Video of Final CURR 530 Presentation

In addition to the components on the previous blog (scroll down to view), I put together a mashup video of my presentation. Please note, if some of the pages from the unit redesign are difficult to read, see full UbD unit in previous blog below.

Soundtrack is "Sounds of Summer Running" by Mark Johnson

*As stated in previous blog, this was a presentation for CURR 530 final at Montclair State University. I am not affiliated with the Benards Township school in any way and have no real intentions of proposing a redesign to the curriculum referenced (from: www.bernardsboe.com)

Final CURR 530 Project

Components to my final project are posted to this blog... enjoy!
1. handout
2. memo
3. Link to original curriculum referenced from http://www.bernardsboe.com/
4. UbD redesigned unit
5. Links to "yawp" video and Watcher at the Gate referenced in unit
6. Works Cited

NOTE: click on the documents to enlarge and read

Handout:


MEMO:


Click here for Original Grade 8 Advanced Writing Curriculum Referenced from: Bernards Township Public School - William Annin Middle School

UbD Unit Plan
Page 1:



Page 2:


Page 3:

Links to activities referenced in the "hook" portion of unit:

"Yawp" video from Dead Poet's Society

Gail Godwin's Watcher at the Gate piece on writer's block

Works Cited Page:

*pls note: this is for a final project of a CURR class at Montclair State University. I am not affiliated with this school in any way, and do not have real intentions of revising the curriculum referenced in the memo shown above.*

Results Now

As your High School English Department Supervisor, I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss some issues I've observed within several of our classrooms. Issues mind you, that we can all discuss when we're together again but for now, please take a moment to read on and start thinking...

As English teachers we all teach reading and writing to our students, but how many of us really understand the importance of what's at stake here? In his well-renowned book, Results Now, Mike Schmoker dedicates three chapters to the importance of literacy.

"It is through reading, writing and talking that students most directly and effectively acquire a facility with what Lisa Delpit calls the "dominant discourse" (1995). It is the language of the educated... Literacy liberates" (56-57).

With this in mind, we English teachers need to be cognizant of the fact that the space our students are going to get the most exposure to reading and writing is within our classrooms. We therefore need to cut back on multiple choice quizzes and useless packets, and focus our lessons around reading more critical discussion, and writing... IN CLASS!

Yes, I said in class. We have too many students who don't read or write at home because they don't care to or are unfortunately unable to for various reasons. Schmoker quotes Richard Allington in his book as saying,

"... as early as 1st grade, the highest achieving classrooms spend as much as 70 percent of class time reading or responding to what they read. The benefits of time spent on purposeful reading and writing are so crucial that Allington recommends that we establish flexible standards: about 60 minutes per day of reading and 40 minutes per day of writing" (97).

Now many of you are thinking, I have a 40 minute period, that's impossible! No it isn't... not with my next idea that is of all of us working together!

Mike Schmoker raises key fact in his book that I believe we're all aware of but turn and look the other way because it's convenient and because it's what we know. He states,

"…isolation masks the starkly different results achieved by different teachers. Without any point of comparison, the isolated teacher never has to confront the fact that (1) the teacher next door is three times as effective as I am, or (2) much of my teaching is inferior (though parents and principals seem to like me as much as--or maybe more than- the teacher next door). "

Have any of you wondered how effective your teaching really is? Have you wondered just what he states, if the teacher next door is more effective? I know I have (I'll admit it) and believe we need to start team teaching and/or at least begin team planning to ensure we're creating lessons, units and curriculums that are equally effective, and allow us to incorporate this vital in-class reading and writing time.

I welcome your thoughts, concerns and responses and look forward to all of us collaborating together to ensure we don't fall into what Schmoker refers to as, "The Knowing-Doing Gap."

More on that next time...
Keriann

UbD Lesson & Reflection

Title of Lesson: The Art of Writing

Grade Level: High School –11/12 Elective Creative Writing Course

Curriculum Area: Language Arts

Time Frame: Five to six weeks

Developed By: Keriann Eklund

IDENTIFY DESIRED RESULTS (STAGE 1)

Content Standards
LA 3.1 Reading: A, D, G and H
LA 3.2 Writing: B, C and D
LA 3.5 Media Literacy: A, B and C

UNDERSTANDINGS
Overarching Understandings

• Students will understand that the process of creating art and writing poetry is affected by outside influences, and interwoven with the artist/poet’s inner conflicts to belong in the very “picture” or world he/she creates.


• Students will explore how artists and poets try to make “something new” that will last forever in the minds of his/her audience.


• Students will experience the artist’s struggle and delve into the ugliness yet justified darkness of that struggle.


• Students will uncover that everything in life is connected, in some way shape or form

Related Misconceptions

• Anyone can be an artist, just throw some paint on a canvas and call it ART!


• The end justifies the means.
  
• Artists and writers are hermits without friends.

Essential Question(s)

Overarching

• What is art? Poetry?
  
• What’s the point of art? Do we need it?


• Who decides what makes art, art? A poem, a poem?


• What is the role of an artist/poet in society?


• What does the creative process look like? Feel like?

Topical

• Is creating art and writing poetry easy?
  
• Do artists/poets create art/poetry for themselves? For the public? Why?


• Do artists have to conform to conventions to make a living?


• Why wasn’t George in his final painting?


• Why is Dot the central focus in the final painting?
  

Knowledge
Students will know…

• The plot and characters of Sunday in the Park with George.
  
• The background of Georges Seurat and his painting, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte"


• The life and work of a chosen poet (self-selected by students).
  
• The stages of the creative writing process


• What a writer’s “watcher” is and how to get around their own

Skills
Students will be able to…

• Define art and poetry.


• Identify and discuss major themes in the play that run parallel with their selected poet and/or the creative writing process.


• Connect their lives to their own writing.


• Contemplate why art is always shifting.


• Analyze social criticism in art and poetry.


• Write original poetry.

ASSESSMENT EVIDENCE (STAGE 2)

Performance Task Description:

Goal
George utilized six key phrases during his creative process: order, design, composition, tension, balance and harmony. For your final task, you will create a “Portrait of Process Presentation” utilizing these ideas.

Role
In presenting your “Portrait”, you will take us on your individual journey of how you overcame your personal “watcher” to get to your final product. You will also have to convince your critics why the process you went through makes your “art” praiseworthy.

Audience
The entire class and teacher.

Situation
As an audience, you will act as critics and there will be a to-be-named “watcher” ready to fire questions at the performer in the audience as well. Decide whether the artist/writer has made something “new” worthy of the public.

Product/Performance
This presentation must contain: six final original poems as well as a representation of the process you went through with one of the poems, and two other forms of supportive art of your choosing (visual, photography, music or performance).

Standards
Same as above

Other Evidence

1. Drafts, drafts and more drafts of all written poems.

2. Short, in-class essays answering prompt questions related to the themes in the play.

3. Reflective blog – three short entries per week to your “watcher” on your writing process

4. Editor – in-class peer review of poems will involve each of you putting on an “editors” hat and essentially, editing and assisting your peers with the revision process.

5. Dialogue Expansion – write a 1-2 page dialogue between George from the first act and George from the second act. What would they say to each other? Why?

6. Group work on the analysis of one of the songs from the musical.

7. Research on a self-selected poet and his/her writing process and poetry.

LEARNING PLAN (STAGE 3)

Where are your students headed? Where have they been? How will you make sure the students know where they are going?
In-class dialoguing and discussion will play an integral role in this lesson. I will guide the students in exploring the writing process through George’s struggle. Their blog entries and drafts will show me that they are on track to meeting this lesson’s goal.

How will you hook students at the beginning of the unit?
I will read “The Watcher at the Gate” by Gail Godwin and have them freewrite about who they think their personal “watcher” is. Then, I will read the quote, “Anything you do, let it come from you, then it will be new.” I’ll put them in pairs and ask them to share their freewrites as well as how their personal “watcher” affects the “new” they create.

What events will help students experience and explore the big idea and questions in the unit? How will you equip them with needed skills and knowledge?
As the class reads and watches Sunday in the Park with George, I will guide them through the themes of the big ideas: what makes art art, the role of an artist in society, etc. and help them “connect the dots” to their writing process. We will also utilize select essays from Jane Hirshfield’s Nine Gates to assist through this writer’s process.

How will you cause students to reflect and rethink? How will you guide them in rehearsing, revising, and refining their work?
This lesson is all about revising and refining. Their blog entries will allow them to reflect and their required drafts will keep them thinking and rethinking.

How will you help students to exhibit and self-evaluate their growing skills, knowledge, and understanding throughout the unit?
I will be a facilitator throughout this lesson, never acting as a “watcher” to my students’ writings but always engaging them with an inner dialogue, and having them express that inner thought process through George and through their poetry.

How will you tailor and otherwise personalize the learning plan to optimize the engagement and effectiveness of ALL students, without compromising the goals of the unit?
This lesson incorporates a variety of assessments and ultimately isn’t about the final product but about the process so if students can exhibit participation and surrender in a sense to the process, they will meet the goal of this lesson without compromising anything.

How will you organize and sequence the learning activities to optimize the engagement and achievement of ALL students?
Starting with whole class learning, leading to group work, utilizing peer feedback and then ending with the final individual project will allow students to move from various learning styles. After the hook exercises, we will watch portions of the play (I don’t want the students to view it all at once) and much of their homework will be reading select essays from Nine Gates. One class period per week will be dedicated to a “writer’s workshop” for them to spend time writing their own poetry. A weekly schedule of activities will be set up and distributed every Monday to better prepare students and keep them on track.

REFLECTIONS

I am not teaching just yet so this is still one of my "firsts" in the few lesson plans I've created so... this wasn't so much "new" for me but just a new challenge all together. I struggled with this... a lot! I love the concept of developing overarching ideas and questions to guide our lessons and give them a true purpose, but it was HARD! I'll admit it!

I did challenge myself though, and pulled a non-traditional musical to utilize in conjunction with a creative writing lesson. I really wanted to use a piece like Sunday in the Park with George as a visual muse for writers struggling with the process but I'm not sure if I stretched the idea too much and if it would really work??

I think the other challenge with this design was that I kept wanting to re-design it and was never satisfied (and still am not) to the point where I almost abandoned it.

Lastly, I didn't really utilize the standards to help with the overarching concepts... I sort of, "fit" them in after I developed my overarching questions and assessment... is that ok?

What Can We Learn from Calvinball?

Shift Happens

My first reaction to the Fisch video, "Did you Know?" was one of bewilderment. I thought to myself,
"this is all about survival of the fittest, ya know?" (no pun intended there with the tag question). But, the scary part with this video is the "fittest" are not us humans anymore. We're competing with computers (well, I'm using one right now so the two of us are actually collaborating) or at least we're competing with technology. Actually, as the shift is happening right under our feet, we're just trying to stay in step with technology.

How do we do that? How do we prepare students for jobs, as Fisch stated, that don't even exist yet?! I think we need to actually take a step back for a second here and realize that, we've been doing it all along. When I graduated from high school, I didn't know how to use Google. I was prepared with skills used B.G. I think some of those skills are still valid today. I was taught problem solving skills... instead of googling something, I had to ehem, look it up in the card catalog and dare I say it, take out a BOOK! <-- check out a cheeky video on books) I was taught good communication skills and instead of googling directions to a new place, I called the location, spoke with a human and wrote the information down (with a pen and piece of paper, not with a cell phone!).

My point is, while it's evident from the numerous facts in this video that we need to seriously consider the shifting and transferring of where and how we lead our students into the 21st century, we do not need to throw useful skills out with yesterday's paper. Duh! Recycle them! Okay, that was cheesy but in all seriousness, we can do just that and still feel confident our students will survive. Perhaps they'll be the fittest?

I'm not scared about this shift and I don't think any educator should be. I'd be willing to bet our government is scared... why else would they have passed NCLB? Why else is NJ undergoing a HS redesign? America is not at the top of the list... and I don't think it's because educators aren't prepared for this shift. In fact, how is NCLB going to help us with this shift? I don't think it will...

Symphonic State of Mind

To start, take a second to watch (or listen while you read) this excerpt video clip of Mahler's Fifth symphony (click to get to the youtube video). Before I was a writer, before I came back to school to pursue my teaching certification, I was a trumpeter and from the first moment I heard this symphony, not only did the opening trumpet solo capture my attention, but as Pink says in his chapter on "Symphony", the overlapping and interconnecting of the various instrument parts created an entirely unique moment I'll never forget.

I'm drawn to symphonies like this Mahler one (and many of his others) because of the layers and layers he creates to tell a story... a story that I believe is different for every listener (and possibly different every time one hears it too). Mahler definitely saw the "big picture" as Pink states, when he composed his master works. I also feel that way every time I read or write poetry.

Okay, now take a moment to read the poem of the week to the right here by May Swenson. I vote for what Sidney Harman said and totally think poets should be "tomorrow's new business leaders." She literally paints a picture with her symphony of words... a metaphor maker for sure who turns the park upside down.

If you can't tell by now, I love this idea of symphony Pink describes and while I'm not in love totally with how he related it to the business world, I think it would be a lot of fun to utilize it in our classrooms and lessons.

A Letter to E.D. Hirsch

Dear E.D. Hirsch,

My, my do you have a strong point of view on education! I'm a newcomer to your philosophy but am taken aback (greatly, mind you) by what you have to say. If you can't tell by now, I totally disagree with your ideas and want to take a moment to explain why.

My biggest issue with your ideas is within your book Cultural Literacy because I do not believe students need to know STUFF (to put it bluntly) through a uniform curriculum and then tested on it with an "objective" test of some sort. I feel like we'd be creating mini Ken Jennings all around our country (no offense, Ken) who can regurgitate useless knowledge that they aren't even sure why they know it in the first place!

Our students need to learn that stuff in context with other useful lessons... lessons that dare I say it, should be taught with hands-on, engaging activities where students not only learn from their teacher but learn from each other through dialogue, interaction and can then apply the new knowledge to other areas in their lives. When you state: "Whether a word is learned by targeted practice or by the contextual method of enriched language use, its actual meaning is, for the most part, just a brute fact. In a sense, all words are learned by rote" you imply a terrible method of learning "meaning" in which adults are the gate keepers of it all and children must obtain it from them (i.e. it sounds like a "banking" method of teaching which Paulo Freire was so strongly against).

Mr. Hirsch, while I value the fact that you've taken such a great interest in our schools and the curriculum that they follow, I do not value your philosophy and your ideas. I think progressive education is working hard in this country today and I actually hope to see some more radical approaches take a more prominent role in our schools.

Best,
Keriann

A Balancing Act

Isn't that what using the NJCCCS in our lesson plans is all about? A balancing act? Well, at least some of it is. I read through the Language Arts Literacy section because I'm going to be an English teacher and most of it seems pretty straightforward. Some of the writing requirements for "by the end of Grade 12" section under 3.2.12 B "Writing as Product" seem a little over the top to me and I kept thinking, I didn't do half of this stuff until my college English classes, how the heck am I going to teach/assist my students to do some of this?

And that's where the balancing act comes in. Maybe all of my classes won't get to "write a literary research paper that synthesizes and cites data using researched information and technology to support writing" (#6 under the above mentioned section). There are going to be times when creating a cool research paper assignment for some of my classes will be warranted but there will be other times when teaching a cause/effect essay format is more important to help my students pass the standardized exams.

So, I think as long as a school recognizes the needs and can find balance in using the NJCCCS it can be useful. I worry I'll have a supervisor who will expect to see all aspects covered over the course of a year and I just do not see that being possible. Part of me also wants to burst the bubble that surrounds these standards and say, "how many of you actually use these to guide you, help you with your lessons vs. how many of you use these and put the obnoxious little numbers in your lesson plans to please a supervisor?" I fear I'll fall into the latter description and not that I probably won't actually teach what the standards are requesting but I just don't need to mark it with a grocery deli counter tag or a USPC code to validate it.

This I believe

I've been reading the novel, Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin for a few weeks now (I'm normally not that slow of a reader but this book found me in the middle of a busy time in my life so... I get in about 3-4 pages every night right before I fall asleep), and what I originally thought I believed about education has been reaffirmed.

If you don't know the story, it "recounts the journey that led Greg Mortenson from a failed attempt to climb Pakistan’s K2 to successfully building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan". He establishes The Central Asia Institute to "support community-based education, especially for girls" in these remote regions of the world. His fight to educate these impoverished people and their children especially before the Taliban does is a remarkable one to say the least.

As I venture into my somewhat typical mission to become an educator in the American schools, I must ask myself, "what is it I believe I should be educating my students for?" As someone who grew up and went through the American public school system, it was ingrained in me to believe I needed an education to get a good job. I had to go to college and do something great with myself. And by great it was clear it should be a good-paying job, not something like the musician I wanted to be because I'd never survive. So are we grooming our students then to fulfill a capitalistic goal... get out there and make some money for yourself!

I believe there should be more to education than that. I think about the children in Pakistan learning to survive because that's what's most important in their lives right now. I believe what should be most important in our school's here in America is teaching our students how to be great citizens. We are two months away from a major election and I'd place a bet that if I asked any teenager (18 or younger) "who would you like to see as the next president of the U.S. and why?" they might be able to say "Obama" or "McCain" and might provide some reasons they've overheard their parents discussing or perhaps read online, but how many of them would actually CARE!? So many of us teach in public schools but how much of our curriculum and lesson plans have anything to do with what it means to be a "public" and what it means to be a citizen?

Keriann, a Poet at Heart

Hello and welcome to my first blog, Tick Tock Poetry. What the heck does "tick tock" refer to? I have no idea myself. I was staring at this antique clock my grandfather gave me when creating this blog, which I knew I wanted to have something with poetry in the title (I'll get to that in a minute <-- no pun intended there) and in watching the second hand ticking away, I thought to myself, "why not tick tock?" and it just stuck (mostly because ehem, the name was available! =)

So, getting back to the poetry part. I am an avid reader of poetry and a write-when-I'm-inspired poet (which happens anywhere and everywhere). I love all sorts of poetry but my faves are your modern writers: Sharon Olds, Yusef Komunyakaa, Mark Strand to name a few. So, don't be surprised if you see a poem or two on my blog.

Ok, more about me (that sounds so self-centered but that is the point of this first post), I am currently a fashion copywriter for a children's clothing company. Ya know, Elaine's job on Seinfeld? Yeah, that's me. I write the little blurbs you see next to the clothing online. Something like, "a fashion favorite perfect for play date fun! Made of our comfiest 100% cotton jersey, pre-washed for softness..." Brilliant, I know ;-) The sad part is the entire job perpetuates gender stereotypes through the language I select to sell the items. Sigh, but that's the industry, that's our society and that's how it goes.

I am thankfully moving on from that business and am in the middle of finishing up my MAT at Montclair State University to teach English at the high or middle school level. I will be student teaching next semester (Spring 09) and this time next year hopefully teaching in my very own English classroom. I am taking CURR 530 as one of my core requirements (actually substituting it for one of my required courses) and am very much looking forward to learning more about curriculum development. I think this class in conjunction with my methods class will play together nicely in preparing me for my future as a teacher.

One more personal note, I am a HUGE tennis fan and as I write, the U.S. Open Men's Semis are on... so I'll leave you now for the battle between the fantastic Federer & cocky Djokovic (can you tell I'm a Fed fan?) and tick tock with you later.