1. I had a sub in for me today. Mrs. Kerpan led the students through today’s activities.
2. They finished reading the article from yesterday about what children learn through children’s stories. The students were given question sheets with the article yesterday so they were given time to work individually on answering them. They were to do it by themselves to help them become more comfortable filling in full answers. They then discussed the questions and shared their responses so they could add to their own answers.
3. Once finished that, Mrs. Kerpan read aloud an article to them that focused on the ten benefits in reading aloud to children. It’s one thing to have kids read on a regular basis, but there are several benefits to reading to them. For example, it often gives them an opportunity to experience a story that’s written in language possibly a bit advanced for their own reading skills so having it read to them exposes them to new stories. It also allows children a chance to observe someone else read or model for them how to experience the grammar in stories, with the reader pausing at the commas or observing the periods. Children benefit a great deal from being read to.

1. One of the assignments planned for this unit is for students to work in groups and create a readers theatre to perform for the elementary grades. The focus is to take a fairy tale and adapt it to make it more modern yet still have the same lesson. This takes quite a few classes to do, though, and to keep on track with our unit I’ve decided this year to skip this project. In its place, though, I had the students watch videos of two readers theatres students of mine two years ago created. They did a wonderful job of including the audience in the storyline and then Kenaston students benefited from understanding what their own project would have been like.
2. We started reading an article, then, titled “Who’s Afraid of the Wicked Witch” about children’s stories and how there are actually really awful lessons told in those stories that can have a bad influence on children’s expectations, like that magical fairies will save the day for you or people are either ugly and evil or pretty and nice. It was an interesting article that opened our eyes to some of the realities of what really is in those childhood stories.

1. To begin today’s class, we started in the computer lab where students were given exactly 20 minutes (plus an extra 5 for good measure) to log into their blogs, type two paragraphs pertaining to their desired relationship with their parents and any reflection of the literature we’ve just studied about the topic, and publish it. Last year, any time spent for blog entries seemed fairly unfocused and students worked at quite different levels of productivity. This year, I’ve explained that I’ll focus on giving more blog time, but they also have to use it more effectively. Twenty five minutes should have been adequate time for them to write something of value (for the content should still be well considered) but their focus should be more centered and less distracted. Hopefully, they’ll become more comfortable getting a whole post done in that time.
2. Then we returned to the classroom to enjoy reading some kids poetry. Some of them were just goofy and had cute ideas, but they mostly all had a rhyming pattern that added to their humour. We talked about the fact that it takes a lot to entertain these students at this age in their life, but at one time when they were quite young their imagination was more intact and it took very little to entertain them. We had fun with the poems; even screamed out one a few times. lol This began our look into children’s literature and how it’s so infused with wonder and imagination.

1. I returned to class today. Since before I left we were working on developing better responses to literature questions, it seemed fitting to test them on those skills. They wrote a mid-unit test on questions related to “The Piano” poem, including some figurative language to be found as well as 20 homonym questions. They did a great job and had a great attitude doing it.
2. I marked the exams by the end of the day and was pleased to share them with each.

– I was away sick today. –

1. Students were given computer access today to either type out their Should’ve Been poems or any other missing / late assignments. They were to be reminded that they have to draw an image along the side of their poems that symbolizes some aspect of the role their poem was about. (Ex: Clown shoes for what the clown “Shouldv’e Been” like.)
2. I had given the sub their next blog post topic, but was told they weren’t ready to move to that step so it is not required yet.

– I was away sick today. –

1. Yesterday, I had given students their next assignment and explained what was required. They were also given two student examples of the same assignment, to see good examples of the project. Today, while I was away, they had the class to develop their poems.

1. We have recently studied two poems and students were given very typical questions related to analyzing those poems. The questions covered content such as author’s purpose, style created by the author, the theme and evidence to support it, who the speaker of the poem is along with what point of view it is written from. All of these questions surround the elements of literature that this group has been learning / reviewing since their last semester of English last year. They should be quite comfortable in understanding what each element involves and how to properly respond to it.

   I was displeased, though, that some were copying answers from other students. They are not developing their own skills in this regard. I was also unimpressed that a majority of answers were incomplete, because it was only a question sheet and not to be marked. I can understand this, as long as that student understands that it’s incomplete and would do better for marked work.

2. Today, students were given back these question sheets, but they were marked – not marked with numbers but corrected just the same to indicate to them where they were lacking or wrong. This should indicate to them what type of result to expect had this been an exam instead. They also had to focus on answering the questions entirely alone.
3. They were also interrupted because they had to go for their group and individual pictures.

1. After going through the two poems yesterday, students were given a little quiz at the beginning of this class to see if they could identify several of the types of figurative language we pointed out yesterday. (I had mentioned yesterday that they might be quizzed on finding the f. l. so they were given an advance notice.) They also had to identify three examples of the author’s style of writing, a topic of literature analysis that we focused on quite a bit in their last semester of English.
2. Once they had completed the quiz, they were asked to work individually on filling in their answers to yesterday’s questions for “The Piano” as well as answering the questions related to “Warren Pryor”. They were also asked to paraphrase the five stanzas for the first poem and the four stanzas for the second.
3. There was a lot of excess talking today. Some students finished early or found the work easy and thought they had opportunity to chat, while others who could have benefitted from a more quiet and focused environment were easily distracted into joining the conversations. I’m not unlike many other teachers when I say this is frustrating and has to change.

   Also… no one should be copying anyone else’s responses to questions. Do the work yourself! I consider it cheating (cheating yourself, at least) when you take the easy route and get someone else’s answers. You may as well leave your questions blank – it would be more honest. And for those who willingly give away their answers, you’re not helping like you think you are.  (There’s my rant.)

1. After yesterday’s challenge from Evan and John’s little outburst regarding the literature, it seemed fitting that I arrive to my classroom to find both the boys sitting at the front of the classroom at the teacher’s desk with an air of authority surrounding them. (The fact that they had their feet up on my desk, like a banker, also kind of surprised me. lol)
2. The boys then took it upon themselves to teach today’s class – one with slightly more success than the other. They gave it a (mostly) good effort though. Apparently, I make for a really poor student! They had students take turns reading through the article, led the discussion of the questions well, and did a good job of summarizing the main points of the author’s purpose.
3. Considering the story was about the strategies used by adults and children, it seemed kind of fitting to let them reverse our roles for the day. I tried different tricks they often use to get me off task, and they mirrored a lot of the same behaviour that I find myself showing in an effort to maintain things on task. All in all, for building a bit more rapport, it was an interesting class!
4. Tomorrow, things will return to normal and I’ll go over the story again carefully. We have some really cool poems to study as well.
5. Reminder: The reflective essay is due Friday and the Body Paragraph assignment is due on Thursday. (I’ll be forgiving on the due dates within reason, so do your best to complete your work quickly.)

1. With students starting their blogging and submitting the first of their assignments, I’m noticing some common errors with the ‘typical’ words that many students struggle with. We want to curb this at the beginning of the year and have students put an effort into carefully choosing the correct spelling of their words for the context the words are used in. A lot of those errors start with Homonyms.
2. We reviewed several groups of them: there/their/they’re; its/it’s; to/two/too; where/wear, etc. They did a quick test on their words, too, and did fairly well. This test was more elementary. Evan seemed pretty confident with it all, though, and challenged me to really test his abilities. Well… game on! lol
3. We then started looking at the next piece of literature we are going to study called “How to Battle with Grown Ups”. We discussed two aspects of the article – that it is a satire and meant to mock the relationship between adults and their children and that it alludes to characters from the Bible, David and Goliath, in creating a drama between extreme competitors. It’s actually quite a well-written article. We’ll study it in more detail tomorrow.