Surprises and Makeovers!

As of yesterday, my period four class is midway through the poetry portion of our unit. Yesterday was probably one of the best days that I have had with my students for a couple different reasons. My CT had to be at a data team meeting all day yesterday and thus he was out of the classroom (and the school) all day. This was my first time teaching the class without him being in the back of the classroom, observing me. I was not nervous about teaching the students on my own, because I have a good rapport with them and classroom management is not an issue with this class. The students completely blew me away. It started with one of my more challenging students walking into the classroom and declaring "This is going to be a good day! We're going to have a good class today!" after which I praised him for starting the class with such a positive attitude! I had the students working in groups to find different literary techniques (metaphors, similes, personification, repetition, and allusions) in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. We read the poem as a class the day before and had a class discussion after each section of the poem (I had broken the poem up into sections) to help aid in comprehension. This is NOT an easy poem, and I let the students know that when we started it. It's more difficult than The Red Wheelbarrow and I felt confident in telling the students this, because I followed it up with "even though this is more difficult than the poems we have been reading, I have complete confidence in every single one of you, you're all intelligent people and I have broken this poem up so that it is less overwhelming" and the students appreciated my honesty. 

As I monitored the groups, I was impressed with what I was hearing. Students were making amazing connections with the text and using the literary techniques to determine how they were important in the poem. Another challenging student was making amazing connections with the literary techniques and I had to praise him by declaring "Wow ***! You brought your a-game today!" The students were all on task, and they weren't afraid to ask me questions. They were completely comfortable with me and although this has not been an issue, I feel that I was finally accepted as their teacher! I think that my CT not being in the classroom had a big part in how the students were behaving! I did not have to reprimand anybody and the class period could not have gone smoother! After we discuss the literary techniques in the poem, I am going to have the students give Prufrock a makeover! As a class we decided that his life is a mess and it needs some professional help! They are going to work in groups and use magazines to make a collage and then present it to the class on how their chosen images will help Prufrock. I am excited to see what they come up with! I feel like they like this poem more than the ones we have been reading, because they are able to make connections with their own lives. Who knew that Prufrock would be the key to surprising me and cementing my teacher role in the classroom? 

"Miss, please tell me none of these poems made it big!"

Last week was my first week of teaching my period four class and it has been a rollercoaster of emotions! The first day that I taught them I had them first period, after two snow days. Needless to say, they were less than excited to be in school that day. As I was teaching my WOW lesson on disillusionment, defiance, and discontent (the major theme of our unit) I realized that my lesson was a little redundant.The students didn't notice this, thankfully. But I made a note to myself to revise the lesson plan for when I have to teach it to my two other classes. The first day went well, but not without a few hiccups. I was a little hesitant to call on the students, because I did not want to put them on the spot. So instead, I used this as an opportunity to exercise my wait time. 

The next day I was teaching them "The Red Wheelbarrow" and "This is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams as an introduction to Imagist poetry. I was really excited about this lesson because I thought that the students would have fun with it! These poems are really short, no longer than twelve lines and each line was only about 3 words, so I felt that the students would like this. Next, I planned to introduce the students to the idea of "parody" through a Weird Al song, "Eat It" (a parody of "Beat It"). I wanted to then have the class journal about why this is a parody and what elements of this song make it a parody of "Beat It" and then do a whip to share out. Finally, I wanted the students to write their own parody poems of either "The Red Wheelbarrow" or "This is Just to Say" (and I provided them with examples of parodies of these poems, written by students their age). 

As we were reading the two poems, it became very clear to me that the students did not like these poems, as I thought they would. At one point one student said "Miss, please tell me none of these poems made it big! I could write something better than this!" I could not have been happier that he said this! "YES! You say you can write something better than this? HOLD ON TO THAT THOUGHT!" Now he was just saying that to get some laughs from his classmates, who shared his dislike and disinterest of the poems, but he was leading us right where I had planned for the lesson to go! It was an amazing way to transition into the next part of the lesson. When it came time to tell the students that we were going to be writing parody poems, I referenced back to his statement and said "How many of you think you could write something better than this? Good, because you're going to have the chance to do that!" The parody poems that the students handed in were so funny! They all included a clear example of imagery and kept the same structure of the original poem. I could tell from the class discussion and the parody poems that the students understood the concept of Imagist poetry. I have included three student examples below! I hope you all enjoy them as much as I did!

A parody of "The Red Wheelbarrow" 

So much depends

upon

the Golden arches

a soda dripping

with condensation 

beside the McDonald's

worker

A parody of "This is Just to Say"

This is Just to Say: I'm a tree

I have broken

the windshield

of your new red sports car

which you're 

going to be angry about.

But I swear it's not my fault

the wind pushed me too far

into your front yard. 

A parody of "This is Just to Say"

This is Just to Say: Coca Cola

I have drank

the last bit of cola

that was in the fridge

which you wanted

before bed.

Forgive me

it was tempting

so sweet

so bubbly.

I love soda.

Weathering the Storm with Nana!

I am very fortunate that my grandmother lives right near PHS! I have spent the storm with my 90 year old grandmother and she has declared us "survivors of the storm!" As I type this, we are sitting in the Warwick Public Library because her house does not have internet. Last Friday, PHS had a snow day, and for once I was not happy about it! I was supposed to start teaching my first class on Friday (after what seems like a million years of sitting in the back of the classroom just observing the students) and I was looking forward to starting an introduction to "Literature of the Modern Age: 1914-1945" or, Unit Four. Nevertheless, I have used this three day weekend as an opportunity to continue planning my lessons, and get better at playing Yahtzee.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow when I can teach my first class and start the new unit! Even as I type this, I am not nervous to teach but rather, I am anxious to start teaching! I feel like I am ready and prepared to take this first class Look out period four, here I come!

I will be taking on an additional two classes after they finish up their unit on transcendentalism with my CT. Instead of doing a poetry slam like period four (which I was fortunate enough to observe), they are ending the unit by watching "The Dead Poets Society" and then doing a Socratic Seminar on it, which I presume will take over a week. It's strange to think that I won't be taking on these two classes until almost March (because February vacation is next week), but it will give me the chance to teach my lessons to period four and then reflect upon them and revise them to make any necessary changes before teaching the same lessons to periods two and three.

My Nana has been a great sounding board for me to bounce my ideas off of, as she is a former teacher herself! As she was alive for most of the "modern age", I used her as a reference to gain historical insight on the United States from 1922-1945. I'm not entirely sure how accurate her stories are from that time period, but they seem to check out when I cross reference them with history books! If nothing else, her stories will help to add to a colorful introduction to the "Modern Age."