Where's the Beef? Explained.

Parents, today, we reviewed the Where's The Beef? commercial and students rightly guessed that, in terms of their writing, I was looking for more substance. I'm looking for more hamburger in the bun!

In particular, I am looking for specific details. Writers need to paint pictures in their readers head. Give me, your reader, a clear, specific vision to hold onto! If you add more specific detail to your communication--no matter what writing form (letter, story, report, review, essay, etc), your writing will vastly improve.

This does not mean just giving more sentences. If those sentences are 'vague', it won't improve the writing. This is one of my writing mantras: longer writing does not equal better writing! You can have pages and pages of bad writing. You can have a tight 5 line paragraph of good writing. I want the good writing!

I have given students these small booklets I call Idea Books or Response Journals. They do not allow for a lot of writing per page. Some students are a bit confused by them. Don't teachers usually ask you to 'write more'? Aren't we supposed to be writing paragraphs? Aren't we supposed to be writing essays?

We will. But first I think we need to look at quality. We are going to go line by line, even word by word in some cases.  Instead of just saying 'a student', 'a boy', 'a school', get specific. Give me 'female dance student, age 6', 'Freddy from ICarly', 'Hogwart's School of Witchcraft & Wizardry' . I now have a much more specific idea in mind.

When you are writing summaries, or providing proof in main idea paragraphs, the same idea holds true. The more specific proof or example you give, the stronger your argument.

We discussed this quote as well (also on the daily quote page): "When asked 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'One word at a time.'" Stephen King, famous author, writer of 49 novels.

Writing is built word by word. As we start our first writing assignment (news report), we will be breaking it down. What is your first line? What is a good first line? How can you improve that first line? What do you put down next?

This need for the right amount of detail will be looked at all year long even though the writing forms will change over time (reports, reviews, main idea/persuasive paragraphs (fall), comparative essay on Romeo & Juliet, short story (winter), poems, procedures (spring)).

Let's go create high quality hamburgers!

Frames 4 Awesomeness!

I mentioned in an earlier post how we spent a period learning about the software Frames 4. I showed how to use it and we spent some time exploring and just playing around with it. I asked students to create a couple of slides, to prove they knew how to make a simple animation...some students really came up with awesome clips! I can't wait to see what they create as we use Frames 4 for literacy & math communication! (Note: for some reason, blogger cuts off the last few seconds of these videos!)

J.S

M.G.

D.P

S.V.O

J.R

J.S

For some reason, the O keeps cutting off! This is supposed to spell HELLO!-Mrs. J

K.M.

J.F.

Note: Blogger cut off the last second, there is supposed to be a crayon suddenly stuck up his nose!

PICTURE DAY! Thursday!

I had noted picture day as Friday of this week, not Thursday but looking at the school calendar I see it is Thursday!

If this is a problem tomorrow, with many students being unprepared, then I will see if we can get our class photos done for Friday.

My apologies!

Mrs. J

Writing Checklist

Students, you will be using this to review your own work and the work of your peers. I will also be using it to assess your work.

CLICK HERE to see the checklist.

Where's the Beef?

Students, a while back you wrote two writing pieces for me so I could have a sample of your writing ability: a report of a life event and a review of a game, book or movie. I specified a few criteria for each writing form (report needed who, what, when, where, why, how while the review needed a rating and criteria).

I left the rest of my expectations purposefully vague as I wanted to see what you would produce on your own, without instruction. This acts as a baseline, so I know which writing traits you naturally and intuitively 'know' and those that you don't.  Then I can provide the direction/guidance you need in order to ascend in your writing levels.

All of you will receive specific feedback on what your areas of improvement are (and that will continue to happen from this point onward).  (Also note that your parents will also receive this information. Many parents expressed to me at Parent Night that they want this information so they know how you are doing.)

Remember that everyone is at different levels in their writing, and just like in video games with your individual gamer profile, so you each have your own *individual writing profiles*.

However, there are commonalities in our writing profiles and so we will be starting with those common areas of need.

This video is meant to address one such area of need. It is a very popular Wendy's commercial from the 1980's. Can you guess why I am showing it? How does it relate to your writing?

Media Literacy: Library Partnership Program

Tuesday starts our collaborative project with Mrs. Calabretta in the library. We will be using Frames 4  animation software to retell either 'One'  or 'Zero' by Kathryn Otashi. 

Students, you will also be using a checklist to determine the effectiveness of media/video content & techniques.  In class, we will be reviewing media & explaining how well they use colour, image, pace, and music to convey meaning.

CLICK HERE for the google doc checklist for media (when Mrs. J tell you to in class!)

WALT: create media forms and explain how media conventions & techniques (i.e.: use of colour, images, pacing, music) create meaning

Guest Speaker: First in our 'Real World Writer's' Series!

We will soon have the pleasure of our first guest speaker in my Real World Writer Series: Chris Simon will be in our class on Wednesday morning. Chris is the editor (and reports for) the Innisfil Scope. I met Chris last year when he interviewed me about a couple of my projects: my Wii math & literacy project and my J/I boy's literacy event.

These are listed on my media page.

Since we are studying report writing, it only made sense to go to an expert & find out the scoop!

Students will be interviewing Chris on Wednesday and then writing a report about the event.

We will be putting our interview & reporting skills to use all year long as we interview other Real Life Writers.


WALT: write a news report, using expected criteria
WALT: speak effectively and listen attentively, evaluating these abilities in self & others

Frames 4 Is Fabulous!

On Friday, we had the laptops for a period and because we will be doing a large number of media projects this year, I wanted everyone trained on Frames 4.

Frame 4 is an easy to use animation software program available on all the school computers. (I tried my hand at it just last week! Students rightly noted that my intro slides were TOO FAST. Students, you know intuitively what makes good media! We will be exploring this further, articulating the way media effectively (or ineffectively) communicates meaning--which is part of the Media Literacy curriculum expectation for both 7 & 8).

Some of the students were more familiar with this program than others. Essentially, I went through all the features, demonstrating how to use the software, then expected a 4 to 5 slide animation from students as they 'test drove' the features. It could be on anything, as long as it showed movement.

All I can say is...WOW! We have some extremely talented animators in our class. In just this short free play period, they came up with some amazing stuff! I can't wait to transform these into web-ready videos and post them for all to see!

THANK YOU PARENTS!

Thank you to all the parents that came out to meet me tonight! I enjoyed meeting all of you & also loved hearing the feedback about the blog. Please keep reading & checking in!

And also remember that my door is always open. Please contact me with any questions, concerns, comments, feedback, etc.

Again, thanks for dropping by!

PS. the parent sign up sheet for interviews in November is now online. Click HERE to view. You should be able to access and add/change times. It is also on the sidebar.

Please let me know if there are any difficulties accessing this. Also, if you prefer, we can sign up times the 'old fashioned' way via telephone or email jujohnson@mail1.scdsb.on.ca.

Who will you become?

We received news today. Ms. Scigliano, the other teacher for this class, is leaving us. We are happy for her new & exciting position & adventures in teaching! We are also sad because we will miss her.

We also  know that this will bring changes and disruption as a new teacher is found for the afternoons and a new routine is created.

This is a new challenge for our classroom but, as we have been discussing, we can control our response to the challenge.

Again, I ask you: Who do we want to be? What kind of class environment do we want to experience? We each control our actions and contributions. We add to the atmosphere. We create it.

It is in our power to experience AWESOMENESS!

You can part of the solution or part of the problem. You decide!

Here are two videos from Michael Jordan that relate to the power of choice and the transformative power of endurance and maintaining focus on a goal. It relates to sports. It relates to life. It relates to our class community.

BECOME LEGENDARY. CREATE GREATNESS THROUGH YOUR EVERYDAY CHOICES.

"I have something more important than courage. I have patience. I will become what I know I am"-Michael Jordan from "Look me in the eye".

We will be coming back to these brilliant videos at a later date to examine them from the perspective of media literacy.

Coming Up This Year in our Awesome Literacy Program...

I have been telling the students about some of the cool things I have planned for our class this year. I thought I would highlight them all here on the blog & tomorrow we will review all of them in more detail:

• 4 guest speakers (writers). These are real writers writing in the real world. Our first guest is Chris Simon, editor of the Innisfil Scope, who will be speaking in person about report writing & editorials (next Wednesday). The other interviews will take place via Skype as these writers call in from various part of the world. We will be speaking with a novelist, a reviewer (including video game reviews) and a poet.
• literacy & media collaboration projects with Gr. 9 & 10 students at Nantyr Secondary School
• Wii project with Nantyr Secondary School
• class youtube page & website(s) to showcase the wide variety of media/videos we will be creating
• Educator Partnership Program with shakespeareinbits.com. This is a software company in Ireland and we will be skyping with Fiona in December. We will be using their software in class in Jan/Feb as we study Romeo & Juliet and providing feedback about their software.

In addition to that, I will be incorporating all kinds of real world media representations to generate discusion, responses, writing, and to use as comparisons to texts. 

I hope you find this program as exciting as I do!

New Vote!

We did a new vote in the class and are now watching Wipe Out during lunch. We were watching that while the voting for the movies took place and after we voted on the movies, several students thought Wipe Out should have been on the ballot. So we added it and Wipe Out won.

We shall be watching the TV show on globaltv.com during first lunch break for about 2 to 3 weeks. Then we will check in to see if its time for a change.

"Life is like photography--we develop from the negatives." --Pitbull, rapper/singer

Our class has 32 students, 23 of whom are boys. Approximately half are Gr. 7, the other half Gr. 8. We all come to our class with different abilities and talents, histories, interests, preferences, social groups and 'smarts'. 

Our greatest challenge has been gelling as a community. There are many bodies, many voices.  There are differences in opinion, backgrounds, abilities. We've different preferences of who we'd like to sit with, external elements we wish we could control (bigger room, less people, specific people to talk or not talk to, more girls, less boys, the list goes on for each individual...).

Today, we learned that we are a community.  We learned that there are some things we cannot control (we are not getting a new room, the student list is not changing). We leanred that there are some things we can control. We can contribute our ideas to the class. We can make known our.

We each control the tone we bring to the class.  If we want it to be less noisy, then we must each make less noise. If we want a place where we all belong, then we need to nurture a sense of inclusion with others within ourselves.

We will be changing up the seating on a bi weekly basis. Students . Everyone is expected to work and talk with everyone else.

I commit to creating a positive classroom community and to being part of the solution