Macbeth & A Christmas Carol

Macbeth Videos
YouTube

A Christmas Carol
Full text
Special Church Edition
Scene Scriptures
“Turning Points” magazine: Person of Christ Absent
Review of Disney Movie
Forgiveness Bible Study

ACC Reading Questions!
(easier, comprehension)
(vague, broad, also multi-choice quiz)
(vague, broad)
(background questions, for 1843 research)
(insightful, book club)
(comprehension, close reading, and extra links)
(some worthwhile quotes)

Elementary ESL & Math Resources: Ongoing

Reading:
Stories and activities (click on “True Stories” = best)
Strange English Langauge FAQs
Reading Comprehension Stories
Topics: Online Magazine for Learners of English
ESL Stories & Resources (more links)
ESLflow.com

Math:
6th grade math online practice

Fractions
Drills
Worksheets
(Some simpler)
Simplifying Fractions (tutorial)
6th grade worksheets

Senior Seminar Resources:

Modern History Sourcebook (indexed online full texts!)

 

Week 22: Bowing Out

6/7/10-6/10/10

I’m still learning in my last week, which is exactly as it should be.  This week, I’ve learned from my mentor teacher’s preassessment strategies and from the advice I requested from my students on my last day.

Because preassessment has been one of the areas I’m focusing on for improvement, I was inspired by my teacher’s step-by-step approach to the rest of our poetry unit.  She had completely taken the classes back over by the beginning of this week (while I stepped back to merely aid classroom management and finish grading), and she took the list of poetry terms the students need to know and, breaking it into sections, had the students tell her which terms they knew and which they did not. Then, on the basis of that assessment, she had each day’s lesson designed to teach one of the unknown terms, ending each day with a brief check for understanding.  The span of the endeavor seemed to be a little slow for some students, but then again, the step-by-step, standards-aligned approach did make sure every student had substantially interacted with each of the terms they are expected to know.  It was useful to me to end my experience with such a concrete example of the type of strategy I’m trying to learn better—preassessment for the sake of student mastery.

 On my last day, the guest teacher (there because my mentor teacher was out sick—such irony!) offered slips of paper to the students for them to write me notes.  I used that opportunity to ask them to “Give me advice—tell me how to teach, tell me what I’ve done wrong or right.”  The very request was an emotional risk on my part, but I got some useful feedback, both in term of emotional encouragement and practical, instructional advice.  One student told me to teach AP, because my assignments are “intense,” and another lauded the Gatsby playlist project because it allowed students to use their creativity.  One reminded me to demand attention, not ask for it, and another told me 11^th graders can be treated like adults (two pieces of advice that seemed to be at odds, I’ll admit, but I get the point—respect is expected in both directions).  Two notes in particular I will treasure, one representing a long road and the other an unexpected success. One girl—an intelligent student but a management challenge—wrote, “We’ve had our ups and downs, but in the end you’re all right.”  That is, I earned her respect because she knew I respected her without putting up with her guff.  And finally, one quiet student wrote, “You are officially on my list of favorite teachers…because all semester you were nice to me.”  I did not even know I had made such an impression on this student, but at the end of my experience, I think it’s important to keep the failures in mind so I can grow from them, but also to focus on the successes that tell me even the small things—especially the small things—are what keep people going and what ultimately make a difference in other people’s lives. “To be a teacher” is not just to teach, but to be a positive presence every day, and that I can do.

Week 21: Half-days and Projects

6/1/10-6/4/10

 This week of half days has been devoted to students’ individual Gatsby project presentations in the classroom and a variety of staff meetings after school.  The Gatsby project has been one of my greatest successes as a student teacher.  Knowing that I did not want to give a test over The Great Gatsby and having identified the objectives my mentor teacher and I did have for the book, I designed the general outline of a project with over a dozen different specific possible manifestations, from re-casting the movie with modern actors (emphasis on character analysis) to diagramming Gatsby’s iconic yellow car and assigning symbolism to the various pieces. The great success here was in the conjunction of common goals with flexible expression. I believe this was differentiated assessment at its finest—and what’s more, students actually did their projects!  One of the favorite projects in 1^st period was one I created on the fly a few days after assigning the project.  About half a dozen students in that period created their own playlists for The Great Gatsby by assigning modern songs to the various characters and explaining their choices in a written statement.  This option worked so well because it required real character analysis, but also allowed students to tap their own expertise.  That is, if they’re going to want to listen to their iPods all the time, why not use it?

 We spent the staff meetings making slow but positive progress toward common school-wide definitions of “formative” and “summative” assessment and “practice,” looking toward the possibility of establishing a common grading policy about how much formative work and/or practice may factor into a final summative grade, if any.  Some of every staff meeting this semester has touched on this issue, and teachers often comment that the conversations can go in circles, but it seems to me that the definitions, at least, are getting closer to agreement.  I fully agree that deciding on common terms and common definitions is a critical step in building a strong, united teaching team across the school.  It’s the same issue that we discussed at the district’s “Novel Adoption Day” (see Week 19)—if all the teachers are using the same terms, then students know what is being asked of them and teachers know how to use the results of student work.  I’ve enjoyed these staff meetings, even when it feels we’ve made only mediocre progress, because the more we get together and talk, the more it feels as though the teachers are a team, working together for the students while working on their own in the classroom.  Just as teachers are asked to stay plugged in to state learning objectives, so also can teachers stay plugged in to the network of other teachers at the school to improve student learning.

Standard T

T: Knowledge of teaching 

 Teacher candidates positively impact student learning that is: 

1. Informed by standards-based assessment. All students benefit from learning that is systematically analyzed using multiple formative, summative, and self-assessment strategies.
2. Intentionally planned. All students benefit from standards-based planning that is personalized.
3. Influenced by multiple instructional strategies. All students benefit from personalized instruction that addresses their ability levels and cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
4. Informed by technology. All students benefit from instruction that utilizes effective technologies and is designed to create technologically proficient learners.

My Understanding

Only if I know what I’m doing can I effectively help students know or do anything.  Moreover, only if my instructional backpack includes enough valid options can I respond with useful flexibility to the diverse needs of my students.  First, I must know where I’m trying to lead my students and I must develop and use a valid positioning system to locate us on the trail and figure out how to move forward or whether we should backtrack to pick up lost hikers.  Second, I must be able to plot routes that get students who start at different trailheads all moving toward the same type of goal, even if their terrain may have to differ.  Third, I must provide a variety of signposts and maps in various learning styles so that every student has a personalized chance at reaching the goal.  And fourth, I should take advantage of technology and enable my students to use the technological tools of the trade for themselves.

Metareflection

RP progress report example

Unless teachers and students assess the progress of learning, they will get to the end of the term not knowing what standards have and have not been met.  Hence, ongoing assessment is critical to enable teachers to shape instruction and students to shape their learning. During my units, I employ a variety of formative, summative, and student self-assessment to discern learning gaps and help students patch them before I must assign a final score to their grasp of each standard.  For example, during the research paper process, students assessed their own progress with brief progress checks (see right), formatively assessed each other’s rough drafts with a peer review rubric, and had opportunity to revise before submitting a final draft for a summative assessment. Essentially, I know how to use different types of assessment at different stages of standard attainment so that both students and teacher can know where we’re going and how to get there.   

One of my favorite elements of teaching is the chances I get to truly personalize instruction for my students. While my content standards are the same for all my students, I often encourage students to demonstrate standard attainment in ways that make the learning relevant to their own lives.  That is, I personalize instruction from the planning side and from the student-product side.   For example, for a lesson in poetry writing based on newspaper articles, I sought articles that would appeal to specific students—specifically, quite a few sports articles and an article on a recent fire for one student who wants to be a firefighter. My rationale for this lesson documents my efforts to accommodate various ability levels, and my assessment of the range of student characteristics one of my classes can be found here.  That is, finally, understanding who my students are (e.g. student questionaire) and where their skills stand (see T1, assessment strategies) is prerequisite to being able to differentiate my planning for the range of my students. 

I effectively use multiple instructional strategies to meet my students at their own levels and on their own turf.  Whether it be tracking down a Bulgarian copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or researching current best practices for addressing diverse student needs in a general education classroom, I make it a priority to seek resources that will help my students succeed.  Also, during class time, I make sure students engage in the type of activities that allow them to use their backgrounds as assets instead of liabilities.  For example, they frequently share personal experiences in small groups when responding to questions that contribute to our curriculum goals.  The variety of their experience builds our collective understanding.  An especially comprehensive example of my instructional differentiation is the variety of options available for students’ summative Gatsby projects.  By drawing on multiple learning styles and cultural interests (such as fashion,  automobiles, and movies), I was able to design options that enabled each of my students to plug his or her individual skills into a unique means of demonstrating concept attainment. (student examples) 

As technology permeates the globe, more resources become available to students, and technological proficiency becomes more critical for people seeking to enter an increasingly information- and technology-oriented workplace. I regularly use PowerPoint and the internet during lessons, and I give my students opportunities to increase their skill with digital tools.  For example, I provide online references and audiobook links for Huck Finn and other readings, and students use the internet to research and PowerPoint to demonstrate their learning.  A computer lab attached to my student teaching classroom allowed me to send students to the computers whenever it proved useful, and I even allowed students to occasionally make legitimate use of their ever-illicitly-present iPods and cell phones to access audiobooks and lesson-supporting YouTube videos. As technology increases, I am committed to integrating new tools into my classroom in ways that give my students a leg up in this electrified world.

Standard S

S: Subject matter and curriculum goals  

 Teacher candidates positively impact student learning that is:  

1. Content driven. All students develop understanding and problem-solving expertise in the content area(s) using reading, written and oral communication, and technology.
2. Aligned with curriculum standards and outcomes. All students know the learning targets and their progress toward meeting them.
3. Integrated across content areas. All students learn subject matter content that integrates mathematical, scientific, and aesthetic reasoning.

 

My Understanding:  

I believe Standard S represents the identifiable benefit that students will gain from my teaching. As I use my knowledge of teaching (T) to positively impact learners (L) in a professional manner (P), it is my content area (S) which should stick with students after they have left my class.  My students should ultimately have improved their knowledge of and ability to work with the ideas in my content area using the spread of skills available, including reading, writing, speaking, and manipulating today’s ever-more-available technology.  Further, if students do not know what they are supposed to have learned, they will not know what skills they have that they can draw upon in the future. Hence, it is critical that I make sure students know the learning objectives, how well they have met them, and how their learning in my class fits usefully into learning from their other classes and into the world at large, where it will be actually used.  

Meta-Reflection:   

I have met standard S because my students have demonstrated competence in a number of curriculum standards via a variety of communication methods, they know what they are learning, and their attainment of my subject-specific content is connected to other areas of learning.  

Student's Gatsby PowerPoint presentation

My students demonstrated elements of reading, writing, oral, and technological competence while completing the various piece of their major Research Paper Project on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. First, students read Huck Finn (showing understanding via group discussion and quizzes) and a selection of scholarly articles on their chosen topics (showing understanding with written summaries of main points).  Then, students showed written competence in a number of small pieces that led up to their final papers.  My students have fruitfully used technology both by searching databases for Huck Finn articles and, for some, by giving PowerPoint presentations as their culminating Gatsby projects.    

RP progress report example

I align student learning with curriculum standards by considering both the given materials and the desired goals and by making sure students know how they are doing with respect to those goals.  For example, when we read Huck Finn, I focused on Washington State writing GLE 3.1.1: “The student analyzes ideas, selects a manageable topic, and elaborates using specific, relevant details and/or examples.”  (HF Lesson Plan)  Students assessed their own progress along the way with brief self-assessments such as the attached RP progress report example (at right).   

 

Student artwork: Edgar Allan Poe montage

Finally, integrating my content with other subjects is one of the best ways to make learning meaningful to my students.  For example, art and music have helped my students process elements of theme from the works of Edgar Allan Poe (see left) and elements of character study from The Great Gatsby. 

Student artwork: The Pit and the Pendulum

 

  

Week 19: Curriculum Planning

5/17/10-5/21/10

Thursday of this week, I got to participate in a district pull-out of 11^th grade English teachers so that we could gather together to plan curriculum around the three novels newly adopted by the district—The Glass Castle, Into the Wild, and Black Boy.  On “Novel Adoption Day,” I learned a good deal about professional development and professional collaboration among teachers.  

First, I saw individual and cooperative reflection used as a tool to suggest strategies for improving student learning. We thought about our own practice and our own students, but then the dozen of us discussed how the similar needs of our students should dictate how we design curriculum. For example, I was intrigued by the session leaders’ emphasis on our need for a common vocabulary of techniques and skills.  They pointed out that there is often a “relentless consistency” in term usage at the middle school level, but that that lexicon does not get passed on to high school.  High school teachers often use a multitude of different terms for the same skill (such as “analyze” or “identify the author’s purpose”), so that students do not recognize how what they’re being asked to do connects to the skills they have already acquired. This district is beginning to work toward broad consistency in terms, skill levels, etc, via collaboration such as the work we were doing that day, but it’s a slow process.  They joked that as the system of consistency begins now in the district’s 1^st grade classrooms, we 11^th grade teachers just need to hang on ten years and we’ll have a perfect world.

 Also, when we discussed placement of the new texts on the academic calendar, student need influenced our decisions. For instance, because The Glass Castle deals with sensitive issues, including alcoholism and parental neglect, we decided that classes would have to have an opportunity to gel first and develop a community of trust before that book could be taught. Hence, it was placed second semester.  However, instead of making Into the Wild also a second semester option (because it is counterpart to Castle in terms of curriculum requirements), we placed it as a first semester option so that in each semester there would be at least one modern novel on the menu.

 It was during this schedule discussion that I learned teachers need exactly the same sort of structure and instructional strategies as students do.  While we followed our discussion protocol of taking turns voicing opinions, reasons, and questions about which book should go where in the schedule, I began to notice that we were agreeing more often than not, but that the discussion had begun to go in circles.  So, I made a suggestion and took the initiative.  I raised the screen and diagrammed our schedule options on the whiteboard, sketching in the proposals as they had already been framed.  Once everyone saw what had already been said, the last couple of pieces rapidly fell into place.  Ta-da.  We were able to see, oh, we don’t disagree.  Later, one teacher thanked me for “saving twenty minutes.”  These are exactly the things we do in the classroom with students—help them see the ideas in a new way.

In addition to the productive discussions and our forays into Google Docs (as a way to share and organize curriculum), I value the  resource books recommended by the facilitators.  As I continue developing my own instructional technique and curriculum plans, I look forward to looking deeper into these texts—especially Readicide and Less Is More.

 Beers, K. (2002). When kids can’t read, what teachers can do. Heinemann.

Campbell, K. H. (2007). Less is more. Stenhouse Publishers.

Gallagher, K. (2004). Deeper reading. Stenhouse Publishers.

Gallagher, K. (2009). Readicide: How schools are killing reading and what you can do about it. Stenhouse Publishers.

Week 16: Catching Their Interest

4/26/10-4/30/10

With The Great Gatsby, I have decided to conduct the unit backwards to the way in which I conducted our study of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Whereas with Huck Finn, we worked through the chapters week by week, did not discuss main ideas until the text revealed them, and capped our experience with the film, with Gatsby, we have begun right away with a brief synopsis of events (minus the ending!) and ideas and a start on the film version.

Because a large part of the students’ aversion to Huck Finn seemed to be their disconnect with the characters—they didn’t see any connection to themselves—I started Gatsby with a series of questions designed to get them invested in the story.  Monday, when I introduced Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age, I led an agree/disagree session to spark arguments over such Gatsby-related statements as “When one comes by wealth illegally, he or she will pay for it in the end” or “If you truly love another person long enough, you will eventually have a life together.”  These statements actually did prompt some worthwhile discussions—and it was interesting to see which students might have a little white-collar crime in their futures, based on what seemed to be their core convictions.  Interestingly, the newspaper articles that have recently dealt with the local teenage plane and boat thief Colton Harris-Moore seem to spark my students’ interest as well, as though this local bandit has become something of a hero to this generation.  The connection to Gatsby is not complete, but it’s possible that their opinions about Harris-Moore have influenced their opinions about Gatsby.

On another note, through a series of emails I’ve had recently with a parent, I’m getting to see what impact a supportive home can have on the accomplishments of a student who usually produces only mediocre work.  “Jason’s” mother and I struck up an email correspondence a few weeks ago when both of us were worried about Jason’s performance.  Since I’ve been able to clarify his assignments directly with her, she has been able to ride herd in a much more effective way than I ever could.  Jason is a really bright kid, with no academic motivation whatsoever, possibly because he has been in quite a few remedial classes and perhaps hasn’t yet encountered intellectual work that truly interests him.  I’m trying to work on him, but it’s slow, largely because of the social dynamics in his class period that make mouthy noncompliance more stylish than taking charge of one’s own learning. This contact with his mother has been invaluable in encouraging Jason to complete a few of his major assignments and move him out of the fear of failing.  That credit safety net, I think, is a blessing for him, but we’ll see if his mother and I can figure out how to motivate him without that fear of failing.

Teacher Observation 2: Giving Students the Reins

1/24/10

In Mrs. Bev Robertson’s 1st and 2nd period Honors English 1 classes on January 22, I watched the freshmen direct the class.  That is, while Mrs. Robertson opened the class with a brief routine and a note about their graded writing notebooks, one small group of students led the class in a carefully orchestrated discussion for most of the period, until Mrs. Robertson took back over for the last five minutes.  Apparently, Mrs. Robertson had been using a particular questioning procedure with her classes all semester, so that now they were capable of leading it themselves.  From this observation, I garnered another example of how students can successfully direct their own learning if given the tools, training, and opportunity.

Specifically, each group of students was to take charge of one of the class’s short stories, reading, analyzing, and writing discussion questions for the story ahead of time.  Then, after the whole class reads the story, the group leads a period’s discussion with the questions they have designed according to Mrs. Robertson’s tiered question procedure.  Some of the questioners even prompted and scaffolded the other students’ answers in the same manner that Mrs. Robertson says she uses. That is, when one boy didn’t get the answer he sought, he gave returned to a specific part of the question, gave another piece of information, and successfully led his classmate to revise her answer. 

I appreciated the skills I saw that the students had developed—questioning on various levels of meaning—and I look forward to training my students in similar do-it-yourself learning skills.  Finally, I approve of the fact that Mrs. Robertson had the story groups draw for order of presentation.  That random chance factor means that the teacher usually gets to listen to presentations on different stories in each of the day’s periods, instead of the same one multiple times.  Keeping the teacher interested will help keep the students interested and will reduce the chance I have as a teacher of forgetting what I said to which period.

Teacher Observation 1: Structure & Achievement

1/24/10

From observing two periods of Ambyr Thomas’s English 3 classes on Monday, Jan. 15, I got a strong sense of how a teacher’s control of the classroom contributes to student learning.  I saw that Mrs. Thomas was very strict with her students, following well-established procedures and using Ms. and Mr. with the students’ last names to convey a professional atmosphere and maintain high standards of behavior.   As she mentioned to me, putting in a significant amount of strict training at the beginning of the year allows the class to settle into agreement about expectations.  Then, the students and the teacher can become comfortable with each other and with class expectations and can then focus on the learning.

Mrs. Thomas’s procedures enable class time to be almost fully invested in learning instead of in zoo-keeping.  For example, she stands at the door to greet students and begins class promptly when the bell rings. “Please have a seat” announces that business has begun, and when I was observing, she spent less than three minutes on logistics related to a turnitin.com assignment before letting students begin their book talks.  Other students were attentive during these brief presentations and after two or three students had presented, Mrs. Thomas moved directly into a highly structured class discussion of an essay that the students had read and answered questions about the night before.  Because students had already read and considered the essay, they were prepared to participate actively in Mrs. Thomas’s discussion:  She directed them paragraph by paragraph, asking them to build on the answers they had already given.  That is, her prior scaffolding—of both procedures and content activities—allowed her students to spend class time on pushing their learning forward.  More structure facilitated more in-class productivity.