Poetry Snapshots

Perception vs. Reality

Before I became a "real" teacher, my perception of teaching English was that I would be blowing kids' minds with classic literature and handing out grammar worksheets. Needless to say, that hasn't happened...yet. Instead, I was surprised to find that I loved teaching about writing. In particular, I found a love of teaching argumentation and persuasion. The seventh graders are gearing up for argumentative writing. We begin by talking about the concepts of perception and reality and how those two things influence our views of the world and all its issues. I have them make a poster that's based off a popular meme to help ground those concepts. It hardly seems like work, and it's one of the few assignments we do where I get to hear things like, "Can I finish this at home?" or "Can I do another one?" The task is to make a perception and reality poster. I start by showing them an example for a teacher, like this one . This makes for a great

First Week is in the Books!

In 7th grade English, we did some activities to help get students get acquainted with their new lives in junior high. On the first day, I challenged the students to work together. We did this activity. It was great to observe how each student approached the challenge and helped their team out. My favorite part of class this week was talking about the Genius Hour project. I didn't have a much time to talk about it as I would have liked, but we were able to brainstorm a few ideas to think about over the weekend. Genius Hour brainstorming "Seventh Grade" activity Most of the students I have in Public Speaking had not previously had a class with me, so I think we got to know each other a little better this week. We did a speaking and listening activity where one student had to describe a picture while the other student listened and tried to draw it. Students also worked in small groups to brainstorm all the different ways we communicate and wrote definitions of

Tongue Twisters, Growth Mindset, and Self-Portraits

To celebrate the beginning of fall (or to mourn the end of summer), here is a lovely picture of a sunflower in my yard. Here’s what we were up to this week! The seventh graders continued their exploration on narratives this week. We practiced summary writing and writing about theme. We also talked about how setting can influence the events of a story. We used close reading strategies using the Collections Close Reader . To put all this practice together, my students have some interesting short stories of their own in the works. I can’t wait to read them! I’m really kicking myself for not getting any pictures of the demonstration speeches we did in second hour this week. I’ll leave it up to you to picture my students teaching the class how to make cheesecake, wash a dog, tie a bowtie, ride motorcycles, and make lava lamps. It was a diverse set of topics to say the least. Friday, we relaxed a bit from the stress of speech delivering and had a Tongue Twister Battle.

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