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Catcher in the Rye – Sticky Notes Activity

A student writes on a sticky note for The Catcher in the Rye activity.

I’m pleased to report that today’s sticky notes activity went well, the purpose of which was to give my seniors ownership of two chapters each of The Catcher in the Rye. That is, I wanted them to revisit the book and do a close reading of at least a small part of it, then report back to the class what they’d learned. I assigned the chapters Monday and gave everyone two days to become experts on them. Today they had to write on yellow sticky notes what happened in their assigned chapters, then place the stickies in the corresponding columns on the top half of the whiteboards. (I have three whiteboards, and we covered them all.) Students then wrote why the events happened — an attempt to answer the “so what?” question — on different colored sticky notes and stuck them on the bottom half of the whiteboards.

My students were fully engaged in the activity — from what I could gather from the quality of their responses and how on task they all appeared to be. I definitely will be doing more of this kind of thing in the future.

The front whiteboard covered in sticky notes.

Looking for your Grades?

A view from my lectern after class today

I’m no longer maintaining the online grades. They proved to be more than I could handle. Teaching is a full time job that cuts into every aspect of my life. Even when I’m home I’m working. At school, I am teaching classes, meeting with students (before and after class, and during lunch), counseling with other teachers, administrators, and staff, attending various meetings, meetings, meetings. At home, I am planning lessons, reviewing curriculum and working on this blog, plus Twittering. Year ‘round, I am either teaching or thinking about teaching or preparing to teach.

In other words, I’ve got to let a few things go. And since the district provides online grading, I’ve decided to use it exclusively. However, if my students want me to email them their grade, i will do so. Just send me an email request to the email I gave you.

New Room Arrangement

I've moved my desk to the back of the room.

I’ve been in this room almost a year now and have come to a few conclusions about the placement of the desks, especially the teacher’s desk. Sitting in the back gives me the advantage of surprise in that it’s much easier for me, considering my style of teaching, to monitor the class after taking myself out of the line of fire. In order to pull this off I had to buy a 100-foot video cord and a sixty-six-foot audio cord — because the audio/visual hook-ups and equipment are in the front of the room, along with the phone. Yes, this does mean I have to walk to the front of the room to answer the phone, but it rings infrequently enough so that it’s no big deal.

In case anyone was wondering, the black vertical shape in the corner is actually a window that I blacked out with black construction paper. That slit is the only window in the entire room; yet because of the glare from the parking lot outside, it lets in a lot of light, which ruins any video I try to show. Now when I cut the lights it’s as dark as a movie theater, just the way I like it.

Possible Topics for “Mid-Term Break”

Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-Term Break” offers many possible topics to write a paragraph about.

By Friday my seniors will have to annotate Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-Term Break” as well as write an insightful paragraph about it. Writing about poetry is not easy for them, so to get them ready, to sort of grease the wheels, we did a little brainstorming for possible topics. The above photo shows what my whiteboard looks like after such a brainstorming session.

Mid-Term Break

What my whiteboard looks like after we get done discussing possilbe meanings of the title of Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-Term Break.”

In my class the whiteboard is becoming more an essential tool for thought, helping us to capture what we think and challenging us to explain why we think it. For example, today my seniors read “Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney as their poem of the week. In both periods we discussed the possible meanings of the title, which at first seems not at all related to the topic of a young boy who’s killed in an accident. But after scratching away at the surfaces, we began to see the title as rich in nuance and hidden meanings. The connotations of the three words almost overwhelm the poem itself. I wrote our brainstorming on the whiteboard and took a snapshot with my old digital camera.

A Crate and an Unfinished Book

Nothing confounds writers more than the challenge of organizing drafts, notes, miscellaneous scribblings, odd jottings, etc. so that we can find the stuff and use it later. The book I’m writing now — A Thousand Words: Graphic Organizers in the English Classroom — grew organically over the course of four years, and finding the right system of organization has given me a feeling of pleasure and control and has even had an impact on how I organize materials for my teaching.

My Crate — and four years’ of work

I started working on this book during the 2006-07 school year in response to a need I felt English teachers have for reproducible graphic organizers — plus, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have a teacher’s explanation of how they’re actually used in a real classroom with real students. The ready-made audience for the book also had a lot to do with my pursing it, of course. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that all of my writing and student examples are currently filed in this big plastic crate on my desk. I enjoy telling my students that there are many ways to think about “drafts,” for drafts can be a on piece of paper, stored on an electronic device, or even shoved into a huge crate.

Classroom management isn’t easy

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times about the difficulty of managing a classroom struck me as being spot on.

The article was right in mentioning that among the top reasons teachers fail and eventually leave the profession is their inability to manage their classrooms. In fact, according to the Times findings, the vast majority of California teachers who are fired and contest their termination are often cited for poor classroom management.

What can teachers do to manage their classes better? It’s not all that mysterious. As the article points out,

Teachers must be consistent in their message and consequences, lay a strong foundation of expectations early in the school year, follow through with promised punishments when children misbehave and remain dispassionate and unflappable.

Last Full Day of School

Mr. Fasano jumps for joy.

You can tell it’s the last full day of school. Only two exam days (half days) left to go till summer.

MLA Handbook Seventh Edition

The newest MLA Handbook

A lot has changed since I used the 1977 edition of the MLA Handbook to write my first undergraduate theses. (Keats was its subject, but what little could I have known about this marvelous of poets back then?) Funny, how I have vivid memories of the handbook’s now-archaic instructions for preparing the paper: use of a “fresh black ribbon and clean type are essential” and using “thin paper except for a carbon copy” was highly recommended. As a teacher, I can attest that today’s students have never fumbled with a black ribbon and have little understanding of how carbon copies work. In the thirty years since my undergraduate days in Flordia, there has been a seismic shift in the way students conduct research, find primary and secondary sources, gather and store information, and prepare a finished paper. I’m certainly grateful I had the MLA Handbook back then, and I cannot imagine completing a research project in today’s computerized world without the careful, concise Seventh Edition, which I purchased yesterday and have been poring over ever since. (Yes, we English teachers have a strange idea of what makes interesting reading.) As my students know, I’m finishing up a guide to MLA documentation which I hope to publish by early summer. It should prove helpful to my future students — after my current students battle-test my rough draft in the coming weeks.

A&P Puppet Show (Student Project)

These guys did a very creative job and have given me a great idea for next year.

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