5.1. Determining the Central Idea by Constructing a Who+What+Why Sentence RL2./RI2.

This week we're going to continue with our work in summarizing readings, but now, instead of a paragraph, we're going to try and boil everything down to a single sentence. That single sentence, called the central idea, is often called the main idea. However, I find this confusing, since in our classroom we have already defined "main idea" as the one idea stated, explained, and proven in a logical paragraph. I used to call the central idea "the main idea of the whole thing," but that seemed kind of silly and long. So, central idea, which for us means "one sentence that expresses the single idea that a writer is trying to communicate to the reader." In an essay, we call it the thesis, which, of course, you know from last week's prewriting practices. However, central idea is one sentence that we will use for short stories, newspaper articles, nonfiction narratives, and essays.

How do you write one of these?

I'm glad you asked. You need to be able to decide whether something is a story or an informational reading. Then, you use the Who+What+Why formula to write a sentence.

Central Idea of a Story = Main Character + Conflict/Climax + Theme
Central Idea of a Informational Reading = Topic + What Happened + Why a Smart Person Would Care

Of course, the mastery list for this week (below) spells it out in much more careful detail.

4.5. "He Who Fails to Plan Is Planning to Fail" - Winston Churchhill W1./W.4

Last week, we stated that we were ready to start writing an essay when we knew what the thesis was, so this week, we're practicing that skill by writing a bunch of theses (that's the plural of thesis, not thesises, which is tough to say). So, here's a collection of seventeen writing prompt, for which you have to develop seventeen logical thesis. Remember to use last week's mastery list; it was meant for you to use, not just memorize and forget. There's a copy embedded in this blog, though, if you need a memory refresher - it will seal into your memory through practice.

4.3. "Cub Pilot on the Mississippi"

"A Cub Pilot on the Mississippi" by Mark Twain, from Life on the Mississippi

Question about Our Unit Theme:

Mark Twain always stated that he learned a great deal about life from his time spent on riverboats, and that that learning helped him as a writer.

• What do you think he learned as a result of his experience with the cruel captain that helped him write?
• Do you think that he could have learned this lesson in a more formal way, e.g. through reading or school?

4.4. Planning a Logical Argument Essay W1./W4.

We're learning how to plan a logical argument this week/month/year, and it is one of my very favorite things to teach, since it's really important and also can be really interesting, because it asks that you fight about it. I made a video that demonstrates step-by-step one of these prompts, in case anybody needs help.




Here's the document itself, if you just want to see the finished product as a reference for your work.

3.3. Applying the Five Fingers. RL2.

We're practicing our story analysis by practicing it as much as we can.  Tonight, I want the class to read a third story by Walter Dean Myers, "The Treasure of Lemon Brown," and complete a Five Finger summary for it.

Remember:

• Choose the main character - one main character. This focuses your summary on what is essential and makes your work far easier.
• Think carefully about what the problem with the character is, especially the internal aspect of the problem (meaning, what two ideas/values/desires are fighting inside the main character's head). The external aspect of the problem (the part of the problem that involves other people) often shifts, but the internal one rarely does. If you get the internal problem right, your job is easy.
• Remember to reflect and try to find a universal theme that emerges from the character's resolving of their internal problem.

An example:

     In the Pixar film Cars, Lightning McQueen is an arrogant, talented, friendless Nascar-style race car who desires victory in the Piston Cup and the individual rewards that come with it. He ties during the final race of the season with two other cars, and so must win a tiebreaker race. However, on his way to the tiebreaker, he becomes separated from his escort and accidentally causes a great deal of damage to the main street in a little town called Radiator Springs. He is sentenced to repair the damage done to the road, and, after first trying to talk, cheat, and race his way out of the sentence, does so. While he does, he meets and bonds with the town's residents, finding true friendship with several. When he finally gets to the tiebreaker race, his friends follow to support him, enabling him to win. However, he realizes, as he is on the cusp of winning, that the individual glory means less to him that his support of other people, and gives up the championship to help another racer finish his last race, showing to himself and the viewer that individual success is empty unless one has people to share it with, and caring for these important people is the measure of true success.

Note:

• Kids will think that Lightning McQueen's problem in Cars is that he's stuck in Radiator Springs, or that he hasn't won the race. They're kind of right, but if you miss the internal aspect, that McQueen is looking for meaning in the wrong place, the story is just a "bunch of stuff that happened."
• The summary does not mention any other character specifically. I could have mentioned others - Mater, Sally, Doc Hudson, Strip Weathers, and Chick Hicks all place important plot roles, but notice how all of those characters are in the story to show McQueen and the viewer ways of thinking about life.  The first four understand the value of people and community, and Chick does not.
• The theme at the end is one that every person in the world must make a decision on. As you go through your life, you will have to decide how much you are going to value individual success (money, career, sports) and how much you are going to value relationships (family, friends, your community). You cannot escape thinking about this. This is why a cartoon about a NASCAR with headlights for eyeballs can possibly be one of the most important things for you to understand, ever. I know that's kind of crazy, but it's true.

3.2. Five Fingers Demonstration RL2.

Here's a video to help you if your stuck with the Five Fingers - I wanted to show you how I go through it, and how you have to revise things and correct yourself while your reading. With some of our skills (RAFT and Prewriting, for example), if you do it right, you can be really confident of yourself, but reading doesn't work like that. It's important to know that it's a process of coming up with theories and either confirming them, adjusting them, or replacing them.

3.1. "Stolen Day," Five Fingers RL2.

Last week we learned how to analyze and summarize nonfiction readings - things like newspaper articles, essays, textbook chapters. However, using the Chain of Main Ideas technique is only really useful with these kinds of readings. It won't work for stories. Therefore, we need a separate tool to analyze and summarize stories. So, this week's procedure focuses on locating and understanding the essential parts of all stories.

Why should I learn this?

Good question. I think, for most people, learning to summarize nonfiction text is more important - for high school subjects, college, and jobs - than summarizing stories. However, between right now (the beginning of eighth grade) and your freshman year of college, you'll probably be expected to understand about a hundred stories between now and then.  Plus, most people LOVE stories - reading novels, watching movies and fiction television shows - and learning how to understand how stories work makes stories more fun, just like practicing a sport should, in the end, make it more fun to play. The picture for this theme is of O. Henry - a master of the classic short story, which is a well-made machine to deliver smart fun.

1.2. Analyzing a Writing Prompt Using RAFT W4.

1.1. "Charles" and Citing Evidence as Proof RL1./RI1.

Sorry for the awkward title, if you can think of a catchier way to say that, I am all ears*.

The Lesson: Here's the mastery list, meaning the list of information that you need to do one of the jobs that we're supposed to master together.




The Text: "Charles" by Shirley Jackson (Note: This copy was sent to my email by the Library of America's killer "Story of the Week" email. I highly recommend both subscribing to the lists and buying some of the beautiful books that they put out, or at least asking that your library buy them.)

Independent Practice: Given seven sentences that posit ideas about the story, write a text citation sentence.

Assessment: I will spot assess this and label your work emerging, proficient, or expert.

* Note on Compositional Method: That expression, where you take a part, "ears" and have it stand in for the whole "me, listening" is called metonymy, like saying "We cold use another bat on the bench" to mean "We should get another baseball player for our team that is good at hitting." Look, I'm off topic already. Also, you should know that things in parentheses are, by definition, not that important. You use parentheses to say, "Here's something I think interesting, but it's not part of my main idea." So, in the future, you can skip this stuff if you want.

HOCW: Back to School Night

First, please let me know some information.
Dear everybody who's interested,

If you are reading this in my classroom, thanks so much for coming out to meet us all, I know how hard it is to organize and make time to attend this kind of thing. I appreciate it. If you're viewing this at home, I am sorry to have missed an opportunity to meet you, but appreciate you taking the time to read this.

What I need to tell you about our class -

I honestly believe that this class can be really important to your student's future, no matter what field or career they choose. Literacy skills are the most important academic skills that a person can learn for nearly any field of work, and benefit people enormously. So I take our class very seriously.

When I think about doing anything is our class, I ask these questions:

1. It is difficult enough to grow students, but not so difficult that students cannot succeed?
2. Does learning this (in this way) benefit the student in high school/college/career/life?
3. Is the way that I have designed the lesson let the student practice a lot and minimize the time I spend lecturing or explaining?
4. Is the lesson or reading I am considering something that is connected to the real world? Is it current?
5. How can I teach or explain this or design this lesson so the skill can be used outside my classroom?
6. Will this interest my students who are giving it their best effort?

These questions help me decide everything I do. I have a longer, more detailed explanation of how I make classroom decisions about everything if you click here, but I also just think that it's important to tell people how you make decisions, because if they share your values, they can simply trust you to do your best. Please read the document attached to the link if you want to learn more about the philosophy behind my actions.

This year we will explore six big topics in our six six-week units (get that?). They are -
1. Learning and School;
2. Values, Rules, and Crime;
3. Groups, Technology, and Power;
4. Past, Present, and Future;
5. Beauty, Art, and Artists; and
6. Mother(land), Father(land), Home(land).


Readings have been selected from many different sources, but include the novels The Giver, Tuck Everlasting, The Wave, My Brother Sam Is Dead, and The Outsiders. Our short story selection proudly features stories by many different authors, including Langston Hughes, Walter Dean Myers, William Carlos Williams, Maya Angelou, Kate Chopin, Saki, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, Mark Twain, Laurence Yep, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ray Bradbury. While I do not expect everyone to like everything, I have not had a student yet that didn't find something that they really enjoyed in our class. In addition, I have drawn dozens of readings from magazines, newspapers, and nonfiction books to help students learn the special structure and vocabulary of nonfiction text.

Grading - We will issue four grades a week - a knowledge, comprehension, application, and effort grade. These will be weighted to match the departments grading policy. Each week, we will gather together the work and see if a student has mastered the skill that is the focus for that week - if they have shown that they know it, understand it, and can apply it. Since we try to expose students to so many readings each week that are of different levels of complexity, we understand that every student might not understand everything, and so we award the effort grade to students who have clearly expended enough effort to either master the skill or to show that they have tried to.

Each check is pass/fail - there are no partial credits - a student either knows it well enough or does not. To meet this high standard for achievement, though, we are willing to grade anything at any time, which means that there are no penalties for late work, a student may retake any assessment as many times as he or she needs to, and that any missing check may be made up at any time. We really want your student to focus on learning these important skills, and so we don't think it's a good idea to give up if it takes a little longer.

Class Rules

1. Everybody who is a member of our class is expected to take their Language Arts education seriously. Everybody in our class is an intelligent, capable student, and is expected to act like it.
2. Everybody who is a member of our class will treat everybody else with the respect that they should - we are all fellow serious students.
3. There are many objects in our room - the school's, mine, other students'. Any object in our room may be used by anyone to complete work. If you need something to do your assignment, you may look through my desk. If you want to borrow a book, let me know and borrow it. In return, you agree to be respectful of all the objects in the room. They are shared amongst us.
4. As a member of our class, I will follow all the rules that I make. If I need you all to be silent, that means that I cannot talk, either. However, as a member of our group that takes our mission very seriously, I am uncompromisingly honest when a student is hurting our classroom's success. Please understand that and try your best. You are welcome to criticize or question me at any time as well.

0.1 Introduction: What We're Supposed to Learn

Have you ever wondered how teachers and schools decide what kids are supposed to learn? Probably not, I bet (I never wondered as a kid). However, I still think, now that I brought it up, it's kind of an interesting question. Kids don't wonder how a school or teacher decides what to teach, but they do constantly wonder why they have to learn certain things.

The answer is often because the school has a legal obligation to teach certain skills in different subject areas. New Jersey, for Mathematics and Language Arts, uses something called the Common Core State Standards, which is a national project to establish shared standards. Here's a link to everything that you are supposed to learn in Language Arts.

I really like these standards; I think that they're much better than the one that they replaced. They're hard to understand, I admit, if you aren't a teacher or a principal, but feel free to ask me what standard applies to anything that I ask you to do, since it was my job to learn them and teach them to you.

HOCW How Our Class Works: Those Weird Codes

Hi, I've been messing with the titles of these blog postings all the time, but I think I finally settled on a system. I feel that this system helps students, parents, other teachers, and administrators in our school understand more specifically (if they are interested) in what we're doing.  However, the code can be a little confusing, so here's help.

The first code refer to our School's Unit Plans.

The number in front, like 4.1. is just the week number in the school year and the day number in the week.

The codes after the title refer to Common Core Standards for Language Arts.

This is a big list of things that English teachers are supposed to teach. It's really interesting to me, here's a link if you want to learn more about it. But, I am supposed to teach Reading Literature (RL), Reading Information Text (RI), Writing (W), Speaking and Listening (SL), and Language (L). Inside or these categories is a numbered list of skills that I am supposed to be trying to teach every student. So, a number like RI2. in this blog means that I am trying to teach students to summarize effectively and determine the central idea of an informational text. Again, you don't need to know this if you trust me, but I believe pretty strongly that everyone should be allowed enough information to understand why I do everything; to me, that's part of being a good public servant.

Some codes refer to other helpful information that helps our class run.

Our classroom policies, procedures, and rules, or technology helps, or this post are important, but not part of my curriculum, so there are no convenient codes for this kind of information. I invented the dorky HOCW code for "How Our Class Works" to explain things that don't fit into any other category, and I will be coding things about using the technology that helps our class run smoothly (at this point) with the standard TECH. There actually are standards for using technology that New Jersey schools are supposed to teach, so I can generally find a standard to fit any technology trick I am looking to impart.

HOCW. Criterion Essay Portal

Our school just gained access to a new site on the internet that provides instant feedback to students on essays. I am looking forward to trying it out -- young people don't get enough opportunities to get their writing assessed. While this program obviously can't directly grade ideas, the company that makes it (ETS, the same company that designs a great many standardized tests) has come up with some clever indirect ways to score the essays. We are going to try an essay today in order to see how the program works.

Group Daily: The average of all of the essay scores will constitute your group score. The highest group score wins.

Directions:
1. Google Search criterion ets login.
2. Click on the top link.
3. Click "Log In."
4. Type in your username - firstname.lastname and school password.
5. Follow the directions listed.

HOCW: Back to School Night Follow-Up How to Find a Teacher's eChalk Website

Here's the information from back to school night on how to locate teacher websites and homework assignments.