Bookish (and not so Bookish) Thoughts

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1. My husband and I sometimes exchange small gifts for Easter and this year he got my the ice cream maker attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer. I tried out this weekend and the first batch of vanilla with Peanut Butter Oreos was a success. If the process didn't take so long this would be very dangerous. I'm excited about all the possibilities, though.

2. I subscribe to Audible and am having trouble selecting books; each time I hesitate, thinking that I'd prefer to read the book instead. I tend to gravitate towards more nonfiction when it comes to listening, so if anyone has some suggestions I'll take them (I just finished Go Wild by John Ratey and David Perlmutter and just downloaded Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina).

3. Today we did SAT testing on site, as opposed to the normal Saturday option. I had the same group of kids, my first period, in my classroom from 7:30-12:30 and MAN were they troopers. The complaining didn't start until eleven and even then it was minimal. I also had perfect attendance- probably the only room.

4. I'm confused about where my makeup goes during the day. I even where primer. Like seriously- does it, like, evaporate? Do I rub my face THAT much? I'm not sweating. So where is it?

5. I finally got my glasses from Warby Parker and I lam very pleased. The process from ordering to receiving was exactly two weeks, and that included a slight delay that was caused by my doctor not including a measurement (I had to do it at home with a credit card, my webcam, and email; I felt like the McGyver of optometry there for a second). Pretty much all their styles are $95 and you can get five shipped, for free, ahead of time to try on at home. Glasses shopping for lazy people. I love them so much I took a picture (I hate the "s" word almost as much as I hate putting pictures of myself on the blog... but I really do love these glasses):

[I seriously took this picture on and off three times]

6. Next week, going back to the whole testing students thing, I'm doing SBAC Common Core testing in my room all day, every day. I know the first two days I'll be psyched to get things done, but by Thursday or Friday I'll be dying.

7. How many helium-filled balloons can you fit in a Honda CRV? Anyone? Guesses? This isn't a trick question, by the way.

8. I'm reading a review copy of  Phenomenal by Leigh Ann Henion right now and I'm a little disappointed. The premise, a woman that has all these awesome adventures to sort of reclaim her identity after having a kid, is something I can identify with, but the execution (at least so far; I'm about half way through) is falling a little short. I hate when that happens.

9. I'm running again! Sort of, anyway. For the first time in a few years I've started genuinely feeling like pounding the -errr- treadmill. I'd love to be the type of mom that loads the kid into the jogging stroller and takes on the neighborhood, but my area is super hilly and the weather has been a bit windy  lately. Plus, I really do prefer the ease of the treadmill. Sawyer will play in the room with me from 30-45 minutes, which is a good amount of time to get in a workout.

10. I met with three students today about their IB Extended Essays (4,000 word papers on whatever the want). I have "homework" now too- I'm rereading Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Beloved, and then reading Home for the first time. For another student I'm reread Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann  and then reading James Joyce' Ulysses. For the third student we're still ironing things out, but I'm sure I'll have a book or two there. This is all over the span of a few months, but I'm excited to read with a new purpose. We created a reading schedule so that we can read at the same time and then talk about the sections. Hopefully everyone, myself included, can keep up! 

 

Their Eyes Were Watching God: Lessons

Over the past several weeks my students have read and dissected Zora Neale Hurston's fabulous novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Given our Thanksgiving break, the end of the semester rush, and all the other fun stuff that comes up, I feel that we could have covered a few more things that we did, but I think that's always the way. Here are a few lessons* that went well, many of which could be adapted to other works:

Pastiche (50 minutes in class, a week at home)

My students were tasked with writing a pastiche for the text, something they found challenging, given Hurston's language. I gave them a few different scenarios to choose from and they had to write 700 words using the author's voice. They brought in drafts to share a week before they were due so that they could peer edit. They ended up being a lot of fun to grade- most kids got the basics and had fun with the creative writing element.

Skills: Literary analysis, creative writing, editing

Marriage Venn Diagram (50 minutes to create, 30 to present)

This is pretty basic, but I think incorporating graphic organizers with specific perimeters is really important. They had to analyze Janie's three marriages individually and in conjunction with each others, while providing textual support to back up their claims. They had to talk about the husbands, but also about what Janie learned from each situation. Students had to briefly present, as well, which is always good practice.

Skills: Literary analysis, utilizing textual support, public speaking

Language Activity (50 minutes)

Given the complexity of the language, we spent a decent amount of time analyzing what Neale was trying to say. For this activity I pulled ten rich passages from the text and copied them onto white paper. I broke the class into groups of ten(ish) and gave each student a passage. The timer was set for four minutes and within that time the student had to read their passage and write down one comment regarding the language or literary devices on the paper, along with their name. After four minutes the paper was passed and the next student had to read the new passage, the previous student comments, and then offer a new one of their own. The first few rounds are easy, but the final few are tough, since they can't be repetitive. 

Skills: Literary and language anaylsis 

*There weren't a lot of real world applications this time around, I must confess

 

"Master Harold"... and the boys Lessons

The past five or so weeks my students have been studying the play "Master Harold"... and the boys (yes, the title is supposed to be written out like that, much to my chagrin) by Athol Fugard. As I did previously with The Catcher in the Rye, here are a few of the more high-interest lessons I did with my students that try to combine some Common Core-ish elements.

Visual Literacy (30 minutes)

To introduce the play and the Apartheid background I collected a dozen or so different pictures into a PowerPoint. For each picture I had the students discuss what was happening and how the picture would relate to the book. We then discussed each as a class and finished the lesson with the students writing a brief reflection in their notebooks. Next time I'll extend the lesson by having the students find their own picture and post it, along with a quick analysis, on the website we use for the class.

Skills: critical analysis, oral production, visual literacy

Understanding Stage Directions (50 minutes)

In order to examine the stage directions, and their importance, I brought in an episode of Friends (the one where Monica where's a turkey on her head to cheer up Chandler). Fun fact: the episode aired the year they were born. Sigh. We watched a three minute clip twice and I had the students write down everything the actors were doing- facial expressions, interactions with props, body language, etc... We discussed their findings and then watched a clip of the movie of the play, doing the same thing. Students were then asked to find stage directions in the text that they thought were critical. 

Skills: Observation/listening, note-taking, reading comprehension, discussion

Scene Presentations

One of our culminating activities were scene presentations. Students had to get into groups and write five-minute scenes that took a contemporary controversial issue and applied it to a friendship, just like race and The Apartheid did for Sam and Hally in the text. They had to use stage direction, props, proper play-writing formats, etc... in order to convey their message. They also had to each find an opinion article on the topic they chose and complete a series of writing activities to analyze it (annotation, SOAPSTone, and a rhetorical precis).

Skills: writing, acting, analysis, research, annotation 

Final Essay- Comparison

Students were tasked with finding another piece of writing, movie, TV show, painting, song, or poem to compare to the play. They had to find a specific thematic element, though, to focus on. They're not due until next week, but so far topics include The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a Billy Joel song, Tupac's poetry, and the TV show Blackish. This should be entertaining, at least.

Skills: analytical writing, reading comprehension, compare/contrast

For those that haven't read it, I highly recommend it!

 

Bookish (and not so Bookish) Thoughts

Link up below! One of these days I'm going to actually like push this on twitter and tweet about it and make it more legit. Mmmmmmhmmmmm.

1. The new Mac OS is called Yosemite. Ew. I like Macs, I like Yosemite, but do they need to be together? It's like combining Diet Coke and chocolate milk.

[Hey! I've hiked that thing! Twice! Source]

2. I finished Tana French's The Secret Place- hallelujah. I'm now reading an ARC of Reif Larsen's I Am Radar and am totally loving it so far.

3. The Giants are in the World Series! We don't have cable or satellite so we sucked it up and spent the $10 dollars so we could stream the World Series games on MLB Live (or something like that) on the PlayStation.

[source]

4. You should follow Los Feliz Daycare on Twitter. Ridiculously funny.

5. The Common Core Committee I am on is working on a unit on dystopias and we agreed to suggest Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, 1984, and A Brave New World in our work. I have to confess I've only read the first (I know. I know! Sci-fi-esque books aren't really my bag), so I've got some reading to do before we meet again. I'm a little excited, a little annoyed.

6. Tomorrow night is parent-teacher conferences, a night I tend to dread, and this year more so. It has nothing to do with interacting with the parents- that's usually pleasant and productive. The crappy part is that we're there from 4:30 to 8:00. We get to leave early the next day, but I have a lunch meeting so I'm not going to really reap those rewards. This time will be especially hard since I'll have to pick Sawyer up from daycare, feed him really fast, and then basically go back to work. And by the time I get home it will be time to feed him again and put him to sleep. Wah.

7. This weekend I have to finish/start Halloween projects. We need a pumpkin (really I just want to take pictures of Sawyer at a pumpkin patch) and I need to make the dogs their stupid costumes. Can you sense the enthusiasm?

8. Today the inevitable happened- I was walked in on while pumping at work. Despite the sign on my door. Despite it being my prep period and there not really being a reason to come in. It gets better- the intruders were an assistant principal and one of the big guys from the district office. Even better? I yelled at them. Twice. Luckily I was all covered up, but it was still traumatizing. 

9. This irritates me so much.

10. The UCLA "Friends of English" is starting a virtual book club, but I'm pretty sure you have to be a "friend" as in "I give you money" sort of friend. Until I'm done paying off my student loans I'm not giving that campus a dime.

Catcher in the Rye Lessons

And I mean lessons as in things you can do with your students, not like the life ones. 

I am in no way turning this into a teacher blog (ew), but I do plan on occasionally posting some of the more interesting lessons I do with my students this year. I always do some of the basics with each book we read- themes, symbols, motifs, background on author, some literary criticism, character analysis, author's style, etc... I also try to do a few more "fun" lessons that connects the students to the text in different ways and allows them an alternative way of showing knowledge, as opposed to an essay or test.

I'm not one of those awesome teachers that are constantly creating new, exciting lessons that drive their students crazy with exciting. I don't dress up in costumes or rap. Sorry. I am consistent, though, and try to make the content I deliver interesting and get my students to actively participate every day. They do well and we usually end up liking, or at least tolerating, each other, so I think this works for me. These lessons aren't anything groundbreaking, but maybe something a little different for some (and boring as hell to others). 

With Common Core upon us, I try to integrate those standards into what I'm doing as well (integrating Common Core into the IB curriculum is an interesting discussion, which I'll save for another day). Basically, how can we connect a work of fiction to supplemental nonfiction material? And integrate writing and speaking? 

I do my best.

Here are three lessons/projects/tasks that my students seem to have enjoyed that, to some degree (some more than others) integrate the new standards.

Diagnosing Holden

In order to get students on-board, they first read a quick handout on teenage depression and determine eight symptoms/causes that apply to Holden Caulfield, filling out a graphic organizer that calls for analysis and textual evidece. Then, students are required to write a 800-1,000 word psychiatrist's report (they're taking on the role of a mental health practitioner) evaluating Holden's mental state. They must write it in a report-like format, use textual support from the novel, and must research mental health illnesses to determine which one they think he suffers from (if any at all). Students must include background, symptoms, treatment, and prognosis sections. They are encouraged to include supplemental information like brain scans, interviews, and anything else they can come up with to strengthen their case. Depending on time, students will either present their findings to the class, small group, or partner.

Skills: research, using the text as evidence, writing a report, analysis of fiction and non-fiction text, creativity, oral presentation 

Boarding Schools

Students are asked to research the effects boarding schools have on children and teenagers, finding at least two semi-recent articles. Students must annotate both articles fully and finish a "SOAPSTone" (an AVID strategy) and rhetorical precis. Students must then determine their own stance, and use evidence from the novel and articles to support their claims. Students will write a one-page response in their notebooks, expressing their own opinions. After this has been finished, students will participate in a Socratic Seminar (fancy word for "class discussion") in which they discuss whether or not boarding schools are positive or negative institutions and how they impacted Holden.

Skills: research, in-depth analysis of both nonfiction and fiction texts, debate and discussion skills

Episodic Narrative (the "Picaresque Novel")- Charades*

After giving the class information about what a episodic/picaresque novel is, students then brainstorm a list of episodes that occurred in the novel. Students are then placed in groups and are given a card with their episode on it. They must discuss the significance of it in the text and then act out the scene silently (beware for hysterics, and inappropriateness, with the Sunny/Maurice scene). After the class guesses what scene they performed, the group discusses the importance while the rest of the class takes notes in a graphic organizer

Skills: analysis, creativity, public speaking

* This is obviously a lighter activity- it makes for something nice to do after a heavy couple of days, during a weird schedule, or as a sort of review before the test