Spring 2015

Pam:

Team Building: Go over each step one at a time (10:45)

fold papers into 8 sections and draw what they did over break on top section
pass paper to the left
write what you see in the panel below
give you 30 seconds
fold the first panel over so that only the words appear
next person is going to draw what theyve read
pass to the left
2 minutes to draw
Pam circulates around the room during each session while keeping time. She gives
them a 15 second warning.
For the final writing, Pam asks for them to write a complete sentence -- not just one
word.
When they finished, Pam told them that the one thing she neglected to do was to have
them put their name on their paper.
She called on one student to begin reading them aloud. They go around the circle
reading the papers. Pam asks them to go quickly so that they can get to everyone.
Class was pretty chatty -- Pam told them she was waiting for them to quiet several
times.
Moral: Communication can go horribly wrong sometimes. How do we keep
communication open and accurate? With each other? With the teacher?

Course overview/info
Pam reads over the course objective (rapidly)
Feels a lot of responsibility to prepare them for college next year
No honors during the spring semester

Diagnostic Essay
Writing Goals
HW: Get syllabus signed
Read and annotate The Effort Effect

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-- reading quiz
-- annotate (take notes on the most important)

Stephanie:

Quote and picture match up

place pictures of celebrities at each place
hand out quotes from each celebrity
students match up the quote with the celebrity and sits in that seat
Content & Craft
Teacher Letter to students
whats content
whats craft -- quirky ways that I write
ask students about what they noticed
Whats true About Me (Today)
Hand out index cards
Powerpoint:
do not write you but know that what you write will be read
give examples
I am funny, sometimes in a non-comical sense. I make myself laugh often and others
less often. I like football, I hate shopping, I like people. My dream on-the-side job would
be doing voices for cartoon characters, but I cannot do this on the spot or alone. Im
rediscovering a childhood love for animals. Im rediscovering who I am.
five minutes
Now, describe yourself in one sentence: condense it down
Sentence: Im expanding and shrinking at varying rates, making it up as I go along.
Now, one word
Growing
Hand in, pass back and teacher reads aloud
Guess based on content or craft?
Guess which student is which
Did we guess based on the content or the craft?
Read some of them and save others for later
Raised By
Raised By Women poem
from Teaching for Joy and Justice
read
listen to recorded reading
Brainstorm what has raised me..
Write list on board
Students write own poem
Third Day: Stephanie

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Seat according to height

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick
Dead Poets Society clip
Semester goals
Why Stories?
Excerpts from the Story-Telling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall
Master (Disaster) piece: Brainstorm
Quickwrites for 5 minutes based on a prompt
Book Pass
Observation: January 8, 2015
Class started around 8:29. She asked them to take out their notebooks while
she thanked them for the Raised by poems and their content and craft. She went
over the agenda and then read from her cards she had them create on the first day.
She read five of them and the students guessed who they were using the content or
craft (the quirky way they write).
Poem chosen because goal setting. Old poem read by Robin Williams in The
Dead Poets Society. First, look at the poem and then watch a scene. Steph projected
the poem on the screen and read it aloud. What are confusing words? Tarry and coy.
Steph defined the words for them and asked for other words. She then asked which
lines did they like? Gather ye rosebuds while ye may/The glorious lamp of heaven,
the sun

She then set up a 5-minute video clip from Dead Poets Society as a rich, white, boys
boarding school in the 1950s. Did hearing it or seeing it shift anything for you? Wanted
to share that because we were doing dreaming and goals yesterday. She had a large
sticky paper on the wall and asked for Ideas for projects or externships from her
survey sheet she had handed out the day before:
Poetry book
Coding lights to go with music
Build an instrument
Self-reflective writing piece
Garden
1st person story
Poetry slam
Choose a project (group or individual)
Poem robot (create a formula to write poems)
Beautify courtyard/garden
Entrepreneurial shark tank type engineering project (build and sell a project)
Create something that solves a problem in the 3rd world
Build robots for battle (historical robot throw down)

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Domino effect
A play
Outside learning experiences/field trips
Write music
Kids
Literary analysis
Legacy -- collaborative writing/art piece
College style papers
Go-Carts
She summed up: prepare for next year and leave something memorable behind. (Kids
were chatty and talked over each other while Stephanie read out the goals from the
index cards)

Moved on to goals and put another large sticky note on the wall.
Something tangible to be proud of
Improve grammar and vocabulary
Better writer
persuasive writing
timed writings
Reading
speed
enjoyment
Feel prepared for college
Public speaking
exhibition
open mike on 1/29 with the poetry club
Asked for comments on whether they wanted grammar and vocabulary and lots of
people talked at once.
History of the English language
Moved into Overview of the Course keeping in mind that the course is flexible.
Overview is for parents and had an important section on choosing the books and
question for parents favorite book and if they want to donate the book to the class.
Then asked for cell phones out and showed them her DP (course site) with the Daily
Recap and she used the Remind 101 app to have them get a daily reminder of the
Recap.
3rd period: Why We Tell Stories -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9TWwG4SFWQ

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Showed it twice and asked students what did you see? Lots of stories emerged and
students shared their interpretations. One student wondered about the personification of
the shapes, but even then there was a story associated with the shapes.
But they are ONLY shapes, but we are hardwired to explain things in stories, but we
bring our own experience of stories and things we have seen. Stories are how we make
sense of the world around us, which is often why we misconstrue things and invent
stories.
She then showed them the article:
Remember her last name story? They remembered her last name.
Facts are language based, but stories activate those sections of the brain as if we had
lived through it.
The Story-Telling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall.
Read through the passage on your own and see which stories strike you
Pair share and then share out.
Course overview with parents favorite book and why.
Friday, January 9, 2015
Poem: Rives -- spoken word
Gift for his sister op
Did anyone else have a secret language growing up?
Language makes us think of stories and memories
Master/Disaster
A story that we want to memorialize or get out of our head
Or if your logical and business oriented, a story for a pitch or about an interview
Story as a gift

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positives

negatives

neutrals

9th
10th
11th
12th
Pair Share
Share out and write on board

Envelope with quick prompts

Pull it out and write about it for three minutes
A moment you didnt get caught
Time you laughed the hardest
The thing you wished you had said in the moment but didnt
The time you said goodbye to___________
The first time you revealed a secret
Favorite mistake
Trivial things that mean a lot to you
The moment you first realized something
3 minutes
If you didnt write enough, it might be one that you will go back to and write more later
Pick another one

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Period 3
Reading histories
Pictures of steph as a reader from childhood
How many pages of reading per week in college?
100 to 600 with the mean of 200
Readers Bill of Rights
Page goal each week
Each Monday read 10 minutes book of choice
2 hours a week to reading
10 pages in 10 minutes
120 minutes per week = 120 pages
goal: 120 pages a week
Start each class with 10 minutes of reading
Time spent rather than amount of pages
Build up personal stamina
Not perfect science, but build muscles
Create google document with sign in
Quarter: Reading Ladder (7th week or 8th week of class)
See how many pages weve read total and the average each week
List books by reading difficulty: Most to least
Tiny summary of each of the books (top five)
Average the number of minutes to see reading rate per week
Every Monday, asked if finished book and then give Book Talk
Create webpage
Picture of book cover and summary with review and link to Good Reads
Generates book recommendations
Your Next Read.com
put into title and it generates recommendations
Three to Read website
Reading constantly books at your own pace
Put Books I want to Read as last page of the notebook
Monday: 1/12/15
Collect syllabus and surveys
Sit in order of length of commute (to or from HTHI) -- seat for the week
Writing in class because we know you have commutes, jobs, sports outside of school

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Poem: Autobiography in Five Chapters

Read/set page goal for the week
A Light History of the English Language
Story brainstorming
Review examples

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Record the number of pages and multiply by 12 for reading goal of the week.
Take notes while watching video -- remember better
Why is storytelling more memorable than mere facts -- infographic
The physical act of writing brings the information to the forefront of the brain
showed notebook of how she took notes

Tuesday 1/13

Read Do Not Be a Damned Liar from Sh*t My Dad Told Me

Sound/body movement exercise
Students in a circle (10)
Each makes a vowel or consonant sound accompanied by a body movement
Ah -- rubbing stomach
Goes up to another student who matches the movement and then goes into the middle
with another sound/movement
5 minutes
Article Notes: What can we borrow and steal when were writing our own?
Title: strong word choice, gives us
Lead: reflective context
Verb Tense: past
might be meaner if in present
gives us perspective
understand dad better
chronological
zooms in on one key moment (snapshot moment)
zooms out -- forgets experiment
zooms in -- dad confrontation
zooms back out
how does he add good details? The movie behind your eyelids
dog slobbering
dog name Brownie
dads reaction to the notebook and dog toy - meltdown
letter to the class clearly not in his own words
realistic dialogue
few dialogue tags -- she said, he said, etc.
more like a play
whats the climatic moment?
when dad comes into the room/opens the door
when dad starts to test the dog/aftermath
word choice

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nouns and verbs vs. adjectives

barrelled
whats the point? whats the so what?
dad is man of gruff, tough love
Steal these moves
mock the opening
its not cheating -- its looking at mentors and borrowing stuff
Next example: From the Tender Bar
Tuesday, January 20

Visuals: Large sticky note paper with details filled in for each short story the class had
read (Do Not Be a Damned Liar from Sh*t My Dad Says; The Voice by J.R.
Machringer; and student story)

Title
Lead
Tense
Structure
Details
Dialogue
Climax
Thoughts & Feelings
So What?
Conclusion
Video: Super Bowl commercial and oxytocin
In your notebooks:
Why was this commercial the top commercial of last years Super Bowl?
What does oxytocin have to do with storytelling
Packet:
New York Times article on Storytelling: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/13/yourmoney/storytelling-to-find-a-job-or-build-a-business.html?_r=0
What strikes you about this article?
Example from Nancie Atwell about the Carpool and Afternoon with Mom to look for T &
F -- thoughts and feelings
Stephanie uses document camera to mark up sheet
What could the student author do to make this more interesting?
Why is she mad at mom?
Why is she irritated?
Whats going on in her life?

future of storytelling: paul zak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1a7tiA1Qzo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHeqQAKHh3M (future of storytelling)
Tasks:

Spring 2015

Ask for the so what? of your story

How can you put T & F into the story? (Thoughts and Feelings)
Open packet to the example from Nancie Atwell about the Carpool and Afternoon with
Mom to look for T & F -- thoughts and feelings
Stephanie uses document camera to mark up sheet
What could the student author do to make this more interesting?
Why is she mad at mom?
Why is she irritated?
Whats going on in her life?
Where is this story going?
Why did she
January 21, 2015
Zoom In -- showed photo of flooded car with kid. Then colored it black and white that
highlighted hand -- example of what she wanted to do with writing.

Uses the Dont Be a Damned Liar under the document camera to show where the
author zooms into scenes around the dads interaction with the kid (author).
Shows Dads displeasure
dialogue
strong verb choice
strong word choice
Goes to the main moments and add the details/thoughts/feelings there.