This week we continued our persuasive essays. The papers are due this Friday and I've been doing my best to work through each step with the students. I want them to come away from this assignmend with a better understanding of the writing process, and especially the ability to create and support a solid arguement. So, in hopes of building those skills, I've asked the students to analyze rhetoric strategies, discuss the pieces of a good thesis, think through their thoughts by creating an outline, research their topics in order to locate strong supporting facts, gain feedback on rough drafts from both classmates and their teacher, and then learn to document resources through the outrageously confusing format of MLA.
I don't know how well I'm doing. Some of these students are really nailing the tasks, but others just aren't getting it at all. Today (Wednesday) I began to introduce MLA through a video & power point, but even before starting I knew that a good portion of these kids were never going to get it. I feel as though I need to continue teaching the concept of documentation since I have included it in this assignment, and I truly think that this knowledge will prove helpful come high school, but is it worth confusing the kids even more?
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Friday, February 12
Holy behavior problems Charlie Brown! I think that the kids were outrageously excited about heading into a three day weekend because all day it was a constant wave of "Shhh" "Guys quiet down" "The volume level needs to come down." Over and over, I couldn't get folks to cooperate today. You'll encounter those days, I understand that, but geez was it frustrating!
We wrapped up the last of the outlines today and worked on rough drafts, so another work day overall. I had one unfortunate incident today that left me unhappy. One of our new females students, who had recently transferred to the middle school from a nearby charter school because of a major disciplinary issue (she was selling booze to her classmates in 8th grade) had a falling out with me today. The student refused to participate in the day's activity of working on rough drafts because "this assignment is dumb, this school is dumb, and you're dumb." We had a lovely little heated talk in the team room which rests in the center of the classrooms in the pod, which resulted in Aria screaming at me, tearing her paper, and me writing her up for misbehavior.
I felt crummy after the situation because the student holds so much potential. She's extremely smart and so very articulate- during our "conversation" (read "argument") she blew me away and easily could have pushed me into a corner with her verbal intelligence- but her attitude and poor decisions need to undergo a major overhaul in order for her to ever find some academic success... or any success really. I learned later from Ms. Luby that the young girl is the product of a rape, and so she's obviously never had a father figure in her life. Her mom plays a very hands-off role in the girl's life and whenever problems arise at home, the young girl is sent to the local teen shelter for the weekend. I can't entirely blame the girl for having a crummy attitude, and especially because she's an EBD student with an IEP, but I wish so badly that she would let me reach out to her... connect with her. I'm not giving up on her yet. I recently made of goals I'd like to accomplish during this experience, and connecting with this girl is now one of them.
Thursday, February 11th
My university supervisor visited during my first hour today. He got to watch the class and I complete the weekly "Positive Peer Relations" activity, a "Reading Practice Quiz" activity, and then for the rest of the hour the students and I worked on writing the rough drafts of our Persuasive Essays.
I tried a tactic today, though not while my supervisor was here, to create small work groups within the classroom. I rallied all of the students who were behind on finishing their essay outlines and had them cluster their desks together. We all worked together, at relatively the same pace, to finish the outlines. This seemed to prove pretty effective with most of the kids. While we were working on outlines I took the time to check in on other students in order to be sure that they were working forward with their rough drafts and to see if they needed any help. It all ran relatively smoothly, outside of the fact that we seemed to run out of time as usual. We're making progress.
Wednesday, February 10th
Today the kids and I began their outlines. I thought that since they'd created outlines for their how to speeches during the week prior that modifying the same type of outline to highlight info for their persuasive papers would be a relatively easy transition. I was wrong. I'm quickly discovering that this is the most difficult unit so far, and definitely the most labor intensive. But I'm doing my best to remain optimistic.
I'm finding myself continually surprised by the tremendous difference in ability and work ethic that these kids have. Some zip through my assignments and earn near perfect scores on almost everything they do. I'd love to have the opportunity to challenge those kids, show them more, and see how far they could go. But then I have another significant group of students who need extreme amounts of assistance with each step of an assignment; and don't get me wrong- I actually prefer helping these kids. I feel most accomplished in the classroom after helping a student to finally reach that "Ah ha!" moment. But the trouble is that I struggle to provide these kids the adequate one on one time that they need while still manage and push the other students. I feel bad because more often than not I find myself pulling up beside some of the students who require the extra help, getting completely engrossed in aiding them, only to look up at the clock and discover that most of the hour is gone and I've yet to help the majority of the class. I need to discover the secret to balancing my time between kids. In my perfect world, I wish that I only had a class of about maybe 10 students, so that I would be able to spread myself out more adequately among them all.
Tuesday February 9th
Today I explained all of the criteria for our persuasive writing unit. I'm having the kids construct a two page persuasive paper. They need to create an outline, develop a working thesis which includes three reasons to support their argument, find three resources, learn to make a works cited page to document these sources, and then present an overview of their papers in a one minute presentation.
You should have seen the jaws drop as I walked through the requirements for this assignment. I just may have gone a bit too far with this one... but then again I thought the same things with the 6 page journaling assignment and I was happily surprised to see that most of the students were willing to meet the challenge. We shall see what ensues...
Monday, February 8th
After introducing the students to the "Thinking Persuasively" activity, we spent Monday reviewing the info we learned last week. I was pleased at how well the students had begun to understand the definitions of rhetoric terms- logos, kairos, pathos, ethos, etc. I had the kids analyze magazine articles through the lens of rhetoric, and identify which persuasive strategies were being used by the ads. The students did really well with this activity, but come Monday when I began to ask them to apply those concepts to persuasive writing topics they drew pretty significant blanks. Time to bridge the gap.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Week #4: Monday, Feb. 1st- Friday, Feb. 2nd
“Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.”
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
Monday, Feb 1st:
Monday marked the beginning of our "How To" Speech presentations. Overall, the students did well. Some impressed me, some disappointed me, many were in the middle. I had asked the students to follow some specific criteria with their speeches: A- the speeches had to be at least 3 minutes long, B- The students had to physical demonstrate the process which they were explaining, C- Another visual, in addition to the props which were used during demonstrating, had to be present (though I said that this second visual could be as simple as some steps written onto the board... nothing elaborate was required), and D- the students had to speak for at least 3 minutes. I would say that maybe a tenth of the students followed all of the criteria. Many students did well during their speeches, but most were not 3 minutes long and the majority did not have a second visual.
Talking with Ms. Luby about how speeches typically go, she said that usually she's content with having at least the majority of the students present, which they did. Out of the 100 students broken into our four classes, only 10 chose not to present. So I'd consider that a pretty good success rate. I just wish that these kids would care more about their school work. I find myself frequently being disappointed by their lazy work efforts. I won't contribute that habit to every student in the pod, but definitely the majority. My biggest goal during my time student teaching has become to challenge these kids. I refuse to lower my standards and expectations simply because the students refuse to meet par. So far the pushing has worked well. Most of the students completed their "Mini Essays" assignment and the majority even wrote the 6 pages which I asked for. I impressed Ms. Luby by getting most of the students to present speeches as well, so perhaps I'm making progress afterall.
Tuesday, Feb 2nd & Wednesday, Feb 3rd:
We finished our speeches up, with the last of the students presenting on Wednesday. What I learned most from the speech unit was not that these students need to work on their public speaking skills (though many do), but that these students lack common respect. I began the presentations on Monday by sharing my expectations for students in the audience. Audience members were required to complete peer evaluations for each of their classmates. Questions were to be saved until the end of presentations, and questions would be politely asked after raising one's hand. No talking was permitted during speeches and I kept tallies of those students who had to be asked to stop talking, and their grades reflected their audience skills. I told the students that it was not appropriate to tell a presenter to slow down or hurry up, as the first priority of these speeches was not to help the class members to create ten different types of paper airplanes, but rather to help their classmates to improve their speaking skills. In every class, I had to repeatedly restate my expectations, and numerous kids lost points due to speaking during presentations. I was shocked by the kids' audience etiquette. I expected more out of 8th graders.
Thursday, Feb. 4th:
On Thursday I introduced the students to Persuasive Thinking in preparation for our Persuasive Paper Unit, which I'm beginning this week. I had the students participate in some activities which introduced the concepts of rhetoric, the strategies of logos, ethos, pathos, kairos, and big names, and I had the students analyze magazine ads through the lens of the rhetorical strategies which we covered. Most of the students seemed to do well with these activities, and I was happy to see that my teaching occassionally sinks in with these guys.
Friday, Feb. 5th:
On Friday I allowed the students primarily a work day. Ms. Luby read the kids a story about Empathy as part of Kindness Month, and we completed one of the Reading Practice Quizzes which are meant to prepare the students for their Basic Standards Test in April. For those classes who ran out of time Thursday, we completed the Persuasive Thinking activities. Outside of this, the students used the class time to work on an extra credit opportunity, catch up on the their Accelerated Reading, or write the Journals which are due Monday.
Friday night I attended the 6th grade Family Night at the Middle School. Having been required to attend the event, the other student teachers and myself were present to aide in the three hour event which was meant to allow the family members of 6th graders a time to hang out with their kids. I worked in the coat room, though to say that I "worked"is not accurate. The 6 or 7 students who had volunteered to work in the room were undoubtedly capable of maintaining the tasks of the facility. In fact, when I tried to help, I found myself getting in the way. So I spent most of the evening gossiping with two other student teachers. The greatest lessons of the night? - Student Teachers = Free Labor for School Administrators, - 7th graders are more than capable of hanging jackets without adult supervision, & - It feels wonderful to vent to individuals who are experiencing the same difficulties as myself. Phew.
Monday marked the beginning of our "How To" Speech presentations. Overall, the students did well. Some impressed me, some disappointed me, many were in the middle. I had asked the students to follow some specific criteria with their speeches: A- the speeches had to be at least 3 minutes long, B- The students had to physical demonstrate the process which they were explaining, C- Another visual, in addition to the props which were used during demonstrating, had to be present (though I said that this second visual could be as simple as some steps written onto the board... nothing elaborate was required), and D- the students had to speak for at least 3 minutes. I would say that maybe a tenth of the students followed all of the criteria. Many students did well during their speeches, but most were not 3 minutes long and the majority did not have a second visual.
Talking with Ms. Luby about how speeches typically go, she said that usually she's content with having at least the majority of the students present, which they did. Out of the 100 students broken into our four classes, only 10 chose not to present. So I'd consider that a pretty good success rate. I just wish that these kids would care more about their school work. I find myself frequently being disappointed by their lazy work efforts. I won't contribute that habit to every student in the pod, but definitely the majority. My biggest goal during my time student teaching has become to challenge these kids. I refuse to lower my standards and expectations simply because the students refuse to meet par. So far the pushing has worked well. Most of the students completed their "Mini Essays" assignment and the majority even wrote the 6 pages which I asked for. I impressed Ms. Luby by getting most of the students to present speeches as well, so perhaps I'm making progress afterall.
Tuesday, Feb 2nd & Wednesday, Feb 3rd:
We finished our speeches up, with the last of the students presenting on Wednesday. What I learned most from the speech unit was not that these students need to work on their public speaking skills (though many do), but that these students lack common respect. I began the presentations on Monday by sharing my expectations for students in the audience. Audience members were required to complete peer evaluations for each of their classmates. Questions were to be saved until the end of presentations, and questions would be politely asked after raising one's hand. No talking was permitted during speeches and I kept tallies of those students who had to be asked to stop talking, and their grades reflected their audience skills. I told the students that it was not appropriate to tell a presenter to slow down or hurry up, as the first priority of these speeches was not to help the class members to create ten different types of paper airplanes, but rather to help their classmates to improve their speaking skills. In every class, I had to repeatedly restate my expectations, and numerous kids lost points due to speaking during presentations. I was shocked by the kids' audience etiquette. I expected more out of 8th graders.
Thursday, Feb. 4th:
On Thursday I introduced the students to Persuasive Thinking in preparation for our Persuasive Paper Unit, which I'm beginning this week. I had the students participate in some activities which introduced the concepts of rhetoric, the strategies of logos, ethos, pathos, kairos, and big names, and I had the students analyze magazine ads through the lens of the rhetorical strategies which we covered. Most of the students seemed to do well with these activities, and I was happy to see that my teaching occassionally sinks in with these guys.
Friday, Feb. 5th:
On Friday I allowed the students primarily a work day. Ms. Luby read the kids a story about Empathy as part of Kindness Month, and we completed one of the Reading Practice Quizzes which are meant to prepare the students for their Basic Standards Test in April. For those classes who ran out of time Thursday, we completed the Persuasive Thinking activities. Outside of this, the students used the class time to work on an extra credit opportunity, catch up on the their Accelerated Reading, or write the Journals which are due Monday.
Friday night I attended the 6th grade Family Night at the Middle School. Having been required to attend the event, the other student teachers and myself were present to aide in the three hour event which was meant to allow the family members of 6th graders a time to hang out with their kids. I worked in the coat room, though to say that I "worked"is not accurate. The 6 or 7 students who had volunteered to work in the room were undoubtedly capable of maintaining the tasks of the facility. In fact, when I tried to help, I found myself getting in the way. So I spent most of the evening gossiping with two other student teachers. The greatest lessons of the night? - Student Teachers = Free Labor for School Administrators, - 7th graders are more than capable of hanging jackets without adult supervision, & - It feels wonderful to vent to individuals who are experiencing the same difficulties as myself. Phew.
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