Graphic Organizer: Fun Fact

I love graphic organizers. They are a fun, entertaining way to help the students to understand a topic more thoroughly. My favourite graphic organizer is the foldable. I wish that I would have done those in my high school classes.

Yesterday, I met up with my AT for my next practicum and he informed me that one of my students has a "visual/spatial" IEP. I had never heard about this before. Supposedly, one of the things he cannot process are graphic organizers. When you put one infront of him, his brain shuts down and they make no sense to him. I found this to be really perplexing because the purpose of graphic organizers is to break the thought process down to make things easier to understand. For him, it literally worked against what it was meant to do. My AT says that this one time he had his class making foldables for an English unit. The student's father had to phone into my AT to tell him that his son would not participate in this activity. The student had no problem writing down the information in a "note-taking" way, but as soon as he was presented with a foldable he could not do it. I thought it was something interesting that I would share.

I will be taking over this class soon, so I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for other modifications I could use that would help?


Here is a website that printable graphic organizers. I think it's a great resource!

Decoder Extraordinaire

The Four Resource Model of “Code Breaker, Meaning Maker, Text User and Text Analyst” is an effective way to encode and decode meaning to make sense of a text. I think this model is an effective way for English teachers to use for all students, not just those struggling with making meaning to a text. 

I am particularly fascinated with the “Text Analyst” step of The Four Resource Model  because it talks about the construction of a text. Many students find it hard to grasp the idea that texts are constructions of a reality. I can see how it would be complicating for a student to understand how an autobiography or memoir could be a “construction” when it is meant to emulate reality. I thought I would share the following resource, which can be used in addition to The Four Resource Model.  It is called the “4 C’s of Media” , which helps students to break down the artificality of texts. 


 This is the 4C's Model

You could decode this Bachelor clip that we watched in class (or a music video, or commercial, etc. -- Youtube is your best friend) according to the 4 C’s of Media resource:

This is also a good resource for Media Awareness:

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/teachers/media_literacy/key_concept.cfm

Rebel with a Cause: Decoding Powers

I, too, like Jennifer Powers, have been challenged (by others and myself) about what the purpose of an English classroom is. I feel as though I have been stuck in a fantasy "literature" world for the past five years because I can openly discuss literature with my fellow English comrades in undergraduate. This fantasy-land escalated to a higher level when I sat inside a class full of people who all had English degrees when I went to Teacher’s College. I could talk about things like heternormativity, hegemony, literary devices, etc., and people would understand what I was talking about. It seemed like the only time I would actually discuss literature was at school, so I did not realize how normalized I had made it. When I took on the challenge of teaching two grade twelve (4U, 4C) and one grade 11 (3U) English classes for my first practicum, I realized that literature, or even reading in generally, was not as loved as I’d thought would be. In fact, many students in high school literally regret having to take English class and the thought of doing any reading was like pulling out teeth.  

            So, what is the purpose of an English class then? I think Piazza (quoted in Power’s article) makes a valuable point when he says, "it is not enough to be content with motivating students to learn to read a book; they must learn to read the world" (p. iii). Whereas I think Power’s makes the “print” literacy out to be the bad guy, I would argue that she does make a valuable point that reading a text is “the ability to encode or decode meaning in any of the forms of representation used in the culture to convey or express meaning" (Powers 13). I think it is our obligation as teachers in this modern world to take advantage of the variety of texts that we have at our disposal. Print literacy is definitely something that I am not easily going to give up without a fight, but I do think that it is poor practice to restrict your students from the many ulterior texts. I think if we keep in mind that our job as educators is to help the process of “reading the world” it becomes easier to understand how different texts might fit into the classroom. After all, you are teaching the students, not the curriculum (cliché).

Lesson Redesign

Original Lesson Plan 

Curriculum Expectations 
Understanding form and style: recognize a variety of text forms, text features, and stylistic elements and demonstrate understanding of how they help communicate meaning 
Speaking to communicate: use speaking skills and strategies appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.

Homework questions (10 minutes): All questions assigned for act 3, scene 2 are due today. Go over answers to questions with class to assure everyone is comfortable with the answers. Assign each question to a student to write on the board.

Reading in character with teacher “think aloud” method (45 minutes): Act 3, Scene 3 and 4 will be read aloud. Scene 3 is only 3 pages long, but exposes key elements of guilt from Claudius, as well as the plot to send Hamlet to England. This is also the first time that we see a soliloquy from someone other than Hamlet. In Scene 4, Hamlet talks with his mother, catches Polonius eavesdropping and kills him. The discussion of the treatment of women, madness and eavesdropping will be prominent. Teacher will prompt students with important quotations, significances, and character developments. Students will be assigned parts to perform/read and props will be provided to add to scene. Teacher will prompt students with important quotations, significances, and character developments. Students will be assigned parts to perform/read and props will be provided to add to scene. Scene three requires five actors to play the King, Guildenstern, Rosencrantz, Polonius and Hamlet. Scene four requires four actors to play Polonius, Hamlet, Queen, and the Ghost.

Movie (15 minutes): Teacher will show clip of Act 3 Scene 3 and 4 from the Kenneth Branagh version of “Hamlet”. This particular version follows word for word from the text. In addition, a play is intended to be acted out, thus by just reading aloud the students sometimes miss important details.

Redesigned Lesson Plan Ideas

Looking back on this lesson, I really do not think that I gave enough time to these two important scenes. Scene three is crucial because it is the first time that we are confirmed that Claudius did, in fact, kill his brother. Scene four is the epic moment where many people argue Hamlet loses control of his sanity. I decided if I could resign the lesson, I would split it into two lessons (if time allowed me to). The first day I would use a Soliloquy Mash-up (explained below):

Soliloquy Mash-up (remainder of the class and into the next):  The task is for the student to have lyrics that relate to revenge, fear, duty, murder or selfish motives available for this class time.
Option one: Students would have been prompted the class before to bring lyrics from home. Teacher should always have backups in case students forget.
Option two: Students are taken down to the computer lab to find lyrics on these themes.
Option three: Teacher pre-selects these lyrics for the class.
The teacher will create this experience in the English classroom by having students merge the soliloquy and one song lyric of their own choosing in order to create a new “mash-up” of two different genres. 

The students will be directed to alternate between one lyric from their song of choice and one lyric from Claudius’s soliloquy.
**The students are responsible to take home their creation and post it to the classroom blog to showcase their talents. The following class, the students will have to present their creation, which can be pulled up easily on the classroom blog.

I also would like to integrate twitter to enable students to tweet from the perspective of any character in the play. I remember doing a creative writing exercise with my Writer’s Craft class in grade 12 that asked us to write a paper from the perspective of one of the characters. I think that this activity would be beneficial for the students to connect with a certain character.  

I would need to have a class (or two) to set up all of these social media sites and always provide step-by-step instructions to help the students.

I would like to note that the majority of my lessons did incorporate media because I felt that a lot of physical understanding is lost when you read a play. I would always show the clip of that scene from the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet.  My students really enjoyed this method and I would always compliment this method with a comparison of play to video after the clip.

Discovering Bitstrips

During our “Discovering Web 2.0” class on February 1^st, I played/discovered Bitstrips. I spent the entire class engaged in creating an avatar and then moving on to creating a comic strip.  

So, what is Bitstrips? It is an interactive website where students can create their own comic individually or collaboratively as a class. Teachers can create engaging assignments in the form of interactive comics. Teachers can create a classroom, where the students can go on and create their own avatar that looks like them.

Positives:
Student engagement will be at an all-time high because students love comics.
Comics are proven to improve literacy and language skills, as well as work effectively for specifically boy’s literacy (which is a hot issue right now!)
It encourages the students to collect, organize and synthesize visual and textual information.
It builds on methods of teaching strategies – and is recognizably a differentiated instruction strategy.
It is important that teachers incorporate the media/technology in the classroom to benefit this “technological” age of students.

Negatives:
I can see this being effective for one assignment, but it may be redundant after that.
Students may get wrapped up in creating avatars and not get into the actual project (just like I did!)
You would have to assign class time for students to do this because access to technology may be an issue.
It may be juvenile for high school students. 

 

I think this would be a really great activity to engage students in creative writing. As an educator, I feel it is important to address what skills the students are gaining from this exercise other than basic literacy skills. Teachers should decide what skills they want to cover by backwards design and then decide if this would be an effective tool in your design. I, also, would have a dicussion with your class about "respect" before making the avatar. This is important to avoid any discrimination. For example, as part of the "headwear" section, there is a hijab as an option. You want to make sure that your students do not choose characteristics of their avatar that is meant to be discriminatory in any way. I do, however, think this website will leave a lasting impression because it’s fun and engaging and I am never opposed to fun in the classroom. 

Literacy Survey

Reflecting on Literacy Survey:

For the most part, I thought this survey covered all of the grounds that I think are important. I particularly like the section that asks the students to check the box of how they read and write on a daily basis. By giving options of different literacies, the student may become aware of their daily reading and writing habits. It seems, sometimes, that the novelty of reading and writing has worn off as a "dated" practice for teens. However, teens are sending on average 200 texts per month, which encompasses both reading and writing. Media literacy is the new wave of "cool" for teenagers, thus I think it is important for teacher's to use technology as an advantage. I added a few boxes, such as asking the student what mark he/she expects to receive and what their goals are for after high school. During my practicum, I gave my students a survey similar to this one. I found the extra questions that I have added to be beneficial for the teacher to really understand the student. Oftentimes, the student is true to themselves and they write down a mark that is in the same ball-park range of their marks from the previous years. It is a good practice for a teacher to look at the mark the student expects to learn and compare it to the mark that they currently have. It may be beneficial to sit down with the student and talk about the gap in the comparison. Also, I find it important to talk about where students would like to go after school. Students enjoy talking about themselves and it may help the teacher to build a more defined understanding of her/his students by playing into their interests and goals.

I also feel that identifying the learning styles and intelligences of the students should be a mandatory practice for teachers. I do not know how effective this survey would be for identifying these specific targets, so I feel that maybe multiple intelligence/learning style quiz might need to be done before doing this survey. It may prevent confusion, but more importantly will help with accuracy. 

Testing the waters

This is my first post.