Oral Book Reviews in 2008!

We'll welcome the new year with a series of oral book reviews based on biographies / autobiographies / memoirs that each 8th grader began reading ten days ago and will probably finish in the down times during break. Students were encouraged to think of someone - basically anyone - who particularly piques their interest and then seek out a biography about that person. Interests ranged from Coco Chanel to Marilyn Manson to Eleanor Roosevelt to Stanley Tookie Williams...and more. When we reconvene in 2008, we'll share our new-found "friends" through a rather formal oral book review format that trains us in the art and ability to stand and deliver in a stylized, choreographed manner. The reviewer will begin with a riveting passage from her book, then will explain its meaning before introducing us to her title and author. Before completing her presentation, she'll explain what lessons she learned from reading about another's life, what the strengths of her author were, and what award she'd assign the book, were it up to her. In this manner, we'll be introduced to thirty-five people of note and will experience the vicarious pleasure of reading of others' exploits! Can you tell that biography is one of my favorite genres?

Eighth Graders: I've posted the individual "book review appointments" on my core's hot pink blog - just in case you've forgotten your sign-up time. Happy Reading!!

Thank You

Thank you to everyone for your well wishes. Today's send off was more than I ever hoped for and certainly made the day very special for me.

And a special thank you to the two best teaching partners a super science girl could ever hope to have! Bert and Sally have made my time at SGS the best it could possibly be - both professionally and personally. They are stellar...and that has the guarantee of an astrophysicist!

Best wishes to you all in 2008! I hope we keep in touch and I'll see you certainly at future 8th grade events and, of course, graduation.
-MM

So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye...

...to our own Mary Margaret. Tomorrow marks our last day together as MM takes off on her next professional adventure as the Cybercamp Goddess for Giant Campus! Their gain is definitely our loss, one which we'll only begin to truly calculate as we seek to greet the new year 2008 without MM in our daily sphere. We will celebrate our time together at lunch with a "surprise" potluck organized by a trusty team of 8th grade elves. The girls were impressive in their last minute organizational feats...there's even going to be live entertainment with an original song reminiscent of the genre Phoebe of "Friends" fame used to create! I'd quote the refrain but a) it's top secret and b) it's profane!! But in my world, if it's funny enough, you can get away with pretty much anything...and this is funny!!

Back to being sad and serious though. I wanted to take a moment to formally thank MM for all she has done to make SGS the vibrant, meaningful, interesting learning environment it is for all of us - students and teaching partners alike. In all my years of teaching (32 at last count) I've known a handful of excellent pedagogues, and MM makes the short list. The past ten years that I've spent orbiting in MM's sphere have been nothing short of delightful, and I'm grateful for every single minute.

Here's to our countless shared memories...from four day lunch pails to comma cracks and more! To quote one of my more favorite student "sweatshop sentences," MM's departure is "the icing on my cake of sadness!" See ya partner!

The Long and Winding Road...

...towards writing competency continues in 8th grade. (As does the ever-encouraged push towards personal organization! We'll get there yet!) 8th graders have been hopping with multiple writing assignments in process at the same time. Much like juggling, the effort required no small amount of focus and attention to detail as well as deadlines on our students' parts in order not to get caught with several writing pieces on their desktop (versus mine) at once. In the past several weeks, we've wound up the Significant Adult Reflection, wrote a Literary Letter to a favorite author in hopes of winning the national prize of $10,000 for our 8th Grade Library, and created our High School Essays for our upcoming High School Application packets. Each writing assignment was put through the multi-draft writing process (Rough Draft/ Editing Guide/Revised Rough Draft/ Final Draft.) On Tuesday we "sentence sweat-shopped" the problem sentences from our High School Essays and are in the process of generating the final draft (due on Friday.) We will mail our Literary Letters away on that day as well.

With regards to organization - both personal and academic, we discussed systems that work for us at our Wednesday morning 8th grade community meeting. Here are some of the excellent suggestions from individual 8th graders:

• Make good use of class time
• Keep a running list of your "open" assignments and refer to it often
• Prioritize: plan ahead and set your own internal deadlines
• Make sure your binder is well-organized: clean it out regularly; store old assignments elsewhere
• Develop a personal system for regularly checking the teachers' blogs for assignments and updates
• Use your file drawer effectively to keep assignments in order
• Put your personal schedule on the iGoogle calendar account that Bert helped set up so that it interfaces effectively with our school schedule and assignments
• Use the calendar and "alarm" in your cell phone to remind you of upcoming assignments
• FOLLOW THROUGH ON YOUR ORGANIZATION PLAN!

Per usual, I was completely impressed by the collective wisdom of our 8th grade community!

Gramma Sally's Sentence Sweat Shop!

Recently our 8th graders were introduced to “sentence sweat shop” where problematical sentences from the Significant Adult RRDs (revised rough drafts) were ferreted out, analyzed and edited by the class and then by peer editors for both grammatical issues and clarity of thought as well as expression.

Here's the drill:

1. I highlight sentences with issues as I edit the RRDs. Typically, this amounts to 3-10 sentences per student. I use the traffic light approach: A green sentence means: Go girl! (ie it highlights a particularly excellent sentence...these are RARE!) A yellow sentence indicates caution: awkward, inept, confusing. A red (or more truthfully, hot pink) sentence screams: STOP! These are usually fragments or sentences with such extreme issues that they must be reworked in order to proceed.

2. I then turn the yellow sentences into sentence strips which three different peer editors then rewrite/rework. This is where the sweat - both literal and metaphorical - comes in. Students sit at tables with piles of scratch paper and attack these problematical sentences. They attach a given sentence to the top of a page, then try to rewrite it, conferring with the author if necessary. Once a given student has taken a run at the sentence, she passes it to the next student until the problem sentence has been reworked at least three times.

3. The corrected/edited strips are then given back to the author who is free to borrow any part or all of the suggestions her editors have offered. In this way, the author has multiple choices for editorial improvement as she works towards a new and vastly improved Final Draft (FD)

Needless to say, this is a time-consuming, arduous process. But...and...it works! We will be applying this method to our High School Essays which are currently in the peer editor stage. The most amazing thing: many of our girls admit to actually enjoying "sentence sweat shop!" Go figure!