A Teacher's Reflection: How My Post Masters Classes in Reading Informed My Practice
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| ELL students clap for a fellow classmate after a presentation |
My Classroom (in 2009)
The teaching context is high school English language arts (ELA) and English
language learners (ELLs). My students
are in grades 9-12. I teach in a large,
diverse school of approximately 2300 students located in Burke County. I typically have between five to fourteen
students in any given ELL class and between twenty to thirty-two students in an
ELA class. This past year, I taught an
ELL course for novices just starting to acquire conversational English. I also taught a reading class aimed at
providing students with strategies to survive in their content courses like
world history and biology. I taught a
communication skills course that focused on all the domains of language
usage: reading, writing, listening, and
speaking. All of my students were native
Spanish speakers from Guatemala or Mexico, and they ranged in age from thirteen
to twenty-one. Two of my ELLs were also
classified as exceptional children or EC and required additional support and
modifications. Two additional students
were in the process of being assessed and placed in the EC program. My classes are ninety minutes in length and
are two nine weeks in duration.
Assessment
Assessment is a
major component of both the ELA and ELL programs. In ELA, the English I end of course test
(EOC) and the tenth grade writing assessment are major standardized
assessments. In ELL, Ballard and Tighe’s
IDEA Proficiency Test (IPT) is used to classify students and show their
growth. Aside from these state mandated
assessments, I use a variety of formal, informal, formative, and summative
assessments.
For
instance, I am a firm believer in the use of writing portfolios to provide
insight into the nature and growth of my students. I take a beginning narrative writing sample
from all students to establish a baseline and to learn their strengths and
weaknesses. It is from these samples
that I plan my instruction. For my ELL
students this past school year (2006-2007), this narrative was related to
Sandra Cisneros’s House on Mango Street
(1989) because research shows that multicultural texts can foster reading
comprehension when students bring background knowledge to the task (Kooy and
Chiu, 1998). The students were invited
to interview their family members and tell the story of their names—what they
mean, how they were chosen, if they were named after someone and what that
person was like. They were then to tell
the story of their names and if they would change their name and why. From these samples, I get a feel for what my
job as a writing teacher will be for the coming semester.
This
past year, based on the writing samples, I knew that my work began at the
sentence level, discussing proper English syntax, the negative transfer between
English and Spanish syntax, and word choice.
Other trends included run-ons, sentence fragments, and the improper
usage of inflectional endings. Aside
from grammar, students also needed work with paragraphing, topic sentences, and
concluding sentences.
Over
the course of the semester, a student’s portfolio will serve as a formative
assessment tool, allowing me to easily pinpoint students’ individual needs and
as a cumulative assessment tool, one that I feel more accurately demonstrates
student growth than standardized tests.
Students also peer assess and self assess their writing, giving them
practice with metacognition, the key to truly internalizing any concept.
In
my beginning ELL classes, a lot of my assessments involve observations with
checklists. In this way, I am able to
monitor language acquisition skills such as pronunciation, speaking in complete
sentences, and using appropriate vocabulary, also known as communicative
competence. For these students, I assess
vocabulary growth several times throughout the semester using pictures and word
banks. Vocabulary assessed consists
mainly of the notional functional.
In
my ELL reading class, I administered the Woods and Moe informal reading
inventory, or IRI, to all six students.
I did not feel that the IPT ratings of novice low, novice high, intermediate
low, intermediate high, or superior gave me a clear picture of students’
reading abilities. Because I didn’t
learn this assessment technique until a couple of months into the spring
semester of 2007, it wasn’t used in a pretest/posttest fashion as I will use it
in the future.
This
assessment revealed that out of my six students, ages fourteen to seventeen,
the highest level of reading proficiency was fourth grade. This formative assessment gave me insight
into the needs of my students and aided me to plan and deliver an effective
reading course. I was able to place
students in appropriately leveled texts during silent reading while also
teaching necessary content reading comprehension strategies.
In
all of my courses, I also use project-based assessments. For instance, in my reading course, students
read biographies and autobiographies.
Then, they created a hat to represent the person they read about. Finally, they presented these hats,
summarized briefly the biography, explained why they chose to read about the
person, recommended the book or not and why, and explained how the hat
represented the person, or its symbolism.
This project was completed two weeks prior to the end of the semester
and required students to use a variety of skills that we had studied, such as
summarizing, analyzing symbolism, making personal connections to the text, and
fluency via an oral presentation. Having
the students make hats instead of writing was an appropriate modification for
these students since they were all intermediate low writers according to IPT
results. I used a rubric to grade this
and all other projects my students do, including writing.
I
feel that rubrics do several important things.
First, they set clear expectations for students. Secondly, they give me a more objective way
to grade a project, a concrete way of assigning points. Finally, a rubric allows me to give specific
feedback to students, feedback that can help them do better the next time.
Rubrics
themselves can be important assessment tools.
The North Carolina Standard Course of Study lists as a goal for students
in English classes for grades nine through twelve: “The learner will create and use standards to
critique communication” (2004). Therefore, my students and I will set “predetermined standards” for
certain activities through a discussion and then by creating a rubric. For instance, after reading several short
stories in my communication skills class, we developed a rubric that we used to
then score the students’ original short stories. Through the creation of this rubric, I am
able to discern what information students have internalized about a topic, like
the fact that short stories have settings and good short stories have settings
that move the plot forward and so on.
Reading Instruction
My
ideas about my role as a reading instructor are continually evolving. Prior to the 2006/2007 school year, I have
always been a high school English teacher.
As such, my role in teaching reading was fairly limited. I did a lot of work to motivate students to
read, but they came to me with the ability to read at a functional grade
level. All of my students could write
and most could read very well since my classes were all advanced or
honors. During that time, I taught reading
comprehension strategies, such as predicting, questioning, activating prior
knowledge, active reading, and determining the meaning of words using context
clues. Often, especially for my ninth
graders, comprehension broke down in texts with figurative language, difficult
vocabulary, and non-linear plots.
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
(1623) is a text in which comprehension frequently broke down. With this play, I did several things as a
reading teacher. First, I provided
background knowledge. We read about the
famous Hatfield and McCoy feud. Then, we
made a personal connection to the text by journaling about family feuds we had
witnessed or been a part of. Next, I
provided historical information to help put the text in context. To scaffold this difficult text, I prepared
students for reading by explaining significant features of the text
structure: stage directions, dialogue,
and footnotes. I also read the play
aloud with the students, using reader’s theater, in manageable chunks. When we finished reading each act of the play,
we viewed the 1968 Zeffirelli film version of the play. Seeing this abbreviated play acted out helped
students better comprehend the story.
When we finished reading the entire play, we read and acted out a simplified
version, an activity that served to build reading fluency while providing a
summary of the twisted plot. Throughout,
we used journals to relate to the text.
Then we viewed the 1996 Luhrmann film version and discussed how a play
some four hundred years old is still relevant today. This unit is very typical of how I intertwine
the teaching of reading within the teaching of literature.
I
use lots of prereading techniques to aid with reading comprehension, such as
writing in journals, class discussions that activate prior knowledge, listening
to music of a similar theme to set the stage of a story, completing KWL charts,
and researching background information to name a few. I also use a story
impressions strategy, also known as PreP, or a prereading plan (Holbrook, 1984) in which I write words and
phrases from the text being read and have students summarize the story using
only those words prior to reading the text.
We then have a discussion about what the words made us think of. I find this activity to be adaptable across
genres and to motivate students to read because an authentic purpose is
set: to see who, if anyone, was right.
During reading, I use Stauffer’s (1969) Directed Reading Thinking Activity
(DRTA) to keep students engaged and to check for comprehension. I also use graphic organizers like story maps
and concept maps to aid comprehension during the reading process. After reading, I use a variety of activities
to check comprehension and deepen students’ analysis of the story such as McLaughlin
and Allen’s (2002) “sketch to stretch” activity in which students draw symbolic
representations of the themes in the story, and the Questioning the Author
(QTA) approach (Beck et. al., 1998).
This
semester, as an ELL reading teacher, I taught fluency in a variety of ways. First, I modeled fluency for them when I read
aloud poems, short stories, non-fiction texts, and gave speeches as
examples. We did repeated readings
(Samuels, 1985) of poetry, reader’s theater, and of student-written speeches. We also practiced pronunciation and
enunciation in these activities, components of learning the language that are
very important for ELLs. To develop
comprehension and in addition to the strategies already discussed, we learned
to determine meaning of unknown words through context clues, cognates, roots
and affixes, and electronic translators.
I modeled these strategies for them as I used them in my own reading
through the method of think-alouds.
I
taught my ELLs strategies for recognizing and understanding figurative
language, strategies supported by Palmer, Shackleford, Miller, and Leclere
(2007) in their study of how to effectively teach ELLs to process and
comprehend figurative language, idioms especially. During the week prior to Valentine’s Day, I
introduced the concept of idioms, and we took a close look at idioms dealing
with the heart. Each student was given
an idiom and illustrated its literal meaning.
Then, as a class, we tried to construct the intended meanings of the
idioms. For instance, a student said “to
wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve” was like the heart was out of the
body—unprotected. Of course, we had,
prior to beginning this mini-lesson, discussed the dual meaning of the word
“heart.” For idioms that were difficult
or impossible to decipher based on just the sum of its words, I provided them
in context after we had tried to resolve meaning. After the mini-lesson, I put a big piece of
butcher paper on the wall to track idioms my students discovered in class
readings, conversations, or the media.
This tracking of idioms was one of many literary elements we looked for
and was a small element of our word wall.
In the future, I will implement the four-step process of finding the
figurative language, finding the literal meaning, finding the intended meaning,
and applying the figurative language to a personal experience (Palmer et. al.,
2006). Having students make the personal
connection with the figurative language will further cement its meaning in
their lexicon.
The
modeling of reading strategies is a mainstay in both my ELL and ELA
classrooms. Through DRTA, I model
predicting. I use think-alouds to show
students my thought processes as I read.
I model active reading—showing students where, why, and when I do things
like highlight, underline, and write in the margins. I model fluent reading constantly. My philosophy is that I should never ask my
students to do something I don’t first model for them. I fluently read poetry—mine and
others—illustrating how to read with meaning and expression. I model the fluent reading of dialogue in
stories and so forth. When I asked my
students to give a how-to speech, I modeled what was expected in a speech about
how to make a beaded ring.
I
also model reading during SSR (silent sustained reading or self-selected
reading). I begin modeling the process
when we went to the library. I showed
students how to use the card catalog to search for books on certain themes, of
specific genres, at their reading level.
I tell them what I think as I look for a book, and how I will often read
the book jacket and skim the first few pages to get a feel of the writing style
before making my decision. Back in the
classroom, I find a comfortable place to sit and read intently. I feel that it is very important for me to
also read during silent reading.
Otherwise, students will not see that reading, even for enjoyment, is an
important task. I laugh aloud at funny
parts in the story, and sometimes, if the book merits, I cry. I make personal connections to the text, and
after SSR is over, I share some of those and any thoughts and questions I had
as I was reading and then invite students to do the same.
To
be honest, word study, aside from studying cognates, affixes, and homophones in
mini-lessons, hasn’t played a part in my classroom. However, as a result of my work in the
reading masters program at Appalachian State University and the influence of
Dr. Bloodgood and Dr. Morris, I feel that word study has an important role in
the high school classroom, and I now have the skills and knowledge to properly
implement word study.
How
I plan to use word study in my class depends on my teaching situation and the
spelling and vocabulary needs of my students.
Regardless of the context of my teaching, I will first administer
Schlagel’s (1982) Qualitative Spelling Inventory to all students. Then, I will group students by spelling
ability so that I can provide them differentiated instruction in small groups. To make word study more meaningful, for ELLs
especially, these spelling words will also be vocabulary words, as recommended
in Words Their Way, “Words that are
featured due to spelling issues must also become vocabulary words, and should
be used and analyzed in conversational speech and connected text as a part of
every lesson” (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, and Johnston, 2008, p. 218).
In my word study instruction, students will
learn meanings, word patterns, and how to spell the word. I feel that the majority of my instruction
in spelling at the high school level (in an ELA classroom) will be for
intermediate readers and writers at the syllables and affixes stage (Bear et.
al., 2008). Most of my high school
students, especially ninth graders, struggle with doubling consonants at
syllable junctures, with unaccented final syllables, and with inflectional
endings like –es, ‘s, -ing, etc. With a
group of students who were at this level, I would teach them, “1. how consonant
and vowel patterns are represented in polysyllabic words; 2. what occurs when
syllables join together; 3. how stress or lack of stress determines the clarity
of the sounds in syllables, and 4. how simple affixes change the usage,
meaning, and spelling of words” (p. 204).
I would teach and model how to use structural analysis to figure out spelling
and words in context while reading.
Students would first need to “Examine the word for meaningful parts—base
words, prefixes, or suffixes, 2. try out the meaning in the sentence; check if
it makes sense in the context of the sentence and the larger context of the
text that is being read, 3. if the word still does not make sense and is
critical to the meaning of the overall passage, look it up in the dictionary,
and 4. record the new word in your word study notebook” (p. 205).
To
implement word study, I will “…begin with demonstrations in small groups and
discussion of the generalizations revealed by the sorts; 2. [have] students
sort their own set of words and check their sorts; 3. [invite] oral and written
reflections [that] encourage students to clarify and summarize their
understandings; and 4. [create and assign] extension activities across the week
[to] reinforce and broaden students’ understandings (218).
We
would work through our word study using word sorts, class discussions, graphic
organizers like semantic maps to learn vocabulary, and through various games. We would play games such as those outlined in
The Howard Street Tutoring Manual
like pitty pat (similar to rummy where word patterns are matched),
concentration, and word bingo (Morris,
2005). Other games that I think will be
beneficial and engaging at this level are Prefix Spin and Homophone Solitaire
(Bear et. al., 2008, p. 226-227).
Because students are more willing to learn when they are having fun and
are more apt to learn when they have multiple exposures to a topic, I plan to
use Bloodgood’s (2004) daily root activities, and homophone and homograph
studies. We will play Homophone Rummy in
which spelling-meaning connections are emphasized. I also plan to implement Bloodgood’s instructional
strategy for teaching homographs (p. 257-259) where students play concentration
and complete Homograph Think Sheets to get them to think about multiple
meanings. As these activities show, I
plan to use a systematic, integrated approach to word study and spelling.
To
motivate and support student interest in independent, self-selected reading, I
use SSR and literary circles in my classroom to introduce students to a love of
reading and to sustain this joy. Choice
is key to motivation, especially for older adolescents who will rebel against
anything they are made to do. Everyone has interests, and once those
interests are known, anyone can be motivated to read something.
My
first year teaching in Caldwell County where Communication Skills is a
precursor to English I, I instituted the aforementioned SSR program in my
advanced classes, classes primarily composed of males. I consulted Burke’s
(2000) Reading Reminders: Tools, Tips, and Techniques to design a reading workshop
with SSR at its center. As a
rookie teacher, I set up the program with zeal, expecting it to work perfectly
from the outset. After all, who wouldn’t
like to read anything of their choice for fifteen minutes daily?
Soon,
the behavior was prohibitive to reading.
I quickly realized that my students needed motivation to willingly read. I decided to have students complete interest
surveys I modeled after Burke’s. Based
on those, in which students primarily listed hunting, fishing, cars,
four-wheeling, and comic books as interests, I was able to more effectively
stock an inviting classroom library. I
remember clearly the boys rushing into the room to see who could get to the
books about deer hunting first. I had to
set up a system for students to check out the books they were interested in
because they couldn’t stop reading. I
noticed the shelves getting barer, but hey—I must have been doing something
right for students to steal books!
Using
literature circles to read novels and short stories also provides motivation to
the students for many of the same reasons as SSR (Carrison et. al., 2005).
Students are able to read materials of their choice, but also a social aspect
plays a role. Students are grouped by
book or story choice and find themselves engaged in a safe “community,” sharing
their ideas and opinions in a variety of roles.
The Language Arts—Reading and Beyond
Since my courses
are English Language Arts, I would be very remiss indeed if the language arts
were not at the core of my daily teaching.
I utilize an integrated model of instruction, in which all of the
domains of the language arts are touched upon daily—listening, speaking,
reading, writing. I use a thematic
approach to literature in both my Communications Skills course and in my World
Literature classes. However, I find that
teaching literature by genre is more effective in English I where we take a
comparative look at text structures across genre, but even so, I still pull in
other genres that are related thematically to the genre at hand.
As
a bell ringer in all of my classes, I start with a Daily Oral Language (DOL)
activity. The DOL is a sentence that I
have written incorrectly on the board.
This sentence will either use literature or the classroom as its context
and will focus on errors that have been covered in class mini-lessons or
particular errors that I have noticed as a trend in student writing but have
not yet covered in a mini-lesson.
Students copy the sentence, make corrections, and then we discuss the
sentence. After this activity, we usually
either discuss a piece of literature from the day before or begin a new piece
in the manner that I outline below. By
the time any given class is over, students have read aloud and silently, whole
class, independently, and in pairs. They
have typically done some type of writing.
At least twice a week, my students give informal presentations, such as
showing a picture they have drawn of a character and explaining it. I also show related films because media
literacy is an important component of language arts. In this way, I integrate the language arts
into a cohesive whole, a whole that does not senselessly isolate skills.
When
teaching a piece of literature, I always start with a five minute quick write
that asks students to respond to a quote or a statement. This writing activates
prior knowledge, sets a purpose for reading, and sparks curiosity. For example, prior to reading Richard
Connell’s (1924) “The Most Dangerous Game,” I invite students to write in their
journals about a time that they felt they were in danger and how they reacted. Then,
I take volunteers to share their responses.
This response sharing is followed by a class discussion in which I write
“game” on the board. I tell students
that the title of the story we are about to read is “The Most Dangerous Game,”
and we brainstorm games that are dangerous.
I’ll typically get answers like “Russian Roulette,” “football,”
“soccer,” “wrestling,” or “hockey.”
Then, if no one has mentioned that “game” can also be animals that are
hunted, I steer the conversation in that direction and get answers like
“jaguars,” “cougars,” “lions,” “tigers,” “bears.”
After
writing all of these responses on the board, I tell students that we are going
to read to find out who, if anyone, made a correct prediction. We read the story aloud in a DRTA format,
alternating between me reading and the students reading. We stop at logical points in the text to
make, adjust, and/or discuss predictions.
We also discuss important plot and textual elements as we go along.
One
way that I keep students engaged while reading, aside from our talking, is to
assign an activity for during reading.
For this particular story, that activity is to track imagery at certain
points in the text using an active reading guide. For instance, we stop and think about the
scene where Rainsford falls overboard into the “blood warm” waters of the
Caribbean into a night so dark he can’t see his hand in front of his face. We reread this passage, and the students
write down which senses are activated and tell how they would feel in a similar
situation. This activity also teaches
writer’s craft—the craft of painting “word pictures” with descriptive language.
This
story also lends itself to discussing foreshadowing, figurative language,
irony, and character foil, which are also elements of the author’s craft. When we finish reading the story, we talk
about the above literary elements, as well as direct and indirect
characterization. Students are placed in
small groups and go back through the text, finding examples of irony and other
literary elements and then explaining their findings to the class in an
informal presentation. We then talk
about archetypes and brainstorm stories and films that have this man versus man
theme, like The Pest (1997) and other
movies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Dangerous_Game#Movies). We view The
Pest and do a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting this film with the
story. We also discuss the genre of
slapstick comedy.
I
teach writing in several ways. I take
writing samples and create mini-lessons based on those. I have students keep portfolios and
periodically analyze their own writing.
I operate a writing workshop in my class based on Burke’s (2003) model. Students have the choice of what to write
about. For two to three days a week for
an entire semester, we have the writing workshop. I start each class with a relevant
mini-lesson, at first focused on the rules and guidelines of the workshop and
later on writer’s craft. Then, we have a
quick status-of-the-class, where I go around the room and students tell me what
paper and what draft they are working on.
The rest of the time, students write or work at peer-conferencing
stations set up around the room. When
they are ready to have their paper revised for content, they come to me and
read their paper aloud to me so I analyze content and not grammar. We continue this process until the end of the
semester, when I ask students to have completed three completed pieces of
writing that have been through the entire writing process.
My
philosophy is that good writing is good writing, so even in the courses where
my immediate goal is to prepare students for the 10th grade writing
test, I do not drill the students on a meaningless formula with abstract
prompts. Instead, I try to create
writing activities embedded in literature.
However, in Burke County, Communications Skills is a course whose
primary focus is writing, and the amount of literature I was able to
incorporate was limited. I feel that
writing has to be taught in conjunction with literature because the literature
provides exemplars. This past semester,
I created thematic writing units and used children’s books as my primary
literary models. Since the writing test
is informational and includes definition papers as a possible prompt, one of my
units was “Define Yourself,” a unit that we sustained for the first nine weeks. I feel that the theme gave my instruction
continuity and gave the writing a meaningful context. After all, students write best about what
they know, and what do they know better than themselves? We learned how to write good topic sentences,
good introductions, and good leads. We
learned what a thesis statement is and how it sets up the organization of an
essay. We analyzed the state rubric for
the writing assessment. We talked about
how to read a prompt and incorporate the language of the writing in our
papers. Through it all, I supported
their writing with extensive modeling. I
wrote on the overhead and used a think-aloud process to model how I constructed
introductions and body paragraphs. We
also wrote essays as a whole class in this manner. My students received extensive scaffolding in
the writing process, first only being asked to write a sentence, then a
paragraph, and so forth of essays.
I
also used creative writing in this class.
Wordless picture books gave my ELLs the confidence they needed to be
creative writers because the story frame was already there in the pictures—they
just needed to supply the words (Cassady, 1998; Reese, 1996). We used our journals as places to begin
writing without judgment, as a place to germinate ideas until they were needed.
When
teaching genres, like the short story mentioned above, I integrate media
(movies, music) and poetry of a similar theme to provide a richer exploration. I
introduce the genre, teach its structures, and discuss the similarities and
differences across genres. We look at
exemplars of specific genres. I have
students write in a variety of genres. I
use the multi-genre project to teach and reinforce our study of genres
(Moulton, 1999).
I
teach author’s craft explicitly and implicitly through vocabulary,
mini-lessons, literary models, and our own writing, as explained by Piazza (2003). One such mini-lesson on author’s craft is a
lesson I’ve developed on audience. We
view a clip of Lemony
Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), discuss the ways in which Count Olaf
differs in his words and actions between the two audiences (Mr. Poe and the
children), talk about code-switching and registers, and finally write letters
to three different audiences and share them, analyzing the features of the
language used for each audience: word
choice, tone, and details. I have
developed mini-lessons on many aspects of the author’s craft: strategies of organization, tone, voice,
character development, and literary elements to name a few. I introduce the element, define it, and show
it in literature before asking students to incorporate and/or examine the
element in their own writing.
Poetry is my passion,
so I teach and integrate it in a multitude of ways. I teach poetry as a genre, poetry as
creative, personal, and research writing, poetry as a response tool. When I teach poetry, the most important
concept I try to convey is that poetry is fun.
I use magnetic poetry to teach grammar and parts of speech (Faulkner,
2007). We write conjunction poems after
we learn the coordinate conjunctions. As
a response tool, I offer poetry as an option to respond to SSR books and to
books and stories read in class. I have
had students create “found poems” from the text of The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint- Exupéry, 1943) to convey its central themes. Students also write poems that explore their
feelings after reading such emotional texts as Wiesel’s Night. When doing research,
I offer students the option of writing I Poems that incorporate their
findings. This past semester, students
in my ELL communication skills class researched the countries they were from
and presented the information in this format.
It’s amazing how many facts they were able to convey in so few
words! Also, poetry used in this way was
not as threatening for these students as a full-blown research paper would have
been.
As a genre, I teach
poetry by first discussing what poetry is and isn’t,
debunking the myth that poetry has to rhyme.
We talk about how poetry can be as simple as a gentle breeze on a warm
day or the way a baby puckers his mouth as he sleeps. Poetry is not just written—it is a certain
aesthetic. We write poems defining
“poetry.” We learn vocabulary related to poetry—stanzas, lines, line breaks,
couplet, iambic pentameter, and so forth.
We study and write various types of poems. I share my own poems with them as we study
each type. I invite them to bring in
their favorite poems to share with the class.
We read poems widely—from the classic to the modern to the silly. We listen to c.d.s of authors performing
their own poetry. We take field trips to
poetry readings. We study music as
poetry, hip-hop as poetry. We analyze
“Drops of Jupiter” by Train for poetic elements. I have had students create PowerPoint poetry
performances, write argumentative papers to explore how a song of their choice
is a poem, memorize and recite their favorite poem, and create poetry notebooks
just to name a few activities.
I teach poetry as a
genre, but I also integrate the study of poetry into related texts. For example, when reading Romeo and Juliet we
learn about the sonnet and write our own.
When reading Night, we read
the poems that children wrote while at Terezin
Concentration Camp from I Never
Saw Another Butterfly. When reading Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), we read “Sympathy” by
Laurence Dunbar and discuss how this book may embody the theme of this poem and
what the title of the book means. With
my ELL students, we also read Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing Up
Hispanic in the United States
(1994) and write personal poetry in response to these poems. In my creative writing course, I also used
the poetry workshop as a means for students to get feedback on their
writing. Each student had to bring in
one poem they had written during the semester for peer review. This activity taught students how to analyze
poetry, and how to make and take constructive criticism.
Responses to Reading and
Literature
I ask students for a variety of responses to
reading and literature. Some of these
are simply oral—“Why do you think Elie Wiesel calls his memoir Night?”
Others require responses in drawings—such as to draw a scene from Night that was particularly vivid due to
imagery and explain why. Other responses
are personal essays, such as which character from the book are you most like
and why? Sometimes the response writing
is more informal like journal writing, such as the following prompt for Romeo and Juliet—“Have you ever dated
someone your parents didn’t approve of?
Give details.” I also ask for
literary analysis papers, like comparing Romeo
and Juliet to West Side Story.
I use reader’s response
logs as a way for students to respond, especially to SSR. I ask that students connect the text to
themselves and to the world. I use
letters to the author and letters to characters as responses. We have debates and court trials with such
books as Steinback’s Of Mice and Men (1937),Cooney’s Driver’s Ed (1996), and
short stories like Stockton’s (1882)“The Lady, or the Tiger.” We write alternate endings. I ask students to complete creative projects
in response to reading. For example,
after reading Romeo and Juliet, I had
students to create a mask to represent a character of their choice. Then, they wore the mask while presenting it
and explaining its symbolism. I have
also used this same tactic with Sophocles’s Oedipus
Rex. After reading Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2001), by Ann
Brashares, one activity was for
them to get into groups and to decorate a pair of jeans like the girls in the
book did, with rules of their circle of friends. They presented their rules, and we discussed
how a set of rules can reveal a lot about our personalities. After reading Ferris’s (2001) Bad, I asked students to create a slang
dictionary. After reading “The Truth is
Like the Sun,” and discussing Elvis Presley’s quote, “Truth is like the sun,
you can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away,” I asked students to
do a truth experiment in which they told the truth for an entire day. Their results were written up using the
scientific method, and we discussed this experience the next day. As a follow up, we watched Liar, Liar (Shadyac, 1997) and wrote
about universal themes.
I feel that my role as
an English teacher can be equated to that of a magician. I have a bag of tricks that I use to keep my
teaching relevant to the lives of the students and to keep them interested and
motivated to read and write. I am
constantly adding to that bag of tricks.
I love being creative, and one of my favorite things to do is to come up
with fun activities for my students to do after reading. My work in the masters program and the post masters program has given me
many other activities to add to my repertoire, like the I Poem, wordless
picture books, the multi-genre project, word sorts and word games,
comprehension strategies, vocabulary strategies, and fluency strategies.
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