Maniac Magee

We are well into our exploration of the novel Maniac Magee, using a modified Literature Circle system. Rather than have the students exclusively lead their own reading groups, they work in groups while under the teacher's direct supervision. The four jobs the students use to inform their responses to their reading are Discussion Director, Summarizer, Illustrator, and Travel Tracer.
     In Cultural Studies the class is transitioning from our focus on individual identity to thinking about groups and communities. The class read the following quotation from Susan Goldsmith's A City Year,

"Communities are not built of friends, or of groups with similar styles and tastes, or even of people who like and understand each other. They are built of people who feel they are part of something that is bigger than themselves: a shared goal or enterprise, like righting a wrong, or building a road, or raising children, or living honorably, or worshiping a god. To build community requires only the ability to see value in others, to look at them and see a potential partner in one’s enterprise."

 Using this quotation as a launching point the students discussed whether they agreed or disagreed with Goldsmith.

Homework: Literature; due Wednesday, November 3rd. Read Part ll of Maniac Magee. Do your Lit Circle Job, and come prepared to discuss the novel.

Class Identity Chart

In Cultural Studies this week the students have been working together to create a class Identity Chart. Some of the categories they have  identified as important categories are gender, likes, dislikes, nationality, ancestry, age, and place where people live.



In Language Arts we have been analyzing sentences from popular novels, in an effort to learn how to understand and compose more complex sentences themselves.


In Writing Workshop we discussed the components that go into making an effective memoir. The students were give a handout entitled, What are questions that memoirists ask?


Homework: Literature: due tomorrow. Come ready to discuss Maniac Magee, from the beginning of the book to the end  of chapter nine. 
Writing Workshop: Answer the questions in the handout Questions Memoirists Ask. Jot down any words, phrases, or images that occur to you as you think about the questions.

Sentence Diagrams.

In Language Arts today we continued our work in grammar, and explored the importance of context when looking at parts of speech.

During our thirty minute Silent Sustained Reading period eleven of our students went down to the Temescal Creek classroom, and were reading buddies for the second graders in that class.

Most of the students were given copies of their new Literature novel, Maniac Magee.


Homework: Language Arts. Due Tuesday, October 18th. Write out the sentence;

_____________ Aden always fences with Carter's old foil.


then rewrite the sentence, putting a time changer in the blank space in order to find the verb, and then diagram the sentence with labels and arrows.

Literature. Due Friday, October 22nd; please try to read up to the end of chapter nine in Maniac Magee. If this is too much for you to read in four days please come to me and let me know. Come to class ready to discuss what you have read.

"We Wear the Masks" part 2

In cultural studies the students completed their own masks, some with a desire to hide, and others with a desire to reveal an essence of how they see themselves. The students then did a silent gallery walk, observing each others' masks and bio-poems. They wrote down their reflections about what they saw, and pondered the question, in relation to their classmates and themselves--Who are we?


Photographs of the masks and poems will soon be posted on this blog.


In Language Arts the class is working different ways of summarizing literature. The students are using the, Sentence, Word, Phrase, thinking routine, and impressionistic journal entries to summarize a work of fiction.


Next week the students will all be given a copy of Maniac Maggee, by Jerry Spinelli, which will be the first novel we will be reading as a class this year.

Book Covers Galore!

Two versions of Stargirl.

For their summer reading project the students got together in groups and created their own book covers of works they had read. The three books they focused on were The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis; Tangerine, by Edward Bloor, and Stargirl, by Jerry Spenelli. Apart from designing and creating the cover, the students were also responsible for writing blurbs about the books on the back cover.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and another version of Stargirl.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Tangerine.

The very popular Stargirl gets another cover.

"We Wear The Masks."

The sixth graders started Cultural Studies today watching a short video on masks, identity and world culture. We then did a quick reading of Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, "We Wear The Mask." This started us on a conversations on what are some of the purposes of masks. What do masks hide? What do they reveal? The students were then asked to look over their bio-poems, consider some of their thoughts about their own identity, and then create masks of their own. This work will be finished tomorrow in class.
Any student who has not yet turned in a bio-poem needs to do so.

In Language Arts we continued discussing what makes for a good question in a Lit Circle discussion. We looked at differences between a closed question, and an open question, between a fact based question, and a value based question. Tomorrow we will explore strategies to help students summarize material that has been read.


Homework: Cultural Studies. Due Wednesday, October 6th.  Students should finish their Mask-Making worksheet.
Reading: Read for thirty minutes. Remember to make an entry in you reading log.
Tardy Homework: Students who have completed their bio-poems, or did not complete yesterday's language arts homework should do.

Introduction to Literature Circle "Jobs."

Today in Language Arts the class was introduced to some of the jobs sometimes used in Literature Circles.


As a class we began reading, "Chura and Marwe," an African folktale. Using the job of Discussion Director as a prism while we read, the students were asked to underline any words they found unfamiliar or significant. They were also asked to make a note of any questions or comments they had while reading. Throughout our group-reading of the folktale we stopped periodically to discuss questions that students had discovered. The questions ranged from the fact based, to the value based. There were questions about the content of story as well as the style of the language. 


We also looked at the Lit Circle job of Illustrator. The students were asked to draw a sketch of something about the story that had caught their attention. The students then shared their drawings with a partner, and discussed how the illustrations gave them insights into the story. Some students mentioned that sketching was an excellent way for them to gain intellectual entry into a piece of literature.


Homework: Due Tuesday, October 4th. Please finish reading "Chura and Marwe." Bring in two questions you have from your reading in order to add to the class discussion. This counts as your home reading.