Child's Play

Armed with their notes on the S.T.E.A.L. framework for character evaluation, students worked in small groups applying this to the main characters of 6 veeerrryyyy short novels.

The groups focused on one of following stories:

• [Placeholder.jpg]

Their singular task, within their groups, was to read their selection, and complete a S.T.E.A.L. character analysis chart.

While I didn't collect this document, what I did do was scan one completed chart from each group. If you missed today, I'll be able to put you in a group tomorrow, and they'll catch you up.

S.T.E.A.L.ing Characters

Aw, snap.

Turns out, R/F/D/S isn't enough. It's a good starting place, but we need to go deeper.

Today, students skipped over writing a personal response to Speak, and instead, took a serious note on Character Analysis.

"But, Tidyman, why do we even have to do this?

Didn't we just do character analysis the other day?

Wasn't that the R/F/D/S thing?"

No. Don't be silly. That's Character Classification. It's basic. It's a good first step.

But that just means you know something about a character. And knowing, if you recall, is quite low on Bloom's Taxonomy. You deserve better.

We must seek to understand.

And so, students took notes on this powerpoint. 

We then looked at S.T.E.A.L. as applied to Theodor Geisel's seminal work, The Cat in The Hat.

Due to copyright law, I cannot link to my copy of The Cat in the Hat.

I paid 6 dollars for it.

You're welcome.

To see the framework, as well as the applied example, I present this .pdf file.

It's got a little more info than we worked with today in class, but hey, whatever.

Tomorrow, students are going to practice applying this framework to other stories. They'll work in groups.

HW:

• Bring Notes notebook to class
• YOU MUST BRING BACK THOSE 2 FORMS YOUR 7TH PERIOD TEACHER GAVE YOU. #FRFR.

"Awww nawwww! He didn't!

He didn't just embed a whole powerpoint

into his blog!"

I totally did.

Belonging; Applied Kinetics

Today, students took a gander at this opening powerpoint right here, and completed Journal Response #5: "Belonging". It was tied to Speak, but invited personal reflection.

This was, of course, after I had returned students' Classwork Composition Notebooks, which I had collected and checked on Friday.

• If you missed Friday, I need your notebook.
• If you missed today, Monday, I have your notebook to give back to you. Please complete Journal #5, available above.

Next, we moved to Applied Kinetics. For this activity, students moved to different quadrants of my classroom to indicate their understanding of whether characters from Speak were R/F/D/S.*

*Looking back on this, I wish I had portioned more class time for this activity.

Tomorrow, students will expand their breadth of character understanding by familiarizing themselves with S.T.E.A.L.

I would tell you what that means, but hey, that's tomorrow's class.

Character Classification & Speak

Students began class with a journal response to Speak

Here is a link to the .pptx that contains the prompt!

After responding to the Journal Prompt, students set up their Tables of Contents in their Classwork composition notebooks, which I then collected. I will return them on Monday.

And then we not-seamlessly transitioned to Bloom's Level III: Applying.
Students were asked to evaluate several characters (both major and minor) from Speak using the 4 character-classification terms we covered yesterday:

• Round
• Flat
• Dynamic
• Static

Here is a link to the document that was our handout in class!

HW for weekend:

• Finish character classifications (if not completed in class)
• Continue to review Speak

Open House!

Hey! It was awesome! Thanks for coming by to my room, and all of MLK tonight.

If you need/want/missed the Powerpoint I showed this evening, it's right

Here

if you'd like to download it.

Thanks again, from all of us here at MLK!

Round, Flat, Dynamic, Static

Today, students began by responding to yet another Speak-related journal entry prompt. This, as well as the notes on Character Classification, are contained on:

This Powerpoint!

After responding to this journal prompt (and having a little time to share some very interesting feedback -- looking at you, 3rd period --) students received this note-taking skeleton that accompanies the explanatory powerpoint.

Their task was to complete it as we went over the notes in class.

Tomorrow, we'll be using these words to look at numerous characters in Speak.

Setting: Contrasting Analysis

We began with this brief powerpoint presentation, which included Journal Response #2: Cover Analysis.

Sidenote: Here is a link to the full-size scan of the cover we examined.

After allowing for some discussion of the cover's artistic elements, we transitioned to an analysis of a 3rd key environment in Speak: The Janitor's Closet.

Here is the exact document I gave out in class.

By the end of class, the time had come to apply (Bloom's Level III) our practice of analyzing settings' effects on people to students' own lives.

Here is the document I gave out for HW.

HW & Announcements:

• Finish the Closet Setting Analysis
• Complete the Speak: Setting Application (personal)
• 8/21: MLK Open House
• 8/29: Picture day!

Setting Analysis: Syracuse NY

Students responded to the Journal Entry contained in this .pptx. There was an opportunity for students to share, and defend their answers.

Then students transitioned from simply knowing the setting of Speak, to analyzing the effect that Melinda's house, and school, have on her character while she's there in the First Marking Period.

This was the document that students received. It's to be completed for tomorrow, when we directly address the literary process of characterization - the manner in which an author creates a believable character.

Getting Into "Speak"

Mkay here was class:

1) Students swapped their copies of the Brainwashing/Music Industry articles (see Friday's post), and answered each other's Bloom's I-VI questions.

1.5) Some classes, but not all, insisted on discussing the ramifications of this article. Lots of good points arose organically, and I can't record them all here. Two of the best (in my opinion) were these:

• This article's conclusion is flawed: it ends with the idea that, through repeated listens to "bad" pop music, the audience will eventually figure out just how bad it is. This runs in direct opposition the the thesis of the rest of the piece: that listening to bad songs more frequently encourages audiences to like it.
• "Bad" is a subjective (a.k.a. "biased") statement. Especially given that the author at no point gives an example of a "good" song.

Freshmen handed this document in.

Then, they took notes on a handy piece of English called the Plot Diagram (this was page #2 in the NOTES composition notebook):

Having equipped students with the generalities of this framework, we then applied this knowledge to Speak by mapping the novel's details across a blank one. The blank document can be found here.

HW for Tues:

• Bring Speak to class (if possible)
• Review the First Marking Period. Tomorrow, we're going to focus on setting.

OmigoshOmigosh!

*disclaimer: this post has NOTHING to do with my class, or even MLK.
It's just about literature*

GUYS. GUYS?

GUYS!

(and girls too of course, I mean students in general)

Powell's bookstore is selling ALL of Haruki Murakami's books for

30% OFF!!

It's still too early to call this the Book Sale of the Year, but it's close.

Put an eyeball on it: http://www.powells.com/subjects/fiction-and-poetry/literature/murakami-sale/?utm_source=specials&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spec_Murakami&utm_content=Browse%20Button

Interested in Murakami, but don't have the coin/interest to invest?

Come talk with me about him.

I've read a few of his books.

Wrapping Up The Week

Good afternoon, and Happy Friday.

Today, students did 2 things: set up their composition notebook(s), and engaged with an activity that involved both skill we addressed this week.

Here is a link to a short powerpoint that explains how to set up the composition notebooks.

We then inaugurated these by taking our first Lit-Term related note: The explanation, and a definition, of parallelism.

• Click here to see the notes students copied from my whiteboard.

Or click here!

Then, students demonstrated their familiarity with Annotation and the application of Bloom's Taxonomy by exercising those skills on:

This article from mic. (this is the exact handout)

And here's the same article in web-based format.

Remember: the job was to read, annotate, and draft the Bloom's QUESTIONS. You didn't have to provide answers.

HW for the WKND

• Finish annotating the article, and drafting the Bloom's Questions.
• Bring Speak to class, if you have a copy (digital is fine)
• Bring your notebooks back to class as well.

And some totally non-required thinking:

The article submits that:

Songs are popular because they are played a lot.

And not that

Songs are played a lot because they are popular.

This...intrigues me. And makes me think about Transformers 4. Is the media defining popularity for us? Or do we, as consumers, but more importantly, human beings, have agency in deciding what's "cool" anymore?

I love questions like this because I don't know the answer.

Huddle Up: Working in Groups

Having gotten the impression that most Freshmen were getting sick of 50 minute lectures on English, today was a day for practicing recently-acquired skills in small groups.

First, students evaluated (Bloom's Level V!) each others' responses on the IBS practice from last night, and compiled a "Best Of..." set of I-VI questions.

Having completed this step, it was time for the groups to apply Bloom's to a small piece of "new" material.

Armed with one of six children's fables, students had to work together to A) process the reading, and then B) formulate a question (with answer) or task for their story at each level of Bloom's Taxonomy before the end of class. I collected each group's sheet before the final bell.

HW for Friday:

• Bring your composition notebooks to class tomorrow, so we can set them up.

Learning Blooms...

...see what I did there? Little play on words in the title. Heh.

Today students got a crash course in something called Bloom's Taxonomy. What is it, you ask? Well...

It's a framework that scaffolds a student's understanding through increasingly complex levels.

Don't worry, I tried my best to explain what that meant today.

• First, students got a breakdown of what Bloom's is, and how it features 6 levels of understanding. We also annotated it.
• Then we took a look at resources for drafting Bloom's-oriented questions.
• Here is an additional bonus resource that I didn't give out in class.

Honestly, this was kind of a lot to digest. So we needed to examine Bloom's Taxonomy applied to a specific story: Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Certain students did the voices for the characters in each class. Archie's rendition of Papa Bear was awesome.

I also asked students to respond to the Goldilocks examples on p.2. Things took a turn for the amusing around the "Formulate a theory as to why Goldilocks went into the bears' house" part.

"But Mr. Tidyman, what's porridge?"

Now that students had gotten a glimpse of how Bloom's works in action, it was time for them to demonstrate their fledgling understanding of this framework by drafting their own questions. Which I sincerely hope they do, tonight, for HW.

HW for Tonight:

• Read The Itsy Bitsy Spider
• Complete the Bloom's chart on the front (you don't have to answer your own Q for level IV)

Bonus Round!

If you made it this far you don't have to read any more. Here are some additional offerings from today:

Copyright Natalie Dee.

Like this picture? Look up Marxism.

Maddy mentioned an awesome word to describe Goldilocks.

You should learn it.

During a conversation about the bears protecting their house with guns, Emeline made the "Right to bear arms!" joke. It was glorious.

During a conversation about the bears not being at home (what were they out doing?), Kendall and Lily pretty much simultaneously made the "They had to go get the...bear necessities!" joke. More glory.

Treat yourself:

Personalized Annotations

Today, Freshmen (but not 2nd period, sadly -- there was a Grade-Level Meeting then) corrected wrong answers on their first Summer Reading Assessments. I had to drop two of the questions, for reasons I explained using THIS handy (and short) Powerpoint.

While the students worked on those, I reviewed students' annotations that I asked them to complete for HW last night (see post below), on their own personal current event articles.

I saw some really good work!

Alexandria in 3rd did a great job of writing comments, questions, and reactions to her article in the generous right-side margin of her page. She graciously allowed me to post her article as an example:

• Alexandria's Page 1, Page 2, and Page 3.

Kendall in 7th did something that was popular among those students with several colorful writing instruments: she used a bunch of different-colored annotations for different parts of her article.

But what set Kendall's method of annotation apart is that she included a Key explaining what each color was used for. It was organized and eye-catching. She also allowed me to post her work as an example:

• Kendall's Page 1+ Color Key 

These two students weren't the only people who did a great job, but they're the two who I asked if I could post their work. If you also made stellar annotations, I'm sure I told you so when I gave these back to you.

We'll go over popular problems/misconceptions/mistakes tomorrow.

And speaking of tomorrow...

HW for Wednesday:

• Bring back your annotated Current Event article/media for a lesson on Question Building.

Mid-Day Update: Emergency Vocabulary Lesson

I'm noticing a disturbing trend as I examined students' current event article annotations.

9/10 students have circled, underlined, or highlighted the phrase "pro bono", and put a question mark by it.

But when I asked 3rd period what pro bono meant, no one uttered a peep.

You know what this means?

It means nobody looked it up, despite not knowing its definition.

Do you think people come out to their car, out in the parking lot, notice they have a flat tire, and say, 

"Welp! That sure looks like a flat tire!"

And then jump in their car and drive away?

No.

1. Identify the problem.
1. Ex.: "I don't know this word/phrase."
2. Take steps to fix/solve/address it.
1. Ex.: "I'll just look it up right here on my phone that has the internet (and/or) that has a dictionary on it."

Def. of "Pro Bono"

Word of the Day: Annotation

Good Afternoon!

Today, Freshmen received some direct instruction in the time-honored practice of Text Annotation:

an·no·ta·tion ˌanəˈtāSHən 

noun

noun annotation plural noun annotations

1. a note of explanation or comment added to a text or diagram.
   • the action of annotating a text or diagram.
   Synonyms: note notation comment gloss footnote commentary explanation interpretation

Several students indicated that they had heard this term before, which was good news. I then led a Annotation Demonstration, after giving students a copy of a USAToday article with which to practice this skill.

• Here is a link to the USA Today example article.
• And here is a link to an example of the annotations we did in class.
• Page 1
• Page 2

While I led the majority of the demonstration, students were invited to ask questions, as well as contribute their own annotations.

I then checked to make sure students had successfully obtained their own, unique, current event article from over the weekend (see post below for details.) Because, and you can probably tell where I'm going with this...

HW for Tuesday:

• Annotate YOUR OWN current event media that you hunted down over the weekend.
• Students who chose a video can make video annotations with:
• VideoNot.es
• Problems? Check this out: http://blogs.bedfordstmartins.com/bits/traci-gardner/videonot-es-for-analsis-peer-review-and-grading/tgardner/
• This web-based annotation tool is forcibly compatible with Google Drive.
• The bright-green MTA Bus Pass form is due to the basket in Guidance tomorrow.
• From everyone. Fill out the front to obtain a card, fill out the back to decline. But return it, regardless.
• First Day Packets are due TOMORROW to your first period teacher!
• Tomorrow morning, students will attend Grade Level Meetings in the Auditorium, with theoir grade level.

If Today Was Friday, Why Did It Feel Like a Tuesday?

Hello!

Today, students accomplished the following objectives:

• They found their new seats for Q1 (after attendance. Spoiler alert: it's alphabetical order. It helps me learn names.)
• Students took their first Summer Reading Assessment, over both Speak and Enrique's Journey.
• If you missed this, see me to make it up ASAP!
• Freshmen, both familiar to MLK and new-to-the-school, got a brief meet-n-greet window of time in which to "break the ice."
• "Break the ice" is an idiom. Literally, there was no ice that was broken. They just talked to each other and introduced each other to each other.
• Idiom is a Literature Term. BOOM! Learning.

While students took the SRA, I tried to learn everyone's names. We'll see how well that went on Monday. (Right, Fernando?)

HW for the Weekend:

• Bring in a current-event piece of media that concerns itself with the main topic of Enrique's Journey: children immigrating to the U.S.
• By "current" I mean that this piece of media must have been published in 2014.
• By "piece of media", I of course mean news articles. But I also mean interviews, TV specials, propaganda, songs, editorials, YouTube clips...pretty much any media.
• How to submit:
• Print it and bring it to class!
• Save it on to a thumb drive and bring it in!
• E-mail me a link! (Include your full name and class period, plz.)
• Questions about the assignment? E-mail me, or ask it here by posting a response to this post.
• Don't forget about your First Day packets! They're due BY Tuesday, 8/12.
• If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. Finish your Summer Reading.
• Get an agenda/assignment book. Srsly.
• If you haven't yet -- e-mail me. 

"But Tidymaaaaan, I can't do these things! I'm going to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 'cause it opens tonight!!"

Good. Fine. Go see it. But before you do: #getonmylevel.

See y'all Lunes.

Welcome Back!

Or, in some cases, just plain Welcome!

Today, students received my Class Rules & Supplies List, which we went over.

We also enjoyed a brief ice-breaking activity, before allowing some time for general questions and answers about schedules, the MLK building, and school life in general.

HW for Friday:

• Complete the Summer Reading
• Write me (Mr. Tidyman) an introductory e-mail
• Here is a link to the assignment guidelines!