Month: March 2013

This post is a part of the Slice of Life challenge which is hosted on the Two Writing Teachers blog.  The month of March the challenge is to write a blog post a day.

Top Ten Reasons I feel awesome today:

1.  My lesson about the short story “The Lady and the Tiger” by Frank Stockton rocked today because of the pre-reading strategies I used yesterday.  The students were totally loving the story and excited about the fact that they got to choose the ending.

2.  Seeing the DVD of The Outsiders sitting on my desk, my students were totally excited about the possibility of watching this movie.  We just finished reading the book and I am planning to watch the movie and have them analyze the way the director and actors interpreted the book.  I can’t wait to have them do this to evaluate their integration of knowledge and ideas.

3.  Then we talked about how the pile of Romeo and Juliet was sitting on the table waiting for us.  I had multiple students SUPER EXCITED about reading this play. I LOVE this!  Holy cow, where did these readers come from?  Oh yeah, I have been using the unprogram this year…

4.  This week I started to use the idea of “sacred writing time” from Corbett Harrison on The Writing Fix website.  I bought his bingo cards and handed out the March one and told students they could write about what they wanted to write about or a topic from the card.  Almost all of my students were writing!

5.  We started a unit about symmetry today.  The students feel confident about this concept.  I loved the positive vibes about the math unit.

6.  I started my Technology Study Hall after school today which will include both a book club group and a creative writing group.  We had a lot of fun together!

I am doubling up on posts today.

Every week I participate in the It’s Monday meme which is hosted by Jen and Kellee at Teach Mentor Texts. It’s a chance to take a step back and reflect on what I have been reading this week and to think about my plans for the week to come.

I also am participating in the Slice of Life challenge this month hosted by Ruth and Stacey at  Two Writing Teachers.  In this challenge, I am writing a blog post every day in March.

This week was a slow reading week for me because I had report cards due and was trying to catch up with grading.  I also have been doing more writing with the Slice of Life challenge and some of my reading time was spent reading blogs and commenting.

Books I Finished This Week:

I finished Prodigy by Marie Lu earlier this week.  I actually stayed up too late to finish it because I had to find out what would happen to Day and June.  I liked this book better than Legend and after that ending I cannot wait until the third book comes out.  I am so intrigued by the world in this series and it will be interesting to see what happens next.

Finnikin of the Rock is an amazing fantasy adventure book.  I absolutely loved the characters and the original story.  I was surprised that it was definitely a book for high school readers.  I don’t know why I expected a more middle grade book, but I was pleasantly surprised.  I would definitely recommend this one to high school students and adults alike.  It is a book about how people can survive and hold on to hope even in the most dire circumstances.

Books I am Currently Reading:

I picked up Teach like Your Hair’s on Fire and started reading it this afternoon while waiting for my computer to load.  It seems like it will be a quick read so I will most likely keep reading it this week.  I also started Engaging Readers and Writers with Inquiry by Jeffrey Wilhelm.  I like his ideas and I am excited to read more.  I also am still listening to and loving The Night Circus.

Books I will read this week:

I think I will start Mexican Whiteboy tonight.  Next up on the list will be Hard Love and then Unwind.  I also have a huge pile of books that I just got from Scholastic which includes a number of treasures and award-winning books from this year.  I hope there will be more time for reading this week so that I can continue to whittle down the to-read pile.

This post is a part of the Slice of Life challenge which is hosted on the Two Writing Teachers blog.  The month of March the challenge is to write a blog post a day.

This week at school was a strange week.  There wasn’t anything concrete that I could point out as being the reason, it just was an odd week at school.

On Friday, we were up to business as usual when one of my students came back to the classroom from an errand and informed me that the hallway display was falling and should he fix it?  So he took a stapler, some tacks, and tape out to the hallway and did his best.

Now, this display is really not the best.  I cobbled it together and did not probably take the time needed to make it look great, but I really wanted to have the students display their reading somehow.  We talked about it and worked out together what they might do and I left it to their creativity to give me some sort of display.  It is one that I am not very proud of, because not everybody participated and we don’t have all the books represented.  I do think the students who did add to the display did an excellent job and there are some amazing things there.

I didn’t think the kids were all that proud of it either until Friday.  After this boy proceeded to fix the display, it stayed up for the rest of the day without an issue.  The problem is that all I have in the hallway are cork strips so there isn’t much support for this big paper.  At the end of the day, as students were lining up to leave, I saw another student stapling the top of the display back to the cork strip.

Now, I was perplexed.  What was it about this display that made students care if it was up or falling?  Aren’t they the same students that will walk past posters that fall without a care?  What is the difference?  And then, it dawned on me that these students had ownership of this display.  It is a compilation of the work of multiple students and they helped me decide what it would look like.

What a good reminder for myself about the power of belonging and having some say in the classroom.  I will be thinking about this as I plan for the week.

This post is a part of the Slice of Life challenge which is hosted on the Two Writing Teachers blog.  The month of March the challenge is to write a blog post a day.

I just got home from Half Price Books where I bought this book stack:

Although all of these books were in the clearance section and I got a fabulous deal, I really had no business buying more books.  I think I might have a problem.  Is there a book-lovers anonymous to help me with this book addiction?

The reason I should not be buying more books is the fact that I already have waaayyyy too many books on my to-read shelves.  Yes, that’s right it is plural.  These are my to-read shelves at home:

This one only has books on 2 of the shelves

This one is stacked full of books that I have yet to read.

This does not include the dozens of books that I want to read in my classroom or the ones I have stored on my Kindle (must stop looking at the daily deals).  I seriously need to stop spending money on books for a while.  This year, with the addition of Twitter into my life, I have become even more of a book nerd than I used to be.  Now I know all the titles on the clearance shelf at Half Price Books, and I want to buy the whole warehouse at Scholastic sales.  The worst of it is that somewhere along the way, I converted my husband into a book nerd too.  (This isn’t really a bad thing it just stops us from having the voice of reason when it comes to book buying.  He is on a graphic novel kick right now and our collection is growing steadily)

So I am starting it now.  No more book buying.  Hello, my name is Andrea and I am a book addict.  It has been an hour since I bought my last book.  Where is the twelve step program and the support network for me?

This post is a part of the Slice of Life challenge which is hosted on the Two Writing Teachers blog.  The month of March the challenge is to write a blog post a day.

Today I went out with my husband.  We have a favorite bar in our neighborhood that is an awesome beer bar.  They have been named in the top 100 beer bars in the United States in multiple magazines.

This bar is Sugar Maple in Milwaukee, WI.  The bar has 62 craft beers on tap.  Because of our patronage at this bar, I have become a beer snob.  What I love best are the bartenders that we know well.  It is fun to catch up with Josh and Rob when we go there.  It kind of feels like Cheers to us at this point.  Woo-hoo for friendly places with excellent beer!

The next stop for us was our favorite restaurant in the city.  This is an authentic Mexican restaurant with the best Mexican food I have ever had.  If you are ever in Milwaukee, you should visit Guanajuato Restaurant in Bay View (or GTO as the locals call it).  I had some amazing enchiladas tonight, but everything I have tried on their menu has been awesome.

I came home tonight ready to take the night off.  I have spent all week working on grades and tomorrow I need to finish with report cards.  I enjoyed the night off with my husband and now it is time to read…

This post is a part of the Slice of Life challenge which is hosted on the Two Writing Teachers blog.  The month of March the challenge is to write a blog post a day.

In a middle school classroom, one can never quite know what to expect.  I can make plans and work to follow them, but life sometimes throws in curveballs.

Yesterday was one of those days.  Brainstorming at lunch we came up with the possibility that maybe it was crazy because kids thought they were going to have a snow day and then they didn’t.  It felt like a full moon day with the crazy antics of the students and things just not quite right.

My morning was quickly interrupted by a group of girls trying to discover what was happening and how a rumor had started.  One girl was crying because the rumor was about her and made her boyfriend mad at her.  Three girls were angry at the girl who started the rumors.  That girl was retaliating because she thought the other girl had shared a secret of hers.  Luckily, I have 8th graders this year that can use their brains and do not resort to fighting right away.  This is not always the case in an urban school.  Oh, and this was supposed to be reading time.

In the midst of high drama in the hallway, I stood back and took a look at my classroom.  It is not easy to inspire adolescents to be readers.  Many come into the classroom with the idea that reading is for nerds and that they hate to read.  While I may not get every single one of them to be the voracious reader that I am, I can inspire them to give books a chance.  Many of my students have read their first book ever this year.  And all of them have at least 10 books under their belt at this point in the school year, many are closer to 25 or 30 books read.  Yesterday, when I really needed to have some peace and calm, I got it at independent reading time.  Every one of my readers in the classroom is reading a book they enjoy.  This was a time to savor the place I had created with my students this year.

It is always so calming to step back and observe the positive.  It is tempting, on a day when there is drama and crazy kid behavior, to dwell on the challenges that I have and the lack of motivation that students seem to have and the negative attitudes about school that they bring.

Yesterday, I focused on Estefany and felt better.  Estefany is a student that came into my classroom thinking that reading was boring.  She is a second language learner so reading has always been difficult for her.  This year, I worked hard with her to find books that she would enjoy.  We started out with easy books.  She read all of the Franny K Stein series even though she knew they were for younger kids.  Then she burned through Babymouse and enjoyed Dear Dumb Diary books.  One day she came into school with the book Bobby Vs. Girls by Lisa Yee.  “Ms. Payan you have to read this book.  It is SO GOOD!” she exclaimed.  So naturally, I took the book home and read it.  Then, Estefany wrote to Lisa Yee on Goodreads and got a reply.  The reaction was epic (as the 8th graders like to say).  This author was a rock star in her eyes!  She had been steadily reading multiple books at a pretty good pace until about a month ago.  That is when she discovered the Maximum Ride series.  Estefany went from reader to READER in the blink of an eye.  She read the entire series in a week and then went on to burn through the Witch and Wizard series, Graceling, Entwined, Cinder, Shadow and Matched.  The moment I knew that this girl was now a book nerd was when I heard her friend one morning.  “Are you CRAZY?” yelled her friend, who usually is a very quiet girl.  “She stayed up until 3 in the morning reading!”  Oops! I created a monster.  Estefany and I talked about how I understood this need to finish a book, but perhaps a school night was not the best time to do this.  She promised she wouldn’t do it again and we went about our day.  This is the kind of data that I think people should be paying attention to.  This reader will improve and has already improved in her reading.  If I had given her any one of the books in the list at the beginning of this school year, she would not have been able to read it. This is a success story and this is what I focus on when things start getting nuts in the classroom.

There are other stories like this one in my classroom this year, but none so dramatic a change.  In  a time when their lives are volatile and everything seems unsteady, I am glad I can give my middle school students an outlet and a chance to live vicariously through characters in books.  Even though life in a middle school classroom keeps me on my toes, I willingly dodge the obstacles so that I might inspire them to become READERS.

Title: Grave Mercy
Author: Robin LaFevers

Publication: April 3, 2012

Source: Kindle Book

Goodreads Summary:
Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.

Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

5 of 5 stars

This post is a part of the Slice of Life challenge which is hosted on the Two Writing Teachers blog.  The month of March the challenge is to write a blog post a day.

When I got the Troll and Scholastic catalogs as a child, I felt this deep sense of wonder and excitement.  I would pore over the catalog circling every book that sounded interesting and longing for the luxury of being able to get every book I wanted.  My parents usually gave me a price limit and I would agonize over my decision for days.  Finally, I would bring the catalog and my payment back to school and the interminable wait would begin.  How long would it take until my books arrived?

And then, the day would arrive.  The book box would show up at the classroom door as if brought there by fairies (yes, I loved fantasy books as a kid).  My teacher would sort the orders and the pile of shiny new books would be placed on my desk, sometimes towering precariously from the height.  All I wanted to do was bury my nose in that glorious pile and sniff the aroma of new book.  Oh, if they would only figure out a way to bottle that smell.  Being a pretty smart kid, I realized that I needed to restrain myself from book sniffing in public so I just picked up the books and paged through them.  If I was extra lucky, the books would arrive right before silent reading time.  Then I could spend my reading time savoring one of my new treasures.  

When I started teaching, I went in search of the Scholastic catalog because I knew I wanted to share this experience with my students.  What I didn’t anticipate is that I would be just as excited about the book box now.  I have a serious book addiction and cannot help myself when it comes to good book deals, so I spend hours agonizing over my selections as an adult also (more so since I am paying for it).  When the book box arrives, I am so excited to sort the books and give my students their books…I only hope their reaction is as enthusiastic as mine used to be.

So yesterday, when that red box arrived at school, I dove right in and sorted through the treasures inside.  I cannot wait to crack open those new books and find the riches waiting there.

This post is a part of the Slice of Life challenge which is hosted on the Two Writing Teachers blog.  The month of March the challenge is to write a blog post a day.

This week I am frantically trying to catch up with all of the grading I need to do so that I can turn in report cards on Friday.  I always start out the marking period with the best of intentions.  “I will keep up with it this time,” I say to myself.  And then life gets in the way.

This year especially, my work load seems to always be about three times what I could reasonably be expected to do.  Our district is under strict mandates from the state DPI because we have not met adequate yearly progress.  Did I mention that we are a large urban district with a very high poverty rate?  According to these mandates, we need to be doing response to intervention in all subject areas and differentiating all day long.  Also, we need to do bell to bell instruction and should not have any down time (even in elementary school classrooms).  Also, we need data.  Lots of data.  I do not have an issue with giving students formative assessments so that they can understand where they are and I can plan better.  However, not every one of those assessments is going to be one with a numerical score that I can “analyze.”  There are many things that are far more valuable that are more qualitative in nature.  Yet, here I am bogged down with scores that I MUST turn in.  (Don’t get me started about how the assessments I am required to use do not align with the standards I am teaching) Since my report cards are standards-based report cards, all of this data is extraneous.  All of these mandates make it impossible to get my work done in a reasonable amount of time.  I usually am at school at least 2 hours a day longer than required and if I don’t do about 6 hours of work on the weekend, I am behind all week.

Therefore, I find myself scrambling in this week when report cards are due to look at and analyze the work that my students have done this trimester.  I do not want to sell anyone short when determining their proficiency in the standards.  Little by little, I am developing a system to help all of us understand the standards better.  I want my students to be able to self-assess and understand why they receive the scores they do.  Time to take a deep breath, buckle down, and get those grades done.

This post is a part of the Slice of Life challenge which is hosted on the Two Writing Teachers blog.  The month of March the challenge is to write a blog post a day.

Hyperemesis Gravidarum is the name of the condition that is changing my sister’s life right now.  If you have heard of this condition, then the next words out of your mouth might be, “Isn’t that what Kate Middleton had to go to the hospital for?”  The answer is yes.  My sister is suffering from extreme nausea during her pregnancy.  Did she try ginger? You might ask.  Yes. Did she take Zofran? Did she eat soda crackers? Did she try peppermint? Yes, yes, and yes.  My poor sister has been nauseous since September when she found out she was pregnant.  She got exactly 2 days to enjoy the news and has been miserable ever since.

By December she was feeling sick but still able to wrestle down some food.  In February, she had to take medical leave because in her state she just wasn’t able to do the twelve hour shifts that her first year of residency asked of her.  She has had to defer her spot at Harvard for her neurology residency until two years from now because next year she will be making up her time off.  Now, she has started an IV line at home along with a Zofran pump.  They are having to pay an exorbitant amount of money for home health care and she is still miserable.  The good news is that the baby seems to be growing well and everything seems healthy.  However, there is no relief in sight for my poor sister.  There is absolutely nothing that the doctors can do to relieve her nausea and she has to continue to try to get food down because she needs the nutrients and so does that little baby.

I am so excited to meet my little niece in May and I know her parents will love her also.  I just wish my sister didn’t have this to deal with throughout the pregnancy.  I had never heard of this condition before but I will know more than I wanted to about it from now on.  If you ever have a friend suffering from this, know that they will need your support and comfort.  They may not be able to talk on the phone, but they will appreciate messages and e-mails.  I know that my sister and I have had much more contact in the last month or so because she needs someone to talk to.  Being at home and unable to move around very much can get quite boring.  I have gotten so I look forward to the message I know is waiting for me most mornings.

What I am most impressed with is my sister’s amazing resilience.  She is going through something that is unimaginable for most of us and she is never getting any relief from that nausea.  Does she get down every once in awhile and express that frustration? Absolutely.  However, she manages to keep finding a bright side and to look forward to the precious baby that will come from all of this.  She is strong and beautiful and I am so lucky to have a wonderful woman like this in my life.