How do we make our children want to care about bigger things? Can we?

     I've always been told that as educators we can't make our children want to do something that they don't want to do.  I've always second guessed that.  I visited a site today for an assignment in one of my classes  www.esrnational.org that gave this teacher a new view, if you will.
     This site was founded in 1982 and has tons of programs that help educators with ways to reach children.  Some of these include advisory programs, after school programs, and book reviews.  Some of the ideas mentioned I have seen my school attempt; such as, the academy camps offered this summer, after school tutoring, group led parent/teacher conferences, and PLC meetings.  Hopefully with a little more experience and organization, our school will be a shining example of what this site discusses.  We are getting there, it seems.
      This site also includes lesson plans geared towards thinking and reasoning skills: five levels of conflict, child soldiers, and mapping global conflict.  All of these put children into situations where they must empathize with dire global anomalies, and do research, presentations, and cooperative learning to figure out what is going on in the world and how they can help or at the very least express gratitude that most of what they are discussing, they haven't had to experience first hand.

     At any rate, I've always heard that you can't make children care about something if they just don't want to, but I don't agree.  I just think there are different ways of doing it.  This site provides teachers with some of those ways.  We want our children to be aware and helpful of things going on around them, so we should expose them to these things and see just what kind of reactions we get.  I think our kids just might shock us...in a positive way.

Thanksgiving Holiday

During my holiday, I am grading papers, working on MAT assignments, and remodling my new home.  Not really much of a "break," but in the mix of all this.  I was also thinking about a lesson that will help my students finish up the novel we've been reading and study for the TLI tests.  What if they wrote a letter to the US government about the treatment of the Japanese in the interment camp from the perspective of one of the characters.  They would have to use at least two text statements, maintain first person point of view, maintain character voice, and use one example of figuaritve language.  I might have them look up pictures and/or information about the camp online to help with visual aspects of the letter, as well.  I just hope I have time to do what I want to do.  Time is an issue when teaching, I've learned.

Farewell to Manzanar...no really...

I am just sitting here tonight, Sunday night, right before Thanksgiving week, thinking of ways that I can finish teaching my novel in two weeks.  Yes, that's right, two weeks left of teaching time in the semester and that's not counting the two days I have to give TLI tests.  We are reading Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, which is a book about a young Japanese girl struggling to find herself while living in an internment camp in California during World War II.  This novel deals with racism, alcoholism, family abuse, historical facts, a little geology, and overall, many literary qualities that come in handy when teaching English; such as, juxtaposition, simile, metaphor, polysyndeton, symbolism, etc.  My problem is that we've only made it to chapter ten, and the novel has twenty-two chapters.  I was thinking that I could read excerpts from the work that dealt with the most important factors of the novel, just to teach what I really want them to know.  That way, I'm covering everything I need to cover for the students.  I'll be glad when I can really say...farewell to Farewell to Manzanar.

Watching Movies in the Classroom: Yay or Nay?

So, it's right before Thanksgiving holiday, and several of my students have already said that they would be absent the Friday before.  I was trying to think of a lesson that wouldn't put too many of them behind, but that would still relate to what we are doing in the classroom and be fun at the same time.  I decided to show a movie that is full of figurative language, and somewhat relates to the novel we are reading since there isn't a movie based on this novel: Farewell to Manzanar.  I decided to show Chronicles of Narnia:  The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.  Both are during World War II, both have small girls as the heroine, and both include allusion, hyperbole, metaphor, symbolism, etc.  I have made out a question and answer sheet that uses all levels of  Marzano's questioning in hopes that my students can find the figurative language within the movie without my spoon feeding it to them.  My question to all of you teachers out there is...Are movies okay to show in class?  I don't want to be THAT teacher who "shows movies to her students."  But if they are having to think, is it okay?  If the movie is based on a book, is that okay since it is sort of an introduction to a classic that they may want to read on their own?  I want your opinion.

I'd like to invite everyone to my classroom web page!

I've been keeping up with a classroom web page, and I'd like to invite all of my followers.  The address is http://www.mrshalls9thenglish.webs.com/ This web page includes pictures of projects, daily assignments, a calender, a homepage with many links, and classroom rules.  I hope all of you will check it out and give me some feedback on what I could add to make it better!

Let's talk books, people...ones our kids will actually like...

    This summer, I was trying to figure out what kids in the ninth grade actually like to read.  I already knew about the vampire craze:  Cirque du Freak, Twilight Saga, Vladimir Todd.  I had already read books like Emily Strange, and Gossip Girl.  I wanted to read something that wasn't fantastical.  Something that teens could read, in the pg-13 range.  After weeks of searching, I finally found one, albeit one that only girls will probably be interested in. Tee hee. ;)




Young adult novel



Falling is Like This by Kate Rockland is a contemporary story about a female journalist still living at home, who falls in love with a famous punk rock star, but finds her independence in the end.  The protagonist is about twenty-two, so I was worried about students connecting, but in the end, I realized that reading about someone who was older who makes not so great decisions might be an eye opener for some of my students who are struggling to find who they are.  Some iffy situations occur in the novel that may not be so great for students; such as, drinking, allusions to sexual content, drug use, and language, but Huckleberry Finn, The Awakening, Catcher in the Rye, and Of Mice and Men are all classics and have all been used in the school systems for literary purposes.  I don't think that this book could be categorized as a "classic" just yet, but I do think that it should be on every high school English classroom library shelf.  :)  Courtney Love's caption on the front cover of the novel in and of itself will attract those students who don't normally read to think twice.  Maybe they'll think, "Hmm, books can be cool."

This is what I wish my classroom looked like...

Unfortunately, I have a little tiny room with little tiny but heavy desks that I have to move around everywhere when I want to do cooperative learning.