Our Pledge Wall

I forgot to mention that we had a personal pledge for each of our students to sign so that we could celebrate and put them on our "Pledge Wall." This will stay up to remind our GPE students that they have committed to striving for excellence in every step of their GPE journey.

More Ideas for Graduation Project Experience

GPE! I like it, and you're absolutely correct that we need to help our students see it as an experience in their learning journey. I agree that the pledge wall needs to be tactile to be more accessible and visible. I remember the art teacher created a very colorful and inviting goal chart last year for the couple of seniors she was advising. It charted the progress on all the subgoals of the graduation project. She hung it right outside of her classroom so that everyone passing by could see it. Wonder if we could take that idea and run with it?

I've been remembering one of the highlights from Katie Wood Ray's keynote speech last October at the NCETA Conference in Charlotte, NC. She elaborated on the importance of having mentor texts for students to study as they are writing in different genres. Since research papers are still a "relatively newer" genre for our students, we need to find models of research papers for them to study. The question is where? I have some of the collections from last year's sophomores, but the majority are not anywhere near the length our seniors' papers are required to be. I'd like to have models that highlight organizational and framework possibilities such as pro/con; cause/effect; causal analysis; definition; problem/solution and argument. In truth, most papers will have components of several if not all of these organizations, but I do believe that it's important to have students purposely set their papers up with one of these organizations from the beginning. Otherwise, you end up getting a lot of papers that are more "reports" versus research papers. We need to talk about how to get them to understand RE-search as a dialogue where they enter with a voice and discuss with the experts on selected topics. DeSena has an excellent book on this (see http://www.ncte.org/store/books/126267.htm to order a copy which I highly recommend). Last spring, I participated in NCTE's webinar with DeSena. I believe I still have a copy of the archived webinar I can share. She discussed at length that a way to help students avoid plagiarism is to truly understand the differences between research and reports. Afterall, at its foundation, research is for the purpose of answering (a) question(s). Students need to start with generating questions they are trying to answer.

Ok, so here's the challenge: where do we find outstanding research papers that can serve as model or mentor texts for our students? We need a diversity in terms of subject and reading level. I spent some time perusing some of the sources in google scholar, but so many of them are at a very high level. I'm not sure most will be accessible to our students. By the way, we do need to add google scholar to our list of sites to show students. We should go ahead and start building our wiki for this group. We can add resources to it for our students. Speaking of resources, I found this link for teacher resources: http://www.ncte.org/collections/collegeresearch
Although it's geared toward teaching research in the first two years of college, it does appear to have some benefits for us.

Great Collaboration

For me, one of the signs of really great collaboration is the positive energy and optimism I feel when walking away from a formal or informal "session." My head swirls with ideas and seeds planted each time we dialogue. Over the years, many collaborative opportunities have crossed my path (well, maybe a few I zestfully ventured off the path to discover and drag back to the main trail:) and I can honestly say each has taught me lessons. Some have been difficult collaborations while others just flowed with little effort. I always look forward to "talking shop" with Amanda.

Our dialgoue this afternoon focused on incorporating technology into our graduation project group. Our school does not have a graduation project class; rather, every student, grade 9-12, has been assigned to a faculty advisor. Monthly, we will have a block of time where all students will report to their advisor and go over senior project information and skills needed. I think our consensus to approach this as a senior project class (even though sadly we are limited to 30 minutes a month in our formally scheduled blocks) will help the students be tremendously successful. We've decided to introduce students to these tools:

• Delicious bookmarking (great way to tag research sources) which will require each student to have an e-mail. Amanda will set up delicious accounts for the students once we help them set up gmail accounts.
• Google documents (which requires them to have google accounts; thus the decision to go with gmail as opposed to gaggle which our school provides)
• Blogs as a 21st century way to "journal" through their journey in graduation project plus this will give them material to incorporate into their presentation that is sophisticated.
• Setting up a wiki for our group so that we can all collaborate and help each other. One of our pages can be a Celebration page to highlight the accomplishments along the way. We'll have to meet on Monday and determine the information we want from students so that we can develop the form they'll fill out.
• Show students how to sign up for turnitin.com so that they can use those tools in that service to help them effectively paraphrase and avoid plagiarism as well as use the peer review function.
  
• Find a spot for our "pledge wall." Maybe we can use dappleboard.com and post it on the wiki. Hmm.
  

I'm sure we'll be adding to our list as we think of more helpful things such as some tools for choosing paper topics, researching and taking notes and developing strong thesis statements. I know that one of the biggest challenges is getting students to actively read informational text and take effective notes. That can be something we focus on next. My mind is moving faster than my fingers can keep up with which is a good thing. I'm energized! I like our plan to take this graduation project into the 21st Century.

posted by Valerie

Perfect Fit

Lefanim, this word reminds me of an old, familiar pair of shoes. The fit is perfect and it provides a comfort that I think will carry us through our blogging adventure. From the beginning there has been an ease and comfort that has come naturally whenever Valerie and I have conversation about literature, life, and our common passion for teaching. My hope is that all of our blog readers will have the opportunity to be a "fly on the wall" and listen to the lively (sometimes chaotic) dialogue that occurs at the point of lefanim, when the wisdom of the past is coupled with youthful vision.

Conceiving the Possibilities in Language

I guess it goes with the territory of being an English teacher, but I love words and all the vivacious possibilities of creating meaning with language. Lefanim is a Hebrew word with two opposite but paradoxical meanings: "Once upon a time," and "To look to the future." As a teacher with nearly 15 years of teaching experience, my goal is to couple the lessons I've learned with the exciting and cutting-edge ideas of new educator Amanda Spence. The lesson of Lefanim is that we must know and honor our past, our roots, if we are to survive and embrace the changes the future brings in education. Together, Amanda and I will reflect and record our thoughts on all the "stuff" that goes into teaching English language arts.