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:

Our Cross-Curricular Unit Begins

Through trial and error, false starts, and big flops, we are continually trying to reach
the kids, to get them truly interested in the material. We’ve seen great success with
this in our World War II Unit. This cross-curricular unit is one that the students look
forward to each year. They ask questions about it a year in advance, and somehow
that excitement seems to eclipse the amount of work we ask from them.

A big part of the build-up for this is how we decorate the hallway and our classrooms.
During this unit, we transform our entire hallway into an interactive display. It contains
work from some previous years and morphs each year into something a little different.
The unit centers on our subject areas of English and US History. The students read
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, and study people, events, and locations from the
war itself.

Because of the importance of colors in the novel, we add different colored plastic
tablecloths to give the symbolism of the colors a tangible feeling in the hallway.

Death, who is surrounded by the books Liesel finds/steals in the novel looks
on as students walk into their English classroom, while the steam from the train
that decorates the door goes across the hallway to the social studies classroom,
which is blacked out to represent the devastation caused during the war and
serves as a solemn reminder of the lives lost during the Holocaust.

The hall is even more exciting with the addition of R/C model airplanes.

Check back over the next couple of weeks when we show you the display with
the student work from this year added.

A Walk on the Wild Side

Sometimes to take a journey all you need is a great book, but sometimes you have
to actually move your feet. Recently, inspired by a brief case study in the textbook,
you know the pages between the regular sections that student pretend do not exist,
I decided it was time to get my students moving. I love experiential learning, I love
hands on, but I also love the structure of a more traditional classroom setting. I
struggle with creating balance for my students and my sanity.

Inspired by the story of an American scientist who braved the African forest, I
decided I could brave the wilderness of our school neighborhood. Before we
left the classroom, I told the students we were going outside. Instantly the noise
increased and excitement began to build. In their mind outside at school meant
extra recess. For me it meant connecting to scientific skills, making them take on
the role of a cartographer, writer, and data collection specialist. To begin I shared
just briefly the story of mapping the African forests. We discussed what that might
have been like. The students were amazed that anyone would be willing to make
such a journey. None seemed to think they would follow this example and set off on
a similar path.

My school is in a residential setting. There are no forests to explore nearby, but we
do have a lovely little garden complete with chickens, vegetable and flower beds, a
few trees, and opportunity. Their instructions before leaving the classroom were simple. . .
observe everything you can. Listen, look, breath deeply, but don’t talk because you
might miss something. Our entire journey took about 20 minutes. When we made
our way back to the room the students learned of the real purpose and the task that
was before them. I got the collective groan, several questions, and a little pushback,
but as a class, we gained the opportunity to talk about the perspective and difficulty
of map making, the variation of data collected, and make connections to their English
class as we talked about descriptive writing. None of this would have been as meaningful
to the students if we had simply read the case study. Yes, it took an entire class
period for what could have been done quicker. Yes, I will have to read all the journal
entries and that will take more of my time. Yes, there were a million other ways to have
done this activity or I could have skipped it all together, but some lessons are worth
taking the first step.

The students submitted their maps and writing. Some were beautifully drawn and
detailed, others were less so, but every single student learned something, and that
after all is the point.

Stepping Out There

I have a secret… I can’t dance. I mean, it’s bad. I am uncoordinated, two left feet. So when it’s time to teach the Jazz Age it gets interesting. I want my students to experience something from the decade. The easiest way was to incorporate some of the moves from the time. I decided to teach the students to dance, but I can’t dance. In order to do this, I first had to change the physical space of the classroom. The students were surprised to walk in and find no desks in the classroom. The wide open space became our dance floor. I took it one step further and came in costume, dressed as a flapper. At first the students stared in disbelief, some laughed nervously. I was a little unsure of myself. Thankfully, the internet helped teach the moves. The students and I learned the Charleston and later the Fox Trot in class. We laughed, a lot! We looked silly. We faced our fears! The students learned.

I heard from parents that evening. The kids came home and taught their families. They left my classroom and performed for other teachers. They may not remember Warren G. Harding and the Teapot Dome Scandal, but they experienced authentic learning and shared it with others.

It took me pushing through my fears, being willing to look foolish with them, and embracing a little chaos in the classroom. In short, I stepped out of my comfort zone and everyone benefited. Now, I have to try to recreate this magic as often as possible.