Authentically Engaging Students in 1st 5 Days

By Kim Miklusak

In AP Language we decided to do an assignment right off the bat that would not only help us get to know our students and what is important to them, but also help them dive right in to rhetoric and authentic writing.  This year students will be participating in the NY Times Student Editorial Writing Contest.  For this project, students will write an editorial on a topic of their choosing, 450 words, with at least 2 pieces of research.

We reviewed the assignment with students, they read the NYT winners from last year, and compiled a list of skills they noticed made the editorials successful.  We then brainstormed topics we were interested in with the people at our table.  To start narrowing down our topic, we got students up on their feet, doing a "speed dating" activity that I have seen our foreign language teachers do, specifically Linda Ashida.

One side of the room talked about the topic they were interested in; the other side of the room asked questions to help narrow their focus and ultimately reach a call to action.  After every 30 seconds, students would switch and continue to speak about their topic.  They ended the activity by returning to their seats and debriefing with their table.

From their students wrote their first draft of their editorial.  Over the next few days they shared with their peers, receiving preliminary feedback on audience and purpose.  This week students will revise their appeal to strengthen their appeal to ethos, next week pathos, the final week logos--ultimately they will write one final draft in which they find the appropriate balance for their specific call to action.  Our goal is for students to write several drafts over the coming months, incorporating what they are learning in AP Lang, but also using what they are leaning from the writing process and applying it to their classroom reading and writing as well.

Please follow us at the hashtag #1YrInEng to see how we are doing!

Positivity on Twitter

By Mark Heintz

As part of the new year, I made a resolution to share my classroom on Twitter this year. I feel one of the roles of a teacher is to communicate with the community that they serve. Over the past two weeks, I have tried to tweet at least once every day about the nature of the lesson or progress towards a goal.

The first positive result of my efforts to tweet has been connecting with other teachers and getting new ideas.  A few weeks ago, our school Periscoped a few classrooms to share a live feed of daily classroom learning.  You can read about that here.   I received some feedback on the lesson and changed my plan the next day to incorporate their ideas about including argument towers to improve student writing.  I thanked them for the suggestion on Twitter. It was great to get new ideas and share the results!

Another positive result has been feedback from parents and guardians. I have a few parents/guardians who actively follow me on Twitter and one tweeted at me:

It was a positive affirmation of my efforts to share what was happening in the classroom.

Finally, the first few days of the new year, the pictures in my tweets largely came from my first period class. A student in my second hour said I was unfairly biased towards my first period. He was right, so I now engage with all of my classes throughout the day. The students are interested in what I share and how I share it. They are turning into historians!

It has been a great start, and I can't wait to see future outcomes!

Writing for an Authentic Audience (without the internet)

By Kim Miklusak

This week my English 100 students are working on argumentative paragraphs.  They read and annotated an article on Colin Kaepernick from Kelly Gallagher's Article of the Week site, and then they wrote a summary of the article to demonstrate comprehension.

Another teacher on our team, Emily M., pulled a handful of statements from the article to debate.  On a giant sticky note I wrote out four of them and separated the paper into "Agree/Disagree/Qualify."

The statements read:
1.  Not standing for the anthem is disrespectful to our troops.
2.  We should be always be able to protest against our government in peaceful ways.
3.  A celebrity should always be a good role model.
4.  People should stand up for what they believe in no matter if it goes against what others say.

At each table students used small sticky notes to brain storm as many pieces of evidence or arguments as they could for all of the sticky notes.  They walked around the room and stuck them to the paper.  They then walked around to look at all of the responses.  This produced, as you can imagine, some excellent discussions.  Students discussed modern and historical angles, brought in outside information, challenged each other, and so on--all respectfully.

The next step was for students to choose which topic and which stance they wanted to argue.  They used our dry erase tables to brain storm and then to anonymously hand write their paragraph.  The next day I hung the paragraphs up around the room.  Each group had a feedback chart using the elements of a good argumentative paragraph that we had discussed.  My 5th period evaluated my 7th period's paragraphs and awarded up to three points to the best response.  Then my 7th period did the same for 5th.  The last step will be to review the feedback given by the other class and revise.  This is all the final step before students start writing their own argumentative paragraphs on a new topic next week.







Not only did the competitive nature of this assignment have students up, walking around, and engaged, but knowing that their peers would be reviewing it--even anonymously--was enough motivate more of them to do their best!   It was a great experience that I look forward to doing more as the year goes on!