Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

My high interest low vocabulary book, Cars! made at Tar Heel Reader High Interest, Low Vocabulary Books for Older Struggling Readers When young children are learning to read they do so using books that are at their instructional level--books they can read independently with little help from others.  These books are designed to capture the readers' interest and they are written using appropriate vocabulary. What happens, however, if you don't learn to read as quickly as those around you? You could find yourself a high school student (or beyond) struggling with basic reading.  If so, you will quickly realize that the books at your instructional reading level could very well be too childish for you.  What is the solution?  High interest, low vocabulary books or books designed to keep an older person's interest while still being written at a level that makes word identification easier and making meaning more accessible.   Where can these high interest low vocabu

11-10-08 Workday, parent conferences. Students who come in love telling their parents about this project. I think I'll invite parents to come in for an "author celebration" or something. Students will present pieces of the finished project on Wednesday. I am excited, just after looking over the few projects I have. These students are the lowest-performing students at the school for one reason or another, and I say this lovingly. I think that they are quite capable; I never lower my expectations! But for those people who think that these types of projects only work with honors or AIG students--I just wanted you to know. Many of them were in summer school, have been retained, are in group homes, have been at the alternative school. I'm excited because they got excited! Of course there were some bumps, but everyone worked on these! I am going to work on a set of questions that will allow for student input on the project--what did they like, what didn't they like, wh

11-04-08 Election day! Students are taking too long on their first and second genre pieces! They need to work faster. They are also talking TOO much. I am circulating, pointing out to students who think that they are multi-tasking that they are actually sitting and talking with pencil in mid-air. This type of intervention seems to be semi-effective, as I am timing how long some just sit and chat. I hate days like this. Glitter all over genres where it doesn't belong, students sitting in peer conferencing corners without drafts, Ah Ha! I have been giving daily participation grades. That's how I deal with these time-wasters! Those who don't complete what they said they would at the beginning of class are breaking their contracts with me. More mini-lesson on genres--newspaper articles aren't covered in glitter.... Note to self---hide the glitter next year, and beg student examples to help them see finished products. HW : Begin to bring in materials to bind these piece

11-3-08 The day before the election and students are excited. Some have decided to do an additional piece on this time in their lives because they feel it is so historic. YAY! The willingness and desire to do extra is exactly why I love this project. So, as students conference with me, I keep a chart of the date, what draft we worked on, and what we talked about. I gave a short mini-lesson/review to one girl today about sentence fragments. I also gave her a handout on sf rules and a quick practice sheet to do and bring back to me. I love writer's workshop because it allows me to do embedded grammar instruction individual to each student. My mini-lessons come from these conferences, too, and from my observations. Today's mini-lesson was on the author's notes (also called end notes or reflections). I shared a completed author's note from a student's paper, "I decided to write about my memory as a diary because it shows more feelings and emotions. It's just

10-31-08 Halloween! What a crazy day to have a controlled-chaos type of project going on, especially since our students are allowed to dress up! Today, students shared the genres they brought in. We looked at a menu from a Chinese restaurant. It had the restaurant's name, address, telephone number, and business hours on the front, as well as an attractive picture. It folded in two, with printing on all possible sides. The courses were broken up into appetizers, lunch and dinner specials, drinks, side items. There were pictures of the more popular items, and each item had a tantalizing description and a price. Then, we talked about how a menu might be used to share a story or a moment from our lives. One boy decided to use a menu to write about his favorite Thanksgiving, rather than the journal format he had chosen. He decided that he could title the menu "A Pendley Thanksgiving, 2007" and that he could, as part of the description, list who cooked the food. I liked the id

10-30-08 Another part of writer's workshop is to start each class with a relevant mini-lesson. As I observed yesterday, some of the students really didn't still quite "get" how genres differed from one another. One student worked on a wanted poster that was about a dog that he had lost. When he started the final draft, he promptly covered the edges in glitter ! So, in today's mini-lesson, I used that as an example and we talked about why a poster looking for a lost dog wouldn't be covered in glitter. We talked about what it WOULD look like--it would probably say "Lost Dog" or "Missing Dog" in large letters at the top. It would probably have a description of the dog and would include a picture. It would be neatly written so people could read it. The dog's name would be included. A phone number to reach the owners would be listed on the poster ( flyer ) and could even be on tear-off strips at the bottom. Among the facts would be where the

10-28-08 Today, students finished their planning. They picked four of their memories that they really wanted to write about and began making the hard decisions. They had to decide which genre(s) they wanted to use to write about each memory and then write a 1-2 sentence statement explaining why they had made that specific genre choice. (These statements about genre choice later become part of their author's notes in the final product.) After I modeled this part of the process, I just walked around the room and observed, stopping to help students at this juncture who seemed particularly stumped. For example, one of my students lost her baby brother several years ago to a tragic accident--he was run over by a family member in the driveway. This student at first wanted to write an obituary to show her memory. In her rationale, she wrote, "Obituaries are how we show that someone died." When I talked to her about the genre format, she realized that an obituary would reall

A Word Cloud of Key Words from this Blog Post 10-27-08 Wow! The kids were excited about this project! It was hard turning the class over to the writer's workshop format, even though I fully believe in it, and I've done it before! ( update: I now ONLY teach using a writer's workshop format.  It has revolutionized my teaching and my students' engagement and therefore their learning) We started class today with an overview of the project, a discussion of what memoir is, and brainstorms about our lives. Some of the students had a hard time feeling that they had anything to write about, although I stressed to them that their memories don't have to be tragic or adventurous or whatever to be important. I modeled this portion on the board as I did a simple brainstorm of things that had occurred in my life that I might like to write about (using a list format).   Students are to do all of their planning and drafting in their learning logs, the spiral bound books they

A Word Cloud of Key Words from this Post MultiGenre Memoir--My Daily Reflections and Lessons (Click on the title for a link to PART of my multigenre memoir at ASU) Time--2 weeks 90 minutes a day Level--9th grade English 1 (easily adaptable) I started this memoir project two weeks ago. We began work on our projects after students read Tears of a Tiger , by Sharon Draper. They loved the book, by the way. Throughout the reading, we had meaningful and authentic discussions about the author's use of genre, why for instance she opened the book with a news article that objectively discusses the tragic car accident before she flashed back to conversation in the locker room beforehand. The following notes are from my observations in and after class as we worked on the project. This particular project was completed with two year-long English 9/Reading classes. The highest reading level is 6th grade, and many of the students are EC, ELL, or 504. I adapted this project from http:/