Learning, Laughter, and Love in Middle School English

What happens when you give a middle schooler a candy cane?  See for yourself!  Anyone remember the days of going to Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour and getting an Astro Pop just so you could turn it into a dangerous weapon and stab your sister in the arm with it? Not that I ever did such a thing!   Anyhow, I ended the week by giving each student a piece of black paper and a piece of white card stock.  I read them the poem "Please Hear What I'm Not Saying"  by Charles Finn. It's about the "masks" people wear and why they wear them.  One of our essential questions for The Outsiders was "Why do people wear masks and try to hide their true selves?"  Students chose a character from the novel and created the character's self portrait using just black paper, scissors, and a glue stick.  After glueing it onto the card stock, they wrote a poem about the masks the character wears in the novel, as well as what is really behind the mask.  Students see

Each year I set at least one goal for myself as a teacher.  Last year it was to start my own blog and to commit to blogging each week.  I did it!  The previous year it was to embrace technology in my classroom.  I did it!  This year one of my goals was to find a way for students to publish their writing-to have an authentic audience.  I did it! What our blog looks like I started off my looking into online literary magazines.  I tried a few but it was a lot of work for me .  I had to upload each piece of student writing.   To do that for every student was extremely time consuming.  Also, it wasn't visually appealing.  So I spent last weekend researching a solution online and found one-a classroom blog!  After researching a few student friendly platforms, I decided on kidblog.org.  It is reasonably priced, EASY to use, and students have numerous choices of avitars and banners. They can also comment on each other's writing!   Student comment on another student's

Students have already finished chapter 6 in The Outsiders .  In fact, I gave them permission to finish the book over Thanksgiving break, and many of them did!  They love the book, so it's not hard to get them to read.  In an honors class, I have them read most of the book at home.  That allows us to use class time for discussions and activities.   After the first three chapters, we had a fishbowl discussion.  After reading the next three chapters, I showed students Costa's Levels of Questioning and assigned them to write two Level 2 or Level 3 questions about the chapters.  When they returned to class, I divided them into three groups.  Each group had a facilitator, recorder, time keeper, and summarizer.  I gave students approximately twenty minutes to discuss their questions.   As groups were discussing, I circulated around the room.  Most of the groups did a fantastic job and were very engaged in the discussion..  I observed that in a few groups seeme

Before leaving for Thanksgiving Break, my students took the SRI test for the second time this year. This test measures each student's lexile level.  This is an exciting time for my students but  also creates a bit of anxiety in both my students and me, the teacher! These students give up their elective to take this class, so I definitely want them to feel as though their hard work is worth it! As you can see from the chart below, we would like students to be between a 970-1185 at the middle school level.  Before the test, I gave the students a pep talk, had them look at their first score, and then sprinkled them with fairy dust (aka glitter).  Don't worry!  I only sprinkled those who wanted to be sprinkled!   I told students they were welcome to take a bathroom break, go get a drink, or just get up and stretch at any time during the test. They were so focused!  After about twenty-five  minutes, students began to finish.   One by one, I'd hear an excited voice say, &quo

Middle school students are very social creatures (for the most part).  They enjoy talking, debating, and listening to what others have to say (well, okay, maybe they are working on the listening part).  Anyhow, after reading Readicide by Kelly Gallagher,  I decided to revisit my approach to teaching The Outsiders this year.  Last year, I required students to find quotes from each chapter that addressed our essential questions.  Not only did they have to find the quotes, they had to provide the context and an analysis of each one.  I will admit that we had some great discussions using this method. However, what better way to kill the love of a book than to require students to stop every few pages and complete a quote response?  Gallagher asserts that there is a happy medium, and I agree! This year I assigned three chapters as homework.  Students read the chapters without interruption.  In class, I numbered them off.  Each number correlated to an assigned chapter, and students

I am really excited about how the final projects turned out using GoAnimate!  I really feel students created thoughtful theme statements and gathered excellent evidence from the text to support their theme.  Their analysis was also impressive.  Here's a link to one of my favorites, which also happened to win the Best Video Award for that period.   Monsters are Due on Maple Street Theme Video And another Honorable Mention: Another Great Example After the project, I had students complete a reflection in a Google Form.  Most of the students enjoyed the project.  A few were frustrated at times (but they powered through)!  Almost all students agreed that it was a nice change from the usual essay.   

Another idea I stole from Kelly Gallagher,  my favorite author of books about reading and writing, -bulletin boards with a focus.  Rather than displaying entire student essays, (which nobody actually reads) select a focus for the board and display work that demonstrates excellence in that area.  A few weeks ago, my students wrote personal narratives.  My bulletin board this week focuses on great hooks. The students were excited to see their work on display.  Next time I will have another focus!

This week I brought in an article that seemed relevant to my Read 180 students.  I read it with students in small group and had them mark the text.  This means students identified  key words and underlined the author's claims.  If you are a Read 180 parent reading this blog, it would be great if you could read the article and discuss it with your child.  Students also wrote a summary of the article using a template I provided.   10 Benefits of Reading Template for summary writing Students also read an article today about trophy hunting.  Remember the story that was in the news awhile back about Cecil the Lion?  Students seemed genuinely interested in the topic and were surprised to read that there are actually some benefits in allowing trophy hunting.  After reading, I had them look at the arguments for and against trophy hunting and find evidence to support each.    Of course, students also read in their reading groups, read a Newsela article and took a quiz, and cont

They love collaborating! Yesterday I asked one of my classes, "Do you think we do enough writing in here?"  All 33 of them responded with a resounding, "YES!"  I was thrilled.  You see, over the summer I read several books by Kelly Gallagher  which encouraged  me to reevaluate  the way I had been teaching writing and inspired me to think of new ways to teach writing.  Just a FEW of the things I learned and decided to try: Give students more choice about what they write.  Give them several topics to choose from. Provide students with mentor sentences and texts.  SHOW them good writing.  Ask them to emulate what they see! Don't correct every little error. For each essay, pick TWO sentences for the students to correct.   Do most writing in class.  Give students feedback DURING the writing process, not after. So far, I have nothing but positive things to say about implementing each of these strategies. So far, my students have written an essay in whic

I know that I mainly talk about my English 7 class on my blog, but I also have the privilege of teaching Read 180, our reading intervention class.  I've taught this class numerous times over the past ten years, and it is a very rewarding class to teach!  Students are placed in this class mainly based on their lexile score.  However, we also use other data to make sure we are making the right decision when making a recommendation to parents! To get a lexile score, students take an online reading test.  The first time students take the test,  passages start off easy.  . Difficulty is determined by sentence length and vocabulary difficulty.  Once a student's lexile has been determined, the test is over.  One of my Read 180 kiddos The Read 180 model is whole class instruction for the first twenty minutes.   Typically, students receive vocabulary instruction and read with me using the cloze reading strategy in their R books.  Then, we break off into three groups.  Currentl

Last week was so busy that I am just now getting around to posting!  Last week students read "Rikki-Tikki Tavi by Rudyard Kipling.  I grew up with this story (and cartoon). I was surprised that most of them had never heard of it!  Back in the day when certain movies only came on once a year-think Wizard of Oz and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  Rikki-Tikki   was something I always  looked forward to.  The cobras terrified me almost as much as the  Sleestaks   in Land of the Lost.   Anyhow, it is a great story for character analysis, so students learned about indirect characterization using the STEAL acronym.   S is for speech, T is for thoughts, E is for effect on others, A is for actions, and L is for looks.  Students looked for passages as the read that revealed Rikki's character.  I then taught the how to seamlessly incorporate quotes into a literary analysis, analyze each quote, and cite the source.  I think the kids did very well, especially since it was new to mo