And

It's the final day of the month long Slice of Life Story Challenge. Last year I reflected by creating a word picture of my blog, so I thought I'd take another look and see. I'm glad to see students take center spot and I am interested in how reading and writing are similarly sized. For me, this year's challenge was about writing and so much more. You know that soda commercial that says "and..., and..." ? That sums up the abundance of this month's challenge:

• writing and
• reflection and
• community and 
• commenting and
• students and
• five classes and
• new friends and 
• using the schedule feature on Blogger and 
• skyping and
• creating writing quotes in CS5 and
• writing with my son and
• posting a round up slice for students each day and 
• welcoming new slicers and
• celebrating being joined by colleagues B and K and
• enjoying every minute
• of together.

I hope you'll come back Tuesday as the Slice of Life continues. Happy slicing everyone!

Love Like That

What would teaching look like with the Sun's attitude?  What does a love like that look like in a classroom?

• selfless
• less interested in taking credit than in spreading the wealth
• curious and eager
• a teacher that greets students at the door with a smile and or a greeting
• a teacher that knows at least 3 things--likes,dislikes,interests-- if not 5 or more about each student in the room
• gentle
• loving
• dedicated o
• a teacher that takes responsibility and ownership of students' learning (or not learning) 
• a teacher who accepts late work 
• a teacher who grades what students know and are able to do in terms of course content and not behavior
• kind
• compassionate
• peaceful
• a teacher who uses quizzes as formative assessment not punishment
• a teacher who believes writing aids in processing information (not in curbing unwanted behaviors)
• caring
• joyful
• a teacher who listens 
• a teacher who gives students voice and opportunity
• honest
• self-controlled
• gracious
• a teacher who teaches bell to bell instead of handing out an assignment (and then shopping on the computer or browsing the Internet while students work)
• a teacher who adjusts when warranted and doesn't lean on legalism
• empathetic
• responsible
• a teacher whose mind can be changed in the course of a conversation
• a teacher who admits mistakes and takes corrective action

Some friends and I were talking about just this idea as we discussed punitive moves some of our children's teachers made this year and in years past. Our children started middle school this year. The sixth grade team's philosophy in the K-8 school often doesn't jive with mine. They  look to give every student in sixth grade a detention and or an undone (a slip for a missing assignment)  the first  of school to set the tone. "What kind of tone?" I wish I'd asked at Open House.

I do appreciate how such differences in philosophy force me to examine my own beliefs and practices.  I still cringe thinking about times in my own classroom when I might have been on the look out for bad behavior instead of good. Come Monday we'll be celebrating the good work students did for the Slice of Life Story Challenge. I hope you have a lot of good to look forward to as the last quarter of the school year gets underway.

Crafting Care

Wednesday, I went out for a birthday dinner with two girlfriends whose birthdays are also this week. One is a teacher, the other an occupational therapist. My therapist friend said she was tempted to buy me a grabber or elastic shoelaces or another piece of adaptive equipment to make independence easier during my shoulder recovery. She couldn't bring herself to do it and said she'd save the grabber idea for when we reached 80. We laughed. So lucky I am. We are.

Her conversation stuck. I am currently reading Steven Wolk's Caring Hearts and Critical Minds. The two came together in an idea for a unit. 

I started by researching adaptive equipment as I started thinking about inquiry units I could loosely structure for students to dive into after our reading tests in April. I came across "I Can Do That: Coping Successfully with Amputations", a Think Quest project designed by students one of whom is an amputee. Then, of couse, I started thinking about books.

Wolk talks about anchor texts he used with students during literature-based inquiry units. Though I have used anchor texts with the whole class in the past, I do much less of it now. Instead, I offer students choices in themed sets. Students group themselves by book choice (or I group them after they declared their top 3 choices). I teach from short texts that connect with the themes and use them to teach the content I want students to learn over the course of the unit. It's not quite literature circles and it's not quite what Wolk describes, but there is overlap between the two.  I'll write a proper review of Wolk's Caring Hearts and Critical Minds once I finish it, but you know, if a professional book sparks this much thinking and sets me right to work, it's good. You can preview/read the entire book online at Stenhouse now too.

Wolk illustrates the paths of the inquiry units he designs in flow charts. Here is the beginning of his unit based on the novel Rash by Pete Hautman.

Ideas in this unit will seem familiar to many as he structures activities before, during and after reading. Many teachers have written units as such. Now though instead of having students all begin reading the same, whole-class novel, Rash circled above in this case. I would offer choices around the theme--this one being  Government, Freedom and the Future say. Choices could include: 

The Compound, S. A. Bodeen

Divergent, Veronica Roth

Matched, Allie Condie

Rash, Pete Hautman

Running Out of Time, Margaret Peterson Haddix

Unwind, Neil Shusterman

When She Woke, Hilary Jordan

Students would read the books in groups of three. Together we'd delve into, discuss and write from short texts. It can work. I've done it before. What I haven't done is try to run several issues at a time. I was thinking that students might enjoy investigating an issue with a group and creating a web resource like the ThinkQuest pages. So I started a book list. You are welcome to add to the list. It's public on Google Drive here.

I created the list with books I have read and that I know are in my classroom library or media center. Now I need to cull articles, poems and short mentor-texts that connect to the big ideas or questions like: "What's the issue?" or "What's at stake?"  I'm still in the early, creative stages of planning. I'm ready to jump into Poetry 180, The Poetry Foundation or the Poemeleon. This part of teaching is all adventure and exploration.