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LLED 320 – Poetry Playoffs, Reading Placemat, De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats, Whole Class Novels, and Lit Circles: Update for Tuesday, 22 Feb 2011

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We covered a lot of ground today.  Here’s the highlights:

Poetry Playoffs

After reviewing the 8 Ps of Powerful Presentations:

  • Proper Articulation
  • Pronunciation
  • Power
  • Pace
  • Pause
  • Pitch
  • Passion
  • Poise

I asked you to rehearse your best haiku in case you were one of the 8 contestants chosen to face off.  Here’s the draw and how it turned out:

Congratulations to Kira on her victory.  In a related story, check out this clip to see Anthony Bourdain enjoying a bowl of “mysterious meat” pho and a beer:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsSiA-JHm0U[/youtube]

If you search this blog using the keywords Poetry Playoffs, you’ll find information I’ve posted last year on how to run a the PP in your class, if you’re interested.

Wrapping Up Writing in the Classroom

I mentioned that we just touched on writing in the classroom.  Also, I urged you to consider the principles of effective writing instruction as you teach.  Penultimately, in an effort to address several comments that arose as I marked your LLED 320 Writing Assessment Tasks, I pointed you toward the ESL Standards document (2001) developed to assist teachers with the assessment of writing, reading, and oral language work completed by EAL / ESL students.  It’s structured similarly to the Performance Standards document we used in class and you can find it on the Ministry of Education ESL website or below:

Finally, if you’re interested in a great LA survey text that has a good section on Writing To Learn, I recommended that you check out Marion Crowhurst’s Language and Learning Across the Curriculum (LB1576 .C76 1993 in Ed LIb).

Factors That Help Students Develop As Readers

We ended our previous session with by having you consider the factors that you thought helped students develop as readers.  I asked you to put your ideas together and create a placemat with a group of three others and try to come up with 3 – 5 factors that all group members could agree on.  After sharing the ideas of several groups, we compared the responses with the research:

I asked you to consider our upcoming reading activities through the lens of those 4 factors.

Considering Whole Class Novel Studies Using Using De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats

With your graphic organizer of Chapter 6 – Whole Class Novel from Student Diversity in hand, I asked you to consider the WCN through the lens of one of De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats.  After reading up on what type of thinking each hat represents using the handout below:

I asked for each group to report out on their thinking around WCNs.  To wrap up, we all put on our Blue Hat – the metacognitive hat – and discussed the process of using the 6 Thinking Hats.  It was pretty meta!

Lit Circles: Double-Entry Journal Task

One During-Reading activity that really promotes thoughtful engagement with lit circle books it journaling.  In an effort to model this process with you, I’m asking you to keep a Double-Entry Journal as a means to consider the lit circle activities we’re engaging in during class time.  The task will be completed in class and it’s due on Thursday, 3 March 2011.  Here’s the handout:

To this point you had experienced:

  • Book Talks
  • Time to Read (in class and at home)
  • Sticky Notes

I asked you to choose to of those ideas and to give me your thoughts on them in the My Thinking side of the journal.  We took 10 or so minutes in class to do this.

Lit Circles: Conversation Time

I modeled a Lit Circle conversation with the members of The Hunger Games reading group and utilizing a Fishbowl strategy.  After a quick debrief, I asked each reading group to meet and engage in a similar conversation.  The discussions were lively and could have run much longer than the time we had left in class.

That’s all for today.  As a good follow up to our in-class activities, I recommend reading Chapter 7 – Literature Circles: The Basics, the Big Ideas, and Beyond in Student Diversity. It provides more details on how Lit Circles addresses the factors that help students develop as readers and it illustrates a model of how one teacher uses Lit Circles in her classroom.

That’s all for today.

– Lawrence

Pillars of Middle School & The Power of Language: Update for Wednesday, 6 October 2010

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My Job, Your Job

To start, I showed you the MJ, YJ chart and asked if there was anything on it you couldn’t live with.  There wasn’t so these are the guidelines we’ll live with.  In an effort to ensure each of you are as focused as possible for the duration of each class, I did add an item about the use of electronic devices – phones, laptops, MP3 players, and what not – to the TC side of this chart.  Here’s what I added:

“Use laptops and other electronic devices only for class work related tasks (taking notes, for instance)”

The entire MJ, YJ chart is below for your reference:

The Pillars of Middle School

After one tour of a middle school I thought the time was right to have you examine the pillars of middle school.  After a brainstorm-walk-and-talk, we listed your best answers to the question “What are the 5 key components of an exemplary middle school?”  The list you developed was very close to the one agreed upon in the middle school literature – as noted in this NMSA (National Middle School Association) Research Summary from December 2007, “Characteristics of Exemplary Schools for Young Adolescents” –  and as highlighted in my brief PPT presentation:

Language Article Placemat

In an effort to wrap up our look at “Chapter 4: Language” from the Communication fort he Classroom Teacher text, I asked you – as a member of a triad – to complete a placemat to review your ideas on the piece, then to summarize the triad’s thinking using a 3-2-1 organizer:

  • 3 – Key ideas from the text
  • 2 – “Language-related” actions to take on practicum
  • 1 – Point to ponder/question

Here are the directions for Placemat and the 3-2-1:

Here’s a really cool, old school placemat:

I think that covers it.

Cheers,

– Lawrence