Poem

Sometimes the sun
Lingers low
On the surface of things.

It stays, sweeps a pine needle floor,
Brushes heated dust up
Until it lands softly all around me.

Then I am that rich kindling
With which a fire can rise after
The sun's bold laying down on things.

Third Time's a Charm

Third Time's a Charm

But not the second. At least not for me. I'm just wrapping up a unit that started with the hero's journey, using Lois Lowry's The Giver as a lense of study, and has moved into mythology. When I did this last year it seemed like kids were bouncing off the walls with ideas. A few were even excited to hit the library in the name of research. Their presentations were well thought and even interesting. This year kids are dropping my class left and right. Even I dread going. What's happening?
This isn't the first time a retread’s bombed. I've had students whine, "It’s not the same as last quarter," when they've retaken a creative writing class. I've learned from that particular course that community members make a huge difference in class atmosphere and outcome. Is that what's going on with English 9? Maybe I've simply rushed them. I mean, I already had an idea of what the outcome'd look like. Last year the kids and I approached the unit as an exploration. I had an idea of what I wanted from them but we worked together towards discovery. I wonder if I pushed this year’s kids in an unnatural direction. By unnatural, I mean in a direction they wouldn’t go on their own. Maybe I tried to make this year’s kids into last year’s kids. Does that even make sense?
Anyone else have ideas about what went wrong? How do y’all approach something used as something new? Is it possible to explore something you’ve already done with a group of kids? The third time I want charm.

Next Steps

Timeline - might need to add this
Resources - got it but need to get help using moodle rather than ning
Essential Questions - got it.


Thanks to Sharon - I love the idea of videoing a workshop with kids who can model the way. Planning to voice record during the actual class.

WIP - Ready to Present

Background
With the help of Cris Tovani's reading strategies and the imagination, the creative writing class I teach is magical. I know because students actually want to write more.
To provide more writing I looked to cyberspace. The resulting moodle class was a minor disaster. The kids who'd been in the class before, knew how to apply deep reading skills to a piece of peer writing. Those who hadn't had as much scaffolded instruction never developed the deep reading skills I was hoping for. And, I had more grading than I could handle.

Guiding Questions
Initially, I thought my goal was to offer students more opportunities to get feedback on their writing. That's why I went from one piece in a quarter with extensive review, to four pieces in quarter. While I still hold that goal in mind, I think that fix is as easy as having students run second or third pieces through written review, but not an actual workshop.

What cybercamp has helped me discover is that what I really want to do is document the workshop process. This is as much to share something I practiced as an undergrad with Jeffrey Lee and adapted for my class, as it is to collect data for my own reflection and for my students to reflect on and share.


Next Steps and Hunches

• Ask students for feedback. I've started a discussion in Olde Columbine's online community asking for help. A graduate has already responded and in the fall I'll direct students to the site to further the discussion. My hunch is that students I've worked with will jump at the opportunity to document their work and that new students will be afraid. This is the case every quarter when I tell kids they won't be turning work in to me for a grade -- that they'll be writing for their peers.
  
• Record both the written feedback as well as the actual workshop. For this step, I'll need a doc. camera, video camera, and voice recorder. I have a video camera and voice recorder already and am working with admin. to get a doc. camera. I imagine students will feel more comfortable if given a choice whether they'd like their workshop voice or video recorded. I'm a little concerned about data management. Recording and posting might end up being a daunting task for me. I may need to enlist a student digiexpert to help out.
  
• Post data in a space that is safe for students. I'm not quite sure what that looks like, but believe I'll use moodle. This is where I need guidance. I'm envisioning a protected space where each student can have a folder of sorts in which their voice or video recording will live as well as the images of their peers' feedback. I'm not sure the moodle can hold this much information. I just created a ning and am playing around with that - maybe that's a better solve than moodle.
  

Technology - Work in Progress

6/2 Initial thinking:

I've found a great format for teaching a writer's workshop. It's a model I learned in college and adapted for the highschool setting. However, the quarter only offers enough time for each student to workshop 1 piece of writing. My students want more and I'm glad, even though it means some creative problem solving on my part. Since I can't build more time into the day I want to focus my energy on how technology might provide more opportunity for students to workshop their writing.

I started this endeavor by ditching the face to face portion of writers workshop and asked kids to provide their Cris Tovani style feedback on the course’s moodle forum. You can see that students like Laura, who had already taken the class, did a much better job at this, than did students who were trying to use the online format without ever having learned, through the face to face portion, how to engage the reading strategies with a peer’s writing. I discovered that students need to sit in a circle with their peers to learn the skills they need before they can be turned loose in an online setting. Plus, the amount of grading was a total nightmare. I'll never do that again.

Back to square one.

6/3 Developing the ideas

New goals and questions/Provisional answers and hunches:

- How can I share what's happening in the class with the cyber community. Seems like workshop is pretty useful but I'm kind of selfish about it. How can I share with teachers, students, parents, principals, professors...

Plan: Video or voice record workshops, maybe all of them if I can manage that. Post them to a site. New question, how public should this be and where's the best place to post the recordings?

- How can I document what's happening. This might seem redundant but I see sharing out and documenting a little differently - there are differing purposes. Sharing is a little bit to show off. I've stumbled into something that is pretty amazing and I want to show off - maybe someone else will make it work for them too. Documenting has more to do with data. Sometimes students misplace (if you're a teacher, I know this suprises you) their readers responses. These kids have difficulty writing end-of-quarter reflections. Plus, I want data the shows student growth for my administrator.

Plan: I think I need a doc. camera. With that, I could take snapshots of readers responses and keep these records on whatever space I end up using to host the class. Folks keep talking about flipcharts - maybe that's the answer. Since I've never used either of these, I may be a bit of a Polyanna. It may be impossible to take a picture of every readers response written in 8 weeks of learning. Gosh, I wish I had readers response and a video of a workshop to show you so you'd know exactly what I'm talking about.

- How can I provide students with more opportunities to write and get feedback about their writing. There must be a balance between one face to face workshop per quarter and 4 online workshops.

Plan: With a handy class space to host this information, I'll be able to simply hand out a second workshop for each student each quarter. While this won't provide them a second face to face workshop, it'll allow them feedback on a second piece of writing. It will provide a space to document that second piece. Could I have done this without technology. Yes, but it's funny, that simple thought didn't even cross my mind until I took came to cyber camp.

Beyond that, I want to involve students in this growth process. I've put the feelers out on our school writing space. I don't expect much feeback this summer. But I'm hopeful that students can be directed to this space and help me out in the fall.

OMG - I'm blogging again

Geez. It's been a while. I'm pretty psyched to be in a class with smart folks exploring the uses of differing technologies in the classroom. Check out cybercamp to see what learning today ought to look like.

Professional Development - Yeah

I’m taking an amazing course offered by Bud Hunt. Basically, he's introduced us to the K12 Online Conference 2007. It seems similar to the National Writing Project in that I’m totally fired up with ideas and am entirely excited to share thinking with other teachers.

In an attempt to lessen the self-indulgence of some of my blogging, I hope to post stuff I learn on here, like there’s this amazing keynote speaker who you should check out. His name's David Warlick and if you're thinking at all about how technology is affecting your students or yourself you've got to listen to his presentation.