Self-determination

Today I asked my Grade 10 class to write their own rubric for the creative assignments I had given them.  I gave them an example, explained our new grading policy of Mastery (A), Proficient (B), Competent (C) and Partially Competent (D), explained how Proficient is being able to tick all the boxes but Mastery has a special something that lifts it above the proficient and they have to define what that special something is and said, "OK, you guys have handed in tons of assignments before, I think you know what makes top quality work and what doesn't.  Go into groups based on the assignment you chose and put together a rubric".  I was really impressed by the collaboration I saw and the results.
I had decided that if they couldn't come up with a good rubric I would use it anyway and then we could ask the questions, "What is wrong with this?  What are we really looking for?"
The thing I took away with me, though, was one girl who could not believe I would use the rubric they designed.  She asked, "Will you really use this?  You won't change it in anyway?" in several different ways. I assured her I would and even wrote the rubric into a google doc while she watched, ready to use next week.  But, how sad that she would think I would waste their time by designing a rubric and then discount it. 

Back!

After taking a sabbatical last year, I am back in the classroom and enjoying it. One of the things I was able to do while away was do a lot of reading and I have lots of new ideas to implement but I am remembering some sage advice of picking one or two rather than trying to do everything!
One of the last books I read was Daniel's Pink Drive.  This was insightful about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and I used some of the ideas in my prezi on assessment that I shared with my classes. (You can find the prezi here if you are interested).
One of the new things I am going to use this year is a blog with my Grade 9s.  I think it has the potential to improve their writing through more of a meaningful interaction with peers and writing for a wider audience than me.  At the moment I do not feel comfortable making it open beyond the class so maybe that will restrict the audience somewhat - but it's a start!  I decided to use kidblog as a safe option but wonder if edublog may have been better? I'm excited to see what might happen with this innovation.

Team Teaching

I have been team teaching with an older, more experienced colleague on the Much Ado About Nothing and I have really enjoyed it.  I think it's hard to genuinely team teach but we have done all the planning together and split the preparation and while I lead class discussion, my colleague can make comments or take the discussion in new ways at any time.  Plus, we both have been flexible in adapting what we are doing based on how the class pans out.  It has made me realise what I miss in teaching in a small school where teachers teach all of one grade - the synergy of talking through and reflecting on teaching.  It's a strength to have a team (or pair) of teachers teaching the same unit.

Audio

So, I decided that the class reading of Much Ado About Nothing was doing nothing for us as a class.  I investigated some audio versions that we could listen to and not have to try and figure out meaning as we read but listen to an interpretation and try and figure it out.  There's a difference in my head, not sure it sounds that way on "paper"!  (I guess that might be an idiom we have to explain in a historical context one day!).  I really wanted to find the free version of the Shakespeare's Globe play that the UK government made available but it is no longer available (boo).  There were two choices and I listened to the samples.  I did not like the voice of one's Benedick and the other was the BBC Radio version with David Tennant.  I downloaded it then realised as I was looking for the start of Act 2 (we did a good job of understanding Act 1 so didn't want to redo it) before class realised it had a Northern accent and a Scottish accent.  I didn't really think about it before, so hope my class will be able to understand - they enunciate clearly but I know the accents!

Who Wants to be a Millionaire

I watched Slumdog Millionaire for the first time on Monday and I loved the idea behind it of how the answers to the questions reveal the character's life and the complexities of India in a creative way.
So, perhaps rather ambitiously, I decided we would try it as a class in our writing lesson today.  I have been playing around with how to do it most of this week and I finally settled on showing them a clip from the original show, then a clip from Slumdog to explain the premise, then gave them examples of questions and answers.  I thought thinking up questions would be too difficult and as that was not the purpose of the exercise, thought it better to provide some ideas although they were free to change/modify/create new ones. Then I asked them to think about how they could create stories from the question/answer.
I'm not sure how well it really worked - it seemed to be a bigger leap than I thought for them.  I still think the idea has potential but maybe I need to scaffold it differently.

Stream of Consciousness

I used an idea taken from an "ancient" book called Poetry in the Classroom (Mallick and Jenkins, 1983) that a colleague had left behind when she moved back to Australia.  The chapter was called 'What Happens When We Read a Poem' and it modelled a response to a poem by Sylvia Plath by showing the stream of conscious thought prompted by the poem and associations (and random thoughts that pop into your head for no reason!).  I thought it was a great way to show how analysis is really a series of engagements with the poem, that we all can do it, and that it takes a few readings of the poem to start to think deeper about what the poet is saying.
I photocopied the example in the book (although realised we did not need all 4 pages!!) and asked the class to individually pick one of four poems from the IGCSE anthology we are using.  Then (using the phonic phones again!) they read through the poem and noted thoughts and ideas as they thought of them repeatedly.  I was modelling for them - I use the computer and projector to do this so they can ask as I write and I can point out things I may have forgotten to mention until I do them - and when I could sense (after about an hour) they were reaching their limit I said they could wrap it up but I was so engrossed in what I was doing I had to tear myself away!!
As we had a bit of time left - double block today - I suggested they get into groups based on the poem they did and discuss some of the ideas they had and questions they still had.  This was interesting, and once again, we were all reminded how our responses are often personal and so varied.

Pipe Phones

I wanted my students to listen to the poem we were looking at today so I borrowed the pipe phones from Elementary and asked them to read the poems into them.  They absolutely loved this "low-tech" device and it met the purpose beautifully or reading the poem to themselves without being unbearably noisy or conscious of each other reading.  Some asked to keep it!
We then randomly formed groups of 4 and talked through the poem before coming back together as a large group and sharing different thoughts and ideas while one of the student recorded what we said on a document projected on the screen.
A good lesson.