Ahoy! Prezi ahead!

***For best results, play the following while exploring Prezi: Exciting Pirate Music!

Treasure Island: Pirates!

I am very excited about my text satellite!

 

Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, is one of my favorite novels.

 

That is not the only reason that I selected it, though!  It is a story of adventure, growing up, and - best of all - pirates!  I believe that it has the potential to be a very engaging novel in the classroom, particularly for male students.

 

I decided to focus my text satellite on an interdisciplinary study of piracy.  In addition to Treasure Island, I chose the broadway script of "Peter Pan and Wendy" as further reading material.  Student understanding of the Hollywood pirate will be challenged through a critical article ("Romantic Hero or Bloodthirsty Robber"), current movie and theatre video clips and exerpts from Exquemelin's 18th-century pirate tales.

 

Students will expand their knowledge of pirate history with historical information from the Elizabethan Era site, historical documents, and documentaries.  Students will use this knowlege to compare and contrast images of pirates from throughout the past few centuries and analyze poetry.

 

Finally, they will explore modern day piracy with excerpts from Terror on the Seas, current event articles, and current documents.

 

A soundtrack will be utilizied to engage student interest but also to deepen their study of piracy through an analysis of the music and its lyrics.

 

Note: The attached link to my text satellite does not allow for the following videos to play:

• Pirates of Penzance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2j90qg_5_w&feature=related
• Hook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssJBfafFgSw&feature=relmfu

Assessments

Creating a rubric for the short story alternative assessment was by far one of the most enlightening experiences in my teaching journey.  The assessment that I created, inspired by Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery, required students to either defend or critique a tradition in today's society.  I made a variety of project mediums available to my students, ranging from paintings and comics to persuasive essays and poetry.

I've created assessment templates like this before for other education courses, but I was never responsible for demonstrating how I was going to actually assess student work.  So, when I sat down to create the rubric for "The Lottery" assessment, I was faced with more questions than I expected.

To be fair to myself, I have heard all of these things before.  Yet, actually creating the rubric for an assessment made me consider these things:

•  Assessments must reflect learning objectives.  What do I want my students to learn?  This is what I need to assess.  Thus, assessments become a measure of not only student learning but also teacher effectiveness.  If I am successful in teaching, then my students' work will reflect that.
• Students need structure.  I cannot expect students to simply complete what I have in mind.  They need specific direction.  For example, in order to get the maximum amount of points for their tradition statements, the rubric details that the students must turn in a statement with all three of the required componenets on time.
• Assessments must be measurable.  Assessments that are measurable clearly demonstrate student understanding of a topic in an organized manner.  Assessments can then be used to maintain teacher accountability as well as to chart student progress, which is helpful to students, parents, and administration. 

In Science Methods, we discussed making sure that assessments allow for further student growth and learning.  Therefore, assessments cannot just require students to repeat what they have learned in the lesson but should encourage them to make new connections and observations.  This maximizes learning time in the classroom and ensures that students really understand the lesson.

Another idea that I love from Science Methods is giving students a quiz immediately after engaging in the lesson.  Dr. Shane modeled this by having us rotate around three stations with an outline of what we need to know for the quiz.  He emphasized that his intention was not to trick us but to ensure that we have learned the details that he wanted us to pick up on.  There was less emphasis on memorizing the material.  Instead, I focused on making sure that I understood the material that he highlighted for us.

Students do not often fully understand why they are being assessed.  They understand that in order to earn an "A" or to move on to the next grade, they must do well on assessments.  Traditionally, "doing well" requires hours of re-reading and memorization.  If this is all that students do, then they are not really learning anything.  I think student understanding of assessments need to change.  Instead of measuring how much information they can cram into their heads, students should understand that assessments exist so that they can demonstrate what they can do with what they have been learning.

And if assessments are not measuring what students can do, then they need to change so that they do.

This brings up the disparity between objective and authentic assessments.  While there is room for both in the English classroom, I prefer authentic assessments.

Authentic assessments provide further opportunity for students to explore the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy: applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.  Thus, authentic assessments allow students to take ownership of their education.  Students are able to directly and tangibly interact with the class's materials, which  leads to a deeper learning experience.

Objective assesments are also helpful in the classroom.  Sometimes it is necessary to make sure that students understand basic concepts that are best measured through objective assessments.  Just because they do not engage the top tiers of Bloom's Taxonomy does not mean that they are not valuable.  However, an English classroom - which is supposed to engage students in critical thought - cannot be reduced to multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank.  That is an insult to student intelligence and creativity.

Final Example: My 10th grade English teacher, who is my absolute favorite teacher, displayed a great blend of objective and authentic assessments while teaching To Kill A Mockingbird.  After certain readings, he would give quizzes that ensured that we completed the readings while directing and measuring our comprehension of important details within the text.  He supplemented these objective quizzes with a variety of authentic writing pieces, including character studies and narratives.

Fighting Readicide

A brief, musical assessment of reading in today’s schools: http://soundcloud.com/barrylane55/01-wasting-away-in-basal

Kelly Gallagher’s driving argument: Reading in school is killing students’ love for reading.

 In my Science Methods course, we read John Dewey’s speech “Science as Subject-Matter and as Method.”  In this speech, Dewey actually contrasts the English classroom and science classroom: “All this change [in science content] is to some extent a symptom of healthy activity, change being especially needed in any group of studies so new that they have to blaze their own trail, since they have no body of traditions upon which to fall back as is the case with study of language and literature.”  I would argue that the study of language and literature is no longer as static as Dewey perceives it in his speech.

 My favorite thread of Gallagher’s text is the idea of developing “expert citizens.”  English classrooms are unique because they have the potential to be such free and interdisciplinary spaces.  Literary texts are written in response to the world around them.  Therefore, a study of literature must engage the outside world.  Gallagher refers to this kind of expansive, interdisciplinary exploration as a “wealth of knowledge” (38).  English classrooms can no longer rely on literary “‘memory gems’” (Dewey’s term for the literary classics).  English is as alive a discipline as science – constantly changing and growing with the world around it.  We are responsible for preparing our students for the demands of a world that is much more complex and connected than ever before.

 I love the idea of combining traditional texts with modern texts: novels, short stories, poetry, graphic novels, magazines, music, newspapers, websites, and video games.  I will never tire of sharing my Graphics and Gaming class experience from last semester.  I am usually barraged with a series of questions (and then an exclamation): “That was a required class?”  “So, you just sat around and played video games all day?”  “What can you learn from video games?”   And, inevitably: “I want to take that class!”  These questions and Dewey’s article demonstrate a stigma regarding the English classroom that we need to dispel.

 When most people think of an English classroom, they immediately associate reading and writing.  Yet thinking is also a key component.  To reiterate, English classrooms can no longer focus on introducing students to great writers.  Instead, students need to engage in critical thinking to prepare for life beyond school.  Critical thinking through reading can be enriched by including a rich variety of authentic texts.  I particularly liked Gallagher’s Article of the Week (AoW) activity: Students were expected to read and respond to a current event article every week.

 Why is this important?  “What the reader brings to the page is often more important than the ability to read the words on the page . . . a wide knowledge base . . . is foundational if [students] are to develop into critical readers of the world” (33, 35).  Literacy is not just reading words off of a page; the words need to have meaning.  If students cannot apply meaning to what they read, then how can they demonstrate independent thought?

 The most recent experience that I can remember having with Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) was the Drop Everything And Read (DEAR) time during elementary school.  As an avid reader, I relished those moments.  I read every opportunity that I could.  I remember a moment during a unit in fourth grade on the Oregon Trail in which my teacher asked us to use our imaginations to go back in time and share what three items we would take with us in our wagon on the journey west.  I answered: “A gun (because everyone else was saying that), chocolate, and books.”  I definitely believe that moments for free reading played a huge role in my love for reading.  Why do these experiences have to stop after elementary school?  I definitely want to have independent reading every week in my future classroom.

 It is imperative to give students free choice in those moments.  Gallagher often suggests that many students will only ever read within the classroom.  Therefore, we must make those moments as meaningful as possible in order to encourage the development of critical, lifelong readers.  This can be accomplished by allowing students to explore their interests through their own book choices.  I love Gallagher’s concept of a “book flood” (32).  I have recently begun to build my classroom library.  It’s interesting that it is so challenging to find books that will appeal to male students.  However, I am really trying to find a wide variety to stock my shelves.  It is also important for students to be able to share what they are reading.  I would love to have a class reading blog or verbal book reports.  These activities would not only involve students in a culture of reading but would further encourage them to take ownership of their own reading.

 A final thought on the chart that Gallagher presents contrasting “Beating the Odds” schools with “Typical” schools (26).  As I scanned the chart, I was reminded of our textbook analysis activity.  The chart and the activity boil down to the same question: How much are we willing to invest in our kids?