Tag Archives: Energizers

LLED 320: Writing Reflection & Conferencing, Poetry Playoffs, Poetry Reading Discussion, & Lit Circle Books Out: Update for Tuesday, 21 February 2012

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We had a lot to get to today so I won’t start lollygagging now.  Oh, wait.  Speaking of lollygagging:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDaFcQJC4z8[/youtube]

OK.  Now where was I?  Oh, yes.  No lollygagging and all that.  Off we go…

Learning Intentions

Here are the goals I had for each learner by the end of today’s session:

I [the learner] can…

  • Self-assess my haiku writing
  • Give thoughtful feedback to an author in a conference setting
  • Rehearse and present my haiku with power and passion
  • Sell my preferred poetry strategy from the Chapter 8 reading to a classmate
  • Thoughtfully consider the Lit Circle books on offer and choose one to read

In hindsight, I think we touched on all of these.

Daily Write – Haiku Self-Assessment Process

I asked you to self-assess your haiku products and writing process with the following 4 sentence starters.  The audience was the “teacher” that you would conference with shortly:

  • You should notice…
  • I’m most proud of…because…
  • My greatest challenge on this task was…because…
  • My best haiku is…because…

Writing Conference

After modeling a writing conference focused on these three questions:

  • What’s working (in your work)?
  • What’s not?
  • What next?

I gave you a chance to have a go in the role of “teacher” and student in a conference setting.

Energizer #1 – Telephone Charades by Christina

Poetry Playoffs

I set the stage with a poetry presentation clip from the Mike Myers joint, So I Married An Axe Murderer:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlkoQ4bUE5k[/youtube]

Then, in an effort to model the need for skill work with students if you want them to improve as speakers, we worked with Punch (=power) and Paint (=passion), two concepts we’ve played with before in our Me in a Bag Speeches (remember those?) in Term 1.  John S. O’Connor’s book, Wordplaygrounds: Reading, Writing, and Performing Poetry in the English Classroom, is where I found the ideas we used.  I can’t recommend this poetry book highly enough, as I borrowed our Haiku process from there, too!

Armed with your powers to punch and paint, you rehearsed for the PPs, we chose the draw, and decided how would would assess the presenters (on delivery, content, and form, as it turned out) [Thanks to Nicole for the photos in this post – LH]:

As the image above attests to, in the end, Eric A. – the freshly crowned Haiku Guru – took the honours with his piece.  Here it is in all its award winning  glory:

Entering

Naked I enter

From my mother’s womb I slip

…brr  Let me back in.

Luckily no one captured the final performance on their camera so I won’t be posting an accompanying video!

Energizer #2 – What’s My Fave Food by Mirela

Reading Discussion on Student Diversity’s Chapter 8: Poetry – Three Invitations

To process this chapter, I asked you to identify your preference for one of the three strategies outlined in the text and then sell it to a classmate.  We debriefed by talking about the reasons we thought the strategies might work with the learners in your classrooms.

Literature Circles Books Out

Using one full-blow book talk for The Crazy Man by Pamela Porter and a set of book trailers from YouTube, I introduced the set of books we’re going to work with over the final 3 weeks of class.

The book trailers are in a previous post and here’s the blurb I wrote up for The Crazy Man:

Homework for Wednesday’s Session – Novel Reading & Six-Hat Thinking

You have two tasks to take care of for Wednesday’s session and both are outlined in this image:

The hat you need to use for your Six-Hat Thinking on Chapter 6 – The Whole Class Novel was assigned by numbering off in class.  Here are how the numbers fit with the hats:

Here’s the Six-Hat Handout that was, ahem, handed out in class.  This style of thinking was pioneered by Edward deBono:

The video clip below gives you a nice primer on the purpose and power of the Six Thinking Hats approach:

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

If you missed class and don’t have a number, just choose one, put on its associated Thinking Hat, and have a go with your reading and note taking.

Oh, and there’s no excuses for not doing this reading.  For some reason, Chapter 6 of the Student Diversity text is online here.

That’s all for today.  See you on Thursday.

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Group Presentation Organization & Writing Assessment Task, Part 2: Update for Tuesday, 24 January 2012

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After I asked you to prepare for a trip to Nitobe Gardens at the start of Thursday’s class – be sure to bring your UBC student card – and our Daily Write, we got down to the meat of the matter

Group Presentation Organization

We developed the following schedule for the 20-minute presentations:

and you can find the task handout and rubric on the Assignments page of this blog.  For all you visual learners, here’s the schedule at a glance compliments of EM:

Engergizer #1: Hum That Tune by Amy V.

Student Diversity Readings (Intro, Chapter 1, & Chapter 3) Discussion

We took some time to process this lesson’s readings.  I asked you to use your Sticky Notes and structure the conversation in any way you saw fit.  Below is an image that summarizes our conversation regarding the form and content of these conversations:

 

Writing Assessment Task, Part 2

As an intro, I mentioned that some goals for this task were to:

  • Introduce you to the Performance Standards
  • Encourage you to engage in professional conversations about assessment
  • Increase the reliability (repeatability of your measurement) and validity (were you right?) of your writing assessment
  • Examine how to determine weaknesses in writing and consider strategies to address these areas of need

Next, we did a Carousel Brainstorming / Graffiti activity aimed at listing strategies to address weaknesses in student writing.  Here’s how I structured the activity:

  • Each TC received a bullet point from the Not Yet Meeting column of theGrade 8 Writing Personal Essays and Opinions Quick Scale Here’s the list of all 10 bullet points: Gr 8 Writing PE & O QS NYM Bullet Points
  • Find others with your bullet point and get a piece of chart paper and a pen
  • Write your bullet point as the title on your paper
  • Brainstorm a list of ideas you could use in classroom instruction to address bullet point – the weakness in the student’s writing – for 2 minutes.
  • Move to a different paper when given the signal.
  • Add your ideas to the paper you’ve arrived at.
  • Repeat the “move and add” process.
  • When asked to stop moving, highlight the 2 or 3 best ideas on the page you have in front of you.
  • Report those ideas out to the class.

The photos below show the ideas generated for each of the bullet points…except #7 (We missed that one for a bizarre reason that I won’t go into here – LH):

Energizer #2: People Machine by Liz W.

Assessing Your Writing Samples

After I presented a think aloud on how I’d assess and evaluate the speech from last day’s session, we got down to the assessment of the writing samples you’d brought to class.  Here’s the process we followed:

NOTE:  The document below is recycled from last year’s post and, as such, has an inaccurate due date.  The due date for this year’s In-Class Writing Assessment Task is Tuesday, 7 February 2012.

I will take some time in Thursday’s class to review the key components of this task and to outline the format I’d like you to use as you complete it.

Energizer #3: Make Them Laugh by Amy S.

BLOG ONLY BONUS CONTENT: Assessment and Reporting Resources

While the assessment process is a complex one, there are many resources available to help you out.  One excellent source of information is the BC Ministry of Education website’s page on Classroom Assessment and Student Reporting.  On this page, you will find the following info:

Key Links and Resources

Other Related Resources

I reckon that’s enough for today.

Cheers,

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Intro to LLED 320, Literacy Placemat, Medieval Drama, and Student Sketching: Update for Tuesday, 17 Jan 2012

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Welcome back to campus for Term 2…

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVS3WNt7yRU[/youtube]

Hell0 to the 6 TCs who are joining the Middle Years cohort in this section of LLED 320.  I’ll post class updates on this blog so be sure to check here if you’ve missed class or misplaced a handout.

Here’s what shook down today:

Daily Write

We took 5 minutes to think and write about the topic:

  • Everything I really need to know about teachign I can learn in a K – 12 classroom

or anything else that’s on your mind.  We took up a few responses when we were done.

Preview of Thursday’s Class

Please bring the following items to class:

  • the 4-6 writing samples you gathered during your 2-Week Prac

We’ll be using the samples in class on Thursday, 20 January.

Revised Course Schedule

The course meeting times have been changed and are now as follows:

  • Tuesdays: 1:00 – 5:00 in Scarfe 1328
  • Thursdays: 1:00 – 5:00 in Scarfe 207

Course Outline

Here is a copy of the course outline:

Looking Back & Looking Ahead

I accessed your prior knowledge – the info covered in LLED 310 – so I didn’t overlap my instruction with what had already been covered.  Also, I asked you to indicate topics you’d like addressed in the course so I can determine how best to focus the class time we spend together.

Energizers

Hey, it’s a long class for a Tuesday and Thursday afternoon.  To spice things up and to model the types activities that you can do in your classroom with your students, we will be working some energizers into our session together.  I kicked it off by modeling Hot Categories and, later in the session, a Medieval version of Fruit Bowl/Basket:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GruDA8LrUcc[/youtube]

Each TC will need to present an engergizer to the class and we drafted a schedule to that effect.  Here it is:

Please email me or hand me a short description of the activity for posting on the blog.  I’ve set up an Energizers page on the blog for ease of reference.

How Might We Define Literacy Placemat Activity

We used the placemat strategy – described in a goodly amount of detail here – as a means to access your PK on literacy.  I’ve posted the completed placemats in 1328 for all to see.  Below is a template of the graphic organizer used to do this activity:

Here’s a link to a fairly comprehensive definition from the folks at The Centre for Literacy.

Building Classroom Community Through Medieval Drama

You’ve heard of the European Middle Ages, right?  A time of brave Black Knights and, well, “coconut” horses…

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eMkth8FWno[/youtube]

I had a few goals in mind when I planned this task for today’s class:

  • Getting the MY and newly arrived TCs working together
  • Modeling how the LA strands and literacy, in general, can be infused across the curriculum
  • Having some fun at the end of a long, long day

To those ends, we engaged in variety of dramatic activities, including:

  • At The Fair – an riff on the active (and very competitive!) game Fruit Bowl/Basket
  • Exchanging Objects – trading imaginary objects with fellow fair attendees
  • Preparing for the Royal Feast – create a tableau the depicts some aspect of the preparations for a grand medieval feast.

Here’s the handout with all the details:

To bring closure to this piece of the lesson, I asked you to consider two questions:

  • What aspects of literacy were involved as we engaged in these activities?
  • How might you use or adapt these activities to good effect in your practicum (or another) classroom?

The Students We Teach

To wrap up the session, I asked you to consider a student in your class that made a strong impression on you.  Then, as best as you can, I asked you to create a poster with their likeness on it that described their:

  • Personality
  • Background
  • Strengths as a learner
  • Challenges as a learner
  • A slogan they’d likely have on their t-shirt

We had time to finish the poster creation but not to take them up.  We’ll do this in Thursday’s class.   Please remember your writing samples then, too.

– Lawrence