Co-operative Reading

After doing a bit of reading on co-operative reading strategies (and to be honest, it was in one ear and out the other…) I finally decided to put it to use with my Year 9s for their second novel study.

We are looking at Goggle-Eyes by Anne Fine and will be writing a ‘Response to Literature’ essay from it.

I gave out the roles to each group. They quickly read through them and then chose one that they wanted to try. Then I split them up into the different roles and they discussed how they might use the technique with the last chapter that we had read.

They really enjoyed it. It was good to give it a trial run because they were not always following the job task roles. It really led to students discussing the book – asking their own questions, drawing their own conclusions.

I can see that I will need to do lots more modelling in terms of what kinds of questions could be asked and making sure that the groups are working cooperatively.

More to come!

YEar 10 Media

My Y10 Media class are going to be creating Zines for their first assignment.  It will be the assessment for our unit on Social Media.  I want them to learn about the positive and negative aspects of Social Media such as Facebook and Bebo.  They have to create a Zine in groups that deals in some way with Social Media.

I want them to be thinking about the impact of it on their lives – how they are growing up as the first generation where everything will be on the internet – if they want it to.  It is very interesting stuff.

ARAGHHG

Life seems to be spiralling out of control. sort of.  How can it sort of spiral?  We are hurtling towards NCEA exams…with our own in school exams also looming.  I have so much stuff to cover…and yet I feel mostly positive.  I am kicking my Year 11 into gear – lots of homework tasks and directed learning.

Hopefully we will get there.  They are mostly great.

A swing in direction

Today we are ‘beginning our film reviews’.

Learning Objectives:

1. To have an awareness of audience in our writing
2. to be able to spell accurately

Vocabulary

Topic Sentence Structure

Audience                      Paragraph

Students use the dictionary to write definitions for their vocabulary list.

Students then write three sentences

1. To their grandparents.
2. A text to a friend (100 letters max)
3. Their teacher.

The only rule is that they have to be thinking about what each person they are writing to might want to read.  (awareness of audience).  They must also spell each word correctly.

Reflection

Students enjoyed the activity but were a little perplexed. One idea would have been to give them a sentence for each type and get them to re-write them for a different audience.

Year 9

I have decided to specifically focus on my Year 9 class for the rest of the term for this blog.  This is to remind me to fill in the blog in the first place.   Today we started a little mini-unit on Creative Writing out of the When The Kehua Calls novel.

The students were asked to find as many adjectives as they could in Chapter One.  One of the students who is always seeking approval (attention)

thought that she had 40 words.  Unfortunately many of them were adverbs or verbs.  She managed a few adjectives though.

The students then picked five of the words and wrote a creative sentence for each of them.  They then shared with their group.  The group decides which of the sentences is the ‘best’ and they then share with the class.

Cooperative Reading Square

We started the lesson with students creating question dice from a template.  They really enjoyed this part!!

The students then listened while I read a section of When The Kehua Calls.  They then rolled their dice in pairs and asked a question of the piece of text.  They wrote this separately to the following activities.

Students were given a task each – in groups of four.  These were doled out according to their birthdates.  They seemed to enjoy this although lots of questions were asked.  I told them to be brave.  The instructions that came with the original activity said that students will need to be explicitly taught the skills required.  In the next lesson I will take them through what is expected for each part.  Perhaps come up with four 5 minute activities that we could do at the start of the lesson.

Generally they seemed to enjoy it…but when I asked for a show of hands I got mainly 2/3 out of 5 for enjoyment and a 4/5 out of 5 for understanding.  Will go into more detail next time as to why they didnt enjoy it.  I think splitting them up into different groups had an impact but it is good to get them working with students they might not otherwise work with.

Vocabulary Jumble

Had a really great activity that I did with both my junior English classes today.

Using a list of words from the books that we are studying they had to look at it for 2 minutes and then try to correctly write them in their books.  They then swapped their books with a partner to mark.  the top student only got one wrong out of 22!

They then took those words and organised them into categories of their own choosing.  Wrote them in their books.

Went well!

so tired

again with the so tired!  this has been a week! i need to get my long term planning sorted.  i feel a little on the back foot at the moment – always running to catch up with things.  my media girls seem to be enjoying the group magazine assignment.  The big problem seems to be getting into the computer lab!

Working through some creative writing exercises with Year 10 English.

Term Two: The Sick Term

So far this term I have been feeling quite sickly.  Classes are going well though.  I seem to have a good relationship with most of my students and there are no classes that I dread turning up to.

I am really enjoying working on The Truman Show with 11EAD. 

Poster

We are looking at some gnarly philosophical questions – existentialism, free will, the role of television.  I am enjoying planning and the students seem to be enjoying learning and constructing!

Year 9 English are reading When the Kehua Calls and while there is some reluctance and cultural cringe going on, they generally seem interested.  Some students say that they are unable to read it just before they sleep as it ‘freaks them out’.  Interesting to see a book affect them so deeply.  We are beginning to look at the themes in another text – The Makutu on Mrs Jones. 

Year 12 are trundling along doing their assessment.  It is sad to see how some of them barely manage to string a coherent sentence together.