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.

Day 5

To begin this session, I read aloud chapter six of the novel. As I read, I paused to model the questions that I had as I read. I used a think aloud strategy to model the thinking going on in my head. I tried to focus on higher level questions that require critical thinking. Once or twice, I posed questions that were easily answered in the text. When doing so, I reminded the students that those were not good questions because the answers were right there in the text. They didn't require me to do any real thinking. As I read, I wrote down all my questions. At the end of the chapter, I had the students look back at my list. I asked them, "What makes these good juicy questions?" Students were able to tell me that you had to think to answer the questions. You had to look back at the book to find evidence to answer the questions. I thought this was great!



Also on Friday, I collected my students' guided notes. I was able to see what students are still struggling in regard to character description and questioning. On Monday, I plan to meet individually with two students who are struggling with their guided notes. I think that if these students improve with their guided notes that the quality of their posts on the blog will also increase.



Next week, I plan to turn my attention toward developing good written answers to the focus questions. I plan to model for students how to integrate their own inferences with evidence from the book to create a well constructed paragraph.

Day 4

Today, my students worked on the fifth chapter of the novel. I am still finding that students interest level concerning the novel is high; however some are feeling overwhelmed with the amount of blogging that takes place on a daily basis. For this reason, I am only having them respond to their teacher-partner. They do not need to respond to an additional person through blogging. Instead, I am letting the students verbally respond to other students' posts during class.



Students have improved in regard to describing the characters in the novel. I have asked them to use highly descriptive words to describe the characters, not words like nice, caring, kind, old, etc. Some students decided to use a thesaurus. The trend quickly caught on in the group, so I did a quick little lesson on how to use a thesaurus appropriately.

Now that students have shown improvement with descriptive words, I would like to see an improvement in the quality of questions that they generate. Many students are still posing very dry or superficial questions; however today, one of my students posed a great interpretive question. It was so good, that I decided to use it for the day's focus question instead of the one that I created. Tomorrow, I plan to use a think aloud strategy with my students to model good questions.



Students are still excited to see what their teacher-partners comments are. Many of the teachers are commenting that the students are able to make good inferences based on the information they are reading. The students are getting better at providing evidence, but it is something that I plan to work on after questioning. The teachers are prompting the students to discuss any themes that are emerging in the novel. So far, this has led to discussion on stereotypes.



Tomorrow, I plan to collect my students work to see how their guided notes are looking.

First three days of implementation

Well, I have finally started to implement my engaged learning project! I actually started on Monday of this week. I quickly scribbled some notes over the past few days and now I will paraphrase them.

Day 1:

• Prior to the first day of implementation, my team divided our 65 students into small groups. I only have seven students in my group which is great! I have the chance to give each student some one-on-one attention. Also, each student has a teacher-partner that they will correspond with as they read the book.
• The students played into the hook. The group of students that I have are above grade level and have a love of learning. They felt that it was "cool" that they were going to be able to help other teachers by sharing what they learn through reading the novel Seedfolks.
  
• Together during class, I read the first two chapters of Seedfolks aloud. Students then reread the chapter and took guided notes on a packet that I put together for the novel. Their notes included a short character description, questions/comments about the chapter, as well as vocabulary questions. I'm looking for students to write "juicy" questions (interpretive/evaluative), but for the first day, many of their questions were pretty "dry" or superficial. The students do, however seem to be enjoying the story. They were engaged during the reading and the note taking.


• Next, I posed an interpretive question about the chapters that we read. The students brainstormed ideas to answer the question and located evidence in the book to back up their ideas. It was nice to observe the students sharing their ideas and listening to the ideas of others. I told that students that they did not have to raise their hand to make a comment...we would treat this time more like a book club format. It was hard for students to do this! They kept raising their hands. But after a few minutes, they got the hang of it and took turns speaking. Locating evidence was a bit challenging for some. Some students tried to use their own experiences to back up their ideas instead of evidence from the book.


• Lastly, each student used a laptop computer to post their ideas about the reading to a blog that I set up through the school. The teachers-partners also answered the same question and posted their answers to the blog. After creating the post, each student was to comment to their teacher-partner's post as well as one additional post. Since it takes some time for students to post their blog, read the other posts, and create comments, I've divided the process as follows: First, students post their comment. Then they read the other comments that are posted. At the beginning of the next class period, students read any new posts and post their two comments.

This is the procedure that I have followed for the past three days. It seems to be working well. The students seem to be enjoying the book. Every chapter of the book describes a different character's perspective of the neighborhood that they all live in. Today, one student pointed out that the blog they are creating represent the different perspectives of the book. To some degree this is true! Many students have never blogged before and I can tell that they think it is a fun mode of communication. They are excited about sharing their thoughts and ideas with students as well as teachers. Most teachers have been writing comments back to the students. They can't wait to open the blog and look for comments!

I will be working with my students on the fifth chapter of the book later today. I will then add additional notes to this blog!