Art, Tech, and School

Please help me by filling up my empty classroom with supplies, books and games. After a decade of teaching I moved back to the Boston Area and in the move donated everything I had at the time to the schools and kids in the area. Now that I’m back in a classroom in this fun late-stage capitalist hellscape I am back into an empty classroom full of needs...and even after spending over $200 in the first week, the classroom is still largely empty. Please support in any way you can, even if it’s just sharing! Amazon Classroom Supplies List: Amazon Classroom Book List: TPT fundraising:

FAQ Below

It’s summer WTH?: Yeah, it’s summer! But fun fact, most kids are 1-2 years behind academically after the pandemic (awesome) so therefore more and more programs are running summer school. My program is part of BPS (Boston Public Schools) and focuses on ESL and Math for 2 hrs a day, with art, STEM, and Nature programs coming in the rest of the time to expose them to more things. However we are just in random classrooms in random schools in Boston, and have very limited supplies... What’s your class like: Chaotic Fun. They are 12 kids aged 9-11, half of whom are ELL, a third on IEPS, and all living around or below the poverty line. They love art, hate math (except for 2), and are neutral on ELA (depends on what we’re doing). I have 2 who cannot read at all, and 1 who reads at a 7th grade level. Most of them would be quite happy if I just always let them play with supplies rather than actually use them in any academic sense. You know, typical kids. What supplies do you have?: Upon arrival I was given 1 pack of 25 pencils, 6 packs of 10 markers, 1 ream of colored paper, Popsicle sticks, graphing paper, measuring tape(?), tissues and lysol, and two board games...Basically, what was donated to the program. Here’s a photo.

When studying to become a teacher you spend a lot of time asking and being asked, "What is a teacher?" Of course in some ways the answer is easy: you get paid to impart knowledge onto others. (I add pay because I'm sure most of us impart knowledge onto others daily without being recognized for it.) But naturally teaching is about a lot more than just, well, teaching. It's about caring, it's about believing, and it’s about giving up something for the benefits of others. 

I've spent a lot of time in a lot of different schools located in Western Mass, and I've spent a of time going to schools in Eastern Mass. I've both seen and had teachers who simply teach, and seen and had teachers who go way beyond what is expected or sometimes even needed from them. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what makes me a teacher, or what will make me a teacher, and what makes anyone a teacher, and in all my time I've come up with a list of the "top 5 what’s" that make someone a teacher, rather than just someone who teaches.

1. BE WILLING TO LET GO

No one, not even the greatest teacher, is entirely selfless, but all teachers are have some certain selfless tendencies. Teaching is hard because, like most anyone else, you have a lot of ideas. You have ideas about political structures, the state of the world, what makes for good child rearing, what the best kind of ice cream is, and what books should be revered. You've got ideas on what you want to do with your life, what you want to accomplish, and how you're going to accomplish them. You've got plans, you've got opinions, you've got ideas...and in order to teach you have to be willing to let them go.

Of course I don't mean let them go completely, just at times. In any given class you have impressionable students with rich family lives that can be and probably are different from what you think they should consist of. You've got a district trying to meet the states standards in a way they think will work best, and you've got a community, a government, and a state trying to tell that district how to do it, in a manner that, again, probably isn't what you would think of. And chances are, while you're spending your days arguing with too-clever 10 year olds, you've got in the back of your mind a book you wanted to write, or a place you want to visit, or maybe just that dinner you really want to cook. But that kid, and all the others, is going to exhaust you, and you're going to have to let things go, at least for the time being.

One of the greatest qualities a teacher needs to have is the ability to simply step aside and let it go for now. Knowing when to sigh, smile and nod is a great tactic for any long meeting, for any know-it-all child, and for any, temporarily, lost dreams. Teaching is exhausting enough without fighting all the time, and that fighting can do much more harm than good. That being said...

2. STAND UP FOR YOURSELF

In a world that really, really likes to demonize teachers, teachers need to be able to stand up for themselves. Gone are the days were student achievement is based on, you know, the student. Now is the time where, if little Jerry got a bad grade, you must have missed something. I'm not saying this is totally wrong, in fact I think it's helped school systems realize their weaknesses in a lot of cases, but I am saying there are people, students, parents, principals, curriculum leaders, districts, states, etc. that will take advantage of this. And a teacher has to be able to put their foot down and say enough is enough. 

In the school I am working in right now there are a lot of shifts happening as the common core comes into fruition and district adjusts to take on more schools with fewer teachers. And a lot of the teachers I am working with are exhausted by the meetings they are having with parents and officials alike. But a lot of them are also squaring their jaw and saying, "Enough is enough. You don't need to recognize everything we do, but you sure as hell aren't going to bully us into thinking we're not doing enough." Teachers are the black sheep of any system, they get blamed for all the woes others have, and really, only the strongest ones will survive. 

3. BE FLEXIBLE

I suppose that this really sort of sums up the two previous points, but in a different way. My last week as a teacher was sort of hell as everything I had planned went down the drain when a major family crisis happened. I was devastated I’d worked so hard to get to this week and I'd had it all planned out. But I took a deep breath, and I adjusted. 

And that's what all teachers need to be able to do. Plans go to waste constantly. Sometimes students just cannot get it together. Other times there are last minute assemblies, major state tests get changed, snow days happen, or halfway through the year you get handed a new curriculum. From the little to the big, teachers need to be flexible, otherwise they, and their students, will suffer. 

4. BE CARING

A successful teacher is a caring teacher. They're the sort of teacher who worries about their students, who believes all their students can succeed, and who works to make everything ok for their students, at least while they're in the class. Teachers need to care because their jobs are demanding and if they don't everyone will suffer. Caring teachers know that if they make things fun for their students, they're going to be fun for them too. And caring teachers know that if they make things safe for their students, their students are going to open up to them. Classrooms run off social dynamics, both student-student, and student teacher. A caring classroom is going to do better because there will be more of an ebb-and-flow to the classroom in general. There's discussion in place of lecture, listening instead of, well, lecture, and frenzy instead of boredom. Teachers need to care, and they need to care a lot. 

The other side of it is that teachers need to care about what they do. That is, they need to really believe that education makes a difference, and have opinions about what education is like in their school, district, state, and country. Caring teachers will work to make education work for all, and that is a huge part of what education is. 

5. LOVE WHAT YOU DO

One of the hardest things for a teacher to do is maintain interest. Throughout a year a teacher presents the students with dozens of different subjects that cover a broad range of interests and a broad range of terribly boring things. It's hard to keep everything interesting all the time, but it's important. Not everyone is going to like everything, but at least if you try and present things as useful and interesting, than you're going to sway some of those students on the line. 

One of the criteria for becoming a teacher in Mass is to "Use engaging ways to begin a new unit of study or lesson." That is what the images above are; a way to start a new unit and make it interesting. Of course some units lend themselves to illustration more easily; math, for example, is hard to do. Drawing a bunch of numbers on the board is not going to be enticing for most students. In fact it will probably scare more of them away. But of course board doodles are not the only way to keep things interesting, they are just something that I enjoy, and my students love. 

Maintaining interest is I think one of the biggest challenges teachers face, because it involves a lot of thinking outside the norm. When I was in Elementary school most everything was done with texts, and getting to watch an informative movie was a real treat. Today, with the technology that we have, movies aren't so much a treat as they are another way to give kids information. But they still help students maintain interest.

In my class we've been studying geology. Geology is a lot of fun in itself; there are a lot of hands on activities that naturally go with it. It's also a subject that the students have had since second grade, and most of what we could do has already been done, and is not so interesting anymore. There is also a LOT of vocab that they are suppose to know, which lends itself to a lot of reading. But reading only reaches so many students, and is only so fun, so to make it more interesting I interrupt our readings with video clips of things we are reading about. Think tectonic plate movements are interesting? Well, they are actually, but only when you can see what it is they do. So rather than just read about divergent, transform, and convergent boundaries, we see them in action, and replicate them with some gooey food. Volcanoes are fascinating, and there are millions of videos out there that show their incredible force, but take time to explain what sort of volcano this is, how we classify them, etc. 

Video clips are a fantastic way to help students get interested. Anything that gets creative really is. But I find that the biggest way to maintain interest is to make sure that the students feel as though they have a say in their own education. The state and district mandates what my students must know, but it doesn't mandate how much they must know about it, or what area in specific we need to teach them. If I taught just what the standards said, we'd be done with school in a month. Standards are broad, and with good reason. The lack of depth, that is, the fact that they simply give me bullet points on what to teach rather than how, allows me to let my students fill in the gaps with their own natural curiosity. 

When laying out units I like to leave time to ask questions, and more importantly, leave time to answer those questions. Nothing needs to hugely in-depth - we have a giant research paper for that - student’s questions just need to be answered. If students feel like they are getting a say in what is being taught, they are apt to want to actually pay attention. And often what students wonder overlaps with those vague standards. 

Again, this is easier to do in some subjects than others. Actually it's pretty much easier to do in every subject but math. Math is difficult because it's not a subject that is naturally inquisitive, nor naturally active. It's an area I see almost all teachers, myself included, struggle with how to make interesting for my students. But it's not a total loss.

Making math interesting, at least for me, is not the same as making science or history or ELA interesting. It's about making my students believe that I find it interesting, and find it practical. When I introduce a new math unit, I try to impart on my students what makes this particular area fascinating. I tend to view math as solving little puzzles of riddles, particularly higher-level math where the answers are not simple. I try to help my students see it that way by playing math games, or presenting them with large math riddles. I also try and make sure that they can see why it's important to know these things. This can be tricky because half the math we learn by 6th grade is just to help us in specific fields, or with boring adult things like finances. But it's important that I have an answer for why it is they need to learn something, regardless of how interesting that answer may be. 

At any given moment in education there are a few dozen buzzwords that teachers are expected to know. In Massachusetts the biggest contenders at the moment seem to be SEI, RTI, Social Justice, and Differentiated Learning. The first two are set-in-stone ways about what to do in your classroom. The other two are more open, and full of grey areas.

Differentiated Learning is a way to approach the everyday classroom. It's about classroom management, lesson planning, assessment, seating plans, and curriculum. It guides the way you approach any given subject, and pushes you to try and find new, better ways to teach. Differentiated learning incorporates everything that I have spent the last few years studying; child development, social justice teaching, integrated approaches to teaching, constructivist teaching, etc. It's something that influences all of my teaching, and forces me to keep up and never sit back and let the students work. 

Differentiated Learning means, essentially, teaching to a child's strengths. At this point it really shouldn't shock anybody that not everyone learns the same way. Peoples personal wiring, their socio-economic standing, their home culture, even their mood can affect the way that a student approaches learning. For some students reading out of books and writing notes works well, for others nothing sticks unless they can get their hands on it, and others need everything listed in order on the board, or repeated verbally half a dozen times, or they'll never get it. 

Everyone learns differently so how do teachers handle this? It used to be that they didn't. They simply taught in the way they were taught, or in a way they felt comfortable, and assumed that students who didn't do well simply were not smart enough. That's no longer an acceptable way to approach learning, nor should it be. Every child is in fact quite intelligent; they learned how to speak didn't they? It's a teacher’s job now to figure out how to help them, and others, see just how smart they are. 

As I said earlier differentiated instructions encompasses many aspects of teaching, down to the way you seat your students, but the aspect it influences most naturally is the instruction itself. I believe that all classrooms should be "integrated" classrooms. That is they should pull from other fields to influence the way they approach a subject, because you're going to hit all kinds or ways of learning in doing so. I'm best at bringing in visual art and tech, as I find that students tend to respond positively to these areas, and they are two areas that can easily be incorporated into any subject. Art and tech lend themselves to visual, and kinesthetic learning. Verbal/Auditory learning is there anytime there is instruction, and the sort of memorization learning, reading texts to learn facts, is where most learning starts anyways. 

Differentiated learning is about making sure that you hit as many "Ways" to learn as possible in, if not any given lesson, than at least any given unit. I love teaching science because there is so much that can be taught and retaught in so many different ways, and art and tech just blend so well with it. Reading from the texts, doing experiments, watching videos, recording data by drawing and writing...it's a great way to make sure students really understand the subject. English is another one that's easy to hit all sorts of learning, as is Social Studies; read texts, fiction and non fiction, write papers, perform plays, draw stories, create a dioramas, posters, newsletters, etc., film news pieces, discuss...the subject lends itself to learning. Math is probably the hardest, especially as it grows more and more difficult, but it's still not impossible. Giving students manipulative to see how equations work, using student’s body to emulate angles or even graphs is fun and simple, and calculations themselves are a sort of art form. One can keep a class on its toes and ready to learn, and help all students achieve, if they're willing to put a little thought into instruction.

When I was in high school it seemed to me that all of a sudden teachers wanted to have "tough conversations." These conversations would go from the radical side of racism, sexism, poverty, etc. to the more immediate conversations of what is happening to our education system, who the hell thought electing that guy was a good idea, and why is it that everyone wanted to see the video of Saddam Hussein being hanged? It was as if out of nowhere people had decided that now was the right time to talk about these things, not before. And it was hard. I didn't know how to talk about them, I wasn't sure when to state a fact or when to state an opinion, wasn't sure how to clearly differentiate between the two, and certainly no idea how to say something tough, something not everyone might agree with. And the truth is I was getting to talk about "tough issues" before many of my peers, because I went to a High School that valued conversation, and saw the importance in arming students with the tools of talking. I watched a lot of friends experience the same sort of shock I had during our first year of college, and could do nothing but sympathize, and wonder why we had never done this before, even when we'd had the perfect opportunity.

One of my strongest memories of Elementary School is the day 9/11 happened. I was in fifth grade, and I was in art class. My teacher, Mr. Girard, would always watch the news in the classroom next to ours while we had art, around 9 AM. I remember him coming in, sitting on the table at the front of the room as he often did, and announcing to us in a grave voice that something terrible had happened. I no longer know what he said, I was only 10 at the time, but I know I understood the details of what happened, but not the impact.

When I went home that day my mother sat down my best friend (who is in the grade above me) and me, to tell us about what had happened. She at some point had clearly decided that my younger sister was not ready to hear what had happened. 

I know she started the conversation off by asking us if we had heard about anything that happened today. I know this because, being the good student I was, I was eager to tell her what I had heard. I started to explain it to my friend who, despite being a year ahead, hadn't heard anything (in fact no other class in the school, not even the other 5th grade class, had been told). My enthusiasm dwindled though when I saw my mothers face. She looked so sad. And that was when I realized that something terrible had actually happened. 

The thing is, despite how terrible it was, I don't remember ever talking about it anywhere outside of home. People avoided the conversation with me for some reason. Maybe they were afraid they would say something that would scare me more than I was, maybe they thought that I couldn't possibly understand what had happened, or that I never thought about it because I was just a child. But I did think about it, and I had strong emotions, and a lot of conflicting emotions. Outside of my home people rallied behind a nationalistic ideal, or so the media said. Inside my home my parents, both from military families, held their breath and cursed at what this reaction would undoubtedly bring. I remember being confused, and conflicted, and sad, but "knowing" I shouldn't talk about it in school. 

And that's wrong. 

When the Sandy Hook shootings happened I was sitting at home, packing to leave the country and visit my sister in Germany. There was so much information coming at once, and so much of it turned out to be wrong, and I was so confused. All I could do was sit in my living room and cry. And all I could think about was how my students would feel when they found out. How they would process this. This would be scary, whether they were 9 or 12, or maybe even 7. This could have happened to them. It could have been their school and schools are supposed to be safe. I was scared for them, and could only imagine how they must feel. But I was far away, and by the time I came back I could only hope that people had spoken to them about it. 

Turns out most of the schools had. They spoke to students individually, and spoke to them as a group. In the class I am in now they asked the students to write about what they had heard, what they were feeling, and what they were wondering. And they talked about the things the students needed to talk about, based on what the students voiced. They didn't scare them with unnecessary details, and they didn't confuse them by giving out of context information. And the kids, sixth graders, handled it like champions. And they now have context for what else is happening in the news; the gun debate, the anger over lawmaker’s inability to act, and the concerns over school safety. And they have a better understanding at 11 and 12 about how to talk about tough situations than I did at 17.

My point is that you can't and shouldn't avoid tough conversations with Elementary aged students just because it’s tough. In the last four weeks my students and I have been studying families around the world. We've been looking at pictures and seeing what we can learn about the families, their lives, and the countries they live in. And while doing this we've discussed in detail what stereotyping is, what a personal bias is, what racism and sexism we see in the world, and in our own communities. And while these conversations are tough, and I often leave them feeling exhausted, I also leave them feeling immensely proud. Each time we talk the students do a bit better at checking their own statements, at questioning themselves and others, and recognizing where they are getting their information. They also understand that what they say will not be ridiculed, simply discussed. They know that the class is safe space, and that having ideas and opinions that may not be popular among their peers, or even with their teacher, is ok. So long as they are willing to reexamine their information, and keep on discussing.

And the skills my students are learning now are the sorts of skills that will benefit them for the rest of their lives. Talking about stereotypes and biases helps prepare them for the far more diverse middle school they are about to head off to, and the world beyond that. It helps them understand how to handle when someone makes an inappropriate statement, and gives them the skills for being open-minded, even when we may not want to be. Equally important it helps them learn a skill that all citizens should know; take the news with a grain of salt, sift through all the information and form your own opinion, and above all understand that there is always going to be someone who disagrees with you. 

Sixth graders can handle these conversations. So can fifth graders and fourth graders, and third, second, first, ninth, seventh, twelfth, college students, and maybe even nursery students. The conversations just need to adjust to a level that the students can understand, and be developmentally appropriate. Younger students may not understand what racism is, or all the systemized factors that go with it. But they can understanding thinking someone is different, and they can understand being mean to someone, and chances are even a kindergartener can understand judging someone when you know nothing about them is wrong. They can do these things because even by five they've likely felt hurt by something someone thought or said about them.

When you start to have tough conversations with young children, it gets easier for them to have tough conversations when they are no longer so small. You lose some of the scariness, and you make it go from something that only some people talk about, to something that everyone should talk about. Conversations should be tailored of course, to fit the developmental level, and sometimes the knowledge level. You wouldn't want to talk about Sandy Hook with a class of first graders unless that whole class knew what had happened and wanted to talk about it, which is pretty unlikely. But there may be one confused six year old, or even a group of them, who need to be reassured, or have questions that need answering. And there are topics like racism, sexism, stereotyping, that young students can be introduced to without being scared. Picture books are a great resource for that.

One of the hardest parts in teaching, I find, is making yourself clear, and seeing that your students understand. As a teacher there are often a million things that I am keeping stored in my mind at any given moment. During a lesson I'm tracking who is answering questions and who is not, who is engaged, who is talking, who have I called on half a dozen times and who haven't I called on once, what are we talking about, what is this student trying to tell me, or ask me, what should be the next thing I say, what what what...It's a lot to say the least, and it is no wonder that I sometimes worry my students may be getting lost in all the words, without hearing the meaning.

So how do I get my meaning across? And which meaning do I get across at any given moment? At the 6th grade level lessons are multi-leveled with many skills and knowledge worked into them, and what I say in one moment is often only so I can build on it in the next. I'm trying to get my students to follow my logic and every step of the process, but I expect that many won't, if for no other reason than they think differently, and draw conclusions that are different from mine. So how do I make sure my students get my meaning?

Well, to start, I state it as explicitly as possible. In the never-ending world of curriculum standards and core goals, most everything I do is adapted from what I'm being told I need to teach. Obviously I veer some; there's no standard that says you should help students understand their own bias for example, but even in my veering I am reaching for something that will be useful to them on their MCAS, or in middle school, while still striving to help them in their life as a human on this planet. But I can't just have my students guess at what I'm teaching, they're not mind readers unfortunately, so I start by stating.

With 6th graders you can often get away with just stating the standard, but sometimes you need to think in kid friendly language to help them understand what it is they're suppose to understand. And even more often standards are asking me to teach the students multiple things, and need to be broken down. 

For example in the Mass Social Studies standards for 6th grade it states: Compare the standard of living in various countries today using gross domestic product per capita as an indicator. Although this summarizes nicely, it's asking for a lot. In order to reach this standard my students need to know what GDP is, and what GDP per Capita is. They need to be able compare and contrast, they need to understand what GDP can say about living standards, they need to know the GDP of multiple countries, and they need to understand that GDP is an indicator and not an absolute indication of living standard. And that's one standard.

So when teaching it, I break it down, and I mix it up with other standards, and I build towards it. At the beginning of the unit my students were asked to first learn about living standards in different countries, then asked to compare some countries, then taught one factor that is a little easier to grasp, literacy rates (Also a standard), practiced comparing and contrasting and discussing using literacy rates and other acquired skills, then taught what GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is, and finally taught how to find GDP per Capita. In each of these lessons I explained to them explicitly what they were working on (comparing and contrasting, literacy rate, checking our own bias about other countries), and occasionally referenced that we were working to a greater goal.

But I didn't leave it there. And this is where the other half of how to make sure my students get the meaning comes in.

Periodically I asked my students what they thought we were learning, and why we were learning it. I referenced a greater understanding, that was not a standard, and talked with them about the process we are going through to reach the standard and the understanding; how we are learning skills, gaining some knowledge, and reaching an understanding. And all along the way I asked them how they felt they were doing. Asked them, not told them. Essentially, I asked them to think about their own learning, and see for themselves how they thought it was going. In other words; Metacognition for 6th graders. 

Thinking about your own learning is tough, but it is the best way to get students to learn, and to guarantee your lessons are clear. Giving them the responsibility of checking their own understanding, of seeing if they believe they are on the right track, of wondering if they understand, gives the students some added responsibility, and makes them feel like an active participant in their learning, not just a passive viewer. And it can be done with students of all ages. After all students at any age can think about themselves. For younger students a simple "Can you tell me what we're doing?" allows you to gauge if the student really understands, and allows the student to test for them if they do or do not understand. 

 One of the most interesting things for me whenever I step into a new classroom, second to the children of course, is seeing where the teacher stands with technology, as compared to myself, and the students. 

I've never walked into a classroom where there is absolutely no technology, because technology is everywhere. Every classroom I have been in has had at least one computer, access to some sort of television, and a projector or document reader, all of which are tech. Most teachers know how to write up an essay in Word, or create an extensive PowerPoint, just like most teachers know how to write on a projector, and turn on a computer. The fact is most teachers are at least somewhat excited at the prospect of getting a SmartBoard or a Mimio, even if they've never used one. And document readers or Elmo’s are far more useful than old-school projectors. But often when teachers are presented with this technology for the first time, they hesitate to use it. Either they're not sure how to use the technology, or they're not sure how to incorporate it into their classroom.

These are two very different issues actually and there are a variety of solutions for them. Not knowing how to use the tech may indicate the need of enhancement classes for teachers, or tutorials, walk-throughs, etc. Not knowing how to incorporate the tech seems to be more about getting use to it. And although ideally this step would come after the teacher knows how to use the technology that's not always possible, and it's not really necessary, in fact one can do both at the same time if they're only willing to play around a bit.

Of course I understand that the "playing around" with tech is easier for me to do (and encourage) because I have a familiarity with computer-based tech to begin with. After all in college, besides going for my teaching license, I studied programming and computer animation. And I come from the generation of computer classes and access. This gives me an advantage of having a base knowledge that I can use with most any new tech I come across. But most teachers share at least some of this base knowledge as well.

Computer programs, from Word to Photoshop, are laid out in a similar manner. Most projection based tech, Elmo’s or ancient overheads, works similarly as well. Photo editing programs all have similar tools, as do movie-editing applications like IMovie or Windows Movie Maker. In fact the more experience you have with any one program, the more likely it is you'll be able to figure your way around a new program with varying amounts of success.  So even though I've never even heard of a Mimio until I stepped into my new class five weeks again, I was still able to get a handle on it and start using it in class with lessons in less then a week. But again, I have a love of technology and treat each new tech I encounter as a challenge, and that's not often the case for my cooperating teachers.

I'll say it again: The best thing you can do with any new technology is play with it. Many teachers, many people in fact, tell me that they're afraid to play around with their new programs or technical items because they don't want to break them. But the truth of the matter is the likeliness of you breaking any of it is incredibly slim. After all the people creating the Mimio's and Document Readers are doing so with classrooms in mind. They've read the standards and the core and they know that what educators are looking for is technology that not only can the teachers use, but the students can as well. So they're doing all they can to make their tech rugged and childproof. And let's be honest if a child can't break it, chances are you are going to either, no matter how non-tech-savvy you are.

So when you get something new the first thing you should do is turn it on and play with it. Press buttons, open tabs, click on the menus with the words that mean nothing to you. Give yourself simple assignments: create a slide with the mimio, find out how to save something that I've written using the smartboard pen, learn how to switch between the computer and the document reader. 

Think back to the first time you used Google, or got an email account, or even the first time you went online. You didn't know what to do but you figured it out. Maybe you read some simple instructions that the email provider gave you when you started, something almost all new programs have. Or maybe you just started hitting things. Or you asked a friend for help.  Whatever you did you likely did it without a ton of guidance, and chances are in you're own way you're a pro at it now. 

So play with your new technology just like you did the first time you turned on a computer. And once you've gotten even the simplest of ideas on how to use it, give yourself a challenge to use this new tech in your classroom, with your students. I guarantee you it will entice even your most bored student. Start simple; I would like to use images I got off Google to show my students what people around the world eat for breakfast. I want to write notes on the smartboard rather than the whiteboard, so I can save them for later. If my students have a question, I want to use Google to find the answer, or send one of my students to use Google to find the answer. 

Eventually, you'll meet these goals. And each time you meet one you'll find that it gets easier to meet the next. And before you know it, you're regularly taking advantage of the tech in your class, and becoming an expert on the best way to quickly find answers on the Internet, or on using the mimio to enhance your lessons and engage your students. 

Technology is a wonderful addition to the classroom, and not something that should be feared, or seen as hindrance. I understand when teachers tell me that it just seems like one more thing the state wants them to do, but it can in many ways help you accomplish a lot of those demands. And you don't have to do it alone. Collaborate with your fellow teachers. Rely on your incredibly tech-savvy students, because chances are you've got at least one in your class, to give you some pointers on how to use a new program or tool. Ask that young student teacher in the 6th grade classroom. They'll all be willing to help, and they may learn something new too.

The Modern Legends sub-unit within the Legends unit started on Friday. Normally I am adverse to starting anything new on a Friday because you lose two days between the lessons, and the students will hardly remember what you did never mind what you're studying. The reading block also happens to be the last period of the day. But this actually worked to me advantage as I wanted to start the unit by reading aloud a "Modern Legend" that just so happens to be a favorite of mine: Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone. 

Of course I knew I could never read aloud the whole book, so I picked a chapter that I thought would work best. Chapter 16, or Through the Trapdoor, is a great example of a modern legend, and it also makes a great read aloud. The students were actively engaged; the chapter is chock-full of humor and suspense, and it an example of how much more entertaining the book is than the movie. Hermione's wit and Ron's sarcasm are a language my students understand, and Harry's determination lends to a lot of intense moments, and a lot of groans. If ever you think that a group of TV-watching, computer hacking, 21st century kids could never be entertained by a book, well, you're probably just not reading a good enough book.

On Monday we finished the last page or so of the chapter and jumped right into our legends WS. As a testament to their own engagement the students needed no help filling in the details about what had happened during the chapter, and many of them had things they could add from their knowledge of the book or, yes, the movie. 

The legends worksheet was done in five minutes, and we moved on to the meatier part of the lesson. Because of how uncertain I was around the time each portion of the lesson would take, I actually wrote the whole, from reading HP to writing paragraphs about our own favorite modern legends as one unit. This gave me a lot of freedom in timing, so I never felt the need to rush the students.

The point of the modern legends unit, besides introducing to the kids to the concept of new legends, is to help them develop the skills needed for writing an argumentative paragraph. So following the legends WS I introduced them to a graphic organizer that they could use to form their argument. The worksheet is simple: one "topic sentence" box, three, small, "key point" boxes beside it, and branching off each of those boxes, a large "details" box. And at the bottom of the page, another box to write in your concluding sentence.

I knew, having read a lot of their other paragraphs, that the kids were going to really have to be walked through how to construct a good paragraph. The topic sentence itself took almost 10 minutes to construct, as we needed to talk about making sure it encompassed the whole argument, had details, didn't give away all the details, and, you know, made grammatical sense. 

With the help of almost everyone in the class we managed to construct the sentence, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone is a legend because it meets the criteria of one." Short, simple, to the point, and with a little bit of detail. 

From there we decided on the conventions to use: The Hero(es), The Adventure, and The Magic. Lastly, using the legends WS, we picked out details that we might wish to include for each of these conventions. 

The next day was the day of constructing our paragraph. Again this was a process that took almost a half hour, as we argued about word choice and details, and discussed transition words and phrases, topic sentences, and concluding sentences. Again the students were engaged, and our work was almost more like a conversation than a dictation. I believe heavily in making sure that the students are always doing something, and in making things novel to them. Structuring the intro to the paragraph creation as a "We" and a "create" rather than a "watch me write" keeps the students thinking and the ideas flowing. And of course we were using the Mimio (similar to a smartboard) for the first time in class, so every stroke of the stylus was an amazing feat. Here is the paragraph we constructed:

The parts that are highlighted each correspond to a paragraph convention: topic and concluding sentence, transitions, details, and indents, as a student pointed out at last minute. The act of highlighting the details was the most exciting for the class, as up until that moment they weren't even aware that the pen color could change. It also served to help my visual learners by allowing them to see the parts, rather than just learn them. And it proved effective, as I was to learn in their next assignment.

The photo at the top of this post is the list of possible modern legends that the students dictated to me. (The fancy words were my decoration at the beginning of class to try and entice the students). The last part of the modern legends unit was having the students replicate, on their own, the process of writing an argumentative paragraph about whether X is or is not a legend. This served as another form of assessment for the students; testing their knowledge of the conventions of a legend, as well as their skills in constructing a paragraph. To get them started we created a list of possible modern legends, and then passed out the legends worksheet. 

The teachers in the room carefully watched everything they did. Nobody could get their graphic organizer until they had conferred with a teacher about their legends worksheet, and demonstrated their ability to pull details from the text. Likewise, no student could start their paragraph until they had a solid topic sentence and argument. Teachers made note along the way of what students needed help when and with what part, which meant that completing the paragraph wasn't even as necessary as getting through the graphic organizer. So at the end of class, whether students had finished or not, I collected their work.

The Legends Unit was the first unit I tackled in my placement. The picture comes from the last lesson I did on it, though not the last lesson of the unit. The unit is on a hiatus now while I try and work out the last, complicated part, and while we as a class try to catch up on all that we've missed with all the snow days. 

The legends unit was a new unit for the class I am in, one of the many new curriculums that the head teacher is expected to teach. It derives itself from one of the Massachusetts Curriculum Standards: Reading Standard for Literature Grade 6 MA 8 - "Identify the conventions of legends and epics (e.g., the hero, quest, journey, seemingly impossible tasks) in historical and modern literary works."

Like much of what the teacher has been given this year this unit came with essentially nothing. The district lent her a single lesson on Cinderella that another 6th grade teacher in the district had done. But of course, Cinderella isn't really a legend, and a single lesson was not going to teach the students about what a legend means. So I volunteered to work on the unit.

The first thing I did was go home and think about what the conventions the students should learn about. The frameworks suggest a hero, a quest/journey, and an impossible task. The Internet added that legends typically have something supernatural or magical to them, and have a happy ending. The idea of a legend having five possible conventions or elements appealed to me much more than the idea of having three specific conventions. Part of the reason why it appealed more was because I thought that what the kids should take away from the Legends unit isn't just the conventions, but also the ability to decide for themselves if something is a legend.

Essentially, to borrow from the "Understanding By Design" book, the goal of this unit would be for students to understand that the definition of "legend" is flexible so as to encompass a wide variety of stories around the world and across time. The knowledge they would collect along the way would be the conventions of legends, names of popular legends, and some of the skills needed to write an argumentative essay.

With this in mind I created 8 lessons to start, with another 3 or 4 lessons tentatively planned, based on how quickly the students progressed. The first three lessons followed a similar pattern, and where meant to get students use to the unit and starting to think about what makes something a legend. Essentially the class read a legend, filled out a worksheet that listed the 5 conventions and asked for evidence of them from the story, then discussed why it may or may not be a legend.

I chose to try and tap into our geography unit as well and started the unit off with legends from Asia: a story called Little-One-Inch (Issun-boshi) from Japan to introduce the unit, and the story and translation of the poem Mulan for the second lesson. I thought that starting off with stories that in fact fit the conventions of legends, but may not always be thought of as legends, would help the students grasp the concept of the definition being flexible, as well as give them something to connect the country names they had been learning to.

The third legend we worked on was The Odyssey. The idea of this legend was to talk about how it is called the "original legend" and is where many of the "conventions" come from. But of course, the chances of people in Ancient China or Japan knowing the story of the Odyssey is pretty slim, yet their stories also fit this convention. Again, working into the theme of the definition being flexible to fit stories around the world.

The fourth lesson was both a formative assessment as well as an example of paying attention to differentiated learning. I had three stories of varying difficulty (on level, above level, and below level) and gave students stories based on their comprehension ability. It's important to note that I based the groupings on comprehension and not reading skill in general, because I have students who read incredibly quickly and fluently, but don't comprehend half of what is happening. Likewise, I have students who struggle with reading, but have incredible comprehension skills. As the task of picking out details in the story to support the five conventions is really a comprehension skill I wanted to give students stories that they could, theoretically, succeed with, and not be bogged down by reading issues they may have. In case you were wondering, the three stories were; The Sword in the Stone and King Arthur (advanced), The Story of Heracles (at level), and the Zuni tale of Ahaiyuta and the Cloud Eater (below level). 

The FA marked the halfway point in the Legends unit, which in turn meant shifting from traditional legends to what I had most been looking forward to...Modern Legends. 

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At this point I have been in the classroom for 2 weeks. It has actually only been 8 days as both weeks were short due to holidays or report cards. I've spent the fist 2 weeks getting my footing, and testing my skills as a teacher in a classroom full time. 

The classroom I am in has 19 students (so few!) and of those students only 7 are girls. This class has a wide range of ability, with 5 of the 19 students being on IEPs (Individualized Educational Program), over 1/4 of the all the students. The students themselves are all clever, good kids, who work hard and seem to generally want to learn. But they are also clearly blossoming into adolescents and are prone to talking over each other and talking back. That being said, the students almost always get along with each other and the classroom seems to be full of supportive, kind kids concerned for their fellow students. 

In my first week I got to spend a lot of time with the kids, in part because of they’re being indoor recess every day. It is always hard the first few days you are in a classroom, because you never know what a particular group of students is going to like or be like. And one of the biggest differences between the upper elementary years and the lower years, is that the older students tend to be less interested in something just because it new. And since the 6th graders are technically middle schoolers, despite being in an enclosed elementary style classroom, you will meet a lot of resistance when trying to get to know them. So I generally just sit back and observe the kids for the first few days. Their conversations with each other will give me a lot of insight into conversations that the kids may wish to actually have with me. Their behavior in class will tell me a lot about what areas kids are enthusiastic about, and what areas they probably don't do as well in. And their behavior at recess will give me more information than I could get in a week of trying to talk to them.

By the end of the first week, and certainly by the end of the second, I had a pretty good idea of who each of the students was; their interests, personalities, favorite subjects, and home lives. It's important to me that this is my first goal because everything else that comes later; creating appropriate instruction, catering to differentiated learning styles, predicting how a lesson may go. All of that is much easier if you have a good understanding of who your students are as people, as well as learners. 

It also helps to naturally build a bond between you and each of the students, which is essential to teaching. Kids, especially adolescents, are more likely to respond positively to you if you show them that you are as interested in them and their interests, as they should be in what you want them to learn. Building a bond helps you both understand that you are there to help them succeed and to reach those dreams whatever they may be. It gives students the backing they need sometimes, and the confidence they often lack in themselves. It helps you understand and be able to help them sort out their own social issues, and demonstrates that you are not just there to make them do school work. Bonds create trust, and trust creates a sort of learning that fits each child. 

At this point the blog is going to officially switch over from being about the after school art program I teach to my experiences teaching in a 6th grade classroom. The transition actually happened weeks ago, and I am on my 3rd week in the classroom, but due to schedule adjustments, workload adjustments, and career conferences I haven't had any time to do anything that was due the very next day. Hopefully, now that things have settled down, I will be able to blog more regularly.

So here is the update:

Friday December 7th was the last ASAP class as well as the children's gallery. The class was just a lot of getting the kids ready for the gallery, getting down what they wanted to say about each of their pieces, letting them finish up their comics, and talking about ways to continue their artwork after this class. We finished up with a simple "see you later."

"Later" was literally a few hours later. From 6-7 we held the kids gallery, which was a hit. The gallery was set up so that each of the projects they had done had its own space, and beside each project was the description that the kids had written. A lot of people came; the kids family and friends, my own family and friends, and of course my advisors. People walked around and eventually all the kids got a chance to talk about their art. They were suppose to get up there and talk about things they had learned this semester and why they chose to do some of their pieces the way they did, as we had practiced in class, but instead they got up there and talked about how much they had enjoyed the class and enjoyed having me as a teacher. It was incredibly embarrassing, but also incredibly sweet. I held it together, and we ended with a warm farewell.

After that was the whirlwind that is the end of the semester and winter break. I returned to the area on January 21st, and began student teaching full time on January 22nd. The posts that follow this will be focused on what I am doing and seeing in my student teaching, as well as posts on topics of teaching that are important to me or relevant to what is in the news. 

Last class we had a speaker come in to visit this. Chris Bishop is an animation professor at Hampshire, as well as an animator himself, and was also my first animation teacher. He works with the Hampshire animation studio, Bit Films, and teaches the intro to animation and animation workshop classes at Hampshire. Chris gave a fantastic 20-minute talk about the process one goes through to create an animation from start to finish. It was interactive, informative connected to a lot of the things that we did, and the kids enjoyed it immensely. 

Two things came out of that presentation though. The first is that this was my first time to really see how much the kids had learned over the course of the program. Since this is not an academic course there is not any need for an evaluation. I keep note of where the students are in their learning within each unit, and within each other area of learning (how kids see animation, etc.) but not necessarily their vocabulary, or what they know about each step in the overall process. 

So when Chris asked them questions and the kids had plenty of answers it was very exciting for both of us. They were able to come up with the steps in the process, sometimes with a little more guidance than others, and were able to use vocabulary words like "layout" and "imagery" while speaking. It was encouraging and exciting and made the talk that much more enjoyable.

The presentation also created the end of the animation viewing, much to the kid’s dismay. The idea of to end animation viewing time did not come easily, because the kids were really starting to reach a level were we could discuss in class. However with the end drawing near, the gallery, and the visit by Chris I needed to make sure that there would still be enough time to complete our final projects. And thus, animation came to an end.

But it went out with a bang, not a fizzle. 

The last time the kids met was the day of our movie viewing. The movie viewing was mostly meant to be a fun thing, but it was also meant to mark the end of our time on animation, and offer us the chance to discuss in class a full animation rather than just parts of it. The animation we watched, which the kids chose based of a series of trailers we watched in class, was Miyazaki's Howls Moving Castle. 

Howls moving Castle if you haven't seen it is a beautiful movie with a very complicated plot and a lot of complicated themes. It is a great movie to delve into theme, character, plot, and style with kids. And following Chris's speech that is just what we did. 

I knew that this movie would need a lot of clarification. It is confusing regardless of how old you are and it is even more confusing when you view it for the first time at 9 years old. Luckily the kids had been equipped with the tools they needed to sort out the plot.

We spent about 5 minutes naming all the characters in the movie, and going over their connections to each other. From there we talked about the plot in a chronological way, regardless of how the movie presented the information. We started by talking about Howl as a boy, and went to the final scene were Turnip head turns out to be the prince. Throughout our plot recap and after it we talked a lot about why things were done certain ways, and what certain actions told us about other actions. It was a lot of give and take, with the kids asking probing questions and me following them up with some clarifications, and some questions of my own.

The kids wanted to know things like "why did Howl eat Kalsifer?" "Why was there a war?" and "Why was Howl so conceited?" I in turn would give some information, like how part of the reason Howl was the way he was, is because he ate Kalsifer. But I would also ask other questions to help the students clarify their own thinking. "Who was Turnip Head in the end and how was that connected to the war?" "Was either side right in what they were doing, and what does that sort of say about war?"

The post below gives the GIF sets for all of the kid’s animations. GIF sets are sort of file format, and when videos are turned into GIF's they often become sped up or slowed down, so I will link the actual YouTube videos below:

Dragon  Enyu  josiedestroyer  Remus  Shawn

As you can see the kids animations were pretty successful. I am actually quite impressed with them; each child finished the animation, and each child made their images flow well enough that, when translated to movie format, they appear as animations and not just a slide show. I wasn't sure how well this project would go; animation is a whole different level of art than the drawing that the kids are use to and there was a lot that had to be discussed for them to create "successful" animations. 

Some animations were more successful than others. Again, this doesn't say anything about the child, the child's skills or talents, or anything like that. Just as we discuss in class every child learns differently and each child is going to have their own strengths, and their own areas they could work more on. It is true for adults as well; I have never been in an animation or general art class where everyone’s talent was "on the same level." People are good at a variety of things and the only difference between kids and adults in art is that adults have decided what it is they are good at, and kids can still be swayed. 

So then, what makes some more successful than others? Well, the criteria I was working with, my "rubric" so to speak, went as follows:

1. Does the animation have continuity? That is; can you follow a "path" of motion?

2. Do the images follow a clear, sequential path to create the animation effect? (That is, are they too different and create a "slide show" effect, or are they too similar and there appears to be no motion?")

3. Are the images clear?

That was pretty much it. There is more I could look at, but for a beginning animation I just wanted to see that the kids could create something that flowed, and that could be seen. All of the kids reached these criteria to some degree. Certain animations are clearer than others, and certain have a clearer motion path. And all of them come off as an animation rather than just a slideshow. I'm not surprised that there is such a range, and I am actually very impressed that the animations worked out as well as they did. 

Like I explained in the last post, a big part of this class is letting the kids, basically, "go at it." I didn't want to bore them with a step-by-step how to create an animation class. I also didn't want to just hand them the paper and let them have free range though, so instead I did a little bit of pre-teaching, and a lot of in the moment teaching. Before beginning we talked about the concept of FPS (frames per second). We did a little inquiry work about what having a higher FPS might do to an animation, and what having a lower one might. (If an animation is 15 frames long, playing it at an FPS of 6 will make it go faster than playing at an FPS of 8). We talked about trying to get all of our animations to be about 8 FPS, the FPS that is commonly used in rough, hand drawn animations. We did some math then: If I want you to try and create a 3 to 5 second animation, you will need.... (24 to 40 frames). The math and numbers were mostly there just to help the kids who grasp concepts in that logical, quantitative way, and to help them understand the boundaries of the project; drawing at least x amount if frames.

After this I talked about key frames and in-betweens. It's funny how tricky this subject gets, despite how straightforward it seems. Key frames are the "main" frames. They are the big action frames. In-betweens are just that, the frames between the main action frames that create the "flow" that is animation. Then each child was asked to create a storyboard were they would draw their key frames (at least 10). We talked a lot about why people create storyboards, and why I wanted them to create them.

When we moved on to the actual animating I found that a few of kids didn't even look at their storyboards again, and a few relied too heavily on them. Only one of the kids drew their key frames first; the rest just drew frame to frame. This was actually what I had expected, and though I reminded them about key frames I wasn't going to make them work that way because I understood that for many of them that way was just too different from what they are use to.

Another thing we talked about was constantly referencing back to the frame you had just drawn, to try and figure out where the next figure needed to go. I taught them a few ways to do this; placing frames side-by-side, clipping frames on top of each other and flipping through them, even using their rulers to set up a sort of grid. There were two kids who I saw do this regularly, and I think that it shows in their animations. Actually, it seems to me that this was the biggest deciding factor in how much the animations came across as animations. 

Now, of course, we all want to know what this says about kids abstraction and developmental levels. The truth is it is harder to tell with this lesson than others because of how complicated this lesson is. A lot of what I see that worked and did not work in the animations I attribute to my teaching. For example most of the kids paid no attention to the FPS while they were drawing, despite how much we talked about it. I tend to believe this is because, while we talked about it, I didn't relate it to what it meant for their flipbooks. If I were to do it again I would set a frame limit, let them work, then talk about it, because I could use their initial animation drafts as examples, rather than just arbitrary numbers. 

But there is some to be said about different levels of abstraction. In this case the kids who made the animations that flow the best, who used the tools I gave them, listened to what we talked to in class, and applied it to their work...those kids were on opposite ends of the developmental spectrum. I tend to believe that this is because of how new and how different animation is, and what we were talking about is, that the level to which kids could abstract has less to do with the abstraction, and more to do with the kids themselves. In the case of the younger one, they are an avid artist, more so than his peers. They have a level of familiarity with the tools and concepts that the others don't, simply because they have been less exposed. This child also just thinks in a mindset that is similar to many people in the animation profession. Like I said before, everyone has their specialty.

The other child was on the older end of the spectrum, moving on to middle school next year. And I believe their ability to use these abstract concepts was so strong because of this. And, similar to the younger child, this one has a very sequential thinking style, so something like animation is going to fall under their specialty. 

What this all tells me is that, while kids can still clearly abstract at a younger age than Piaget would have you think, there are a lot of factors that go into their ability to abstract. Younger children can deal with complex, abstract, ideas. But their learning style, their familiarity with what is being taught, and their experience with the tools and terms are all going to impact to what degree they can abstract. So yes, age does play a part in someone’s ability to abstract, but that is because the older you are, the more experiences you have had, not because of an arbitrary number or level. 

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I've mentioned before that I follow a certain line of teaching in my classroom called Inquiry Based Learning. In reality I use a mix of teaching pedagogy, as do all teachers I know, but they all share the common theme of making the learning child centered.

Inquiry Based learning is a type of learning that stems from the students questions that are connected to what is being taught. Think of it like this:

For every class I write a lesson plan that outlines what we are going to do that day and when we are going to do it. Since this is such a long class the lesson plan is actually a few lesson plans and a schedule. Each day has a similar structure - lunch, class time, work time, break time, class time, and work time. Each lesson plan has a main goal - imagery, coloring techniques, different kinds of animation, etc. Each class also has a limited amount of time - a little less than 2 hrs. (Not including lunch). There is no way I could get through everything I plan for each class, nor do I ever go into class expecting to. There are two reasons for this - one is that as a teacher having too much to do in a day is much better than finding yourself without anything to do. The other is that I know the day is going to fluctuate depending on the kids needs, wants, and questions.

I could, and many teachers do, walk into the class with a detailed outline of every moment of the class and expect the kids to follow that. And there are points were I expect the kids to follow certain lessons, or to hold off working for 10 minutes so we can talk about what concept art or frames per seconds means. But I find it much more beneficial to all of us if I let them be a part of what happens in the class. Any parent who has a child in this class can attest to the fact that things are run in a very "democratic way" and any child in the class can tell you that we vote on nearly everything. This is because, in this environment, it is important that the kids feel that their input is just as important as mine. So each day I'll ask if they want to work, or if they want to learn about animation. And if break is planned for 1:25 but at 1:23 they are all quiet and concentrated and into their work, I'll shift break, in the same way I would shift it up to 1:15 if they were active and clearly needed to get out. 

But inquiry based learning goes beyond a democratic class. I spend a lot of 1-on-1 time with the kids, talking about their projects, their plans, and what they want to do. And if what they want to do is spend the time I set aside for concept art focusing on how to draw a foot at a certain angle for a certain pose, then that is what they will get to do. Or if they want to rush through their flipbook project because it is less interesting to them than some of the work in their sketchbooks, than so be it. This class is based around what the kids want to explore, and I am only there to guide them. Yes, there are certain requirements and certain areas being taught, but that is to help them focus in their questions. After all, while I would love to spend time exploring with kids why it is that snow doesn't always collect on the ground, but an art class is not the place for that.  So instead we can shift our focus to our production, or learning about animation, or going over a quick guide to drawing a face, rather than just what it says in the lesson plan.

Inquiry based learning is very similar to constructivist based learning, another pedagogy that I work to incorporate into all of my lessons. According to the book Elementary Science Methods: A Constructivist Approach "the premise of constructivist learning is that children discover new concepts for themselves and internalize these concepts by constructing valid connections to prior information." In other words, kids will learn when they can connect new concepts to old concepts.

I have used the term prior knowledge before without bothering to define it, as it sort of defines itself, but for clarity purposes I will state it here. Prior Knowledge is knowledge that kids (and adults) already have on a subject. It is knowledge that has been internalized, and can be called on again to help them learn new things. 

So for example, if kids are learning about the water cycle, they will likely already have prior knowledge that the sun heats up water and forms some droplets, they just may not know that the vocab word of "condensation" or that it goes one step farther and "evaporates" the water. But through experimentation where they get to see this happen, and through a teacher giving them vocab words like evaporation, they will make the appropriate connection with the knowledge they had before, and internalize these concepts. This is a lot more affective than having them read about evaporation and then testing them on the vocab. 

In an art class kids have a lot of prior knowledge. They have been drawing for ages, and they likely know a lot about how to make marks on a paper. So I don't teach kids how to draw or even how to draw well, I teach them what they think will help them, and what I think they can connect to. Blending with colored pencils, for example, or using different sized pens to make the right line thickness. And if there is something that they will benefit from doing themselves - like learning that you need to do pen, then watercolors - I will let them experiment and make those connections for themselves. And, if it's something almost entirely new, like animation, I will work with them through discussion after discussion, to help them draw their own conclusions and learn the vocab words like "plot" and "style" in their own time.

Essentially, it is important to me that the class feels less structured and less strict than a typical general curriculum classroom. Of course I have a lot going for me - no standards, no testing, fewer kids, longer classes, etc. - than most teachers get in their everyday classroom. But seeing what works and what doesn't in this small class will give me a lot of prior knowledge for my general curriculum classroom teaching. Also, by flowing with the kids, I learn more about their learning; what they do and do not understand, what they can and cannot abstract, and what they are and are not yet ready for. Which, in turn, helps me distinguish what is the result of developmental level, and what is the result of the individual.

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For more information of Inquiry learning: Follow This Link

And for more information about Constructivist Learning: Follow this link