Writings of a Little Girl

I was rummaging through my closet last night and came across an orange sheet of paper folded up.  When I opened it up I knew immediately what it was.  Back when I was in elementary school, I would sometimes sit with my mom in the big sanctuary instead of going to Sunday school with the rest of the kids at church.  This was back when our church services were about 2 hours long, so I would sometimes scribble, draw, or write for fun.  The folded piece of paper I found was an old sheet of paper where church members could write sermon notes, but I decided to write a story on it.  I scratched out the words "Sermon Notes" on the top and decided to write a story about a penguin.  If you can't read the picture version, here is the story with all original spellings and punctuation included:

Once there was a penguin named little penguin.  He was smart, and had a green beake.  His friends made fun of him because he was different.  One day he saw some yellow paint.  Maybe if I paint my beack yellow they woun't know that my beack is green.  So he painted his beack yellow.  The other peguins diden't even know who he was.  Then one day he was watching a cook fixing lunch.  Then all of a sudden the cook acxadently took the pepper and threw it out the window.  Little Penguin sneezed all the paint off his beack.  His friends were very mad at him.  He was sad.  Then one day a girl came to his house.  Her beack was green too!  She asked him if she could stay with him because the penguins did not let her stay with them.  He said sure they won't let me either because I have a green beack too and they lived happily ever after.

I showed my mom this and we had a good laugh about it.  She said that you can tell I read a lot of books when I was young.   The Ugly Duckling, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and Disney princess movies/stories are all being channeled here :)   And, the name Megan and the grade A+ is on the sheet because I used to play "school" when I was little and would pretend to grade the papers of my students which were actually written by me.  Obviously I thought this was a fabulous piece of writing.  Yep.  Major nerd.

Renaissance Festival

Today I went to the Renaissance Festival with the 7th graders!  Medieval accents, period costumes, giant turkey drumsticks, and hilarious entertainment were everywhere.  And, a million school children from all around Ohio littered the festival as well.  We had a lot of fun.  I chaperoned a group of five girls.  Four of them were friends and stuck together, while the other one was glued to my side the entire time.  My cooperating teacher has a bad back right now, so she did not end up coming with us.  I had one parent take the other half of my class for the day.  Sitting on the bus with a group full of twelve to thirteen-year-olds is LOUD.  They love screaming out the windows to the people on the other buses.  A group of them were eating Skittles and passing them around during the trip.  They tweaked the lyrics to Taio Cruz's song Dynamite by singing, "I throw my Skittles in the air sometimes, saying AYO, taste the rainbow."  I have to admit, that was hilarious.  When the buses arrived and parked, a woman with a medieval costume and accent entered our bus and explained the rules:  no food, bags, or weapons in the area.  After lining all the 7th graders into a single file line, we marched them back into time.  I made sure that I took my group straight to the arena where the jousting entertainment was about to start.  Thankfully we got early enough before all the seats filled up.  Queen Elizabeth and her minions walked into the arena and were placed in the box seating.  A funny man on a horse came out and introduced the jousters and really got the audience involved with cheering.  It was a blast.  Later, we watched two comedian swordsmen put on a performance.  We mostly walked around and enjoyed all the shops.  Overall, the kids had a blast and were able to learn a lot about the time period.  I highly recommend going at least once.  It's an awesome way to really experience the medieval era while being extremely entertained.  I definitely want to go back with friends or the fiancé.

Booktalk Competition

For my English Education class at Wright State, each group of two people had to come up with one Young Adult book to pair with Romeo & Juliet.  My group, consisting of Heather and I, was given the theme of manipulation to pair up with R&J.  Now what you have to understand is Heather and I are a little obsessed with the YA book, The Hunger Games.  Maybe the word "little" is putting it too lightly.  We've read it at least 4 times, have already made lesson plans on it, and own two Hunger Games t-shirts.  So, Heather demanded that we choose Hunger Games to booktalk to the class, to try and persuade them to read and pair with R&J.  Because not everyone in the class has read it and because it has every theme R&J has, we thought it would be a good idea.  Heather and I are overachievers as well.  If something is due in a week, we'll have it down in two days.  Anyway, to persuade our peers to pick Hunger Games to read, we decided to write and chant a rap/poem to go along with a video we made, instead of doing your normal pick a quote and give a synopsis of the book booktalk.  Here is that video.  Enjoy, haha:

Lost Generation

My pastor showed this video at church.  I refuse to believe that I am part of a lost generation, or that my students are part of a lost generation.

Rock Star Day

Because Bellbrook Middle School "rocks," all teachers and students were encouraged to dress up as rock stars a few Fridays ago.  Well, it ended up being that all the teachers dressed up and only a hand full of students.  My teacher had the best costume by far in the entire building.  She dressed up as Kate Pierson from the B52s.  She had the red bouffant wig and an amazing 80s multicolored jacket to go with her knee-high black leather boots.  All the students from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade were coming down our hall and peeking in the classroom.  She rocked!  I wasn't a specific rock star, but more of a Beatles fan/rocker.  The kids loved it.  It was a fun day.

1st Teacher Inservice

I attended my first teacher in-service yesterday.  It was...interesting.  I've decided that teachers are the worst students.  At WSU and at the in-service, teachers cannot sit still and often complain when they are forced to sit and listen to someone else teach!  My professor at WSU says the same thing, lol.  The teacher in-service had every teacher from the district in the middle school cafetorium.  Someone from the district came with a crappy PowerPoint and showed/explained to us the schools' report cards and test scores...for 4 hours!  It was rough, but the
teachers I sat with were hilarious!  Especially the ones from the high school.  They were moaning and complaining the entire time.  Their argument is that because they are the ones in the classroom, they know the most about what's going on and what's best for the students.  They do not need someone coming in from the district telling them how they are doing.  I see both sides.  The teachers do know best when it comes to students, but I think that teachers need to be able to understand and use the data provided by the district as well.  Overall, it was a long, boring day, but it will give me some professional development credits.

Found Journal

There is only one class that I look forward to at Wright State this quarter: Studies in English Education. There are about 14 of us in the class, including our professor. I know and love everyone in the class, and our professor is someone we've know all throughout undergrad. She is extremely down-to-earth and nothing but encouraging and helpful to us student teachers. If we ever have a problem, we just let her know and we have an answer within 24 hours. She's willing to drop whatever she has planned to help us out. You have no idea how awesome that is!!!

Right now in class, we are reading a book called The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer. I've only read the first two chapters, but so far it has been telling us how important it is to be reflective about how who we are, because it affects our teaching. Palmer says, "Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for better or for worse." We teach who we are. If we are extremely grumpy people, we will be extremely grumpy teachers. If we are visual learners, we will more than likely design our lessons for visual learners. Instead of writing a typical journal response to our readings, our professor is having us keep a "found journal." A found journal is a journal where we collect and paste an object from the classroom into our journal and connect it to Palmer's writings. If the object cannot be put into the journal, we have to describe the object. People have written about Band-Aids, detention slips, bulletin boards, and gum wrappers. My friend wrote about a gum wrapper that was signed by a student. The student told her that one day he was going to be a professional football player and that his signature would be worth a lot of money one day :) She is in a 7th grade classroom as well. All in all, it's a great way to reflect on the book and a great way to keep a scrapbook of our time student teaching.

Motivation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmTxr7OsPj0&feature=player_embedded

One word: AWESOME

Subbing

So on Thursday and Friday, I enter the world of subbing--as in completely alone with the students all day. Yikes. I'm excited, but a little nervous about how the kids will act. I guess it's time for me to really lay down the law, lol. How I act and teach on these days will really set the tone for how I will be perceived by them throughout the school year. So, it's a little nerve racking, but I'm sure it'll go great. I imagine they'll be a little hard to quiet down in the beginning. I can hear it now, "Miss Bennett! Miss Bennett! Where's Mrs. Bakita??" I'm sure they'll sound just like my preschoolers at church: "Miss Bennett! Miss Bennett! Miss Bennett!" Oh, and speaking of preschoolers, the class I teach at church really confirms my belief that I should not teach elementary. The saying my name every 5 seconds and high-pitched voices are cute for about a minute and then I have a headache :) Not to say I don't love them, but I could not handle all of them all day, haha. So, everyone wish me luck this week!!!

Word of the Day & Sentence Stalking

Two of the activities I have been in charge of at Bellbrook is the Word of the Day and Sentence Stalking. For the Word of the Day, we introduce one new vocabulary word to students on the overhead. The image we show includes the definition, the part of speech, and a question for students to answer about the word. Instead of bogging students down with a huge list to memorize, we only have students learn one word a day, and test them over the words on Friday. However, students will be asked to remember these words for the next week and so on. If students use the vocab words in their writing, they get one point per word they use that goes towards the class score. Our three classes are in competition against one another. If students come across vocab words in their free reading and show us, they each get a point per word as well. We've already had at least three students do this.

Sentence Stalking is an activity where we teach students about grammar and the mechanics of great writing. Instead of giving students a sentence full of errors and having them correct the errors, we give students an awesome sentence from the Jerry Spinelli book we're reading to the class. The idea is to have students mimic great writing. We learn by imitation. We learn to talk, walk, play sports, cook, clean, etc., by watching and mimicking those around us. Therefore, we are hoping that students will mimic the great sentence we show each day. When the sentence is shown on the overhead, I ask students what they notice about the sentence. I encourage them to participate and that their observations cannot be wrong. Sometimes they think they have to give a genius answer. So, every day students will comment on the obvious: the capital letter at the beginning of the sentence and the period at the end. Then students will start to venture (which is one of their vocab words :) ) and comment on different things they observe such as the apostrophes, the commas, the word choice, the repetition, and the alliteration. The other day, when asked, "What makes this a sentence?", a student commented, "Because there is a subject and a predicate". I was amazed! They actually remembered what they had learned from last year. Each day it seems that students are noticing more and more details about the sentence. Sometimes we will even have students stop and use the technique the author used to write their own sentence. Oh, and this is called Sentence Stalking because students are "stalking/creeping on the sentence :)

Digital Booktalk & Neighborhood Map

2 weeks of school down, a lot to go. My cooperating teacher is amazing and the students are great. I've already learned so much. While looking on the Web for information about the YA book Nothing But the Truth by Avi, I came across the website http://digitalbooktalk.com/. This website is awesome! It has video booktalk of several YA books for grades K-12. I found a cool booktalk for Nothing But the Truth, which I think my 7th graders will love. I'm hoping it will get them excited about reading the book. If you register on this site, you will be able to get ideas for helping students make their own book trailers in class.

In class, my cooperating teacher and I are reading a chapter from Jerry Spinelli's autobiography, Knots in My Yo-Yo String each day. In this book, the author has drawn a map of an aerial view of the neighborhood he grew up in. The stories from this neighborhood are what inspired him to write his autobiography. So, my teacher, who had my professor at Wright State for a Writing Workshop a few summers ago, decided to use one of the professor's ideas in our class. We handed out sheets of drawing paper to each student and asked them to draw an aerial view of the neighborhood they grew up in. The map had to include many different places where students have a lot of stories from. For example, neighbors homes, a school, a creek, a basketball court, a swimming pool, a bike trail, etc. After students were done drawing, we asked them to place three Sticky Notes on three places on their map which they could write a great story about. After students finished this, we had students write in their writer's notebooks about one of the places for three minutes. After the three minutes were up, students had another three minutes to write about another place/memories. The kids loved this! They were so quiet and engrossed when they were both drawing and writing. This is a great way to prompt students to write something meaningful and something from the heart.