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.
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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!
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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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