This is our online blogging site where you will post your assignments 2-7
Monday, March 14, 2011
Assignment 5/6 - due March 28/31
Assignment 5 - implement your lesson! You may do this in your classroom or, if this is not possible, with friends/ family.
Assignment 6 - post a brief reflection on the implementation. How did it go?
Yesterday, I implemented my lesson plan using Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Isle of the Dead” based on the same-titled painting by Arnold Bocklin with my Creative Writing students. It was an overwhelming success! The students were automatically drawn in by the painting, jotting down as many ideas as they could come up with in one minute on a scrap piece of paper. I encouraged them to write what they saw as well as what they imagined. Then, I began the music and all of the students wrote the entire time—only pausing to look back at their notes or the painting. After the writing, I gave them 5 min. to S.T.A.R. their writing; I had never used this revision method before, and it worked great. Students got right to work on making changes because they knew exactly what to do. After the S.T.A.R., they traded stories with a partner who read their story and gave them feedback about the differences they saw between their two stories. Lastly, we shared just the topic of the story with the whole class—we had everything from stolen brides, to prison islands, to demon hauntings, to someone’s mind—it was really interesting to hear the variety of topics. To end, they just wrote a short note about why they thought there would be such differentiation even though we all experienced the same music and saw the same painting.
I did the lesson today with my 6th graders during my 4th period class. It took me some time to find the right pictures for my power point and that made me realize that if I am going to do more power points for the other chapters I will need to make the time to do them. The power point worked very well for my purpose. The purpose was to simply give kids a starting place to learn some background for ancient Asia. The 6th graders showed a lot of enthusiasm during the presentation and their reflections, for the most part, were very good. They noticed the material and the colors used in the art work of that time period. When the class started to read the chapter the students noticed that the pictures of the pottery in the social studies book were much like the images in the power point. It made for a great class discussion at the end of the lesson.
I implemented the “I Am From” poem lesson plan in my class of 9th graders and it was a big hit. The kids are really into the book we are reading called The Pigman by Paul Zindel. The kids chose their favorite character from the book and just that was an exciting start. The kids were torn as to what character they liked the best and it was fun to watch them go through the pros and cons of each character in just the couple of minutes they had to decide. Most chose one of the three major characters, but a few chose other lesser characters and did a great job at it. The lesson required that the kids know quite a bit about their character and their ease at it showed me how well they have been paying attention to the book. They each went through the process of making lists and creating an “I Am From” poem about their character. After they had their poem complete, we each shared a line, much like we did in Barry Hoonan’s workshop. We made a written version of the poem and discussed the different views that the kids had about each of the characters. They were active the whole time and put out quality products. There wasn’t a dull moment or a moment off task. They loved the activity and actually asked if they could create pictures to go will the poems, which I agreed to. We are now making it into an illustrated class character poems book. The discussion was awesome and each of the kids had something to say because every one of them had thoughtful information they had created to share. I loved the STAR method of editing as well because it gave the kids specific things to look for and do. It was also helpful for them to know that they can get ideas from their peers (without copying) and use them to springboard their own great ideas.
This is in response to sleonetti's lesson on using Sergei Rachmaninoff's music as a writing tool. I am happy to see that the lesson went so well! I too want to use this as a writing prompt but I have not decided whether it will be this piece of music or another. I was curious to see how the kids would react to the music and to the actual writing requirement, but it looks as if it was a success. I tried the STAR method as well, and liked the results I had with it. It seemed like an easy tool for the kids to use with writing. Your lesson looked very structured which gives me a good idea of how to implement it into my own classroom. Thank you!
I taught the lesson to my third grade students this week. It took us two days to complete the lesson, plus one day to complete and present our posters. Overall, it went well.
Students were very engaged with "noticing" the text features and the information on the poster. Due to the fact, I haven't used "jot it down" before, there were some students who had a hard time transitioning to that task. The book I chose for guided practice was a little too long. I think a few short text pieces would have kept the observations and discussion more focused. I broke the lesson up into two days because of scheduling problems so we had to pick up where we left off the previous day. We reviewed the learning objective and our chart from the day before. Thanks to our wonderful librarian, I had plenty of interesting short books for students to choose from during the independent practice. The students read books and created "expert" posters with detailed charts and diagrams.
After this lesson, students have a better understanding about the components of expository text but I will need continue teaching students how to summarize the information presented. At this point, their responses were still detailed oriented versus summarizing.
I'm glad your lesson went so well. I am also interested in the poem and loved the idea of using it with characters from a story. As we have been working on characterization, this would be a good lesson to have students analyze and evaluate the characters. I am curious if your student's observations were similar and how they discussed their different points of views. Also, I don't know how I missed the STAR method of editing but the comments have me intrigued about what I missed!
505 Response 3: Like Megan, I am planning on using the “I Am From” poem to have students reflect on characters except I will be doing this with my World Lit. unit for my seniors. In this unit, they get to choose from Cry, the Beloved Country, In the Time of Butterflies, Thousand Splendid Suns, or The Good Earth. I think it will be interesting to read what they have to say about the characters since they books are so varied. I am planning on implementing this as a part of their book share, so the students will get to hear everyone’s poems. It’s nice that Megan has all of her instructions lined out in her lesson plan, so I only have to make minor changes—thank you!
The following day, I implemented my lesson plan using, "I Need a Hero," in our country. It was a great success. The students were automatically drawn in by the poster, and slide show, write it down as many heroes they could come up with in 90 seconds on their notebook and transfer their ideas into their poster with the group. I encourage them to write what they notice? Saw? Observe as well as what they imagined and they can express their feeling about their hero. Three of my students are dressed like their heroes. They are wearing costume of Michael Jackson, Mother Theresa, and Elves Presley. My students are expanding their knowledge it caught me by surprised. I realize Third-grade have a lot of imagination and very creative and shown an extra productive in my lesson plan. They loved to express their feelings, openions, how their hero, shown a tremendous contribution to Amirican people. Some kids had a big surprised and smiled when three students are extending their favorite heroes by dressing up like them. The group discussion it was a success because every one of them had thoughful information they had an ideas to contribute in the group and gain knowledge from each other. In my classroom we use a lot of poster especially in our Math subject when they do their chart and diagram.
"I am from" poem, I am so grateful one of us using Barry Hoonan's workshop poem. His methods are very useful to all of us. We are experienced and we shared our knowledge to our students too that why "Northwest Inland Writing Project" really help me a lot especially the writing part is big challege for me. The STAR method of editing other students work is really helpful for them to think for themselves. Most of all you have an excellent implement the lesson and completely agree students can learn from their peer.
I did my lesson yesterday. Yesterday was the last day with students before spring break. Not ideal timing :) My lesson was creating vocabulary index cards with four different sections. Overall the lesson went really well. The kiddos did a great job, I just don't feel that the words are truly internalized. I think I will need to re-visit the cards daily (for the week of those vocabulary words) on a full week (not spring break) to really get the full effect that I am picturing. I will continue to try this lesson on a regular week ;)
For this lesson, I chose the eight-year-old girl next door, Sophie. We read, Click, Clack, Moo/ Cows That Type, by Doreen Cronin. Sophie really enjoyed the book, even though she had read it before. During the lesson, I misread the word, “Clickity” and said Click instead. She was sure to catch it! The words, “neutral,” and “ultimatum” caught me off guard. I had not thought in advance that these words needed clarification. I guess, I read right over them when I was planning. So, we talked a little about their meaning. Next time I will add this into my lesson plan. Sophie had many ideas. The letter she wrote from her dog was short but good. The letter format was reviewed but she was already familiar with it so I think this was quite easy for her. I know it will be very different teaching this lesson to an entire class. However, the one on one experience was good preparation.
I gave my lesson plan to my 1st and 7th grade cousins. My lesson plan was using a childrens book to discover the writing trait of voice. We had fun listening to the story and pointing out when there was a great source of voice. My 7th grade cousin thought that this lesson was super easy and so he helped out the 1st grader. The 1st grader enjoyed listening to the story and giving me examples of this trait. He gave me a great story with examples of voice and shared them to me out loud. The story was about his sisters and him finding a mouse in their chickens grain barrel. He told me this story with enthusiasm and a great source of voice. It made me pleased that he understand what was being taught and was excited to share this knowledge with me. It would be interesting to see what a whole group of 1st graders would think about this lesson.
I was able to try my lesson at work with a group of 14 adolescents. I gave the instructions that I would be playing snippets of music and they were to write what ever came to mind.
The kids really enjoyed doing something creative and different. I work at the Youth Acute unit at the hospital. The kids are usually in therapy groups all day so it was a nice break for them.
If I were to do this lesson in a classroom I would choose longer pieces of music. It seemed that the short songs I had a available to me did not hold their attention long enough.
I would also give more specific instructions; most of the kids ended up just writing lists of what the music reminded them of instead of creative pieces. One kid did write a very interesting piece on how a song reminded him of winter.
This was a very valuable experience for me and I am glad I was able to try it out on actual kids instead of my family!
I LOVE the idea of using the "I am from" poem using a character from a book. In my second grade class I think this would be a great group activity to do with a character from a book we are reading. Then I could let the students brainstorm about their own "I am from" poem. Great thinking :)
Upon completion of reading a biography and the multitude of activities that can be completed...students are asked to select 3 objects his or her famous person would find useful and why. This can be shared orally or in writing... I borrowed 3 neighborhood children, all second graders. For this lesson I chose to read aloud the biography. I showed them the book, we took a picture walk, asked questions, predicted.... then I read. At the completion of the book I took a walk up Blooms ladder till I felt confident I had 3 kids who were ready for their assignment. I gave each child 3 yellow stickies and asked them to write down 3 useful items they would like to give Christopher Columbus. Write one on each sticky and then jot down why you selected that item. For the sake of time and keeping the spring breakers interested, I said they only need to share their favorite idea and that would be it. (...dad's GPS..lol) The sticky notes were a safe choice for writing. Kids were not troubled by the blank 8x11 or how much I expected them to write. Each sticky could eventually become its own paragraph, with an opportunity to teach topic sentences. The 3 paragraphs could become and essay. This assignment was a great way to grasp the complexity and level of each child's thinking and how they were able to synthesize their understanding of the information. And yes, I'll do it again.
Megan: My lesson on Responding to a Biography can include so many activities: time lines, diagrams, illustrations, models, graphs, questionaires, role plays...what's in the bag, but I didn't think of the "I am From" poem. What a great idea to use that to complete a character sketch! You really got me thinking. This poem could even be used for animals, countries, scientific concepts...etc. Wow, thanks!
Heather S. I did not take the music workshop so I loved reading about your lesson, writing whatever comes to mind in response to listening to a piece of music. Music is one of our brain's intelligences that gets little attention. I love that it has become the pivotal point of your lesson. I think the opportunity for complex thinking exists with your lesson. Thanks for a great idea!
I implemented my lesson Wednesday, the last day of school before the break. Although the timing was a bit less than ideal, the kiddos engaged in the story, and the lesson. Students did an excellent job of discussing the importance of word choice in writing. Students enjoyed using the thesauruses (they feel like word detectives) to rework the sentences. Presenting the changed sentences was certainly the highlight of the experience for students. They were very proud of the work they had done. I felt this success created an atmosphere in which the kids felt ready to revise their own work. I noticed that students would greatly benefit from future lessons of this sort. I would like to spend more time working on the concept of word choice with students. We have focused a lot on organization, ideas, and conventions; however this lesson was thrilling because students’ voice began to come out in their revised work. I think my class is ready to delve into the art of word choice.
Heather S.- I really enjoyed the idea of using music to get students to engage in their writing. Even though you stated you would like to play longer pieces, I think it sounds like a wonderful prewriting activity. I could see using the short snippets of music to get kids warmed up for the writing task. Megan F. - What a brilliant idea to use the “I Am From” poem as a character sketch! Although you did this lesson with older students, I could see this working very well with my 2nd graders. I think it would be a great whole class activity to really get kiddos thinking about the characters and the text. What a great higher order thinking activity! Jennifer A.- Love the notebook card idea. I think it sounds like a phenomenal way for students to interact with the vocabulary. I was thinking it might be fun to put all of the vocabulary cards on a ring and have kids keep it (and add to it) throughout the year. You could even have them put the words in alphabetical order. Kids could look back on all of their acquired vocabulary
We began our Haiku/ watercolor lesson this week. Having just completed a long, arduous connections writing project, the kids were so excited to work on something short and sweet. I began by reading a couple of Carl Sandburg poems to set the mood. I then read two Haiku poems from Flower Moon Snow, A book of Haiku by Kazue Mizumura. We then talked about the structure of traditional 17 syllable (5-7-5) structure, using one of the poems. I then introduced the non-traditional (short, long, short) structure as shown by Mr. Akin at the NIWP conference. I read them a few of my own Haikus. I then ask the students to write at least 3 Haikus. WOW! When we shared them I was so impressed. What great poets I have in my classroom. Every student got the idea and came up with at least one good Haiku. We then tried contrast and comparison Haikus. Our next step will be to pick their best and refine word choice, before publishing the poem in our computer lab. We will paint our watercolor background when we return from spring break on April 11. It was great to see the kids enthused about writing and having so much spirit while hearing poetry.
Response to elenz: I like both your lesson plan and reflection. It is always inspiring to hear what other third grade teachers are trying and what works. I think that it always takes longer than we plan to implement a deliver the lesson with the results we want. Often things are different than we planned. I’m sure the lesson will go more smoothly and more quickly the next time. I plan to use your ideas (hope that’s OK?) next year to look at the components of expository text. Again using the jotting it down and the poster will take some teaching and training before they become independent. Ah, next year will look different for my lessons and yours, too, I hope.
Megan, I had a similar success using the "I am from..." poem format as a way to analyze character. The students were engaged throughout the whole activity. I also had students who wanted to take the activity further. I have one girl who is using her poem to write a song.
One area that we differed was that all of my students were writing as the same character. I feared that what we would see was a bunch of poems all saying basically the same thing. But this did not happen. The poems were very diverse, and I could see how each student related to the character differently.
The discussion generated was amazing, and I enjoyed watching the students surprise each other with their brilliant insights.
I spread my lesson out over three days which was the best way to deliver it. By introducing the class to NiceNet on the first day, the students had a clear picture of our goal. I also asked the students to sign up for their account as homework. This saved a fair amount of valuable class time. Those students who were able to create an account on their own became my technology experts in the class, and they guided struggling students through the process. As a result I was free to focus on the lesson objective which was to encourage evaluative discussion. I created some initial topics just to let the students get a feel for the software. They were to answer a question about their comfort with technology. I also created a forum for off-topic discussion and one for questions. My advanced students with almost no prompting on my part quickly took ownership of the forum and had posted 40+ messages before coming to class on day two.
On the second day the students created “I am from…” poems as if they were Salvador, and his teacher had assigned his class this activity. I was impressed with the insight and inferences the student exhibited in their poems. I was able to teach the lesson in 30 minutes. I moved the Youth Voice Adaptation introduction to day three since we weren’t really ready to have a discussion. As homework the students were supposed to post their poems. Again this saved a great deal of class time. Only a handful of students showed up on day three without their poems posted, which they were able to do very quickly at the beginning of the period.
The first part of day three was spent in the classroom with a lecture on Youth Voice Adaptation. The students received the lesson well and were excited to see how this activity would play out. Once in the computer lab, I was surprised that I spent almost no time dealing with technical issue. Our class experts kept everyone moving forward, and I spent my time posting comments of my own in the forum. I also called students over to my computer to discuss their posts, which often meant asking them to be more specific. At the end of the period many of the students were so engaged in the discussion that they worked past the bell. The students were genuinely interested in what other students had posted. They gave each other courtesy beyond what they would in the classroom. Many of the quieter students contributed the most to the discussion and really impressed their classmates.
Overall, I felt the lesson was a complete success, and I hope to replicate it again in the future.
I introduced the 'I am from...' poem to a group of resource room kids with great expectation and enthusiasm. The results were, however, less than stellar. After making lists of family foods, and sayings this is the kind of result I received: 'I am from a hamburger, an x-box and 'your killing me.'
I really enjoyed doing the 'I am from..' when we did it as a group at the conference; in fact, it was soulful and brought tears to my eyes listening to other teachers talk about the intimate details of family: meals around a table, games played together, or sayings shared.
Somehow, though, family didn't translate as well with my students. They don't eat meals with family persay and they don't do things with their family, instead, they hit the x-box. the 'I am poem...'wasn't nearly as poetic with my group of students. Most of them said they were from some sort of processed corndog, or other quickly-heated-dish? Not really touching, if you will. It kind of left me with an Edgar Allan Poe feeling in my gut.
So here's my reflection:
'I am from a place called hurried. I teach hurried kids who keep hurried lives and eat hurried foods in front of hurried screens; 'hurried souls too busy to stop and taste life.'
I was able to teach my lesson to my 3rd-grade neighbor. She was eager to see what I had planned, but I think she didn’t find it to be very challenging. I adapted my lesson as I taught seeing that she easily grasped the concept of organization; although, she may not have been familiar or used to talking about a book in terms of “text structure.” My anticipatory activity contained three short events that she organized in sequential order. Once she completed this, I made sure to ask her, the reader, if she would understand the story if the events were rearranged. She was able to deduce and communicate why the story would’ve made much sense. This was my introduction to the concept and need for organization in writing. I then asked her to pay close attention to the author’s organization as we read Rain School. I adapted this part of the lesson and took turns reading with her rather than doing all the reading myself. We stopped to discuss events that might cause other events to happen; we made predictions and identified the problem and solution. After the reading she was able to summarize the events by writing a paragraph describing the cause and effect events. I asked her to read it to me and we discuss her summary organization.
One thing I like about the lesson was the way the book clearly displayed the use of organization. One thing I would maybe change about this lesson is instead of having the students identify the text structure and organization of a previously shared text, I have them use their own writing to identify these elements.
I like your pre-writing activity (looking at the organization of a book)
After reading the book, I would suggest a secondary prewriting activity:
Have your student fold a blank paper into thirds and discuss how most stories follow a 3 ACT structure. Barry Lane calls it: The set-up, the mix-up, the end-up.
I implemented the "I am from" poem in my fifth grade class. We haven't completely finished the assignment, but they thoroughly enjoyed creating their lists. What I noticed was that is was difficult to get these 10 and 11 year olds to write specific things down for their lists. They wrote down words like "Idaho", and I worked with them on changing "Idaho" to "spud state". I foiund it a valuable writing exercise.
the idea of using the "I am from poem" to analyze a character from a book was a great idea. This would really help the students to dig deeper into the life a particular character. This would be a very effective comprehension strategy and check.
I finally got an opportunity to teach my lesson, poetry for fluency, to the 3rd grade title students. They were completely engaged. I chose a poem that was a little high for their abilities, but I wanted to challenge them and they were right with me through the whole lesson. At one point I started to loose them, so I had them put everything down and stand up and do some brain gym activities for about 2 minutes. After this they were ready to get back to work and we ended with everyone engaged. I really liked using Barry's technique of turning to your partner and discussing for 12 seconds or 27 seconds. The students like this as well.
Yesterday, I implemented my lesson plan using Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Isle of the Dead” based on the same-titled painting by Arnold Bocklin with my Creative Writing students. It was an overwhelming success! The students were automatically drawn in by the painting, jotting down as many ideas as they could come up with in one minute on a scrap piece of paper. I encouraged them to write what they saw as well as what they imagined. Then, I began the music and all of the students wrote the entire time—only pausing to look back at their notes or the painting. After the writing, I gave them 5 min. to S.T.A.R. their writing; I had never used this revision method before, and it worked great. Students got right to work on making changes because they knew exactly what to do. After the S.T.A.R., they traded stories with a partner who read their story and gave them feedback about the differences they saw between their two stories. Lastly, we shared just the topic of the story with the whole class—we had everything from stolen brides, to prison islands, to demon hauntings, to someone’s mind—it was really interesting to hear the variety of topics. To end, they just wrote a short note about why they thought there would be such differentiation even though we all experienced the same music and saw the same painting.
ReplyDeleteBeth Artner
ReplyDeleteLesson 5/6
March 16, 2011
I did the lesson today with my 6th graders during my 4th period class. It took me some time to find the right pictures for my power point and that made me realize that if I am going to do more power points for the other chapters I will need to make the time to do them. The power point worked very well for my purpose. The purpose was to simply give kids a starting place to learn some background for ancient Asia. The 6th graders showed a lot of enthusiasm during the presentation and their reflections, for the most part, were very good. They noticed the material and the colors used in the art work of that time period. When the class started to read the chapter the students noticed that the pictures of the pottery in the social studies book were much like the images in the power point. It made for a great class discussion at the end of the lesson.
I implemented the “I Am From” poem lesson plan in my class of 9th graders and it was a big hit. The kids are really into the book we are reading called The Pigman by Paul Zindel. The kids chose their favorite character from the book and just that was an exciting start. The kids were torn as to what character they liked the best and it was fun to watch them go through the pros and cons of each character in just the couple of minutes they had to decide. Most chose one of the three major characters, but a few chose other lesser characters and did a great job at it. The lesson required that the kids know quite a bit about their character and their ease at it showed me how well they have been paying attention to the book. They each went through the process of making lists and creating an “I Am From” poem about their character. After they had their poem complete, we each shared a line, much like we did in Barry Hoonan’s workshop. We made a written version of the poem and discussed the different views that the kids had about each of the characters. They were active the whole time and put out quality products. There wasn’t a dull moment or a moment off task. They loved the activity and actually asked if they could create pictures to go will the poems, which I agreed to. We are now making it into an illustrated class character poems book. The discussion was awesome and each of the kids had something to say because every one of them had thoughtful information they had created to share. I loved the STAR method of editing as well because it gave the kids specific things to look for and do. It was also helpful for them to know that they can get ideas from their peers (without copying) and use them to springboard their own great ideas.
ReplyDelete505 Response
ReplyDeleteThis is in response to sleonetti's lesson on using Sergei Rachmaninoff's music as a writing tool. I am happy to see that the lesson went so well! I too want to use this as a writing prompt but I have not decided whether it will be this piece of music or another. I was curious to see how the kids would react to the music and to the actual writing requirement, but it looks as if it was a success. I tried the STAR method as well, and liked the results I had with it. It seemed like an easy tool for the kids to use with writing. Your lesson looked very structured which gives me a good idea of how to implement it into my own classroom. Thank you!
I taught the lesson to my third grade students this week. It took us two days to complete the lesson, plus one day to complete and present our posters. Overall, it went well.
ReplyDeleteStudents were very engaged with "noticing" the text features and the information on the poster. Due to the fact, I haven't used "jot it down" before, there were some students who had a hard time transitioning to that task. The book I chose for guided practice was a little too long. I think a few short text pieces would have kept the observations and discussion more focused. I broke the lesson up into two days because of scheduling problems so we had to pick up where we left off the previous day. We reviewed the learning objective and our chart from the day before. Thanks to our wonderful librarian, I had plenty of interesting short books for students to choose from during the independent practice. The students read books and created "expert" posters with detailed charts and diagrams.
After this lesson, students have a better understanding about the components of expository text but I will need continue teaching students how to summarize the information presented. At this point, their responses were still detailed oriented versus summarizing.
505 Response to Megan's "I am From" lesson...
ReplyDeleteI'm glad your lesson went so well. I am also interested in the poem and loved the idea of using it with characters from a story. As we have been working on characterization, this would be a good lesson to have students analyze and evaluate the characters. I am curious if your student's observations were similar and how they discussed their different points of views. Also, I don't know how I missed the STAR method of editing but the comments have me intrigued about what I missed!
505 Response 3: Like Megan, I am planning on using the “I Am From” poem to have students reflect on characters except I will be doing this with my World Lit. unit for my seniors. In this unit, they get to choose from Cry, the Beloved Country, In the Time of Butterflies, Thousand Splendid Suns, or The Good Earth. I think it will be interesting to read what they have to say about the characters since they books are so varied. I am planning on implementing this as a part of their book share, so the students will get to hear everyone’s poems. It’s nice that Megan has all of her instructions lined out in her lesson plan, so I only have to make minor changes—thank you!
ReplyDeleteMarch28, and March 31, assignments
ReplyDeleteThe following day, I implemented my lesson plan using, "I Need a Hero," in our country. It was a great success. The students were automatically drawn in by the poster, and slide show, write it down as many heroes they could come up with in 90 seconds on their notebook and transfer their ideas into their poster with the group. I encourage them to write what they notice? Saw? Observe as well as what they imagined and they can express their feeling about their hero. Three of my students are dressed like their heroes. They are wearing costume of Michael Jackson, Mother Theresa, and Elves Presley. My students are expanding their knowledge it caught me by surprised. I realize Third-grade have a lot of imagination and very creative and shown an extra productive in my lesson plan. They loved to express their feelings, openions, how their hero, shown a tremendous contribution to Amirican people. Some kids had a big surprised and smiled when three students are extending their favorite heroes by dressing up like them. The group discussion it was a success because every one of them had thoughful information they had an ideas to contribute in the group and gain knowledge from each other. In my classroom we use a lot of poster especially in our Math subject when they do their chart and diagram.
Feedback April 2, assignment Megan Frison
ReplyDelete"I am from" poem, I am so grateful one of us using Barry Hoonan's workshop poem. His methods are very useful to all of us. We are experienced and we shared our knowledge to our students too that why "Northwest Inland Writing Project" really help me a lot especially the writing part is big challege for me. The STAR method of editing other students work is really helpful for them to think for themselves. Most of all you have an excellent implement the lesson and completely agree students can learn from their peer.
I did my lesson yesterday. Yesterday was the last day with students before spring break. Not ideal timing :) My lesson was creating vocabulary index cards with four different sections. Overall the lesson went really well. The kiddos did a great job, I just don't feel that the words are truly internalized. I think I will need to re-visit the cards daily (for the week of those vocabulary words) on a full week (not spring break) to really get the full effect that I am picturing. I will continue to try this lesson on a regular week ;)
ReplyDeleteFor this lesson, I chose the eight-year-old girl next door, Sophie. We read, Click, Clack, Moo/ Cows That Type, by Doreen Cronin. Sophie really enjoyed the book, even though she had read it before.
ReplyDeleteDuring the lesson, I misread the word, “Clickity” and said Click instead. She was sure to catch it! The words, “neutral,” and “ultimatum” caught me off guard. I had not thought in advance that these words needed clarification. I guess, I read right over them when I was planning. So, we talked a little about their meaning. Next time I will add this into my lesson plan.
Sophie had many ideas. The letter she wrote from her dog was short but good. The letter format was reviewed but she was already familiar with it so I think this was quite easy for her.
I know it will be very different teaching this lesson to an entire class. However, the one on one experience was good preparation.
I gave my lesson plan to my 1st and 7th grade cousins. My lesson plan was using a childrens book to discover the writing trait of voice. We had fun listening to the story and pointing out when there was a great source of voice. My 7th grade cousin thought that this lesson was super easy and so he helped out the 1st grader. The 1st grader enjoyed listening to the story and giving me examples of this trait. He gave me a great story with examples of voice and shared them to me out loud. The story was about his sisters and him finding a mouse in their chickens grain barrel. He told me this story with enthusiasm and a great source of voice. It made me pleased that he understand what was being taught and was excited to share this knowledge with me. It would be interesting to see what a whole group of 1st graders would think about this lesson.
ReplyDeleteI was able to try my lesson at work with a group of 14 adolescents. I gave the instructions that I would be playing snippets of music and they were to write what ever came to mind.
ReplyDeleteThe kids really enjoyed doing something creative and different. I work at the Youth Acute unit at the hospital. The kids are usually in therapy groups all day so it was a nice break for them.
If I were to do this lesson in a classroom I would choose longer pieces of music. It seemed that the short songs I had a available to me did not hold their attention long enough.
I would also give more specific instructions; most of the kids ended up just writing lists of what the music reminded them of instead of creative pieces. One kid did write a very interesting piece on how a song reminded him of winter.
This was a very valuable experience for me and I am glad I was able to try it out on actual kids instead of my family!
505 Responding to Meghan F.
ReplyDeleteMeghan,
I LOVE the idea of using the "I am from" poem using a character from a book. In my second grade class I think this would be a great group activity to do with a character from a book we are reading. Then I could let the students brainstorm about their own "I am from" poem. Great thinking :)
What's in the Bag?
ReplyDeleteUpon completion of reading a biography and the multitude of activities that can be completed...students are asked to select 3 objects his or her famous person would find useful and why. This can be shared orally or in writing...
I borrowed 3 neighborhood children, all second graders. For this lesson I chose to read aloud the biography. I showed them the book, we took a picture walk, asked questions, predicted.... then I read. At the completion of the book I took a walk up Blooms ladder till I felt confident I had 3 kids who were ready for their assignment. I gave each child 3 yellow stickies and asked them to write down 3 useful items they would like to give Christopher Columbus. Write one on each sticky and then jot down why you selected that item. For the sake of time and keeping the spring breakers interested, I said they only need to share their favorite idea and that would be it. (...dad's GPS..lol)
The sticky notes were a safe choice for writing. Kids were not troubled by the blank 8x11 or how much I expected them to write. Each sticky could eventually become its own paragraph, with an opportunity to teach topic sentences. The 3 paragraphs could become and essay. This assignment was a great way to grasp the complexity and level of each child's thinking and how they were able to synthesize their understanding of the information. And yes, I'll do it again.
505 response: March 31
ReplyDeleteMegan: My lesson on Responding to a Biography can include so many activities: time lines, diagrams, illustrations, models, graphs, questionaires, role plays...what's in the bag, but I didn't think of the "I am From" poem. What a great idea to use that to complete a character sketch! You really got me thinking. This poem could even be used for animals, countries, scientific concepts...etc. Wow, thanks!
Heather S.
I did not take the music workshop so I loved reading about your lesson, writing whatever comes to mind in response to listening to a piece of music. Music is one of our brain's intelligences that gets little attention. I love that it has become the pivotal point of your lesson. I think the opportunity for complex thinking exists with your lesson. Thanks for a great idea!
I implemented my lesson Wednesday, the last day of school before the break. Although the timing was a bit less than ideal, the kiddos engaged in the story, and the lesson. Students did an excellent job of discussing the importance of word choice in writing. Students enjoyed using the thesauruses (they feel like word detectives) to rework the sentences. Presenting the changed sentences was certainly the highlight of the experience for students. They were very proud of the work they had done. I felt this success created an atmosphere in which the kids felt ready to revise their own work.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that students would greatly benefit from future lessons of this sort. I would like to spend more time working on the concept of word choice with students. We have focused a lot on organization, ideas, and conventions; however this lesson was thrilling because students’ voice began to come out in their revised work. I think my class is ready to delve into the art of word choice.
Heather S.- I really enjoyed the idea of using music to get students to engage in their writing. Even though you stated you would like to play longer pieces, I think it sounds like a wonderful prewriting activity. I could see using the short snippets of music to get kids warmed up for the writing task.
ReplyDeleteMegan F. - What a brilliant idea to use the “I Am From” poem as a character sketch! Although you did this lesson with older students, I could see this working very well with my 2nd graders. I think it would be a great whole class activity to really get kiddos thinking about the characters and the text. What a great higher order thinking activity!
Jennifer A.- Love the notebook card idea. I think it sounds like a phenomenal way for students to interact with the vocabulary. I was thinking it might be fun to put all of the vocabulary cards on a ring and have kids keep it (and add to it) throughout the year. You could even have them put the words in alphabetical order. Kids could look back on all of their acquired vocabulary
We began our Haiku/ watercolor lesson this week. Having just completed a long, arduous connections writing project, the kids were so excited to work on something short and sweet. I began by reading a couple of Carl Sandburg poems to set the mood. I then read two Haiku poems from Flower Moon Snow, A book of Haiku by Kazue Mizumura. We then talked about the structure of traditional 17 syllable (5-7-5) structure, using one of the poems. I then introduced the non-traditional (short, long, short) structure as shown by Mr. Akin at the NIWP conference. I read them a few of my own Haikus. I then ask the students to write at least 3 Haikus. WOW! When we shared them I was so impressed. What great poets I have in my classroom. Every student got the idea and came up with at least one good Haiku. We then tried contrast and comparison Haikus. Our next step will be to pick their best and refine word choice, before publishing the poem in our computer lab. We will paint our watercolor background when we return from spring break on April 11. It was great to see the kids enthused about writing and having so much spirit while hearing poetry.
ReplyDeleteResponse to elenz:
ReplyDeleteI like both your lesson plan and reflection. It is always inspiring to hear what other third grade teachers are trying and what works. I think that it always takes longer than we plan to implement a deliver the lesson with the results we want. Often things are different than we planned. I’m sure the lesson will go more smoothly and more quickly the next time. I plan to use your ideas (hope that’s OK?) next year to look at the components of expository text. Again using the jotting it down and the poster will take some teaching and training before they become independent. Ah, next year will look different for my lessons and yours, too, I hope.
Response to Megan Frison:
ReplyDeleteMegan, I had a similar success using the "I am from..." poem format as a way to analyze character. The students were engaged throughout the whole activity. I also had students who wanted to take the activity further. I have one girl who is using her poem to write a song.
One area that we differed was that all of my students were writing as the same character. I feared that what we would see was a bunch of poems all saying basically the same thing. But this did not happen. The poems were very diverse, and I could see how each student related to the character differently.
The discussion generated was amazing, and I enjoyed watching the students surprise each other with their brilliant insights.
NiceNet & ”I am from…” Poem Lesson Refection
ReplyDeleteI spread my lesson out over three days which was the best way to deliver it. By introducing the class to NiceNet on the first day, the students had a clear picture of our goal. I also asked the students to sign up for their account as homework. This saved a fair amount of valuable class time. Those students who were able to create an account on their own became my technology experts in the class, and they guided struggling students through the process. As a result I was free to focus on the lesson objective which was to encourage evaluative discussion. I created some initial topics just to let the students get a feel for the software. They were to answer a question about their comfort with technology. I also created a forum for off-topic discussion and one for questions. My advanced students with almost no prompting on my part quickly took ownership of the forum and had posted 40+ messages before coming to class on day two.
On the second day the students created “I am from…” poems as if they were Salvador, and his teacher had assigned his class this activity. I was impressed with the insight and inferences the student exhibited in their poems. I was able to teach the lesson in 30 minutes. I moved the Youth Voice Adaptation introduction to day three since we weren’t really ready to have a discussion. As homework the students were supposed to post their poems. Again this saved a great deal of class time. Only a handful of students showed up on day three without their poems posted, which they were able to do very quickly at the beginning of the period.
The first part of day three was spent in the classroom with a lecture on Youth Voice Adaptation. The students received the lesson well and were excited to see how this activity would play out. Once in the computer lab, I was surprised that I spent almost no time dealing with technical issue. Our class experts kept everyone moving forward, and I spent my time posting comments of my own in the forum. I also called students over to my computer to discuss their posts, which often meant asking them to be more specific. At the end of the period many of the students were so engaged in the discussion that they worked past the bell. The students were genuinely interested in what other students had posted. They gave each other courtesy beyond what they would in the classroom. Many of the quieter students contributed the most to the discussion and really impressed their classmates.
Overall, I felt the lesson was a complete success, and I hope to replicate it again in the future.
I introduced the 'I am from...' poem to a group of resource room kids with great expectation and enthusiasm. The results were, however, less than stellar. After making lists of family foods, and sayings this is the kind of result I received:
ReplyDelete'I am from a hamburger, an x-box and 'your killing me.'
I really enjoyed doing the 'I am from..' when we did it as a group at the conference; in fact, it was soulful and brought tears to my eyes listening to other teachers talk about the intimate details of family: meals around a table, games played together, or sayings shared.
Somehow, though, family didn't translate as well with my students. They don't eat meals with family persay and they don't do things with their family, instead, they hit the x-box. the 'I am poem...'wasn't nearly as poetic with my group of students. Most of them said they were from some sort of processed corndog, or other quickly-heated-dish? Not really touching, if you will. It kind of left me with an Edgar Allan Poe feeling in my gut.
So here's my reflection:
'I am from a place called hurried. I teach hurried kids who keep hurried lives and eat hurried foods in front of hurried screens; 'hurried souls too busy to stop and taste life.'
I was able to teach my lesson to my 3rd-grade neighbor. She was eager to see what I had planned, but I think she didn’t find it to be very challenging. I adapted my lesson as I taught seeing that she easily grasped the concept of organization; although, she may not have been familiar or used to talking about a book in terms of “text structure.” My anticipatory activity contained three short events that she organized in sequential order. Once she completed this, I made sure to ask her, the reader, if she would understand the story if the events were rearranged. She was able to deduce and communicate why the story would’ve made much sense. This was my introduction to the concept and need for organization in writing. I then asked her to pay close attention to the author’s organization as we read Rain School. I adapted this part of the lesson and took turns reading with her rather than doing all the reading myself. We stopped to discuss events that might cause other events to happen; we made predictions and identified the problem and solution. After the reading she was able to summarize the events by writing a paragraph describing the cause and effect events. I asked her to read it to me and we discuss her summary organization.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I like about the lesson was the way the book clearly displayed the use of organization. One thing I would maybe change about this lesson is instead of having the students identify the text structure and organization of a previously shared text, I have them use their own writing to identify these elements.
Kari,
ReplyDeleteI like your pre-writing activity (looking at the organization of a book)
After reading the book, I would suggest a secondary prewriting activity:
Have your student fold a blank paper into thirds and discuss how most stories follow a 3 ACT structure. Barry Lane calls it: The set-up, the mix-up, the end-up.
I implemented the "I am from" poem in my fifth grade class. We haven't completely finished the assignment, but they thoroughly enjoyed creating their lists. What I noticed was that is was difficult to get these 10 and 11 year olds to write specific things down for their lists. They wrote down words like "Idaho", and I worked with them on changing "Idaho" to "spud state". I foiund it a valuable writing exercise.
ReplyDeletethe idea of using the "I am from poem" to analyze a character from a book was a great idea. This would really help the students to dig deeper into the life a particular character. This would be a very effective comprehension strategy and check.
ReplyDeleteI finally got an opportunity to teach my lesson, poetry for fluency, to the 3rd grade title students. They were completely engaged. I chose a poem that was a little high for their abilities, but I wanted to challenge them and they were right with me through the whole lesson. At one point I started to loose them, so I had them put everything down and stand up and do some brain gym activities for about 2 minutes. After this they were ready to get back to work and we ended with everyone engaged. I really liked using Barry's technique of turning to your partner and discussing for 12 seconds or 27 seconds. The students like this as well.
ReplyDelete