Themes

As I was listening to Sanders read the other day he said, "I noticed a connection between three books. I noticed that each of these books is about a kid growing up and each kid has a new baby brother or sister, and they all feel jealous, but then they change and they learn to share their parents."

Wow. He was finding a theme. This is not easy work for a seven-year old. Think about it. Do we as adults find themes in books easily? No way. I might find a theme in one author's books - like the tension between salvation and sin, or Salinger on middle-class pretense and listlessness - but it is just plain hard to find a theme in books by different authors like Sanders did. It's so cool to find kids doing things like this in my class. Love my job.

Earthquakes, Street-Musicians and Janitors

Inspired by "Growing Readers" by Debbie Miller of TC and yet totally our own.

This was the strongest first week of school I've ever experienced as a teacher of reading.

On Monday, Ronnie, the janitor, and after hours dj of everything from Mingus to Sting and back, handed me a Caribbean Life newspaper excerpt about a new singer from New Orleans. I made a big teacher deal of it in front of my kids, "See how smart people know what their friends are interested in and give information to each other?"

On Tuesday, Joanna asked, "Mr. Shirk, remember when you're friend gave you a newspaper about music can you read it to us?" Happily I complied; it went over their heads. But the act of a seven-year old girl remembering a day later an interaction involving text between two adults and expressing her interest in hearing about it; wow. She is aware that a community of ideas exists between people who are alert and soulful. Also, a good friend pointed out to me that Joanna felt welcomed into this community.

On Wednesday, Julian brought in a book about earthquakes in response to the rare East Coast quake we felt on Tuesday. See the last bullet point on our chart of things good readers do. We added this in response to Julian's contribution. That day (I had also brought in 4 books on earthquakes from the library) we practiced partner reading - book in between two bodies, one pair of hands on book so we don't rip it, quiet voices but lots of reading and talking, reading and talking, and so on.

What do these experiences say about lesson planning?

The things of highest value could not have been written in to my lesson plans because they were responses that my kids and I had to our learning environment. On the other hand, I prepared by sitting in a coffee shop reading Debbie Miller on building a community of readers and I prepared by developing a bond with Ronnie with music blaring in the empty school corridors - "I know that's McCoy Tyner, but that just doesn't sound like Coltrane..."

What's lost when a school, or a graduate school, doesn't call forth this kind of preparedness, or worse, starves responsiveness by over-emphasizing detail in lesson plans.

What do these experiences say about assessment?

It's impossible to put what Joanna and Julian did in a multiple choice test. Yet those are the measures our school wants to use to say we will be as good an elementary school three years from now as City and Country, The School at Columbia or PS 321. This makes me want to be a teacher and learner always, never a policy maker or a leader. Ojala, que haya otro modo de ser lider.

Tea Party of the Radical Center?

Last year Thomas Friedman proposed a Tea Party of the radical center. A contradiction in terms? Yes. Helpful vision? Maybe so. I'm left thinking about this vision after TFA's 20th Anniversary Summit in DC.



Like NYCORE (NY Collective of Radical Educators) and Grassroots Education Movement (grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.com), I was expecting the event to feel something like a scientology convention. When Joel Klein said, "Is this our Egypt moment?" and something like "Don't be afraid to stand up to the big interests," I felt a little seasick. Does he say things like that to Rupert or Bill and Melinda. Disgusting. Orwellian.

However, I chose to attend sessions throughout the day that were led mostly by TFA alums who have been in the classroom for 10 and 15 years. Are they the majority? No, but they're out there. And all reaffirmed my connection to the organization. They shared tips and stories about building strong community with students, parents and fellow teachers.

With this in mind, I felt much better at the closing session. An alumna who is a PhD candidate at Temple had good things to say. And I was convinced that the two alumni state senators who spoke are more faithful public servants than the average politician. At the end, a kid from KIPP's orchestra was singing under his breath as he was playing backup to John Legend. Pretty good stuff.

Progress with Non-Fiction

About the difference between fiction and non-fiction, I'm afraid that my kids only understand that "stories are not real" and that "non-fiction is not a story."

So today I asked, "we know that most non-fiction doesn't have a problem and resolution, then what does it have?"

Ashley yelled out, "facts!"

"Good. What types of facts?" I asked. We ended up with this chart through a process in which I asked them to recall non-fiction books that we read, i.e.

Me: "Process is about how things happen. What books did we read this year about how something happens?" -

Kids: "From Pit to Peach Tree"

Me: "Ok, what process, what thing that happened, did that book teach us"

Kids: "How trees grow?"

Me: "Ok, so growth is one of the types of facts that's a process."

(Note: all this was focused to lead up to the skill of summarizing a non-fiction text by writing a main idea and two details.)

Time

For four years I've struggled to teach 2nd graders to tell time. It struck me yesterday that

1) time is all about movement - sun, moon and hands of a clock and

2) the idea that the clock is moving is very abstract to 2nd graders - I mean, do you know any seven-year old who will sit still long enough to notice that the hands on a clock actually move=)

So, I thought about showing a time lapse of a clock that I found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQqX1GHr0nw&NR=1

(Thanks also to my colleague who then referred me to the following: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71RSVSyIyfI&feature=related )

And I did the following:

1. I have my kids watch it all the way through twice and say what they notice

2. I play it again but stop it every 15 minutes, and ask them each time “Where is the hour hand?” and they use the following words

a. Right at

b. Just past

c. Almost_____ but not yet. So it’s still _____ 3. I play it again and stop it to quiz them on some times, like this:

a. Where’s the minute hand?

i. Is it easy or hard? (hard if the minute hand is past 30)

b. Where’s the hour hand?

i. Right at

ii. Just past

iii. Almost_____ but not yet. So it’s still _____

c. What time is it?

4. I tell them a time and they have to tell me when to stop.

silence

I suggested a book called "White Teacher" by a Genius Award winner for the Gentleman's Book Club at the school where I work. 100% of our students are children of color. Nearly 90% of the teachers, and 100% of the male teachers are white. 3 gentleman showed up. 10 showed up for "The Fight" last year. 12 showed up for "The Watchmen."

My thoughts cycle back to many "liberal" people I overheard this summer during the World Cup saying they "just couldn't root for Germany" because of its recent history. Meanwhile, a German friend visited me and told me about attending a reading by female Holocaust survivors hosted in the equivalent of the Pentagon. Where is the U.S. in this process?

I think TFA’s mission has encouraged me to see my students as either future middle class wage earners or not. Today I looked out at my class and saw black children and I felt more content, more comfortable than in the past with what I saw.

They’re beautiful and quirky, and confident and unsure. They know a lot about what it means to be black children in Brooklyn in 2010. They know a lot about what it means to be children. They know a lot about Trinidad, and Prospect Park, cornbread and pet deer.

Am I going to add to their emerging awareness of identity by acknowledging their funds of knowledge or will I heighten their insecurities by making them feel only as if they’re preparing to become part of the middle class?

Better Research Questions

I realized that my kids connected so well to Malcom by thinking about his story. Even before they read the text, they asked, "Why did he do what he did to get sent to prison?" That can be linked to the idea of character's motivation in narrative structure, something we've been learning about all year.

So, I decided to have them write their questions about their new research topics on a story mountain that shows the parts of a story. You'll see my model and a few of the kids' below:



In blue I put a few examples of the questions that they had asked about Malcom when we made a KWL chart at the beginning of the book about him.

Today I added my own questions about my own research topic, "the beginning of slavery," in blue.








I like how she asked about the disagreement between the Nation of Islam and Malcom.


I like how Samuel, below asked about Frederick Douglas' parents. I think he's connecting to some information we learned from Malcom about how slaves didn't know their parents' or grandparents' names.
























I like how he put the question about slaves in the south as part of the "characters" component of narrative structure.

Setting Up Research

We made this chart as a whole group in the middle of February. I was impressed by what the kids already knew about Malcom, especially that they didn't seem to have a sophomoric "anti-MLK" idea about him.

I also thought their questions were great - they expressed confusion/disequilibrium that they could figure out while we read on. For example, when they asked "Why did he do what he did to get sent to jail?" they were expressing confusion that someone could be both an important historical figure and a criminal - totally natural confusion for the seven year old mind. Full of intrigue, they jumped out of their seats, pointing at this question as we read the scene about the police standing by doing nothing to help Malcom's family after the Klan burned his house down. They were making the connection that someone who wasn't protected by the law might not feel the need to obey the law.


Unfortunately I don't see the same potential for intrigue in this next batch of questions that they're doing on their own. I'm wondering how I can guide the research process so that they're asking more intriguing questions without controlling the kids too much.

Do communities need to change?

(This post is about my 4th graders who I've had a rough time engaging this year.)

I'm hoping to get them going by looking at our own community as a way to lead into interesting history and throw a bit of argumentation into the mix with the question "Do communities need to change?"

Before getting into “Do communities need to change?,” I think my kids need to start with something more concrete, like a unit of study on “what is in our community?” I’ve made a blank outline map of our block and plan to take them around the block to fill in the uses of each building (commercial, residential, community.) Next, I would take them to a new block to test their map skills and understanding/awareness of land use.

First concern, it seems too concrete. How can I link it to an exciting essential question that gives it some movement? What can I do to link it back to the argument “Do communities need to change?”

Second concern, what information do they need to research in order to have an informed (rather than sophomoric) opinion about the argument? And how can I link this argument to historical research?
(I’ve thought of going to the Brooklyn Historical Society library myself to try to find data on how land use in our neighborhood has changed. However, I’m not sure how to connect that to 4th grade appropriate knowledge of economics and politics.)

Third concern, assessment tasks? Persuasive piece? Op-ed style “column”? Debate? Mock town hall? I like any of these ideas but I’m not sure how to assess them.

When my kids asked as part of a study of Malcom X if MX and MLK had slaveowners, I decided to start making a timeline.

We started with 2010 and then I asked them how many years we needed to put on to show all of the North American history that involves their African ancestors. (partern talk, then whip around for whole group share.) They had guesses ranging from 10 to 1,000 years and I gave the correct answer, right in the middle of their guesses, 450 years (enslaved Africans were first brought to Florida in 1560.)

I asked if they thought we could put 450 years on the one poster that we had up on the wall (thumbs up or thumbs down.) They were split in half. "Sure we could," I said, "we just need to make the years really small, like this," and I started to draw in teeny, tiny years. "You guys have seen timelines before, so you know that we need to put some dats and some writing about what happened on those dates. Is that all going to fit here?" "No," they responded.

Then I directed them to look at the lines on the paper. "Can we use one line equals one year? Let's see....nope didn't work. Can we use one line equals two years...nope doesn't work."

Eventually we ended up making three lines equal a decade. I showed the kids how to count the three lines and then write down the next decade. Then they filled it in on their own, as you can see from the variety of font size =)

We put up important historical events starting with their birthyear. I decided to put up only events that they're familiar with, but that they don't know the date or chronology of.

First they brought up the "I Have a Dream Speech" and then Michael Jackson's brithday. They were excited to see the proximity of the two. I think that affective dimension helps them understand time and historical depth.

We've gone on adding 2-3 dates each day. Before asking them what they want to add I review the chronology with them through quick questions, i.e. When did the Civil War end? How many years older than MJ is Ruby Bridges?, etc.

Next, I plan to refer my kids to this chart to make a new KWL chart (What do we think we Know? What do we Want to know? What did we Learn?)

Ancticipating that they'll have questions about Frederick Douglas (they put his birth on the timeline, but don't seem to know much about him) and the origins of slavery, I went to the library and got some biographical and historical texts.

If you have any resources or ideas please share them!

Immigration Bibliography

My buddy Todd is planning an immigration curriculum for 3rd grade. I found this book at the Bank Street library: I Was Dreaming to Come to America: Memories from the Ellis Island Oral History Project. It has short paragraphs of quotes from kids thinking about coming to U.S. America. The content is diverse, everything from commentary on the trip to the sights and sounds of the new physical environment compared to the "old world.



If you have any other ideas for immigration bibliography post them here. Thanks!