Classrooms can be an ugly place for idealists.
Students are not perfect, other teachers are not perfect, my ideas, thoughts, actions, and practices are not perfect.
Before it begins to sound like I'm irreparably jaded, I knew all of this before I began this school year. Over the last month, I have watched my group of Sophomores struggle to pay attention and participate in our daily activities. There has been an enormous effort on my part to connect with my students, to make them feel heard, valued, and independent. But there is only so much I can do as a co-teacher who is merely imposing upon a pre-existing lesson plan. It was like being a sub, but with the main teacher still present.
So for my upcoming unit, my CT has given me free rein over what I incorporate into the plans. There are only two limitations. The first, which I knew before I planned the unit, was that the lesson would cover John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men. The second, which came as a disheartening surprise after I planned my unit in full was that my CT warned me against moving away from the novel. I certainly understand consistency in lesson planning, but everything I had planned was directly connected to the novella. Then I discovered the real stipulation: Don't move away from Common Core.
Internally, my mind referenced texts I have read over the past two years. Engage your students. Find an overarching concept. Challenge their critical thinking skills. Relevance, Relevance, Relevance!
So, my ideas don't align with the pacing guides. Reality check: 1, Lindsay: 0. Have I got some news for reality: I'm resilient and full of ideas I'm not afraid to try.
In Teaching English by Design, Smagorinsky (2008) suggests planning units with an overarching theme(p. 112). Parts make-up a whole, and conceptual units of instruction do just that--create lessons where the instructors connect different aspects that are related to make the unit more engaging. Common Core's Sophomore ELA Pacing guide for Unit 2 focuses on character analysis. The overarching concept I have designed for this unit is "Reality", which heavily focuses on realism.
My goals for this unit are:
-to be mindful of the strategies for comprehension, writing, and attention
-causing genuine and relevant inquiry (Wiggins & McTighe)
-to spark meaningful connections (Wiggins & McTighe)
-to incorporate new, innovative practices
-to get students college and career ready (Bomer, 2011)
In order to accomplish these goals, I've had to spend a lot of time getting creative.
A useful text for me has been 50 Instructional Routines to Develop Content Literacy (Fisher et al., 2010). It seems that I am constantly flipping through this text to see what routines I can adopt and adapt for my students. These strategies certainly help me keep in mind their attention, comprehension, and need to write. For example, during our introduction activity I have planned for them to simply use think-pair-share when analyzing a stanza from the Robert Burn's poem "To a Mouse" as an introduction to Of Mice and Men. Not the most creative approach, but it allows them to bounce ideas off of one another before being put on the spot as a whole class.
The most fun part of this introductory lesson (for me) was incorporating another strategy from Fisher et al. (2010), I arrived as a "visitor" who was dressed as a 1930s migrant worker! The students did not think I was cool, but they paid attention and it was fun.
Causing genuine and relevant inquiry, and sparking meaningful connections between "real life" and the text is one of the more challenging aspects of this unit. I found that turning to Pinterest was a helpful tool to help me generate ideas. I'm a visual learner, and everything on Pinterest has a picture! I would really recommend using Pinterest to help with your lesson plans. You can create a board and fill it with ideas that can very quickly be referenced. I found several pictures from Time's issue about The Great Depression and I also saw that several other teachers had been comparing it to The Great Recession!
(P.S. you can follow me on Pinterest here: http://www.pinterest.com/lindsaydale/)
Although Pinterest is a fun, new innovative practice, there are several other tools I can incorporate into my lessons. My new favorite is a spin-off of an Oppinionaire (Fisher et al., 2010). From the website Poll Everywhere you can have your students text their responses to a class number (not a real phone number) where their responses appear on the screen. And, yes, before you freak out, their numbers do not coincide with their responses on the screen, but you can track the messages with the numbers on the site. You can ask any question you'd like, and the students can respond with one word answers, yes or no answers, or sentences. For my unit specifically, I will use it to gauge their responses about decisions the characters made and other debatable themes in the book. They like this better than a Value Line or Oppinionaire, and it incorporates technology.
Check it out here: www.polleverywhere.com
College and career readiness are, to the state and school district, the most important piece of the lesson. In my unit, I will ask my students to read articles about The Great Recession and current economic downturn, read articles and do activities about "the working poor", discuss the treatment of mentally handicapped in the 1930s and today and what job opportunities they have, and creating a final project that ties to one of these "real life" topics that connect with the novel (along with an accompanying paper, of course).
I want these students to understand that I'm not here to ignite their passion about English class, but through this unit I want to convey to these students that they don't need to be college bound to care about the world and its impact on their lives.
So, help me spice-up my lessons! What creative activities for Of Mice and Men can I do with a group of unenthusiastic sophomores? I'm willing to try just about anything.
Sources:
Bomer, R (2011). Building Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classrooms. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Fisher, D; Frey, N (2012). Improving Adolescent Literacy: Content Area Strategies at Work. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Smagorinsky, P (2008). Teaching English by Design: How to Create and Carry Out Instructional Units. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Wiggins & McTighe. Understanding by Design.
Well Mrs. Slater, I can tell you one thing for certain, I can relate to your post on all levels of understanding. Being a teacher today is hard, especially with all of the distractions at students fingertips (cellphones, computers, crushes, etc.), and I can certainly understand how not having things just a certain way in your classroom can be frustrating, as I too am a idealist. The most excruciating annoyance I have is when I am addressing a class, and I see students looking in their laps at their illuminated laps (I see you texting there), or see them watching that flock of geese fly by. As educators we do have to realize that students aren't perfect, but we also have to realize that they can do more than they think. It is truly a balancing act when it comes to trying to get them to pay attention, but still understand that they are imperfect humans.
ReplyDeleteIt's great that you have your goals laid out for yourself for upcoming lessons! I too have been doing this. Do you feel that the more you teach your students, the easier it feels after a while? It's a wonderful feeling when you realize you are teaching, and there isn't that sense of nervousness any more.
As for your question on Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men; I would say maybe try working with the idea of isolation. This book has many examples of isolation. The characters want to obtain some land to be alone. They play solitaire (a single person game) In the end the character of George even loses his best friend, and ends up all alone.
Another idea I have for the book is maybe try to explain how field workers lives were depicted back then. There are a good number of photos and interviews you can find on the internet. These might help the students get a better understanding of the time period.
Also, you might try having the students draw George and Lenny in their mind's eye after reading the first couple of chapters. We have been doing drawings like this in my class, and the students have been turning in some very excellent work!
I hope you keep doing a great and wonderful job, you seem to have a great grasp on what you want to achieve! I look forward to reading more soon!
Lindsay,
ReplyDeleteI imagine that we rookie teachers can expect many such reality checks during the next year and a half. We are preparing for existence in a double standard saturated industry in some senses. While required and encouraged to follow traditional, broadly based standards, pacing guides, and Common Cores, we are also being told to think outside the box and be versatile for accommodating each student’s needs. We have been taught in our teacher preparation courses to be incredible for our students but not if it doesn’t meet specific criteria. We seem to be required to do things the same old way but make it new and improved. It’s so true that engaging students takes extraordinary efforts. Students have grown less responsive to the old ways and their grades and dropout rates can attest to it. I’m glad your students have you to exert energy to fight the downward trends. They will be better for it. Great post!