The Writing Process

My CT did an amazing exercise today for our students to better understand the writing process. The point of the exercise was to show students how writers are just like sculptors. At the beginning of class, each student was given a small container of clay. After they had their clay the teacher gave these directions and made the following analogies. I paraphrased the directions from the website http://forums.atozteacherstuff.com/showthread.php?t=62544:

1. Close your eyes and knead the clay and get a feel for the clay--A writer must know the material before he or she begins to write. Words are the materials of writers which can be found in dictionaries, thesauruses, and books.

2. Play with the clay. Bend it, stretch it, pile it, press it. Don't make anything out of it. Just play--Writers need to play with words by writing in journals or writing notes.

3. Today you will create something. You will put it on display for your peers to see. It is important for writers to know who their audience will be, because it can affect what they create.

4. You cannot create something unless you know what the purpose is, just like writers need to know why they are writing. Today you will make a pencil holder--something that will hold a pencil on your desk.

5. Create the first of many ideas you will come up with for the pencil holder. Don't decide on the final idea yet. Instead, experiment with your ideas, just like a writer experiments with how he or she may want to say something.

6. OK, mush up your dough and create another pencil holder. There are thousands of ideas where that one came from.

7. Now mush that idea up and start again. Try something new and different from your last design.

8. OK, now mush it up again. Now we need to come up with a way to evaluate your pencil holder. (Have students come up with a rubric).

9. Create your final draft keeping the criteria in the rubric in mind.

10. Look at your final creation from different views. Look at it from the top, the side, the bottom. What revisions can you make to make your creation even better? Just as you need to look at your sculpture from a new perspective, a writer needs to look at his or her writing from a different perspective: read aloud the paper or ask a peer to read the paper.

This exercise is a great analogy for the writing process, and the students really enjoyed it.

Engaged and an Eagle!

I wasn't going to write about it on here, but I thought why not? This blog is sort of turning into a journal/memoir of my life right now, haha. I am engaged! To my best friend! Jake proposed to me on 8-9-10; therefore, we'll always remember the date. I've been dating him since 4-18-04. He ended up proposing to me at the fossil beds in Caesar's Creek--the place where he took me on our first date. It was awesome because my family was in town from Seattle and was able to see my ring. Right now the plan is to get married in June 2012.

I am an official Eagle right now as well! Today was the teachers' first day at Bellbrook Middle School. The school had a continental breakfast for all the teachers in the district, followed by a district meeting. Then, the district meeting was followed by the middle school meeting, and the middle school meeting was followed by a meeting with the Intervention Specialist for 7th grade. So it was a long day. But, I'm really excited to meet my students tomorrow!

7th Grade Book List

So I met my CT the other day. She gave me a tour of the school and introduced me to some of the staff. Everyone seems really nice and the school is great! I love the room I'm going to be teaching in. My CT is very modern with her teaching ideas and has a teaching style that really suits me! She let me look at the 4 units we will be teaching this year. Each unit will have students reading a book as a class. These books will include Stargirl by Jerri Spinelli, The Giver by Lois Lowry, The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis, and a book that I choose to teach at the end of the year. My CT said that it could be any book I wanted, but that she would like to be able to fit it into a culture unit about beliefs, values, rituals, heroes, etc. I have not read a lot of YA books that have these themes, so I started looking up different books on Amazon.com. I found another book by Jerry Spinelli called Maniac Magee that might work. I'm reading it right now to see if I like it. The book is written like a folk story about the legend of a boy named Jeffery Magee. Jeffery runs away from his aunt and uncle who he lives with after his parents die. He ends up having many different adventures in two nearby cities called East Mill and West Mill and ends up getting the nickname, Maniac Magee. The people in these cities are very segregated by race and do not mix very often. However, when Maniac shows up in both cities he confronts the racism by socializing with everyone, all while trying to find a place to call home.

So far it's a really great book, and I think I could teach about tolerance, homelessness, and how legends and folktales are often used to pass on the values and morals of a culture. Maniac is certainly a hero in the story and becomes a legend to the characters in both East Mill and West Mill.

The Race to Nowhere

My uncle from Seattle told me about a documentary coming out called "The Race to Nowhere." In the trailer for this movie, it discusses the stress that students undergo in order to succeed and meet the expectations of society. Achieving good grades, passing standardized tests, being involved in a variety of extracurricular activities, getting into college, and making a lot of money are just some of the pressures students face. The trailer mentions how students are experiencing anxiety and depression while some are committing suicide when the stress becomes too much.

This obviously is a major problem. Our society's obsession with success and achievement forces schools to eliminate all the fun in learning. Teachers are teaching to the test in class so that their students pass the required standardized tests. Many districts' fine art and music classes are being cut because they are "not needed" and are too expensive. I think this is crazy. All students need the chance to be creative in school. What student did not like to play with crayons and paint when he or she was little? We all have a creative side, but schools do not always allow this.

The pressure of success is another problem. Although students need goals and should shoot to succeed at what they do, the expectation to always succeed and never fail has got to go away. My pastor at church just finished a series entitled, Fearless. He talked about how many of us have the fear of failure. I will admit, the thought of failing and not being good at teaching is definitely something I think about. Even though I have done well at school my entire life, I still feel the need to be successful at everything I do. My pastor says that often times failure precedes great success. Abraham Lincoln had several failures before he became one of the best Presidents of the United States. In fact, he ran for at least 10 different positions in the government and was defeated at least 10 different times. The point is, even in the midst of defeat, he kept trying. Students do not realize that failure is often a great thing. We can learn from failure and defeat, and if we try again we have a better chance at succeeding.

Overall, I think failure needs to be discussed in schools. Students need to be aware that putting in effort and failing is not always a bad thing. Instead, it makes us stronger and allows us to grow when we push through the failure and try again.

To read more about The Race to Nowhere, here is the website: http://www.racetonowhere.com/

Subbing License

Just called the Sugarcreek Board of Education to see about getting my subbing license. I figured I might as well get paid when my cooperating teacher is absent during my student teaching. This way, if I don't get a job right after my master, I can still sub in the Sugarcreek district.

Animoto

During my Phase I observation in a 9th grade class, the students made a 30 second video of their research instead of writing a paper. Their videos had to have text or pictures that represented their 6 sub topics. The students used a website called www.animoto.com. This website allows you to create a video by plugging in pictures, music, and text. The site takes these things and adds cool transitions to complete the video. The end product is really cool. You can pay $30 to have a year subscription if you want to make videos that are longer than 30 seconds. Here is one I made of Jake and me:

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

SO True

Friend of mine posted this on Facebook, lol.

Hunger Games Travel Brochure

My ILA Cohort has designed a Wiki space for us to post lessons and information during the school year. I've been going through the lesson plans I've made during my undergrad and found this travel brochure I made for a guided writing assignment. Yes, I'm a little obsessed with The Hunger Games, but it's such a good book! The lesson asks students to make their own travel brochures for the Hunger Games. They are allowed to have a little freedom in the information and attractions they include, but they must have information that is tangent to the book. The pictures above can be printed out and folded into a brochure.