Witticisms, Commercial Breaks, and Google Movies

I started this post last week, and well...you know...got distracted!  Teachers never get distracted, right?

I have my seventh graders involved in literature circles right now. This was the article that got me started on literature circles a few years ago. I got tired of kids nodding off when reading a novel, so I did something about it. It's one of those things that takes a lot of time to set up, explain, and model, but once the students get the hang of it, it's a magical thing.   I even heard one student say, "This is the first book that I really, actually read in a long time." Hallelujah! They are all reading Esperanza Rising, but in the future, I would really like to try student-selected novels with literature circles.  One thing I'm still trying to get better at is gauging their comprehension throughout the process.   We are also plugging away on Genius Hour.  I'm learning a lot about how to improve it next year.

Kourtney's experimenting with different glow-in-the-dark solutions for her project.

Carson's researching 3-D Printing for his Genius Hour project.

We had a rough couple of weeks in speech class. We dove right into informative speeches, and then the motivation dropped off a cliff somewhere in the process. Even though we recovered in the end, I think the students learned a lot about how much work a great speech (or great lesson) takes. I still saw a lot of improvement in their delivery and organization despite dragging feet.  This week they worked on the language of persuasion and used persuasive techniques to create a commercial. Needless to say, it was a nice break from the stress of speech prep and delivery.

Since the last time I wrote about twelfth grade, we've done a lot!  We practiced some close reading and discussion skill using The Wife of Bath. We had lively discussions about gender. I stole some ideas from this master teacher in Pocatello. I will surely be returning to that source!  Sticking with the theme of gender roles, we are currently reading The Importance of Being Earnest. I was quickly reminded that students don't always catch the wit, satire, and irony of these 'ancient' documents.  It took awhile to get into the play, but we've had lots of belly laughs since we started. We have also started a research paper.  The students were given two topic options: something related to gender roles or something related to the career/college of their interest.  Research papers are a giant beast to tackle in any class, but I think we are off to a great start.  I use some elements of the I-Search method which is old, but in my opinion, makes for a more meaningful process for the students.

Student's article of the week; close reading and response.

My group of tech smarties created some animated movies (click here to see an example) using Google Presentation. I stole this idea from a teacher post on a Google+ community.  Now we are trying out choose your own adventure stories using Google Forms.  They are also making illustrations using Google Draw. I keep running out of fresh ideas! Thankfully Google keeps giving because I find something 'Googly' (Googlish? Googily?) every week (like this).