This weekend, Mr Taynton and I said goodbye to our beloved dog, Romi. She was very sick and it was the right thing to do. It was sad but was our last act of love for her.
You can read my tribute to her here.
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Story boarding with tableaux
Posted onI am currently reading Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest with my grade 10 class, most of whom are not native speakers of English. After completing Act One, we stopped reading and I was about to give them some of the usual activities I do at the end of each act. Thankfully I stopped and asked them to storyboard the act instead. They were asked to think of some key scenes and key quotations and then plan out their storyboard. We do have some fairly good artists in the class so I gave them the option of drawing their storyboard but also suggested some alternatives, such as finding images of people they thought fitted each character and printing and cutting them out before pasting them into a storyboard as a sort of collage. I also suggested they could pose their friends in tableaux for each scene, photograph it and then put those photographs together for the storyboard. This really captured their imagination and they all chose this option. The energy levels rose dramatically; all members of the class were involved; and I could hear that the discussions they were having about the play went beyond anything they would have had they merely written about what they understood or perceived.
A most satisfying lesson. See my other post for the photos.
Let’s get blogging!
Posted onAlrighty then. That’s all the student blogs set up. Let the blogging begin. I’m hoping this will be a way forward for my students to share their learning with a wider audience in an authentic way, as well as encourage them to reflect on their learning, explore their passions, and share their successes.
As the students began to explore their new blog space in class today and yesterday it seemed like there was a positively charged atmosphere in the room, so the signs are good. They will be able to use their blog to write their reading reflections, chart their progress in their passion projects and generally have a voice.
This will also be a useful tool for their student-led conferences at the end of the year and they can use this blog as their e-portfolio.
CSI – Visible Thinking
Posted onOh, I love visible thinking, particularly for reflections. One of my favourites, which works especially well for a poetry unit, is Colour Symbol Image, CSI. Today my grade 8 class used this to reflect on our unit about Identity, and the depth of reflection is something you would not get with a written reflection.
In the past I’ve had some other wonderful reflections, too, such as an exploding head because “Sometimes when you are thinking of a meaning in the poem, it is really hard it makes my head EXPLODE!!!!!!!!!!”; one student chose light blue as his colour because “I have not learnt western poetry before, but I feel comfortable learning that; blue stands for happiness, because poetry is beautiful, and I can see nice pictures presented in poetry. But light blue means that I can’t understand English and emotions of poets sometimes”; another chose green which was explained as “There are many different kinds of green: blue- green, jade, apple green, dark green, British Racing Green. This makes me realise that it’s all about perspective – we don’t always see things the same way, and yet there are essential similarities. Culture and poetry are like that: we view them differently depending on our perspective and the way we interpret things and yet there are essential elements which are the same.”
I’ve used other reflections in other units but for poetry I have found this the most successful.
Visit the Visible Thinking website for more details.
We’re on our way!
Posted onPhew! I have finally managed to set up my student blogs. I think. I hope.
It’s been like wading through thick fog: I know what I want at the other end but my way through is misty. I wonder how successful I will be in helping my students navigate their way – talk about the blind leading the blind. Luckily, I do have some very tech savvy students in my grade 10 class in particular who are excited to learn new things, so they will be my best allies. I do think it’s good that I learn alongside them as it really is the best way to model lifelong learning skills. I will be able to help with the ideas and they can help with the realisation of them. Team work.
I’m still unsure about where I put links, how they all connect to each other, and a million other things. But hopefully as we move futher along with our projects it will become easier for us all.
A moment of realisation
Posted onI think I’ve just learned a very valuable lesson about blogging: don’t wait until you have time to write the whole blog to start writing down your ideas. I’ve had the belief for a while that a blog needs to be written all in one go – a stream of consciousness as it were. But I’ve come to realise from reading a few that they are often pieces that writer take time over and revise, and edit, and re-work and generally polish. This is a revelation to me, as I have, in the past, always written straight into the blogging site and then pressed ‘post’. I don’t think I’ve ever taken the time to “compose” a piece before.