Community Partner -- Baker Youth Club Tues 12/4

Tonight five students volunteered at Baker Youth Club in Warsaw. The students had the opportunity to read their short stories to the students. They read three stories and did two activities that went along with their stories.

The students read:
"A Knights Tale" by Eric Hammer
"The Case of Missing Herold"
& "The Words I'd Hoped I'd Never Hear"

After reading to a group of K-2nd graders and a group of third graders the students were in charge of activity time. They played dragons & knights (sharks and minnows) and freeze tag where the person who was "it" got to wear a white dentists coat, which went with the story "The Words I'd Hoped I'd Never Hear".

The students and the kids at BYC had a blast. Some of the staff members said the kids said the activities were really fun. After Stephen read "The Words I'd Hoped I'd Never Hear" a lot of the kids said "I remember the time I went to the dentist!" and they kept talking about things that had happened to them. They were very impressed that my students were "authors and illustrators" which is something the kids at BYC had learned in their after school class.

One of the best things that made my night was when one of my students came walking out of the office two volunteer applications for himself and another student. They promised the kids they'd be back!

Awesome, awesome night for PBL. The way that Shelby talked about it after we left made the whole project worth it and really affirmed that this PBL thing can have a great outcome. Imagine when I perfect it and it's not longer our first rodeo!

Senior Project 2: Celebrating Unsung Heroes, almost complete

I'm thinking we're going to be finished with the senior project #2 Celebrating Unsung Heroes early next week! They're finishing up their final drafts of their essays tomorrow and I'm going to give them their edited epics back on Friday.

We wills start laying the projects out in Open Office Draw. I think I came up with a layout that is going to work today and I think I want the kids to all do the same layout. However, I'm debating if that is "true" PBL. I'm thinking I'd like them to all look the same in when we print them out so they all look cohesive and are well organized. I've thought about asking one of the students in my class that is good at graphic design if he'd like to come up with a template.

This is what's left on our to do list:

• Final edits to epic
• Check essay final draft one last time
• Get pictures of their hero to me if I need to scan them OR save pictures to the computer
• Get things laid out in Open Office Draw
• Check one last time
• Print
• Laminate
• Display! 

Laying them out in Draw should take too terribly long, especially if we're using a template.  I'm going to try to take some pictures of them working on the computers on Friday and I want to take a final
picture of them with their posters when they're completed.

I'll try to remember to post a few of the epics on here as well!

Freshmen Project 2 Finished! Reflections & Reading with Community Partner

The freshmen have finished "Project 2: Becoming Published Authors"! Thank goodness!!! I need to learn how to keep these projects to 6 weeks max if not shorter! The kids complained they didn't have enough time, but I need to find the balance between enough time and too much time. I was ready to move on and have been for a few weeks. Although, I don't feel that way about the senior projects.

Reflection Writing: 
Yesterday I had the kids do some small reflection on their jobs (Publisher, Illustrator/Liaison, Lesson Planner) and what was good/bad about those. Then they got into groups with people who had the same job and discussed.

Today we reviewed how to write a reflection today looking at formatting, content, and the purpose. We created a short bullet list in each class that discussed the things I would be looking for and why we write them. I'm a little disappointed in my kids and their discussion skills thus far. I just don't think they're at the level they should be. That is part of the reason I'd like to create tighter, better planned projects so that we can really dig in and focus on those types of skills. I can definitely see how the project will change for the better next year. The kids will write a 1+ page reflection on their experience during this project focusing on the following four questions. They can go beyond these questions, but I should see them discuss each of these at some point in their reflection paper.

• Your favorite part of the project overall, why?Pieces of the project that you struggled with (beginning - end), how did you overcome these problems?
• What skill do you think you bring to the table in your group? What are you good at that a group would need?
• How could you have collaborated better with group members? What is a "group skill" you need to work on?
• What two things do you want to improve or work on during the next project?

Those are due on Friday so we'll see what I get. I'll post some of the better written ones here, without names of course. 

Baker's Youth Club -- Community Partner, Wrapping Up Project 2:
To wrap up this second project we had the books published at Hardesty Printing in Warsaw, Ind. I have four students that are going to Baker's Youth Club tonight at 5:30 to read to the kids and play through a few activities that they planned.  I'll post some pictures as soon as I get home. I think I'm going to spend some time writing my own reflection to share with the kids and I will post it here as well. I'll probably do that on the drive to my PBL Conference in Fort Wayne tomorrow since I don't have to drive.

Until tomorrow. 

Research Tool in Google Docs!

Research Tool Added to Google Presentation

This is awesome!!! We're definitely using this when we do our research papers during the opinion/editorial project! Hopefully all the kids will have Google accounts by that point!

November Follow Up Recap...

Another great day of PBL. Have my senior project at least outlined and I'll just need to refine over Christmas Break.

Here is a rought outline of what I want to do w/ seniors in the spring:
--Macbeth-looking at different adaptations and media (reading orig., movie in modern adaptation), writing/performing their modern adaptations....but I dont really have an "authentic" partner for this one.
--Inspiration and Influences in Literature-looking at reasons authors write (events in history, how they live, society values) as well as themes or how their writing influences history (religion, issues in society, love)
--Modern, Lord of the Flies...not sure with this one.

The next freshmen project is still wimming around up in my head. We're going to do The Odyssey and I'm thinking something with chatacter education and partnering with the elementary or middle school.

Here is my rough plqn for English 9 for spring semester:
--The Odyssey-chatacter ed w/elementary schools
--Opinion/Editorial-research paper, column
--Poetry-persuasive poetry, radion jingles? Not sure how this one will work with the standards, but someone did it with her 6th grades and it sounded cool

I know over our last few weeks before Christmas Break I want to work with them on final prep, working better as groups, finding and citing evidence on essays (to prep for their final).

PBL Academy Follow Up

Om our way to the follow up workshop for the PBL Academy workshop. I'm excited to get feedback from others and see what they've done.

Updates as we go.

Reading Groups

Students analyzing characters in their reading groups.

Student Facilitation/Leadership "AHA moment"

So I had an AHA moment in my English 12 class yesterday. I had two students who would not stop talking in their groups while we were collaborating on a TChart on the whiteboard. I'd finally had enough of talking over them and telling them to be quiet so I handed one of the students a dry erase marker and told him to take over. As I sat down at my desk I was skeptical because of his cocky attitude. After a few minutes I noticed something. The students were more likely to throw out answers while he was writing on the board and facilitating vs. when I was up there doing it.

I'm not going to lie, I did it just to call the student out and possibly watch him struggle with it a little. It was meant to be an AHA moment for him, but it wasn't until later last night that  I realized it was actually an big realization moment for me.

I realized that I need to start giving kids more control and teaching them how to lead/use these protocols for themselves. This is the third expectations protocol that we've done and rather than "training" them to take charge I've been facilitating. I realized that I need to start working on stepping out of the equation more so that they can start to lead and coach each other.

Having them writing things on the board rather than writing it myself may seem simple or like I'm being lazy, but I think it really engages not only the new facilitator but the other students as well. I'm going to try to step back into a role where I'm coaching on the sidelines.

Self-directed learning, Freshmen Knows and N2Ks

After going back and re-evaluating the steps of PBL I circled my freshmen around to work on our Knows & N2Ks (a step that we'd previously skipped). I gave the students a homework assignment to research and try to figure out the basics of short stories. They had to consider the following questions:
-What are the different parts of a short story?
-What qualities do good short stories have?
-Think about the things we talk about for book talks that you should have in your short stories

Students were prompted to use the Internet, if they had access at home, their literary books, or any other resources they could find.

After discussing their lists in their groups students received the rubric that I'll use to grade their individual stories. They used their rubrics to start forming their Know and Need to Know lists. Once we're finished with our Knows & N2Ks I'll start to build the scaffolding that will guides students through analyzing and planning their stories.

Refocusing on the Steps

So I realized after my fifth period started reading our first short story that I was rushing ahead. I had to pull myself back and re-evaluate the steps in PBL. It worked out well I think because it gave the kids a chance to review the steps. I started by telling the kids we've already done step 1 (entry event), and then I asked them what step we had skipped to. After some coaching a few kids guessed step 5 (scaffolding) because I was teaching them about short stories and we were analyzing our first story.

After they realized we'd skipped to step five we talked about the steps that we had skipped.
1: Entry Event
2: Driving Question
3: Problem Statement
4: Knows & N2Ks
5: Scaffolding
6: Final Deliverable

I shared my Driving Question with the kids. Then I gave them the formula that I learned this summer for Problem Statements. The students got in groups and brainstormed ideas for the problem statement. Each group shared their ideas up on the board then we worked as a group to condense our problem statements into one final statement.

I decided condense the three different class period's statements into one, but I also posted each classes individual problem statement on the white board in my room.

Good day to back-track

Had to take a step back today and evaluate. freshmen created problem statements, and they'll do knows and need to knows (n2k) tomorrow. Hopefully I'll remember to elaborate on here tomorrow.

Rubric frustration

I went to grade my first set of projects today and I'm now thoroughly frustated. I really hate the rubric format that I have set up, and I'm having a difficult time breaking away from it as I create the rubrics for my next projects.

I have to change the English 9 short story rubric since I decided I don't like the formatting. I also have to create the English 12 rubric for the heroes project. While I'm closer to an idea of what I want the final deliverable for tue seniors to look like, I'm not 100% there yet.

My struggle with the rubric is there's no definitive addition process for o, which I guess is how my rubrics have been in the past. (I think that's one of the main reasons it's extra frustrating.)

I think another thing that's throwing me off is the fact that the rubric I created this summer is more of a checklist where each level builds on the other using Bloom's Taxonomy. While this makes sense in practice, it's not really making sense on the rubric and end portion.

I feel like I can't break away from this template/format I adapted this summer. I hate when I get stuck in an idea that I can't seem to leave behind to start from scratch.

Oh well, tomorrow is another day I guess.

On a more positive note, I met with someone from the Warsaw Community Library and they gave us some great display space that I think is going to work very well for the senior hero project. I need to meet from the woman from BYC about the freshmen project...maybe I'll have the freshmen construct a list of questions for her this week when we do Knows/Need to Knows.

I should probably be reading some Poe and Beowulf this weekend as well, but there is only so much time in the day  right?

Project #2: Day 1 Entry event

While I again planned way more than we could get through I think the day went really well.

The kids are excited (most of them). After handing the Heroes flyer to the seniors and the Short Shory Night invite to the freshmen I heard multiple kids whispering and exclaiming that it was cool! A few are resistant but I think they'll adjust in time. Now I'll have to dig into more planning this weekend.

I'll share more about  what we went through for each entry event tomorrow. I'm exhausted, need my rest for picture day tomorrow, and I'm typing this on my phone.

Background & Excitement for Project 2

So as I sit here at my computer at 9:15pm, a time on the clock that I'm rarely awake to see, I've started to reflect on my first four weeks of school. This is my second year of teaching, and I feel totally different than I did last year. I feel in control. I feel relaxed (usually). I feel prepared. I feel excited. That last descriptor is one I would not have expected to use in the same sentence as "I feel..." twelve months ago.

At this point, although I'm slightly delirious from sitting at a desk for the past four hours, I really feel that I owe that excitement to my new way of teaching this year. I've revamped my lessons to fit what some would call the newest "fad" in teaching, Project Based Learning (PBL). While many would consider this a phase that will come and go I have to say that I'm in love.

Now, it may be too early in the year to tell but I find myself getting excited when I plan and even more excited to introduce the next topic of study to my students. I'm starting this blog to document my journey, and my students journey, into this new style of teaching and learning. Who knows maybe this will end up being the book that my husband keeps begging me to write.

I owe my late night work session tonight to preparing the "entry event" documents for my freshmen English and senior English classes. Tomorrow is the beginning of their second projects and the entry event introduces the community partner and next topic of study.

I'm only hoping that my students will be as excited about these next projects as I am!

Seniors Project #2: Celebrating Unsung Heroes

• We'll read Beowulf & Legends of King Arthur along with other stories about "heroes" throughout history
• We'll discuss the qualities of these different heroes (compare and contrast)
• We'll discuss how the authors of the various stories are able to portray the main characters as heroic
• What are different tactics they use in their writing to convince readers
• Then after much reading and discussion students will choose someone in their life or community that has these qualities
• Then they'll interview/research that person
• Take or find an environmental portrait of them
• Write a story about their life showing readers why that person is a hero
• The end products will be displayed at local libraries.

Freshmen Project #2: Becoming Authors and Illustrators

• They'll study and discuss various short stories
• Learn about characters
• Learn about plot
• Learn about visual imagery, metaphor, simile, etc.
• Learn about theme and voice
• Then they'll take everything they learned from analyzing stories and write their own!
• We'll research the world of publishing to work on editing and revision
• Eventually students will illustrate and publish (print and eBook) their stories