"A" day, which meant three Literature/Speech classes, and my prep period.

Easy day today as there were only three things on the menu:

1) Pass back their esays on The Old Man and the Sea, and inform them that if they fell short on one out of the three essays I would allow them to rewrite it submit it for rescoring.

2) Finish the movie of Old Man and the Sea .

3) Start a new novel, My Brother Sam is Dead. Do some pre-reading activities, which consisted of reviewing some key elemnts and reasons of the American Revolution, and learning some key vocabulary words: Minutemen, Loyalists, Tories, Patriots, Whigs, Continentals, Redcoats, lobsterbacks, munitions, garrison, stockade -- stuff like that.

We will start reading the novel next class (Wednesday).

So all three classes were easy-going today. I spent my prep period writing up a list of expository speech topics, designing a voice inflection exercise for next class, writing up a balnk speech outline sheet for the kids to use (I will allow them to use an outline for their next speech, and I want them to begin to learn how to organize ideas and outline their thoughts), and figuring a way to get around my classroom's internet proxy filter so that a webpage I created for my class can be accessed by my school's computers. Took me a while to figure out how to get around the proxy filter (disable it, really), but once I figured it out it was very easy to do on all the browsers. My class webpage is on geocities, and the proxy filter doesn't allow pages on geocites to come through. Maybe one of these days I will take the time to move my page onto the school's server... but that is a lot of unecessary trouble, as far as I am concerned, and something which would take an inordinate amount of time -- free time which I simply do not have.

Wednesday October 13, 1999

"A" day, which meant three Literature/Speech classes (and my prep, thank goodness!). Two things on the menu today:

1) Voice inflection exercise

2) Assign an expository speech which we will do next Thursday -- I gave them a list of topics.

3) Start a new novel: My Brother Sam is Dead

The voice exercise was particularly fun. It is also a vitally important lesson, as nothing is more disastrous for a speech than a poor use of your voice. If you don't sound interested in what your talking about then your audience won't be interested. The audience is like a mirror; it reflects back to you what you project, and your voice is the primary tool that projects your quality of energy.

What I did was present several phrases which the kids had to say in different contexts. That is, they had to say the same phrase in different ways to project different meanings. I used some phrases designed to especially challenge my 13-14 year old students:

"Oh Baby" -- one of my classes actually said this phrase 17 different ways! Of course a lot of time was spent listening to the boys all practice saying it in a sexual context -- something which they just couldn't resist (so typical of 8th graders).

"I love you" -- the four contexts I put to them were:

- I don't ever want you to doubt it

- If you force me to say it I will

- I love you, but not I the way you want me to

- How could you treat me this way?!

"Shut up" -- the contexts they had to use were:

- flirtatious

- I don't believe you

- very annoyed

We did a few others too which were a little easier for them, but those above were the challenging ones that really forced them to stretch themselves and play with their voice. This lesson was extremely effective and really fun, but the problem was that the boys want to dominate the emotional atmosphere in the room. It was a real challenge for me to reign in their energy and boisterousness to give the girls the space to participate equally. Of course, the girls have been socialized to allow the boys to take up most of the emotional space in the room, so this was a task I wasn't totally effective in accomplishing.

After playing around a bit with our voices and the phrases, I would pick a student to say phrases and have the class guess which context it was said in. This forced the kids to be clear and effective with their voice inflection. It was funny to see the shyest kids physically try to hide from my view in the hope that I wouldn't pick on them. One girl was physically hiding her face behind her notebook hoping that I wouldn't make eye contact and pick her.

I don't have my list of topics at hand, but I tried to create topics that would be doable without any research, as this is their first try at a real speech. We are also going to video tape all of their speeches -- partly because it is a promotion requirement that they have examples of two speeches they did (one expository and one persuasive) in their portfolio, and partly to use them to review their performances so they have a good tool to see how they can improve next time-- so I wanted to make it fairly easy for them to put together this speech. Two of the eleven topics I gave them were about teachers: "What are the three most annoying qualities of middle school teachers?" and "What are three best qualities of middle school teachers?" I also designed a more difficult topic which deals with a variety of metaphors: "My school is like a _______________?" (mental straight jacket; an orchestra; a jail; a zoo; a jungle; an assembly line -- and about ten other choices). This was for the more "deep thinkers" in the class.

I also gave them a blank outline sheet with space for an introduction, three main points and examples/details for each, and a conclusion. Organizing and supporting their thoughts in an effective way is a key skill for 8th graders, one that I concentrate heavily on in all four classes. This will be their first real experience with an official outline in any of my classes, and they must present a completed outline before I will allow them to give their speech.

Next, we started reading our new novel, one that ties in nicely with our study of the American Revolution in History class: My Brother Sam is Dead. I read aloud to them for the first 15 or so pages, and you never heard anybody be more dramatic in a reading in your life! I believe my reading was simply masterful and had them rivited with intense interest in this story after just a few paragraphs. I know they have had stories read to them before in school, but I took it to a dramaticlly intense theatrical level just because I know they haven't experienced that before, and because I knew it would really excite their interest. And it did; I had about 20 kids ask me to borrow a copy after class so they could read it at home that night. I couldn't have asked for more -- except a stronger voice...after three classes it was about dead.

Thursday October 14, 1999

"B" day, which means Block classes -- two of them. Routine day in Language Arts: we read some of the students' vocabulary stories, then took a quiz on this week's vocabulary list. As has been the case all year so far, almost every student wrote up pretty good stories -- they enjoy having them read aloud for the class -- and did very well on the quiz. Only a couple kids who don't ever study didn't do well...one important lesson they learn in my classes is that actual studying pays off.

History class was fun because I showed episode two of "Roots." Kunta Kinte. Remember that? We had just finished reading about the institution of slavery in the colonies, typical features of a slave's life, reasons why they replaced indentured servants as labor, the Triangular Trade, Middle Passage, slave auctions, etc., and this episode of Roots was a perfect video to show all that. I will continue with the video next class and show episode three -- that is where he learns to speak English, begins to work in the fields, and first tries to run away. Very dramatic and the kids really enjoy it. And it is truly educational. In years past many of my students have rented the whole series at a video store and watched the rest of it at home.

This is the first year, surprisingly, that nobody recognized the actor who plays Kunta Kinte. He has been a host of "Reading Rainbow" on PBS I recent years, and usually many of the kids recognize him from there. But I guess none of this year's students grew up watching Reading Rainbow. They know all know who MTV's Daisy Fuentes is though....

Friday October 15, 1999

Assembly Schedule today, so had shorter classes. "A" day which meant Literature/Speech class - three of 'em.

Two things on the schedule: A lesson on the eight different types of speech introductions, and continue reading My Brother Sam is Dead and finish the chapter one assignments. We spent all class on the speech lesson, so MBSD got put off 'till next week.

I taught them many different ways to do a good speech introduction: tell a story, create suspense, rhetorical question, humor, reference to occasion, common ground, and some more. I taught them through using some lively examples I have accumulated. Those example illustrate clearly which ones are the most effective (stories) and which ones work best for different occasions and audiences.

Then we compiled a list of 30 of the most boring speech topics we could think of. Listed them on the overhead. had some really boring ones e.g., burned out exit lights, life of a slug, a can of paint. Then I had the students team up with a partner, pick one of the topics, and then create an interesting, attention-grabbing introduction for their topic using one of the methods I had just taught them. Then they performed them for the class. It was a lot of fun, and I believe it was effective because they now know that if they can create a halfway interesting intro for such a boring topic, they can surely create a very good intro for their speeches.

I believe the students are now ready for their first real speech, which they will deliver on Thursday. If you look at the speech scoring guide for 8th graders, you can see that they don't have to reach perfection; the benchmarks are still rather lax at this grade. But I have given the students lessons in gestures, voice quality, introductions, required them to outline their speech, and they have had some lessons in my Language Arts class about effective use of language (similes, creating vivid word pictures with adjectives), and I have given them topics that should be doable for them and halfway interesting (important for me because I will listen to them all day long!), so I think they are ready for their first attempt. Will have to wait 'till Thursday to see how well they do --- and the video camera will be running, so the pressure is on!

End of Week 3.....