This week we were still reading Romeo and Juliet. I don’t really want my students to go home and try and read it themselves (would like them to not get completely frustrated), so I decided to look at vocabulary – words that might still be in every day use but that they might not know.
I used 18 words from Act I that still are actively in use in modern English, and I asked my students to NOT look the words up but to write any definitions that they knew (or kind of knew). For the words that they did not know, I asked them to guess based on words that they knew that are similar.
I struggle with making vocabulary study more active and dynamic. It’s hard to shake the years of “look it up” training that I experienced in my own education. So when they handed in their work (from the iPads via a WebDAV server) I printed the pages, cut off the names, and handed out a random page to each student. They then cut each word and definition from the page in a strip, giving them 18 strips of paper. I asked them to turn the strips face up. Each student was randomly handed a word and they went around and collected all the definitions from their classmates desks for that one word.
I asked them to group the strips in definition clusters – were there similar definitions? Were there outliers?
Every student had the chance to report on what their word was defined as. That day I heard from all 72 of my students – what did they see? What patterns emerged? What did they think their word meant? How had the word changed from when Shakespeare used it? As far as all class conversations about language go with seventh graders, this was a good day.
Image by Jack Dorsey
Filed under: Activities, Books for class | 1 Comment
Tags: classroom, Romeo and Juliet, vocabulary study
Mom – laughing at the stars
It was a year ago today that Mom died.
It’s been fast and it’s been agonizingly slow.
I took today to do some things that Mom would have liked. I listened to Stan Kenton, I went to mass, and tonight I’m going to enjoy a glass of scotch.
My daughter Emily reminds me that Mom was not just the woman that we wrote about in that obituary a year ago. Mom was someone else, too.
My mom loved to smoke. It made her angry that it was so unhealthy for her. Mom loved a cocktail every night. Mom loved to laugh and she was usually game for our hare brained schemes when we would travel together. Her partners in laughter were Janie and Mason and Jim and Mary. Jim is telling St. Peter that same story about deer hunting, and Mary is serving the heavenly hosts “our favorite coffee” now – but we still get to laugh with the Wheelers. This is good.
Up for most things
I wanted to tell two of my favorite Mom stories from my general adult years. The first isn’t really a story so much as remembering Mom at my cousin Al’s wedding to Wendy in the Berkeley Hills. We had a day or two to sight see, and instead of taking Mom for crab we found some little sushi restaurant and made her eat raw fish. Mom really wanted a spoon for her miso. Nope. We made her drink it out of the bowl. She was so so patient with us – Sam and I were traveling together for the first time on that trip, and we were just figuring out how to deal with the fact that I have no innate sense of direction! That trip we also made it to the Muir Woods – it was so beautiful, and I will always remember that we did get there because at the last trip to CA, she had no pulmonary strength at all and couldn’t have made the walk.
My Mom, Rock ‘n Roll Goddess
But my FAVORITE Mom story is from when we went to see Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young at the United Center. We’d been to Ravinia a ton of times with Mom, so going to hear aging folk-rockers was no big deal My sister and her husband John organized four tickets to the show and we were up on one of the mezzanines, straight in front of the stage. Mom leaned over to me at 8:05 and said, “Shouldn’t it be starting soon?”
“Ma – it’s a rock concert – no way.” And the lights dimmed and the opening chords of Carry On began. Okay – and then we hear -
“Psst – John…” it was his friend, the manager at the Center. They had four unsold tickets closer up. He had to wait until the show started to give them to us, so we were to follow the usher and he’d take us to our seats.
So, to the band singing “Carry on, love is coming to us all….” we were led to seats, third row, center.
Amazing
And the show was incredible. They sang for hours. Graham Nash wore no shoes all night long. At about the point where most of the band went off for a break and Neil Young stayed on to share some of his solo career hits, it was clear that David Crosby had noticed my mother: the tall, white haired woman in the middle of the third row who had been standing and singing along all night. He kept pointing and winking and applauding toward Mom. And she was clueless!
By the time the show was over, she had made eye contact with him – she couldn’t stop laughing. The guy at the edge of the stage told her if she wanted to go back stage he was sure that would be okay. Mom shook her head, laughed, and headed to the car at the end of the show.
My ears rang for quite a while, but it was a great night.
And that’s Mom. Rock and Roll babe.
“And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, ‘Yes, the stars always make me laugh!’ – from the Little Prince.
Filed under: Memory and Story, My family related blogs | 2 Comments
**And then a miracle occurs**
I’m reading student short stories.
Yes, I am aware that I had two weeks to read these, but I will say that if I don’t assign homework for my little dumplings, then I should get a bit of a pass as well. And here I am, reading narratives that my students have written.
Exposition
They started with characters that they created. And they had to know a bunch of things about their character before they could start writing. For some this means they jump right into the story with great opening lines -
“After a long day at school, Kitty was immersed in her history homework when her phone buzzed.”
or
“It was Tuesday, just after dark, and the situation was serious.”
But as often as I get a nice beginning, I get what I describe as the character dump, a la S. E. Hinton in The Outsiders. Along the lines of hello my name is Ponyboy and I have green eyes and sandy hair that is long that I slick back and I have two brothers and our parents are dead and we are called greasers and we don’t get along with the Socs and I wish that I were Paul Newman.
One really great opening was buried behind the character dump:
I spend my life sitting on corners waiting for a drug deal to come my way.
Now, if that was an opening sentence, you – as the reader – wouldn’t know if the narrator was a dealer, a junkie, or a cop. There is so much potential when you have to construct an understanding of the character.
Miraculous Conversions
Another typical moment in a student story is the miraculous conversion from bad to good or the suddenly off-the-page-and-out-of-sight climactic confrontation. The writer leads up to these moments, and just as they get to the thing that we (as readers) really want to know about and care about, it’s over in a blink. The characters had a conversation and made up. Suddenly, the main character knew that he had to change his life. I want to hear that stuff! I want to know what the character is feeling and thinking!
Second Drafts
My students all knew that this was a first draft. I made sure that they knew it is different than a rough draft. Spelling, punctuation, subject verb agreement, correct word choices – these all had to be in place. In the second draft they will develop their story more, tell us more, show us more, and let us hear their characters speak. It’s not easy to read these, but it is worth the time and effort.
Image by 50 Watts
Filed under: Activities, Publishing Student Work | 2 Comments
Tags: drafts, exposition, reading student work, Writing
New Year
I feel as though I need to be more intentional about writing this year. So I will begin as I intend to continue – and write each day.
This was a wonderful, bittersweet holiday break. I went on break a week before my daughters and they will continue for another week, watching endless episodes of How I Met Your Mother and working at Winter Camp at Circus. This is all good. We have gathered as family, sung carols with neighbors, exchanged lovely gifts, cooked food together, and enjoyed glasses of wine. We contemplated the variations on the latke (with jalepeños? spiced like a samosa?) and created black eyed peas simmered with smoked turkey neck instead of ham hocks. We lit a candle for Mom at every event, shared tea, scotch, cookies, and laughter with her. It was as it should be.
But in truth I am not ready to return to work on Tuesday.
It has been a lovely two weeks. I worry that I am not able to get to my RSS reader, not able to plow through the piles of paper that need sorting to file or recycle. I worry that I sleep too late. I worry that I won’t have the patience for my students that they so clearly need.
I have yet to really begin reading the piles of short stories that my students wrote. I don’t know how I will do all the reading that I must do.
But what I do know is that I have wonderful friends, both old and new, that my children are healthy and so very alive and lively, that I will learn some new things this year, that I love deeply and am loved in return, and that I have faith in me and those that surround me, and it will sustain me.
Happiest of new years to all of you. Who knows what our days will bring us? All we can know is what we will bring to the day.
Love. Always.
photo of sunrise over Lake Michigan by rottnapples
Filed under: Refelections | 4 Comments
Tags: New Year
Lovely Beckoned Again
Well, I cut school and went to the Bean.
Not exactly school, but I ducked out of the conference that I was at during the small group discussions and headed to Millennium Park and the Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate for the 11-11-11 Beckoning of Lovely.
I towed along with me four other teachers. We saw lots of our students (Miss AmyKR’s kids go to my school) and found my daughters, my nieces and a passel of friends from home and work. So many of the circles of my personal Venn Diagram overlapped during that hour, starting with the basic big page of white and nerdy. What my cousin Alan refers to as “pleasant geeks.” Add on top of this field the overlapping circles of Nerdfighteria (the fans of John and Hank Green), teachers, the circus family that my daughters have cultivated, my nieces down from WI, and work – and well, you have much of my life assembled at in the park.
And this year’s Beckoning did not disappoint although it was more subtly sweet and less overtly a series of products.
- We made a grand entrance.
- We made music.
- We made friends
- We made a wish.
- We helped make a red scarf (make something beautiful)
- We listened to the music of Nick Gage.
- We made a pledge
- We are making a book of advice for John Green’s son Henry. Don’t Forget To Be Henry.
And of course, I got a little misty. A young woman (a nurse) told us about a patient of hers who has since died. She has, tattooed over her heart, “Make The Most of Your Time Here” in his handwriting.
It was lovely – a chilly day full of warmth.
“We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.”
Filed under: Memory and Story | Leave a Comment
Tags: Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Beckoning of Lovely, Decreasing World Suck, John Green, Nick Gage
iPads and Seventh Graders
I have been away from here – and I am totally remiss in not spending some time catching up on what has been happening in my classroom.
This year we have piloted a program with iPads in the hands of each seventh grader. First let me say that it is NOT the same a full one-to-one laptop program. But it has given me flexibility and the chance to try some projects and ways into thinking that I have not had the opportunity to explore. There are some good things here.
Roll out was relatively painless – with the exception of some issues about account management, and we are still trying to solve some of those things. Games are a bit of a burden. I really want the students to embrace the iPad as something that they always have with them, but that means I do have to figure out how to handle the before and after school epic golf/driving/angry birds sessions that drive some people crazy. As long as I don’t have to fight with Facebook for classroom airtime, I’m good.
But we are tinkering – trying new stuff. I’ve used the availability of email to push out pdfs to students, get them all blogging (whoa, did html tags confuse them), create stories with pictures, write, comment on friend’s blogs, create Prezis. And we don’t always have them open all class. Sometimes they just have to email a classmate or check the homework calendar.
But how often do you have a 5 foot-9 inch 7th grade boy tell you that he thinks the homework is going to be “fun” and then have him come to class with a wordless story depicting an epic battle between a stapler and a staple puller? I don’t want to spoil the ending, but just know that a pencil meets a bad end (and not at the hands – as it were – of the pencil sharpener).
Teaching is so much fun sometimes.
Image by Beau B
Filed under: My room and welcome to it, Technology | 1 Comment
Tags: iPads, teaching, tinkering
Things I’ve learned
Things I’ve learned or remembered these past two days:
Poison ivy is fact of life. Recognize it, avoid it, or deal with it.
People who are poisonous or who make you itchy are a fact of life. Recognize them, avoid them, or learn to deal with them.
The ones who look tough are usually big squishy marshmallows.
The ones who look like the work will do them in are usually ninjas in disguise.
Hunger IS the best sauce.
Hard work can be great fun.
Good weather is relative.
Glow worms are weird, but in a good way.
A flicker feather is a jaunty addition to any ensemble, especially jeans and a sweatshirt.
The 3AM potty break and clog dancing class was really only the potty break.
I miss the people I love so much when the stars are achingly beautiful and they are not here to share them with me.
After twelve hours you no longer smell the aroma of wood smoke (in your hair, on your clothes).
Seventh graders, both boys and girls, love to scream.
Seventh graders, both boys and girls, say the most inadvertently hilarious things.
A good joke is really funny when you are really tired.
Here is to stars and laughter and good friends and excellent colleagues and that delicious shower I am going to take on Friday.
Filed under: Refelections | 2 Comments
Tags: learning, Seventh grade trip, teaching
Summer Plums
I have all kinds of fruit trees and plants in my yard.
Pears, apples, a peach tree, grape vines, mulberry (if that is something you consider a fruit and not yard litter), some black raspberries, and one or two strawberries. I even have a plum tree or two, but they never produce fruit and are doomed to an early death. I can’t grown smooth stone fruit – our ground is infected with a black knot fungus that seems to affect only smooth stone fruits like plums and cherries. I suspect, however, that my inspection of the peach tree today has revealed fungus there as well.
And it’s a pity, because tiny summer plums are one of my favorite food memories.
We would pick plums in a wind break at a state park near my home. We didn’t get them every year. But when we did, they were amazing. Pinkish yellow, like the sunset, their skins were tough. But the pulp inside was warm from the sun, soft – almost liquid – and sweet. The pits had a mild tang that clung to them as they held on to the flesh of the plum.
If we picked enough, Grandma would make juice that would eventually become the most beautiful, delicious jelly. Clear and that sunrise/sunset color, it kept the summer alive fo us.
The plums from the farmers market last week reminded me of those South Dakota plums. My husband said, “No one is eating these.” Oh, yes – someone is eating them. I’m just taking my time.
Filed under: Memory and Story, My family related blogs | 2 Comments
Tags: garden, plums
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
– Carl Sagan
I went to the farmers market today. I had a few things on my list. In particular I was hoping to find a grower that had padron peppers, a small green pepper that you toss lightly in olive oil and quickly sauté in a hot cast iron skillet until they are blistery. I found a shishinto pepper at two growers. I did break down and get them and as I walked through the stall I saw they had early apples.
Early apples. Yellow transparents.
These apples are the stuff that a million memories are made of. When I was a kid in Brookings, there were two houses that had yellow transparent apple trees. One was Mrs. Quam’s. Her tree was on an alley and I would ride my stingray bike (purple to pink fade) home from the pool, detouring through the alley and grab an apple off the tree as I cruised by. The second was the house at the corner of 7th and 16th. There were three trees along the street. They were also in grabbing distance on a bike.
Yellow transparents are not an eating apple. They are crazy sour and when you cut them, they turn brown quickly. Mom bought that house at the corner with the apples, and suddenly my summers were filled with apples. Like determinate tomatoes, these trees bore fruit heavily in a short span of days. There was one summer where we sat and peeled apples, slicing them into fat quarts for pies until our thumbs were brown from whatever chemical turns the apples brown. Those quarts ended up in the freezer for winter pies.
But today I had to buy them. Never was there a less likely day for pie baking. Humid and warm, not a good day for turning on the oven to 425 or for making pastry. But I had to do it.
When I cut into the first apple, the subtle smell was the same. I bit into a piece, and I got the familiar tightening at the back of my jaw. My sister is coming for dinner and, well, I had to share with her the apples, and the pie. So I saved two. I only wish they still had leaves clinging to them.
And I did find padron peppers, by the way.
Filed under: Memory and Story, My family related blogs, Refelections | 2 Comments
Tags: Apple pie, Memoir, yellow transparent
Thinking and Learning in Spain
Traveling in Spain gave me more than an opportunity to see the Alhambra. It gave me the opportunity to look at how I learn things and how I cope with challenges that are outside of my usual experiences.
Shopping, dining out, asking directions, following directions, listening to tour guides, reading signs.
Each time I was faced with something I didn’t understand, especially when I was failing to accomplish what I wanted, I thought about what my students must experience when I throw something new them. I started to make a list of coping strategies that I was using. Some of them worked; some of them didn’t.
Shopping: when shopping for supplies for the apartment I relied on my knowledge of food names from my restaurant days. I watched what others did in the produce section to get fruits and vegetables weighed. I made one mistake. I grabbed what I thought was toilet tissue and purchased paper towels. Right shape, right material, wrong product. That’s like choosing ‘than’ when you wanted ‘then’.
Dining out: coping strategies included using visual cues and prior knowledge.
Asking directions? Izquierdo and derecha I knew, and having a map that I could draw on was useful. Visual cues (which way are they pointing?) and staying calm helped.
Taking a tour that was in Spanish was always interesting. I would try to catch as many cognates as I could, and if there were any English cues I tried to grab them. I let myself be immersed in the language during a tour. In that moment there were no consequences for not understanding.
So, I learned a lot about myself in Spain. Things I love, things that frighten me, experiences I will always remember. It’s good to be a student again.
Filed under: Professional Development, Refelections, Travel | 2 Comments
Tags: how I learn, Learning strategies, Spain, Travel
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