The Apocalypse is Approaching: A Lesson for Writer's Workshop

Download the free lesson on my Teachers Pay Teachers store!

Whenever Halloween time rolls around, I always find our Creative Writing club and classes looking for themed writing.  I, personally, cringe at the cliched themes for this time of year, but this time, I think we came across something pretty interesting...the apocalypse.

So a little bit about our club first.  My colleague Tara and I run The Ink (creative writing club).  We are a club that meets twice a month - once for a writing workshop lesson and a second time for an open mic night.  The club has been through several other formats and configurations, and we have found that this one works best for us.

LESSON SHARE TIME!
So I thought I'd share with you, my loyal, faithful readers, the lesson plan we designed for our writing workshop this coming Thursday.  I've created a nice, clean, and FREE lesson plan with all docs that you can grab on my TpT Store - Mud and Ink..

Part 1 - The Mindmap Jigsaw Apocalypse

• Divide your students into several groups.  Each group will receive a different "type" of apocalypse to brainstorm about. 
• Distribute materials to the appropriate groups.  Instruct students to skim through the images, videos, and articles looking for language and images that spark their interest and might make its way into a piece of writing.  "Types" of apocalypse scenarios we brainstormed include:
• Nuclear
• Environmental/natural disaster
• Personal (the "end" of my life as I know it - a breakup, graduating high school, etc.)
• Zombie
• Political
• Biblical
• Doomsday prophecies
• Students should record their ideas in a mindmap format (or whatever other format you like)

Part 2 - Whole Group Mindmap:  Bringing the Jigsaw together

• Bring your crew back together.
• You, or a student leader, can direct a discussion where each group shares the type of apocalypse they studied.  
• Take notes on the discussion in a giant mind map combining the ideas, language, and images presented by each group.

Part 3 - The Mentor Text

• In creative writing, Tara and I have found it fundamental to start every writing task with a writing mentor (thank you Jeff Anderson!)
• Distribute copies of a mentor text that you like.  The mentor can be thematically connected or stylistically connected to your lesson - whichever applies to what you want to teach!
• We found this super cool poem from Scott Hightower called Apocalypse Soliloquy.  
• Read and discuss the poem with your kiddos!

Part 4 - Writing Time

• Using all of the brainstorming from the mindmaps and the mentor text, turn the kids loose.  Give them about 8-10 minutes to write on an idea or image that they feel strongly about from the day's worth of discussions.  If you're working with a group or reluctant writers (my group are all in a club for writing...they're my amazing word nerds, so there's no pulling teeth here!), send me a note and we can brainstorm some more specific directions! ;-)
• SHARE!  Always ask your students to share.  We give snaps for lines we love when the students are reading.
• Keep writing.  Keep writing.  Keep writing

I hope you give it a try!  Shoot me a tweet @misscordes324 or an email at amandacordes1@gmail.com and let me know how it goes!

Keep truckin, friends!

xoxo,

Amanda

A Socratic Seminar Success

As we wrapped up our study of The Hunger Games, my sophomore team agreed to conclude the unit with a socratic seminar.  I had done a quick version of it during our poetry unit last April, but with the team's help, we crafted a truly unique, challenging, and rewarding experience for the students.

The original seminar was inspired by Esther Wu's seminar "The N-Word" on Teaching Channel.  Take a look below to be inspired yourself!

I love using Teaching Channels videos to inspire my own teaching!  I never would have thought to use a list of transitions as Esther did.  We used, tweaked, and modified her resources, and our version can be found here:

Socratic Seminar:  The Hunger Games
The Seminar Packet
The Coaching Protocol
The Listening Roles

Holding your own Socratic Seminar!
Plan two periods to prep the students, two days to conduct the seminar, and one half-period for reflection.

The speakers are seated at a central table while coaches sit behind their protege.   One student is at the front of the room taking notes in the Big Board role (as developed by Esther Wu).

On the prep days, we focused on teaching transitions and building an arsenal of textual evidence for the questions that students felt passionate about.  We took our time going through each of the questions so that the students could highlight the 3-4 that they wanted to tackle right out of the gates on their day for the seminar.

On the days of the seminar, the students were broken into two groups:  SPEAKER & LISTENER.  On the first day, they did one role, and on the second, they switched.

Students sit in the back of the room in their Evaluator roles (transition tracker, comment counter, general evaluator, etc.)  I sat next to them taking notes and grading the discussion.

On the day following the last seminar, be sure to provide time for reflection.  This day was so rich for my students!  I asked them four simple reflection questions, had them answer at their desks, and then we created a graffiti wall of responses, memories, shout-outs, and highlights from the socratic seminar experience.

A Stormy Summer Monday

Sitting in the Geneva Starbucks on a stormy Monday night, I'm feeling the need to focus my energy on goal-setting for the upcoming school year.  After five years of doin' this dance, I'm really starting to know myself, my habits (good and bad) and what needs to be improved (and restored) in the classroom and in my life.  Other teachers know how this goes - we burn, burn, burn all year long taking shallow breaths along the way and finally, by the time summer rolls around, I feel like I need fourteen hours of sleep and complete zombie-like status on a regular basis.  None of these behaviors are productive or efficient, so I'd like to dedicate tonight's post to how to make summer purposeful so that I can have a more evenly paced school year.

Tonight, I'd like to focus on BEAUTY.  Here are some ways that I plan to use my summer to experiment with style and procedures to make me feel like a more beautiful me in the 2013-14 school year :-)

Beauty:

1. Find a salon and COMMIT.
• This is a huge problem for me...I find salons that I like, but it's too expensive to keep up my appointments and afford cuts!  This summer, I need to find a salon where I can get my haircuts and waxing taken care of when it needs to.  This is an absolutle necessity!    
2. Take the 30 Day Hair Challenge
• After my much needed haircut, I plan to take a 30 day Instagram Hair Challenge!  30 Days, 30 different hair dos!  Through this experiment, I hope to land a few new go-to hair styles for the school year.
• Will be using these websites to help:  http://www.hairromance.com/2012/09/30-braids-in-30-days-day-1.html
• LUXY HAIR Running Late Styles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zugLQF3uLmk
3. Revise morning & night beauty routines
• Routines are hard for me...I don't like doing the same thing every day, BUT I DO like going to school feeling put together and organized.  I need to use my morning time and my getting ready for bed time as a space to really prepare for the day and wind down and fully relax before bed.

xo, 

Amanda

"We are in the business of saying goodbye"

     There's this eerie silence after the last class leaves on finals day.  For over 180 days, this room has been bursting with laughter, heated with debate, and the host of many first time discoveries of talent, skill, and creativity.  Now:  silence.
     That's it.  That's our job.  One of my teachers (and now CEO) at Golden Apple used to say to us, "We are in the business of saying goodbye".  Those words feel tattoo-traced into my forearms today.  What a strange feeling - to pour heart, soul, joy, discipline,and  every last ounce of energy into 140 young people, and for them to just simply stand up, walk out the door, and say "Have a great summer!", not thinking anything of it.
      How will I muster up the energy to do this all over again come August?