Final journal reflection

Students have finished reading the novel, created a project related to what they learned in the book, and presented their ideas to the class. There were three groups, each containing two students. Therefore, three projects were planned. The students came up with some wonderful ideas including diversity commercials on the school-wide morning announcements, kindness posters to be displayed around the school, and trying to line-up speakers from a variety of cultures to share their stories during our language arts class. I thought that the students did a great job of taking the themes presented in the novel and relating them to real world experiences. I have learned that my students are very interested in cultures other than their own. I think that reading this novel and developing this project has allowed my students to become more culturally sensitive.

I had my students fill out an reflection after presenting their projects. Students thought that the project was an important piece of reading the novel. Many students shared in their reflections that simply reading the novel would not have been enough. I thought it was great to see the students taking this kind of ownership in their learning.

I plan to implement this project next year. I am not sold on my hook...I think I can make it better. That is something I will work on before next year. I would also like to add a research piece to the project. For example, I am thinking about having the students research information related to their own culture before reading the novel.

Student Projects: Days 1-3

Students are coming up with some great ideas about how to share what they learned through reading the book with other students. Students are working with a partner (so there are three groups) as to how they can plant their own seeds of community here at CBE. These are the ideas that have been discussed so far:

• Bulletin board/sings around the school that have quotes or interesting thoughts about the themes presented in the book.


• "Commercials" on the morning announcements that are viewed by all classes each morning.


• Bringing in speakers from other countries to share their stories. (This actually happens in the SEED class for teachers. I think it would be great for students to hear these speakers as well.)


• Starting a "Unity in Diversity" club at school. Not sure what this club would do yet...


• Having students study their own cultures and create a poem about what is important to them. These could be displayed in the building and represent many cultures.

These are a few of the ideas that the groups have been throwing around, so to speak. I think that they are really making real-world connections to the topics discussed in the book. They have two more days to prepare, and then they will share their ideas with the class and implement their idea some time before the end of the second quarter of school. I have decided to grade their plan and presentation. I will not formerly grade the implementation.

Day 11 and 12

Yesterday, the students finished the novel. Today, we discussed themes that emerged from the book. Some of them were brought up in previous discussions, such as stereotypes and ignorance. Students used their lists of highly descriptive words as well as the novel to come up with themes. The following ideas were discussed: tolerance, diversity, prejudice, judgemental, pessimistic, ambition, persistence. Every time a new idea came up, I simply asked, "Why do you think this is a theme present in the novel? Give me evidence." I did not tell the students they were right or wrong. By the end of class, the students decided that some themes were more prevalent than others. Their assignment for the night is to write about the themes they think are most important from the book. I asked them to think about what the author would want his readers to learn from the novel. This will also be their last blog to their teacher-partners.



I don't know if I will do this blogging with my students in the future. In some ways, I've really liked it. It very much supports inquiry learning, which is what I was going for with this project. The teachers provide the students with good questions and the students also practice generating good questions. I'm just not sure if it is totally necessary. I think I could have provided all of the scaffolding for my students instead of the teacher partners. It was neat to have some inter-generational conversations take place though. I guess I'm still undecided about the effectiveness.



I have been using the critical thinking rubric to grade students writing/blogging. It has worked well for me. It is nice to have a set list of criteria to look for in the students' writing. Some students can be great writers, but lack critical thinking skills in their writing. This writing rubric has helped me to understand both the reading and the writing process and how they are connected.



Tomorrow, students will begin to plan their own seed projects where they will design a plan to plant a seed of change within their own community. I hope that students will be able to see that a little kindness/charity can go a long way. I'll be interested to see what they come up with. I've been encouraging students to think about this project throughout the reading of the novel. There are many ideas in the book (such as the themes discussed above) that might help them in designing their own projects.

Day 10

Today, we picked up where we left off with our discussion about ignorance. The students seemed to agree that this was a prominent theme in the novel.

During class, I looked over the students' written responses. Their writing has really improved since started to required them to create a rough draft to highlight their own ideas and evidence from the book. I decided that I would give the students a choice of creating the rough drafts to highlight; however, I told them that I expect quality writing. If highlighting really helps them, then they should continue a while longer with that procedure. Those students that already understand can now skip that procedure.

Days 8 & 9

Chapters 9 and 10 were read and discussed. As usual, students followed our regular procedure. My role in all discussions has been that of a facilitator. I have never told students the answers to their questions. Instead, I would pose another question that might help guide them toward the answer. I have tried to make the conversations very inquiry-based. I think that this has helped to strengthen my students reading skills. They are learning to read between the lines to infer the author's message.



As a short review, I had the students look back at the characters discussed in the novel thus far. I had them create a list of three to five highly descriptive words for each character. "Fluffy" words like nice, caring, etc would not be considered highly descriptive. Some students decided to use a thesaurus. The students came up with some great words to describe the characters; however some students struggled, especially when they tried to use the thesaurus. Two students in particular were choosing very uncommon words that didn't really fit with the story. I sat with these two students to help them get a better idea of choosing highly descriptive words and using a thesaurus. Of course, students had to have evidence from the book to back up their descriptive word choices. I think that this list will eventually help them decipher some of the themes of the novel. At the end of class, we started to have a discussion of what it means to be ignorant, since it was a word that appeared on one of the students' lists. We will pick up with that discussion tomorrow.

Day 7

Students came into class and checked the blog as usual. Then as a class we discussed some of the comments. Today, we read and discussed chapter 8 of the novel. A student brought up how the kids in the novel seem to be good problem solvers. I thought this was a great comment! Kim is the first character introduced in the novel and she is the one who really starts the big change in the community. Also a child came up with a solution to the garden's water problem. This led to a discussion about how many people view today's youth as problem-makers, not problem-solvers. I encouraged them to share this insight with their teacher partners to get an adults perspective of this idea.



Earlier today, I was filling out the Proposal Rubric for this class. One of the pieces on the rubric stated: Assessment standards and tools are discussed, created, and agreed upon. They are used by both teacher and students to judge and report on the quality of their products and performance. For this category, I gave myself a "still developing." Looking back, I wish I would have shared the assessment rubrics that I created for this project with my students before beginning the project. I plan to share the Critical Thinking rubric with my students tomorrow. When it comes time for students to develop their own "seed projects," I will share with them the assessment rubrics that I created and ask for their input.

Day 6

Over the past five days, we have seemed to fall into a routine which is working well. Students come in to class, get a computer, and check out the new posts on the blog. This is followed by a short discussion of the blog. Students comment to one another regarding the ideas they have posted. Then, we read a new chapter from the book.

Today, I read chapter seven aloud to the students. As usually, students then reread the chapter as they took guided notes. While students were silently reading, I worked with the two students that were still having trouble developing good questions. Instead of them reading the chapter silently, I had them take turns reading aloud. This allowed them to verbalize their questions as we read. When everyone had finished this, I had the students go around in a circle and share their questions. We briefly discussed the "juicy" questions together.

Today, I decided to work on creating better written answers. I presented the students with the focus question for the chapter: What does Virgil mean when he says he is mad at his father and also feels sorry for him? I then gave students time to write their answers (I called it a rough draft for their blog.) When students finished writing, I had them grab a highlighter. I asked the students to highlight their own thoughts/inferences in one color and to highlight evidence from the book in another color. This worked really well! Some students found that their answers were made up of exclusively their own thoughts. Other students realized that they had a lot of evidence from the book, but none of their own thoughts. I then told the students that they should try to have a balance of their own ideas and evidence from the book when they construct an answer to the daily focus questions.

A few students already had a good balance of ideas and evidence, but their answers could still be made better. I noticed that a couple of students had all of their ideas at the beginning of the paragraph and all of the evidence at the end of the paragraph. Their writing will improve if they learn to weave the evidence in directly after their own thoughts. This will be something that I watch for over the next few days.