Year 10 Speeches

 

I've just this minute finished teaching my Year 10's, who are in the middle of presenting their oral texts to the class.  This has been an interesting experience; one that has been quite different from similar tasks with my Year 9's.  

At our school, we stream in the Junior School.  My Year 9 is a top class, whilst Year 10 is middle.  I have mixed views on streaming - of course, there are positives and negatives for both.  But I would mostly argue and believe that while streaming is generally great for the top kids, it's not so much fun for the others.  I've been with classes who have said 'we're the cabbage class, miss', and others who know they are top and have an arrogance to boot. If you think of yourself as the 'cabbage class', how do you fly?  Do you even bother? It reminds me of a great TED talk I watched recently, in which a teacher described convincing a class that they were the best class (even though most believed they were not).  You can find Rita F. Pierson's talk 'Every kid needs a champion' here.

Whilst my Year 10's are not the so-called 'bottom' class, they know they're not the top.

For oral texts this year, I wanted to try what I had tried with my Year 9's - that is, opening up the floor to them to choose how to show me what they know.  After extensive teaching and discussion around presentations/speeches/oral texts, I asked them to put forward some suggestions.  I must say, they weren't that keen. Where Year 9 lapped up choice and offered several creative ways to present work, Year 10 almost shut down.  Not to be deterred, I reflected that perhaps that needed slightly narrower parameters to start to feel safe enough to offer up their suggestions.  So I limited it to: a TED talk scenario in class, a motivational talk by a coach or captain at half time, a pecha kucha presentation, or a good old fashioned speech on something they were interested in. We looked at lots of examples of each of these, and they all seemed quite interested.  I was looking forward to seeing what they would come up with.

All chose speeches. I guess it was safe.  But I wonder if, by streaming our classes, we don't allow all students to feel safe enough to creatively experiment. In the end, I want them to choose a format that they like (or, at the very least, have chosen!) but it's been a very interesting experience for me observing both my junior classes and their enthusiasm and reticence balanced equally on between both classes.  The only difference I can see is the streaming.

Senior Exam Week

And so we send our seniors off the week before preliminary examinations with the best wishes and the highest hopes that they will put in the work necessary to do well.  I always try to refer to these mid-term school exams as preliminary - we usually have 20 students or so who need to access these results as derived grades for NCEA.  It's a fine line between encouraging students to take these as seriously as NCEA for that reason, and not freaking them out about a three hour assessment held two months before their learning journey ends! This year I've pushed for all students at Year 11 and 12 to try everything, see how they go and assess it from there.  

In addition, our school prizes are decided on the back of these examinations.  If students only sit two of three papers, they pretty much eliminate themselves from the running at Prizegiving.  Such pressure.

I really encouraged my students to write practice essays and email them to me over the weekend.  As is the same most years, I received four essays from classes that total 70 students.  I guess you can only offer your services at this time - they have to take you up on your offer. I live in hope that I will receive more closer to NCEA. In the weeks leading up to these exams, we do lots of practice 'testing' - forced time constraints in class - to make sure that they are at least writing some essays in the lead up.

I have become more and more enthused about Unfamiliar Texts as the years progress.  I've done some concentrated teaching around this standard this year, and my Masters student teacher also did some great work with my Year 11 class.  I'm marking 127 (all Year 11!) Unfamiliar Text papers after the exam on Wednesday morning - wish me luck!  As you English teachers out there know, that's actually 388 answers, with three unfamiliar texts in each student's paper. Woohoo! I'll be a marking expert by the end of the week. I'm looking forward to seeing if some of my teaching adjustments pay off for my students.  The inquiry cycle in action!

Last year I marked most Year 11 Unfamiliar Text papers, and found it to be amazing professional development as far as my teaching was concerned.  By the 80th paper, I sure knew what I was looking for, and plans were swirling around in my head around the teaching I could do around what I'd learned.  I'm really looking forward to similar enlightenments this year.

Good luck, all students out there!  Show us what you know!

Book Review #2

And here is a second review in my quest to 'walk the walk'.

http://booksellersnz.wordpress.com/2014/07/28/book-review-a-song-for-issy-bradley-by-carys-bray/

A Song for Issy Bradley

By Carys Bray 

 

There are no words. That is what is written in Claire’s journal after her young daughter Issy dies from meningitis. And there really are no words to describe reading her death, and the excruciating nature of this experience for characters Claire, her husband Ian – a Mormon bishop – and their children Zippy, Alma and Jacob.

The first half of this book is exact in exploring the profound trauma of grief. That this grief comes from the death of a small person really takes your breath away. It is every parent’s worst nightmare that their child – not yet fully grown and full of potential – could not just be sick, but dying, before ever reaching his or her human potential. Bray captures this exquisite pain and explores it from all angles with grace and, believe it or not, humour. The point of difference here is that this family is a conservative Mormon one, and Ian, the father, is a bishop in the Mormon Church.

Claire is Issy’s mother. She is a latecomer to the Mormon Church, after meeting and falling in love with Ian whilst at University. This ‘outsider’ status was a relief for me, as a non-religious reader. All other characters in the book grow up in the Mormon Church, and I would have found it harder to understand the absolute pervasiveness of religion in the story without Claire and her life before becoming ‘Sister Bradley’. After Issy dies, Claire emotionally checks out and takes to Issy’s bunk bed for the foreseeable future. Claire’s physical protest at the death of her youngest daughter feels real – like a challenge to a god that seems to have very little discretion when it comes to pain, suffering and death. Whilst the other family members struggle in different ways, none of them question God as Claire does, with a refusal to continue with life post-Issy.

Of course all family members struggle, and it is the surviving three children and Ian who try to get on with life as they experience this profound grief. Alma just wants to play football, but is haunted by images of his youngest sister fetching the ball. Jacob believes so hard in God that he is determined to resurrect Issy and make everything all right again. Zippy is the responsible, teenage sister who is expected to cook all the meals when Claire emotionally falls apart and takes to Issy’s bed permanently. Some of the humour comes from the depictions of expectations of teenage girls in the Mormon church, although these are somewhat tragicomic: Zippy in her mother’s wedding dress at a Mormon fashion show, where all teenage girls are wearing relations wedding dresses, and promising chastity at a time when hormones are obviously all over the show. And then there is Ian, the most fundamental believer of them all. Every action and decision taken by Ian comes from a place of God – a Mormon God – as he too struggles with Issy’s death.

Ian would be an easy character to dislike. Early in the book he provides religious reasoning for everything that is happening and seems very sure that Issy’s death is as it is meant to be. His life’s soundtrack is provided by the Tabernacle Choir, a touchstone of peace and reassurance in his Mormon life. However, Bray counters his religious beliefs with enough perplexed humanity for the reader to understand that he is as lost as Claire, but is trying to manage it as best he can through the filter of his belief in God.

It is obvious that Carys Bray has a personal understanding of growing up in a fundamentalist Mormon family. Bray’s experiences both shape and care for this work as she poses questions about the Church and the place of organised religion in children’s lives. These are explored in a sympathetic way, especially through her characters and their personal struggles in the face of indescribable grief and pain.

For a situation in which there could be no words, Bray seems to have found the right ones.

Something a little different: a book review

I think it's important as an English teacher to be practising what I am preaching.  I do this mainly by writing book reviews for the Booksellers blog.  I thought I'd post a few here for you.  I'll include the link to the original publication, too.


http://booksellersnz.wordpress.com/tag/purgatory/

Purgatory by Rosetta Allan

According to Catholic doctrine, when you are in purgatory, you are destined for heaven. But purification is necessary, so as to achieve the requisite holiness before paradise is reached. Unfortunately for John Finnigan, the 10 year-old murdered youth of this book, purgatory is also a place of suffering or torment. He can’t touch anything, and he finds himself alone once the bodies of his mother and two brothers, who initially share purgatory with him, are discovered. Perhaps purgatory is being left alone, abandoned by those closest to your heart. Or maybe it’s eternal boredom, the ultimate lesson in find-something-to-do that mothers have mouthed from time immemorial. ‘It’s so boring out here, we’re all getting ratty … nothing to do but fight,’ declares John on the second page. His journey, whilst in this state, from utter boredom to appreciation of the smallest things - owls, cats, pohutakawa trees - is an interesting one.


Rosetta Allan uses first person, present tense ‘ghost narration’ to place us dead in the centre (pardon the pun) of John’s world. ‘No one knows we’re dead, except him,’ states John in the first 50 words of the novel, ‘We’re the dead Finnigans’. So of course, the next question is, who killed John and his family in 1865?


And so John’s story is alternated with James’. James Stack, whose life seems tough from the start. But not as tough as John’s - John is dead, after all, and James has the gift of life. James’ story is told in third person, past tense. This creates distance and gifts a traditional voice to the events of his life. Nothing really seems to go well for James, who follows his sister across the world, with her woollen, lace collar in his pocket. As the collar disintegrates, so do aspects of James’ life. But all the while we are reminded: he is alive, at least. It speaks to Allan’s skill that important moments, such as how John and James’ lives intersect, are subtlely rendered and not easily guessed. Well, I was pleased by this, anyway.


My over-arching fascination with this book came from the knowledge that these events actually occurred. Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries was the most recent book to remind me of the richness of our history and how untouched it has remained, in literature, until recently. Or, sorry, maybe it is only just starting to be explored in fiction well. Living in Dunedin means hours can be spent perusing the settler exhibitions at Toitu (Otago Early Settlers’ Museum), Allan’s book is another reminder of the life of old characters in old photos that otherwise could remain historic artifacts of a time long-gone. Allan has explored her family history in a fictional way that reminds those of us from ‘other’ places (be it two or five generations back) that we were once settlers, that life was hard, and the world was a very different place.