One of our 6th grade standards requires students to analyze how an author uses point of view. Before I can even think of having my students actually analyze an author’s point of view (and more specifically, a character’s perspective), I always try to arm them with some background knowledge and first-hand experience. I decided to allow my students to use googly eyes to eyebomb inanimate objects and write a short story in the point of view of their choice. After winter break the plan is to then kick it up several notches and focus on perspective when reading literature. If you’re not to sure about how perspective and point of view are different, then please read this blog post by Dr. Roz Linder.
A couple of weeks ago, RCSD‘s staff development department sent out an email to all district teachers about an upcoming optional professional development day at Krause Center for Innovation. Redwood City Education Foundation was going to make it possible for at least 10 teachers to attend the mini Google Summit event; I went to the larger Google Summit event at Gunn High School in Palo Alto two years ago, so I knew I had to make sure to be at the KCI event. The catch? Teachers had to apply for a chance to go.
As soon as I got home from our staff meeting, I typed up my answers, submitted them, and waited. A few days later I got an email and it said, “CONGRATULATIONS! YOU GET TO GO TO GOOGLE SUMMIT!” Woohoo! I enjoy learning about new ways to enhance my teaching, so I was excited to learn about new computer applications, ways to better my workflow (and my students’ workflow), and how to enhance student learning through my current blended learning model.
Yesterday (Saturday) I spent the entire day at Krause Center for Innovation learning about ways to use Google Apps for Education in the classroom. In the next few days I plan to implement a few new strategies, and I’ll write about the new sites I learned about, too.
Last week I introduced students to answering text-dependent questions using evidence from the text. This seemed to be a difficult task for many students because they wanted to write their answers using their opinions and thoughts.
I had an evidenced based poster I created last year, but when I went to look for it on my computer, I couldn’t find it! I ended up finding this poster on Teachers Pay Teachers, and while it isn’t the best way for students to write with evidence, it helped many students last week.
This week I am sharing Carlos’s work. Carlos did a great job using evidence to answer text-dependent questions. On Friday students watched CNN Student News and typed answers to three questions answered in the newscast. Carlos did a great job answering question number three.
First, it was hard for me to believe summer was over. Now, I’m trying to figure out how the first two weeks of school zoomed on by! We kept busy over the past ten days; I had an aide comment, “Wow! You’ve got these kids working hard in here!” WOOHOO! Yeah!
Let’s take a look at what we’ve been working on, shall we?
Writing Survey and Rhetorical Awareness
I spent the summer reading Teaching Writing that Matters: Tools and Projects That Motivate Adolescent Writers. Gallagher and Lee stress the importance of students being rhetorically aware; in other words, students need to know their audience, their purpose, and context for writing. I can remember being asked several times to write about myself during the first days of school. By the time you reach middle school, About Me essays can be a bit boring to write. Gallagher and Lee suggest having students complete a writing survey followed by a Three of Me activity. The Three of Me activity requires students to write three different descriptions of themselves. I thought this would be a great way for me to informally assess students’ writing, and it allowed them to write about themselves in different ways.
Here’s a sample of the writing survey students completed. I really enjoyed reading through these because I got to see some of the rules of writing students have heard throughout elementary school, and I got to see who LOVES to write and who HATES to write.
For the Three of Me assignment, students had to introduce themselves to the class, describe themselves as if they were in an advertisement, and write a campaign speech explaining their qualifications.
Part 1:
Part 2 (students used Google Draw for their “advertisements”):
Part 3 Students explained their qualifications for a public office.:
At the beginning, this concept was a bit difficult for students comprehend. We had to review the words qualifications and public office. We watched a few middle school campaign speeches on Youtube, looked at campaign posters, and watched President Obama give speeches to various audiences. Those videos and images seemed to help a lot!
Reciprocal Teaching/Fab Four Reading Strategies
I also introduced students to Cornell Notes. This was a very scaffolded version of Cornell Notes. My aim is to continuously model how to take notes during the first trimester and continue to loosen the strings as the year progresses. For this lesson, students filled in the yellow blanks with words from my PowerPoint. This lesson was about the Fab Four reading strategies: predict, question, clarify, and summarize. We watched this video and a video I made last year (you’ve gotta watch this! The students love this video!).
On Friday, students came to class and read over their Cornell Notes and discussed any questions they had about Thursday’s lesson with their partner. Then they quizzed each other using the Cornell Notes. After that, they took a short check for understanding quiz I created using Google Forms. 100% accuracy from all classes. Yes!!
After the quiz, we read Gary Soto’s The Drive-In Movies and used the Fab Four Strategies while reading. Before reading, students rated their knowledge of key vocabulary found in the story. We didn’t finish this, so we will revisit the vocabulary on Tuesday. Watch the video I created for this lesson here.
I know it well: I can define this word, I know the part of speech for this word, I can use it in multiple sentences, and I use it in my vocabulary.
I have seen or heard it: I can’t really define this word, but I have seen or heard it before.
I have no clue: I know nothing about this word!
We didn’t break into Fab Four groups; instead we read the story as a class (listen to me read it here), and I paused at certain points in the story to show them how to predict, question, and clarify. After we read the story, students tried their best to write a summary using 15-20 words. Students used the reciprocal reading tracker below for all of their questions, etc.
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