Learning, Laughter, and Love in Middle School English

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...

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 stu...

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, ...

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.  ...

One of my goals this year is to not only have students write more  but to have students have more choice in what they write about.  Since we already wrote an informative essay, I decided to focus on narrative writing.  Of course, this means I must teach imagery, diction, and figurative language!  We read  "Fish Cheeks" by Amy Tan and analyzed the author's use of literary techniques and devices.  We also looked at the structure of the text.  Students enjoyed the story and it was an excellent example of  descriptive writing and story telling. Next, I showed students this picture:   Students had to describe the picture. However, they were not allowed to use the following words: woman, stroller, trash, garbage, or baby. They were given the option of taking on the persona of one of the characters, describing the scene as a passerby, or just describing the picture itself. One student wrote as though she were attending an art exhibit and ...

We accomplished so much this week!  Students read "Does Teaching Kids to Get 'Gritty' Help them Get Ahead"?  Students practiced the second part of the Article of the Week assignment-writing a summary and response to the article.  Students wrote both parts of home for practice.  In class, I had several students share their work  with me. I projected the assignment  onto the screen, and we discussed each one as a class.  It was a way to provide valuable feedback to students and a great teaching opportunity for all!   Practicing our summaries and responses Learning to Annotate After practicing all aspects of the assignment, students received their first official Article of the Week Assignment!  I am excited to read their responses, as well as discuss the topics that we will be learning  about.   In addition, I introduced students to the Sentence of the Week activity.  I wanted to teach commas, so I found three sen...

As the week comes to a close, I feel like the students and I are settling in.  In preparation for our upcoming Article of the Week Assignment,  we practiced annotating  another article "What it Takes to be Great."   I showed them a few short clips of some people who are "great" in their field-Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and a classical pianist.  We discussed how all of these people make what they do look so easy.Of course, in the article we learned just how much TIME these people put into becoming great!  After reading and annotating the article, students reflected on how confident they feel about annotating the text and describe, in their own words what it means to annotate.   "Instead of quickly reading through and having to reread something, I learned to read slowly and REALLY read it.  It (annotating) helped because I knew what I was reading, and I actually understood it." -Student Based on their responses, I feel we are r...