9-18-12

As today’s opening activity, identify (i.e., name) the genre of each song being played. (It’s the same song every time, but each version is a different genre.)

We’ll follow with book talks to familiarize you with a range of YA novels.

Reading Journal: Writing for yourself – thoughts and ideas you might use.

Book Talk: “As if” talking to students. Goal is to entice listeners to read the book. One-two minutes max. (It’s OK to read a little.)

Book Review: Audience is colleagues; “teacher talk” is appropriate. Goal is to help readers decide when/whether/how to use

book. Review is posted online for anybody interested in reading it.

Leftover from last week:

• Achievement Gap

• One-Page Book Reviews

• Book Flood

Readicide Review

Quickwrite in response to this passage from Readicide, p 59:

“[This is] what has gone wrong in our schools: the creation of readicide through intensive overanalysis of literature and nonfiction. Young readers are drowning in a sea of sticky notes, marginalia, and double-entry journals, and as a result, their love of reading is being killed in the one place where the nourishment of a reading habit should be occurring—in school.”

Choose ONE SENTENCE from your quickwriteto read aloud for our “waterfall of ideas.”

Flow - “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it … for the sheer sake of doing it” (61).

Achieving “flow” in the classroom: Can we?How can we?Should we?

TooMUCH

Instruction

Too LITTLE

InstructionStart with plenty of help – or, at least, plenty of help available – then decrease level of intervention until students can function independently.

Other metaphors: Finding the Sweet Spot,

Moving from the guided tour to the budget tour

Framing: providing necessary background knowledge

Teaching students to re-read

Big chunk / Little chunk

Strategies good readers use (pp 103-106)

HOW? (How much is enough? How do we “let go”? Then what?)

Variety: Lots of strategies; lots of choices.

Multiple methods:

Whole-class novel

Book clubs

SSR

Multiple responses:

Written word

Spoken wordArtifactDramaMusicVideo

You don’t have to doevery activity forevery book!

What makes a fire burnis space between the logs,a breathing space.Too much of a good thing,too many logspacked in too tightcan douse the flamesalmost as surelyas a pail of water would.

So building firesrequires attentionto the spaces in between,as much as to the wood.

When we are able to buildopen spaces in the same waywe have learnedto pile on the logs,then we can come to see howit is fuel, and absence of the fueltogether, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a loglightly from time to time.A fire growssimply because the space is there,with openings in which the flamethat knows just how it wants to burn can find its way.

(Teaching with Fire, ed. by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner)

Fireby Judy Brown

“It is important to note what the students in [the McQuillan] study did not get. They didn’t get worksheets. They didn’t get points. They didn’t get sticky notes to place in the books. They didn’t get book report forms. They didn’t get grades. They were simply given good books and time to read them.” (74)

“Numerous studies have found the most powerful motivator that schools can offer to build lifelong readers is to provide students with time in the school day for free and voluntary reading (FVR).” (75)

Some final (for now) Readicide quotes:

Would you let your students read this book?

If so, which students?

In either case, WHY?

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John Green says it is “definitely for high school students and up.” Let’s watch (and listen)…

From o.w.g., after he confronts maura (p. 174):

when things break, it’s not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it’s because a little piece gets lost – the two remaining ends couldn’t fit together even if they want to. The whole shape has changed.

i am never, ever going to be friends with maura again. and the sooner she realized it, the less annoying it’s going to be.

This scene is one example of “loss” in the story. What are some other examples of loss? What does the story say about “loss” (as a theme)?

203/4 – i can’t help it – i’m seeing our apartment through his eyes – our whole lives through his eyes – and it all looks so … shabby. the water stains on the ceiling and the dull-colored rug and the decades old tv. the whole house smells like debt.

Consider the following passages, then comment on the importance of perspective.

244 – tiny: you may not have noticed, but i’m not what you’d call conventionally beautiful. … do you think that there’s any minute in any day when i’m note aware of how big i am? do you think there’s a single minute that goes by when i’m not thinking about how other people see me? even though i have no control whatsoever over that?

245/6 – me: but why me? I mean, what do you see in me? tiny: you have a heart will. you even let I slip out every now and then. I see that in you.

274 – gideon: because you’re my friend, wingnut. Because underneath all that denial, you’re someone who’s deeply, deeply nice.

Read the opening paragraph of Chapter 1, then the opening sentences of Chapter 2.

What do you think of each character? Why? How do the authors’ choices – for example, using dialogue tags and all lower case letters for o.w.g.’s chapters, but following usual conventions for Will Grayson’s chapters – affect your attitude toward each character? How do these choices contribute to the development of each character?

In groups of 2 or 3, discuss some activities to address these standards with WG,WG.

Also for next week, bring your first book club book (“problem novel”) to discuss with your group. As a group, you will discuss what you

might have a book club do with this book.

(I’ll give you about half an hour, so be sure that somebody in the group has some sort of agenda – something to do or discuss.)