Rerun

The “Stirrings” (Again)

November 18, 2009
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It is sooo much fun making 7th graders uncomfortable and embarrassed. Is that mean? When the kids accuse me of being mean I tell them I get paid extra for being that way. “The meaner I am, the fatter the paycheck.” “Nuh uh!” I didn’t think kids said that any more. But I don’t think making them say “eew” or “gross” or making them do the uncomfortable/embarrassed squirm instead of the I’m-so-hyper-I-can’t-cope squirm is being mean. Besides, when you have 7th graders reading chapter 5 of The Giver, well now you have what the military calls a “target rich environment.” This year’s bunch was kind of cute about it, actually. After the previous night’s reading assignment, I hold a Q and A session before the reading quiz. I tell them I will answer any and all questions they have about whatever they don’t get. “I don’t get it,” is not a question. I also won’t answer, “What happened in chapter __?” Sometimes the sessions get a little free-wheeling, and each one takes on the characteristics of that class period. But this year, more than the past couple of years I have taught this book, there were waaay more kids with

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Virtual Mailbag: Yes, I do.

November 14, 2009
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Over there in the comments, Christine (thanks for the nice words) asks if I really read the whole of The Outsiders to the kids. Ummm, yeah. That’s sort of one of my shticks. Well, more like a hook. As in the fishing metaphor. The Outsiders is the hook I use to draw reluctant 7th graders into English and reading and actual discussions and such, and make them like it. In 16 years of teaching this book, I have yet to meet a 7th grader who doesn’t love it. But if you give it to them and let them go on their own, they will devour it in hours, and while they will still love it, they will miss two-thirds of what the book has to offer. And if you do the whole “popcorn” reading thing…well, no offense, but let me just say that I HATE THAT! The kids have to hear the rhythms and the feel of the dialogue and the writing, and I think one of the big problems kids have with reading comprehension is that many of them read so slowly that they lose the overall meaning. (More on this later.)  So unless you have a class full

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Guest Artist: Creating Memorable Characters (Also: Chapter 6 rerun.)

October 14, 2009
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Guest Artist: Creating Memorable Characters (Also: Chapter 6 rerun.)

You can tell Susan Hinton was young when she wrote The Outsiders. Even as I read it aloud for the 60somethingth time (and still laugh and tear up), I see the repetitions and the plot holes and the shmaltz. But I don’t care, and neither do the kids. It’s the characters she created that bring the book to life. They are realistic, sympathetic characters who represent all the things that kids feel. They can see parts of themselves in various aspects of Pony (loner, spacey, high expectations for him that he has trouble living up to), Johnny (pushed around, bullied, but protected by the gang – sort of the runt of the litter), Dally (rebellious and angry, impetuous, loyal, confident), Soda (blessed with charisma, but not school-smart), Darry (the provider, the rock, but still unsure of how to play his new role as parent), Two-Bit (immature, yet wise and funny), Cherry (trapped by her image, unsure of who the real Cherry is), and so forth. (Boy howdy, as Pony would say, that was one heck of a sentence.) So I like to remind the kids of this as we read the book. It’s really all about the characters. Steve Martin,

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57% New Material (Chapter 5 and Richard Cory)

October 7, 2009
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I can’t figure out what’s going on. We’re at least 3 or 4 chapters behind where we usually are. I haven’t been trying out that much new material. One of the science teachers made a comment the other day about how many times we’ve had weird (read: shortened period) schedules this year. Let’s see… Extended Advisory Schedule: First period 20 minutes longer, all others four minutes shorter.  Normally our first period is 10 minutes longer than the other classes. That extra ten minutes is technically called Home Base (my crew calls it Homies) or Advisory. This is what’s left of our Advisory program which was part of the whole middle school idea that was so popular 10 years ago or so. We used to have an extra 1/2 hour period in the morning where we were supposed to do team building and character building and values building and all sorts of construction projects. That was when they changed the sign from junior high to middle school. (Before Advisory it was an entire period devoted to something called Teen Skills. Don’t even get me started on that.) We’ve had four or five of these, ostensibly to cover the school handbook. Uh

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33 % New Material

September 8, 2009
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I’m well over 100 posts now. If this were a tv show, I ‘d be syndicated, and you’d be seeing reruns at 10:30 after the Seinfeld reruns. I’ve only done one repeat so far, but today we started talking about the writing technique called Show not Tell. I always like to start the year teaching them this one, because it makes their writing much more interesting to read for the rest of the year. Last year’s entry (9/22/08) about this says most of what I have to say, but I’ll come back at the end to add a couple of things. Here we go, from last September, with… “Don’t tell us the old lady screamed…” “…Bring her on, and let her scream.” -Mark Twain. For most middle schoolers, one of the biggest problems they have with writing is being specific. Everything is weird or cool or disgusting or fun. Especially weird or disgusting. There are no details, just general opinions. (Oh how seventh graders love to give unsolicited opinions…) I like to start the year introducing them to the idea of Show not Tell. The first assignment is always to “show” me the messiest, most disgusting room possible…without using any

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Random Featured Post

Quizzes for Dummies?

A few years ago, while we were reading Outsiders aloud, I was about to give them my usual “reading check” type quiz to make sure they were following along, thinking about what we’d talked about, connecting the literary terms to the examples in the book, etc. I can’t quite remember what my inspiration was (probably just to throw them for a loop like I like to do), but I decided to let them “cheat.” My quizzes on the books and stories we read are always open book, but this time I told them they could take the quiz, not only open book, but “open mouth.” I told them they could talk about the questions and answers as much as they want in any way they want, and decide however they want to, which of the answers to choose. “You can share what you know…or not. You can decide whether to heed the wisdom of the group…or not. You just can’t lie. You can’t knowingly tell everyone the wrong answer on purpose.” One class that day came up with the name Quiz for Dummies. The rest of the periods thought that was a little “mean,” so we’ve stuck with Open Mouth. [...]

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Mr. Coward has been teaching on the beautiful central coast of California since 1989.

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