Some pictures of goings on in the North Lake English Classroom. Select a picture for a larger view:
1) Mapping out Percy Jackson’s Hero’s Journey Across the U.S. 2) List of major themes found in The Hunger Games conceived and generated by the 8th Grade literary geniuses 3) Sacred Reading
8th graders,
For your response to your Sacred Reading today, write to Taylina (who is all the way up in Alaska!) about the book you are reading. Your responses will need to be approved by me before they are posted, so be sure that they are spell-checked and examples of your best writing. DO NOT use text-speak, as this is a school assignment. Simply write your response as a comment. After you receive my approval, you can submit.
Ms. Phillips
The Hunger Games is an amazing book because it has all of the elements for every possible audience: action for the boys, deep and complex themes for adults and students alike, and last but not least…Romance.
When teaching The Hunger Games, the romance and love triangle between Peeta, Katniss, and Gale is often overlooked and we, as teachers, tend to focus more on the setting, themes, etc. But, if you ever happen to be teaching this book on Valentines Day, this is actually a great chance to not only dig deeply into the characters, but also let the kids talk about what most of them are probably going through in their own lives: LOVE!
So, here is a great lesson plan that worked really well with my students in an attempt to connect this sometimes depressing novel with the very undepressing theme of love.
Objectives: Students will be able to define and identify different elements of indirect characterization through the context of the book The Hunger Games. They will select quotes that reveal different ways the characters “show” love in the book.
1) First, have students freewrite about love to get them in the mood.
2) Introduce the 5 languages of love to the students and allow students to share their personal connections: 1) Words of Affirmation 2) Quality Time 3) Receiving Gifts 4) Physical Touch 5) Acts of Service
3) Ask students if they think Peeta loves Katniss. Ask how they know. Set them up for an introduction to indirect characterization.
4) Give a brief mini-lesson on how authors reveal the complexities of characters through many techniques including using dialogue, showing the character’s thoughts, their physical appearance, and the reactions they receive from other characters. Inform the students that they will be focusing on these means of indirect characterization in order to prove who loves who in their book.
5) Give an example from the text. For example, Peeta shows his love for Katniss through “words of affirmation” or, Dialogue when he argues about her talents to Haymitch: “She’s excellent,” says Peeta. “My father buys her squirrels” (89). Gale, Katniss says, is her “confidant”. She tells him things that she would never say to anyone else (112). This could be an example of how Katniss loves Gale because she tends to show her love through both quality time and words of affirmation.
6) After students understand what you are asking them, they should search for evidence in their text for who loves who. I found that supplying them with a table/graphic organizer helps them know what is expected of them.
7) Lastly, students should put what they find into writing and turn in a page where they analyze the characters and come to some sort of conclusion regarding the love triangle between Gale, Katniss, and Peeta.
“This is the Dream” by Olav H. Hauge
This is the dream we carry through the world
that something fantastic will happen
that it has to happen
that time will open by itself
that doors shall open by themselves
that the heart will find itself open
that mountain springs will jump up
that the dream will open by itself
that we one early morning
will slip into a harbor
that we have never known.
I feel inspired as a teacher whenever I read this poem. I aim to do this with my students: to open new harbors that they have never known. This often proves to be difficult when there are so many obstacles and jagged rocks in our way, but most of the time I see the small wonders.
On Valentines Day during our Monday Freewrite, I asked students to write about love. We went around the room and shared our responses and, feeling inspired, I wrote a love letter to the students. It’s sappy, I know. The kids thought so too. All I got was “That’s not a love letter! It’s about school!” Yeah, well, I’m a teacher :
Dear students,
I, as your teacher, would like to say that I love to see how your dreams come true each day. How when you read a book you are one step closer to reading the world around you. How you recognize the person you’ve always considered an enemy to be like the lost and lonely character that might actually deserve love too. How when you write a page about how much you disagree with being forced to write a page, you are one step closer to having the abilities to change all of the cruelty in the world. So students, I would like to tell you that I love your future, I love your possibility, your dreams, and I love how I can see them all coming true.
Sincerely,
Ms. Phillips
A final thought: It’s awesome when work is something as enjoyable as reading. So, here’s a picture of students hard at work:
In pic: 7th Grade Ladies reading book...5? in the Percy Jackson Series. It's quite wonderful to assign book one of a series and then have kids gobble up the rest of the series on their own without me even forcing them too!
Going through some old papers that I wrote from Grad School, I came across a little gem that made me start thinking about the past few months in my new job here at North Lake School. It was an evaluation of my year student teaching. Reading it over, I very much appreciate the optimism and passion I had, but I also slowly realized that my ideas and hopes still have not changed–and I am happy for that. I am not going to lie, I have been spending far too much money on books, the couch in the class is looking a little rugged after only three months, and I by no means have dry-erase boards velcroed to the desks, but you know, I feel like I and the students are all well on our way to becoming a community of readers and writers.
All in all, this short reflection on my hopes as a teacher continues to motivate and inspire me and I am happy I ran across it. As I read it over, I realize how important it is to continuously reflect on your teaching and to look back on the reflections from previous years so as not to lose that new teacher spark. In recording our thoughts, reflections, and practices, we have a record of the growth we have made, as well as the possible setbacks we may have missed.
What I learn most from re-reading the following evaluation of my teaching and hope for my future is that I never want to lose the rose colored glasses it seems every new teacher has but every veteran loses. I hope to always look at this wonderful profession as I did on the day I wrote this:
I am picturing myself in my classroom next year…I have somehow been given all of the money in the world, and my classroom is pure perfection. There are even dry erase boards velcroed to each desk for students to quickly jot down answers to spoken questions before they choose to share. But that’s not all; we also have a library full of pillow pets, and there is even a couch. In the corner is a broom for the students who can’t sit still so they can positively contribute to our community even when they are just “having a bad day”.
The students are comfortable because we have created a community where we respect the learning process and each other. When I think about the support my students need to reach their potential, I think about the support they need from, not only their teachers and other adults in their lives, but also from their peers. Kids can be cruel, but they don’t really want to be. We as teachers need to create a room where only the good is invited, where only confidence is built, and where students feel safe.
In support of my students as readers and writers, I also feel that it is important that each and every voice is heard in the classroom—even the quiet ones, even the one who must be separated from the group because they “just can’t seem to behave.” We are all different and we all have stories to tell. It’s important that strugglers and even the ones that make you want to pull your hair out are not left out—so often kids misbehave because they are not given the attention or patience needed for them to succeed.
Reading and writing allows each kid to share their story, and it is important that they see literacy as a tool, not a chore. That is the wonderful thing about reading and writing, it gives us a way to record and share our stories. In my classroom it is not going to be embarrassing to share a story about something that you have or are dealing with outside of school. Instead, it will be recognized as brave, bold, and daring—something to be respected.
Talking, reading, or writing about controversial issues going on in the world today also will not be avoided. There is literature that raises important questions that relate directly to our life but that are often avoided because of their “controversial” nature. I intend to let the sparks fly—I intend to allow my students to question the world around them…in fact, I will encourage it, even teach it. In the end, I want my students to leave my class after a day, at the end of the week, and at the end of the school year still thinking, still questioning, and above all, planning to make changes in their life for the better.
Now…as for my grade, I think I have received an A. First and foremost, I have worked really hard at being the best teacher I can be by doing classroom assignments to their fullest and taking care that they have been done in a way that relates to my teaching. I have made it to every class, participate regularly, and, above all, love what I am doing.
Teaching the importance of reading and writing is a large fete–enormous, actually. I am reminded of this daily, and try hard not to let it bog me down when it seems that in a class we have an unexpected setback.
As a younger teacher, I am lucky to still have fresh memories of the struggles most everyone faces in High School: the drama of friendship and first loves, the homework, the troubles at home. Through it all, I think about how much I learned in High School despite all of these distractions, and I try to tell myself that in 5 years all of this will mean something to my own students as well.
I remember my very favorite teacher in High School: Mr. Henry. He was passionate, excited about teaching, and worked hard to engage every student–but I fell asleep in half of his classes throughout the year due to the fact that they came right after lunch. It’s strange, I don’t even have any memories of him ever waking me up.
I had an epitome this week in reflecting on my own frustration with dozing students. When I catch my own students dozing in class when they should be reading, paying close attention to all of the incredibly important things that I think I have to say, or learning from merely being aware of their surroundings–which isn’t possible if you are asleep–I wake them up. True, my favorite teacher in High School never woke me up, but now–years later–I sure wish he had. I think about all of the important history I missed out on and how much I enjoyed his class when I was engaged and willing to learn.
My love for learning came from those teachers that didn’t let me slack off. I loved Mr. Henry, but it ends up I didn’t actually learn much from his class. The classes that taught me to be a hard worker and lifelong learner are those classes I dreaded–Mr. Farmer made me read a Chapter of Invisible Man a night and turn in a 1-2 typed page every single day, but when I finished it, that book found a special place in my heart. He introduced me to other amazing books–ones that I found special complexities in through my writing and that shaped the way I still think today: Brave New World, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Fountainhead, Siddhartha, and the list goes on.
It is difficult to teach learning, which is all reading and writing is. When you read, you think; when you write, you think even more. Reading, writing, communicating, thinking: these are the basics to every single classroom, every single job, every single relationship, every single social interaction, or even physical activity–yet they don’t come naturally to us. We must learn how to think, how to analyze, how to criticize, how to question the world around us.
Reading and writing are like running. The more you do them, the stronger you get. The more you push through those moments that your mind tells you you just can’t work any harder, the farther you will be able to go tomorrow. In tackling the reading of difficult texts, it is so easy to give up–to say that it’s pointless to try to understand what seems like a foreign language some times. The ones who just don’t believe they CAN learn, who find reading and writing so hard that they refuse to even try, are the ones who seem to think their fate is fixed. But it is not. Our brains are muscles not fixed IQ scores. We can all learn, so long as we wake up and try.
On that note, I will let Will Smith give some final closing thoughts:
