Truce?!

       When I picked up Truce by Jim Murphy, I was initially intrigued with the notion that two armies, enemies on the frontlines, could openly disobey orders by celebrating Christmas with the enemy. Think of that! Two opposing armies calling a truce and celebrating together.
        I never realized, however, that in order to truly appreciate the actions of these soldiers, I would first need to understand how the war began, which countries were involved, and all of the major events leading up to this moment. This book does all of that!
Written in a narrative style, and incorporating first-hand accounts, this nonfiction text walks the reader through the initial causes leading to World War I. The reader gets a sense of the arrogance and fearfulness of the leaders, the national pride of its countries’ people, and the hasty entry into the war. Once engaged in battle, the book helps the reader experience the various military campaigns, especially that of trench-warfare. Haphazardly dug trenches in close proximity forced both sides into random, ill-conceived attacks; however, it had one enormous effect-both sides could communicate to each other. Through such random acts of dialogue, both sides softened, losing that steadfast anger that caused them to enlist in the first place.
        As Christmas approached, with both camps locked down in their trenches, each side began talking, swapping carols and food, edging toward a tenuous peace which was achieved on Christmas Eve. Can you imagine shaking hands with your enemy, sharing a cigar, exchanging food tins, and singing together? One soldier summed this unique experience when he said that it was the epitome of, “peace on earth and goodwill toward men.”

Chicago is in Flames!

            The Great Fire by Jim Murphy is a phenomenal account of the The Great Chicago Fire that began on October 8, 1871 and burned with little resistance for three days. While this is nonfiction, the book is written in narrative, incorporating first-hand, eye-witness accounts and first-person, post-fire testimony. Woven throughout the text are artist renderings and photographs illustrating the spread of the fire and revealing the vast destruction. One of the most effective parts of the text is a simple map interspersed through the book that clearly shows the wide-spread damage caused by the fire.

            The author paints a clear visual of the devastation fueled by a two-week drought and 30 mile-an-hour winds. Devastation further carried along by an endless supply of 59,000 wooden buildings that comprised Chicago at the time. The reader is also provided all of the unfortunate missteps and errors made during those crucial initial minutes of the fire.

In the end, having followed so many accounts of this disaster, it is hard to imagine that the only solution to ending the great fire would be rain. This book captures the pride, panic, arrogance, incompetence, strength, and perseverance of a city struggling to survive such a firestorm.

            Anyone teaching the Midwest region, Illinois history, or the power of nature should take a strong look at this book. In fact, with such a push toward authentic learning, this book would be a fantastic companion to any math lesson on area or large numbers. After all: more than 100,000 people were suddenly homeless; more than 17,000 buildings and 73 miles of street were destroyed in three days; only one-third of the city had water; an estimated 300 people died; and the fire reached temperatures in excess of 1,500 degrees.

           The spirit of the city and its people were remarkable though. Within days, relief arrived from other towns and states, residents of Chicago had already reopened businesses like Margaret O’Toole’s chestnut stand. Rebuilding soon was underway. Ironically, the fire started behind Catherine O’Leary’s house at Jefferson and DeKoven streets, which is currently the site of the Fire Academy.

A Lifetime Written in Bone

In my pursuit to learn more about the nonfiction genre, I just completed Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland by Sally Walker. Even during my initial preview of the book, I knew much attention was given to its accuracy. Not only is there a bibliography, index, and a list of additional books and websites on the subject, but there is also a timeline and the author’s source notes. She has included a list of her actions during the writing of this book. She begins with her first phone call with a forensic anthropologist regarding the idea of writing on this subject back in September 2005. After reading, “A Note to the Reader,” her passion and respect for the subject are abundantly clear.

The author has a knack for incorporating important content vocabulary quickly followed up with a kid-friendly explanation of the new term. Also, her vivid descriptions of the excavations and accompanying maps and photos help bring the text to life. Since nonfiction text is at its core informative, the author repeatedly provides a question/answer method to her writing. She poses an interesting historical question, explains the scientific process taken to reach a conclusion, and then provides the answer before moving on to her next question. Intended or not, the reader not only learns the information provided, but is also left with a healthy respect for the scientific method and patience of the archeologists. Throughout the text, I was personally left with a feeling of wonderment, of wanting to learn more about life in the early 1600’s.

When I set out to learn more about the genre of nonfiction, I learned a student of mine had a similar personal reading goal. He too thrived on realistic fiction and wanted to branch out into nonfiction. This is an extremely well-written, informative text that I will immediately share with my student. Having already learned about Jamestown this year, he will have the requisite schema to step into this text.

Nonfiction is Necessary?

A few days ago, I read a chapter from Literature is Back by Carol J. Fuhler & Maria P. Walther regarding nonfiction texts. This is not a strong genre for me by any means. Reading a chapter from a professional text helped get me thinking more about this personally neglected genre.

The chapter suggests various texts to support content instruction and pairs those texts with fiction and activities to cement learning. Two strategies stuck out for me, “I Remember” and “Say Something.” I can see both strategies creating more engaged active listeners and higher retention of content.

Somewhere the author encourages the use of nonfiction in a read aloud. I’ve done this exactly once this year with, “Children of the Dust Bowl.” I chose this text because it was the one piece of nonfiction I knew about, and it happened to tie directly to a chapter in our social studies unit on farming. The book had an effect I hadn’t anticipated. My class has a Wikispace, which they are using to chat with a fourth-grade classroom in California. After finishing the book, half my class seemed to jump on the laptops to write their pen pals about the plight of the Okies. The replies were a stitch; none of the California students had even heard of an Okie. Now the author has me thinking of other ways to spark my students’ active participation.

I was struck by something else the authors mentioned. The chapter suggests that reluctant readers enjoy “obscure topics.” While reading this, I felt the authors were clearly overstating this point; however, yesterday, one of my lowest three readers happily approached me as I finished with a guided reading group. She was quite excited that she just read an ostrich has eyeballs as big as tennis balls, but a brain much smaller. Of course I was surprised to hear this random detail. She continued with a hypothetical to prove her next piece of learning. If this ostrich was in our classroom, it would be oblivious to whether there was a wall or not and simply walk into it if given the chance. Again, fascinating and random. Had this encounter occurred prior to my reading this chapter, I would’ve thought nothing of it; however, the exchange takes on a different meaning for me now.

Perhaps there really is something incorporating more obscure texts with my lower readers. She was absolutely hooked. I believe a trip to my school and/or local library might be in order this week. I’m positive there will be ways of incorporating quality nonfiction into my curriculum.

Being Bullied!

I understand that time is always against us. I certainly don’t mean to vent about this aspect of teaching.  We need to prioritize and let certain things go. This is not a new concept. 

But what is so frustrating to me is not being able to use the time I have for what I want. For example, I set aside my entire planning hour to finish writing grades so I could begin that section of my report cards. This entire hour was stripped from me the moment a parent contacted me and another teacher regarding bullying issues amongst certain students. Suddenly, I found myself information gathering, investigating, guiding students in problem solving, and so on.

I guess I really shouldn’t complain though. The students now have tools to help them on the playground away from the classroom. The parents are happy because the teachers taught their children coping and communication strategies in social situations. And I had all day Saturday to work on report cards.

On second thought, someone owes me a day.

Say “Yes” to Chatter!

Before I was abe to implement my grand, if not insane, plan to put nine- and ten-year olds in a chat room while I read to them, my technology department needed to configure the laptops to work from my room. Then I needed to register the students and give them time to play with the technology. As soon as I introduced an emoticon, the class clamored to figure it out too. At least they were excited.

The true test came today when I finally implemented the lesson idea. The class loved it! Apparently we learn from our mistakes, though. I thought I made the username and passwords fool proof, but I did not. Today we wrote them down.

I read for twenty minutes from the book “Kidnapped” by Gordon Korman. While I read, the relentless sound of keyboarding could be heard. When I finished, we discussed how everything went. Everyone agreed we should do this again. Almost all found it challenging to multitask. After all, students are trying to listen to me, read the chat, and insert their own thoughts. This is no small task. 

I copy and pasted the chat into MS Word; it came to seven pages in 9 point font with two columns per page. Fascinating reading, really. I would say that ten percent of what was typed was silly, off task, or overused emoticons. About ninety percent of what was typed stayed on task about the book. Students pointed out interesting words; asked and answered questions about plot and character; made inferences; pointed out personal connections and feelings; and offered predictions. A few times, students even typed that they would only respond to a particular student if (s)he only wrote about the book. I even loved reading that some students found this book less interesting or more interesting than the other read aloud books I’ve done.

During our post read aloud discussion, students again brought up using Chatterous in book clubs to discuss their thoughts at home online with each other. Other ideas offered were: create a chat with another fourth grade classroom; create a chat for our next reward party (would be a quiet party, huh); create a permanent computer station during language arts where reading groups could go to discuss guided reading novels.

For a first attempt at this, I will say that I am very pleased. Clearly this isn’t something I would do everyday, but I can certainly see a value in it, and the class was most receptive. Once students were comfortable with this, I could easily see using this during a particularly suspenseful or climactic part of a book. For now, I will incorporate Chatterous one more time this week. Only this time, I may add my paraprofessional into the mix to provide the occasional answer the students can’t provide to each other.

Chatter, us?

I was posting a comment on Kyle’s blog about read alouds when I noticed the Chatterous website in my Favorites folder. I suddenly thought it might be nifty to put the two together. While I read, my students already draw and write down comments about the read book. Wouldn’t it be intriguing to take that process to the next level and allow the students to comment about the book on Chatterous? In a way, it would be a real time digital book club.

I wonder though, would students stay engaged in the story if they were sharing their comments with eachother? Would they be more engaged? Would they point out exciting moments, new language, writing techniques, emotion reactions, etc?

Please share your thoughts and opinions. I have a feeling this could either work very well or fail miserably.

Faculty Stays Awake With Etherpad!

It seems like only last weekend that I learned Etherpad and the timing is rather fortuitous. We had a faculty meeting yesterday that began with the entire faculty creating our very own “Faculty Meeting Norms.” I immediately went to my principal to discuss the possibility of using Etherpad instead of notecards and pens. She quickly agreed.

The faculty really got into it. Teachers formed small table groups to add their ideas in real time using Etherpad. Everyone felt as if their voice mattered. The atmosphere was upbeat and cheerful instead of the usual groans of, “Great another activity.” Even during the discussion to finalize and pare down the list of ideas, several members of the faculty actually voiced an appreciation for using this interactive technological approach. For the first time in a long time, the staff and faculty felt connected and heard. Even our literacy coach informed me she was going to use this technology when she does professional development.

This activity only lasted about ten minutes, but the benefits were long lasting. I would strongly suggest trying this when the opportunity presents itself at your school.

Moylan is a “Leading Lady?”

Dear Friends,

I thought it might be interesting, if not then a little self-promoting, to note that I was cast today as one of the two leads in the comedy by Ken Ludwig entitled “Leading Ladies.” The show runs sometime in November at the Woodstock Opera House.

The following description of the play was lifted from http://www.samuelfrench.com/store/product_info.php/products_id/5908

In this hilarious comedy by the author of LEND ME A TENOR and MOON OVER BUFFALO , two English Shakespearean actors, Jack and Leo, find themselves so down on their luck that they are performing “Scenes from Shakespeare” on the Moose Lodge circuit in the Amish country of Pennsylvania. When they hear that an old lady in York, PA is about to die and leave her fortune to her two long lost English nephews, they resolve to pass themselves off as her beloved relatives and get the cash. The trouble is, when they get to York, they find out that the relatives aren’t nephews, but nieces! Romantic entanglements abound, especially when Leo falls head-over-petticoat in love with the old lady’s vivacious niece, Meg, who’s engaged to the local minister. Meg knows that there’s a wide world out there, but it’s not until she meets “Maxine and Stephanie” that she finally gets a taste of it.

PLC – Changing the Current Educational Paradigm

I recently attended a two day conference in Rolling Meadows presented by Rick and Becky Dufour. I went to it only knowing that it was about Professional Learning Communities (PLC). I must say that I have never been more impressed with a teaching  framework. Everything about this model made sense.

Before I address the most basic components of PLC, there first needs to be an understanding that the grade level must have one hour of common planning time to address the process of PLC and specifically discuss the skills and progress of the students. Additionally, the school schedule needs to be adjusted to create a half-hour block of time that can be utilized for strictly intervention/enrichment instruction, not new instruction.

With those elements in place, each grade level comes together and pares down the curriculum to strictly its essential skills. Then the grade level creates a common assessment to use after teaching every so-many skills. Once the test is given, the specific score data is tabulated and compared to the rest of the grade level team. In reviewing the data, each teacher can see how effective (s)he were in teaching the skills. If a class didn’t fair well, then the teacher can get other intructional techniques to try with the class again. If there are only a handful of students who missed meeting the benchmark score, then the teacher who taught the skill the best overall, takes those struggling students during the intervention/enrichment time to work with them. Several of his/her students then rotate to another teacher on the team for further enrichments activities on the same skill since those students mastered it. 

I love the idea that the team is responsible for all of the students in that grade level, not just the specific teacher whose class they were assigned. Teachers can practically guarantee that all students will meet grade-level benchmarks on essential skills.  

Having spent the summer doing educational research, I was looking for the research based methods in their presentations. Every component they presented was backed up by research, which included the researcher citations.  In fact, several schools presented their ISAT scores over the past five years since implementing this teaching process. The results were more than impressive. Without getting into too much detail, I will just say the least performing school in a nearby district went from 57% meeting benchmark five years ago in reading and math to 94% in 2009 in reading and math. Additionally, the number of students labelled “LD” dropped by more than half.

The six of us that attended were so energized and empowered after leaving that I sent a thank you email to both my principal and the superintendent. How exciting that the entire current teaching paradigm we use in our district will shift for the better. For more information, you can visit http://www.allthingsplc.info/