The Counting Continues

He slides the graded paper across the oak desk. Scratches and gouges imitate rolling, rocky waves as it slides the across the aged surface. His hand mechanically sets the paper in the 'done' tray, swings back across the desk and fumbles to separate the last two papers from each other. The sheets of paper give up their embrace and fall apart, one staying in his hand, the other falling like a orange leaf from a bare tree. The paper barely rustles as it is laid into place. He reaches up and removes the glasses from his face, the index finger and thumb on his opposite hand rub in the corner of his eyes to relieve some of exhaustion he fells creeping into his head. A new resolve pulses through his brain, he returns his glasses to his face, grabs the red, felt tipped marker and starts to read the essay that hulks on the table in front of him.*

* Thinking of doing something like this for my second genre reflection. An semi-extended metaphor for grading papers and finishing the end of the semester. Could use some suggestions. 

Thanks, 

Gage Gruning 

KATE Conference Response

 What breakout sessions were most helpful to you as a future teacher?  What ideas are you going to incorporate into your teaching and/or planning?

The last session that I attended was about learning studios. It is a kind of classroom arrangement that focuses on movement and student involvement. The classroom layout makes use of chairs and tables on casters (for the sake of mobility), dual projectors and dual whiteboards. I liked this breakout session the most because the classroom arrangement sounds like it would be very useful and would go well with the teaching style that I hope to emulate. Even though it would be close to impossible to incorporate every idea the presenters talked about I think that some would be useful and easy to incorporate. 

The easiest would be attaching casters to the furniture so that they are easier to move, this would be good for group activities. I also think that I would like to include dual projectors in my classroom design. The presenters talked a little about the use of these, including showing side by side texts and pictures so that the students can see the differences between the two texts/images. They talked about paint that is used especially for projecting screens and I figured that this would be easy to get permission for, it could be easy to do and easily to undo if I changed classrooms.

Overall, I enjoyed the conference and learned a lot of new things during the breakout sessions. I would definitely attend next year's conference. 

Genre Reflection #1 - Regaining Control

The rest of the class sat silently, looking back and forth between the rogue student and the teacher.

            

“How do you know if we can’t do the assignment in two sentences?”

The teacher leaned back against the table at the front of the class, the podium with the assignment in question on it, stood at her right. The rest of the class sat at light grey desks grouped together in quartets around the room. Hands and papers masked their amusement at the interruption to their usually uneventful day.

           

“I’m not saying you can’t do the assignment in two sentences but I am just going to let you know that you are going to get a bad grade if you only write two sentences”, the teacher’s flat voice conveyed her exhaustion expertly.

The student stood among the desks, chest out and shoulders pushed back in a mock sense of confidence. He fed off of the hidden smiles and quiet snickers. The louder they became the taller he stood and the more the false sense of confidence moved towards justified confidence. Seeing this the teacher stood at her full height, moving towards the student causing the interruption. Speaking in her teacher voice the teacher announced, “This is not a discussion. The assignment is that you write a narrative story about a time when you learned a lesson. It has to be at least two pages in length, double spaced and typed. That’s it.”

           

“But why does it--”

            

“No. That’s it”, countered the teacher.

Smiles and snickers were immediately stifled by the tone of the teacher’s new found voice. With the silence the rogue student’s shoulders sagged, his chest caved, his legs buckled and he sank into the navy blue chair. The teacher finished passing out the rest of the assignment sheets and walked the perimeter of the classroom, squashing the lingerings of an uprising still brewing in the student’s minds. The teacher returned to the front of the classroom with her shoulders pushed back, her chest pushed triumphantly forward and her head held high.

Make It Interesting!

For my last lesson I decided to incorporate a lesson about urban legends with my larger lesson about To Kill A Mockingbird. I made a PowerPoint, that I'm going to attempt to link to this, that described what an urban legend is and relating it to the novel. The very last slide of the PowerPoint is the activity that the students did at their tables.


I teach in a morning class so the main struggle with the students is keeping them awake. When I started teaching my urban legend lesson every student perked up and listened and responded to what I was saying and what the lesson was about. They also seemed to enjoy the writing assignment that went along with the PowerPoint, an urban legend explaining the origin of Boo Radley. The lesson was so impacting that in today's class I had a student come to me before class started wanting to share an urban legend with the class. This didn't have to do with the novel but it showed an interest in the class that I thought was important to perpetuate.


That is what I took from this experience in my student teaching class. That it is most important to engage the students with a lesson that meets their interest and also conveys a valid and measurable point. With this lesson the students had to realize the effect of an urban legend and what it means to the community of Maycomb, AL (the setting of the book). They also participated in a creative writing assignment that allowed me to assess their group skills along with their writing skills.

Whole Class vs. Individual Activities

My classroom is in the midst of working out beginning of school jitters and my role is determining how students work together, separately and as a class. One of my classrooms first assignments was a class reading of “Rules of the Game”, by Amy Tan, and “Almos’ a Man” by Richard Wright. From this assignment I got a good look of what students are self-motivated and what students are more likely to talk than work. Randy Bomer, in his book; Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms,  talks about the characteristics and provides an insight to the importance of whole class teaching strategies and their relationship with other styles;

“So it’s important, but it must always be at the service of the other structures, particularly 

independent work, in order to make a difference in people’s literate life.”

I couldn’t agree with him more. There were several instances when the class reading of the stories took a turn from engrossing to boring and the students were not being held accountable for their work (which can be a problem with whole class teaching methods). At that point it was obvious that individual work time was required so that the students felt some sort of accountability. 

Bomer, R. Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms. 2011. Portsmouth, NH. ISBN: 9780325013947

Welcome to my Pre-Student/Student Teaching Blog!

All of the names used in the blog are pseudonyms, used to protect the identity and maintain privacy with students and teachers that are mentioned.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully, I will have accrued a nice selection of teaching materials and ideas that will inspire and provide you with ideas you can steal and use to teach your students or children. 

- Mr. Gruning