Social Studies & Seating Charts

For my last observation I had the opportunity to visit Jake Long's class at Biddeford Middle School. I will be student teaching with Jake starting in January, so I was particularly interested in this visit.

Jake is the English teacher at BMS' recently created STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) Academy. Space is limited in the academy, and students must apply for entry. Therefore, the classes tend to be comprised of highly-motivated learners. Since the focus of the curriculum is towards the sciences with less time for the humanities, it means that Jake's English Language Arts class is actually a combination of English and Social Studies (and he has to teach a math class, too!). Though it is challenging to cover as many standards as would be possible if the classes were split, it does provide the opportunity to combine the subjects in interesting ways. For example, the focus of their social studies unit is understanding how different technologies impact different eras in history (from the medieval ages, through the Renaissance, to the age of space exploration), but this unit is further enriched by having the students read speculative short fiction about fantastical technology by authors like Ray Bradbury. I'm really excited to start thinking about how English and literacy lessons can connect to science and technology, so instead of finding the STEM program too narrowly focused, it is actually encouraging me to view English in a whole new light!

During this day, Jake also changed the seating charts for all his classes. He does this once a month to encourage the students to work with new people. For the new seating chart, he grouped the students based upon their book preferences. He then let the new group (4-5 to a table) decide on a book that they all wanted to read together. It was a cool idea to group students based upon the kind of books they loved to read, and the kids were visibly excited to be given the freedom to choose what book they wanted. If you make reading enjoyable, all the other stuff -- the nuts and bolts -- comes so much easier.

I am looking forward to joining these dynamic classrooms in 2017!

Propaganda & Witch Hunts

This post is from an observation at Biddeford High School, where I had the opportunity to observe three different English classrooms:

The first class was an 11^th grade American Literature class with Nick Wilson. Mr. Wilson used Google Classroom to provide resources and student documents. I found that the use of Google Classroom was a common link between all three classes I attended. Mr. Wilson reviewed the entire summary of the day’s course work (including what would be assigned for homework) at the very beginning of class so that students could ask questions before diving into the individual assignments. Following this overview, students broke into small groups to work on vocabulary exercises. Mr. Wilson was frequently encouraging his students to communicate with one each other, even requesting that they make sure to say hello to one of their fellow students when retrieving their vocab books. The class progressed with an explanation on annotated reading and a video on colonial history. Mr. Wilson would often pause during his instruction to check that the class understood the concepts; this was usually assessed by a show of hands.

The second class, with Ms. Jayne Sheltra, was a 10th grade English class learning a unit on propaganda. The entire class time was spent in small groups, with 4-5 students reviewing commercials on their chrome laptops and determining what elements of propaganda would be utilized. Ms. Sheltra told me that this lesson would then be used in the larger context of learning rhetoric and in their reading of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

The final class was with Ms. Veronica Foster, where her class was about to begin Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”. She introduced the topic by activating background knowledge around the concept of “what is community” and the students’ current knowledge of the Salem Witch Trials. She then had the students go around the room to different stations that included pertinent information to the story (the town layout of Salem, religious and philosophical views of the time, etc). 

On Writing & Parents

Last week I observed tenth grade English classes at York High School. They were working on revising essays they had written at the start of the school year based upon a book of their choice that they had read over the summer. The essays had purposely been set aside for a number of weeks before being revisited, as this was an editing recommendation presented by Stephen King in his book On Writing, which the students have been reading in class. Another recommendation from the book is to keep a “writer’s toolbox”, which includes basic concepts like vocabulary and grammar, but also more complex ideas like elements of style and form. The students keep their own “toolbox”, which is basically a personalized list of the various writing rules and literary devices they can incorporate into their own writing; it also serves as a place to track their own writing strengths and weaknesses.

            I think the toolbox is a helpful exercise for the students to self-assess their own writing, and I am a fan of On Writing myself. I actually love to read books on the craft of writing, in general, and I think it would be wise to expose the students to other examples of the genres. Even though Stephen King’s book is very good (and he is a very well-known and successful author), it is clear from reading many different “how to write” books that every author has their own strategies and advice, and every novice writer has to find the style and methods that work best for them. By just studying one book, I would be worried that a student might feel constricted by trying to emulate King’s approach to writing too exactly. As we’ve learned, differentiation is key, and it is important that students be exposed to multiple methods of learning.

            However, that is a relatively minor complaint, and I think the main thrust of the lesson is beneficial for producing better student writers. The students also each write a letter to Stephen King at the end of the unit, which is a nice way to make a further connection beyond the walls of the classroom.

            In between classes, I spoke with the teacher about the school’s grading system, as York High School still grades on an A-F scale, in contrast to the other schools that I have been in that are moving to a standards-based assessment approach. The teacher said that one of the biggest obstacles to changing the system is the parents, who seem primarily concerned about getting their children into college, and don’t want to rock the boat with any changes to the grading system that might impact those chances. I asked her if she generally found the parent-teacher relationship to be a difficult dynamic. She said, in most cases, it is very respectful as long as there is frequent and proper communication. Most of the time she said the parents just want to make sure that you actually like their child. It was another good example of how important it is to foster kind and empathetic relationships as a teacher.