Tonight's homework was to write a book review of indeterminate length on the book of your choice. I started with the idea of who has "liked, kinda liked, or loved" a book before. Virtually every hand goes up. I then asked, "who has thought 'man this book has stunk, or wasn't very good'?" To that a variety of hands went up. Fantastic! Everyone has an opinion, and some people actually get paid to give it through book reviews (not to mention book reviews). I was aiming at relevancy, and think it was achieved when I found some kids (particularly those less included to write/read) got that crooked head, "really?" look!
For me this is a starting point. Who can take an assignment like this and organize it into a piece of writing that makes sense?! Who struggles and needs more scaffolding to make their writing happen? Other items will come out of this too, such as who was really in need of support and tried like gangbusters alone... or who needed that parental support. To each of my groups I prefaced this with don't worry about writing a giant piece, but instead work until you feel finished or feel like you can't add anything. We'll go from there.
Not only does this start some of my writing work, it helps me with content for our online portal. We use a site called Communicator, a secure portal that lets us host an internal site with a blog, wiki, and discussion board function. Book reviews will be central to this. Kids always ask "what book should I read next?" and I often say... "ask a friend." This will be a great way to get kids interested in reading other kids books... and writing for an authentic audience. I am excited!
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
A Long Three Weeks
I essentially crawled into a hole for the last three weeks. My focus has been on getting everything set for school, getting to know my kids, and marathon training. Yep, I'm currently two week out from my fall marathon so that was sucking up time also! In the last three weeks we've had our first day, welcome back assembly, welcome back bbq, done pre-assessments, grouped kids for our rotations, met about special education students, and had curriculum night. This week seems like it is the first without anything really happening as far as events are concerned.
Where are we at? We're in a good place. Our groups are rolling, which means that kids are now knee deep in Social Studies/Literacy work. We've discussed non-fiction features, and been using them to find information. We've also started to did into geography, and kids have really been digging it. My homeroom has started a little beginning of the year project also: their biographies as word clouds. We start by typing up a short bio of ourselves (at least 10 sentences). Then we plug it into Wordle. From there, we need to look at the cloud to decide whether we want some words to be larger or not... if so, you need to write more about it! We've been doing it on our netbooks as well, so the sound of kids just typing away and whispering to their table group is pretty awesome. The talking you tend to get when kids are struggling to get going can be frustrating- this wasn't one of those times.
Could I write more today... sure. Instead I need to vow to blog more often. So I will! Perhaps a snip of my Wordle coming this week.
Where are we at? We're in a good place. Our groups are rolling, which means that kids are now knee deep in Social Studies/Literacy work. We've discussed non-fiction features, and been using them to find information. We've also started to did into geography, and kids have really been digging it. My homeroom has started a little beginning of the year project also: their biographies as word clouds. We start by typing up a short bio of ourselves (at least 10 sentences). Then we plug it into Wordle. From there, we need to look at the cloud to decide whether we want some words to be larger or not... if so, you need to write more about it! We've been doing it on our netbooks as well, so the sound of kids just typing away and whispering to their table group is pretty awesome. The talking you tend to get when kids are struggling to get going can be frustrating- this wasn't one of those times.
Could I write more today... sure. Instead I need to vow to blog more often. So I will! Perhaps a snip of my Wordle coming this week.
Friday, September 2, 2011
The Endless Summer
My first two years of teaching I had mixed emotions about the end of summer. While I was excited to teach, I was also longing for some more time in the sun (and sleeping in past 6am). This year has a different feel. Once Monday hit, I was excited and ready to be back. I was ready for a little structure in my life created by waking up at 6 every morning, and a schedule with the kiddos.
All of that was brought home yesterday. Yesterday was my school's Meet and Greet. It is an opportunity to families to come to school, check out their classroom, meet their teacher, introduce themselves, and tour around the facilities. The number of people in our 5th grade was astounding, which is fantastic since that means a large turnout. Some of my former kiddos came by to say hello too (also great). The best part about it is feeling the energy in the building- kids are nervous and excited, the same going for adults. Many (kids and adults) are excited for school to start back up.
This is it. The last weekend of summer.
All of that was brought home yesterday. Yesterday was my school's Meet and Greet. It is an opportunity to families to come to school, check out their classroom, meet their teacher, introduce themselves, and tour around the facilities. The number of people in our 5th grade was astounding, which is fantastic since that means a large turnout. Some of my former kiddos came by to say hello too (also great). The best part about it is feeling the energy in the building- kids are nervous and excited, the same going for adults. Many (kids and adults) are excited for school to start back up.
This is it. The last weekend of summer.
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