A TIME OF KNOWING INFINITE GRATITUDE

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's think about giving thanks.

Sometimes a prayer of thanksgiving to God gets strangled in the throat, stuck to the roof top of the mouth, and coughed past the lips.  That's when we thank God for those things that could have been a lot worse.

But sometimes, thanksgiving is so heart felt that just one breath launches us beyond all thought and time into an infinite, elevated multi-verse of thanksgiving.

Of course, I am thinking about summer break.  Never, in the annals of William D. Heard, have I yearned for the view of my school inside my rear view mirror.  Tomorrow is the next to last Friday of the most awful year of my professional life.

This time next week all of me, including my shadow, will tremble with joy inexpressible.  The nightmare will be over.  

And I thought last year was horrendous!

I am thankful for those long days of summer even though they pass as quickly as coffee pouring into a cup.  It's the only time in my life I catch a glimpse of the writer's life.  I can hardly wait.

So I say, "Praise the Lord!"

Blessings...

Testing to see if this still works

Testing

I am posting this to see if I can access it from the Internet.

Welcome back.  I hope my post finds you well today.  I will finish my "Cask of Amontillado" plan below:

After Reading Response

I Do

I will show the students my reformulations of the story.  I can write a poem in two voices.  This story lends itself well to that reformulation since there are only two characters in the story.  Since I want them to write a crime scene investigation report, I would show them the one I wrote.  Having choices is always a good thing with students.

We Do

          Students will move into two or three groups.  They will become crime scene investigators.  As a class, we will imagine how we would go about solving the mystery of Fortunato’s disappearance.  We will list the kind of clues we might look for and who should be interviewed.  We will imagine what possible witnesses might say.

You Do

The students will create a reformulation of the story as a Voki, an Animoto, a poem, or a CSI report.  They will present their products the day after the assignment is due.

Evaluation

I will use the following rubric for the You Do reformulation.

____10  deadline met

____10 conventions

____30 character motivation is expressed

____30 text is present in reformulation

        Leslie had a good idea about the rubric.  If you add this up, you will find that the sum is eighty points.  Students who want to revise their assignments are allowed to do so.  They earn more points for that.

Thanks for visiting.  I hope the past three Reader Response lessons are helpful.  I am eager to apply these this year and write about the results.

See you next time.  Teach on...

Reading Response Theory: Before Reading Response in I do/We do/You do

           Welcome back.  I hope my blog finds you well.  I hope to post twice a week every week, so come and see me every Sunday and Wednesday.

           I would like to share part of an implementation plan that I wrote for the Coastal Savannah Writing Project.  I took a unit that I teach and re-planned it using Reading Response Theory.  I want to share my Before Reading activities.  The short story we will be reading is "The Cask of Amontillado" by Poe.

          Any reference I cite comes from one of the following sources:

Roessing, L. (2009).  The Write to Read. Thousand Oaks, CA.

               Corwin.

______ . Losing the Fear of Sharing Control: Starting a Reading

               Workshop.  Middle School Journal, January, 2007, 45.

______.  (2004). Toppling the Idol. English Journal,  94 (1), 42.

Spandel, V. (2005). The 9 Rights of Every Writer.  Portsmouth, NH:

               Heinemann.

Activities:  Before Reading

Focus lesson:  Motivation

Students will write in their reflection journals a response to the statement, “Describe a time when you were motivated to finish something you started.” 

The purpose for this reflection is to engage students interactively in their reading.  Roessing writes in The Write to Read (2009):

A reader response program allows teachers to see how students make meaning from what they read and whether they are truly engaged in what they are reading, and it allows teachers to help students read authentically. 

Authentic reading is interactive. (p.2)

            The reflection is designed to begin the process of making meaning as the students lay the groundwork for interacting with the text by connecting to it.  Using the I do/We do/You do strategy will show the students that their teacher is also making meanings and being engaged in the text assigned to them.  During the CSWP, many of the focus lessons were taught in this way.

I Do

During the CSWP, students demonstrated a Voki to review what happened in class the day before.  They created two avatars who discussed the day’s instruction and memorable events or quotations.  The Voki was engaging and hilarious.  I immediately recognized how effectively a Voki could be used to instruct students.

Since religion is the subtext of “The Cask of Amontillado,” I will use a Voki to introduce students to the Roman Catholic observance of Lent.  Montresor’s observance of Lent is a primary motivation for the method he uses to kill Fortunato since he wanted to murder his friend without being punished by God and man.

We Do

I will pass out copies of the story.  We will survey the story:  noting the art, vocabulary, and marginalia.  I will imitate Roessing’s (2009) strategy: “Write a response—anything you are thinking, feeling, predicting, or questioning” (p. 8).

You Do

Since I am required to include online instruction, I will assign the students to go to their Aplus lesson, read the Introduction about Poe’s life, and write their own anticipation response focusing on the two main genres Poe created and what in his life might have caused him to be a tormented person.  They will add their thoughts to their original response.  This will be a modification of Roessing’s anticipation response: #2a response on page 8.

I hope this has been helpful to anyone who wants to teach Poe.  Next time, I will post During Reading activities.  

Please come back.  Teach on...

After Vacation

             Welcome back.  I hope my post finds you well.  I just returned from vacation. I am excited to be posting again.

              Tomorrow, our teachers report for training to prepare for the new school year.  I am not eager to give up two weeks of my summer break, but I need the training and the money.  I work for a private company hired by the school system in the city where I live.   The company relies mainly on computer driven instruction with programs such as Nova Net and Aplus.  

 For teachers it is an exciting opportunity to learn what is happening in education software.  I learned Podio, Study Island, Reading Plus, Lexia, and there are others to learn as well.  Although the programs are still primitive, relying mainly on text and pictures, they are thorough as far as content goes.  

            There were problems and setbacks.  Eventually, the company had to return to teacher led instruction.  I am hoping that we will continue that.

          Truly, teachers are eager to learn new strategies.  As technology improves so that teachers can capture students’ attention and stoke their imaginations, the classroom can be transformed into an exciting and safe place for students to get in touch with their own creativity.  

             I learned so many strategies and so much technology during my class time at the Coastal Savannah Writing Project.  I will be implementing many aspects of what I learned with a view to modify my instruction so that it becomes more effective. 

My school is unique.  It is an alternative school.  Very few teachers know the kind of environment I find myself in every year.  For me, teaching is challenging and emotional.  I am faced often with students who relate to grownups with withering hostility and scorn.  

I like to say that I teach the brightest and best students in the school system.  Unfortunately, these brightest and best are not allowed to return to their home schools for various zero tolerance offenses such as violence, narcotics, and chronic disruption of the learning environment.  

Since traditional instruction does not work in my school, I am eager to apply what I learned at the Coastal Savannah Writing Project.   If these strategies work in my school, assuming that I am applying them well, then they should work anywhere.

My students could be ninth grade freshmen.  I really do not know what and who I will be teaching until either the first week of school or possibly next week  I could be teaching English, grades 9-12, or Social Studies, grades 9-12 in World History, U.S. History, Government and Civics, and Economics.  

Yes, the company requires that we write lesson plans for every prep.  Last year I had to write four lesson plans per day.  Imagine that, four preps and four lesson plans per day.

Some of my students will be incoming freshmen and others will have repeated ninth grade several times.  Their ages will range from thirteen to twenty years old.  Some will enroll on the first day.  Others will be added on any given week throughout the semester.  Last year, during the very week of school, a new students were enrolled. 

Indeed, I may never have the same number of students on any given day.  

Many of my students will be angry, frustrated, hungry, high, and militantly opposed to authority figures as well as learning in an academic setting.  Others will be cooperative, eager to earn their credits, and more often than not able to appreciate the rare opportunity for earning many credits quickly.

 It is crucial that my lessons engage students quickly and expeditiously.  I cannot expect lecture for any length of time over five minutes.  However, I anticipate that the strategies I learned while attending the CSWP should be highly effective. 

My purpose for existence in the company is that my students must pass the End of Course Test in 9^th grade.  That is the stated and expected purpose of everything I do.  

Students take a pretest.  If students score a 90 or above, they move on to the next lesson. If they score less than 90, they read the lesson content.  After the lesson, students take a practice test.  They must score a 90 or more on the practice test to move on to a mastery test.  If they score less than a 90 on the mastery test, students must reread the lesson.  Students who score a 90 or above are promoted to the next lesson.  An apple appears on their Aplus student progress chart. 

Needless to say, the expectation of the company is that students achieve passing test scores.  My job depends on my students passing their classes and passing the End of Court Test.  However, my hope is that reader response strategies will result in students passing the EOCT and acquiring high literacy skills.  

Next time, I will write about a lesson I modified that reflects reader response theory.  I hope so see you there...Teach on!

Gone Until Sunday

I am a counselor at a Passport Ministries camp this week.  I will resume the blog when I return.