Exit Card Idea: T-Shirt Design

As I've mentioned before on this blog, I am a big fan of using exit slips/cards. It helps me keep track of what students are actually learning before the test AND it forces even those who weren't paying too much attention to produce something before they leave the room.

My problem is that I don't always want a summary - that's super boring. I've tried to think of different, interesting ways to assess this, such as Ice Cream Flavors. I came up with this one after randomly finding this website - an entire "store" dedicated to To Kill a Mockingbird merchandise.

I'm not even sure how I got there - all I know is that I was planning my TKAM unit and there it was. Anyway, the idea.

Have the students create a T-Shirt design based on the section of the book/article they were supposed to read for that day. What would it look like and what it that design's significance? It takes it one step further than "summarize what you read."

Modeling Literature Circle Meetings

Starting next week, my freshmen are going to attack a literature circle. Last year, I did this unit at the end of the year, after they had some practice with discussing. I'm nervous about doing it so soon, but hopefully this "sink or swim" will prepare them for the rest of the year, especially since it's so guided.

(Not my Students, but this is typically what it looks like)

Anyway, I was concerned last year about modeling a circle meeting. Reading in a circle is fine - the students have done it before. It's discussing on their own that's a struggle. Luckily, I found this video to help out. I tried to embed it, but it didn't work :(

It's a 9th grade circle meeting, using the traditional roles. The best part about it is that there is a student that didn't actually read the material! The girls roll with the punches. It serves many different purposes.

In additional to watching it, I have to kids make a T-Chart about what they Hear and See in the video. We discuss and use it to create circle norms and rules. It worked well last year and I'll be sure to let you know how it progresses this time around!

SSR Accountability

Since I decided to become a teacher, I have read probably over a hundred scholarly articles about every literacy subject I can think of...  but none so much than the benefits of reading. Often.

I am a huge fan of SSR, especially in 9th grade. In fact, I spend the first 8-15 minutes of class EVERY DAY on SSR. The only exceptions to this rule are Assessment Days and Half Days. Part of the problem that I ran into last year for this was accountability.

I had a quarterly project, which worked fine, but I often felt like students would waste the actual class time and just cram the project in the night before it was due. Typical. To try to combat this, I had a daily reading log, where students would record the title and pages read in one column and give a brief response in the other.

Sounds great in theory, but here are some of the most typical responses I would get:

• This book was ok today.
• I don't really like this book.
• This book seems really cool.

I had to change it up for this year. I wanted something that couldn't faked as easily - and even if a student just did each activity based on something they read in class, it would still be beneficial. I found this elementary Weekly Reading Log on Pinterest and adapted it for my secondary classroom.

Here are the results:

They turned in the first log today - I haven't graded them yet, but from a couple glances, they look pretty promising!

Ice Cream in the Classroom!

With the Common Core (not so) slowly taking over, I've found it very helpful to implement strategies, such as exit slips, in my room as formative assessments. It's really easy to tell if a student has mastered a particular standard when I only have to focus on one a day.

In my English I class, we're reading The Odyssey and yesterday we finished the Cyclops Adventure. The standard for the day was:

I can cite thorough textual evidence to back up my analysis and inferences about the text.

I was trying to think of an interesting way to introduce an exit slip to test that theory - and beyond reading a ton of really boring summaries, I was lost.

Then, very luckily, for both myself and my students, a colleague sent me this Buzzfeed List. It totally saved the day! "6 Ice Cream Flavors Inspired by your Favorite Books!"  How perfect is that?!

I had the students create an ice cream flavor based on the Cyclops story. They had to name it, explain what the flavor was, AND explain the significance of their choices. Below are some of the more clever names:

The best parts of this activity, at least in my opinion, are these:

• I could VERY quickly discover whether or not the students understood the material.
• The activity took exactly 4 minutes at the end of class.
• The kids got to be creative and seemed to really enjoy it.

Procedure Review and Book Pass

Before we get into curriculum tomorrow, I did a final review-introduction activity with my kids today. Tomorrow, we're going straight into the Article of the Week, so this was a nice cap to the end of my first days activities.

Procedure Review Game

Going over the procedures in class, I had the kids get into groups of 2-3. Each group then got a whiteboard and markers for each person. I called out a category (Example: SSR) and the kids had to write down everything they remembered from the syllabus on that topic. The catch was that only one person could write at a time and EVERYONE had to write something. Set the timer for a minute and see what they got!

Musical Book Pass

I try to encourage reading as much as humanly possible. It's the key to success in English, whether the kids like it or not. To introduce the students to my classroom library, we did this activity.

I set a book under each desk in my room. Students received a book pass form with sections for title, pages, and comments. I played music and they had to move around the room, not hovering at any particular desk. When I stopped the music, just like musical chairs, they had to race to the nearest desk. The last person standing had to stand up in front of the class and tell about their favorite book.

The book pass portion came after each round. Students took the book beneath their desk and recorded the title on their sheets. They then read silently for a minute and commented in the space provided. Some kids really found some books they were interested in reading!

Journaling with a Purpose

Journals and short writing prompts seems to be a favorite amongst us Secondary English Teachers. It keeps the students writing, and we all know practice makes perfect. We also strive to make writing worth something, so the more writing we can give the students that can connect to their lives OR let them give their opinion, the happier we are.

But who, in reality, has the time to create those interesting journal prompts, especially if you journal every day.  Here is a solution that a colleague of mine came up with...

Every day, put up a random, interesting photo. It can be a setting, a person, an animal, ANYTHING (school appropriate, of course). Students write a section of a short story every day that has to do with that photo.  Soon, with only 5-10 minutes at the beginning of class, students have a solid short story. If you keep the photos random (or create a PowerPoint with several random ones), you might even get the reaction of "What am I supposed to do with that?!"  This makes me happy :)

Imagine going from this....

To this the very next day...

This is how he does it...

• 12 school day cycle, on average - 3 days of photos and 1 day of revision X 3.
• Day 1 has at least 1 person in the photo, real or fictional, and that person becomes to central character to the students' stories.
• From there, he just puts whatever interests him that particular day - here are 2 sites that could provide very interesting material...
• SlideShare
• Historical and Rare Photos
• Revision days follow the RADaR method, and it's either an individual or a partner activity.
• He floats around the room offering suggestions... but mostly, he lets the kids use their creative brains to make the connections themselves - and we all know making connections is not necessarily easy for some students.

It's really nice because after about 3 weeks of bellringers, the students have a solid narrative that they spent (on average) 90 minutes drafting and 30 minutes revising. How often are you going to get students to write that long - and with almost complete attention?

Meeting Kelly Gallagher!

I went to a seminar today at the community college, about 45 minutes from my house. I was definitely not looking forward to getting up early, especially since I've really gotten used to sleeping in and spending my entire day reading (using Goodreads, which is an amazing site) and playing with my dog. However, I went...

And it. Was. Awesome.

It was a talk by Kelly Gallagher, who, if you have never heard of him, will really open your eyes to several completely practical ideas what you can incorporate into your classroom. He's all about reading and writing, but it could completely work for any subject area.

I don't know if I could even begin to describe my 5 hours at this seminar, so here's what I'll do. Links to his website and Amazon...

Here are the main points of today:

• Writing scores are at an all-time low - NCLB obviously did not work.
• Formulaic writing is "fake" -- Kelly even dares his students to find a published 5-paragraph essay.
• To achieve greatness, you need 10,000 hours of practice in ANYTHING. That averages out to 4.72 hours of writing or reading every school day from K-12... and we don't have that kind of time.
• Don't just "assign" writing - teach it.  Write along side the students.
• Students have been doing entirely too much "Frugal and Gorbit" reading.  See if you can answer the 2 questions following the passage below. If you can, it proves his point.

As he rudled down the laskin, the jolet frugal plamed the gorbit.

"Phat plamp me again," quirfed the gorbit, "or I will sasted you."

"Oh zep," corped the brated frugal. "You always misto."

Away went the blotted frugal and the whorlotted gorbit. Perhaps the listents could thormi another day.

1. What did the frugal do?                                                     2. What might to listents do another day?

     A. blotted himself                                                                 A. plame

     B. plamed the gorbit                                                             B. thormi

     C. sasted his zep                                                                  C. rudel

     D. plumped his quirf                                                             D. blot

Here are just a couple of the methods to incorporate writing and higher order thinking at the same time:

• Instead of having students fill out endless worksheets, have them write their own headline for the reading. You can't fake the comprehension there.
• Incorporate an Article of the Week!
• Have students break down what a writer is doing sections after section and have them follow that pattern - students can imitate style... and sometimes it gets them going easier than looking at a scary blank page.
• Have students summarize in TONS of different ways - 17 word summaries, reflections, shrinking notes, whatever. Students can fake multiple choice, but not summary.

Food for thought...