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 ...

Killer Waves, Students Teach, and We Believe

This week was our first full, five day week...and oh boy, it was a full week! :) Most of CHS at the Chris Herren assembly. Really puts into perspective how small our school is! We were swept up in the short story "Rogue Wave" by Theodore Taylor in 7th grade this week. It was a challenging story, but it had a great plot that kept us on the edges of our seats. We practiced writing summaries together and did some activities to help us identify multiple themes. Before we started reading the story, the 7th graders made their own vocabulary lists by scanning the story for unknown words. Then they put their lists on Quizlet so they could practice their words in a variety of ways. On Friday, students wrote their Genuis Hour project proposals on our blog . One of my fantastic students posting evidence from the text to support a theme. The summary my students helped write together. Deciding what evidence is relevant. Sp...

Carpe Diem (a philosophical rambling)

Teaching seniors is hard. Teaching seniors during the last month before graduation and attempting to instill some kind of appreciation and enthusiasm for Hamlet is reckless behavior. Yet, that's exactly what I am doing. Kelly Gallagher describes it best: "I have done many difficult things in my life. I have run a marathon. I have eaten escargot to impress a date. I have sat in the middle seat of a cross-country flight, wedged between a snorer and a person in desperate need of Gas-X. Worse, I have sat through an episode of Sex and the City. But all of these pale in comparison to the hardest thing I have ever done: stand in front of thirty-seven teenagers with the expressed purpose of teaching Hamlet. " He defends this seemingly impossible task by saying that if we help students see the reward of the hard work it takes to tackle a complex text, they will surprise you and work hard. I'm not sure how successful I've been at doing that this year. I'm trying, b...

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