Thoughts On Teaching

Commercial Poetry

Todd — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:28:37 +0000

I mentioned the VW commercial that uses a Dylan Thomas piece (not a poem, but it’s rather poetic prose) a while back. There are also these Levi’s commercials with some Whitman poetry. I’m not exactly sure what to do with them, but there’s a connection between these commercials and a way to use them in the classroom. This is too good to be useless.

Whitman – “America”: Levi’s commercial; Poem; Whitman audio clip
Whitman – “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”: Levi’s commercial; Poem; Smithsonian audio clip
Thomas – “Under Milk Wood”: VW commercial; Text

Even though I hate the commercialism of it, preferring to make the classroom as free of advertising as possible, what if you set students loose with a small snippet of a poem and had them create an ad campaign using it? They’d have to understand the poem enough to see how it would relate to a product. Have them set images to it and there’s a whole other layer of interpretation. Use this as prewriting to some larger analysis of the poem and this could be gold. You could give them copies of poems that are game for this project along with a list of products they could choose to advertise. That would certainly help those students who struggle with too much freedom in these matters.

Team up with an Economics teacher. Most Econ teachers I’ve talked to have a project where students create their own businesses. As part of that project, they also pick a poem to use as ad copy for their ad campaign.

Do you know of any other commercials that use poems? Have any ideas what to do with all this in the classroom? Do tell!Similar Posts:

New Test Items

Todd — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:08:24 +0000

Every time you create a new test item, a new way to assess knowledge, what do you do? How do you step kids into that new item type, one they may not have seen before, in order to make sure you’re assessing exactly what you want to assess (content-area skill) and not something accidental (test-taking prowess)? I spent about two hours on Wednesday figuring out how to handle this situation. What would you have done?

Situation

You give biweekly vocabulary tests. Each week, your students get seven new words. You talk with them about the definitions, trying to put dictionary speak into plain English, telling (funny) stories about the words, and asking for situations in which the word would be used. Because you do all this, you decide to replace the vocabulary test format you’ve had for years with something new.

You figure that, since you verbally review words by giving examples, having a section on the latest vocabulary test where you provide a scenario (Stephan doesn’t care) and students fill in the appropriate vocab word from a word bank (apathetic) is a good idea. You go a bit overboard with it and make that a sixteen-item section and fill the word bank with twenty words to add a wrinkle to it. You realize that, on a seventy-eight point test, this new section is worth forty-eight points but still think it’s fair.

Additionally, you have a student teacher and the university supervisor stops in the day said student teacher is correcting this test with his class. Afterward, the university supervisor looks over the test and gives a remark about it, how it perhaps tests student ability to adapt to new test items more than it tests vocabulary skill. Your student teacher tells you this during your prep. When students bomb that portion of the test, not in droves but in some statistically significant fashion with several possible explanations, you nod. And that critique passed on to you from the university supervisor tickles the back of your brain all afternoon.

At first, denial. You’ve reviewed the words a lot of different ways and feel that these new items are not tricks at all. Next, anger. So what now? Any time a new test item is included, you make it extra credit? There’s nothing wrong with putting new and better test items in place of old and busted ones. The bargaining settles as you decide to cut the total points possible to the highest score in the class, thinking that will keep the test valid. Depression sinks you and you just stare at the test, wondering what you were thinking making that new section worth so many points. Acceptance happens. Bringing some of your close colleagues in, you soon expand your thinking and decide you’re going to do something about it.

Two hours later, you have it all worked out, copies in hand, plans laid, and explanation given to your student teacher. That test will be thrown out. It’s now a study tool. The vocab review the next day will take the form of those new test items. A brand new test will be given Monday. This new test will have five scenario-fill-in items and five definition-fill-in items, along with a ten-word bank so that process of elimination helps. This is a set of steps marching toward eventually giving a similar test that this whole mess started with.

Due to all this, you do not get that stack of twenty papers for today graded and all hope of passing those pieces of writing back by this Friday flee.

You?

What do you do when you feel like a new test item is in order? Which test items do you think are fair to include from the beginning of the year? Is Matching such a universal test item that it doesn’t need scaffolding? How do you handle that idea that dawns on you as you’re making tomorrow’s test? What do you do if you’re making that test and finally realize that those test items you’ve been including don’t do what you want them to?Similar Posts:

Ten Minutes

Todd — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:20:29 +0000

I feel like I’m going to be able to breathe again so writing more often will come after that. We all have our struggles. I have a bunch of ideas to share and am starting to lose track of where to start. Here’s my first contribution to your school year that’s already well underway, but maybe you still have time to implement this. Consider doing it in October.

Students read for ten minutes every day throughout the month of September. It’s rough to commit to the chunk of time each day and I must admit that I haven’t been able to do it every single day, but my average is good. Most of the time I’m reading during those ten minutes, too. This is terribly important, especially at the beginning. As a result, I’m seeing more students getting into what they are reading, more students bringing books with them, more investigation into what books I have on the shelves, and more curiosity about the new ones I’m putting up.

I also took some time over the summer to cut out an entire bookcase and the bottom shelf of each of the remaining three cases. Those books aren’t being read no matter how good they are because they are out of sight. This is a “less is more” situation for sure. I’ve gotten rid of a lot of books students never read, packed in easily another thirty titles, and increased the chances of a student picking a book at random that ends up being even moderately cool.

And students are interested and reading the entire time. This means good things in the future.Similar Posts:

Moments Like These

Todd — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:36:33 +0000

The Do First for the day is this: How would you define a moment? Or maybe it’s this: Finish the story “The moment was…” Or maybe it’s a (cheesy) quotation: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” But maybe you don’t have a Do First topic at all. Maybe you just show the video and see what the class makes of it:

Possibilities

Have students look through the comments on this video to see what they agree or disagree with. Asking for feedback about a set of comments you select would be a good idea, too.

Someone on YouTube threw this out: “For all the moments of life to catch, why were so many of them manufactured in this piece?” That could be a great discussion starter, a nice way into a critical viewing of this video. “Support your answers with evidence from the text” works for more than the written word. Which moments are staged? Which moments are real? How can you tell? Examining what works and what doesn’t could also be a way for your students to create their own version of this video.

Whether or not the music is needed could be another point to debate. Perhaps you should talk about the selection of a piece of music that fits more into the background, instead of one that steals the thunder of so many of these visuals like the current song does. I wonder if this piece would be stronger with a more subtle score.

Background

This video is the culmination of a week-long set of Radiolab segments about death. The regular-length broadcast called “After Life” was followed up by short audio pieces each day until Friday, when this video was released as a way to wrap up the whole thing. Radiolab never ceases to amaze me; just about each week is better than the one before it.

Download

Is YouTube blocked where you are? Then download the video and decide if a piece of Radiolab is worth showing to your students (answer: yes).

Warning: There is a “moment” of someone holding a condom (found at 1:17-19). There’s also a shot of a surgical cutting (2:45-47). I’m still mulling over whether or not the condom thing is a deal breaker. I’ll almost certainly show it to my all-senior Speech class.

P.S. Thanks for the Radiolab reminder, Emily. Yup, it is brilliant.Similar Posts:

What I Won’t Do This Year

Todd — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:48:11 +0000

Collect writing and then ignore it for a month. Expect study questions answered every night. Give daily reading check quizzes worth tons of points. Skip grading blogs on a Saturday morning. Wait until April to institute a classroom after-school writing lab. Circle every single grammatical error on a given page. Assign just one piece of writing that involves student conferencing and that happens to be the last piece of writing. Take rebellion personally. Only phone home about negative behavior. Try to institute fifteen new things. Start a “routine” that we only do twice. Break a routine that we’ve done many times. Hand papers back as a way of finishing the discussion about that topic or student writing. Call them “essays.” Continue a practice I know isn’t helping improve skill simply because I can’t think of anything better. Ignore the Speaking and Listening standards just because they aren’t tested and are not “power standards.” Obsess over standardized test prep. Rally around the STAR and CST tests. Provide my students with an excuse to blow off my class, other classes, testing, or school. Model expectations only once and then expect perfect execution. Require only written expression of comprehension. Spend far too long on a given text. Focus on merely a few writing and reading types. Unveil the writing prompt only at the end of the text/unit.

And on and on.

Have you thought about this? Have you mentally gone over how last year worked for you? Have you considered the list of things that you want to make sure you avoid, things that didn’t quite work the way you wanted them to? What made it to the top of your list?Similar Posts: