So far, at the beginning of each session, I have been going over what I have written on this weblog with the whole group. I want to include them in my thinking process so I can see what they think. Students turned in their final interviews today. They took home their Inspiration diagrams last week and used those to help organize their thoughts and ideas prior to writing about their interviews with their classmates.
As I look at the papers, I see improvement in their thinking from the first round of interviews. The visual aspect of Inspiration really helps. I also see a lot of punctuation and spelling errors. Since we only have two hours per week, for now, I will be concentrating on content with them. I think the stories lend themselves to editing, which we will get back to later. We can put revised, corrected stories right below the original. I'm still working through the parameters of this. I wonder about the ESL students and when is the best time to work on the grammatical parts. As a whole they are a reticent group. I am encouraging conversation and working at making them feel very comfortable and getting them to realize that they are a most important part of our group. They have much to contribute. We want everyone free to share ideas. I think this is happening.
My native English students are careless about proofing their work. We'll edit their papers in the same way as with the ESL students. Aaaah, it is always a hard call between the mechanics and the content. I want our "flow" and "thinking" to continue but still need to pay attention to the details.
A most interesting conversation occurred shortly after class began. I was talking about the frantic pace of life today and how we all have so much to do that you really have to work at it "to stop and smell the roses". (Lots of lively discussion around the meaning of that idiom!) Kids feel the same pressure! Isn't that depressing? They feel it at home and at school. I asked them what was the one thing they missed the most that they never seemed to be able to get to at school and it was reading for pleasure. Emily has a book that she is just dying to get to the end of and she is having difficulty carving that small time out of her busy schedule. We brainstormed ways we could maybe solve this problem. Talking about things like this with adults is a new thing for some of the students. My hope is to get them thinking about various items we could discuss, research, think about and then write about. They thought about titles they could give to this topic. Here are a few:
The Boundaries of Life
Stop! In the Name of Business
Rambling Rambler
The Frustrations of Life
How Do You Feel about Life?
Their homework assignment is to write about this topic. I'm not sure they are entirely clear about just what to write but we'll see. The goal is to get them to see how much untapped potential they really do have!! Get them to really start thinking and taking risks with their writng.....
Our class was interrupted (for a very good reason) to celebrate Marcia Mateling being announced as the Rockdale County Teacher of the Year. That story follows this post.
Then we headed to the technology lab, opened up Inspiration and began to list topics of interest that we might write about this year. I asked them to put their thoughts in the form of a question that we could answer when writing. Some of their questions follow:
- Why do people kill animals?
- How do you feel about school?
- Why do kids watch so much TV?
- Why do kids eat too much candy?
- What would you do if you could have some free time at school?
- Do you like science?
- Who is your favorite leader?
- How would you change Iraq if you were the President of Iraq?
- How would you feel if the power of the President was too much?
- How do you keep yourself stress free?
- Do you think that war is a terrible or a good thing?
- How can a teacher help me understand problems?
- What cool planets are out there?
- Why do people get mad?
- What things are in space that we don't know about?
- Are wars necessary?
- What medicines are in the world?
- What embarrassing things have happened to you?
- What is something great that has happened?
- How do people stop world hunger?
- Why do many children like to eat junk food?
- What is happening in the world?
- Should I go to college or not?
- Could we have more privacy, please?
- Should MP3's be illegal?
- Are cellphones good on the road?
- How many hours are too many on the TV?
- Who would you like to win the presidential election in 2004?
- What makes a good friend?
- Are games fun to you?
Wow! These students are amazing. Can't you see the good thinking that is emerging? Good work, students. I am proud of you, and as always, I can't wait until next week!