22.11.12

The Red Tree

This week in year 7 English we have been keeping up our paragraph hamburgers but also trying to add critical thinking. To help with this we have been talking about literal and inferential interpretation.
We have been using one of my favourite books, “The Red Tree” by Shaun Tan. This book has countless learning opportunities for English classes and is an easily accessible text for most kids. It is the perfect combination of simple words and complex images. We have been using this book for a week now and every time we pick it up almost all of my students have found something new and interesting to talk about.
We began the week by examining the front cover and doing a brainstorm on the content of the text. We then chose 3 words from the brainstorm that we thought were most likely to reflect what the text is about.
Next we only read the words of the book, without seeing any of the pictures on the inside. As we read, each student made a storyboard of 8 images. We discussed visualisation and how words can put images in your head.
The next thing we did was read through the text together. We spoke about the meaning of the text (and how different people make different meanings) and the intended audience. Students were then split into two levelled groups. The upper group reread the book and then chose a picture to deconstruct. With the lower group we read through the text together and very explicitly identified the meaning of images and words.
Later in the week, we began to review the paragraph hamburger so spent some time focusing on how to improve our writing. Finally we read through the book together again. At each page we stopped and made a list of words that reflected the mood or theme of the page. From this list we practiced writing a paragraph to examine the literal and inferential meaning of the page. We did one together and then students wrote on their own.

17.11.12

The Paragraph Hamburger

I really don't spend enough time talking about my job on here. Which I guess is good and bad! This week in year 7 and 8 English we have been studying the Paragraph Hamburger.

This is one of those writer's workshop type lessons that I always wish I had done during the first few weeks of school and right now I am making the promise to do that for next year! I am going to do it and do it right from the very beginning!

The paragraph hamburger is such a simple and effective metaphor to get most kids thinking about how they write. It is also a valuable tool to use when a student asks you to read their work. It allows you to have a conversation that is easy to understand (example: "Well, I see that you have made a lettuce burger...let's see if we can add some tomato and meat to make this paragraph a bit tastier").

I tend to start this sequence of lessons off by going right back to the start and asking kids what are paragraphs made up of? Very quickly I get the answer: sentences.

I then break down 3 essential elements of a sentence - Capital letters, punctuation and words (which can obviously broken down further if needed). I then show students an example of a paragraph hamburger graphic organiser (and here is another one) and discuss how this will help their writing improve.

The next step is getting students to understand what they need to do before they write. I take students through the brainstorming phase. Usually I get them to brainstorm between 5 and 12 things they know about a topic. I know 12 seems like a lot and would probably do less for younger grade levels but I tend to find that the first 5 things are what EVERY kid thinks of, so for those who can think out of the box I try to encourage them to go with the more unique ideas they brainstorm later in the process. I often tell kids - if you can't brainstorm 5 things you can't write enough so go find out more information!

We then look at an example of a paragraph (one that is a very obvious example that easily "fits" into the hamburger graphic organiser). I also usually put a title on this paragraph. Often when I ask students what the topic sentence is they will tell me the title which gives me an opportunity to teach them to think of the title as the wrapper of their burger. It gives a little taste of what is to come. We then go through each sentence and identify where it would fit in the graphic organiser.

We then look at another paragraph and rewrite it. At this point I get students to actually draw their own hamburger and write the sentences into it. I find this is a bit more consistent with getting them to see each part is important otherwise they wouldn't have a complete burger. This also gives me an opportunity to go back over writing sentences - I ask students to check their capital letters and their punctuation. I tell them to think of these things as sauce:
1. sauce usually ends up going the whole way through your burger
2. burgers just don't taste right without sauce

The next step is talking about super-sizing your burger or making a "lot" burger. In this phase I get students to go back and see if they can add in something extra (example: "This burger is looking pretty tasty but I like my burger to have extra bacon. Can we add in some bacon!?"). This sometimes gets students to go that one step further to add an extra sentence.

Finally, I will give students a familiar topic or some information to read and let them make their own burgers. After writing I will ask students to make sure they "have sauce" (capitals and punctuation) and also that their burger has a "wrapper" (title). We will then swap burgers and have a taste of each others, maybe get a partner to try to supersize the burger or simply conference to see if they get the concept.

So there we go. A little snapshot of my classroom this week. Sadly no pictures, but I will get some to add into this soon. This is something that I try to do over two weeks or so to ensure students become familiar with the idea and the steps. It is also something valuable to teach to refer back to all year, especially for those students who sometimes struggle to write.

16.11.12

Orange You Something

You know that saying "when life gives you lemons"....go buy oranges and make this cake. And eat it over the sink in your pajamas on a Friday night....for dinner.


What you need
2 or 3 oranges
180g butter
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
2 1/4 cups self-raising flour

Peel the oranges and then chop them up and blend them until you have really pulpy juice.

Pour the pulpy juice into a bowl and mix in butter, vanilla, eggs and sugar. Slowly fold in flour. Pour into pan (I used a springform pan for the first time and it was lovely!)

Bake for 70minutes in a 180 oven

11.11.12

shake it off

What do you do when your professional world and your personal ethics clash?

It's not often I don't want to go to work. I like my job. I love the kids I teach. I tolerate my colleagues. However, tonight I am feeling very Sunday night. The kind of feeling where I don't want to fall asleep, I don't even want to get under the covers because it means tomorrow will be here quicker than I want it to be.

I remember being 10 and sitting on the couch all Sunday night because I knew if I fell asleep it would be Monday all too soon and I didn't want to go back to school. It concerns me because that's how I feel tonight. Fifteen years later. I shouldn't be having this feeling.

It's been a tough few weeks. I seem to have managed to spend a lot of time off the radar this year, but the last few weeks have been tough. These questions just keep nagging my brain.

Did I do the right thing? When has it ever been wrong to do what I did? Why am I relieved that you are not concerned when I am so concerned? Why aren't you concerned? What gives us the power to decide these kinds of things? How can I see this is so wrong and you can't?

I know that I joined this job to help kids. I joined this job to give knowledge and help and opportunity. And that got lost last week. And it wasn't my fault. And I'm powerless to do anything to fix the situation. All I can do is sit back and question other people and the situation and myself. What kind of person am I to let this happen?