#lflas

Matrix 3: Students Blog Their Thoughts and Interests; Utilize Them

          I remember when I was in high school or in fact middle school that I would have various interests away from my school subjects, but I stuck with English as my favorite because I love to read novels, talk about them, and write about them. I also love writing poetry and prose which is a major part of English class. However, I still remember that my peers did not feel the same way about school.  Some liked different subjects than me and/or hated school all together. Also there are other things about school that I hated that others liked. For example, I hated that we were forced to change our class period format. We went from a traditional seven periods every day to a block schedule as well as waking up at the crack of dawn to get to school on time.

           Many of these issues are still on students’ minds, among many other things, today. I actually had difficulty in finding student blogs in general. Not many students blog about their feelings today, which I think is due to more avenues to express their feelings. Facebook, snapchat, twitter are several of the current avenues with which to express issues in their lives. Teenagers are full of opinions because they express themselves so freely. I did find three blogs that talked about school, interests, and other aspects of their lives. All of them are written by girls ranging from high school to middle school age and come from different backgrounds.

           Some of the issues that were previously discussed are also mentioned in a student blog called it’s grace. This blog is written by a girl named Grace, who is fourteen years old and in middle school. She writes about her interests in the future, school, and other activities, such as poetry. Of her three posts about school her most interesting post is about issues in school. She makes two points that are issues for her about school: school times and uniforms. She makes a clear point with evidence from livescience.com that the brain is not ready for learning at 7 in the morning. She creates a solution to the problem by saying that exercise should be in the morning to jump start the brain. I agree with her that high school students should not be subject to learning at such an early hour. High school students are more prone to learning at a later time, let’s say 10am instead, and staying in school until 4pm. So for a simpler explanation, elementary school children should go to school at 7am and the high school students should go to school at 9am. Another issue that Grace points out is uniforms in school. The fact that she was bringing up the issue in the first place means she has school uniforms at her school. She points out that the school uniforms she wears does not allow for students to express themselves and how the rules are more directed to females than males because school admin want a distraction free learning zone for male education. This blog was more about the education system and less about interests in subjects. http://gracekoury.edublogs.org/

           The next blog Wendy’s blog!!!!!!!, is written by a middle school aged girl named Wendy, who is actually from the same area as the previous blog. This blog was written for an English class as well as a digital storytelling assignment. She writes five posts about interests in her life as well as about school. However, her school experience is different from Grace. In one post she explains that she does not like school at all, but does not go into details about why. She mainly talks about her favorite television show; Once Upon A Time, and her upcoming Christmas holiday.

           Finally, the most comprehensive blog, Simply Aubree is about the life of a teenage girl in ninth grade. In three blog posts she talks about English assignments involving Romeo and Juliet, poetry with extend metaphor, country style music and recipes, as well as hunting. She posts her school work such as her English essay on Friar Lawrence from Romeo and Juliet as well as her Civics poster about a Third Party in politics. She is artistic, loves to read, and creates beautiful poetry. She also started this blog as an assignment for a class, but she continuously updates it with her interests and thoughts. Her Friar Lawrence essay is well written and very mature for an eighth grader.

           Going through these blogs helps me to understand more about students that take English/ Language Arts courses in school. I will run into a diverse range of students with different interests as these girls have shown. Learning about what students are interested in is beneficial for teachers, especially for English teachers.  English teachers have the power to capture a student’s interest through a novel or an activity by incorporating their own interests into that novel or activity. Teachers need to be an advocate for their students to the best of their ability and to show them that we have to build or structure lessons that gear toward common interests, such as music, writing, educational issues, and creativity.

 References

Blogs

http://gracekoury.edublogs.org/

http://simplyaubree.edublogs.org/

http://wendyrm.edublogs.org/

Alright, here we go. This one is going to be really short because it was a continuation of the previous day. First block did not get to finish annotating and presenting. It started with getting out their poem packets, group think sheets, and presentation sheet. I gave students that were absent, not finished or struggling fifteen minutes to finish. I asked my teacher for a timer, so that I will not go over.

After the fifteen minutes were up, there were still some groups that were not finished. I gave them two more minutes and skipped their groups’ presentation slot if they still needed time. The presentations moved slowly, because there were times that the presenters were speaking too soft to hear or students in the audience were being too loud. I had to repeat with my voice and confirm with the group about their literary device. We got to about half way, when the time caught up with me. I told them that we were going to have to stop the presentations and move on to the exit slip. They had two minutes to write one sentence about the lesson and how I did.  The students passed all their papers to the front of the room and I collected them. I talked with some of the students about not getting their pages filled, and joked around with them so that I would loosen up.

Alright, the start of a new day and it is finally time for me to present my lesson. I got there just in time to set up. I presented my hook and gave the students time to free write while listening to jazz music about what they feel or see when they look at the faces of the poets they will be discussing today coupled with the music. They wrote for about 5 minutes, which I noticed was too long. I asked for volunteers and several students talked about their writing. I collected them and went into the main activity. I asked the students to get into pre-assigned groups. While they were semi-settled I went into the instructions of the activity that were written on the PowerPoint Presentation. Each group had a poem to annotate, a group think sheet to fill out and a presentation fill in sheet. The group had to annotate the poem, looking for literary devices, at least four; which they have to write in the group think sheet and present to the class. While they were presenting, students in the audience would write down the four literary devices each group is presenting.

For the first block, the students only have one hour, so they would not be able to finish the activity in that amount of time. So, they would continue into the next day. While the students were annotating, they were confused as to what to do. I realized that they needed an example of what I was looking for, but I had not provided one and did not have to do it either. The first block students continued to ask questions right up until they had to leave. But before I let them leave for the day, I asked them if they could write a sentence about how I was doing do far. They kept that sheet along with the packets and left the classroom.

First block ended and I had the opportunity to observe 12th graders during my teacher’s planning/duty block. The 12th graders were finishing up the Romantics by taking more notes and reading some of Byron and Wordsworth. The 12th graders were so much more mature than the 11th graders and were way more mature than 9th graders. It was a refreshing observation. The most interesting part was when they broke for a tornado drill. Other students from the classroom above came down and sat on the floor as close to the wall as possible. There were several students next to me that were also seniors. They were talking and messing around with each other. I asked two particular boys whether they were dating each other, one of them did not understand my question, so I repeated it. The first boy said no, as sincerely as possible, and the other jokingly said yes, and was caressing the other student. A boy next to them started laughing hysterically, and it was quite funny. I personally love to work with seniors, they are the most mature and I can joke with them without hurting their feelings. They left the classroom after the drill and I continued to observe, until the next block.

This block was with ninth graders and they were doing the same thing as the day before. Library and source cards. These students were well behaved in the library and got most of their work done.

Now, the last block of 11th graders. I presented by hook, shortened the time, and did not ask for volunteers.  I passed out the packet, the group think sheet, and the presentation sheet. I had the students get into their groups, and gave the instructions. This class was the most difficult because they are the most rambunctious. They had the same issues as the first block, and the groups were switched around. I did not consult with my teacher first before I made the mistake for forming a group that had two of the most unproductive students. This group of students made it to the presentation portion of the assignment, and many of the students noticed that the answers that were given were wrong. I believe that having a sheet of literary device along with their definitions would have helped. However, the students got through the presentation aspect of the activity and wrote an exit slip for me. They answered three questions and provided a grade for me.