Flowers for Algernon - Part I

This is my third year teaching eighth grade (after eight years teaching every possible reading/writing variation of seventh grade we have had). When I left seventh grade, I was teaching writing, and eighth grade is predominantly focused upon reading. One of the biggest issues I have had has been pacing. After two years of trying to manage every listed reading assignment in our curriculum, I threw it all out the window and decided to simply teach - and it is paying off. Unfortunately, there are still requirements. 

One of the eighth grade required readings for eighth graders is the short story "Flowers for Algernon." When I say requirement, I mean requirement. Oops. Missed this for the first two years! Year three, I got this...I think. So here goes. 

Progress report for March 5

• Although my students should pick up on the indirect characterization right away, I am going to start with direct characterization. This will be a short and sweet review to introduce us to Charlie. 
• We will be working on computer annotation skills (Google Drive), starting with some basic underlining/highlighting skills. I am trying to get them away from highlighting everything on the paper. I have been teaching annotation all year, but that has not cut down on the highlighter abuse. 
• Since we will be using Google Drive, we will also work on adding comments to take notes. I have created a sentence stem (slide 3) to guide their reflection of the direct characterization. 
• I am also going to have the kids rewrite the first entry in proper English. Well, as proper as they can make it, I suppose. I haven't quite figured out how to grade this. It might simply be a participation grade for them, but I want them to get some editing practice. 

Progress report for March 6 

• For the second entry, we are switching gears to indirect characterization. I want my students to start putting together what we are learning about Charlie through his writing. 
• Since we have been working on Notice & Note signposts throughout the year, I am going to review Again & Again. With our Again & Again lenses (I am combining the N&N signpost with a text evidence strategy from Falling in Love with Close Reading), we will be looking for patterns in Charlie's thinking that help us understand his traits. 



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• The hard part here is getting them to focus on the text evidence. For example, what does the "rabits foot in my pockit because when I was a kid I always faled tests in school" tell us about  Charlie? (It was really hard to type all of that incorrectly.) Using a modified version of the frame provided in FILWCR, I am going to have the kids write a character traits statement about Charlie.

This is as far as I have gotten so far. Now I have to figure out where to chunk the rest of the text so it doesn't take me until the end of May to teach the entire story. 

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Resources: 

The Giver: Chapter 1

While my Pre-AP students are reading Milkweed, my academic students will be reading The Giver. Last year, I will honestly admit that I did some of my worst teaching with The Giver. I was frustrated with my students. They refused to read outside of class, impeding the lessons I was trying to cover in class. For the most part, we listened to the book and did very little with it. Of course, when I was doing this, my newly-promoted secondary superintendent was brought to my classroom to view some of the finest teaching our school has to offer. (sigh) Not my best moment, but I refuse to let it happen again. 

Prior to beginning the novel, we will be going through our Texas Literacy Initiative vocabulary routine with the word release. Although I know my kids know this word, I want to put focus on it since it is such an important concept in the novel. We will be viewing the presentation with Nearpod so that I may assess understanding of the term. I am not expecting any issues here. We will come back to discuss this more after reading the first chapter of the book. 

Last year, I began by having my students create their own perfect societies, but it become more of a distraction and never truly connected to the novel the way I had initially intended. This year, I'm throwing that out the window. For chapter 1, we will focus on Contrasts & Contradictions from Notice and Note. They are already familiar with Contrasts & Contradictions, but now we are going to shift away from characters and focus on the setting. I want them delving deeply into the differences between Jonas' world versus our own to see what this "perfect" world is like. 

In preparing the Contrasts & Contradictions lesson, I incorporated Christopher Lehmans' Close Reading Ritual from Falling in Love with Close Reading. The lenses will be focused on the setting of the story. The patterns will be the Contrasts & Contradictions. We will then use this information to create a picture of Jonas' society. 

As with some of my previous lessons, I am going to have my students respond to the presentation questions using Nearpod. By using Nearpod, I ensure that every student submits a response, rather than letting another student answer on his/her behalf. I can skim through their responses and see who is understanding the text and the strategy, as well as who is not. This information is also saved in a report that I can use as needed.

This is definitely a better start from last year's teaching. Ain't nobody comin' back this year to say I ain't doin' my J-O-B!