And that's how we roll! Exploring reading comprehension using music and poetry.

With only two weeks left of this term, I decided that I would let my students decided what materials we looked at next. So, on Friday I asked my Form 2 and Form 3 girls what they would be interested in reading next. My Form 2 girls said that they wanted to read more Edgar Allan Poe, after hearing him for the first time last week. Instead of reading another short story to them, I decided to bring in one of Poe's poems. So, in today's lesson we spent two class periods analyzing Poe's poem, "The Raven." We started class by discussing why poetry is often more difficult to comprehend than other reading materials. We talked about symbolism and inferring meaning as two of the biggest challenges that make understanding poetry difficult.

Since, "The Raven" is a narrative poem, we used our story elements (character, setting, plot, conflict, resolution) as a way to make comprehension easier. As we read the poem together we identified these elements. Because of the language and length of the poem, we looked at each stanza together as a class and talked about what was happening.

Since the girls are still having some trouble understanding my accent,

I read a stanza aloud and then had a student read the same stanza again so 

that they could understand every word.

Rachel reading a few stanzas.

Students seemed confused as to why Poe selected a raven, when I explained that the raven is often a symbol of death or darkness in literature, students asked why he didn't use an owl. An owl? Now I was the one who was confused.  I explained that an owl often is a symbol of knowledge and wisdom. The class thought that it was funny that an owl is seen as being wise because in their culture the owl is a symbol of death. That's one thing that I love about teaching here, I'm always learning something new!

After discussing most of the poem as a class, I had my students analyze the remaining stanzas independently. I asked them questions about certain phrases or lines in the poem and they had to summarize what was going on in the stanza as well as answer the questions. I stressed to them that they must use their own words as well as lines from the stanza when defending and supporting their answers. We then talked about the poem as a whole. Student's did an excellent job inferring and supporting their thoughts with evidence from the poem!

In the second to last stanza, I asked students to summarize what was happening.

Students busy analyzing the rest of the poem.

While Form 2 was easy to please, Form 3 girls were a bit more difficult since they said that they were only interested in music. They did not want to read poetry and the only topic they were interested in was music. I searched for an article about music but nothing seemed to be interesting enough. Then I realized that I could bring music into the classroom if we looked at the lyrics of a song. Now, the real hard part came when I had to find a song to use. I wanted a song that had good lyrics that we could look at and analyze. It also had to be a song that I had in my iTunes library. Even with a somewhat eclectic taste in music, I knew that Everclear, Owl City, Kesha, Matchbox 20, Gary Allan, or Enrique Iglesias just wouldn't do for a lesson. After searching through nearly every song, I finally decided on an 80's classic, "Ninety-Nine Red Balloons" by Nena.

I had to go into class early in order to put up all lyrics to the song. 

 I had to stand on a chair just to reach the top of the board.  

I put the lyrics up on the board. I then had students copy the lyrics. I asked them what they were looking at and they said it was a poem. When I told them that they were looking at song lyrics, they were ecstatic. We read the lyrics and then I played them the song on my laptop! Then we looked back at the lyrics and began analyzing them. We looked at what was happening in each stanza. In the end, I asked students to answer the following questions: What is the tone of the lyrics? What do you think Nena's views on war are? What is the overall message that Nena is trying to get across in this song? Students had to defend their answers in their own words followed by specific evidence and lines from the lyrics. This is a real weakness for this class, over half the class was unable to do this on their Form 3 midterm. However, after modeling what I wanted students to do, nearly every single student  in the class was able to answer the questions in their own words as well as provide specific evidence from the lyrics.

We had an awesome class discussion about the way that the military were portrayed as being ignorant and eager to go to war, how high tech machines designed to protect could be used to destroy if we were not careful, as well as discussing the power of imagery of the red balloons, as well as speculating what they symbolized. Many students agreed that the red balloons were effective because they are a child's toy and it makes the military look extremely ignorant to go to war over something so harmless. We discussed the tone of sarcasm in the lines "Everyone's a superhero/Everyone's a Captain Kirk." Students also inferred that the red balloons were a symbol of the narrator's dreams or ambitions and in the end the dreams were destroyed by war. I have never seen these girls so excited about reading comprehension and analyzing as they were today! At the end of class we listened to the song again. I asked the girls if the song seemed different to them the second time they listened to it, now that they looked at the lyrics and talked about it, and all the girls agreed that the song seemed much more serious to them.

Predicting the future with modal auxiliary verbs!

Today, in Form 2 West, students spent the class predicting each other's futures! After learning about nine different modal auxiliary verbs (can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, would, will) and what each is used for, it was time for students to apply what they learned. First, I had students create a few sentences of advise. Using the modal auxiliary verb should, I had students pretend to give their best friends some important advice. Students then shared their sentences with each other. There was lots of great advice, but I didn't hear anyone say, "You should study hard in Form 2 grammar!" It must be because they all are already doing that!

After some time giving advice, I let students create their own classroom rules! They had some pretty interesting rules. For example, the teacher must remember to never give homework, you must enter the class hoping on one foot, and you must give your desk mate a candy bar each Wednesday. Imagine how silly class would be if students made the rules!


After a few minutes of sharing their classroom rules, I walked students through the steps on how to make fortune tellers. We folded the paper oragami style and students had to use the modal auxialiary verbs will, might, and may in order to write different predictions. For example, you will become rich and famous. When a student had their fortune read, they had to identify the modal auxiliary verb.

Concentrating on folding the paper...

Students holding up their completed fortune tellers.

A Little Grim...

Today was all about Venn-diagrams and the Grim Reaper! To my shock and surprise, students in both my Form 3 and Form 4 classes had never heard of or seen Venn-diagrams before. The idea to do a lesson on comparing and contrasting came to me after I noticed that students struggled on their midterm with the questions that asked them to compare and contrast. Many students had difficulty organizing their thoughts or answering both parts of the question. So the purpose of today's lesson was to show students a simple way to compare two things. I presented students with the challenge to compare and contrast Appointment In Baghdad by Edith Wharton with the poem, Incident In a Rose Garden by Donald Justice. 

Comparing and contrasting is often difficult because that is such a broad question, so I asked students to focus on what they knew. As we read, I asked my students to pay attention and find similarities and differences between the two readings based on the story elements we had learned about in a previous class (the characters, the setting, the conflict, and the resolution). 

I read the first story Appointment In Baghdad aloud. This is a short story about a sultan and his young assistant. One day the young assistant entered the Sultan's palace "out of breath and wild with excitement" and he asked the Sultan if he could borrow one of his best race horses. The Sultan asked the assistant why, and he replied, "'Because just now, as i was walking in the palace garden, I saw Death standing there. And when Death saw me, he raised his arms in a frightening motion. Oh, it was horrible! I must escape at once!'" The Sultan gives the assistant his best horse and the young man rides to Baghdad, then the Sultan confronts Death in the palace garden and he asks him why he frightened his young friend. Death answers the Sultan, telling him that he did not mean to frighten the young man. "'You see, I raised my arms only in surprise. I was astonished to see him here in your garden, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Baghdad.'"

The next story that we read was a poem Incident In a Rose Garden. This poem has three speakers, the gardener, the master, and Death. I had three students read the three parts of dialogue. Students discovered that this poem is about a gardener who sees Death in the rose garden. Frightened, the gardener tells the master that he is quitting because he saw Death standing there with a scythe. He tells the Master, "'I think he would have spoken, / Seeing his mouth stood open.'" When the master confronted Death to ask why he scared the gardener, Death answered him "As for your gardener, / I did not threaten him. / Old men mistake my gestures. /I only meant to ask him / To show me to his master. / I take it you are he?'"

Form 4 boys reading Incident In a Rose Garden aloud to the class.

Form 3 boys reading the parts of the gardener, the master, and Death aloud.

After reading and discussing both stories, I asked students to compare the story elements in each to find similarities. Students came up to the board to fill in the Venn-diagram.

After discussing similarities, we looked at the differences in each story as students filled in the appropriate parts of the Venn-diagram.

Finally, we were finished comparing and contrasting these stories!

Form 3 boys Venn-diagram completed!

Form 4 boys completed Venn-diagram!

I feel the need to justify to students every time I don't use the textbook to do a lesson. Students were thankful today because they got to read about the Grim Reaper instead of a short story about beauty contests!

"The Tell-Tale Art" of Reading Comprehension!

Students have been working hard in English as they have been applying a variety of reading comprehension strategies to the texts that they have been reading. Today, I introduced the students to Edgar Allan Poe. I selected Poe to not only challenge students with their reading comprehension, but to also capture their interests. I am bored with the selections of reading that their English textbooks offer, I cannot even imagine how students are feeling at this point. So today student's explored Poe's short story, The Tell-Tale Heart.

Before getting down to the reading, I had students do a short literacy activity called story impressions. I selected key vocabulary terms from the story and placed the terms on the board in the order that they appeared throughout the story. I read the terms aloud to the class and explained any words that they did not understand like startled, cautiously, and planks.

The list of vocabulary...

Next, students wrote a short prediction about what they thought the story was going to be about after I described the type of stories that Poe typically writes. After a few students shared their predictions with the class, I read the story, The Tell-Tale Heart aloud to the class stopping occasionally to check for understanding by asking students to answer questions or to summarize. I asked students to pay attention to the way that the vocabulary terms on the board appeared in context.

Lorynna sharing her prediction with the class. 

Lucy reading her story impression/prediction aloud.

Reading The Tell-Tale Heart aloud.

One of my students felt the need to point out that I make funny faces 

when I read aloud! Thanks.

After reading, we discussed if the narrator provided evidence in defense of him being mad or did his evidence make him seem mad. For homework, I asked students to write how their story predictions were the same and different from the actual story. I explained to students that thinking about the reading and comparing and contrasting similarities and differences was one way to understand what they comprehended from the story. Overall, students seemed quite captivated by the writing of Poe. After class, three students chased me down just to ask if they could borrow the book that contained the collections of Poe's work. I was happy to lend it to them! This is the type of excitement over reading that I wanted to see!

My Form 2 girls are such a fun group of students! 

They are always so excited to try anything new!

Making Connections: getting close to books!

Today’s class was all about making connections to the books we read. We looked at the three types of connections we can make between books: text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world. We discussed that text-to-self connections include any material that triggers a memory or connection to our personal lives, while a text-to-text connection is when any material reminds us of another book, poem, play, journal, article, newspaper, or any other reading material, and finally a text-to-world connection is when a book we are reading reminds us of an event going on in the world, or a connection to a movie or play or song. We talked about using these three types of connections to better understand and remember what it is we are reading. If we are thinking about how the material we are reading relates to us and our world it can help us make the reading more meaningful and sometimes more interesting.

Three types of connections to reading include text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world.

After discussing the three types of connections, I wanted students to practice making various connections to different types of reading materials. I brought in a variety of materials that I read short excerpts from. I first began with easy books and progressed to harder materials.

We started with a picture story book and ended up at Shakespear!

I wanted students to write what type of connection they had to each excerpt that I read aloud and I wanted them to write about what specifically from the text triggered this connection.  To begin, I modeled what I wanted students to do. I first read a short excerpt from the children’s book Wild Child by Lynn Plourde. The excerpt focused on pumpkins in the fall. I then wrote on the board how this excerpt reminded me of Halloween.

 

Modeling how I wanted students to show their connections.

Students then went to work making their own connections….

Even though students are working hard, they are still having fun!

My students are so sick and tired of hearing this phrase but I love it!

I love to tell my students that to better comprehend what they are reading they need to do more than just read, they need to think about what it is they are reading! And making connections is just one way to help them better understand!

Who knew that auxiliary verbs could be so much fun???

After being told to stick to the textbook and to have the students in Form 2 complete the exercises after the lesson on auxiliary verbs, I was frustrated that I wasn’t allowed to explore the topic of auxiliary verbs in my own way. Why should it matter the means or the way that I go about teaching as long as in the end students understand what auxiliary verbs are? I was worried that I would lose the student’s interest and attention (especially Form 2 West, a group of active boys who learn best when they are doing hands on activities) halfway through this lesson. Imagine spending eighty minutes taking notes on identifying primary auxiliary verbs that are used to form the perfect or the progressive aspect. Then, imagine reading through endless example sentences and underlining or filling in the correct tense of the auxiliary verb. I bet you are bored just reading those few sentences.

As a teacher, I understand that not every lesson can be fun and exciting, and sometimes it is absolutely appropriate to take notes and lecture, however, my style of teaching doesn’t allow me to have my students copy endless notes from their textbook without finding someway to liven up a lesson. I believe that if students are exploring new concepts in a fun and exciting way, preferably hands on, they will better understand and remember those concepts. However, I also understand the need to respect the school, its curriculum texts, and the culture, especially since they have so graciously welcomed me in and allowed me to volunteer teach at Mema. The only solution to this dilemma was a compromise.

So today Form 2 boys took notes on auxiliary verbs. They learned that the term auxiliary verb is a fancy-smancy term that is short for helping verb. Students learned that the purpose of the auxiliary verb is to help the main verb in order to give a specific meaning to a sentence. They learned that primary auxiliaries are used: with main verbs to express tense (tense auxiliaries); to show agreement between subject and verbs (singular vs. plural auxiliaries); to form questions (the auxiliary verb goes before the subject); and used in the perfective and progressive aspect (present tense auxiliaries are progressive while past tense auxiliaries are perfect).

After all that intense note-taking and explaining what all that meant. It was time to do some book exercises. Before class, I wrote down all of the sentences from the exercises in the book on sticky notes. I put the sticky notes on the board. Knowing how silly and active the Form 2 boys can get, I introduced to them the game of charades. I had them form groups and each group had to come up to the board, select a sticky note and act out the sentence on it. After the class guessed what was being acted, the group read the sentence to the class and wrote it on the board. As a class we underlined the auxiliary verb in the sentence, changed the auxiliary verb to the correct tense, or filled in the missing auxiliary verb. Students had a blast! We were able to get all the bookwork and exercises from the book done, but we were also able to do it in an exciting and hands on way.

A group selecting a sentence to act out. 

Each sticky note has a sentence from their textbook.

This group acted out the sentence: 

Kindly do the work for me.

Can you name the auxiliary verb?

This group is acting out the sentence: 

The story about the monkeys wearing make-up was a hoax.

If you think regular charades is hard, try acting out a silly sentence like this!

Presenting Form 2 West...they are quite the group of actors.

What’s in a story?

Students spent the day reading children’s books! In order to help with reading comprehension, the students learned about story elements. Nearly every single story contains the same elements and if students are able to recognize and identify the basic story elements then they will be able to better summarize what the story is about.  What better text to illustrate this concept than children’s books. After creating my lesson plans, I frantically searched the bookshelves at the home in hopes of finding a few decent storybooks, since its not like I can go to the local library to find any. The collection of storybooks that I found were very eclectic, but the students ended up loving them. Our list of story books included: The Gruffalo’s Child by Julia Donaldson, I Met a Dinosaur by Jan Wahl, Matthew’s Dream by Leo Lionni, The Pokey Little Puppy by Janette Sebring, and Wild Child by Lynn Plourde.

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Such a fun collection of storybooks.

We began class by identifying the parts of a story starting with the tile, the characters, the setting, the conflict, and then the resolution. We discussed how the characters, the setting, the conflict, and the resolution combine to make up the plot of the story. After discussing story elements, I introduced the story, The Gruffalo’s Child to the class. The responsibility of the class as I read was to identify the elements of the story. After I finished reading, the students filled in our story elements chart. Based on the chart, students summarized the story.

This was our class story elements chart for The Gruffalo's Child.

As an elementary teacher, I believe that students are never too old to be read to!

 The class really enjoyed being read The Gruffalo's Child aloud!

Now it was time for the class to practice. Students broke up into four groups. Each group circled up and chose a reader who read the story aloud.

This group of senior boys read aloud The Pokey Little Puppy!

Look how intense this group of boys are as they read I Met a Dinosaur! 

All the groups were so focused!

Then, as a group, students filled out the story elements of their book and each group shared it with the rest of the class. For homework, students got the opportunity to create their own stories!

Chris sharing his groups story elements and summary!

Of course there is homework...