Sharing my Favorite Things: Reading and Snacks

This week we had our book club for class. As one of our last activities we have book club, an opportunity to share the book we most enjoyed this semester and eat! As snacks go, ours was tasty, but pretty standard. I can't wait to read everyone's blogs this week as one of our topics is the snack we would like to share with out book. This isn't always possible in the middle of the afternoon at school - soup or elephant ears would be tricky to prepare and serve, so we are letting our imaginations enjoy our snacks today.

I chose to share the book Rhythm and Resistance: Teaching Poetry for Social Justice by Linda Christensen. I liked the opportunity to pull some poetry into our class work and Christensen offers a clear plan for me to follow.

This image is my graphic organizer of Rhythm and Reisitance. I made it at mindmeister.com

Love mindmeister, but it takes time to learn.





We were each asked to select one section of our book to share at club, and since I am still enjoying the poems for two voices (seriously, this is powerful voice!), I chose the poem "Two YoungWomen" by Deidre Barry

I’m 18, and years older than that. 
I’m 18, and I can’t believe I’m that old.

I get up before sunrise, because I have to be at work.
I get up at 6, because I need time to do my hair and makeup before school.

I walk two miles to work, the blisters on my feet open from wear. 
I drive to school, and walk carefully, because I need to keep my shoes clean.

I spend my day inside a factory, with hundreds of other girls, unable to take breaks, and unable to leave. 
I spend my day in classes, wanting only to get out.

I would give anything to go to school, to learn, to be able to get somewhere in life. 
I would give anything to be done with school. Who cares anyway?

I think this poem will give my students both points of view. I especially appreciated that Barry didn't sound judgmental; she simply presents the two lives as they are. Barry maintains a respectful tone and selected words and phrases that balance the two lives presented. This is one of the poems from the book I plan to use with my class on social justice next year.

If I were sharing this book in a more formal book club, I would need a food item that helps us connect to the character or theme. Early in the book I found myself smiling over the "I am From..." poems. On page 11 is a poem by Oretha Storey that includes these lines:

I am from chocolate cake and deviled

eggs that made afternoon snacks just right.

(complete poem found at Rethinking Schools)

Since I love both chocolate cake and deviled eggs, this would be my snack offering! Since I can't feed you through the Internet, I shall simply feed your imagination with the recipes I have selected for these goodies.

Thanks for spending this term with us!

Coca-Cola Chocolate Cake (source: Brown eyed Baker)

A classic Coca-Cola Cake - supremely moist chocolate sheet cake with a boiled chocolate frosting.

Brown eyed Baker

Ingredients:

For the Cake:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 (12-ounce) can cola
1 cup unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 eggs
½ cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Frosting:
1 (12-ounce) can cola
½ cup salted butter, cut into small cubes
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
4 cups powdered sugar, sifted

Directions:

1. Make the Cake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.

3. In a small saucepan, stir together the cola, butter and cocoa powder over medium-high heat and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Pour into the flour mixture and stir with a rubber spatula until moistened.

4. In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk and vanilla until blended. Add to the batter, whisking constantly.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes.

6. Make the Frosting: About 15 minutes before the cake is finished, begin the frosting. In a small saucepan, bring the cola to a boil over high heat and cook until the liquid is reduced to ½ cup, about 12 to 15 minutes. Stir in the butter and cocoa powder until the butter is melted, then remove from the heat. Add the powdered sugar about 1 cup at a time, whisking until smooth. Pour immediately over the hot cake in an even layer. Allow the cake to cool to room temperature before serving. Leftovers should be covered and stored at room temperature or in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.

For the deviled eggs, there are dozens of recipes, but if you need step-by-step directions, I recommend SimplyRecipes.

Source: flickr

Next week's plan: Rebels by Accident by Patricia Dunn. Hayley recommended this book to me. Her topic for the term was Danger (interesting!), and I am ready for some fiction, so I grabbed it. I am almost half-way through it, so I will finish it as we finish the term.

Finally! Real Reading - at least for me.

This week I am discussing three books I have read that aren't exactly my topic, but my topic lead me to these books. It was nice to change from adult nonfiction/ teaching materials to some "real" reading occasionally. It helped me get through the six weeks, because I am telling you, those teaching books can get pretty dry.

The View for Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg (upper elementary)

Image Source

            I love Konigsburg. The first book I read by her was Silent to the Bone. Dang. I was hooked. Then I read The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World. I seriously wondered how I could have missed her all my life. I have a friend who retired from teaching middle school, and she was always trying to get me to read A View from Saturday, but I never picked it up. Fate finally interfered last week. I read a lesson plan in The Book Whisperer, remembered how much my friend liked the book, and then found the book at a used book sale for 25 cents. Some times you simply have to answer to the gods, and this was one of those times. I really liked the book - not as much as Bone or Mysterious Edge, but it was worth reading!

Drowned City by Don Brown (middle school)

Image Source

            Great graphic novel! I have Brown's graphic novel The Great American Dust Bowl, and I really respect the powerful merging of the text and the images. Drowned City did not disappoint me. I visited New Orleans for the first time in April of 2005. I fell in love with the city that gave us Louie Armstrong and shrimp Po' Boys. Then in August of that same year I stared at the television as I watched a city I couldn't wait to get back to wash into horror and desperation. My heart broke for the people who had to live through Hurricane Katrina. Most of my students only know the stories of Katrina from news clips or anniversary stories. Drowned City provides an excellent opportunity to bring them closer to the tragedy that the people of New Orleans faced and are still, ten years later, trying to recover from.

Little Bird's Bad Words by Jacob Grant (primary or pre-school)

Image Source

            Little Bird has learned a new word - a word that does not impress the adults in his life. The images of this children's picture book are clean and entertaining. The funny way the author lets us know Little Bird hassaid an inappropriate word without actually saying the word made me laugh.Little Bird must learn not to use words that others find offensive - but as any elementary school teacher can tell you - the lesson must be repeated as Worm picks up the word and starts to use it.

Next week: book club! I will share a selection from The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller.

Poetry Week!

Image Source

Okay I admit I was a little unsure of where I would find a poem about learning. I should not have been; there are many, many poems about learning! I did narrow my choices down quickly when I found a book on teaching poetry in conjunction with teaching social justice. I didn't go looking at libraries -- I ordered it right away. Rhythm and Resistance: Teaching Poetry for Social Justice, edited by Linda Christensen and Dyan Watson was the perfect fit for my current topic and a class I am planning for next year.

There are many poems I could have pulled from the book, but on page 112 is a small section on poems for two voices. I love poems for two voices. I love having the sound of one voice telling a story and another telling a different point of view, woven into the first voice.

The following lines from the poem "I am a Woman" poem tells the story of two women living in Chile living in 1973, after the overthrow of the government. Unfortunately, I cannot find the author of the poem. It wasn't given in the book, and although I did find the poem listed several times on the Internet, the author is listed as "anonymous." This poem would be shelved in the genre of historical fiction. If we could trace the author, and find that these events actually happened to two specific people, then we could move it to political history in nonfiction.

I find the repeating sounds of the poem, the rhythm, to be useful in seeing the reflection of the feelings of the two women. I also liked how the mood switched with every line, the first line always reflects loss, and the second line always reflects hope. The line, "whose heart was constantly strangled by hunger" was a power piece of personification. It is difficult to be a kind and loving father when a man feels he cannot feed his children. In American history we saw this during the Great Depression; hunger doesn't just starve the body, it starves the soul.

I am a Woman

I am a woman. 
I am a woman. 

I am a woman born of a woman whose man owned a factory. 

I am a woman born of a woman whose man labored in a factory. 

I am a woman whose man wore silk suits, who constantly watched his weight. 

I am a woman whose man wore tattered clothing, whose heart was constantly strangled by hunger. 

I am a woman who watched two babies grow into beautiful children. 

I am a woman who watched two babies die because there was no milk. 

I am a woman who watched twins grow into popular college students with summers abroad. 

I am a woman who watched three children grow, but with bellies stretched from no food. 

But then there was a man; 

But then there was a man; 

And he talked about the peasants getting richer by my family getting poorer. 

And he told me of days that would be better, and he made the days better. 

We had to eat rice. 

We had rice. 

We had to eat beans! 

We had beans. 

My children were no longer given summer visas to Europe. 

My children no longer cried themselves to sleep. 

And I felt like a peasant. 

And I felt like a woman.

Image Source

If you found the poem interesting, you might find the idea of "white privilege" worth reading about. The concept of white privilege is based on the idea that so often those with advantages are simply unaware of the disadvantages other race. It isn't always a case of not caring, it is a case of not recognizing. This is a link to a completely unscientific and simple quiz to get you thinking about the concept of white privilege.

Next week: Last week on topic! I will be finishing The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller.

Surfing the Web for new Ways to Learn

All about websites! This week we read websites regarding our topics. We all started with an article from Wikipedia (love Wikipedia!) and then went in search of two additional websites to help us deepen our understanding of our topics. Here is what I discovered while surfing the web this week.

Image source: Wikipedia

"Learning Styles" from Wikipedia

As expected, full of very educated opinions on learning styles. Also boring. This web page did not help me much, so to be honest, I moved on.

"The Differentiator"

Image source: http://moodle.nptcgroup.ac.uk

I thought "The Differentiator" was the coolest web page I had seen in a long time. This web page allows students to design projects based on his or her own strengths. I really thought this would be a great tool for my students to use. I played with it several ways and generated many project statements. I just knew my students would appreciate the opportunity to design their own projects. Wrong. Several of them simply decided to write an essay because it was easier. I wanted my students to get excited about the work they were doing, not just have a "get it done and over with" attitude. I still might find a way to use it, but what I am doing now doesn't seem to be helping my students learn. Useful for forcing me to recognize the various learning styles of my students, but not really useful for my students.

 

"Facing History and Ourselves: Teaching Strategies"

Image source: https://www.facinghistory.org/

Mission Statement: Facing History and Ourselves is an international educational and professional development organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry.

By studying the historical development of the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, students make the essential connection between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives.

I first heard of Facing History last spring when I was finishing a project with the Library of Congress. FHAO had just launched a set of lesson plans for To Kill a Mockingbird. Since I teach this novel twice a year, I thought I should look over the lessons. I was amazed. These were lessons that didn't ask students to crank out the usual essays or the standard multiple choice questions, these were lessons that asked students to read a scene in the book, then look at the history of racism in our world, then actually talk about it. I teach a unit on the Civil Rights Movement every year. A friend asked me last winter if I thought I was changing the thinking of my mostly-white students. I stated that, no, I didn't think I was, but I did hope that when they are confronted with racism, they recognize it. I want them to acknowledge it. Facing History's perspective on Mockingbird gives me the opportunity to do just that.  Most useful website I have use in, well, maybe ever.

Teacher Tech

Image source: Teacher Tech

"Teacher Tech" is actually a blog, not a website. It is written by Alice Keeler, author of 50 Things You Can Do With Google Classroom. Google Classroom is now the portal my school is using to push out online assignments, I figured I should learn it. I read the book literally in about an hour. There was one tip that I felt I had completely missed in my own explorations of GC, but at the end of the book, Keeler's blog was mentioned. I have found the blog far more useful than the book. I don't read it every week, but I do check it every so often, skip some posts, share some posts, and really study a few. So I guess the most valuable part of the book was the blog! Useful for giving me ideas and new tips for making the most of the Google Classroom (as limited as it is).

My plan for next week: The Book Whisperer (finally, no more putting it off) and poetry! I am planning to read Rhythm and Resistence: Teaching Poetry for Social Justice.