February 14, 2008

Valentine’s Day is probably not the best day to begin participating in a student literature circle.  The students are very excited.  Most likely full of Valentine sweets!

In Mrs. Mitchell’s class each literature group has four students.  This class consists of all girls.  One girl is the secretary and she collects the group folder from Mrs. Mitchell that contains the papers labeled summarizer, predictor, visualizer, and comprehension monitor. The students take turns being the summarizer, predictor, visualizer, and comprehension monitor. They take these papers home and complete them on the part of the book they have read.  Each student is also required to keep track of the words they do not know the meaning of.  These are to be looked up by the group or the student can look the definition up and discuss it with the group.

This group is reading The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.   I have actually seen this movie, but will enjoy reading the book.  Before this first meeting I was able to read the first two chapters of the book. 

Our discussion for today was mostly about Mary Lennox and what a “nasty” little attitude she has.  We discuss why she is like this and how sad it is that her mother ignored her as a baby and small child. 

The majority of the group had not read more than two or three chapters, so the goal is for everyone to read to at least chapter ten for our next literature circle.

February 22, 2008

I have learned my first lesson about middle school literature circles.  You can give a student a book, but that does not mean they will read it.  Since we had a three-day weekend I had hopes that everyone would have read the ten chapters, but this did not happen.  Many excuses – I told them I had finished the book –they were shocked.  I was shocked that only one student had read to chapter ten in the three days.  Well – what to do.  One of the girls said she had already read the book, one has seen the movie, and the other thought she had taken it home, but it was actually in her locker. 

After passing out their papers and discussing which student did which job we barely had time to discuss the book.  In order to get them to talk about the book, I asked them about the little red-breasted robin in the story and what changes they were noticing about Mary since she had met the bird.  We discussed how everything had seemed dark and what an unhappy child Mary seemed to be until she meet the little robin.  It seems that the red-breasted robin has cracked open a part of Mary and made her began to understand about how to have feelings for something.  One of the girls mentioned the boy Colin in the story.  I asked them what they thought of him and who he reminded them of earlier in the story.  We discussed this and our time had run out.

Mrs. Mitchell told the class that this coming Monday would be our last day with this book.   I hope the girls finish the book.  I felt somewhat frustrated after this literature circle.  I have spoken with Mrs. Mitchell about my frustration and we plan to meet on Monday, before our next literature circle. 

February 25, 2008

This week the students are testing.  By the time 7th period rolled around I’m not sure who was more fried, the students or the teachers.  The students beg the teachers to not make them read anymore because many of them have had a great deal of time to read while they wait on other students to finish their test.

Mrs. Mitchell decided today that each literature circle would do a project this week on the book they have read or as in my group still reading.  On Wednesday the students will decide how they are going to illustrate and present their book to their peers.  Each student in the group must pick a character to portray.  They can build dioramas or just use their imaginations to express the plot or characters in their book.  I will meet with my group on Wednesday, February 27th to observe what our group wants to do for this project.

February 29, 2008 

I did not get to the class on Wednesday, but did try to get down to hear the book talks from the Reading II class that was visiting Heights.  I was not very successful at that either.  But what I did get to see was very good.

I had also planned to get back into the classroom on Friday, but that did not work out well either.  I ended up needing to cover the front office that afternoon for the other two secretaries.  There are never any dull moments in the school setting.  Hopefully I will be able to venture down the hall on Monday to meet with my literature circle.

March 3, 2008

I actually made it to class today, only to find that 3 of the students in our group were not at school.  The class is working on a collage that they will share with the class that describes or tells the story of their book.  The one girl that was in my group was busily painting over a paper heart dollie.  I asked her why she was doing that and she told me it was to represent the love that was in The Secret Garden.  We talked about the red bird in the book and she painted a small red bird using watercolors.  She searched through magazines to find a picture to represent the girl and two boys.  She gets side tracked easily and was excited to show me a picture of some army men with one getting shot in the rear-end.  I told her I didn’t think that had much to do with our book, but she didn’t get back on task until she had shown the picture to a friend and Mrs. Mitchell.  I asked her what she remembered about the secret garden that Mary found.  She remembers the flowers and vines, so we talk about that being apart of her collage.  She asked if I would like to help her, so I drew some branches and used the watercolors to make green leaves.  Our time ran out – but she gave me a hug and told me it looked really great and thanked me for helping her.

The class will finish their collages on Thursday and share them with the class on Friday.  Frances recommended that it would be good for me to do my own collage and share it with the class.  I must get busy.  I look forward to listening to the students share their thoughts on the books they read.

March 10, 2008

The class continued presenting their collages on their book.  I missed part of the class because of a dentist appointment.  The girls are doing a good job on the presentations.  The students have found great pictures or drawn pictures to symbolize their stories.  After presentations the class will watch the movie The Secret Garden.  Mrs. Mitchell has chosen our next literary book, Literature of the American Southwest.  This book is full of folk tales and tall tales, short stories; fiction and non-fiction, and poetry.  I look forward to the reading.   

March 14, 2008

The class is watching The Secret Garden. 

March 17, 2008

Students are finishing "The Secret Garden."  Everyone is excited about Spring Break.  Me too!!

Mrs. Mitchell and I have gone to the bookroom and decided on the next literature book the students will read.  Using the Literature of the American Southwest, the students will be exposed to Folk Tales and  Tall Tales, Short Stories and Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry.  

March 24th  

SPRING BREAK      YEA! YEA! YEA!

March 31, 2008

Mrs. Mitchell read the students a story and introduced the new book, Literature of the American Southwest.  She assigned the Folk Tales and Tall Tales.  The students will do a journal writing on Thursday and change the ending of one of the stories.  I will do an activity with the students on  April 7th on the first two short stories:  "He" by Katherine Anne Porter and "How I Won the War" by Robert Flynn.

April 7, 2008

Today I headed off to Mrs. Mitchell’s class excited about the literature stories that the students were to have read.  After conferencing with Francis I had decided that I would put the students in small groups and have them select a favorite part in one of the stories and have them act it out to the class without talking.  Middle School kids, I guess every teacher wishes that when they give students an assignment that they actually do it, but I know now that is just a dream world that doesn’t exist.  Not even half the class had read the two stories, so I divided the students that had read into two groups and let them pick the story they wanted to work with.  As for the group of non-readers I had them open their books and told them to begin reading.  While the two groups worked on their skit I decided it would be good to do a “story sell” after they presented their skit, to hopefully entice the other students to be interested in reading the two stories.

The students enjoyed the activity and did a good job trying to convenience the other students why they would want to read the stories.

April 14, 2008

Due to conflicts I was unable to work with the class this week.

April 23, 2008

Mrs. Mitchell is out of town this week so I thought what a perfect time to take over the class.  She assigned the students a story from Lomesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.  I really like class of all girls and I have grown very comfortable going into the class.  Of course with my previous experiences I knew that probably half the class had not read the story.  Was I surprised when I asked how many had read the story and only about three hands went up.  Well the teacher is out of town!! So I guess they thought that no one would really know.  I decided to put them into five literature circles and asked them to read the story.  One person could read the whole story or they could break it up.  Every group took turns reading.  I circulated the room and took my turn reading with different groups.  I asked the groups to talk about something they thought was interesting, funny, or just unusual in the story.  After each group finished the story I had each of the groups present to the rest of the class what they choose from the story and why.   Most of the groups talked about a funny part in the story.  Many thought it was funny that one of the characters named Deets did not know his last name.  We discussed why he might not have know his last names.  They came up with several good reasons.