Week 1--Post RCWP Teaching

I am so excited to finally get to see how my teaching has transformed since the RCWP! I am proud to say that we are using the Letters to the Next President idea in 7th grade. Many of my kids expressed delight in the idea of actually writing the President. Here's the lowdown. Most of my kids are too young to participate in the contest, so instead of entering, we are going to come back to this piece whenever we can over the next few months to revise and clarify the letters. My plan is to send them out as soon as the President is inaugurated--all 90 letters full of rich, wonderful voices expressing good wishes, concerns, and hopes from citizens too young to vote.
The dual goals of this piece are unique too--as we mine ideas, conference, and share, students will learn about each other in (ideally) valuable, intelligent ways. In the past, I have spent lots of time at the beginning of the year going over norms, expectations, blah, blah, blah. This year I decided to just do that the first two days exclusively, then discuss the expectations as we need them. I am hoping that this will alleviate a lot of the repetition and boredom at the beginning of the year (for both the kiddos and myself). It will also give me a way to model writing for a purpose and the process in general. Because the inauguration is months away, it will allow for them to see how a piece can REALLY grow in rich, meaningful ways over the course of time (and many revisions).

Already, they have listed things such as alternative energy, mental health, building strong families, and major economic issues. I imagine I'll post some--maybe through podcasting. My guess is that the kids will pay more attention to the presidential race now that they have a role in it. I also see this as a way to use the critical literacy questions to examine community opinions, campaign ads, and media pieces of the candidates. Of course, this is in addition to preparing for the MEAP and our regularly scheduled curricula!

I thought about my fellow TC's a lot this week. How did your first week go??

PS--Two things I am attuned to since the RCWP:
1. I take note of names I like for characters. I have two students that have given me permission to use theirs someday--Jack Lindgren and Levi Dunn. Neat, huh?
2. Good, true, funny, unbelievable quotes that stick with me. Try these, "No, you can't use the drumstick to clean your ear out," or "Stephen, you can't have the Lazyboy and the fan!" The first one is obviously one I said to a new kid who brought the wrong tools to English, and the second I said to a boy who was sitting in our "fancy" chair, hogging the fan on our extremely hot 2nd day of school. The one that is not something forced out of me is WAY better(said with 100% sincerity), "Mrs. Frost, how much of my homework can my mom do for your class?"