Teaching Poetry to Middle Schoolers

Me (in my most excited, I love teaching voice): "We're starting poetry next week!!"

{insert student groans}

Them (in their bored, disinterested voices): "We hate poetry.  It's stupid! It's SOOOOOO hard!"

Me (taking my excited voice up a notch):  You'll love it!  I promise!!

{insert skeptical looks and eye rolls}

So....how do I get my students to love {like/tolerate} poetry?

I let them take control of the lessons.  I am simply a facilitator posing debatable questions to poems they have read.  The students discuss the answers with each other {NOT ME} constantly referring back to the poem to support their answers!

Through the process, they organically understand theme, mood, author's purpose, etc without me beating them over the head with it!!

How it works...
1.  Introduce your poet.  Do a web hunt, have a guest speaker, watch a video. Whatever you need to do to get the students to understand who the poet was/is.

2.  Introduce and work with vocabulary from the poem.  I have my students look up the words, draw cartoons to go with each word, and perform actions to go with each meaning.

3.  Sit your students around one table {or a lot of tables pushed together.  We do our seminars in the school library}

Read the poem and annotate/jot.  I tell them it may be hard and they may have to read it more than once to get an understanding.  Let them know that is ok and normal!

4.  Pose debatable questions to the group.  The questions should be open ended...not yes/no.

5.   Give a writing prompt to go along with the poem.

We might spend a week on one poem and author, but that is OK!  They really understand {and dare I say it...like} the poem at the end of the week.  They will ask you if you can do seminars everyday, all day!!! 
Quality over quantity.

Has anyone else used the seminar method to teach poetry?  

If you would like an example of a poetry seminar lesson plan, click here. 

Happy teaching,

Why I Teach Novels

I am a huge fan of teaching novels in the language arts classroom.  When I hear rumblings of doing away with novels in the middle school classroom and replacing the time with chapter excerpts and passages, it makes my heart sad.

I remember my third grade teacher read aloud Island of the Blue Dolphins and I was mesmerized!! I looked forward to the next day's lesson......I daydreamed about what would happen to the characters....I wanted to read other books by the same author...I learned to love reading.

Isn't that what teaching reading is all about?  To get them to LOVE it...to want to do it on their own?!?  I don't sit down at night after the kids have gone to bed and just read excerpts of novels.  I read books that engage me, that I love, that I just can't put down.

If we can get students to love what they are reading, then they will read.  The more they read, the more proficient they will become.  Stamina will be built, comprehension will happen, and natural readers will be born.

Currently, I am in the planning process for two new novels to read with my seventh grade students.  I can't wait to share what we're going to do with these amazing books...it is sure to be exciting!  Until then...

Happy Teaching,

Increasing Motivation: The Effort Meter

Does anyone have those classes that are super hard to motivate?  The ones where the idea of a zero is not scary and reason enough to to the work.  I do... {insert heavy sigh}

I have tried several motivational strategies (tickets, rewards, praise, punishment) for those students who would just not do their work.

In a moment of frustration {and slight craziness}, I stomped to the white board and announced 7 people did their homework last night and promptly wrote it really big in red expo marker.

Then I announced we were going to do a little math lesson.  We counted how many students were in the class, 31, and I wrote it under the seven.  As a class we talked about how to find a percentage and I had the students figure out what percentage of students did their homework last night.

 Just 23%.

They were honestly shocked.

I kept the number on the board and told them we were going to see if we could increase the number the next time we had homework.  And they did.  Thus, The Effort Meter* was born.

 What do you do to increase student motivation in your classroom?

Happy Teaching,


*It's called The Effort Meter because I got tired of students saying they were not getting close to 100% turn in rate because they weren't "The Smart Class."  I tell them over and over it has nothing to do with what they have coined "smart" and has everything to do with effort.

 

Classroom Management Middle School Style: #planB update

I wrote this popular post about my little classroom management tool, #planB.

This nine weeks I decided to put a little sugar on it....

#awesomeness!

If ALL of my students are being awesome...they are engaged, working, participating, etc, the class gets a happy face.  If they get three happy faces, they get 5 minutes of free time at the end of class.  

It's so simple and the kids are motivated by earning a little reward for great behavior.  

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

Happy Teaching,

180 Days of Inspired Teaching: Finding Figurative Language

In the past I would give the students definitions of similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, and personification.  We would do the typical worksheet, some homework, and take a test. However, none of this was really done in context so there was no meaning for the students.  They could tell you what a simile was, but could not explain why authors used them in their writing.  The importance was lost on them. 

And then I had the AHHHH moment.

We were reading Milkweed, a beautifully written historical fiction novel, aloud and I kept coming across similes, metaphors, imagery, etc.  We would stop, talk about it and discuss why Spinelli used this type of language when he wrote.  The students even started showing me the figurative language they found while reading.  It was a warm your heart, magical, happy teaching moment. 

So this year I decided to make an interactive bulletin board to continue with the "found figurative language" concept.

Anytime a student finds an example of simile, metaphor, personification, etc they jot it down on something and stick it to the board.  

**You can get a similar poster set here**

So far it's going well...they seem genuinely excited when they find an example! It's something I call awesome!

Happy teaching,

Fun Friday: The 100 Wall

As a little {free!} reward for making a 100 (or level 4) on take home reading, quizzes, and tests, my students earn a star!

How it works...
1.  The student earns a star for every 100 they make.
2.  They take the star home and decorate it however they wish.
3.  Put the star on your classroom wall.

It's so easy and a great way to reward those students who do super work.  And I think it increases their motivation to put forth their best effort on assignments. 

Our goal is to make the stars go all the way around the room.  We can do it!
Bonus:  It makes a colorful display of awesomenessl!



You can download the star for free at my TpT store!  Just click here --> Get my free download!




Happy Teaching,

Idea: Picture Collages to Summarize Reading

So I was wasting time on Twitter when I should've been grading and I came across a fantastic post from this dude.  

 It's all about creating picture collages using Pic Collage.  

It got my brain going!

What if...

1.  Students
read a book

2.  As they read the recreate important scenes from the book and photograph them.


3.  They import all the pictures into Pic College to create a final product to visually summarize their novel! 

What a great way to work on visualization while reading! 



I love the idea!  I will have to try it out soon....if someone beats me to it, let me know how it works out!

Happy teaching,