Skip to main content

It's not all Unicorns and Rainbows

When I read through my past blogs, I realize that they are overwhelmingly positive. I make it sounds like everything always goes as planned and students follow directions. Let me assure you that things do not always go as planned and students rarely follow directions.  Yet, at this point in my career, I both embrace and accept this! Kids fall out of their chairs in the middle of deep discussions, kids get up to sharpen pencils (mine is electric) when I am in mid sentence, kids ask to use the bathroom in the middle of instruction... Heck! We've even had a bird fly in our classroom. You get the idea!  It's called teaching middle school.  

 Sometimes my lessons don't go as planned either.  Last week is a perfect example!  We had just read "The Pedestrian" by Ray Bradbury.  Written in 1951, Bradbury envisions a futuristic society where television has taken over the world.   Walter Meade, the protagonist,  refuses to embrace this kind of world and ends up getting arrested and taken to a psychiatric ward because he is out walking after 8 PM.
I wanted the students to consider the methods the author uses to convey the theme of the story and taught them the SIFT method to analyze literature. SIFT stands for symbolism, imagery, and figurative language to convey theme and tone.  Students found numerous examples in the text. I then partnered them up and had them use an animation app called VOKI to create an animated presentation. They were required to have a theme statement, tone statement, and examples and analysis of quotes that were examples of symbolism, imagery, and figurative language.


I explored various animation apps before choosing VOKI. Almost all of them will give teachers a free two-week trial, and VOKI was no exception.  I had to manually enter every student's first and last name  (over 120 students).  That was kind of a pain, but I'm a fast typist.  Then, I spent over an hour playing around on the app. I wanted to make sure that I knew how to do what I was asking my students to do and that it wasn't too difficult.  I had a great time with it and couldn't wait to get to school and show it to them. I just knew they were going to love it!

 All was well and good until they all started working on their presentations.  Numerous students were frustrated and said that the site "lagged".  Remember that these digital natives have never had to redial a rotary telephone after a busy signal or ventured to the library to look at an article on microfiche! Several other students stated that their work had vanished and were frustrated that they had to start over.   Obviously, I was pretty upset too. I hadn't had any of those issues when I practiced on VOKI!  I felt like a total loser!  I was afraid my student thought that I hadn't prepared!

Well, somehow we made it through.  I was actually pleasantly surprised when I watched their presentations. Most of them turned out well.  However, I have to wonder if maybe the best lesson was in practicing patience!  I can't say that I will be using VOKI again, and I am glad that I had a free trial!





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TQE: Get students Engaged and Digging Deep

I've mentioned before how Twitter has helped me grow as an educator.  Edutwitter is a valuable resource for book recommendations, new teaching methods, lessons, and articles.  One of my favorite educators to follow is Marissa Thompson, a high school teacher at Carlsbad High. This summer I read about her TQE(thoughts, questions, epiphanies) method for discussing literature.  I'd always longed for having discussions like the ones I had in my college literature courses, but when I try fishbowl or Socratic seminar with my students, the discussions felt forced, flat, and awkward. That changed today when I tried TQE for the first time.  Sharing homework in small groups Students writing their TQEs on the board When I listened to Marissa's podcast on Cult of Pedagogy ( check it out here ), I was intimidated. After all, her students are in high school and have a rock star teacher.  I think I read the transcript twenty times before finally trying it.  Here's h
5 comments
Read more

Writing an Essay...with a Partner

I love technology for collaboration! Teaching writing to middle school students is not easy.  All students come with different skills and knowledge.  With 35 students in a class, it's impossible to sit down one on one and assist students with the writing process.  Teaching students to write a literary analysis is particularly challenging because most seventh-graders have little, to no experience.  Students need to learn to  develop a thesis statement, find evidence from the text to support it, provide the context of the selected quotations , and write insightful commentary on the evidence they selected. Remember, these kiddos are twelve! Graphic organizers are particularly helpful to these young writers. The biggest challenge is providing feedback to students as they are writing, rather than after they turn their work in for a grade.  Students need to be able to use the feedback they receive and see the difference it makes in the final product.  I was adamant that I was not go
2 comments
Read more

Hexagonal Thinking

The last few weeks can be challenging. Keeping students engaged and learning is my mission! When I stumbled upon a post about hexagonal thinking, I knew I had to try it with my students. I am SO glad I did. Although this activity can be done digitally or on paper, I insisted that my students in class do it old school. My goal was for my students to have thoughtful discussions about what we read this year. Here's how it works! First, I came up with a list of key characters and ideas from The Giver, Animal Farm, and The Children's Story. I found this awesome generator on line where I could just type in my words, and it put them in the hexagons for me. Then I printed out the pages (there were three) for each group. I did a copious amount of research before embarking on this activity, and I was shocked by the number of teachers who cut the hexagons out for their students. That would have taken me HOURS. I simply gave each group scissors, and they were done in five minute
1 comment
Read more