Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

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...

10-29-08 Today we started writer's workshop in earnest. Yesterday we went over the rules of the workshop (which I'll try to link here). The main rule is that students at their seats can not talk with one another. They can, however, go to the peer conferencing corners to quietly discuss drafts in progress. Once they have conferenced , they must fill out a conference sheet and attach it to the appropriate draft in their learning logs. Also, I have a basket on my desk that students can put drafts in for me to look at. But when they come to work with me, they must read their drafts aloud. It's amazing the errors they catch on their own this way, and having them read to me allows me to focus on content and form rather than conventions. I started off the class with a status-of-the-class meeting. This meeting is important in writer's workshop because it establishes the routine, allows me a record-keeping device, and allows the students to see where other students are at in ...

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, s...