John Cage liked to share a list of rules for creativity developed by artist Sister Corita Kent. That list was then typed up and popularized by Cage. They are: Rule…
Hoe ons onderwijssysteem een monocultuur van onze kinderen maakt
Did he seriously just say that? How often has one of our students with Autism, ADHD, or other difficulties said something completely inappropriate to a peer or adult, but not even realize that what they said was inappropriate!? This activity provides a way for students to learn that some thoughts should be kept to themselves! Students ...
Making Conversation a Cornerstone in the Art Classroom % %
You know that collective sigh, the one that choruses around the room when you enthusiastically announce, "Class, the next unit we'll be entering into is poetry!" If poetry is taught the right way, students should be cheering at the thought of a Poetry Workshop day. Below I will outline the "why" of Poetry Workshop along with tips and tricks that I have picked up to make any poetry unit a raging success in your middle school classroom. If you like what you read below and want to implement a Poetry Workshop in your classroom, make sure you check out the Poetry Workshop resource available in my TpT store. This resource will walk you through every single step of implementing Poetry Workshop in your classroom, along with the assembly of a student Poetry Workshop binder that can be utilized across the entire school year. Lesson plans, graphic organizers, grading rubrics, and so much more awaits you in this comprehensive resource. Why Use Poetry Workshop? *It’s a change of pace. We immerse students so heavily into Reading Workshop and Writing Workshop day after day. It’s nice to have the option to mix things up a bit with Poetry Workshop. It is also a great transition between units. For instance, maybe you’ve just completed a three-week persuasive writing unit and you’re about to head into a round of literature circles. Take a day or two hiatus in between to do Poetry Workshop once the Poetry Workshop Kick-Off lessons are completed. Poetry Workshop can serve as a natural transition between the big, heavy units throughout the whole school year. *It will reach unexpected students. You may have a pretty good idea right away of who in your class excels at writing or can already read college-level material, but you may be surprised at which students soar while writing poetry. Poetry Workshop is a great way to hook in students who struggle or are unmotivated when it comes to reading and writing because it appears to be a manageable chunk. The thought of writing a five-paragraph essay or reading a 300-page book scares them half to death, but reading or writing a poem may not seem as scary. *It’s a great way to teach literary elements on a smaller scale. Sometimes it’s too daunting for students to come up with the theme of an entire book, but starting out teaching theme through poetry is the perfect scaffold before teaching theme in relation to a novel. The concept of theme will transfer perfectly between a poem and a book, but more students will understand the concept if you start teaching it through a poem all students understand and can easily read and reread. The same goes for teaching figurative language. Poetry is the perfect pathway to finding examples of figurative language and teaching them how to identify and use it. Point of view is also a great lens to look at poems through and teach students about through poetry. *It gets students to appreciate words and how words can evoke images. Poets have a gift for saying a lot with only a few words. It’s important that we’re teaching students how to be impactful writers in few words and make every word count. A poet keeps his/her audience in mind and thinks about what emotions he/she would like the reader to feel. Teaching-wise poetry allows so many pathways into teaching students about word choice, organization, sensory images, and audience awareness. *Poetry removes the need for perfect capitalization and punctuation. The poet gets to structure his/her poem how he/she wants to, and there is an art in playing around with punctuation and capitalization while writing a poem. Releasing this pressure of having to write “right” will allow students to write freely and openly. *A lot of times when we think about teaching poetry we think about having every student write a haiku, an “All About Me” poem, a name poem, a limerick, and then we call it good. Students publish a few poems, and we call it good for the year. This is not what Poetry Workshop is. Poetry Workshop gets students to read poems, analyze poems, consider techniques poets use that they would want to use, and write their own poems once they feel comfortable doing so. Teach students what poetry really is. As teachers, sometimes I think we’re afraid of poetry ourselves and then default into teaching poetry through a set of “form” poems. We hate it and are uncomfortable with it, so these views get passed right down to students. Let’s shift this attitude! Poetry can be a beautiful thing that teachers and students alike have a positive attitude about. Tips for Teaching with Poetry Workshop: Tip One: Teach Poetry in Phases I was first introduced to the idea of teaching poetry in phases when I read Fountas and Pinnell's book, Guiding Readers and Writers. Here's how I've taken the idea of phases and broken them down to work for my middle school students. Phase One: Collecting & Responding Have students read through poetry books or poetry websites, reading as many poems as they can. If they come upon a poem that they really enjoy or relate to, they can copy the poem down. I also like to have my students respond to the poems they write down in Phase One using prompts from the anchor chart below. Phase One exposes students to poetry in a non-threatening way. Students think about the poetry they enjoy. As they copy down poems, they also have to focus on how the poet structured the poem, what letters they capitalized, and how they punctuated it. Phase Two: Mimicking Techniques This is where it gets fun. Students now take techniques they've noticed other poets use and mimic these techniques to create poems of their own. Take a look at the anchor chart below to get an idea of the types of techniques students could mimic. Phase Three: Original Poetry Students can now create poetry of their own choosing. Give them the green light to let their creative spirits fly. Also discuss with them what they've learned from the first two phases that will help them as they create poetry. Check out the anchor chart below to see ideas for what makes a good poem. Tip Two: Whole Class Poetry Stalking I teach grammar in my classroom through pulling mentor sentences from our class interactive read aloud and have students "sentence stalk" the sentences by noticing everything the author did to construct that sentence. I transferred this concept into our poetry unit by having students notice everything they could about a particular poem as shown below. What has been great about poetry stalking is we have realized together words to use to describe poet's techniques. It has also been a great way to show that poetry has flexible rules for capitalization, punctuation, and poem structure. Not all poets construct their poems the same, but it's fun to infer why poets make the choices they do while writing poems. Check out this website for a great list of poems to use with middle school students while sentence stalking. Tip Three: Use Poetry Interactive Read Alouds There are so many great books out there written in verse. As you kick-off Poetry Workshop for the year with a poetry unit, consider doing a read aloud with one of the amazing book choices below to complement the work students are doing in Poetry Workshop. Tip Four: Teach New Types of Poetry Mix is up with your students by showing them poems different types of poems. Three of my favorites are below. Book Spine Poems: Give book boxes from your classroom library to students and have them create a book spine poem of their own. Blackout Poems: Copy off pages from several different books and make photocopies, allow students to select one, and then have them black out the words they don't want leaving the words they'd like to use to create a poem. Sandwich Poems: Students take the first and the last line from a poem they copied down during Collecting & Responding and write a poem filling in the middle. Tip Five: Make Everyone a Poet Show your students that everyone is and can be a poet, even you. Model the work you complete alongside your students during Poetry Workshop. Also, make sure you give plenty of time to have students share what they're doing in Poetry Workshop with one another.
CHICAGO — In case you haven’t been keeping up with the school closing crisis in Chicago or the continuing escalation of gun violence, the experience of youth in the hella screwed-up public education system just became even more brutal. The Chicago Board of Education is now defending the classroom ban of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis in 7th through 10th grade classrooms, satisfying its desire to dictate and restrict how the book is read and taught.
You know it's true.
A poster created for our English language arts and social studies departments (humanities) to use in their classroom, as well as in the library.
Our school has used quite a few Character Education programs throughout the years, but sometimes I find myself looking for more practical, concrete ways to help students deal with conflicts. These are not the larger, bullying-type conflicts that we discuss often in the Character Ed programs, these are the daily recess squabbles, the bickering/arguing, and the tattling that can occur throughout the week. With these types of conflict, I don't want to be the constant referee, negotiating both sides in every disagreement. I want to empower my students to choose between a variety of strategies and develop these necessary skills themselves. While looking for some of these online, I was contacted by Kelso's Choice and couldn't believe my luck. This program seemed to be addressing the skills I was looking for in a very kid-friendly, concrete method. I am excited to share this product review in case you are looking for a similar program. Disclaimer: Although Kelso's Choice sent me these items, all opinions are 100% honest and my own, and I never recommend something I wouldn't or haven't used in my own class. Kelso's Nine Choices The main character in this Character Ed program is a cartoon frog named Kelso. He is present in every K-3 lesson, but not in the lessons for grades 4-5, which I appreciate. He demonstrates all of the strategies that students can choose to solve a small (not big) problem. In grades 2-3, there is a wheel with all of the available choices and I absolutely love that visual. There are nine choices and lessons to introduce each one, along with a story from Willow Pond to help students role-play and solve these small problems for the animal characters. While there are nine choices, the program is very explicit that a student should try two and then get an adult if the conflict persists. There is an entire lesson at the beginning about small and big problems to help students differentiate what needs immediate adult intervention versus something they can work together to solve. The program also emphasizes that students are strong enough and smart enough to solve these small problems-- I love how much it is repeated throughout the teacher guide. Large posters accompany the product and I appreciated the ongoing visual. They cover each of the nine choices: Go to another game Talk it out Share and take turns Ignore it Walk away Tell them to (please) stop Apologize Make a deal Wait and cool off As you can see, these are common strategies that many of the students have used before, often in combination with each other. What I was grateful for was the common, explicit instruction around all nine of these to create a system in the classroom, on the playground, in the lunchroom, and beyond. Plus, the explicit instruction can do a world of good for our students who struggle with these choices and social skills. Working together as a class on each of these in a systematic way can let every single student be "in it together" and have a common language and framework to use as a group. Program Materials Included in the Conflict Management set was everything you could ever need to launch this with your classroom. There is a very comprehensive Leader Guide filled with grade-specific lessons, extensions, reproducibles, parent and staff letters, and stories. Lessons are in-depth, but quick, and encourage you to engage in some meaningful conversations with your students. Take a peek at the Table of Contents HERE. A CD helps with making copies for your classroom. Two frog puppets are also included: Kelso and Lily. Since I teach third grade, I offer these up as an option, but not as a requirement. My daughter is in second grade, and she is still loving any and all activities with a puppet, so I'm glad they were included for the K-3 group. Additional cut-out characters can help bring the stories and role-plays to life. There are also some great lessons provided to help use the puppets with your class. Inside the Leader's Guide are the Willow Pond stories, but they are also compiled in a full-color book that would be perfect for your classroom library. The font is large and these stories could even be used as a shared reading opportunity. The provided DVD has an animated Kelso reviewing all of the choices and how they can be used in students' lives. And, most importantly, there are huge posters to display in your classroom, hallway, lunchroom, etc. You can see the difference between the K-3 version and the 4-5 version above. There are five of each and they are BIG at 24x36"! If you are teaching grades 4-5, the authors knew that Kelso the frog would not be as big of a hit with the older grades, and the lessons are adjusted accordingly. There are photos of real kids and much more in-depth scenarios and questions. Even "Share and take turns" has been removed and choices are divided up into verbal and nonverbal. It's a nice jump and will keep kids engaged even if they've been learning these choices since Kindergarten. One of the components to this program that I really love is the inclusion of every staff member and family member in the program. They realize that a lot of these small conflicts arise outside of a structured classroom environment, and this program is designed to work for just those scenarios. Included are reproducibles that the on-duty adult can use to support and/or congratulate those students who used the choices to solve a conflict. There are letters and activities for students to take home to help educate the parents and certificates of achievement for every student as they complete the program. There's even a song they can learn and maybe even sing schoolwide? The authors, Barbara Clark, PhD and Diane Hipp, CPS not only knew what they were doing when it came to conflict resolution, they knew how to implement it into a schoolwide system and make it doable for teachers and staff. There is no extra fluff to dig through, nor are there scripted lessons that kill meaningful learning. The lessons are packed with goodness and could easily give students new experiences with these choices for their entire elementary experience. Overall Thoughts I really like Kelso's Choice Conflict Management program and could see it becoming a part of a successful school's character education collection. It is practical, simple in its use but effective in its strategies, and is a one-stop-shop for an entire elementary school. I can imagine School Counselors loving this program as a way to help give all kids common language and skills about solving small problems in an empowering way. There are plenty of activities to keep this a yearlong and elementary career-long program for students. Especially with its extensions into 4th and 5th grade, I can see how kids of all ages can use these simple, but powerful choices to solve their ever-changing conflicts. With every adult in their daily sphere reiterating these choices, it gives students a solid framework to address small conflicts and feel empowered instead of frustrated. Find more information at: https://kelsoschoice.com. There are free downloads and loads of extra information for you to peruse. There is also information about a 30-day Free Trial, if you think you would like to experiment before you make the schoolwide decision. Have you used Kelso's Choice in your school? I would love to hear about your experiences with it in a schoolwide system!
This blog post provides you with 20 descriptive writing prompts and ideas for a teaching a full descriptive writing unit!
Both President Obama and Mitt Romney support the continuation of lower rates on federal student loans. No matter the interest rate, Rick Parker sees dim prospects for repayment, while Kirk Walters reacts to a government study showing student loan debt lasts longer than many anticipated.
This is a helpful sentence diagramming guide to give students several examples of different diagramming scenarios. Click here to view and print.
Having just temporarily recovered from working on report cards, I thought I'd share a little about a technique I use for grading student wor...
In this post, I'll teach you how to host a figurative language tasting activity--a lesson that gets kids writing explosive images every time!
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Education also withholds permanent markers of performance until the end of a semester to motivate students and demonstrate control.
Words and Pictures by Grant Snider
I came across this recently and thought I'd share it: The original source.
“Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.”
“Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.”
