Introductions to Read AloudsHello fellow educators and parents, Today I'd like to talk about the read aloud. Oftentimes, read alouds get a reputation among some as a 'waste of time' due to the fact that students are listening to a book rather than reading it themselves. Now, I respect the opinions of others, but this opinion is one I cannot get on board with. The audiobook and podcast industries are booming. Listening to information, whether it be stories of fiction or non-fiction, is an extremely popular way to consume media these days. It's important for us to teach students how to actively listen. Additionally, read alouds can be used to model reading strategies that you want your students to use when they venture into book clubs or independent reading. Read alouds are the perfect way to introduce your students to reading. It allows for them to see an adult reading the way they should read themselves when they do so independently. In my classroom, I use a read aloud at the beginning of the year to model reading strategies that I want students to work through with their own independent reading. Each week, we explore a different aspect of the book together as I model what I want students to do on their own. We've used a variety of strategies throughout my years of teaching to track our thinking, but my personal favourite way to show understanding is through a double entry journal. What can students do when listening?One of my favourite ways to have students engage in listening is to use a double entry journal. Double entry journals allow for students to jot down information that stands out to them when listening. Their thoughts do not need to be deep or ground-breaking, just moments of the story that stand out to them and what it makes them think about. Usually, students will inherently notice things that match reading strategies you want to model aloud for them. This can look like a teacher stopping while reading and making oral observations. For example, "hmm, I'm noticing that Katie is saying a lot of mean comments about herself. This makes me think that she might not have a lot of self confidence." Or, "you know what I'm noticing here? Devan is starting to doubt his friendship with Shane. I think this shows he's going to change later on in the book." Both of these are reading strategies, one being a character noticing and the other a prediction. As you model these strategies for students, they will begin using these strategies themselves as they are listening. There are plenty of other ways to engage students in active listening, but the double entry journal is an excellent entry point into active listening. It's a great strategy to implement at the beginning of the year to get students ready for all the skills they will be learning. There are, of course, many other strategies like sketch noting, think notes, etc. that can be used as the year progresses. My Favourite Read Alouds for SeptemberEgghead by Caroline Pignat Goodreads Synopsis: Will Reid is a gawky kid who wears fake turtlenecks, is obsessed by his ant farm project, and is lousy at gym. In other words, he's the perfect target for Shane, the Grade 9 bully. Katie has been Will's friend in elementary school, but defending him in the high school environment comes at an unforeseen cost - she dreads the rumours that link them in a boyfriend/girlfriend way she's never considered. Devan has been part of Shane's bullyboy team until now, when he comes to realize that it's not so smart to mindlessly back up each nasty attack of Shane's. Together the three young teens are struggling to find their way out of one of the classic dilemmas of life: how not to be a bystander to bullying, how to stand up for your friends, and how to deal with consuming rage. Personal Note: Egghead is a novel that I have used as a read aloud for years. It's time, now, for its retirement - but students connect to this novel in so many ways. It has a multi-dimensional villain and teaches very important lessons throughout. The reason for its retirement is that it's time for a new novel that is a bit more current as this novel is a little bit on the older side. Still, it will always hold a special place in my heart due to the lessons it teaches and the years I've had meaningful and connective conversations with students over the incredible characters. Restart by Gordon Korman Goodreads synopsis: Chase doesn't remember falling off the roof. He doesn't remember hitting his head. He doesn't, in fact, remember anything. He wakes up in a hospital room and suddenly has to learn his whole life all over again . . . starting with his own name. He knows he's Chase. But who is Chase? When he gets back to school, he sees that different kids have very different reactions to his return. Some kids treat him like a hero. Some kids are clearly afraid of him. One girl in particular is so angry with him that she pours her frozen yogurt on his head the first chance she gets. Pretty soon, it's not only a question of who Chase is--it's a question of who he was . . . and who he's going to be. Personal Note: Restart is one of the novels in our HERO/GEM (character development) book club that my colleague and I (shout out, Ms. Martynowitcz) created a couple of years ago. The story is incredibly popular with students and takes on a unique perspective of a bully. It shows that people can change, and that it is never too late to do the right thing. These are all incredible themes for the beginning of the year. The Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling Goodreads synopsis: Aven Green loves to tell people that she lost her arms in an alligator wrestling match, or a wildfire in Tanzania, but the truth is she was born without them. And when her parents take a job running Stagecoach Pass, a rundown western theme park in Arizona, Aven moves with them across the country knowing that she’ll have to answer the question over and over again. Her new life takes an unexpected turn when she bonds with Connor, a classmate who also feels isolated because of his own disability, and they discover a room at Stagecoach Pass that holds bigger secrets than Aven ever could have imagined. It’s hard to solve a mystery, help a friend, and face your worst fears. But Aven’s about to discover she can do it all . . . even without arms Personal Note: Aven's story of being different, but not allowing it to consume who she is, is a truly incredible thing to behold as a reader. It would be an excellent choice at the beginning of the year to learn to accept everyone as they are, and to learn that each of us carries our own experiences into the world and how those experiences shape how we are with others. On the Hunt...There are many other titles I could recommend for a read aloud, so if you're in need of one, feel free to reach out to me via the forum on the blog or on Twitter (@MrsMaffinPirie)
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Maternity Leave MusingsHi fellow educators, I write this to you from maternity leave. I gave birth to my daughter on August 24th and naturally have been taking some time away from teaching, even though I still think about it all the time. I find myself constantly in a position where I think something will "make a great lesson." I try writing things down but often my lizard brain will say, "I'll remember that in September when I go back." What do you think the chances are of me remembering any of my "great lesson ideas?" Right now our world is still turned upside down with COVID-19. The most recent variant, omicron, is leaving schools closed again for two weeks. I know this is frustrating and as teachers we find ourselves grappling for lesson plans. Do we finish what we had started before break? Do we start what we were going to start in January? Do we fill the time with something else? Becoming Mother Nature - Podcast UnitI thought now might be a great time to introduce a unit I did last year with my students when we were shut down. I discovered the podcast "Becoming Mother Nature" and decided it would be worth playing for my students. I was pleasantly surprised at the level of engagement I got out of them considering this was a unit we did near the end of the year, when students were exhausted from the constant flip-flopping between online and in-person learning. This unit is not fancy, but it helped for students to actually talk to each other in small groups. I kept it very simple to make it easily accessible and easily differentiated for all levels. It allowed for each person to contribute to the conversation/record their thinking, no matter where they were coming from in their learning. Each day, we listened to an episode (or sometimes every other day depending on scheduling, I also teach History/Geography/Drama.) You can find the episodes on Apple Podcasts for free. Be warned, there are now multiple seasons of this podcast so you have to scroll to the bottom. IF you want to see the teaser, please click the link above or click here. I had students record their thinking in Google Slides or on a Jamboard, all of which are outlined in the Google Drive folder I'm going to share here. After working on their slides/Jamboard, I consistently had students engage in a breakout room "book club" style discussion. They brought questions, think marks, etc. to discuss with their peers. We had completed Socratic Seminars in the past, so we engaged in one of those as well. If you want more information on these seminars, click here for an example. They're an amazing way to get your whole class discussing. One of my favourite colleagues and I, Julie, came up with an amazing "top 10 news stories" unit where we used Socratic Seminars for students to discuss the world events in the past year - but that's a story for another day. Each episode varies in length. You could easily do this unit with any podcast that is appropriate for your age group - although the resources in the folder are tailored specifically for "Becoming Mother Nature" - sorry! I have a resource for each episode. There is no large summative, although if you have the time I would definitely approach one! We just happened to be completing this at the end of the year and we were in a hurry to see how the show ended. Overall, for a unit that was last minute, I was really happy with the level of engagement my students had with the activities and the content. They looked forward to listening to the episodes, which was really nice after feeling very burnt out mentally from the pandemic teaching and learning. Plus, I was about a million years pregnant when we did this unit, too! I loved listening alongside them and popping into their breakout rooms to hear them actually talking to each other. May the next couple of weeks be full of laughter, learning, and patience. I'm here with you in spirit, Ontario Educators! Please forgive if there are any typos in this entry, I'm frantically writing this during nap time. Click HERE if you want to see/use the whole unit. I can't guarantee that it is completely put together, you may need to navigate some things on your own/add mini-lessons as needed. Keep in mind that for my students, this came after a year of working on think marks, discussion strategies, small group engagement, etc. The folder is organized by episode! Feel free to reach out to me via the contact box on my blog, or on Twitter if you have any questions about the unit. Made With Love From: Mom
It’s a simple sweater. Grey, knitted braids embedded in wool The sleeves are long and tattered from cross country adventures at dawn. They hang like bluebell flowers stretched apart. Not much to look at, but sewn in the back is a simple tag: “made with love from: mom” Painstakingly knitted by my grandmother’s arthritic hands, it was made with love for her son, my dad, and now It’s worn by me on days I’m feeling extra low Days when grief feels like a tidal wave, swallowing me into its deep waters This sweater opens a window to the past, a connection to those I can no longer see. When I put it on, it hugs me with its woollen arms, the musky smell reminding me of the days after, when I went through his things Picking, pilfering, postering: what to keep, what to donate. You see, some things cannot be replaced. Cannot be uploaded to the cloud or bought at a superstore Some things can only be made with love, from: mom. Reading Linda Sue Park's "The One Thing You'd Save"Recently, on my Education Mecca of Twitter, I saw fellow educators discussing the poetry compilation/short novel written by Linda Sue Park called "The One Thing You'd Save." It continued to come up for me on my never-ending Goodreads recommendations and was quickly added to my list of "to be read" books. After reading the synopsis of what the writing was about, I immediately felt compelled to purchase the book so I could read it for myself. I thought it would make an incredible mentor text for a writer's workshop project. Meaningful prompts that explore emotion and identity are always at the top of my list when looking for a writing project, and this seemed like a great fit. In summary, Sue Park's writing explores the question: if your house was on fire and you could only take one thing with you (your friends, family, pets, etc. are all already safe) then what would that object be? It forces us to think about the things that are important in our lives and the things that cannot easily be replaced. In "The One Thing You'd Save" this question is posed to a group of students and they venture into writing poetry on the one thing they'd save. Our Writing:To begin our project, we started with a PearDeck to get our brainstorming brains activated. First, I read some small sections of the novel for my students. Then, I posed a series of 'yes' or 'no' questions to my students about whether they would save certain objects (memorabilia, family heirlooms, photograph of a loved one, etc.) Then, we explored some of the writing in the novel and discussed what these fictional student author's did well in their writing. I even posed a few questions to them about the imagery present in the poems where students drew what they thought the writing was talking about (this was fun, some very interesting drawings took shape!) Next up was the brainstorming piece. I modelled and thought aloud what object I would save with students, and brainstormed aloud with them what memories I had with this item, why it was important to me, a list of adjectives I would use to describe it and 3 literary devices I could make up to enforce my writing when I went to write my poem. Modelling this for students is important, it helps them see what's expected from them but also models the writing process. I tend to write every project I give to my students myself, so that I can see how long it takes and what challenges I faced as a writer. That way, I can help mitigate those issues as they arise for students. The last step before writing their poems is sharing my own writing with students. I share my own poem, then we do a 'success criteria hunt' where students receive a copy and we practice annotating it for the success criteria of the assignment. For this assignment, I am looking for a strong voice, the use of descriptive words and the ability to use figurative language/literary devices to strengthen the imagery of the poem. We will have a structure of 3 line stanzas and the minimum I required was a 9 line poem (3 lines x 3 stanzas) but they could absolutely go beyond that amount! We're in the middle of the writing process now, but I'm already so impressed to see what students are coming up with as the items they would keep. Sure, there are some cell phones and laptops in the mix, but many students are digging deep into what really matters in life and questioning the things they could never replace. Hey, even a laptop can be significant and one of the writer's in Linda Sue Park's novel described their own laptop as "a second brain" and the opening to an entire universe! That's the kind of language that I can get on board with. If you're interested in exploring this unit with your class, then feel free to take a look at the resources compiled in this Google Drive folder. I ask that you do not request permission but make a copy of the documents and use them as you see fit! You'll need to create your own poem, which is half the fun, and might need to adapt some resources to work specifically for you! If you haven't used PearDeck or you don't want to use it, the introductory lesson will need to be adapted so students can respond on the slides instead of via the third party app that I use. Happy writing! I am a place worth knowing.
I am a tranquil street corner where friends laugh at corny jokes. Smiles spread widely across the faces of the people here as they beam from ear to ear. They listen deeply, they love instead of like. Hands are held between families. Parks spread across the mossy grasses. Fathers push their children in swings while the children scream in excitement, begging to go just a little higher, or just a little faster. Partners huddle together under woollen blankets at the drive-in theatre, munching on salty popcorn in the backs of trucks and vans. In this place worth knowing, wildflowers slink down the stone paths as honeybees drink their sweet nectar. Protea flowers burst through the soil and blossom in soft pinks and vibrant reds. Little stone cottage houses line the avenues, each sitting on the clear blue lake. Boats pass by with rainbow sails; speed boats rushing by with water skiers and paddle boats peddled by people. If you sit on the deck behind your cottage, the scent of warm linens and lavenders overwhelm your senses. Trees litter the skyline here, no skyscrapers in sight. They stand tall against the light breeze that blows through the afternoon, melting into mountains that kiss the sky. Shedding their leaves, the trees on the horizon beam with fall colours. Their leaves crunch beneath your feet, creating a layer of autumn confetti on the ground. The sound is an orchestra, filling your ears with your own personal symphony. I am a place worth knowing, like the library books that line the shelves throughout the streets. When you sift through each book, you can find your next story, your next adventure. Some of the bindings on the sides are beaten and broken, a clear display of how often they’ve been read and loved. As you walk through the street, people are sifting through the books on the shelves. Every person can find a story perfectly suitable for them. Those who aren’t reading play scrabble on wooden tables. They challenge each other with triple letter scores and double word masterpieces. Everyone is happy here. Not the superficial happiness you plaster on Instagram and count the likes as they roll in like the tide, but the kind of happy that requires little acknowledgement. The happiness that lives here is the kind that settles in your heart and stays there, like a bear hibernating in the winter. I am this place where families bond, nature reigns supreme, and life is simple yet beautifully complex. This place is me, and it certainly is a place worth knowing. Sorry, it's been a hot minute...Oh my goodness! This post is long overdue. It's been a year, right? I'm convincing myself that I will not blame myself for not keeping up this blog during 2020. After all, our nation hit a massive pandemic, teachers had to shift to online learning, and there are so many other things that have occurred throughout this year that made it unlikely for me to write for pleasure. That being said, some really awesome things have been happening in my classroom this school year. At the end of our last school year, we were challenged to move online. It was hard, for sure, but it taught me a couple of things. Firstly, I have never been more grateful for my job than I am today. I see the devastation that has happened to our economy, I see businesses closing their doors, and I am grateful to have a job that has stability. Secondly, I missed in-person teaching so very much. It's made me so glad to walk into the building I teach in every day and to approach each day with a new awakening of love and gratitude for my chosen career. I usually begin each year with some kind of memoir piece for writer's workshop. It is my way of connecting with students, and this year I pursued a prompt from 826 Digital and ran with it. If you haven't checked out 826 Digital yet, please do! It's a free online resource (once you sign up you can donate which I encourage) and offers everything from full unit plans to writing prompts. This project was based on their prompt called "I am a place worth knowing." Students created memoirs of themselves and imaged themselves as a place in the world. The place had to embody them. It is one of my favourite memoir projects ever. My classes impressed me SO much with their creativity. Let me walk you through...We started this unit by thinking about identity. Who are we as people? I wanted to use identity work throughout this year to begin framing anti-racist ideals and social justice discussions throughout our school year. Identity and belief systems are the main foundation to how I teach grade seven history, so working through understanding our own identities was important to me this year. As a class, we completed a few PearDeck activities on getting to know ourselves and this culminated with creating an identity web. If you have never completed an identity web with your classes, or have never done one yourself, I highly recommend it! It helps you get to know what your students value and what their key beliefs are. This can help with classroom management and simply connecting with them. For my classes, I also used this as an opportunity to teach them about hyperlinks and they were able to show me specific pictures or places in the world that were important to them. As we moved on, I offered the prompt to students to start brainstorming. They came up with some incredible ideas. Every time we brainstorm, we also share ideas and allow each other to add to our own lists. We discuss the difference between inspiration and copying. If someone has something that resonates with you, it's great to add it to your own list. It isn't copying their idea when it pertains to you and your own life too. The Logistics...After our amazing ideas came the explicit mini-lessons to try to encourage students to use strong word choice and focus on the senses when writing. We discussed showing details rather than telling them, and engaged in a few mini-lessons to add imagery to our writing. One of those was writing from photographs that would represent our places. We also took some time to think about the things we were including in our writing and what they could symbolize. I talked about people playing board games in my city because it's something I love doing with my friends and family. I mentioned playing cards because it's something I grew up doing. I mentioned places I had been on favourite trips with my husband, or places I dreamed to go one day. In summary...If you're interested in crafting a memoir-inspired project during the first months of school to get to know your students, I recommend trying out 'I am a place worth knowing.' Seeing students creativity shine through this assignment was wonderful. I was able to quickly learn about what they were passionate about, what they value, and what is important to them. This project worked a lot better than my previous "beginning of the year" writer's workshop prompts and students seemed to really enjoy it. I will definitely be doing this one again!
Our students have been working hard on their "My Life as a Playlist" memoirs this year. For the project, they write of a snapshot memory that is associated with a song. The song is to represent that moment in their life. I like to write alongside my students and show them revision firsthand. Here is my writing that I am working on: "walk the Line" by Johnny CashIt was just another night, except that it wasn’t. We had played cards together hundreds of times. Our notebook laid on our sticky kitchen table. The notebook was filled with countless points etched and scratched out with hasty pencil and pen marks. Games that were started and cancelled because someone was winning by too much, or new family members joined in on the fun. Yes, it was just another night. Except that it wasn’t, because it was the last time we played cards together happily and carefree. In the months to come our card games would change. The setting would turn from our warm kitchen table to cold hospital trays, waiting rooms, and hospice beds.
My phone laid on the table as my dad sat in awe in front of me. He was amazed to learn of Spotify for the first time. A classically old school man, he refused to acknowledge anything other than the dusty tape deck that sat on top of our antique dresser in our family room. Thrifted bluegrass tunes sat in front of it, CDs filled with country crooners and opera fanatics. He was amazed by the collection of artists playing through the tiny speaker, the sheer magnitude of how much music was available to me at my fingertips without a CD or a tape player. He happily requested song after song, hoping to find one melody that this technological wonder didn’t possess. He sang along to every tune. His baritone voice wrapped the room, and those of us within it, in comfort. His whistles sounded like those of a songbird perched outside. Sometimes when I think of him, I still hear the melodies as if they were yesterday. We played until Saturday turned to Sunday. We laughed until our bellies were sore. We scratched new scores into the pad of paper, filling our dollar store notepad with even more victories and losses. It didn’t really matter who won. What mattered was the impressed look on his face as I sang along to lyric he had worried I’d forgotten. The songs from our road trips, from our judo nights, or our trips to King’s Diner. Yes, it was a night like any other, except that it wasn’t. How to Follow Along With Your Child's Assessments
Hello and welcome!
At the beginning of the year I informed parents that their child's assessments will be on Google Docs. The document is in their own Google Drive account and is titled with their name. This Vidyard video is an explanation on how to follow along with your child's assessments that they receive from me in Language, History/Geography, and Drama. Each child has a document where my assessments can be found. Some are longer assessments (large projects, responses, etc.), some are feedback only when I sit with them during conferencing, and others are quick check-ins so they can understand their next steps in their learning. Please view the video to learn about how to access this document and what each assessment means! If you're interested in learning more about how I set up our assessments, consider reading the blog post below... Feedback is Important. How can I ensure that my students read the feedback I spend hours marking?
One of the greatest struggles in teaching is the marking. It can be daunting, and the most frustrating part is when students don't read the feedback you spent the time crafting for them. They don't do this to be rude, but it's a natural instinct to want to see the mark at the bottom of the page rather than reading the short paragraph on how they can improve. I know I did this as a student, and I know many students still do this today.
I turned to Google Docs/Google Forms as an assessment format a couple of years ago. I've created a Google Form (see photograph) on G-Suite and use the add-ons of Doc Appender and Form Values to feed assessment data to each student in real time. The data feeds to a document that is shared with them on G-Suite. This assessment practice has become invaluable to me as a teacher. It makes my assessments quicker, and allows for me to give real time feedback that students can revisit when they need to. Oftentimes, to discourage students from ONLY focusing on the mark, my assessments take a "Not Quite, Almost, On Target, Wow" approach. Students have to read the feedback in order to really understand what their mark actually is. I don't intend to do this to be confusing, but rather to ensure they are looking to improve rather than looking for a mark and leaving. This year, there is a "learning skills" section of my assessment document for me to track and comment on how students are implementing their learning skills during inquiry/group/independent projects. I will comment on whether they collaborated well, worked independently with their peers, took great initiative, etc. It's important for students to receive feedback on learning skills throughout the year, as it is my professional opinion that learning skills are the most important aspect of the report card. These are very strong indicators of success! Finally, in the assessment document there is opportunity for students to dialogue with myself about their next steps for improvement. On larger assessments, I have students reflect on what they need to work on for next time. Sometimes I simply have them summarize the feedback they receive so I can ensure they understand it. We also have a peer evaluation feedback for students to assess and give feedback to each other, which feeds to their document as well. It is my hope that through using this method for assessment that parents can follow along with their child's learning, and students can receive advice on how to make themselves a better learner. This is what the job is all about, after all: helping students become the best version of themselves. Not to mention: trying to track teenagers getting rubrics signed by their parents is a very onerous task, and one that I found to be fruitless at best! Thank you for reading and learning with us! Hello visitors and families! It's a new school year, which means the first week is filled with forms and things to return to the school. This year there will be two extra permission forms for our classroom. One is a technology use form, as Waterloo Region District School Board requires parent permission for third party apps. This year, we will be using Weebly again to create student blogs. We will also be using PearDeck in class which is an app that I LOVE and wholeheartedly stand behind. It makes Google Slides interactive, and I have found that it really encouraged student participation. Especially in those first few weeks of school when students are more shy than usual, PearDeck allows opportunities for students to silently share their opinions. For me as a teacher, I can also see what they think without having to point someone out, and I find that students are more prepared to share their answers once they've written them out beforehand. Another reason I love it is because you can quickly check to see student understanding and use the data as a formative assessment. If you want to know more about it, please see the video below and if you are a parent in my classroom, please contact me with any questions! Last year, I started a new "end of the year" project with my grade sevens. It was a simple one: out of all the books you read this year, which one had the biggest impact on you? Which was your favourite? There was a lot of discussion, but many students were able to land on a novel right away. This made my heart so happy, as I really didn't have ANY student in my class that said they couldn't think of a novel. Some even struggled to choose between a couple they really loved. Students filled out the following template about their books, feel free to use it in your own classrooms if you are a teacher visiting this page. As with the majority of assignments I assign, I provided students with an example of a book talk where I wrote about a book I love. We also used a few book talks as a mentor text to look for features that made them persuasive and encouraged us to want to pick up and read! With it being the end of the year, I was worried about the groans of, "ugh, another project?" but I didn't seem to get a lot of negative feedback. I was so excited to preview some of their recommendations. Many of their choices came from our book clubs we did this year, which is awesome! It means the texts we have chosen for these kits are engaging, and I hope they continue to peak student interest as the years go on. Others were novels from my personal classroom library that I recommended for students, and some were novels from home. It was exciting to read the book talks about novels I don't own or have never read - I quickly added them to my own 'wish list' and purchased some for the library this year. As we are gearing up for back to school, I made a reading bulletin board outside of my room so that my new grade 7 students can see how last year's class connected to novels, and can immediately get an insight into the books that students loved this year! In addition, each recommendation is going to be compiled into a book that will sit in our classroom library this year. I hope to continue to recommend novels for students, as this is one of my favourite parts of my job, but also to send students to this resource for them to find their next favourite book! |
AuthorHi! I'm Mrs. MP and I teach grade seven English! I'm so excited for you to learn along with me Archives
January 2022
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