Demos today:  Elizabeth Curran and Bob Burton

Scribes: Diane Thayer-Peterson and Pamela Doerr

Today's writing prompt:

 

"A person's work is nothing but the slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence her or his heart first opened."     -Albert Camus

 

Candance read from:

Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott

Chapter called "False Starts"

 

Take a look at all of the writing that is in your journal so far this summer.  Go back to the seeds that are planted in your writing at this point.  Look for a line that jumps out at you... or something that surprises you.  Look for a "tree in winter."

 

Demo:     Elizabeth Curran

Topic:  Writing to Learn:  Working difficult texts in the American literature classroom

 

Background: Liz teaches at Como High School in St. Paul.  Many of her students are low-skilled stuents, and she also has a lot of students who are English Language Learners.

 

Journal:  What are your virtues?     What are your vices?

 

Work leading up to this lesson:  work on aphorisms, computer lab, research on Ben Franklin

 

Reading: from The Autobiography,  "Moral Perfection" by Benjamin Franklin

in text book: Prentice Hall Literature, Volume

 

Read text out loud. Read in chunks. It's a difficult text to send home and have low-ability high school students do on their own, so Liz suggests reading it together in class.

 

Vocabulary Task:

Choose a partner to work with, and create your own more modern dictionary for some of Ben Franklin's virtues.

 

Examples from today's class:

cleanliness: feng shui

resolution: "just do it"

frugality: reduce, reuse, recycle

sincerity:  Don't "wolf" (translation--lying)

tranquility: Don't sweat the small stuff

 

Student example:

sincerity: Tell your friend the truth when her top looks horrible on her.

 

Monitor a virtue in yourself

Next, students are assigned to select one virtue to monitor for a week.  They are given a tracking sheet on which to record how they worked on that virtue for the week.

Logistics: Questions to discuss with the class--Where to keep it, when to write in it, did you think about it during the day?

 

Guidelines for a one-page writing assignment:

Look at the virtue chart summary

Create a definition and tell why you picked this particular virtue.

Discuss your procedures -- where did you keep it?  When did you write in it?

What were your results?  Discuss this in your writing.

Conclusion - Discuss whether you will continue with this. Will you add on other virtues?

 

Question for Liz:  What is your purpose in doing this assignment?

Answer: To understand that Ben Franklin wrote about virtues and to understand them.

              To understand more about themselves

 

 

Other uses of using Writing to Learn:

• Illustrate aphorisms
• Write a myth for the Native American unit and illustrate it.
• The Crucible projects (essay, cartoon strip, create a quiz)
• Career Research Paper - one-month project, students research a career

 

 

Demo:     Bob Burton

Topic:     "The Golden Thread"

 

This is a lesson that is done at the end of the year. Everything that the students do during the course of the year will be used at the end of the year. 

Bob listed all the curriculum he teaches on the board. 

Books: Tears of a Tiger, Great Expectations, Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Other: hobby speech, greek mythology, short stories, book to a movie, design a unit.

Reference to book:  The Stories of Eva Luna by Isabell Allende. (dicy)

 

The Golden Thread: A big final essay about everything. It is a research paper. They must find a personal theme that weaves through their own work. He saves all their work. They can have back a photo copy of their work during the year, but at this time they need all their previous work. He keeps it and hands it back. When kids finish with an assignment they think their done but this brings back all their years work.

Here Bob shows some student examples. They vary from 9 pages to 23 pages. It is up to each student.

Bob has all his students for the entire year. They start with "I believe my Golden Thread is......."  They begin with a rough draft and they meet with Bob along the way. He gives them a bit of freedom in this product. They also use peer editing. This really spurns individuality and uniqueness.

 

Our assignment: We are going to create our own Golden thread among the various teaching demos.

• Everyone is asked to go up to the board and write our demonstration topic name in chronological order.
• We are to write down, in our journals, what we took from each demonstration in our journal. We do our own also. Write a word or a bulletin, whatever we took from that particular demo.
• Bob's students look at their own work only. Here we are looking at what we took from other's work also.
• Meet with writing buddy to talk through golden thread idea.
• Students meet with Bob to share their identified golden thread.
• Students then begin writing about their golden thread, explaining how each demo illustrates/connects to the golden thread.
• We went around and shared our golden thread statement.
• This is a powerful reflection. It transforms assignments into long term learning.

 

 Bob took comments and questions.

 

Students do share this with the entire class. They must come back and get the final papers after the school year. He assess this by effort. He also uses it as a self assessment to his past year of teaching. He can make changes in his teaching for the next year.

Clarification: The students are asked to come up with their golden thread first before looking at their work and then after reflecting on their actual work products they can reform their golden thread. Remember: this is a research project.

Students do not know this project will happen at the end of the year until they begin it.

It is a 2 week project. This is done in class. They can reference any books that they've read in the classroom.

 

Question: What would happen if the students did know about this at the beginning of the year? Although some students do tell next years students so they have an idea but there is still a mystery.

This is good for student's self analysis of theme in each lesson taught.