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

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. Speech students led some interesting disc

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