Starting up. September 2013

A new school year has begun, and now that we have finished with our SAM Induction Program, we are beginning to dive into the curriculum.  At this point, I would like to say a few words about this site.

I have been maintaining this site for a few years, though the posts on this blog have been sporadic, each September, I start again, with the aim of writing more regularly.

The site, itself, has many uses, one of which is the posting of homework for English class.  You will also find links to assignments that will help you become more successful in your work.

Thanks for reading.  Please check back regularly.

We Begin Again

September has arrived, and though the air is still sticky and hot, we are spending time, once more, in the classroom.  The beginning of a new school year offers multiple opportunities for new explorations and the learning of new things.

I am looking forward to sharing a journey of exploration with you.  Let us work together in our English class to learn new and amazing things.

Wow. It's almost Christmas

Where does the time go?

I started the year with every intention of writing regularly on this blog. I even had a great idea for starting, but it fizzled.

So many ideas and intentions are like that.

So, we've had the first parent night, and it was nice to meet so many of the parents of my students.

Now, we are getting ready for our first big break in the school year. December begins this week, and that means snow and cold will soon be here.

I will try to write more frequently over the next few weeks. My new goal will be to use this space to explore one new education related idea each week.

Let's see how I do.

A New School Year

September.
It still feels like summer, and it is difficult to get out of bed. Despite this, we end up at school ready to begin another year of exploration and learning. September is a month of conflicting emotions. We yearn for the carefree days of summer, but on one hand we get excited about the new things we will learn in the coming months at school.

I came across an article entitled "Ten skills every student should learn". I thought this would be a good place to begin the year.

What are the skills you, as students, think you should be learning? What do your parents think?

Let me know by leaving a comment. I will post the ten skills and offer my thoughts on them in the coming weeks.

I look forward to reading your thoughts.

Pursuing our Interests

I know it's been a long time since I posted anything here. I always have good intentions, and then the reality of each day seems to suck up all the time. Today, however, I read an amazing blog post and felt inspired. Sometimes that's all it takes for us to start on something: an inspiring moment. The blog post I read is titled: Dreams When We're Awake, and it is found on a blog I follow called Cool Cat Teacher Blog. Here is the link: http://bit.ly/i1blfC I found this post to be very inspirational. The writer is a teacher from Southern Georgia who thinks in a similar way to me, when it comes to the purpose of education. She writes about how getting her students to write about topics that they were passionate about started a ball rolling that lead to a conference for like minded teachers and students in Qatar. Very cool. But more so because right now, in my English classes we are working on this very thing. Each student is pursuing a topic that interests them so greatly they want to focus on it for a two month period of time. This project came about as a result of listening to speakers like Will Richardson and reading blogs from forward thinking educators. To me, English class should be about the teaching of how to communicate ideas. In doing so the students will read, write and create media content. These are skills upon which they can build as they move through the school system and eventually into the workforce. While there may be times when the whole class can benefit from reading the same thing, there are also times when students need to be empowered and take responsibility for their own learning. I look forward to sharing the results of these projects.

Challenging myself as a Reader

One of the changes I have made this year, in terms of assessing the personal reading of my students, was to add the row in the rubric that targets challenging oneself as a reader. I know from my own reading experience that it is easy to get sucked into the world of only reading certain genres and particular authors. This makes me lazy when I read because I know what the author will do, or what to expect from reading so many other similar books.

My students, and their parents, have asked, "How do we challenge ourselves as readers." Here is the beginning of an answer.

The first thing to do is to read outside your comfort zone. Pick up books in genres you may not be familiar with. Explore new authors. This was the goal of the "Around the Library in 14 Genres" contest held earlier in the year. The amazing thing to me is that when you branch out and try new reading materials you discover so many wonderful things. I, personally, don't really enjoy mystery novels, and yet some of the most enjoyable books I have read in the last year have been in that genre. I have read the first two books by the late Steig Larsson. You never know. You may discover that you actually enjoy what you thought you didn't.

Drop into a library and browse through the shelves. Some books may just jump out at you.

"...kids are good at connecting ideas and making things their own. If we provide them the supportive environment and tools to foster these connections and ideas, schools are doing their jobs.”

Steven Berlin Johnson

We've been trying to do just this, at least in the grade 8 English classes I teach. Inspired by a video I saw on ted.com, by an Educational researcher named Sugata Mitra, [His talk centred on the child-driven-education.] I have had my grade 8 students working in groups over the last month on a number of activities centred around improving their understanding of certain Literary elements like plot structure, irony and symbolism. It was wonderful to see the groups stand up in front of the class and teach each other through a variety of different media. We saw giant books, pop-up books, slideshows, puppet shows, skits and videos all used to communicate the student's learning.

Which brings me back to the quote with which I started this entry. I like to think that the environment within the grade 8 English classes has been the one described in that quote. Let me know.