You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile

I sent a welcome letter to the adults of the 6th Graders, around a week before I arrived. I ensured the letter was professional yet had an appeal of who I am as a person and teacher. I am a certified English Language Arts teacher, and this also means that I am certified to teach theatre. Given my theatre background, my lessons tend to be on the dramatic side. I find that this is the only way to grab my student’s attention and hold it long enough for the student’s to fully understand the lesson. I love to utilize the sociolinguistic practice of turn and talk. Student’s should be the ones teaching each other, after all, it is proven that students learn more from ideas given by their peers than the teacher. The teacher is there to facilitate the questioning and idea farm factory in the classroom. 6th Grade is a wonderful age, because the imaginations of the children are still wild and active! As a result, the students will bring up points to a lesson that I had never even thought of!

  I love to reach all of my students in a variety of ways. I learned that one of my students did not have an “inner voice” in their head. This made reading comprehension a struggle for them. I looked up academic articles featuring strategies for helping comprehension in students with aphantasia. I utilized these strategies I found, and I saw success with that particular student in book club meeting. During the Team-Taught Hour, I led the Titanic Book Club for the students needing some extra support. I also aided the students in their comprehension by explaining the ship vernacular. In order to understand the story, one must know that Officers are different high-ranking officials on the vessel itself, not cops with guns. Overall, I saw that students were lacking in the background historical knowledge of their books for the non-fiction unit. I would meet with groups and bring up pictures and videos to help the students further understand the world of their book. When I have my own classroom, I will put together a packet for each group, with links to resources and pictures to save time in the classroom.  

Figurative Language Fun Fridays!

I realized that the students were not able to identify figurative-language devices in books and stories. I also knew that songs are RICH in figurative-language. Therefore, I developed a new tradition for my class: Figurative Language Fun Friday! Every Friday (or the last day of the week), I would pick a school-appropriate song/video and dissect a stanza or two of it with the class. We would identify the underlined section in groups and then solve it as a class. After the dissection, we would identify the meaning or symbolism in the song. I am a firm believer in the idea of incorporating art and culture in the classroom to contribute to the classroom culture. When I use music in the classroom, I see students getting involved who would normally sit bored at their desk. The lesson that was the most successful was “All-Star” by SMASHMOUTH. The students watched the opening of “Shrek”, and the energy in the room was ELECTRIC.

MAKE ‘EM Laugh:

I am also a huge proponent of LAUGHTER. During any lesson, I believe that laughter and joking is a necessity when teaching. When I taught my virtual class, my mother asked me, “What is so funny? You are laughing so much in there!” My response is clear, public school is like a prison. The students have to be there, by law. The students must follow rules and a strict schedule. They must be kept track of at all times and ask to use the restroom. Once students realize that they HAVE to be in attendance, that is when the battle begins. If I make my classroom a safe and fun space, the students will be less reticent to coming to school. The sign of a great teacher is to trick to the students into learning. I distract the students by using music or wearing a crazy outfit! I had a student say to me, “What did we learn today Miss M? We just had fun and read about a man who was imagining a raven was his lost wife, Lenore! Just talking about grief and how it can do weird things to you!?” That was the point, dear student, I tricked ya into learning!!

WACKY WRITING WEDNESDAY:

I also began Wacky Writing Wednesday, as the students do not have much creative writing time in the Lucy Calkins Curriculum. For the first 15 minutes of class every Wednesday, the students can free write about whatever they wish. I put a painting or a writing prompt up on the board to get the creative juices flowing. See below for example of the slides (using VistaCreate) I created for these days. One of the best stories that came out of WWW, was a pine tree who lived in a forest. He and his friends were having a peaceful day, when a “terrifying T-Rex emerged from the brush! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! His footsteps echoed through the clearing.” This particular sentence was an excerpt from a student who had been known to say that “writing was boring!” The student excitedly exclaimed, “I even used that ony-mony-peo (onomatopoeia) thing!” This is a direct result of my Figurative-Language Fun Friday.