Marla



Frontloading Activity Reflection: I used this opionionaire the other day to start off a unit on Art, Community and Culture. Although I have been working on this unit for quite some time, I was a bit hesitant when it finally came to implementing the unit as I began to doubt if students would be interested in the subject matter. I gave the students the handout and they filled out their opinion and then they got in small groups and polled their group members and recorded those opinions. I was amazed at the level of interest and engagement that occured during this particular class period. Not only were they interested, they were extremely opinionated. I could not believe the passion that came out in all of my classes about the subject. Students who never raise their hands had their hands raised the entire discussion period. They were adament in their views and their responses were, for the most part very relevant. There was lots of back and forth discussion on many points that were brought up by students. I realized that there are so many areas of interest that aren't touched on during the typical school day. At least on this day, those who have a strong interest and opinions about art, got the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge about a subject and to express their thoughts. I am excited to see how the rest of my unit progresses. With this much enthusiasm and interest, it should be a great experience. Also, I have used opinionaires in the past but I never included getting opinions from home, classmates and the author in the handout. I am convinced that this small touch led my students to engage in a more dynamic way.

This was a very fun activity and got all of the students engaged right away. I also used the three level questions handout we got and had the students use the beyond the lines and between the lines sections to use for their question writing portion. This really helped keep the questions from drifting into either too basic of questions or irrelevant questions. It also made sure that each student was prepared with a question to ask the characters. I would say the best part of this activity was how much the questioners enjoyed grilling the characters, who were also suspects in the story, and how much the students loved taking on the roles of the characters. I had a few students in one class who were willing to do just about anything to get to be the character. I finally had to relent and let one student be the third person to take on the role of the same character. She just had to do it. I will say she gave some new answers and provided new insight so it worked out well. I liked how this activity turned out and I don't think I would want to do anything different but the students liked it so much that next time I might try revisiting the hot seat the next day and adding in the devil and the angel.

This is an iquiry square for a poetry unit. Michelle Bishop and I collaborated on this together. Since I have a page up already, I am posting it but Michelle will also post this on her page soon. I don't have a reflection analysis yet as I haven't taught it yet. I am not sure that Michelle and I have all the pieces in the right places so feel free to offer feedback!

This think-aloud is for the beginning of The Girl Who Owned A City. I wasn't sure if it was going to be a good idea or not using this right off the bat but it turned out that it was the perfect place to insert this activity. I think the main reason students responded so well to this technique at this time was due to the fact that the beginning pages set up the whole story and if they aren't engaged right away, it makes the story somewhat confusing. This read aloud got the kids to read and reread all of the key pieces of information that are so necessary to understanding the story. It also really helped with discussion as we got further into the book because most students could easily recall all of the details from the read aloud. I don't think I would use a think aloud at the beginning of each book we read, but it worked well with a story that has key information at the beginning. Next year when we read this book again, I think I will use a think aloud in a few more areas close to the beginning of the story to reinforce the idea of the necessity of creating mental images as a way to understand the action of the story. I don't want to overuse this technique but, this book is the first one we read as a class and using a few extra read alouds will benefit more than bore students. Visualization for Text Organization I thought I would try using visual images to begin my lesson on Cause and Effect. I put the images up on the screen and had students come up with ideas for what the images were depicting. The students were immediately engaged (always a plus!). They had a lot of fun creating the story and arguing over who was right and correcting each other regarding why something could or couldn't be true based on what was in the images. I was surprised how immediate the interest was in the subject of cause and effect because this unit is usually not a big hit with kids. It was surprising as well that their enthusiasm carried over to the less interesting task of identifying cause and effect in short written samples. Another thing that I hadn't anticipated was how the use images helped a few weeks later when we were reviewing all of the text organization concepts. When students had trouble remembering what cause and effect was, I simply said "Remember the pictures about the car accident" and they were able to recall the information. I know that when we go over text organization again in a few months that I will be able to get the same result just by having them recall the car accident. This allows me to move on so much more quickly than having them try to remember some long forgotten piece that they read a while ago.