February, Language Arts/English Department
One Visit, Twenty Minutes, Three Sentences or What We Saw…
Pre-k—Jen Beasley's class—Jen had read the book Jambo Means Hello a few days ago since they are studying Africa. Today she was calling children up one at a time to have them choose a letter from the alphabet to illustrate a Swalhi word. The child I observed choose the letter L. She looked through the Jambl book to find a Swahili L word and chose Limpo, which means money. She wrote Limpo and then illustrated the word. It was fun to see her thumbing through the pages and looking for her word. Outside the door, several children were working on a HUGE picture of Africa. They were matching flags to the various countries and then gluing them in the correct places. They had to look at the letters of each country to make the correct match. I loved being in pre-k!! Betsy Anderson
K--Rachel Brodie’s class--Nurturing environment that promotes success. Kids are engaged. The room felt calming. Yun Tansil
K—Rachel Brodie’s class-- Kindergarten Spelling and Handwriting: In one small group of eight, the teacher models how print a capital and lower-case letter on a small whiteboard. Students copy. Students are asked to write teacher-selected words starting with the same letter. The teacher gave the students a sentence to write (did not include the letter). Trey Colvin
K—Janice LaMendola's class--Took a dive into Janice LaMendola’s world. It was amazing! Little bitty kids are studying about artists. During my short visit, Janice and I discussed many items. I will share the juicy stuff later. Kidding! My class will be presenting fables to her class tomorrow. Janice is so creative and intelligent. She is a natural born leader. Love her. Judy Campos
1st--Betsy Anderson’s Class–The children were working on biographies and it looked like an extensive unit. Betsy began by guiding through what to look for in a biography while reading it –
1. Name of the person
2. Where and when they were born
3. Family life
4. What they had to overcome
5. Why they are famous, impact they have on us today.
After the children learned about reading a biography (and getting the vital information from it) then created their own about a friend, and eventually wrote a biography of a famous person.
I really enjoyed watching the children at all of their different levels. You can tell that Betsy really considers the different pace of each child. I enjoyed talking to the children about who they chose and listening to them tell me what they have learned about this person. Jen Beazley
2nd--Yun Tansil’s class--I just spent a few minutes with Yun Tansil’s second graders. I was very impressed by the purposeful focus. She had her class at their desks writing letters to their parents about the upcoming conferences and Peggy Fredrickson’s class in the corner area absorbed in free reading. It was a room packed with engaged kids and positive energy. Dan Kasten
2nd--Angie Manning’s class--Kids listening to kids. Readers theatre performance. Kids
speaking to kids. Compliments. Suggestions. Advice. Lisa Sealy
3rd --Karen Dzialowski’s class--Offering children choices, keeps them engaged and enthusiastic. Warm and effective instruction helps them take their learning to greater heights. Rachel Brodie
3rd--Karen Dzialowski’s class--The children presented on fables, a true child-centered evaluation. The confidence danced with creativity to make wonderful projects. The specific compliments exchanged fostered a love for humanities.
Thanks for this project, it was such a joy! Chloe Bade
5th –Tony Adler’s class--Wow. Middle school amazed me. Tony kept everyone involved, and it was clear that the children were truly learning. Humor, compassion and flexibility allowed them to participate freely. Rachel Brodie
5th—Barby Gregory's class--I walk into Barby’s History class sensing the focused energy and attention of her students. Barby is reviewing the three major battles that shaped Ancient Greece’s history. All eyes are on her when she asks, “Which of these Persian battles had the longest lasting influence on western civilization and why?” Jake Mazow quickly responds, “The Battle of Thermopylae, Mrs. Gregory, because it saved democracy as we know it today.” Wow!!! Janet Cashen
5th--Barby Gregory's class--
Learn the way to learn
My hands, my eyes, my ears seize
Information links
Take that, stupid twitter!
Katherine Lewis
6th—Monica Bullock’s class—6th graders making connections from The Giver to utopia/dystopia, Wordly Wise ,Tiger Woods, history, and a broken arm. Susan Bauman
7th--Peggy Turlington’s class--Lesson on short stories where students were kept engaged through her use of diagrams, props, student actors. Students fed off Peggy’s energy and enthusiasm. Carla Kinney
7th—Mike Jenks's class--
Michael Jenks in class:
Using humor to trick you
Into learning stuff.
Blake Harkey
7th—Mike Jenks's class (again)--
The day before the History exam we retell America.
Pencils move from spiral to eye to mouth back to paper:
I write, I see, I digest.
The Mississippi crests the levy for a moment:
The mind can bring her back within the banks.
I am almost 13 now:
I can travel and shape this unruly river.
Adam Holt
7th--Mike Jenks's class(and again!)--Connecting past-present. 1819 depression to 2010 recession. Immigration. Moses Austin 1821/Ad Council 2010--drawing people to Texas. History=relevant. Linda Woolley
8th--Blake Harkey’s class--Composition. Blake_H reviewing for finals: coach running practice. Create energy & focus, call out missteps, congratulate mental hustle, show what to expect and how to succeed. Joel Garza
8th--Susan Bauman's class--
Multi-purpose lesson:
• test-taking skills focusing on quote identification
• Susan asks and teaches the kids to ask about the implications of each quote, why is it important? This gets them to analytical vocabulary, explicating how a passage tells them something about character, story arc, etc.
• Tech use: quotes typed on smart board ahead of time, Susan writes students’ verbal responses underneath
• Susan writes verbatim thus giving group opportunity to workshop each other’s responses. Farid Matuk
9th—Joel Garza's class--
The class featured the most thorough welcoming/acknowledgement of a visiting student I’ve ever seen, complete with hilarious digs at ESD. With the lights out and atmospheric trance music playing in the background, Joel (or Giuseppe Garzino, as he introduced himself, reinforcing my theory that he desperately wants to be Italian) led the students through a look at why certain New Testament texts became canonical and why others were left out. He then entered that day’s assignment by offering the thesis of “The rhetorical aim of the Bible is to teach its reader to be righteous” and asking the students to support that with evidence. Andy Mercurio
9th--Scott Cotton's class –Discussed independent projects, readings, had whole group debates. Let students talk and enjoy casual “historical interactions.” Gives students a lot of think time. Encourages children to conduct research to get the answer. Students were so engrossed in material. Didn’t believe it was 9th grade history. Greenhill is crazy! Students who want to learn?! Beth Boyd
I observed Wayne Hines’ French II Honors class last week. I realized that English teachers share a great deal with MCL teachers: an attitude about language that embraces style as well as structure. Students in both departments must take risks in attempting to communicate clearly and effectively in language. Both prodding and encouragement are in order. I was impressed with the way Wayne wove together formal instruction about verb tense with conversations about more appealing matters: clothes, sports, etc. Students carried on dialogues, making up sentences that reinforced command of tenses as well as new vocabulary. Cues in the form of posters, images on overhead projector, and the teacher’s smooth handling of transitions from topic to topic inspired me. Marilyn Stewart
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Sunday, September 27, 2009
In the Middle
In the Middle (Atwell, Nancy)
Thank you, Adam, for letting me come so early in the school year!
By trial and error and with help from a middle school student, I found Adam Holt’s classroom. A mixture of excitement and curiosity raised and sharpened my attention level. Not having taught middle school students and suffering from amnesia of being a middle school student, I wanted to see how middle school students behave, speak, and learn. Of course, thirty minutes of observation gave me only a sliver of the whole picture.
The students reviewed how to study for an upcoming quiz. Study strategies, such as looking over the rules, watching a School House Rock video, making games, and memorizing, were generated by the students. I’ve noticed, regardless of the grade level, students need concrete examples of study skills and Adam expertly anticipated them. Later, the students paired up to quiz each other on the “super sentences” completed for homework. The Interactive aspect of this exercise allowed the students to give immediate feedback on the benefit of studying with a partner.
Let me digress here. How to teach grammar was a big debate when I first began teaching. I taught third graders, and the consensus was to teach grammar in an authentic format. The instructional leaders, at the time, promoted teaching grammar using the student’s writing; a method to which I still concur. However, as a new teacher, I was confused and overwhelmed, trying to individualize the lessons.
Luckily, the pedagogy of a balanced literacy program came to the rescue. Within the context of a balanced literacy curriculum, a dose of direct grammar instruction and its application in student writing reached a middle ground on teaching grammar. Adam’s students were obviously getting both direct grammar instruction and the opportunity to apply what they learned in their writings. Sometimes being “in the middle” is a good place.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Writing: Pre-K through Evergreen
Pre-K
Jen Beazley and Beth Boyd
In the pre-k classroom, Jen addresses fine motor issues and works to strength hand muscles, so at a month into school, students write their names when they sign in every morning. The focus is to encourage the academic confidence and imaginative play of these young pre-writers. Therefore as a class with Jen as the scribe, they create thought/idea webs which require several skills. They use Venn diagrams to compare and contrast. Apples and pumpkins is a fall favorite. Jen and her students examine all aspects of the apple and pumpkin. They even open them up to see similarities and differences. This is brainstorming and critical thinking, and if you sit in on the class, you will hear their imaginations frequently taking flight.
They are also working on making Munchie Mission less abstract for the pre-k students. To make hunger a little more real for pre-k, for two days they will not have snacks so at the minimum they will experience what it is like to want to eat and not have food available. Jen and Greg, the other pre-k teacher, plan to turn this experience into a skit. This will involve critical thinking and reflection on the experience. It will also begin to develop some understanding that other kids are in different circumstances than they are. Here are the buds of empathy forming as they seek to understand “other.”
Second Grade
Yun Tansil
The second grade year-long theme is Community. They begin with the classroom community, move to the GH community, out to Addison, and then the world. They will launch a new writing project in January. The class will brainstorm who in the Addison and greater Dallas area are community workers —fire, police, park and recreation employees, and etc. The class will generate job specific questions and also ask what GH students can do as citizens to make the community stronger, healthier, and more vibrant. This will require critical thinking, research skills, and the potential for commitment to improve the community=empathy.
Also in Yun’s class, the students wrote get-well cards to a classmate who had been sick for several days. This emphasizes the importance of valuing the relationships between members in the community.
Third Grade
Judy Campos
One writing assignment Judy shared was the immigrant journal. After much research, shared exploration, brainstorming, and discussion, the third graders write journals about arriving in America from a child’s point of view. They imagine what the trip across the ocean was like and what the first emotions might be about arriving in a new land and leaving home far behind. This requires evaluative thinking and imaginative engagement. Putting themselves in the experiences of an immigrant continues to nurture the seeds of empathy.
The third graders also write letters to living heroes. They have to define “hero” and then seek to find someone they think is a hero. More evaluative thinking. They then send their letters to their heroes.
Upper School
Marilyn Stewart and Linda Woolley
In Marilyn’s first paper for her ninth graders, she asks them to express their response to a poem; she gives them several to choose from. They work with key images and through a close reading of the text arrive at a conclusion as to why a reader should care about what they think. Here, they not only have to think critically about a text but also about the validity of their reading of it. Later in the year after reading The Reivers, they students write a reminiscence. This requires a close reading of their lives, beliefs, traditions, and values. They become the text, and they have to think critically about themselves.
This type of self-examination is picked up again senior year in the personal narrative. Students have to evaluate themselves and their experiences to create some sort of synthesis concerning the meaning of their experiences. As Marilyn said, “How can they be expected to understand other people or other perspectives if they can’t think critically about themselves?”
Linda will bring in a service learning component to a senior elective this year that will require students to journal about various aspects of their experience. These written reflections are meant to move the students from the point of view of “self” or “I” to seek to understand/empathize with the “other,” perhaps to prepare them for the world beyond GH and a more global environment.
Marilyn also discussed writing for Evergreen. This requires the student to “get rid of their opinions” and seek the opinion of others. They have to be able to report the story from someone else’s point of view without editorializing and without bias. To sort out what are their ideas and what are the thoughts of the people they interview requires sophisticated critical thinking. They then have to pull all the information to some sort of conclusion.
Jen Beazley and Beth Boyd
In the pre-k classroom, Jen addresses fine motor issues and works to strength hand muscles, so at a month into school, students write their names when they sign in every morning. The focus is to encourage the academic confidence and imaginative play of these young pre-writers. Therefore as a class with Jen as the scribe, they create thought/idea webs which require several skills. They use Venn diagrams to compare and contrast. Apples and pumpkins is a fall favorite. Jen and her students examine all aspects of the apple and pumpkin. They even open them up to see similarities and differences. This is brainstorming and critical thinking, and if you sit in on the class, you will hear their imaginations frequently taking flight.
They are also working on making Munchie Mission less abstract for the pre-k students. To make hunger a little more real for pre-k, for two days they will not have snacks so at the minimum they will experience what it is like to want to eat and not have food available. Jen and Greg, the other pre-k teacher, plan to turn this experience into a skit. This will involve critical thinking and reflection on the experience. It will also begin to develop some understanding that other kids are in different circumstances than they are. Here are the buds of empathy forming as they seek to understand “other.”
Second Grade
Yun Tansil
The second grade year-long theme is Community. They begin with the classroom community, move to the GH community, out to Addison, and then the world. They will launch a new writing project in January. The class will brainstorm who in the Addison and greater Dallas area are community workers —fire, police, park and recreation employees, and etc. The class will generate job specific questions and also ask what GH students can do as citizens to make the community stronger, healthier, and more vibrant. This will require critical thinking, research skills, and the potential for commitment to improve the community=empathy.
Also in Yun’s class, the students wrote get-well cards to a classmate who had been sick for several days. This emphasizes the importance of valuing the relationships between members in the community.
Third Grade
Judy Campos
One writing assignment Judy shared was the immigrant journal. After much research, shared exploration, brainstorming, and discussion, the third graders write journals about arriving in America from a child’s point of view. They imagine what the trip across the ocean was like and what the first emotions might be about arriving in a new land and leaving home far behind. This requires evaluative thinking and imaginative engagement. Putting themselves in the experiences of an immigrant continues to nurture the seeds of empathy.
The third graders also write letters to living heroes. They have to define “hero” and then seek to find someone they think is a hero. More evaluative thinking. They then send their letters to their heroes.
Upper School
Marilyn Stewart and Linda Woolley
In Marilyn’s first paper for her ninth graders, she asks them to express their response to a poem; she gives them several to choose from. They work with key images and through a close reading of the text arrive at a conclusion as to why a reader should care about what they think. Here, they not only have to think critically about a text but also about the validity of their reading of it. Later in the year after reading The Reivers, they students write a reminiscence. This requires a close reading of their lives, beliefs, traditions, and values. They become the text, and they have to think critically about themselves.
This type of self-examination is picked up again senior year in the personal narrative. Students have to evaluate themselves and their experiences to create some sort of synthesis concerning the meaning of their experiences. As Marilyn said, “How can they be expected to understand other people or other perspectives if they can’t think critically about themselves?”
Linda will bring in a service learning component to a senior elective this year that will require students to journal about various aspects of their experience. These written reflections are meant to move the students from the point of view of “self” or “I” to seek to understand/empathize with the “other,” perhaps to prepare them for the world beyond GH and a more global environment.
Marilyn also discussed writing for Evergreen. This requires the student to “get rid of their opinions” and seek the opinion of others. They have to be able to report the story from someone else’s point of view without editorializing and without bias. To sort out what are their ideas and what are the thoughts of the people they interview requires sophisticated critical thinking. They then have to pull all the information to some sort of conclusion.
Assigning excellence (?/!)
Joel Garza, Modern Lyric Poetry
Five questions
Explanation:
First, choose a poem from the text. Next, read the poem carefully and take notes on it—in the book, in your notebook, somewhere. Finally, answer each of the following questions. For this assignment, then, don’t worry about a title, don’t worry about an intro, don’t worry about a conclusion. Just read, think, and interpret.
The questions:
1. What are the effects of this poem’s structure?
2. What are the effects of this poem’s rhyme scheme?
3. What are the effects of this poet’s narrative voice?
4. What are the effects of this poem’s imagery?
5. What’s something you noticed about the poem that I didn’t ask about (meter, allusion, tone, subject, argument, grammar, whatever), and why should I care about that element of the work?
Purpose:
I am challenging students to identify and explain the effects of several poetic techniques and devices, one by one, as they appear in a single poem.
Creativity? Monica: Maybe for the next assignment, return to the same poem and change one of the elements—make a sonnet a haiku, undoing the nature imagery and make it, say, legalistic imagery.
Empathy? Tony: Well, empathy can become a sort of detour. Empathy shouldn’t be shoe-horned into every assignment. Monica: Maybe in looking at one of these poetic facets, especially in poetry, the students can’t help but react empathetically.
Monica Bullock, Sixth Grade
Mystery Theater
Explanation:
After writing a biography report (fourth grade), the students are grouped with three or four other students who have researched different historical figures. As a group, the students must construct a play depicting each of these famous people, without naming each of these famous people. The audience is invited to pay close attention in order to determine who is who. Examples: JFK, MLK, Lincoln.
Purpose:
In order to shape character, the students must comprehend the reading they do. They put into practice conflict, characterization, suspense, dialogue, resolution.
Creativity? Each year, the plays are completely different because the subjects and the combinations of the subjects are different.
Empathy? They’re embodying other people fer chrissakes! Jeez, come on.
Rigor? They are lengthy. They are each seven to ten minutes long. Each student is responsible for his/her own character—they have to bring the character into the action. There’s no hiding on this group project.
Tony Adler, Fifth Grade
Creation myths
Explanation:
The students live myth throughout the winter—the play, the reading, etc. Each student crafts a creation myth about anything s/he chooses. Examples: the greenness of grass, earthquakes, volcanoes, the earth.
Purpose:
To expose students to a variety of writing genres. To explain the importance of myth generally. To advance their creative writing ability, while working through the writing process (invention, drafting, outlining, revising, etc.). Most importantly, perhaps, this is fun. Many students, by means of this project, are drawn into writing for fun.
Creativity? There’s a lot of structure, yet there are very specific goals. Still, they get to accomplish these goals in any way they’d like. Mindful of the ancient models, each student must first choose an object to depict, then imagine the beginnings, the motivations for such a thing to come into being.
Rigor? While using the myth tradition as a backdrop, they have to maintain a story structure, an internal logic and a resolution. Plus, for fifth graders, this is their longest written project of the year—some run to twenty pages!
Empathy? Students gain empathy for the philosophical/poetic urge. Ancient people explained their world imaginatively, from the ground to the heavens.
Five questions
Explanation:
First, choose a poem from the text. Next, read the poem carefully and take notes on it—in the book, in your notebook, somewhere. Finally, answer each of the following questions. For this assignment, then, don’t worry about a title, don’t worry about an intro, don’t worry about a conclusion. Just read, think, and interpret.
The questions:
1. What are the effects of this poem’s structure?
2. What are the effects of this poem’s rhyme scheme?
3. What are the effects of this poet’s narrative voice?
4. What are the effects of this poem’s imagery?
5. What’s something you noticed about the poem that I didn’t ask about (meter, allusion, tone, subject, argument, grammar, whatever), and why should I care about that element of the work?
Purpose:
I am challenging students to identify and explain the effects of several poetic techniques and devices, one by one, as they appear in a single poem.
Creativity? Monica: Maybe for the next assignment, return to the same poem and change one of the elements—make a sonnet a haiku, undoing the nature imagery and make it, say, legalistic imagery.
Empathy? Tony: Well, empathy can become a sort of detour. Empathy shouldn’t be shoe-horned into every assignment. Monica: Maybe in looking at one of these poetic facets, especially in poetry, the students can’t help but react empathetically.
Monica Bullock, Sixth Grade
Mystery Theater
Explanation:
After writing a biography report (fourth grade), the students are grouped with three or four other students who have researched different historical figures. As a group, the students must construct a play depicting each of these famous people, without naming each of these famous people. The audience is invited to pay close attention in order to determine who is who. Examples: JFK, MLK, Lincoln.
Purpose:
In order to shape character, the students must comprehend the reading they do. They put into practice conflict, characterization, suspense, dialogue, resolution.
Creativity? Each year, the plays are completely different because the subjects and the combinations of the subjects are different.
Empathy? They’re embodying other people fer chrissakes! Jeez, come on.
Rigor? They are lengthy. They are each seven to ten minutes long. Each student is responsible for his/her own character—they have to bring the character into the action. There’s no hiding on this group project.
Tony Adler, Fifth Grade
Creation myths
Explanation:
The students live myth throughout the winter—the play, the reading, etc. Each student crafts a creation myth about anything s/he chooses. Examples: the greenness of grass, earthquakes, volcanoes, the earth.
Purpose:
To expose students to a variety of writing genres. To explain the importance of myth generally. To advance their creative writing ability, while working through the writing process (invention, drafting, outlining, revising, etc.). Most importantly, perhaps, this is fun. Many students, by means of this project, are drawn into writing for fun.
Creativity? There’s a lot of structure, yet there are very specific goals. Still, they get to accomplish these goals in any way they’d like. Mindful of the ancient models, each student must first choose an object to depict, then imagine the beginnings, the motivations for such a thing to come into being.
Rigor? While using the myth tradition as a backdrop, they have to maintain a story structure, an internal logic and a resolution. Plus, for fifth graders, this is their longest written project of the year—some run to twenty pages!
Empathy? Students gain empathy for the philosophical/poetic urge. Ancient people explained their world imaginatively, from the ground to the heavens.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Too Fluid
Dawn Beck, Peggy Turlington, Farid Matuk
While our group believes in the need to incorporate critical thinking, imagination, and empathy into our instruction of English across all grade levels, we found these categories to overlap in ways that made the exercise nearly impossible to complete. This may be because the ideas generated last year speak to a different prompt (“how to prepare our students for a changing world”) and so do not lend themselves to being grouped under the three headings of critical thinking, imagination, and empathy. Those items listed by groups in the 2008-09 school year that address discerning between values and organizing information into structures, etc., were easy to label “critical thinking”. One example of this would be “How to structure an essay”. Yet even this concept is potentially something that would be classified under “Imagination” because, of course, structuring an essay requires that a writer project or imagines the perspective of her reader.
So, while we recognize that the boundaries between critical thinking, imagination, and empathy are porous, we also understand the importance of making judgment calls that will allow us to discuss a given assignment or teaching strategy as particularly beneficial to the development of one of these modes over the others. Ultimately, our group thought it would be best to spend time in each other’s classrooms during the 2009-10 school year and blog about the ways the given activities and teaching strategies we witness lend themselves most to the development of one or another of the three modes/aspects of literature.
It seems to us that a conversation about the inclusion and balance of these attributes in the classroom, done after the classroom visits are completed, would be beneficial. A fluid conversation might fit the flexible nature of teaching a little better than a chart. Such a conversation may not quantify these qualities, but we are not sure that quantifying critical thinking, imagination, and empathy is the point; balancing and reflecting seem more relevant to us.
While our group believes in the need to incorporate critical thinking, imagination, and empathy into our instruction of English across all grade levels, we found these categories to overlap in ways that made the exercise nearly impossible to complete. This may be because the ideas generated last year speak to a different prompt (“how to prepare our students for a changing world”) and so do not lend themselves to being grouped under the three headings of critical thinking, imagination, and empathy. Those items listed by groups in the 2008-09 school year that address discerning between values and organizing information into structures, etc., were easy to label “critical thinking”. One example of this would be “How to structure an essay”. Yet even this concept is potentially something that would be classified under “Imagination” because, of course, structuring an essay requires that a writer project or imagines the perspective of her reader.
So, while we recognize that the boundaries between critical thinking, imagination, and empathy are porous, we also understand the importance of making judgment calls that will allow us to discuss a given assignment or teaching strategy as particularly beneficial to the development of one of these modes over the others. Ultimately, our group thought it would be best to spend time in each other’s classrooms during the 2009-10 school year and blog about the ways the given activities and teaching strategies we witness lend themselves most to the development of one or another of the three modes/aspects of literature.
It seems to us that a conversation about the inclusion and balance of these attributes in the classroom, done after the classroom visits are completed, would be beneficial. A fluid conversation might fit the flexible nature of teaching a little better than a chart. Such a conversation may not quantify these qualities, but we are not sure that quantifying critical thinking, imagination, and empathy is the point; balancing and reflecting seem more relevant to us.
Per Linda's Instructions
Judy Campos, Paula Hall, Marilyn Stewart, Blake Harkey:
In the absence of our list from the previous year, we began our small group’s meeting by discussing a few ways we might effectively address various strategies, characteristics, and traits of excellent writers, especially with a mind towards emphasizing how all of these might be sorted into the 3 categories from today’s meeting. Fairly early in our discussion, we determined that we all felt that each of the qualities of “enhanced literacy” helped to ensure the next; for instance, imagination begets critical thinking begets empathy. From here, we started sharing a few lesson plans that we felt illustrated this notion. The teaching techniques (effective or otherwise) and student skill sets (those that were a stated objective and those that were an unforeseen result) we discussed all demonstrate, to various degrees, critical thinking, imaginative involvement, and empathetic reactions.
Paula and Judy discussed a lesson wherein teachers read aloud to their lower school students a book about the San Francisco earthquake of the early 20th century. They pointed out that there was a deliberate emphasis on critical thinking, as the students were encouraged to put the event into a historical perspective as well as compare and contrast these events to other epoch-making moments in history, especially current events that the students might encounter while watching the news or looking at a recent newspaper. Imaginative involvement came about when the teachers encouraged the students to imagine themselves in a similar situation, asking what sorts of things from their own homes they might save if they were forced to leave in an extreme hurry. They also looked at various authorial techniques, especially alliteration and hyperbole (complimenting their unit on figurative language, generally), and asked the students to think about how these strategies of effective and evocative writing enhanced the experience of hearing this story and then emulate these techniques in their own composition. Empathy was achieved not only in imagining themselves in this sort of experience, but also examining the ways in which one’s cultural position in the early 20th century might have colored their individual experience; a person in Chinatown, for instance, would have had a very different experience from a person from the shipping district or a wealthy suburb.
Marilyn discussed how her daily discussion about literature at the secondary level generates questions and discussion points that are not meant to be conclusive, forcing interested students to dig deeper to arrive at a meaningful relationship with a certain work. She mentioned that she really feels that one of the most empathetic parts of her class often comes about in the conclusion paragraph of any given paper, where the student is forced to concisely determine and compose a “so what” closer that demonstrates true analysis and a deeper understanding. My own experiences complimented this, as I reflected how, so often while reading Romeo and Juliet, students find themselves not entirely clear on simple plot points of an assigned scene in the play, but can very accurately characterize the emotional quality of that particular section. This suggests to me that “enhanced literacy” is, quite naturally, deeply tied to a basic understanding of any text, but is not exclusively dependent upon an ability to comprehend difficult vocabulary and lengthy dialogue. Sometimes, I guess, you can really feel it, even if you don’t fully understand it.
So, here’s a list of skills and strategies I think we covered during our discussion, and perhaps a categorization based on our parameters of today’s department meeting:
1. Working in both large and small groups: Empathy. This forces students to consider others’ viewpoints. Also critical thinking, as students are able to listen to a variety of opinions as they form their own.
2. Reading aloud to students: Imagination. We all agreed that this technique should not be in any way limited to the Lower School.
3. Asking open-ended questions: Critical Thinking. Hopefully, this is learned and experienced early, so that when students arrive at each successive grade, their curiosity will compel them to reach beyond the in-class lesson.
4. Following up on previous discussions: Empathy. Even if you’ve changed your mind about something, remembering past circumstances that compelled a certain sentiment or idea can only help your ability to “put yourself in someone else’s shoes.”
5. Establishing a Collective Vocabulary: Critical Thinking.
6. Taking advantage of “teachable moments: Critical Thinking, Imagination.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
August Group Meeting: Linda, Adam, Yun, Jen, and Beth
CRITICAL THINKING
Problem solving
Reflection
Collaborative work
Flexibility
Cross-curricular work--the concept of patterns
IMAGINATION
Inspiring curiosity
Asking open-ended questions--"What if?" "I wonder..."
Asking questions that will challenge or change a student's paradigms
EMPATHY
Peer conversations, converences
Curiosity about others (situations, lives, thought process)--"Everything is not me."
Awareness of the power of words within the context of a community
Problem solving
Reflection
Collaborative work
Flexibility
Cross-curricular work--the concept of patterns
IMAGINATION
Inspiring curiosity
Asking open-ended questions--"What if?" "I wonder..."
Asking questions that will challenge or change a student's paradigms
EMPATHY
Peer conversations, converences
Curiosity about others (situations, lives, thought process)--"Everything is not me."
Awareness of the power of words within the context of a community
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