Friday, April 29, 2011

Riveting YA Lit

I stayed in the bath last night long after the water ran cold in order to finish Todd Strasser's Blood on My Hands. It was phenomenal. While I had some ideas about the ending, it was still a compelling ride to see the story unravel.

The main character, Callie, is found leaning over the dead body of the "it" girl at her high school...with knife in hand...and then cell phone pictures were snapped. Add to all this, Callie's older brother is serving 8 to 15 for attempting to murder their abusive father. The natural assumption is that Callie is as guilty as they come.

What do you do in this situation? I'm not sure I would have the wherewithal that the main character did--she took off running. She felt as though her only chance would be to find out who really did kill Katherine, so she hides until she can do so.

Callie's foray into eluding the law and amateur detective work makes for a fascinating story. Strasser paces it well, especially for the short attention span of a teenager. For an adult, it's a quick read--maybe just a night or two. But definitely one worth picking up.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Hothouse by Chris Lynch

Several years ago, I read Inexcusable by Chris Lynch--the story of a young man who is convinced that he is a good boy and did not do that which he actually did. (I'll leave you to read it and figure out what it is he did.) The book was written as such where you really felt you were in the speaker's mind. In fact, at times, you started to believe him because he believed it so much. Reading it was a powerful experience.

So I was happy to see a new Chris Lynch novel in my school library, Hothouse. This is the story of heroes and how hard they can fall when we lift them up high enough. It is a good story for your teenage boys sitting in your high school English class. You, however, dear teacher, might just struggle with it.

What came across as the narrator's stream of consciousness in Inexcusable comes across as a botched writing attempt in Hothouse. There were times when the writing got in the way of the story. There were times when the plot just drug along. Truthfully, the plot isn't action packed. The story is slow to develop and slow to resolve itself.

Would I recommend it? Definitely to a student. Their tastes are refined enough for a character's rambling to get in the way. But it isn't one I would read again.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Click, Clack, Moo and Follow-Up Questions

Today was step one towards a successful podcast about our nonfiction texts. It is time to have meaningful conversations about literature. I feel that this will help me in my quest to create lifelong readers.

The first step to meaningful coversations is to create meaningful questions. When students are dropped into a discussion setting, they don't know what to say to one another. They know how to share answers, but they don't necessarily know how to ask for help from a peer. They know how to say that they don't get it, but they don't know how to vocalize what it is that they don't get. They have to learn how to ask good questions about their reading in order to take them to the next level of understanding and analysis.

To do this, we started by discussing characteristics of good questions. I have to be honest here--I tried to have the students generate characteristics, but it fell totally flat. They didn't have a clue what I was asking for or what I wanted. They knew what a good question was when they saw one, but breaking one down and explaining why it was good was a bit too much.

So I listed characteristics of good and bad questions on chart paper and we started by looking at that list. We contrasted the two. We looked closely at the pros and cons. We cleared up any confusion as to what was expected. After our brief discussion, we created a six-celled chart using a piece of notebook paper. The left column was for the start questions and the right column was for the follow-up questions.

Now for application. I decided to start with a brief piece by Pat Conroy. His writing is so deep and it is something that I want my students to be familiar with. They might not come Conroy lovers today, but I want them to see the goldmine that is in their backyard. After reading a brief, controversial piece that looks at a situation of spousal abuse, I gave them think time. They had to write down a start question using the characteristics of good questions. After everyone had a chance to write down a start question, I asked for one volunteer to share. We took that question and added it to the first cell of our chart. We discussed possible answers and the created follow-up questions based on those answers. This went on a for a few minutes, and we repeated the process with a new starter question. I pointed out how the conversation could only continue with a good question. Failure to ask a good question would lead to a dead end. I demonstrated this by asking a few bad questions of my own and showing that the conversation could go nowhere.

That scaffolding led to Click, Clack, Moo. Students used the cute children's book to generate starter questions that met the characteristics of good questions. It was a nice lead up to individual work. Just a little more scaffolding and we'll be having powerful conversations about texts that are meaningful to us.

I hope.

Friday, April 01, 2011

Finding time for a good idea

Good ideas are not easy to come by. Let me specify--the idea is the easy part. The logistics are the hard part. I can come up with some ideas, but figuring out how those ideas are going to work in my classroom is something totally different. I have had the great idea that my students need to podcast about their newest literature circle books, a nonfiction text. I am sure that they have little to no experience with podcasting. This is something I will have to scaffold carefully in order to move them along at a good pace, but also ensure that everyone works in their ZPD. One minute of frustration and this balancing act can collapse. There are not a lot of lesson options with podcasting out there. I have experienced this before--I have an idea for a lesson, I know what I want it to look like, but I can't find exactly what I am looking for. I can get lost for hours on the Internet looking at things that don't quite do what I need them to do. I am not quite at ground zero with podcasting. I did fine a great PBS lesson that lays out great steps for scaffolding a podcast lesson. Now I just have to take my own materials and merge the two for the perfect podcasting book discussion lesson!