response to classmates journal week 10

Response to Rachel Jones journal

Rachel Wrote:
Week 9, Pedagogy
This week, I am working to convince my students that poetry is a useful form of writing. Working with my student teacher, we developed lessons where we are reading poems in class required by the GPS, then we are having the students select lines to use as a starter. Although I had some rather good images "The city smells like crumbling buildings"-student and "the post it notes of life stare back through the cave"-student, for the most part, students were confused. I wonder if I went wrong somewhere. Perhaps we didn't work to establish a basis for this work, and so the students are confused about their purpose and their goal. The performance standards focus strongly on literature content, but when it comes to writing, they are more vague. I wonder, should I have done other exercises to set this up before actually having students write? 


Jeff said...
They should be confused. I know I was when we started with this class. Keep at it, they will get it as long as you keep going. Try the emo-poem, my kids loved that and talk about the triggering town, my kids really got into that idea for skit writing, maybe it will help them if the have an understanding of place as a trigger.

Also, you might try multitasking different calisthenics. I introduced writing between the lines first I think but I did multitasking with sonic translations and improving of of other poems and plays in their seats and also set up a table for students in the middle of the room to do the passing of literature material.

One thing good about this is it keeps students moving, which they like to move around anyway. I would just tap someone on the shoulder to let them know it was their time to go to the table and they would tap someone on the shoulder to ask them to leave the table.

I kept them going back and forth between these two things so quickly and for most of the period that they did not have time to ask questions. Once a student started to ask why are we doing this and I just said we don't have time for questions keep going, surprisingly the student did without any fuss. With high school kids it is sometimes best to keep them doing things fast so that they do not have time to talk or think to much for some reason that is fun to them especially if there is movement. I suppose like most of the rest of us they learn this best by doing it not talking about it.

The very best part of this for me was the reactions I would get, students would sometimes groan when I tapped them on the shoulder, because they did not want to stop what they were doing or just politely ask if they could have another minute, it was fun to say no. I would say no it's best to leave it alone while your still hungry to finish it.

I don't know about you but I am a talker, and I talk and talk in class. I will try anything to shut me up and get them learning. This worked for me I shut up and they were doing a lot of work. They did not know what they were doing or why but they did it, and when we were done, the next day several students had new ideas for skits.