So even though I haven't started my unit plan in English which is what I'm most worried about, I found week 2 very stressful trying to get ready for it. There was another student teacher in my class for our 1st 2 weeks of practicum and she was teaching the english classes (which gave me a chance to watch her, and also get ready for my 2 week unit plan which begins after March Break). My teacher wanted me to have a package ready for my English students before March Break so that we wouldn't waste any time when we all returned. For those of you who did TRIBES training, I took one of the activities and decided that would be the focus of my first week with them - "novel in an hour". But instead of doing that, I am doing it over the first week. I picked 2 novels - one for my grade 7's and one for my grade 8's - I put them in groups of 3 to 5 students, and assigned each group a few chapters to ready (anywhere from 2 to 6 chapters). They will not know what happens before their specific chapters, and they won't know what happens after, either. I assigned Chapter 1 to myself (of each book) so I can demonstrate on Monday what I expect them to do - which is to figure out how they can dramatize/present their chapters to the class. Then they will have Tuesday and Wednesday to work on it in their groups. And on Thursday and Friday, the groups will each present their respective chapters in the correct order, so that we can "watch" the book and know the whole story. And I will be giving them an oral assessment based on those presentations. I have also made little reflection journals for them, so that as they are watching the groups, if they have a response, or a connection to something, they can make reflections. They can also write up their reflections after the fact. Their reflection journals will be due on Monday (of my 2nd week of the novel study).
Then on week 2, on Monday, we will do an overview of each novel to sum it all up, and then the next 3 days we will look at various issues from the novels, having class discussions and activities (it's a bit vague now because I haven't actually made the lesson plans yet, but it is one of the many things I plan to accomplish over march break - as well as make the rubrics, and my dramatizations of the chapter 1's; work on my math performance, and catch up with my life at home ;). The novel I am doing with the Grade 8's is called "Shattered" and it deals with issues of poverty, substance abuse, racism, Canadian History (one of the main characters is a homeless man who was in a Canadian Peacekeeper in Rwanda and who witnessed the genocide). I am having a guest speaker come in on Thursday of that week - he is a friend, but he also does work in Rwanda to try to help people heal from what happened there during the genocide. The last assessment I'll be doing with the kids is a personal opinion paper where they can write a personal response either to the novel that they "watched" or to one or more of the issues that we looked at in the 2nd week. And if anyone had to miss the oral presentation, they will present their personal opinion paper orally in the last couple of days.
It took me literally all of this past week to get their packages together (photocopying the chapters for each group; photocopying and collating the reflection journals; organizing who went in what group; getting the packages to all of the students before they left for March Break; finding out in the last day or 2 that some people would miss part of the unit and having to figure out alternate assignments for them; missing some kids who left early for march break, etc etc etc. It was really a race against time and I found it very stressful.
My French classes, on the other hand, which I started teaching during the step days, are feeling really good and I really feel like I'm in my element. I've assigned the parts for the plays that we are going to perform in week 4; and the students are pretty excited about it. I'm going to work on costumes over march break (oh yeah, one other thing I plan to do over march break); and I'm also going to make a trip to staples to get my supplies for the learning wall (which will be on the 2 week novel study I'll be doing with the kids). I just want to survive the 2 weeks after march break!! God help me :)
I'll keep you posted, of course!
You've got a very full plate with the novel study.
ReplyDeleteSuggestions:
give them time in class to read it. Some time to get started, at least. Have a little feedback/reflection they have to hand in before they go in their groups and work on presenting. Either that day, or the next day (but before the time when they have to start working in groups). Just to make sure they do the reading.
Or, alternatively, if you see people haven't read enough, have some time for people to catch up (that's probably too disorganized, though).
Second, have each group tell you what they are going to present, before presentation time, so you have some idea of the flow and time it will take. Make sure they have a clear sense of time constraints. You could even have a set of activities for struggling groups to pick from (a musical presentation, a drama, a chart, whatever the group is interested in).
Try to group the students by some system that suits you. Either similar abilities...or kids who get along well...or kids who share certain interests or some related family of interests (so that they will interact well).
Remember, like abilities can also create competitiveness that just rushes through things or refuses to collaborate. So it has to be a productive match of both ability AND PERSONALITIES. maybe not a match, but a pairing is a better word. people who will help each other.
That's a lot of photocopying and you want to get your time's worth out of it.
If you want a 5 minute presentation, stress that, encourage them and restrict them. If it's 15 minutes, you might need to give them more guidance and ideas, so they have something to work with.
Any art, either visual or sound, will give them some further structure (no matter how simple, the music and pictures ) but a set of ideas they have to deal with will keep them busy.
Just be sure the list of ideas (or any ideas) is clearly understood and workable before they start.
During the presentations, I'd suggest you have 2 charts, one a copy of the other.
One copy is big and at the front of the class (even if its chalk on the board).
The other copy is in each student's hands, so they are doing something while watching, keeping notes on the major ideas or points or motifs that they've been told are salient.
And you can interrupt during, what you could call something like "intermission" to keep it fun, in between presentations, for the whole class to discuss what's going on, to update their charts of what's happening and what ideas/themes/motifs are evident and changing.
This could make it take too long or just long enough. It may force you to spill the presentations out over a longer period or happily just "allow" you to, depending on what you want.
Sounds like a lot of fun and surprise collaboration and definitely a community builder.
-Astaire
For any discussion, I mean you can extend what they saw. Obviously, if it's really clear what the plot was, then you only review the plot development in that presentation for the kids who weren't paying attention or couldn't figure it out (for any reason). But for the rest, you also extend the discussion to relate to something else. Or if your AT is really big on curriculum expectations, then you focus your extension-discussion at intermissions around some related curriculum expectation fulfilling activity.
ReplyDeleteThere's no need to rush through a presentation set like this. The costumes and non - magisterial - lecture style are a great way to pepper the boring school day with something more vivacious. And you don't want it to be under appreciated just because students got tired of so many presentations all at once.
Plus it can be more dramatic to have like THIS CHAPTER NOW and then "next time... da da da!"
I know I kind of rewrote your whole week's plan here but I just got to thinking.
Thank you for all of the suggestions! I've been working on my monologues for chapter 1 of each book. Now that I've started, I'm having fun with it and I've been having some ideas of how I'm going to present them to the class to give them ideas of what they might do. Tomorrow I'm going to work on the rubrics, then at some point over march break I want to go to staples to start getting my supplies for my learning wall. Lots of prep - but hopefully it'll pay off so that when we are all back I can relax (at least a little ;)
DeleteYou're on all your websites and e-everything all the time, aren't you?
DeleteI just wrote this and I feel like the fly that got swatted (" commenting on my blog, eh? Hold it....GOTCHA!")
I'll be honest with you - I'm so overwhelmed with what I'm trying to get together over march break that it is difficult for me to stay on task. So I'll work for half an hour, then take a few minutes to do anything else (like respond to comments on my blog - check face book, etc etc). I'll check out your blog to see how things are going with you.
DeleteI would have loved to spread out the whole dramatic presentation over the 2 weeks, but my teacher is about getting stuff done early so that if everything goes wrong, I have flexibility (like an assembly is announced or whatever might come up).
So the ideal is that we finish all the dramatizations by Friday, then I do an overview of the whole book on Monday to review what it is about (using Fretag's triangle - new to me, but good stuff to learn if I ever do teach english again)
Then we'll move onto the issues of the books - so my next task after I do the rubrics is to make lesson plans for how I'm going to approach the issues with the class. Once that is done - and the teacher approves everything, I'll feel l'm ready to get back to school and do our last 2 weeks of practicum.
That's O.K.
DeleteYou know, you're alright, Mars.
I couldn't find your blog, by the way. Can you remind me what grade you are teaching for this practicum?
Deletegrade 4. you get to my blog by clicking on my username.
Deletebut I haven't written any entries yet. It's going so well that there's nothing to write about...or nothing I feel like writing about. I'll do it later.
sometimes, no news is good news.
you don't even who this is, do you?
DeleteOf course I know who you are :) Andrei :) I loved your blog in the last practicum and always look forward to reading your entries. I think you are a very good writer. By the way, we are going to see the Lorax tomorrow in a movie theatre in the beaches (probably around 7ish p.m.) with some other friends with kids. If you want, you are welcome to join us.
Deleteyou're probably going to the beach cinema, not the fox.
DeleteI'm already going to see another bresson tomorrow. thanks for the invite.
Also don't forget, if you do the presentations one week, and then take them up after the weekend, that's 2 days of video games, tv, family squabbles, and dissipated mental student minds to overcome. Better to interact with it sooner. You know your class by now, but I'm speaking in general. When there's no culture of long term engagement with a problem or text, as there usually isn't in our high speed school system, the kids have trouble connecting ideas and discussing them, without having just learned them. OFten, though, they will surprise you by the connections and memories they have. But that's not going to be your whole class.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that we'll be doing more than reviewing what the whole book is about on the Monday of the 2nd week, just in case it didn't come across clearly in the presentations so in a way it's good to do that after the weekend when they may have forgotten a lot. The teacher also did tell me to teach them about Fretag's triangle before the presentations, and they will be filling that in during the presentations (just in case you don't know what that is, it is the general shape of every narrative - starting with the setting, introduction of the story, then getting into the story until it reaches some kind of climax/conflict; then there's the denouement (anti-climax); and the resolution (which can be good or bad). They also have reflection journals which they are supposed to fill out (to be assessed) based on watching the presentations where there is something specific on each page of the journal (and they have to fill out each page) such as "general response"; "connections to me"; "predictions" etc etc. They only have to do one of each category and reference which chapters they are from (each group is presenting between 2 to 6 chapters from the book).
DeleteI agree, I think the hardest unit plan for me was language as well, mostly because I went in with all these ideas and with this timeline. In reality, it took me a lot longer than anticipated to JUST get through persuasive writing so mostly everything had to get revamped. I had to cut out some other fun things to do because I just didn't have the time for them!!!
ReplyDeleteI focused on persuasive writing, and my class was a little challenging in the sense that they needed a lot of assistance. I had to go through each essay part and specifically focus on writing part by part of an essay. It worked best for my class. Also because most of them don't have the greatest work enthics, I created an essasy package where I would be marking them on their rough draft as they completed the various parts. This gave them a lot of feedback but also served as a guide so they know what else they were missing.
I agree, I think the hardest unit plan for me was language as well, mostly because I went in with all these ideas and with this timeline. In reality, it took me a lot longer than anticipated to JUST get through persuasive writing so mostly everything had to get revamped. I had to cut out some other fun things to do because I just didn't have the time for them!!!
ReplyDeleteI focused on persuasive writing, and my class was a little challenging in the sense that they needed a lot of assistance. I had to go through each essay part and specifically focus on writing part by part of an essay. It worked best for my class. Also because most of them don't have the greatest work enthics, I created an essasy package where I would be marking them on their rough draft as they completed the various parts. This gave them a lot of feedback but also served as a guide so they know what else they were missing.
I love that it's the fun things that get cut. Obviously, those would not have supported the learning as much as the more easily assessable, totally structured work sheets. That's why they had to be dropped !!
Delete