Being an English-Language Arts teacher isn't just about teaching your students how to diagram a sentence or crucial capitalization rules. Through reading, students can be exposed to new ideas, cultures, and ways of thinking. In discussions and writing, students learn to communicate in a variety of contexts. Reading and writing are considered important basic skills for a reason. They are applicable across math, social studies, and science (speaking as someone who had to write numerous chemistry and physics lab reports) even though that may not be immediately apparent to my students. English skills are vital throughout one's life, all student arguments aside.
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Pedagogy
There is no rule in the ELA classroom that you must read only fiction written by long-dead authors. Students care about what's going on in their community and the country and the world. Current events articles were a great way to read nonfiction and encourage discussion in the classroom.
I used Newsela to select current events articles because I could adjust Lexile level. If students were reading independently, I would give them a version of the article that best matched their current reading level. This of course took more time to print and organize, but more students were confident when discussing the article later. I tried to pick articles that related to my students interests, such as the Black Lives Matter movement or the upcoming presidential election. I also paired a video with the lesson to engage students at the beginning of the period and to incorporate different types of news media. My students enjoyed having a chance to discuss the article and share their opinions on what was happening in the world outside my classroom. I had no problems with disrespectful/inappropriate language or behavior, even when we discussed complicated matters like Syrian refugees or civil rights issues. Students were genuinely invested in the conversation.
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The Current Events Connection - ci, cii, ciii
Black Lives Matter - ci, cii, ciii, civ
Over my second summer, I developed a learning plan for Dr. Rutherford's literacy course around the Black Lives Matter movement. My high schoolers had been interested in disccusing these issues and I thought my future eighth graders would too. For this learning plan, we read a Newsela article about a town's attempt to prevent the occurrence of police brutality by having citizens and officers meet to discuss these issues (to put it simply). As part of an extension activity, students were tasked with researching ways police and citizens working together could reduce instances of police brutality, create a poster, and present their findings to the class. Click on the picture to read the original article.
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Writing to Communicate - cv
For my second year of teaching I was responsible for teaching a compensatory writing course to my eight -graders. The first semester I taught the course, I relied on solely myself to teach students the purposes of writing, the writing process, and outlining. The curriculum was unorganized and writing skills difficult to teach since some were taught out of order.
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For the second semester, I started using a classroom textbook as a guide. It was set up to teach descriptive, then narrative (which I skipped for time constraints), then informational, and persuasive writing. For each writing task, students were walked through pre-writing, writing, revising, editing, and publishing steps. It also eased students into writing full essays by starting with a single paragraph first. With the support of this textbook, the writing process has been more organized and structured this semester. I feel students are getting the necessary practice in planning and editing their writing that my other students missed out on the previous semester.
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Novel Studies - ci, cvi, cvii
I read three novels with my students my second year compared to the one extended text I read with each of my
English III and English IV classes the previous year. I used similar methods in teaching The Outsiders, Monster, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas; however, I think I produced the best materials and most cohesive system with the last novel, so that will be the one I focus on the most.
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In my first year of teaching, I selected the articles and developed the discussion questions. This year though, I let my students vote on the general article topic (Sports, Arts, Business, etc.) and tasked them with creating questions for their classmates to answer. To prevent a repetition of general topics, I would eliminate each category used from the next week's selection process. I required that they had to go through each category once before the options reset so that they were discussing a wider variety of topics. I would have students independently reciprocal read the article for homework and we would discuss it later in the week.
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I think my students latch onto current events day because it feels more relevant to their everyday lives. They aren’t interested in grammar lessons, literary analyses, or preparing for standardized tests. Schoolwork is schoolwork and sometimes, the students connect with the material and sometimes, they don’t. But when you give them an opportunity to discuss new inventions, cultural developments, and issues in the country and abroad, suddenly reading nonfiction articles doesn't seem so bad.
Read the original blog: The Current Events Connection
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Also, I started having my eighth-grade students write daily journals the second semester. I did this for three reasons:
1) I needed a way to kill some extra time in my block class, 2) students needed practice writing about a variety of topics for the state test, and 3) I wanted students to see they could use writing as a way to express themselves.
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Descriptive Writing
Informational Writing
Persuasive Writing
I taught The Boy in the Striped Pajamas right before state testing so students wouldn't get burned out on test preparation. The project began with students researching the Holocaust on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website as many students were not familiar with this time in history. I incorporated thematically relevant prompts into their daily journals that they completed at the beginning of class everyday.
We had to read the book in class because I didn't have enough copies to send home with students. To keep a consistent pace, to save my voice, and to hopefully keep my students interested longer, I used an audiobook and had my students follow along in their own copy. We would read a few pages, then stop and respond to a question, make a prediction, or a summarize a chapter (steps my students were familiar with due to reciprocal reading). These Stop & Writes allowed me to make sure students understood what was happening in the text, discuss significant scenes in the story, and point out developing themes. Stop & Writes were predetermined and completed on a worksheet (meaning students could be assigned to read in groups, pairs, or independently). Students were expected to write their responses first, effectively reviewing and collecting their thoughts, before sharing as a class.
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For The Outsiders, I did a majority of reading with snap reading. I did occasionally ask student volunteers to read a paragraph aloud. My students did more independent reading and group reading for Monster. They preferred the days I separated them into groups and had them assign roles for the characters. No matter the reading method, my students always completed Read Along sheets that designated when they should complete a Stop & Write. Sometimes, it was more freeform: they summarized and created their own questions to ask about the text. Other times, I provided more structure by designating when they should make a prediction, summarize a section, or asked them a question of my own. Even independent reading was structured this way. My Stop & Writes were based off of reciprocal reading methods I had learned the previous year and which you can read about in more detail under Best Practices.
