Seriously, consider ditching that dry bit of talk. Push it off as much as you possibly can. The students only need to know certain things right now and chances are that info isn’t on your syllabus. It can wait until later. For now, you have a stage to set and what you do today will impact the rest of the school year. Not irreversibly, but this is important stuff.

Day One for me:

Speech (Period 2)

Breathe And Scan: Everyone comes up to the front of the room, breathes in and out, turns their head to scan the entire audience, says first and last name while still breathing steadily, scans the audience one more time, and takes a seat.

Partner Presentations: You have a total of ten minutes to find out as much about each other as you possibly can. Person A, you are the person who woke up earliest. Person A, you need to find out about Person B in the next five minutes. Person A, the only things you can say in the next five are questions. Teachers: when five minutes are over, switch roles. Give them two minutes to piece together a presentation about each other and then start.

Anecdote – Speech #1: Never too early to start the first assignment! Since I have audio of last year’s students giving their speeches, I’ll pick a few to have the class listen to and evaluate. These speeches will begin next Wednesday.

Plane Trouble: Using the opening minutes from the pilot of Lost, I set up the situation that people crash landed on an island. On their own, they have a list of possessions that they rank in terms of importance for survival. They then rank those items again in a small group. The written piece at the end of this is all about how they decided the order on their own compared to how it was decided in the small group. This is the first in a series of small group discussion activities that culminate with a group speech.

English 1 Support (Period 4)

People Hunt: Taking yet more ideas from Dan, specifically some things he posted on the firstday wiki, we’ll start off with a chance to walk around the room and talk to each other. “Find someone who…” and you can imagine the rest of the page. Part of what I want here is to encourage confidence and fluency in these students. That’s going to be a huge part of this course and helping them succeed in their English 1 class.

Partner Presentations: Similar to Speech but more structured, we’ll have a set list of five questions to answer. Each pair will also create one question of their own. When presenting each other in front of the class, I’ll have a series of sentence starters that they will use (My colleague’s name is…, When not busy with other things, s/he likes to…, I found out that [name] was born in [location], etc.) to encourage not only complete sentences, but variety in sentence structure.

Who I Am: I slightly modified this handout (PDF) and students will begin to work on filling in details about themselves. This is again a confidence builder and an insight into their writing competency. These will result in a paragraph and presentation on Friday.

English 3 (Periods 5-7)

Songs: Again from the firstday wiki through the mind of Damian and something I did last year, I’ll be playing two songs for students: “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You” by Black Kids and “The Geeks Were Right” by The Faint (I will not be showing those videos, just playing the songs). My twist on it this year, though, is that we’ll read the lyrics before listening to the songs in order to start getting at inferential thinking. We’ll summarize the story, learn about the speaker of both songs, find some kind of theme, then move to discussion about the type of song it will be. After hearing the song, we’ll see if that impacts our understanding of it. I’m banking on most students not having heard of these songs or these bands. Let’s see how that goes.

Zombies: Impersonating a zombie says a lot about interpretation of character. We’ll engage in that during the closing minutes of class. In groups of four, students will impersonate zombies for each other given certain scenarios I call out: you’ve been a zombie for a long time, you’re a brand new zombie and don’t quite know what to do, you used to be the President before you became a zombie, you were on your way to the mall when you became a zombie. Closing discussion will have us talking about how the scenarios impacted our characterization of zombies and the common aspects in all of our impersonations. Surely a segment from Shaun of the Dead will find its way into class. Excerpts from World War Z and Zombie Preparedness Initiative will become models for what we write this week, as well as entry into reading nonfiction.

What does your agenda look like?Similar Posts:

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Some Questions

What went well? Did you do anything this year that you keep telling yourself you should do?

Working with songs in English 3 gave a nice way to start discussing how to use text to prove a point. I think it interested some kids and I heard a lot of voices from most classes. We’ll revisit that work tomorrow and discuss the contrasting tone of each of the two songs we worked with. This means we dealt with rudimentary literary interpretation on the first day and I always tell myself to dive right in from day one. We worked right up to the bell and I’m happy about that.

Did you start off with the right tone? Is there anything you’re not happy with? Did you do that thing again that you keep telling yourself not to do?

Speech went terribly. I do a breathe and scan exercise that just about everyone delivered a lackluster performance on. A lot of students in the class do not appear willing to even give things a good try, but that could have just been because it was an 8:13 class on the first day of school. Their first speech is in their hands right now. We’ll get into the communication model tomorrow and I’m planning a slide show to make that a touch more interesting. I still hold hope. And if I can manage to punch holes in handouts before class, I won’t waste time doing it during our short time together. That cost me dearly in sixth period today.

How are your classes looking, just from your brief introduction?

My Speech students strike me as hesitant to do any work, while my English 3s seem chomping at the bit. Speech was the quietest all day, ironically enough. At my school, Speech and Creative Writing are full of seniors who need English credit, not students who elected to be in the course out of personal interest. They are good kids, but by definition they have had trouble with school somewhere in the past and it is often chronic. That said, I really do feel positive overall.

A Short-Term Goal

No conflicts the first week. No matter what, no negative interaction. Find a way to smile at the insult and make students feel like there’s nothing they can do to upset you. Those kids who sit in the back all period and watch the clock? Smile at them. Let them know that there is business to take care of. Get their attention, smile at them, then mime that they should be writing/reading/thinking/talking, but don’t bring the hammer down. Yet. And when you do, do it in private before class or after class. “I need you involved in this class and working on the assignments I give you, not watching the clock. What can we do to make this happen? What can I do to help you be successful here?”

Well, what about you?Similar Posts:

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Today, during discussion of the daily, two students tripped over themselves to help explain someone else’s point. Also, references to “The Allegory of the Cave,” a text we just finished reading, and Issac Newton came up. Referring to things outside their direct experience during the discussion of a daily makes me feel good.

Fully realizing that today may have been a fluke and that the bulk of the reason it went well today is because the students decided to take it on (I take neither full blame for their failure nor credit for their success), here are some of the things I’m doing to help seventh period.

A Conversation With Roles

“Persons A, it’s your turn to speak.” Groups of 3 read their homework to each other. There’s a person A, person B, and person C. That moderates who should be talking in each group. “Now it’s your turn, persons B. Persons A, we’ve heard enough from you.”

When it’s time for whole-class discussion, I ask Group 1 to share what they were talking about: what ideas came up during your discussion? One person from that group decides to speak up and I mark that person off on my roster. By the end of the week, everyone will talk because if you talked yesterday, you don’t have to talk today.

Sentence Starters

While all this is going on, I have these sentence starters on the board (any other suggestions?):

• I liked what you said when you said…
• What do you mean by…?
• I’m not sure I agree with you point…
• Did you mean to say…?
• Why do you think… is true?
• How does… relate to the assignment?

Picking a random number (let’s say it’s 5), I ask Group 5 to respond to what they just heard by using one of those starters. Then, Group 1 has to reply. Only after that conversation ends do we move on to Group 2 sharing out the ideas they discussed. It’s completely random which group I ask to form a response to what they just heard.

Types Of Examples

My seventh period infrequently refers to other texts, news items, events on campus, songs, TV shows, or anything else in their discussions. I thought that keeping in mind the types of examples might help when trying to explain something.

“There are basically two types of examples. One is the hypothetical example. That’s something that hasn’t happened, something you make up. This helps your audience understand your thinking. It shows what would happen if you are right and does a great job of making your point clear. But it doesn’t prove anything since it hasn’t really happened yet. It just lets people know what your idea is.”

“The other kind of example is the specific example. That’s something real, something you’ve observed going on in the world around you. This helps your audience see that you are right. It’s an example that proves your thinking is correct because it actually occurred.”

“So we’ve got the hypothetical, which is good for explaining the way that you think, and the specific, which is good for proving that your thinking is true.”

Other Things

I put more energy toward calling on people in seventh period. I also push them to talk to each other, not me. “Mortimer, what did you say?” instead of “What did he say?”

We have a 4 step process for making sense out of the dailies. I spend far more time walking seventh period through those steps than my other classes, often at the expense of time to complete the day’s task.

I’ve started writing more things down on the board. Instead of people simply stating their ideas, I list responses in whiteboard ink when I ask, “How was Gregor like a bug before his transformation?” The list then goes into their notes.

That’s all I can think of. How do you encourage your students to engage in conversations in your classroom? Tell me about some of your successes.Similar Posts:

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It was MLK, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech that was the first exception to these definitions, because he actually expected those dreams to come true someday. Folks in love will often pine things like “I dream of you in my arms,” a feeling they actually expect to experience sometime soon. Conversely, “I hope I win that one-million dollar prize” doesn’t typically fall from the mouth of someone who honestly expects it to happen; most people are far more practical than that.

So the distinction between the two words isn’t very clear. Unfortunately, it gets even fuzzier the more you think about it as you will realize later tonight while this all stews in your brain. There are times when “hope” is the right word and when “dream” is the right word. There are times when either one of the two will suffice and when only one of them is appropriate and when the wrong one is laughable.

I’ve inconsistently studied Japanese for the last 3 years. If you struggle to learn another language, don’t worry too much. You already know the most difficult one.

And as you have those students who can’t seem to pick up on the finer distinctions of the language, such as becomes clear when contemplating “hope” and “dream,” realize that the cut and dry case is rare in English and that some of those minute points aren’t even clear to a native speaker. I still don’t know if I can describe a practical difference between those two words, a rule that would lead to consistent correct usage.

This is certainly not to suggest that incorrect usage should be allowed simply because it’s a difficult issue. Rather, I hope (or maybe I dream) that this is a reminder of how challenging English is.

I wonder if teachers thinking about these kinds of issues can help us create better scaffolds for learning. New vocabulary puts just about any student in a similar situation to this. Learning to tell the difference between a known word and an unknown word is not an easy thing. How can teachers set up an easier transition?

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Toward the end of the movie, in a segment that’s about 5 minutes long, the 3 candidates for Student Government President each give a brief speech during an assembly in the school gym. Tracy Flick, the classic overachiever, delivers a competent speech. Paul Metzler, the classic nice guy but only a slight modernization of the football stereotype, ejects his speech practically in one breath. Tammy Metzler sucker punches everyone with her non-speech advocating the tear down of student government.

Which One Are You?

The apathy toward a polished final product can take place in speaking just as readily as in writing. Many students go for the Paul Metzler approach and deliver a completely uninteresting, unengaging, boring speech. Sadly, they don’t realize how that speech reflects on them, what it says about their character.

Given the chance to look at the 3 candidates from the film, the writing prompt is “Who would you vote for and why?” The discussion topic is “What does each character’s speaking style say about the person?” The implied question with all this is “Which one are you?”

I drew a copy of a business card on the board for my classes about a week ago (a photo of it is on its way). It’s a business card for a limo service and it’s full of errors, misspellings, and undecipherable nonsense; “Contratulation” appears on the card in a rather random spot. For the most part, my classes said they wouldn’t go with that company because if they can’t spell correctly on their business cards, their driving abilities are in question and the company appears uneducated. With a classic turnaround (“So what does it say to me about you when you hand in papers with mistakes exactly like this?”), students left thinking of the message their mistakes communicate.

This bit from Election could achieve the same effect. Talking about the speeches in the abstract allows students to associate anything they want to with the speeches. Honesty should come from this. And once the opinions are out there, pushing students to consider what their speaking styles say about them isn’t too far a stretch. It worked with the business card and it should work with this film clip.

And You?

Are there scenes from movies that you’d show in the classroom to prove a point? How would you go about doing it? How long is the scene? Or maybe you’ve done this before. How did it work? What did you show?Similar Posts:

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