Expected, Inspected, & Respected.
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
As I shared earlier, my English classes during the month of December generally followed this outline:
The the quick write only had three rules:
I knew that it would be difficult for students to write without something to respond to or some kind of prompt; it's easy to be intimidated by a blank page. To make it as easy as possible for them to fill up the page, I told them they could write about what they had for breakfast, a favourite story, the plot of a movie, describe a tiny moment, write down the lyrics to a song, or even practice their autograph if they wanted to. I also put the poem of the day immediately before the quick write so that they could respond to that if they wanted to and posted a prompt about the poem on the projector at the front of the room. The secondary reason for these poems and prompts was to get the students thinking about possible topics for their personal narratives that they would be handing in. Here are some of the poems and prompts that I provided: "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Lord Tennyson "The Man He Killed" by Thomas Hardy There were two poems on this day. We did an activity where I read The Charge of the Light Brigade and afterwards, told them to stand on the far left side of the room if you thought war was senseless, on the far right side of the room if you thought war was full of heroism, and somewhere in the middle of the room if you thought it was a mixture. Most people stood near the centre. I asked them to do the same thing again after reading them The Man He Killed to see if their answers might change. Most people still chose to stand in the centre of the room. The stories that came out of this writing prompt were my favourite. "As I Grew Older" by Langston Hughes "Beethoven" by Shane Koyczan "Knock Knock" by Daniel Beaty (Not really a poem) "Point B" by Sarah Kay (TED talk spoken word poetry) We didn't do a quick write on that day. "If" by Rudyard Kipling I also threw in one of my favourite clips about how to shape a narrative by Kurt Vonnegut: "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou There are many children of immigrants in my classroom, so this quick write produced some interesting stories about how their families came to Canada. "Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou There was no quick write on this day. "A Hero" by Robert William Service "This Is Just To Say" by William Carlos Williams I'll have a separate post about this one, because it was on a grander scale than most. Here is the prompt from the poem: For another change of pace, I read the illustrated children's book, When I was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant and prompted them with this: "Success is Counted Sweetest" by Emily Dickinson "Like Lilly Like Wilson" by Taylor Mali "Hero Worship" by Robert William Service I always looked forward to reading the poem of the day but I was never quite sure if the students enjoyed it. I threw myself into the readings, making them as dramatic as I possibly could, memorizing Carroll's "Jabberwocky" so that I could act out the slaying of the beast, or shouting, "Not good enough!" as loud as I could during Koyczan's "Beethoven". The only feedback I'd get were nervous snickers and silence. But at the end of December, I had the class fill out a teacher evaluation and received several positive comments about how they liked the way I read them poems.
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David Wiebe
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