Adventurous, Charming, Hopeful, Optimistic & Loyal

I admit it.   I do not enjoy teaching vocabulary.   Ever since I heard Ms. Laura Robb explain the frequency with which some struggling readers need to meet and remeet a word before they own it, I just got tired thinking about how to make that happen.   I think this makes the strongest case for building vocabulary instruction around root word studies.

Last Thursday we did a little harmless vocabulary work, but I can't promise you that all of it will stick.   I made copies of the "Sample Word Wall of Adjectives That Describe a Character's Personality."   You may find it inside Laura Robb's Easy Mini-Lessons for Building Vocabulary.   It's published by Scholastic.

Here's what we did:

1.   Highlight the words that are unfamiliar to you.

2.   Choose five of those words to define.

3.   Identify five words that describe you.

4.   Support your choices.

5.   Watch a clip from "The Muppet Movie."

I showed "Rainbow Connection" to the end of the segment below.

6.   Choose five adjectives that describe Kermit.

7.   Support your choices.

8.   Choose a character from your independent reading book

and five adjectives to describe him/ her/ it.

9.   Support your choices.

A modification I made for my inclusion class is to put them in pairs.

They did all of the same work, but more.

Putting them in pairs made it more natural to say the words out loud to each other as they decided which words they did not know.   Also, they chose five different words to define and shared their answers with their partner.   I put some kids on the class computers to use dictionary.com instead of the paper dictionaries.

And if you are wondering who the title of this entry describes, it's not me; it's Kermit.

The Real Anne Frank/ Part 2

After teaching "Anne Frank" for 13 years, I finally feel like I'm getting into my groove.   What's that?   Slow learner?   Well, maybe.   In the case of teaching real life stories that are enveloped in so many complexities, there's always room for improvement.  

If you read the first edition of The Real Anne Frank, you will remember my frustration with the Goodrich/Hackett and Kesselman texts.   In short, that which makes Anne of the real diary so compelling never seems to surface.   You'll also remember my excitement over the BBC miniseries.

This year I decided to mesh the two and add in a bit from the 1959 play.   This should work for you in classes where students read at or above grade level.   You will need to simplify it further for students who are are struggling readers.

In short, I introduced Anne by way of the BBC.   We watched the miniseries up to the point of the bathing scene.   I chose 10 of Anne's early diary entries for students to read, focusing on identifying conflict.   Students wrote a friendly letter to Anne offering advice on navigating her personal relationships with her family and the VanPels.   10 more entries were selected for a vocabulary exercise.   Each entry also represented an important plot point.   Students then used our laptop lab to visit the Secret Annex.  

We read the play from the cake scene to the date scene, because it's middle school.   Kids love the big date.   Okay, maybe I love it more.   That awkward first kiss is exactly the type of romance that some teenagers need to see, so they can relax a little.   This is the moment in the play when students really see themselves and their friends.   After this scene, writers draft a journal entry that Peter could have created to sum up the evening's experiences.

You may have also read the two sentence journal blog entry.   That's what we did with the last 10 teacher-selected diary entries.   Again, I chose 10 diary entries with important plot points.   The students stepped into Anne's point of view, determined the most important topic of the entry and condensed it into two sentences, capturing Anne's voice.

We then returned to the end of the play.   Students read Anne's real last diary entry.   I read aloud from  Miep Gies's account of the capture and the return of Mr. Otto Frank to the Annex.

Students spent a second session with laptops to Google questions that still lingered.   I also provided a list of 20 names, places and events related to World War II and the Holocaust for additional research.

For the duration, I kept a variety of books on related topics in the room for students to peruse during independent reading time.   Sneetches, Yertle the Turtle, Maus, and this year I added Andrew Clements's A Million Dots.   No, it's not really about the Holocaust, but you've probably figured out where I'm going with this.   By the end of Clement's picture book, you will have seen, yes, a million dots.   Imagine that each dot is a person's life.   Multiply the dots by at least six.   It helps quantify the incomprehensible.

Throughout our Anne Frank unit, students read M.E. Kerr's Gentlehands independently.   When they were finished, they wrote a paper in which they argued whether Grandpa Trenker was a static or dynamic character using support from the text.  

 


Soon we will most likely watch Paper Clips for another perspective, but that's probably another blog entry.

The Daily Spark

"The Daily Spark series gives teachers an easy way to transform downtime into productive time.   The 180 exercises-- one for each day of the school year-- will take students five to ten minutes to complete and can be used at the beginning of class, in the few moments before turning to a new subject, or at the end of class." (from the introduction)

Writing, poetry, journal writing, spelling & grammar, vocabulary, Shakespeare and SAT: English Test Prep!

The Daily Spark is full of possibilities.   For most 8th graders, five to ten minutes will not be enough to complete the writing activities.   That's okay.   Be flexible.   Use the prompts that best fit your students and the time frame that you have.   Some are intriguing enough to transform into longer writing assignments.

Simplify the topics, or add rigor.   I have done a quick browse through the books that I own penciling light circles around the page numbers that would most likely interest my students.

Here's a sample topic from the Writing edition:

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Sweltering, Not Hot

Even the best writers rely on obvious words.   Practice mental flexibility by writing a paragraph describing a typical August afternoon without using the words hot, humid, heat or sun.
________________________________________________

Please note that the above material is copyrighted by Spark Publishing, but I thought they wouldn't mind if I just gave you a little preview.   You may purchase the book on Amazon http://amzn.com/1411402286