As the official second year of my teaching career begins, I am constantly reminded of the positive things that I enjoy and how it promotes my teaching purpose: The subject matter - English The texts - favorites that challenge beliefs of students and my own The age group - high school The approach - facilitator of learning One way to make my year better with a fruitful and positive approach was to create a mantra or theme. I am grateful for discovering the #BlogAMonth PLN. It is my intention for me to grow professionally and personally through reflection writing. I hope these type of posts become regular and beneficial to my practice and attitude. Here is the topic/prompt for August: A new year brings forth abounding NEWS. New students, new classes, new subjects, new roles, new learning and the NEWs (not to be confused with the news) keep coming, and they are personal to our own experiences. One way that I love to embrace the NEWs that lay ahead is with a mantra or theme which will help me challenge myself and frame the year. Please look at the questions below and let us know how you intend to embrace the NEWs. 1. What is your mantra for 2016-17, where does it come from, and how does it motivate/implicate you? 2. Where do you find a source of direction or inspiration for the start of the year? 3. How do you embrace NEWs? My mantra for the year is "Don't Forget to Zoom IN/OUT." Zooming IN, specifically with my students, allows me to get to know them on a personal level. When I zoom IN I can help them adapt or relate to an idea, assignment, reading, or book to something they are familiar with in their own life. In broad terms, Zooming IN also allows focus and understanding of a topic, situation, or problem, which can lead to problem solving, questions being answered, and a better workflow for me.
Zooming OUT is just as important as Zooming IN because we cannot allow ourselves to get bogged down with the nitty gritty every moment of every day. We also have to look at the big picture, and how those little, small things fit into the puzzle. Using both of these sayings will help me keep everything in perspective, and hopefully lead to a productive year. What is your mantra/theme for your 2016-17 school year? OverviewAs the first quarter of the school year approaches, I would like to share the Independent Reading unit that I have created for both myself and my students to work on throughout the semester. In the past, my students only had Independent Reading units last six to eight weeks. I believe in encouraging lifelong reading habits not temporary ones. Switching to a semester long unit has been an adjustment, but I believe it is for the best. The additional time has provided readers with an opportunity to explore different genres and titles rather than rushing through a book that they may not be interested in. Between Monday, September 14 and Friday, January 15, each student and myself is required to create a Reading Bingo! A Reading Bingo! is the same as a traditional bingo - five consecutive squares vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. The following board will be used: SpecificsStudents are provided time in class to read almost daily. Time amounts range from ten to fifty minutes. I also encourage my students to read at home for at least twenty minutes a day. A lot of them are beginning to realize that they need to be doing this to stay on top of the requirements for Reading Bingo! Once they begin to read at home, they realize how much fun reading is. If a parent/guardian had concerns about books that their child(ren) could and could not read, I asked that they communicate with me, so I could supervise accordingly. I do not place a tight filter on books students choose to read. The free square is allowed to be claimed after a student has read two consecutive squares prior to it and is not to be used as a “break” from reading and making progress on Reading Bingo! After claiming the free square, the student needs to pick another square to accomplish and find an appropriate book to fulfill the task. As known from traditional bingo rules, the free square does not need to be used to create a Reading Bingo! The free square cannot be used for extra credit. Extra credit can be earned with Reading Bingo! After a student has made a bingo, each category square that is completed afterwards will earn one point of extra credit. Each book review needs to earn at least a 70% to count for extra credit. For two book category squares, both reviews need to be at least a 70%. The extra credit point(s) will be added onto the overall grade of Reading Bingo! Book ReviewsIn order to hold students accountable and learn about new books, a review needs to be written about each book read. A book review requires:
Examples of potential final grade situations are below:
My high school students complete their reviews through a Google Form on their iPads (1:1) and my middle school students have packets to complete with plenty of writing space for the different requirements. Essential questions tie back to the theme of each course and have students practice the skills associated with finding, analyzing, and connecting textual evidence to larger questions and claims.
Rating SystemsIn order to provide each class (two sections of English 7, two sections of English 10, and one section of English 12) with a sense of ownership associated with Reading Bingo!, we spent a few days brainstorming, sharing, and collaborating their thoughts on rating systems. Each class walked away with their own rating system that they agreed upon. After rationale and symbols were agreed upon, I finalized their rating systems in Piktochart. The reviews are beginning to trickle in, and I am nearing the end of my first book. Stay tuned for further reflection, book reviews, and updates to next semester's Reading Bingo!
Through reflection, I have decided to make some changes to The Avalanche ... of Books blog format, which includes the rating system of books.
The old rating system was based off The North American Public Avalanche Danger Scale and was too positive. I want to give credit where credit is due, but also be critical and provide the best rating I can to my blog readers. I have abandoned my old rating system and the Danger Scale in order to create a new rating system. Over the past few months, I have been trapped in an avalanche of recommendations from colleagues, students, peers, and friends. It has been a constant barrage. Now that I am finished with my teaching internship, I have some time to reflect and read in between #JobHunt2015 applications and interviews. With this time, posts centered around book reviews and ways to incorporate books into my classroom will be shared, and I need a rating system for these books. I wanted to keep with the theme of avalanches, so I did some research into avalanches. Scientifically speaking, there is an entire world dedicated to avalanches. There are a lot of excited people are out there who enjoy studying them and they are geeked. After reading about the different types of avalanches (dry, wet, slab) and the destruction sizes ("not enough snow to bury or kill a person"), I decided to loosely base my rating system on the destruction sizes according to the North American Public Avalanche Danger Scale. Please note: I am not making light the amount of destruction an avalanche can cause. I desire to keep a theme for my book blog. With this ranking system, reviews of books that I have read on my own or with my students will begin to be posted. The description of each category will depend on each book that is read and reviewed.
I am looking forward to sharing with you my thoughts and reflections!
With my students as the selection and voting committees, I had all of the components to run the tournament. At the end of February I asked my students to select their three to five favorite books of all time. I told them that their votes were going to help make the "teams" for our book bracket. #BookBracket2015 had begun! After counting up all the votes, I was met with quite the list of books. Definitely an avalanche of 258 different titles! Fortunately there were 32 top books, so a bracket of 32 was created. Books were seeded based on the number of votes and four regions were established. The stylish bulletin board in the back of my classroom was going to receive a new look, slowly but surely. I say slowly but surely because I only revealed two games (four books involved) per day with my students. I would also post the match ups on my Instagram and Twitter accounts. Each book had a # before it (i.e. #AmericanSniper) and #BookBracket2015 was used in every post. For the month of March, every day that I was in the classroom began with #BookBracket2015. I would recap the previous day's games with a clever pun and reveal the day's match ups. Students would vote via secret ballot for the book that they wanted to win per match up. I collected and counted each vote. By the Elite Eight, I was beginning to get tired of counting the copious scraps of paper, so I opted for hand raising and having students stand on the side of the room for the book they wanted to vote for. I received several complaints from the diehard #BookBracket2015 fanatics. They complained that the integrity of voting was being lost as people were voting based on how their friends were voting. In the Final Four and Championship, we went back to secret ballot voting and a champion was declared: Green Eggs and Ham! Upon reflection, #BookBracket2015 was a success! It allowed me the opportunity to talk about books in my classroom, gave me an avalanche of books to navigate through over the summer, and let me share my passion of reading and sports with my students. My students enjoyed participating in #BookBracket2015 and many have provided me with great feedback for next year. I am looking forward to #BookBracket2016 and who the eventual champion will be! This announcement has a new home! Check it out!
Welcome to "The Avalanche ... of Books" blog! In this first post I hope to answer the usual "first blog post" questions, including who I am, why I am blogging, and why I am calling my blog "The Avalanche ... of Books."
To begin, I am a 2014 graduate of Michigan State University. I completed three degrees in English, history education, and social sciences education. These three degrees led to a lot of required reading. I am three weeks away from completing my teaching internship from MSU's College of Education. I have been teaching several sections of English Language Arts 9 for the past school year at Clarkston Junior High. I have also had the opportunity to observe and learn from other educators in the building. Overall, it has been a great experience and I have learned a ton about myself and teaching! As an English teacher and lifelong learner, I love to read, and I feel like I am in a constant avalanche of books. My bookshelves are teeming with titles ranging from fiction to history to historical fiction to classics to texts focused on teaching and so much more! I am a huge proponent of reflection. During my internship, I constantly asked my students to reflect on the units we accomplished and asked questions centered around what did they did/did not enjoy, what was easy, what was difficult, which type of reading/annotations/assessment did they prefer. I greatly appreciated their details, notes, and feedback. It helped me improve as a teacher both in the moment and for future units and classes. I hope to continue this type of reflection as I move into my first classroom. This blog will be my reflection on the books that I read, along with the classroom implications that they may have. Some posts will be reflections of what I'm doing in the classroom related to books and reading. Other posts will be about books that I read and how I hope to bring them into my classroom. The possibilities and titles are endless (trust me!). |
The Avalanche of Books
As an educator and avid reader, I am constantly hearing about books. I feel like I am being chased by a giant, rolling avalanche of titles and authors. Rating System
5 books - New fave! Read it now!
4 books - Shelf worthy 3 books - Quality read, but ... 2 books - Borrow it 1 book - Skip it Archives
December 2017
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