Brittney+Peterson

Hello Mrs. Canavan. Reflecting on Hot Topics: The Epic Culmination of an Epic Semester May 8, 2011

I am actually sad that this is our last blog post, because I've enjoyed creating this wikiblogthingy. And along those same lines, I think this could be one of the best forms of assessment. Anything that shows progress, epiphany, learning, gaining of understanding, and multiple forms of media (like video, photos, etc). Portfolios I think would be the overall best form of evaluation, but I was also thinking along the lines of including something like a podcast in an online forum that could be played for other schools. Students would be held accountable in an authentic manner, and they would also be responsible for teaching other students.

Our role in preparing students and making them competitive in the 21st century is making sure they are literate in the ways of the professionals. We should teach them English as real people who study English actually practice it. Because of this, we need to encourage other content area teachers to do the same. Some of this entails creating articles to be posted online, and learning the etiquette of discussion online. Some of it entails encouraging other content area teachers to grade students on what is actually important and useful. And along these lines, making our voices heard are important. In any way possible. This means anything from a small team meeting to school-wide meetings to larger confreneces or friends who work at other schools. And I know it sounds cheesy, but voting is always at least a small way to be heard.

Thanks you everyone in our class for the best semester I've had in college. Rachel and everyone, you guys have been amazing! Have a wonderful summer, and I will miss all of you. It's only the beginning!

Final version of my unit:April 25, 2011

Remaining requirements for my portfolio:

Most Updated Version of my Unit: April 22, 2011

The last three lesson plans needed for this unit: April 21, 2011



Edited Inquiry Unit Plan: April 10, 2011

Two Lessons for April 14, 2011 Week 3, Day 13: Drawing Setting

Week 4, Day 17: RAFT Letter

Two Lessons for April 12, 2011 Week 2, Days 6-7: Introduction to Novel/ Character Gallery Walk

Week 3, Day 11: Situation Perspective Character Journaling

Eckert Chapters: Lesson for ENGL 381 and Artist's Statement April 3, 2011



Because I am teaching the biography chapter, here is the cartoon I will be using:

How do we know discussions will happen as they should? Reflecting on discussion: March 27, 2011

Honestly, I feel comfortable as a teacher to play the role of the facilitator like Wilhelm suggests we should do. But I begin to think of some of the things he says and hints he gives about how to prompt conversation like "encourage students not to opt out" and I get anxious (105). I think this is simply because I know how it feels to be a student who is prodded when I don't have any more to say at the moment. Paraphrasing what another student says might be helpful for reiteration, but does that lead to further understanding? I think the idea of playing devil's advocate is a great one, but this only works for willing participants. I don't think it does much to students who are indifferent no matter what.

The largest thing I am struggling with through this whole topic is pressing students to participate. I certainly understand that there are students (I can think of one in particular, we'll call him 'John' from Fairmont) who never speak. I think that John is a great example in my mind of someone who just doesn't push himself to any sort of understanding and who, sadly, I would deem lazy. I asked about John's home life and previous conferences the school may have had with John's parents, and from what I hear, he's been this way since kindergarten. His parents don't seem to mind that he is failing in school because he is lazy. They are more concerned with making ends-meat (<---I have no idea how to spell that) which is understandable. And this is certainly a student who I would like to push without hesitation, but I can't seem to. So I guess I am contradicting myself. I think some students should be pushed, and others should be left alone. Maybe as time goes on I will continue to develop an eye for the student who seems engaged, and the student who is looking at me with void eyes.

I really like Wilhelm's idea about creating entrance tickets as a means for beginning a class discussion. When students bring their own questions I think things will be more fruitful. Students have had a chance to think about things, and formulate some sort of response before they arrive in class. I would certainly read through the note cards as the enter class to see if there were any in particular I might be interested in discussing as a class. The only problem I may have with this is that the students I work with RARELY do any sort of homework outside of class, I don't know what it is. We talked about this in another one of our classes, but it seems to be a widespread epidemic: students don't do their homework. I honestly do look forward to group discussions, but I fear that my students will be coming to class unprepared and I don't know how to address that. It seems like the class I've been in all this semester, the only good conversations come from prior knowledge, the conversations never seem to stem from anything they are "learning" at the moment. But, like Wilhelm also suggests the "ReQuest" seems to be a form of "think-aloud" which seems like more questioning on the personal level. I like this idea for two reasons: first, you can see what sort of understanding individual students are coming to, and two, once they get beyond the lines, this would be great for verbal discussion.

I think this also leads into us assessing how well they understand. If they aren't willing to participate in group discussion, than I think the discussion they have on their own page with the author is every bit as valuable in evaluating their learning. I do hope that this is only what the start of the year will look like. My vision would be for all students to be participating as much as possible. I think at some point in each day there needs to be some sort of discussion. Even if it is only five mins to help lead them back into whatever they are reading. Without discussion, I think students would feel very isolated, the assignments would seem isolated, and the whole class would feel artificial. In order to get students to that point, there needs to be a level of comfortability created, and a sense of "safeness" in the classroom, so that it will be more likely for everyone to participate. I also think modeling conversation with a text from the get go is important. Students should never feel that what they are reading is out of context with the rest of the world.

Overall, I find discussion very important. I am honestly hesitant though, to assume it will go as well as I want it to each time.

Lesson Plans: March 20, 2011

Week 1, Day 4: Think Aloud

Week 2, Day 10: Embedding Quotes

Formative Assessment: Think Aloud: //Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed// March 16, 2011

Brittney, Check this out: http://www.slideshare.net/npro6979/facebook-template. Rachel

That is SUPER COOL. That is what I am hoping to do. I can't tell if that was done on the actual website of facebook or not. Was it just created to look at lot like it? My students wouldn't be allowed to actually use Facebook, but I like the slide show. I think we could do something like that, certainly. Thank you!

Outline of unit plan: daily activities March 13, 2011



Culminating Project and Description for //Life as We Knew It// March 6, 2011

Inquiry unit planning: infancy stage Assignment description: Rubric:

Reflecting on Engagment February 27, 2011

The initial engagement of students is most import in any lesson. And the most important moves we can make that ensures activities are engaging and purposeful are pointed directly at what students know already, and moving up from there. Building on prior knowledge makes a classroom go from busy work, to creative and deeper thinking:

This certainly creates an "I CAN" kind of attitude (get it? ha). Once students feel engaged, they are probably more likely to have confidence in the up coming tasks at hand, including taking on the all-ominous literature. But the really big question is: is the activity driving at something important? Does the conversation that will be created from the activity (either in written or verbal form) pertain to the big questions, or the heart of the matter? If we feel that there is a big theme to be reached reached, explored, or discovered, we need to make sure that the activity fosters the essential questions. And if our students just aren't getting there, then our frontloading activity needs to be revised.

Engagement is the largest role in all planning, especially on the unit level. I watch 7th graders groan almost every day for almost every activity, because they simply are not interested. But once they realized that the material actually does pertain to them, it's as if a light bulb goes on. Lasts week in our discussion as a group, Krista had some great ideas. She will be teaching Tuck Everlasting, and her essential question was "would you want to live forever?" which sparked some major debates. To start a unit like that is really ideal. Who doesn't have something to say about a question like that? It really gets at the heart of what it means to be a human. And so did our conversation. And not only that, but it really leads fantastically into a story about a character who lives forever. There is a lot of potential for that unit.

Early on in a unit, we need to:
 * expose students to many varieties of texts
 * Use texts from a wide range of reading levels
 * Use argument and discussion as a vehicle for engagement
 * Remind students: quarreling only happens when people are not composed and respectful enough to argue



I think it is also important to create an environment where students know it is safe to share their ideas, and they will not be struck down for having an idea that differs from everyone else. Argument not only sparks students' interests, but it also moves their brain toward things that matter, and why the text matters. Arguments:
 * create mental thesis statements
 * Force students to search for evidence
 * Allow students to develop logical reasons for their answers
 * Attempt to get at "the why"

Frontloading Lesson Plan Documents: The first is the lesson plan, the second is the Questionnaire that accompanies it February 23, 2011



I have edited both of the above documents to better fit my unit, now that I am further into it:





Annotated Unit Plan Portfolio Assignment One: Unit Topic Memo February 11, 2011

The main literary source I plan on using:

Pfeffer, Susan Beth. Life as We Knew it. New York: Harcourt Inc, 2006. Print.

The Boise School District Content Standards I am basing my unit planning around are listed below.
 * Acquire skills for literary response
 * Write responses to literature that identifies a text to self, text to world and/or text to text connection.
 * Write a summary of a literary selection.
 * Acquire skills for comprehending literary text
 * Analyze characterization as shown through a character’s thoughts, words, speech patterns, and actions; the narrator’s description; and the thoughts, words, and actions of other characters.
 * Explain the influence of setting on mood, character and plot of the story.
 * Analyze plot development, including types of conflict.

My main goal: Students will be able to:
 * Comprehend a literary text by character analysis, plot summary and analysis, and use of example where the influence of setting changes the mood, character, and plot.
 * Connect the primary text to themselves, the world, and other texts.
 * Analyze and compare conflict of one character to another.

Some essential questions (although, these may change because I haven't yet read the book, I've only looked over some summaries):


 * What is courage?
 * Should you ever give up?

As far as the culminating assessment goes, I will be co-teaching this unit with my mentor teacher and I asked her if she had some ideas for a big final project. She said that the students will be making a Facebook page for one of the characters from the book. Super cool! But don't fear, it's not online. It's just a single sheet of paper, and on it the students include the name, interests, occupation, likes, "about me", hometown (setting) and many other pieces of information about a character. My mentor teacher says that the students wouldn't be required to include quotes from the text, but I would have them do so in an ideal world. But I do think this assignment will help students reach the goals listed above. The analysis part would come in where they write on their Facebook "wall". This would give students a chance to really get into character and describe their feelings, thoughts, and explain themselves as a person from the novel. I would certainly have them use page numbers etc for this section. Also, because this book deals with the world ending, it would be easy for students to relate their "statuses" to courage, giving up, and conflicts between characters.

A language lesson here would be on making informal writing more formal, and using multiple sentence lengths and structures. I foresee a problem with the students thinking that Facebook=casual writing, but this is not so. I still want them to stretch themselves linguistically. So maybe this final project will be presented as a Facebook page that the character plans on his future boss viewing and critiquing.

Reflecting on Learning January 28, 2011

A few major things that seem to accompany us throughout our learning. The first being that it is an uncomfortable process:

One thing that my cross country coach always said was: there is a difference between being in pain and having discomfort. That was one of the ideas I held strongly to, I always asked myself, whether I was running or not running:
 * Am I in pain?
 * Will it benefit me to continue?
 * Am I simply uncomfortable? (and in the back of my mind: do I know this is good for me?)

In these ways, we all share that human struggle of putting ourselves in a position we may be unfamiliar with, but unfamiliarity is GOOD! That's how we know we are getting somewhere!



We need to continue to introduce ourselves to UNFAMILIAR topics! That is one way we can begin to learn, and in turn, understand new things. How, you might ask, do we know when something is unfamiliar? We base it on our PRIOR KNOWLEDGE. What do you know already? What do your students know? Well, probably a lot. But how do we get that information from them? We ASK! By asking we:
 * Form a personal relationship
 * Let students know we care
 * Learn something new about them
 * Develop a plan: where do we go from what they know?
 * Build personalized and individualized scaffolding
 * Keep students in their zone of proximal development

By meeting students at the level they are at, we can build from their starting point, not ours. But measuring that is the hard part. Another mentality that cross country instilled in me was the idea of PR or "personal record". What this meant was that our running time was not compared to other runners, but to ourselves. Our goal was always to improve our own time, and not compare it to our teammates' times. We can look at this through learning lenses also. How much has a student improved compared to themselves?
 * What skills can they execute that they could not before?
 * Can they explain what they've learned to others?
 * Can they answer the "big idea" question that the unit is based around?
 * And if they can answer that question, can they offer evidence?

If these things can be accomplished, they've likely learned something. But do they //understand// it? By being able to: The student then, arguably, also understands. Like most people said in class, learning isn't just about school. But concepts that are actually //understood// in school, are probably the ones that will be used in other aspects of life.
 * Articulate
 * Execute
 * Expand
 * Integrate into daily life

Educatialution:

2

the table is small, fitting my pencil warm and bitten, I sit with pink rimmed glasses, a ballooning shirt pouring out of my tiny jeans while the maternal and iconic woman adjusts her piglet pendent, and presses the loud switch and the light echoes through the loud colors, written on the transparent sheet “in this class” she says, “we date things with names” //like my January// I think, //my birthday// “we don’t use numb ers,” she says “because although the rest of the world may be l a z y we are not”

at this I shake my mind firmly in agreement

6

slowly slowly snakes in and around our classroom in thirty two cages move strong the smell of urine and cedar wood terrariums enrich our textbook experiences the largest creature, Rio, eats rabbits once a month I allow his Enormous head to lay shallow in my lap I purify the tank windows with a

brown paper towel

class is suddenly called to order and Mr. Teacher who has a ponytail and wears a leather watch conducts the start class by bellowing one question: how many of you earned anything regarding the way you look? Or chose the way you look? Got to pick your eye color? (no hands) He continues: no one will ever respect you for any of that. Learn something. Become something.

at this I shake my mind firmly in agreement

9

Oh poetry! if I could write you the way I want you to be known you are a lover, you know, I need you to be my embassy, when I am away, and all I have is you to stand in my place

But alas! I own no words, no strategies, all I know of you is that your flowers are colored red and blue that I feel you most when I am sad and that boyfriends and girlfriends use you as weapons, origami notebook pages an armory of paper cuts and heart slices

Teacher in African dress enters, speaks: the mountains, she says, that morning looked like they had been blotted in ink, black and thick, lain upon the morning sky

and my brain is stretched in metaphor now I know a hint of you

Artist’s Statement

As I began to search for a theme across my learning, I found it difficult to pinpoint a certain idea that stretched through all my years of education. As I have evolved as a student, my interest in different topics has varied greatly depending on my age and the teacher of the class. I began to realize that the two things that have always been true of my learning are both my willingness to meet a challenge and my self motivation. I decided to explore those things in the above poems by looking at moments of motivation, challenge, and epiphany. I allowed myself to travel through my life of education and found a few moments that I always hold onto. The number titles for each section correlate to the grade I was in when the moment occurred. I chose poetry to express these ideas because it’s the medium I’ve consistently chosen throughout the years to express my feelings. When I was younger I wrote superficial and repetitive songs, and as I grew I began including more sense words, more nouns, and I stopped trying to rhyme. There is a strong parallel between my learning and the quality of my poetry. It is easy to see a vine-like growth when one compares my age and my writing strengths. I think this also reflects a growth in my level of understanding in the field of poetry. I remember a time when Dr. Seuss was daunting, but as I began to unpack, explicate, and explore an author’s intentions in poetry, I have been able to implement new tools into my own work. I have begun to understand how poetry works because I can talk about it with technical vocabulary, discuss it critically with others, and execute it myself in an effective manner. I have chosen this project because it is a strong reflection of me, my learning, and my understanding.