Week 8 is a thing of the past, wahoo! I’m excited that we are launching rockets outside this afternoon for science class. I hope to have pictures up next week!

1. New Seats – “New Seats Day” is a middle schooler’s most hated or favorite day ever, depending on how everything shakes out. I give my students new seats every 2 weeks. We do a lot of partner talk and small group discussions, so I like to keep things fresh and interesting by always getting new partner arrangements. As I told my students on the first day, it doesn’t matter whether you love your seat or hate your seat – it WILL change in 10 days. My seating policy has not only cut down on the excessive complaining and repeated requests (more like begging), but it has really been a benefit to student learning and discussion. Fortunately, I have a computer program (Infinite Campus) that randomly generates new seating charts, which really makes things easier on me. Since it’s random, I also don’t have to put any thought into it, and I always reserve the right to ‘rearrange’ if things just aren’t working (or comply with IEP requests for preferential seating).

2. Common Core Flip Book – I purchased this flip book online. It’s really fantastic! Yes, I do realize that the CCSS are all available for free online, but having this resource at my fingertips has been very handy. I would recommend it!

3. Breakup Letter – We are finally up to the Declaration of Independence with my Social Studies class. As a warm-up at the beginning of class, I read them this note that I said I ‘found’ yesterday in my classroom. My class is pretty bright, and they knew something was up. I asked them why I might be reading it, and they eventually deduced that it was from the American Colonies to Great Britain. We did a close reading of two key sentences, and I asked them which historic events it could be referring to. Neat activity!

4. Standards Based Grading Scale – I’ve been researching and drafting a Standards Based Grading Scale that we could adopt as an entire school. This is my draft so far. A good friend encouraged me to add the 2.5, since so many students seem to fall in that chasm between apprentice and master – I agree. I’m going to try it out for a while and see how it works. I like the language a lot better than “Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Minimal,” which often doesn’t mean much to students. This language is borrowed from history, literary lore, role-playing games, and video-gaming, which hits closer to home for my students.

5. Annual Pumpkin Carving – For the past 4 or so years, we have made it an annual event to carve pumpkins with very dear friends of ours. We find cool patterns online, print them out for free, and have a blast making a mess. Mine is Jack Skellington on the right 🙂 Evil smile! Do you recognize Toothless from ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ and the Hitchhiking ghost from the Haunted Mansion at Disneyworld?

How was your week? I hope you are making the most of October, as it is coming to a close quickly! Enjoy the weather, food, and creature comforts of fall!

Welcome, 2014-2015 School Year! This is my 8th year teaching Language Arts at my school. I am always looking for new ways to streamline, engage students, and improve. To that end, I am trying out a few new things this year.

First of all, my schedule has changed quite a bit. Last year, I taught only Language Arts. This year, I will teach Language Arts, Social Studies, a Reading Support class, an Academic Support hour, and I will also be the Reading Specialist. Phew! While that is quite a change with a lot of new things to learn and teach, I also think I’m going to love the variety. Teaching the same thing all day long can get kinda boring and repetitive. I welcome the challenge!

Below are a few new things I am excited to try this year:

1. Common Core Learning Target Web – At my school, and likely at yours, we are required to communicate the daily learning targets to our students as well as visually display the targets. Students benefit from knowing the intended goals and outcomes of instruction. That being said, changing up the learning target on a nearly daily basis can become a cumbersome task. To streamline, my partner and I decided to create a web of ALL the targets we will hit in our first unit (about 1 quarter). Then, we can simply put a laminated bullseye sign on the target(s) we are working on any given day. Seems like this will make things a lot easier. This has the added benefit of showing students a preview of all of the targets and where we are heading throughout the unit.

Common Core Target Web (c) Kristen Dembroski

2. Talk Partners – For the past 7 years, my room has been organized into table groups (4 students). This fit nicely with my classroom philosophy of collaboration, group work, and community. However, it became distracting at times. Put socially-motivated 13-year-olds into a cluster, and shenanigans will happen. This year, I am trying a new idea called “Talk Partners.” You can see from the new seating chart, which I call Chevron Tables, that students are now more in rows instead of clusters. Each table will consist of one pair of students, talk partners, which I will switch up every week. The infinite campus grading program that I use can create randomized seating charts at a click, so this will not be too difficult. I will also work in more reflecting and communicating time into my curriculum. I will pause more often and say, “Explain to your talk partner what you just heard / understood” or “Ask your talk partner a question you still have about this topic,” etc. The goal will be more focused interactions.

Chevron Seating Arrangement (c) Kristen Dembroski

3. Leveled Literacy Instruction – I will be teaching a Reading Support class this year, which is a new offering at our school. It will be for students who are performing below grade level on our district-wide reading assessments, yet aren’t receiving any other kinds of support (not Special Education). The LLI is an elementary school model that is releasing a middle school component in September. Since it’s not released yet, I can’t tell you much about it other than the Reading Specialists that use it at our district elementary schools love it and see very positive results!

4. Snacks! Okay this has absolutely nothing to do with my curriculum, but I am excited anyway. I signed up for Graze this year. School starts at 7:45 and lunch isn’t until 12:50, so I’m very likely to get hangry… So Graze seemed like a perfect solution for me. They will deliver 4 snacks per week (or every other week) directly to my school mailbox, and I can customize the snacks based on my tastes, dietary needs, etc. It’s only $6.49 a box, and I don’t have to do any shopping, prepping, or packing. Food! Yassss!!! Below is my first box that I received during Teacher Institute week. Loving this idea! If you would like to sign up and get 2 free boxes using my referral code, click here.

Are you trying out anything new this year, or embarking on a fun new adventure? I’d love to hear about it!

This week, we are reading “Battleground” by Stephen King (a short story from his novel Night Shift). After we do a close reading and discussion of the story, identifying elements of literature and analyzing the author’s craft, we will also watch the video adaptation from Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Comparing the short story to the movie adaptation helps us to reach several Common Core State Standards, such as:

• RL.8.3 Key Ideas and Details: Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.
• RL.8.5 Craft and Structure: Compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style.
• RL.8.7 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Analyze the extent to which a filmed or live production of a story or drama stays faithful to or departs from the text or script, evaluating the choices made by the director or actors.

To prepare my students for comparing and contrasting the short story / movie, I give them the following handout. This usually sparks a very lively discussion about books versus movies. I love when students come to the rescue of books 🙂

After watching the movie, they need to answer 4 simple questions:

1. Identify one significant way in which the director ‘stayed true’ to King’s version.
2. Explain why you think the director chose to ‘stay true’ to the short story for this.
3. Identify one significant way in which the director departed from King’s version.
4. Explain why you think the director chose to depart from the short story for this.

If you would like to download the picture above as a FREE PDF, click here.

Do you do a book / movie comparison unit? I’d love to hear how you tackle this!