first day.

tomorrow=first day of school=SCAAAAARY.

we finally made it to the first day. and i am scared senseless by the though of actually having students in my classroom. for the first time, EVER, they'll be MY students.

i have a homeroom, and three other classes besides them. we'll be meeting twice a day. learning together. working together. i hope.

i know that the first day and the first week set the tone for the rest of the school year. i've been reading The First Days of School all this past week, trying to prepare myself as much as possible.

i've got some pretty good icebreakers lined up, so it's not all business up front. i want us to get comfortable with each other. i just hope it goes well.

PLEASE OH PLEASE let it go well.

attention: english teachers!

check out THIS WEBSITE right now!

i'm going to steal so much stuff from it. yay!

just for fun.

some fun examples of figurative language.

i know what you're thinking: FUN? figurative language?? HA!

but you're wrong, because it's totally fun.

my first year of teaching starts in just a few short weeks. i haven't hit panic mode yet, but i'm sure it's on the horizon. for the past couple of weeks i've been scouring the shelves of the library i'm currently working at, grabbing as many reading and writing theory/lesson plan idea books i can find, and killing many trees in my effort to copy all of the good stuff i find. and i'm finding a LOT of good stuff, which is comforting.

with all the ideas i have sitting in binders around my bedroom right now, i'm confident that i'll never run out of activities to do with the kids. especially since i want to set aside at least 15 minutes three times a week for DEAR (Drop Everything and Read!) or SSR (Sustained Silent Reading).

my goal for this weekend is to get the first couple of days hammered out. the first two days are going to be all about getting to know each other and creating a comfortable classroom climate. (say THAT three times fast!)

then, i think we're going to jump into some short stories.

my cooperating teacher i worked with all last year started her school year off with short stories, because she felt they were a rich (but easier) way to help students see the structural patterns that are inherent in stories. also, short stories are just plain awesome. there are some amazing ones out there.

it's also a great way to introduce some figurative language! which leads me back to my current post topic.

i feel like when it comes to explaining figurative language, examples do it best. words definitions are just confusing, for both me and the kids.

and even though there is a cornucopia of examples in any piece of literature we might read, i love VISUAL examples the best. and there are really no better visual examples than the ones found in comics. so, today i took a look at the past month's strips for my very favorite comic, Pears Before Swine. Stephen Pastis, the cartoonist responsible for Pearls, has a great style. it's dark, a little silly, but most importantly, he uses TONS of figurative language in his work. i've already used a couple of his strips in my IRONY lesson plan.

here are a few of the examples i found just looking at strips from July 2010:

ALLUSION

PERSONIFICATION

SATIRE

updates!

i realize i've been a pretty lousy blogger, lately.

but hey! it's summer, for crying out loud! not a whole lot of teaching going on at the moment, especially for a newbie like me.

however, i did manage to land myself a teaching position for this upcoming school year!

that's right, ladies and gentleman. you're friendly neighborhood student teacher is finally coming into her own.

i'll be teaching middle school english at the Harmony School of Science, a public charter school.

i know what you're thinking. middle school! *involuntary shiver. but beggars can't be choosers, and i think this might be a nice way to start out in the profession, regardless of the hormones that will be no doubt be running rampant at the school. it's a nice, small school. somewhere along the size i grew up in. definitely not like the one i student taught at, but i think it'll be nice, nonetheless.

in the meantime, i've got lots of teacherly duties to attend to!

towards the middle of my last semester, i was awarded a scholarship to an AP Summer Institute here at UT Austin, and that starts tomorrow morning at 8am sharp. we were each asked to bring along 30 copies of a successful lesson plan we've used in the classroom, a non-fiction book we'd like to teach in the classroom, and a non-fiction essay to use for teaching as well.

i'm so excited to get lesson plans from other teachers, as well as reading suggestions!

for my lesson, i made 30 copies of the final group project i used at the end of my classes' ANIMAL FARM unit. the kids all really enjoyed the freedom and creativity that came along with the project, so i thought it might be nice to share it with my fellow APSI classmates.

the project asked the students to create a country of their own. they were responsible for coming up with the land mass, the type of population (and social hierarchy) that would live in the country, the laws of the land, etc. some of the kids came up with pretty wacky stuff, but that just made it all the more interesting!

if you're interested in doing something similar, the lesson plan and handout can be downloaded right HERE.

for my other materials, i decided to gravitate toward a subject i've been really fascinated by lately: violence. the essay I'm planning on taking is not really an essay at all. it's actually an excerpt from Richard Wright's BLACK BOY. It's a great excerpt, about Wright's first run-in with desperate violence. you can check it out HERE.

this is also another really great story about a young man's first run-in with violence, it's called ALAN, and is only about a quarter of a page long. really powerful, though.

i'm currently working my way through the non-fiction book i think i'm taking tomorrow. like the excerpt from Black Boy and the short story "Alan", it focuses on children growing up and into violence. it's a memoir about a man's childhood in a violent neighborhood.

Fist Stick Knife Gun
by Geoffrey Canada

check it out! it's definitely worth a read. i'll try to keep up with posting the knowledge i gain in the next four days. :)

side note: i finally figured out the whole document hosting thing! that's why i seem to have gone crazy with it in this particular post. i'm hoping to start a daily blog once school starts with each day's assignments, etc on it. exciting!

some things i like about fifth graders.

number 1: their relative honesty.

it was amazing to me how very "pure of heart" some of the kids were. when it came time for recess, they were all antsy and ready to run, but they also had a sense of dignity about them. the ones who knew they were supposed to sit out for five minutes didn't put a fight. they didn't try to worm their way out of doing the time.

they simply took a seat at the side of the playground and waited it out.

the teacher in charge had a sticky note with the names of those who owed time. there was one little boy sitting out whose name was nowhere to be found on the tiny piece of paper.

so she asked him, "what are you doing?"

he looked up at her, and i could tell he wasn't even trying to make up a story that would relieve him from his current state of punishment. he just shrugged and said, "the principal told me i had to sit out."

so we left it at that.



number 2: they're adoring nature.

"miss? will you come back and be our teacher again tomorrow?"

you gotta be kidding me, right? i've just been through hell and back, thanks to YOU, and you want me to come back for more tomorrow?

"PLEASE?"

some things i DON'T like about fifth graders.

number 1: how spastic they are.