Today was weird class for me.  I felt as though I was rushing but that things were taking forever.  Was it a wrinkle in the fabric of the space-time continuum?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXgnZLgXv_E[/youtube]

I’m not sure.  What I am sure of, however, is that we did accomplish the following things in class today:

Administrivia

• Lit Circle Double Entry Journals were due today
• I collected the outstanding Lit Circle novels
• I enthralled Joe with a Lion King See ‘n Say.  Check it out:

Calendar

I highlighted the following upcoming in-class items of interest:

Tuesday, 18 March 2010: Information Literacy Workshop

• 1:30 to 3:30 (class ends early this day)
• PON F in the DLC (DIgital Learning Center)
• Please bring a fully charged laptop

Tuesday, 23 March: LLED Unit Plan Due Date

Please bring a hard copy of all the required elements to show in class and hand in afterwards. Those elements are:

• Unit Outline
• Resource Evaluation Sheets X 5
• Introductory Lesson Plan
• LA-based Lesson Plan

Here are the task outline (with a description of the task criteria) and the UBD planning template I showed in class:

• LLED 320 Unit Plan Task Handout- 2010
• LLED 320 Unit Plan UBD Template – 2010

In addition, here’s a sample of how to complete the Resource Evaluation sheets:

• SAMPLE LLED 320 Unit Plan Resource Evaluation Sheets

Introducing the Class

We met three middle school students and considered how Lit Circles in particular might or might not work for them in an LA class.

Active Participation – Physical: Drama Games

We got the blood flowing by playing two drama games.

Evolution

Here are a set of instructions for Evolution from the Improv Encyclopedia:

Have the group in a circle. Everyone starts out as an egg and places their hands above their head and together so that they look like an egg. When you say, “Go,” each person will find another egg. Once they find that person, they will then farkle (Rock, Paper , Scissors). The loser stays an egg and the winner becomes a chicken, placing their arms as wings and making chicken noises. The chicken then looks for another chicken while the egg looks for another egg. When you win as a chicken you become a dinosaur, placing your hands out and roaring like a dinosaur. If you lose as a chicken you drop back down to an egg. Dinosaurs then find other dinosaurs, where they will play to become the ultimate people. Ultimate people put their hands over their heads like superman and look for others like them. If you lose as a dinosaur you go back to being a chicken, looking for other chickens. If the Ultimate person loses to another Ultimate person they go back to a dinosaur, and if they win they stay as ultimate people.

I learned about Evolution when I played it in a drama workshop.  The handout from that workshop contains another set of instructions for Evolution and is linked below:

• Drama in the Classroom Activities

Bus Stop

Here’s an improv classic!  It’s described in The Jamestown Press article “Kids get laughs while learning basics of improv” by Lanette Spranzo, as are the 3 key rules of improv.  Here’s a PDF of the article for your reference:

• Kids Learning Basics of Improv Article

Active Participation – Intellectual: Concept Attainment

I used the following PowerPoint slideshow to introduce the complex teaching strategy of Concept Attainment (sometimes called the Yes / No Game).  Here’s the presentation:

• 2010 LLED 320 Concept Attainment PPT

Here’s the data set on a literary term that I used in the middle of the presentation:

• 2010 LLED 320 Data Set on Conflict

… and here’s another data set on Fact and Opinion:

• 2010 LLED 320 Data Set on Fact & Opinion

Suprisingly, YouTube has a few videos on the topic.  For instance, here’s a data set on renewable and non-renewable resources:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vihCWCIobOg&NR=1[/youtube]

Here’s another on totalitarianism, a theme in the novel 1984:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jPHzkbvaEQ[/youtube]

If you’re keen to play with CA on your prac… and I strongly suggest you do, here are some data sets I’ve used in my classroom over the years to help stimulate your thinking about the possiblities:

LA

• Poetic Devices Met-Sim-Pers Yes No Game Data Set
• Attention Grabber Yes No Game Data Set
• Alliteration Yes No Game Data Set
• Persuasive Speech Topics Yes No Game Data Set
• Disagreeing Agreeably Yes No Game Data Set

MATH

• Fractions Yes No Game Data Set
• Negative #’s Yes No Game Data Set
• Powers of 10 Yes No Game Data Set

HACE

• Short-Term Goals Yes No Game Data Set

Here’s a visual data set similar to the Triuns one that you could use to intro the topic of CA with your students:

Finally, here’s the Bennett reading I mentioned in class.  It will give you a deeper understanding of how you can use CA effectively in your classroom:

• CA Reading Package from Bennett’s Beyond Monet

SCETS

We ended off class by completing the evaluation of my teaching in LLED 320 this term.  Thanks again to Andrea for collecting and delivering the forms.

See you on Thursday in the DLC at 1:30.

– Lawrence

We wrapped up our work with Lit Circles today.  Here’s how it happened:

Mindful Breathing

Lit Circle Redux

We continued working with Lit Circles today.  Here’s the handout supplied in class.  It contains:

• A quick and dirty summary of the LC process
• The Story Behind Invictus worksheet
• The Story Behind the Poem recipe
• Examples of response journals and comprehension activities
• The Performance Standard Quick Scale for Reading Literature
• Infomation on the assessment and evaluation of LCs
• A LC & teaching-of-reading-related resource list
• An Anticipation Guide worksheet & a recipe for using AGs in your classroom

The handout: 2010 Lit Circle & Ant Guide Resources Handout

Literature Circles-Related Questions

I asked each TC to write a LC-related question that I would answer at some point during today’s lesson.

Advanced LC Introduction Strategy – “The Story Behind the Poem Invictus“

A great way to get students excited about a new box of thematic books is to read and consider a poem on the theme.  I modeled that by using the Story Behind the Poem strategy (a slightly different one than the version presented in the LLED group presentation) to analyze the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley.

Here’s the recipe for the Story Behind the Poem strategy I used: Story Behind the Poem Recipe

Here’s the handout for the poem.  It’s set up to accommodate the SBTP sketching: The Story Behind Invictus PDF & The Story Behind Invictus DOC.

Here’s the trailer for the movie Invictus.   According to the movie’s production notes:

“In the film, Mandela calls upon Pienaar (the captain of the South African national rugby team, the Sprinboks, in 1995) to lead his team to greatness, citing a poem that was a source of inspiration and strength to him during his years in prison.  It is later revealed that the poem is “Invictus,” by William Ernest Henley.  The title is translated to mean “unconquered,” which, Eastwood (film director, Clint Eastwood) says, “doesn’t represent any one character element of the story.  It takes on a broader meaning over the course of the film.”

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9Ovkye6lac[/youtube]

Here’s a scene from the film.  In this clip, Mandela (Freeman) explains how he found inspiration in a poem during his time in prison before narrating Invictus:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVi4k44A1Yo[/youtube]

Last day’s book discussion was guided by the sticky notes each participant had brought to the circle.  In an effort to model another possibility for setting up the book-related talking, I posed a thematic question as a prompt:

“What has the book taught you about life and living?”

After the conversations we discussed the pros, cons, and artful nuances of structuring the conversation in such a way.

Comprehension Activities

Comprehension activities supplement the reading, discussing and journaling during Lit Circle time.  This gives the students not participating in a discussion group one more thing they can be working on.   One of Brownlies’s Literacy in the Middle Years – Part 2 webcasts does a nice job of covering the topic of comprehension activities.  I’ve included a link to the webcast and it’s timecodes below:

Literature Circles (33:49)

Timecodes (all time are approximate):

• 0:00 – 1:45: How to Do Comp Strats
• 1:45 – 6:00: Containers for Characters
• 6:00 – 9:00: Setting Activity
• 9:00 – 11:30: Venn Diagram
• 11:30 – 13:00: Character Tree
• 13:00 – 16:30: Hot Seat
• 16:30 – 17:50: Comp Strats Create Book Buzz
• 17:50 – 22:00: Assessment in LCs & Wrapping Up LCs
• 22:00 – 25:00: End of LC “Advice Letter to the TC”
• 25:00 – 30:30: Ideogram
• 30:30 – 32:00: Call Back to 4 Conditions that Support Readers

Here’s a handout from the first edition of the Student Diversity text.  It has details on some of the tasks discussed in the webcast:

Lit Circle Comprehension Strategies

Assessment of Literature Circles

Brownlie covers the topic in one segment of the webcast and I’ve included a reading on the topic in the handout.

Answering Some LC-Related Questions

Feedback On & Collection of the LC Novels

In order to inform my book choices for next year, I asked you to give me the following information on the book(s) you read:

• Title
• Stay or G0 (for next year’s kit)
• Reasoning

After looking over the information gathered, I can report that there is nearly unanimous interest in seeing all the books return again next year.  Thanks for your feedback.

Many books were returned to me at this point in the class.  If you have yet to return your novel, please do some in the next class.  Thanks.

Final Double Entry Journal Entry

After brainstorming LC topics touched on in class (“What happened”), I asked you to choose 2 items to respond to in writing (“My Thinking”) in a Double Entry Journal.

For this journal, each entry includes your thinking on 2 items covered in class.  You are doing 3 entries and typing them up.  Your final journal is due to me via email on or before Tuesday, 16 March 2010.

Reading in Content Areas

We didn’t have much time left in class but I did want to touch on how you could work with subject specific reading in such classes as Science, Math, or Socials.  After discussing some of the challenges and successes you’ve had or seen with respect to content area reading, we played with a pre-reading strategy called an Anticipation Guide.  This strategy is a very good one because it gives the students a chance to get their head around the vocabulary and key ideas in a passage selection before reading it for themselves.

You can find the AG, the recipe, and the article the AG is based on in the handout posted at the start of this entry.

To get really meta, here’s an article to check out from the NMSA journal, Voices From the Middle, that relates to using expository texts in Lit Circles:

Expository Text in Lit Circles

That’s all folks.  See you Tuesday.

– Lawrence