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19 thoughts on “Museum in the Sky”
I’m only starting to up my game with untargeted lessons and OWI. Let’s do this!
Mindee please look in the tab above called Tutorials. Registering for the Forum is a separate process from getting into the main page here. Let me know if you need help! My gmail address is tinahargaden at gmail.
I am looking forward to the museum’s filling up.
If you want to come to the big Department in the Sky, I invite you to observe my classes virtually on this YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3br3Fc2CQGEQt2_QHzpQsQ
It is literally like coming into my classroom and just seeing what is going on. The videos are unedited, unvarnished, unselected. Maybe someone will have time to peek into Room 23! If you do, then you will see a living experiment in progress – my first year using 100% ISR, my first year starting with One Word Images to build towards Invisibles stories *by design* from the beginning of the year, my first year using artists this early in the year and in this way (two kids using the easel), my first year with no pre-targeted language, my first year with a fully-emergent word wall, my first year with no novels planned. This was a busy year and I had so much learning this summer, and made so many changes to my practice this fall.
So far (day four today) it is going great and I have even less work to do than I did last year. I hate working and love having fun, so getting the workload down to zero except showing up and talking is my goal. It literally is. I spent the first six years of my career teaching three subjects (Language Arts, Social Studies, and French) and I used to get to school at 6:30 AM and stay till 5 or 6 PM. I have a lot to atone for! ๐
If you do, then you will see a living experiment in progress โ my first year using 100% ISR, my first year starting with One Word Images to build towards Invisibles stories *by design* from the beginning of the year, my first year using artists this early in the year and in this way (two kids using the easel), my first year with no pre-targeted language, my first year with a fully-emergent word wall, my first year with no novels planned. This was a busy year and I had so much learning this summer, and made so many changes to my practice this fall.
Tina, I’m snickering right now. Except for the 100% ISR, I am in the same boat as you are. For me however, there was no need to change. All I had to do was throw out my warm-up and do less movie talk. My classroom looks so bare though since I had to switch rooms.
“I have a lot to atone for! ”
Yes you do Tina! My supervisor used to say “work smarter not harder”
I will be checking out your vids this week!
It is cute; just looked at it! I will add more when I can; there are several at school. We did our first story of the year in French 2. It was the story of a pig named Canadian Bacon (his friends called him Candy) who spoke only English and not Pig. He was at the theatre in Buenos Aires with his girlfriend, Georgia, who spoke only Pig and not Fox or English. The relationship did not work out. ๐
We did not have time to make it to three locations that day because we had to finish the drawing before starting the story. Even though the story only made it to one location, it was still a good story and we had a good time writing it up today. The ending was simply that Candy the pig left the fox in the theatre.
I love starting ur classes’ art galleries right here at the beginning of the year. What a different year this will be!
Yes. I love it that we are going straight into creating things. My motto in life is to CREATE as we are creating at EVERY moment. This includes when we are tired. Are we creating a relaxing moment for ourselves or are we over working ourselves?
I tried stories in FRENCH 1. We “reviewed” a character and then went into a story in the past tense. It was a block so I went SLOW. However, I soon saw that there were too many new words. The kids were engaged and I tried my best to simplify. At the end I even reviewed the artists’ work. Homerun stories for sure!
As for French 2. I need to make some calls. I have about 4-5 kids in a 17 student class who are ruining the flow. 8th graders who generally are good are acting out. First calls then it’s time for grammar and reading.
Let us know how this plays out Steve. Sounds like you have a hammer in each hand, ready to go. Good.
Ben thank you. I have one week and two days and I just want to spend them all hugging my kids. Itโs been more fun than work though itโs been lots of work. That just shows you how fun itโs been.
I hope you get all those hugs in these final days of the year, Tina. Here’s a big hug from me *<>*
or **
ok… my attempts at recreating a hug using symbols didn’t work. Anyways, thanks for all you’ve done. We can’t thank you enough!
Same here Tina. Hugs all around. So much work and dedication to others in achieving amazing work with NT and saving careers. Always with a smile. You ROCK!
Iโm so glad that the two of you did all that work so that we can benefit from it, and that we can have fantastic results with our students. Thank you!
Dana, because you did the training last summer in Philadelphia, this comment means a lot to me. It means that the training was successful even though Tina and I were kind of winging it last summer. Not kind of – we were winging it. So thanks. You flew down from Calgary only a few weeks before moving your entire family to New Delhi in order to get that Phil. training in. Thus, your entire year in India was different and I would guess more alive than it may have been. Plus, Tina and I were able to meet you and now when we see you in Portland next month we will learn even more from each other and enjoy the help and society of each other in a field where genuine friendship is rare. This is the value of learning and growing together professionally. I still think it is marvelous that you taught the very same kids as 8th graders who invented the Invisibles as 6th graders. To think that due to the fact that there really is a tribe in our work, when you think of ten years of working together here like w Sean and Alisa who live next door to each other in Chicago, and Tina’s immense role in all this, etc. – it makes us think that it was all meant to be, that we were meant to do this work together and test it and laugh and cry and not really know the results but to give our all anyway.
Absolutely! There is a reason for it all, Iโm sure. ๐ I cannot wait to work together again in Portland. Maybe we can figure out how to map all this vertically so I donโt have to have fights with my curriculum people or my department. Is that too lofty a goal? ๐
I had a fight with that American Embassy School curriuclum team of robots too. It was horrible and public. Jessica (from Denver) was there and then that other dude. They couldn’t get that I didn’t work from their model. I just couldn’t and we had a vertical alignment meeting (that big spring one when it is the only time that all three schools meet to say false things about what they are doing). I was publicly chastised for “not caring about my kids”, not by Jessica but the other guy. Linda Li bailed on me and gave them what they wanted to hear. But by that time she and Zach were the only ones doing TPRS – I was full-on non-targeted. I felt so stupid. And yet now two years later people are having success with my model, even if it doesn’t align with the old timey curricular models of the last century. We’ll talk about it in Portland, Dana, but hopefully for not too long. We should spend our time there learning how to teach kids, not defending ourselves to fools. I have written extensively on this event in New Delhi here but it has since scrolled out, but if you look in the archives around March or April (whenever that meeting was) of 2016 you might find that post. It might be in the “When Attacked” or “Observations by Idiots” categories on this page as well. I took them out back behind the wood shed.
I really believe that you have, Ben, covered so many documentation bases through your collab w/Tina, Cameron and all the other great representers, Marianne Van Klaveren’s (Netherlands) EXPANDED STAR poster is awesome and gives a great variety of options for what to do in the non-targeted “CREAT / REVIEW / WRITE / READ / EXTEND” cycle.
The disconnect happens when WL Ts are obligated to submit 20th (19th?) century scope & sequence docs that catalog grammar rules and vocab sets…
Let’s encourage those T’s in that situation to look at the great variety of docs on your site and to have them cut n paste whatever they need to CYA…
Good idea Alisa. Something we could do is have Cameron Taylor put it all together in one place. The problem has been that most stuff of the good stuff on this topic always scrolls out. I do know that the curriculum docs that you shared have been used/tweaked by a lot of people (hard link above) since they went up two or three years ago. I would like to get to the point where PLC members could just access one definitive document and John would be the one to do it. He is also currently writing a Square Peg book on the request of Teacher’s Discovery to accompany the Big CI Book, and the other one is done. Someday if all goes well he will write one to go with your book. So weird to spend time placating people who don’t know the research and who base their evaluative work of us on models that have nothing to do with the research and standards in our field. J’en ai marre.