What Worked and what Didn't--Two Weeks in One!

Part 1: Reflective Journaling.
What a complicated two weeks. My school district's teachers have worked without a contract since the end of July, and the stress is starting to show in my face. I'm glad I was able to find a few days to smile in my teaching-ware photos despite the stress and turmoil that is going on in my mind. 

The stress of the economics of my job are easy to keep out of the day-to-day lessons though. (Despite the bags under my eyes...) In fact, I've prepared my next few weeks out to the every-minute-detail. This helps. With the chaos (that I love) of NaNoWriMo and the Tuesday/Thursday night scholastic bowl matches (of which I am the HS coach), it's hard to find spare time in November to get anything done outside of the school day.

What DID work: On Sunday, I went to the school and copied everything I need (or anticipate needing) which frees me up to working one-to-one with students and other teachers during my prep time. It was nice not to worry about what I still needed copied or what materials I needed to set aside or pull from the cabinet.

I changed the project my 7th grade students have completed after reading "Names/Nombres" by Julia Alvaraz and I LOVE the results! In the past, we made computer-generated name splashes. This year, I wanted to ditch the computer (yes, I ditched electronics for crayons!) The projects were great! The sight-impaired student in my class was able to complete the assignment by making bookmarks with his six nicknames in braille for each student. It was a huge success and a great way for him to share his nicknames as well.

"Names/Nombres" Names Project

What DIDN'T work: In all my pre-preparations, I failed to notice that this was a short week. Essentially, I had to drop a lesson that I had planned and modify a quiz at the last minute. Really, a small "fail" in the great scheme of things.

Part 2: Teachingware.
I'm behind a week or so. But I WORE the SKIRTS! Last week was a short week and it was COLD! I resorted to leggings a lot and at the beginning of this week it looked like I may not make it (I'm missing my pants in this cold November!) Thankfully, the weather has warmed up a bit again, and next week might be the last week I'm able to "bare" leg!

Week 7 (November 4th-7th)


 <= Monday--This is a perfect example of why I'm doing this. I loved this skirt....until I saw this picture. It's too long for my short little legs. Maybe it would work with a different shirt and boots, but since I can no longer wear high heels, some of these skirts just won't work anymore.

My rating: 3 Sadly. I will miss this one... (replacement search!)

<=Tuesday--Awe, drats. I really liked the idea of these two colors together, but the shapes didn't work together. I love the comfort of this dress (I have already worn it in brown) but if I wear it again, I need to rethink the shirt.

My rating: 4 (skirt) 2 total outfit....Might need to take pictures BEFORE I leave for the day!

<= Wednesday--YES! Don't I look happy! This is what a good skirt and the right shirt for the right person looks like! Once I realized I needed more patterns and colors in my tops, i ran out to the local thrift store and picked up this VeraWang shirt sold at Kohls. LOVE it! and the skirt is perfect! 

My rating: 5! No pockets but this one has lace trim on the bottom edge and just enough detail in black fabric to make it different!

<= Thursday--Some days have just become too hectic at school to find the time to sneak into the bathroom at school to take a photo. Unfortunately, neither the top or skirt/top combo nor lighting is flatterning. Good thought, bad execution!


My rating: 4 for the skirt. I want to try this one again. The length is right, the shirt is not.



Week  8  (November 12-14th)
Monday--VETERANS' DAY!

<=Tuesday--Again, another busy day w/o opportunity to snap a picture. This was a completely comfortable skirt/shirt/sweater combo for a freezing cold day, but I felt a bit "too comfy" for school. Maybe for a winter stroll in a park, but the sweater (as much as I love it) didn't work and made me look old...not good.

My rating: 4 This is not a good picture, but I wore this skirt comfortably until 10 p.m. that night! If I can make it that far without a complaint, it deserves a 4!

<=Wednesday--KICKED IT! Love, love love this skirt! It was a last minute pick from the "winter" storage container. (Yes, there are MORE skirts in storage...) I completely forgot what the detail kick-pleats were like on the back. I will buy another skirt like this!!!

My rating: 5 Such a different skirt! Spices my wardrobe up and despite the lack of pockets, it was a dream to wear!

<=Thursday--This one makes me happy because I made it! (Well, actually, I combined a black skirt w/a red skirt to make this one.) And despite the mistake I made by not seaming the pockets, the skirt was really comfortable. It was mostly cold throughout the day though, so I kept the jacket on 80% of the time. (Or the "robe" as one student called it...guess it might not be as great as I think...)

My rating: 4 Nice and warm (almost 2 layers!) and very LONG pockets! Plus...the color blocking worked!

Thor's Day-- UPDATE: NaNoWriMo Day 14!!!

Last weekend, the students and I got together for our first Saturday write-in. From 10 a.m. until nearly noon, we wrote, updated our status on the http://ywp.nanowrimo.org website, challenged each other with a few rounds of writeordie.com word sprints and had a nice break to create our annual NaNoWriMo writing journals and a few totem octopi.

The students that are showing up to the after-school, lunch and Saturday write-ins are a committed group. Even the high school students that are working on their own this year are making great progress!

I've included a few pictures of the journals some of the students created and a list of a few of the "mustache challenge" entries from our after-school write-in on Wednesday.  (The mustache challenge is a 10-minute word-sprint that is not won by word count, but on the best use of a mustache in your story. The winners won mustache-themed mini-notebooks.)

We still have sixteen more days of intense writing! I hope to get back to the normal routine of blog posts by the end of this month!

KEEP WRITING!

MUSTACHE CHALLENGE ENTRIES:

Alex, the bartender, "What is with the mustaches? They are kind of creepy."
"It's an annual thing. Last year, you missed it by a hair."
"That is the cheesiest pun ever."
"I know that's why you love me."
"Well, it's weird and I don't think I can handle this level of mustache."
"Very funny. I get off in about ten minutes. We could go to the club down the street."

I saw a faint outline of a bushy mustache that was plastered onto a man's face. This man I recognize as one of the leading workers in my queen's land As soon as I saw the mustache, in all it's burliness glory, I quickly get a glimpse of the bright blue eyes and the pale sweaty face.

He had a mustache. It was red, like his hair. It looked weird and almost like an orange color. It wasn't shaved so it was all over the lace. The weirdest fact about his mustache is that Justin only looked to be about 17.

The students were surprised to find the multi-colored mustache saying "good morning' and flying around the room, shocking the kids.

A pig with a mustache was carrying a taser, which also had a mustache.

Finally, the ambulance and fire truck come. Apparetnly one fire resucer likes mustaches He was wearing a "I mustache you a question. But I'll shave it for later" shrit, and he had a hairy mustache too. I mean who wouldn't liek a mustache?

The dealer his mustache is a bright neon, purple with white hairs dyed obviously, but it was in a cool way. But he didn't look a day over 20.

What Worked and What Didn't-- Busy Halloween and NaNoWriMo

Part 1: Reflective Journal
Wow! That was a fast/busy week! With all the anticipated energy of Halloween and Trick-or-Treat nights and a few extra pep-assemblies thrown in for playoff season, it was BIZ-E! Then add in the beginning of NaNoWriMo and you have it! It's officially my favorite month of the year! Lovin' my job!

What DID work was taking a step back and realizing that some of the "heavier" tasks and topics I had planned for the week were simply not going to cut it. For example, in 8th grade we traded a week of in-depth work on foreshadowing for a day-by-day study of suspense filled Gothic poems. FUN!  "The Raven" by E.A. Poe, "The Bells" (also by Poe) and "The Cremation of Sam Mcgee" by Robert Service... helped make this holiday fun and educational for my students. 

What also worked was using time today (the day after Halloween) to finish bigger projects and use my established "WORD PLAY DAY" centers. We've only used them three times this year but the students really enjoy the time and play fairly.
The four "centers" I used each time (the students rotate through these every 10 minutes) are:

1. Computers or Nintendo DS Word Games
2. Blurt or Boggle (board games)
3. Slurp or Sentences (board games)
4. Dry Erase Pockets or Word Game magazines

What DIDN'T work was juggling too many "project-based" lessons in one week. The 8th grade literature students were working on Comic Strips, 8th grade Language Arts students were writing mysteries, 7th grade literature students were making puppets and performing scripts they created AND NaNoWriMo kicked-off!

Part 2: Teaching-wear (Week 6)
I didn't think it would happen so soon, but this week I actually had a "shoot...I'm getting tired of wearing skirts" moment. It passed. I still have a full closet's worth of skirts left to go!

<=Monday--I went full-out dress again. The day was oddly warm and the dress has cap sleeves. I definitely took the jacket off early!

My rating:  4  Comfortable and easy to move in, but NO pockets! 
:( 

<=Tuesday--This was one of the newer shirts I bought when I realized that I didn't have enough color or pattern to go with my drab colored skirts. I own this skirt in brown and a teal corduory. I think I wore it crooked all day! LOL!

My rating: 4 Versatile. 

<=Wednesday-- A Burberry skirt. Nope, not really, but the pattern is the same. I tend to stay away from straight patterns like this on skirts. Notice how wide it makes my hips look! (And they are wide...I just don't want to emphasize that!)
The top was a trick of mine to mix it up a bit. It has metal bits on it. (A preppy rocker look?)

My rating: 3 Although the skirt is comfortable and I like the style/cut, I don't like the way the pattern looks on me.

<=Thursday--HALLOWEEN! and "Hello-Kitty Thursday"! Image that! It was a two-for-one kind of day. The skirt is actually a plum (which helped the purple streaks in my hair show up!) I was incredibly comfortable in this skirt. I do wish it had pocket though. :( 

My rating:  4 I'll wear this one again for sure. It's light-weight yet warm. 

Time-to-Write Tuesdays-- It's a MYSTERY!

During the past two weeks, my students have been building background knowledge and researching details. Now it is time to bring it all together...

                              It's time to write a MYSTERY!

It all started one Tuesday in the computer lab... 
The students knew we were preparing for a new writing topic, but WHAT?

I simply told the students that they were to quickly find an informative website for THREE places of interest. I explained that these places could be places that they had been to before or places they would like to visit. Then, they were told to print only the first page of the website, hole punch the pages and slip them into their writing binders. I told them nothing else.

Nothing.

Their next clue came two days later... 
They were told to look over their pages and write a brief description of the three places that they chose. (I limited them by requiring 1/2 a page per place. Folding the paper in half before they started to write helped them see the "space" for writing.) At this point, they started to wonder, but thought they were writing research papers.

More clues came when they had to repeat the process, writing a 1/2 page for each destination, but changing the focus. All together, the students wrote three quick-writes about The Place, Things (found at the place) and People that they would meet at their chosen destinations.

Finally, I revealed that we were writing MYSTERIES! Wow, did that get them talking!

As the class discussed what happens in a mystery, they began to see that the places, things and people could all fit together like a big mix-and-match book by taking a few elements away.

On Monday, we watched an episode of Scooby Doo. I had discussed how a mystery can be as simple as Scooby Doo. By plotting and retelling, my students proved how the same elements we had discussed last week were evident in one basic cartoon.

Today, we finished our pre-writing. I handed them a simple graphic organizer with the key components: Main Characters, Suspects, Crime or Mystery, Clues (real and diversions) and the "Big Reveal" leading to the Outcome. (Actually, some started writing their first drafts today without this last step... I know they will complete the organizer for credit, but they couldn't help themselves and grabbed a computer to start tapping it out as the story materialized in their imaginations!)

The students are so excited! It makes me excited! (I believe that my NANOWRIMOs have found their topics!)

In the hallway, I set up an interactive "It's a Mystery" bulletin board for parent-teacher conferences and to tie-in with our lessons.

Throughout the next week, I plan to use the writings of Lemony Snicket, Blue Balliett and a few picture book authors to serve as models.

If you would like to try your hand at writing a mystery with your students or write one of your own you might want to purchase the new Pseudonymous Bosch's book, Write This Book: A Do-It-Yourself Mystery. It is a fabulous guide that isn't one of those expensive journals pretending to be a do-it-yourself books.

What Worked and What Didn't (Only a Two-Skirt Week!)

Part 1: Reflective Journal
The end of the quarter always puts students and teachers into a frenzied state. Add the local baseball favorites in the playoffs, high school senior nights and the preparations for a week of parent-teacher conferences and after school meetings.... Well, you get it. To say I'm tired is an understatement.

A large part of writing this blog is to help me keep my sanity and stay positive; I almost lost sight of the "positive" this week...

What didn't work this week was an opportunity that slipped by me to help a student get "things" under control. He had avoided work, avoided groups, avoided assignments and when it came to needing my assistance to FIND his materials, all I FOUND was a complete and total disaster encased in  2'x 2'x 4' metal. Like all things, this was at the end of a class period and the bell was ringing. 

I'm sorry to say, his locker still looked like this at the end of the day today. 

Next week, I'm going to put this high on my list of "Things to Turn Around".

What DID work though was the student book talks and reviews. Every quarter my students report on what they've read in some way. We've used Power Point presentations, e-movies, book dates and the traditional book report. This time, I gave students a choice: a book talk or a written book review. The checklist and rubric were spot-on and the students did a fantastic job. This "option" is definitely a keeper!

Part 2: Teaching-Wear (Week 4)
This week was one of those "rare" short weeks with a "free-jeans" day thrown in. Next week will be like this as well due to Red Ribbon Week (but I'll dress the theme and post the pics anyway)!

Monday- No School (Columbus Day)
Tuesday- Jeans day (Volley-for-the-Cure T-shirt day)
Which left only Wednesday and Thursday for my challenge:

<= Wednesday I changed from a heavily patterned skirt to a pinstriped brown one. It was a comfort thing. The morning started out chillier than I had expected so I also went for the brown tights. When I took my first picture, I had to laugh! I had left my sunglasses on top of my head and the image of myself made me think of one of the Monster High Dolls--Catrina DeMew (pictured here available at WalMart.com ...) The glasses and the scarf must have done it... 
     
                                                  My rating: 4 Really comfortable (but no pockets)  

<=Thursday, I went for the "dress" part of the challenge. I did include in my original oath-to-myself that dresses counted too! This is a one-piece black cotton with a zipper up the back. It has a peplum (which some friends pointed out DOES make the silhouette more hourglass!) and I was cold again so I chose grey tights with my comfortable black flats. (Ha! I was on my way to the cafeteria...$2 for biscuits and gravy--Thursday staples!)

My rating: 4 (Although I really liked this, the skirt with these tights were "tight" and I felt like the skirt was "stuck" or rising most of the day. Not sure I'll wear this combo again.)


By the way, in both photos I'm wearing my octopus/squid mascot for NANOWRIMO. If you are not sure what NANOWRIMO is, keep following this blog! (The insanity starts in 13 days!)

Time-to-Write Tuesdays

Tuesdays in my classroom are ALL about writing....and the Time to WRITE!

My students write Slices of Life every Tuesday... EVERY TUESDAY. (Okay, so that one Tuesday, we didn't because we had a test...) so today it was Time to WRITE!

And Tuesdays are not Monday's... The first, modeled practice and brainstorming work has laid the foundation for today, TUESDAY! and thus, Time to WRITE!

But this Tuesday is special. Today, is October 15th. It's halfway through October. If you look at a school calendar, that's only two weeks away from NOVEMBER... which means:

It's NANOWRIMO AGAIN! Time to WRITE!

What's NANOWRIMO, you ask? 
                                     
                                           It's NONSTOP writing.
                                   It's AWAKENING a dream that's been stuck inside your head. 
                                 It's a NOVEL in the works.
                         It's giving OWNERSHIP to your writing.
                              It's the WRITER breaking through.
It's about setting goals and REACHING them.
                           It's about IGNITING the young writer (and the older ones too!)
                                 It's a MANUSCRIPT at the end. 
                               100% ORIGINAL!
And it's all yours, 
created by you, 
written by you-- 
It's a Novel you've Written in a Month!
                                              by Juliann Caveny

Basically, NANOWRIMO stands for "National Novel Writing Month". This will be my fifth year participating and the fifth year with a group of students participating.

For now, I finished the "big" planning. We have a theme: "20,000 Words or More in 2013!-An Undersea Adventure!", a group totem: A SQUID! (Ink and all...) and all our after school and Saturday dates set on the calendar.

Between now and then, I need to find my own writing focus, help the students create log-ins, print the manuals and gather the necessary materials that have helped to make this after school project such a success. To say I'm excited, is an understatement!

I know my junior high and high school writers are ready to start. Keep in mind, you don't have to participate in NANOWRIMO to create something original in writing. Half the battle is starting! NANOWRIMO gives my students and I the "framework" of routine and a goal for us to work towards. So far, it's worked!

Have you set aside your Time to WRITE??? If not, consider joining us!

To learn more about NANOWRIMO and the NANOWRIMO Young Writer's Club, follow the links. I'll occasionally post about the progress my students and I make.