Building Better Lessons

I’ve read that every innovated teacher faces challenges of innovation. These challenges may range from resistance from students or parents, struggling to find time to teach and plan with innovation. We’ve seen it, faced it, and experienced it. There are certainly highs and lows in this profession. At this time of the year (it’s April), I (Terri) am certainly feeling the exhaustion start to set in. So now is the time to dig deep and shake up what I do. I need it as much as the students at this point in the year where everyone is looking towards summer break with anticipation. Let me be clear, I love my job! I teach at an amazing school, have the support of the best colleagues around, and work daily with respectful children who want to learn! But by April, we all feel the hours.

So how do I stay true to the profession late in the year? I refuse to let myself settle. I force myself to do what I ask of my students. I strive to model for them what I ask of them - to work until the last minute of the year.

This year this looks like building a new HyperDoc to be the center of my Civil Rights Unit for eighth grade. This will help carry us to the end of the year integrating technology, primary source documents, research, and student investigation. In seventh grade, it means building a new unit from scratch and jumping in with a rough idea of where it will land. This is perhaps the most unnerving thing I do as a teacher. I always want to know the end before we begin, but now I am right in there with the students - researching, making connections, etc. They like that I am not so many steps ahead of them. It’s new content for me to teach, so planning takes longer, and it is timely and relevant which also means it’s a potential hot-button topic for parents. I am learning right along with the students up to the very end of the year - trying my best to model what lifetime learning looks like.

I challenge you now, on the cusp of May and summer vacation right on our heels, to try something new with your kids. See where it takes you!

Cross-Curricular Unit Final Projects

We wrap up the novel using the same groups in which the students work in social
studies to create the final projects. The first is simply called “The Color Project,”
and the idea started with a project bundle I (Heather) purchased from Gretchen
Blynt at Teachers Pay Teachers (the same one the entrance ticket idea came from).
I used Blynt’s idea of having students choose a scene from the novel to create
using one color that seems important to that particular scene, and created a
bigger project around it. To begin, groups are all assigned a color in the novel,
and are tasked with finding as many mentions of their color as they can. They
must collect the quotes and page numbers on a collaborative document. They
are then asked to write a group analysis about their color based on any patterns
or recurrences they see in the quotes they researched. Along with this, students
are asked to choose a scene in which their color is prominent which they will
illustrate using only their color, as well as write an analysis on why they believe
their color is represented in their chosen scene.

Their next group project is the culmination of the unit, and students will present
this final piece at the same time they present their social studies display.  Each
group is assigned a character, and they create a body biography on six foot
bulletin board paper including quotes, characteristics, symbols, and important
events in the character’s life.  They must assign a color to their character, and
explain why that color represents their character's personality.

By the end of the unit for US History, the students have worked collaboratively
to create huge display pieces on their assigned research topic. These
pieces are large black sheets of bulletin board paper 6ft. longg. Each piece
highlights the research by displaying a timeline, relevant historical quotes,
summary of the topic and original artwork. The display piece also allows
for a connection to the color project from English. Each group must assign
a color to the historical topic they have researched, and explain why they
feel this color best suits the topic. This allows for a little extra imagination
and creativity in an otherwise research heavy assignment. Each group must
also create a collaborative Google slides presentation. In order to balance the
individual and group components, each group member keeps an accountability
log of all their work throughout the entire process. This is their chance to
describe their role and contribution to the group.

Here are some of the English and social studies projects hanging side by side:

Where It All Starts to Come Together

Two of my favorite days to teach are the two that Terri and I take the entire 8th-grade class (58-60 students) out of the classroom for two hours each day to weave together both of our content areas with social awareness/justice. The two of us were fortunate to attend a workshop sponsored by Facing History and Ourselves, in which they taught us some techniques and lessons for teaching Alexandra Zapruder’s Salvaged Pages. (This is an anthology of diaries by teenagers who lived in ghettos and concentration camps during World War II.)  The workshop is the basis from which we teach these two days, and they have become some of the most meaningful teaching we do.  Part of it is the content, but the other part is the rare glimpse we get of each other teaching, and the ways we are able to piggyback off of each other’s comments and teaching styles.  I think I learn something new every time we teach this because we each grow in our own knowledge, and then we pass this along to our students in different ways.

We begin our first day discussing why teenagers write, and then reading some of the diary entries and asking the students to determine why those particular authors wrote.  The students then watch a video about the stages of the war, and they begin to understand the years of preparation that it took to make the Holocaust happen. They read different primary source documents from Kristallnacht, including newspaper articles, and telegrams, and the realization hits that this night of destruction is not something that just occurred: it was planned in detail, in writing, with many stipulations.

Day Two Reflection

On the second day of our cross-curricular lesson we gathered with kids interested, but a little more cautious than they were on day one. I think they thought it would be more of the same and didn't want to look at more PSD. We started this lesson with a clip from MTV’s documentary “I’m Still Here:  Diaries of Young People Who Lived During the Holocaust.” The clip we show is only about 4 minutes long, short enough we can view it several times through the activity, long enough to add layers of depth to our content.

Through multiple viewings of the clip, students share their reactions, analyze specific elements, and discuss editing and presentation choices. With each viewing students are more deeply immersed in the content and are challenged to consider different perspectives. This technique of re-visiting the same material with various purposes in mind shows rather than tells the kids that they can learn something new each time they read a text, especially if they are looking for different elements.

The video itself is heavy because of the content.  Students become connected to this “anonymous girl” as actors read her diary and music and images are used to enhance the somber and depressing mood. The connection deepens when we read the end of her diary to them, and the ominous meaning of her interrupted sentence sinks in.  The possibilities of what happened to her, and why she ends mid-sentence begin to run through their minds.

One can almost feel the relief from the students when the next activity is a kinesthetic one: they are told to move to a location in which they have plenty of room and are given index cards to write down words or phrases that jump out at them as they read one of the provided diary entries.  The kids then create found poetry from the words they have taken from these texts, and they present them to one another. This is a wonderful way to end this heavy two days because the students are able to create something that connects them to teenagers living very different lives from what they know. Empathy is growing in them deeper and stronger as a result of experiencing someone else’s life through the written word.

Innovation - Getting The Students Interested and Making them Enjoy the Work

Since The Book Thief is such a long novel, students begin reading and working in English before they begin discussing the historical components in social studies (although to truly make this cross-curricular we do talk about some of the events in English), one of the ways we begin to tie things together is by having the students create a writer’s notebook that they will use in both classes.  In English, students will journal about quotes or themes related to the novel, as well as answer personal prompts that will eventually guide students toward choosing their topic for a memoir created at the end of the unit. In social studies, students use the notebook first to brainstorm and then to reflect on leadership characteristics. This always opens an interesting discussion on what it takes to be a good leader, especially in regard to the leaders of the world during WWII. Later we use the notebooks for various reflections on primary source documents or class discussions.

As a way to explore the novel and allow students to show what they have read, students are required to create an entrance ticket for each section of the book in order to be admitted to class the day a reading assignment is to be completed.  This has truly become my favorite way to discuss a novel, because the kids come up with symbolic and personal connections to the text in a way that allows them to be creative. Some of their creations truly are works of art: