If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. ~ Charlie Parker
my classroom
Featured in the NWP Annual Report
Dec 4th
If you read my blog (thank you), you know how much I support and respect the work of the National Writing Project. In my first year of teaching, I found the local affiliate (Western Massachusetts Writing Project) and took part in the Summer Institute, and I have been influenced by its philosophy and work ever since. I’m not sure how I would have been able to teach as I do with NWP friends and educators to turn to for help and for support and for partnership.
So it was a great honor when last year, the NWP contacted me to ask if I would be willing to let a photographer spend the day in my classroom to gather photos for a feature of me for the NWP Annual Report. I was a bit shocked but of course, I agreed. The NWP had just lost all of its federal funding and it hopes to use the Annual Report to make its case with the federal government for support, and for other grant-funding institutions.
As it turned out, and as I planned, the day the photographer came to hang out with us, we were doing a poetry unit and working on Poems for Two Voice podcasts with our iPod Touch devices. I recently received a few copies of the Annual Report, and passed a few on to our school administration, and I love the photos of my kids in the midst of their learning. And Paul Oh’s kind write-up of me was nicely done, too.
I showed the report to my students the other day, and they were duly impressed with the photos of last year’s students, and with me. But I told them that it was the work they are doing as writers that gets attention. It’s another motivational factor for them — the fact that the spotlight might shine at any moment. So, be ready for it.
Here is a link to the NWP Annual Report (click on 2010 Annual Report link) but I have also embedded it. My kids and I are near the end – pages 19 and 20 with one of my students featured in a full spread on page 2.
Peace (in the report),
Kevin
Crash! Boom! Bang! (Writing with Comics)
Dec 1st
We’re shifting into Figurative Language techniques as we move towards poetry — a bit earlier this year for us for scheduling reasons. The other day, we tackled onomatopoeia (the hardest word to spell when your type fast) by using comics as our jumping off point. We began with a Wordle list that I generated of various sound effects.
After talking about the use of sound effect words in comics and its use as an art form to denote action and sound on a flat page, and then looking at a comic page in which onomatopoeia was used, students then had the task of creating their own comic strip about whatever they wanted, using at least five examples of onomatopoeia. They did a nice job with their comics, and you could have heard a pin drop when they were working on them, too. They seemed surprised that we were doing comics for writing class. But any chance to give them a taste of some alternative form of writing and reading is something worth gravitating to. Don’t dismiss comics as juvenile literacy. There’s a lot going on in those frames.
See some of the other comics.
Oh, we also watched the short cartoon from the Dr. Seuss story, Gerald McBoing Boing (the boy who doesn’t speak words). The kids loved the video, even though the cartoon is pretty dated. But the show’s art is something I love — it is so very different from any other cartoon, particularly the Looney Toons of the same era. And since Gerald talks in sound effects, it is a perfect example of onomatopoeia. I have the DVD but, no surprise, you can find it online, too.
Peace (in the comic frames),
Kevin
One Student’s Vision of A Video Game
Nov 29th
We’ve been working our way into video gaming as a design lesson, slowly, and already, I can tell which students are getting hooked by the possibilities. Yesterday, one boy took me aside at the end of class. He’s one of those who is excited by the possibility that he is doing game design in school, and you can see his brain working overtime, trying to take advantage of the opportunity he now has to create video games with our Gamestar Mechanic site. He is one of the ones that I am diving into video game design for.
Here is our conversation:
“Mr. H, I started working on a new game this weekend.”
“I saw the games you posted. You did a nice job.”
“Not those. Another game. It’s going to be so big that the game will have multiple parts to it.”
“Levels? You mean, the game will have more than one ….”
“No,” he interrupted me, anxious to explain. “I have this whole story idea that involves animals escaping from captivity, and the game follows their journey as they run to freedom. They are going to have all these obstacles. I am going to design it so the story stretches over several games, like books in a series.”
I remembered now that he is reading The Warriors series.
“That sounds interesting.”
He nods. He looks to see if anyone else is listening in, for clearly, this is proprietary information that he doesn’t want to spill out yet.
“I am going to have all of these different challenges in it, and I am thinking of how I can use Gamestar to …” and then he launched into some various strategies, wondering what I thought, and so we chatted a bit about the way forward.
I have been struggling to get this particular student to expand his writing this year, to go deeper into his stories and in his reflections. I don’t think he has seen the “meaning” of our work in the class as something tangibly useful. So, I was all ears as he not only mapped out an interesting narrative (inspired by his reading) but also verbally mapped out the “writing” of the story as a video game. I will be interested to see how his project unfolds.
I should note that this is not a class project. This is not something I am assigning him to do (we will be doing a video game project eventually, but not yet). So, the motivation to create something meaningful for himself and for a larger gaming audience that will play his game is one of those moments that I am going to hang on to as we move forward. It’s a moment of insight that I might have otherwise missed if I ignored gaming as a passion for him, and for all of the other students who did not pull me aside but feel the same way.
Peace (in the game),
Kevin
Introducing Literary Characters: A student podcast project
Nov 25th
We’ve been working hard on character traits with our independent reading, pushing into different ways to view the characters in the novels they have chosen to read. One activity is have students introduce a character to an audience. In this case, the audience is the world, as we used our iPods and Cinch to podcast their piece of writing about a character. I gave them a basic framework and an example of my own, and then they worked on the writing and then recorded their introductions.
Here is a sample mix of some of the student voices:
Our podcasts can be found over at our classroom home at Cinch.
Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin
Giving Thanks by Showing Peace
Nov 24th
Considering the Strength of Student Passwords
Nov 20th
I had an interesting conundrum this week in which a website that I brought my students into had a temporary bug in the security feature that did not compromise the accounts, but it did invalidate a series of security questions that would allow my students to access their passwords if they should forget them or if they were to get lost. Unfortunately, unlike most educational sites these days, this particular one does not have a master list of student usernames and passwords available.
So, the day after I realized the bug (which was fixed), I gave each student a piece of paper and had them write down their username and password for me so that I could make a master list. I had to explain that no one would have access to the list (a few looked nervous, which is good) and that it would only be if they forgot their password or username.
This weekend, I created my list and began to notice some trends around passwords that I never really paid attention to before. And given that I am developing a digital citizenship unit for January, I see now that “Password Education” is going to be part of those lesson planning. While some students did a nice job of mixing up letters and numbers in a way that would be difficult to be hacked, I noticed some other things:
- One student, out loud in class, announced that he uses the same password for every site. And then he began to list out the sites that he uses: Facebook, YouTube, etc. Another student, one of his friends, announced that was true and that he knew the password. Not a good idea, I told both of them. I suggested he change his common password, and vary it for various sites.
- One of the usernames in our site appears to be the phone number of the student. Yikes! The site is closed to the public, but still … I found that very odd.
- A few usernames were their real first and last names. Again, the site is closed. But I specifically said they should come up with a username that is invented. Maybe I did not stress that clear enough.
- In a few cases, the password was exactly the same as the username. That doesn’t do much good, does it?
- One student wrote her username and password in sharpie marker on the front cover of her binder. I noticed it when they were filling out my sheet. Not too secure, I told her. She covered it up with a book, as if that would solve the matter.
- One password was clearly the home address of the student.
- A couple of the passwords were only three letters. That’s not as bad as some of the above, but the more characters, the harder it is to hack.
Of course, these are sixth graders and their main goal is to be able to remember their usernames and passwords, so they go the easiest route possible. My job is to teach them and remind them how to keep their data safe, and their accounts secure, and along with a conversation this week about it, it will become part of my upcoming digital educational unit, too.
Here are two resources that are handy when talking about passwords.
First, check out this infographic. It’s a good talking point.
Second, check out this site – Password Bird – which creates passwords based on some basic questions, and mixing up the words. I am going to come up with sort of activity that forces them to invent a few possible passwords. Another site — Strong Password Generator — is good, but the passwords that come out of the engine would be difficult for my students to remember, I think, even with the memory hints.
But I like this information from the Strong Password Generator site:
- A strong password:
- has at least 15 characters;
- has uppercase letters;
- has lowercase letters;
- has numbers;
- has symbols, such as ` ! " ? $ ? % ^ & * ( ) _ - + = { [ } ] : ; @ ' ~ # | \ < , > . ? /
- is not like your previous passwords;
- is not your name;
- is not your login;
- is not your friend’s name;
- is not your family member’s name;
- is not a dictionary word;
- is not a common name.
What it comes down to is an understanding of WHY we have passwords in the first place. This year, I notice, there is less of an awareness of security of online sites with my students. I’m not sure why that is. Without stirring up too much fear and anxiety, though, I want to inform them of ways they can protect their data, and also (when it comes to social networking sites) their reputations.
Peace (in the password),
Kevin
A View of Some Imaginary Lands
Nov 19th
My students recently completed a project in which they picked apart informational text (travel brochures) and then created their own with the design features of that text. These Imaginary Lands also needed to include some themes of peace, in coordination with our school-wide Peacebuilders program. Here is a collection of the projects pulled together with Animoto and featured at our class YouTube site. I’ll share another day my lesson plan, which I revamped this year in order to tie it to the Common Core.
Peace (in the lands),
Kevin
Explaining the Occupy Movement
Nov 18th
Yesterday morning, I asked a question in our morning work:
The Occupy Wall Street Movement has been in the news these days. What do you think the slogan “We are the 99 Percent” means?
I had more blank looks than I have ever seen out of my students. Not only did most of them not know what the Occupy Movement was about, they didn’t even know what Wall Street was. Never mind the 99 Percent (one thought it was about the authenticity of a product someone was selling). In fact, of my 21 students, only three had any inclination of what I was asking them about and of those three, only one had some semblance of facts (mainly because his family drove by the Occupy Boston site recently on their way to a sports game).
I did my best to bring them a balanced view of the movement (stymied when one student asked what “economics” is, causing me to pull back my vocabulary even further). I probably did not do such a great job, although I was sure to balance my explanation with criticism of the movement, too. It’s a complex political situation with many offshoots that require more than I could give in that short period of time. I wish I had had time to show the video (above) that Larry Ferlazzo shared out, but I wonder if the information is too complex for my kids.
What I have been hoping for is that Time for Kids magazine does a cover story on the movement so we could use the reading for more discussions. But the magazine has avoided it almost completely, it seems to me (maybe for the same reasons I have struggled with it). Waiting for Time for Kids may just be a cop out on my end, but I feel as if I need a “teachable hook” to make it relevant to my students. As I told them, and as I remind them all year, they need to be paying attention to the world and to current events, and the politics of today are going to shape the world they become adults in. They can’t just be living under a blanket, ignoring what is going on around them.
On a related note, my 13 year old son read an article about Occupy in Rolling Stone, and promptly said to me, “I want to go to Occupy Wall Street.” I asked him why. “I want to see it in person. They’re saying something,” he explained. A day later, New York City tossed everyone out of the park where Occupy Wall Street began. But a little Occupy movement has sprung up in our small city’s downtown. I might just take him there and see what he thinks.
Peace (in the movement),
Kevin
PS — here is a comic I shared last week, poking fun at Occupy. Now I wonder if my students will even “get it” when they see it on our comic site.
Podcasting Activity: Introducing … Literary Characters
Nov 17th
As we are on the middle of a six week independent reading unit, one topic of discussion is character analysis and character traits. Yesterday, I had my students writing an “introduction” to a character from the book they are reading. On Monday, we will be using our Ipod Touch devices and the Cinch app to record a podcast version of their writing. It’s a nice way to share out what they are reading and keep pushing them to go beyond just writing summaries of what they are reading. (We do everything but summaries for this unit).
I am reading and writing along with them, and the other day, I finished Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse. Man, what a book! I know I am late to the game with this novel, which has rightly received a slew of accolades over the years. I loved its use of poetry, and setting, and first person narrative. And the connection to music as a sort of lifeline to the world, and the inner music inside of all of us … wow. There is just so much that is good with this book, even if it is sad and emotional. I guess that’s what makes it so great — its heart is not fake.
Anyway, here is my podcast of my writing, in which I introduced the narrator — Billy Jo — to my class.
Peace (in the book),
Kevin
PS — here are some of the podcasts from last year
Dissection of the Question
Nov 15th
One thing that I have learned in teaching various strategies around open response to my sixth graders over the years is that many have a real difficulty understanding the question itself (this seems more for math than reading). They get hobbled by the vocabulary, or the style in which the question has been written, or they get confused by multiple-part questions. This year, thanks to an interesting workshop that I attended last month around open response work, I am trying to do more work around how to read a question.
So, yesterday, we began some work by reading … only open response questions. We had no ideas what the reading passage was that the question asked about, nor did we care all that much what the answer might be. We were only focused on questions, and I now have a long list of open response questions from various state tests as a resource.
The strategy is three-fold:
- Circle the action word that you are being asked to do;
- Underline the main essential points of the question;
- Number any parts of the question or topics that seem important.
We went through three of four of these questions together on our whiteboard (see image) with students coming up and marking up the sentence while talking through what they were doing, and then they worked on a few questions at their seats, which we then shared out. Our next step is for them to learn how to use a modified two-column chart for organizing their ideas before they start to write. (This is where the numbering of items will come in handy because we can deal with main ideas and supporting details).
It seems a bit odd to be using so much class time for this kind of isolated question dissection, and yet, I am attempting to give them the tools so that they can be the most successful in my assigned open response questions (which is what we mostly do now in our reading units) and on our state’s testing system in the spring. Organization and understanding of what is being asked of them in a question seem be roadblocks for many, and I want them to be confident as they share their thinking.
Peace (in the question),
Kevin
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