The Mobile Learning Cottage

Today we will start Shakespeare.  This will likely be the hardest unit of the year. Students who have rarely, if ever, struggled with reading will be challenged to read and understand Shakespeare. We will be spending a lot of time in class working on comprehension and helping students to understand the big picture. It is possible, however, that students will be frustrated when doing their homework. PLEASE let me know if this is the case. In fact, if your child has reached the point of frustration, please have him/her stop wherever they are and send me a note and/or email letting me know.

My goal is to have students understand that Shakespeare, while difficult, is a pretty funny guy.

Shakespeare Calendar 1112

We have read poetry, we have listened to poetry, we have analyzed poetry and we have worked on understanding some of the deeper meanings behind poetry. Now we are going to apply all that we’ve learned. Students have picked pictures to use as an inspiration for their poetry project. All of the pictures were taken from the American Memory Project from the Library of Congress.  Students should now have rough drafts. Today and tomorrow students will conference with writing groups and with me to help write amazing poems. This is a great opportunity for students to think about what they want to submit for the Unfinished Jigsaw.

The project is due Friday. This means that we will move on to Shakespeare next. Hold on to your hats for that one.

Photo Inspired Poetry Assign

Photo Poetry Rubric

On Thursday of last week, Mrs. Craft came in to teach a lesson ballads. Students learned the characteristics of a ballad and then used their tablets to annotate a ballad as they listened to it in the classroom. I think the general consensus was that the lesson was a lot of fun.  More importantly, I’m sure students learned the characteristics of a ballad. Mrs. Craft also reinforced the idea of narrative structure and students were asked to put the events into a plot map.

Friday we had a stems quiz and reviewed more poetic terms. Students should now be familiar with alliteration, assonance, consonance,  personification, onomatopoeia, simile and metaphor.

Today we reviewed all of the terms we learned last week. Students were also asked to write a poem or poems that demonstrated at least 3 of the terms they learned. They were given a chance to share some of their poems with the class.  The class is full of very sweet, hard working students who can be a little bloodthirsty, which was reflected in the poems read in class today.

Important upcoming dates:

Biweekly quiz 2/10
Poetry comprehension packet due 2/9
Stems quiz 2/17
Poetry project due 2/17 (most of it will be done in class)

Today we learned a little more about sound imagery – reviewing the ideas of alliteration, assonance (repetition of an internal vowel sound) and consonance (repetition of an internal consonant sound).  Students were fairly familiar with this concept already so we moved on to an activity designed to make them crazy.

They were given a piece of paper that had 8 lists of words.  As I read the lists, students were told to circle a single word on each list.  I refused to answer any questions. At the end they were allowed to pick up to three additional words from the lists. They were then instructed to write a poem using the words they had circled – the first word had to go in the first line, etc. There was grumbling and laughing as they tried very hard to create a poem from this random selection of words.

Today’s goal was accomplished: helping students to understand the importance of word choice and the careful crafting of poetry and writing in general.

Tomorrow Mrs. Craft, the lead secondary English teacher, will be coming in to teach a lesson on ballads.

The research project is finally complete! I can’t wait to start reading what everyone has learned during this project. Today we began our next unit: poetry. I started the unit by torturing students with sharing some songs from my iPod. We talked about what poetry is, how it is different than prose and we reviewed some of the more technical vocabulary before we moved on to the poetry packet they now have in their possession. The packet includes a wide variety of poetry from the funny to the serious, from the short to the long, from the highly structured sonnet to poetry by e.e. cummings.

The goal of this unit is to expose students to many forms of poetry and to help them understand that imagery takes many forms. One of the poems we read today is Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen. It is sometimes hard for students to understand the soldier’s experience during World War I. The poem, coupled with this video give the students a much better idea of what that experience was like.  Based on what I’ve learned about my students during the course of this year, I will throw in a few more war poems.

Tomorrow we take a small step away from visual imagery to focus on sound imagery. Students brought home a calendar for parents to sign so everyone will know when quiz, test and project dates.

Today students were asked to start making some decisions about the topics they’d like to research. They were asked to come up with a “big idea” question – one that has historical significance. This was easier for some students than others and is a skill that we will be working on in class.  Some students also realized that using their in-class time wisely can really pay off.

I will be having a conference with each student to pick their research topic.  It is possible that students may still change their topic if they begin to research and realize they will be unable to find the information for which they are looking.  Some students are already asking to do a second research project, which is always a good sign.

Making Decisions

Day one of research

After spending the last few weeks laying the ground work for the upcoming project, today students were given the opportunity to begin browsing research materials. Students have been encouraged not to become attached to one topic, but rather to read, read and then read some more about topics that interest them. The next suggestion was to come up with a list of questions they might want to answer. While most students immediately opted for computers to begin their research, some went “old school” and opened up a book or two.

Upcoming technology lessons will include: how to use Wikipedia correctly, how to use Microsoft Word to compile a list of sources and create a bibliography, how to evaluate a website for accuracy and reliability.

We had the good fortune of having library today during Wimpy Kid Day. Mrs. Flowers had fun activities going on in the library today to celebrate the release of the latest Wimpy Kid book, which came out on Tuesday. You may see the book show up in your child’s backpack. I bought two copies of the book and so far they’ve gone home with five different students.  While this is not award-winning literature, this book does get kids really excited about reading. This is most of the class sporting their Wimpy Kid masks or just being themselves. I accidentally managed to cut a few students out. My apologies if you can’t find your Wimpy Kid in the crowd.

Next week we’ll go over the analogies that were due today, play vocabulary bluff, and take a stems quiz. We should be able to finish the research feedback before Thanksgiving break.

This afternoon we started looking at the answers students gave to the questions to ponder. We started with the questions on group work. We crossed a few things off, answers we thought were common sense or those that seemed to be a little out there (why, oh why, might we need a ruler if a group is struggling to work together?).  We then started circling those ideas that we believed allowed us to really explain the behavior we’re looking for when groups work together. The best part of this assignment was the conversations that followed about differing ideas on group work and how to help students who are struggling.

We started, but did not complete, the research sheet. Again, we had some really great conversations about what is involved in research. A few things became clear during these conversations. Lessons on how to effectively search Google and how to effectively use Wikipedia will definitely be on the schedule. All too often we assume that because our students are digital natives that they intuitively know how to search the Internet and how to evaluate web pages for bias and credibility.

Below you’ll see what they’re thinking when it comes to group work and research.

Tomorrow is Wimpy Day (to celebrate the release of the latest Diary of a Wimpy Kid) and we have library. We’ll pick up the rest of the research information on Monday.
Feedback: Group Work

Feedback: Research