Marian's Voice

Marian's voice
opened hearts when minds were closed.
Marian's voice
went beyond the stars and the moon.
Marian's voice
is so loud,
it broke down the walls of Injustice.
Marian's voice
was beautiful,
and captured thousands outside her own world.
Marian's voice
overcame the color of her skin,
broke the bonds of prejudice.
and will be heard by many, for years to come.
Marian's voice inspired,
inspired a nation to change,
and became her weapon.
Marian's voice
moved crowds to a thoughtful silence,
and broke through the barrier of racism.
Marian's voice
is smooth like twilight,
made the whole world take notice,
moved men and countries alike.
Marian's voice LIVES ON!


By: English 479 Class

Picture book---

When Marian Sang
Written by Pam Munoz Ryan and Pictures by Brian Selznick

Reading Don't Fix No Chevys

As an older sister that constantly got beat up by my little brother, I can think of many times that I would rather have been a boy so I could beat him up. Although he was smaller than I was until the past few years (now he's 6'3''), he was always much stronger than I was. He is really good at sports and that is something that I have always been jealous of. He is the athletic one of the family and my parents have always loved watching him play baseball, golf, basketball, and even bowling. Scott is a very talented athlete and since I never was able to play sports well I was jealous of him. There are many pictures of my dad trying to teach me how to hit a baseball or golf ball and my brother in the background looking extremely annoyed, and honestly my dad did too.
Since then I have accepted being the weakling and the not athletic one that I am and love watching my brother pitch in his baseball games and love playing golf with him.

Multi-Genre Papers

Multi-genre papers are so cool. I think they are a great way to get students excited about writing and helps them learn a lot as well. This chapter was really interesting because it talks about how people are afraid that students won't learn everything that they are "supposed" to without writing the traditional research paper. But students will still need to research and learn to write a well put together paper. This allows creativity and differences between everyone's own particular writing. I also thought it was really interesting that they brought in the issue of plagiarism and I really think this could help avoid that issue. If we can get students excited about their own creative writing, they won't be as willing to go and find something off of the internet.
I think this is a really interesting topic and would really like to bring Multi-Genre projects into my classroom!

Grammar in the Classroom

When looking for articles about grammar, I found a lot of articles that were focused on how the parents didn't approve of the teaching methods. I thought that was very interesting because as much as many parents complain about the way they were taught grammar and other areas in school they don't like the idea of their kids being taught in other ways. I guess it scares the parents to not have the "correct" grammar rules being set out for their students in black and white but they have to let the students learn in other ways.
The article says, "Students learn to write best by writing." I think this is really important for all of us to understand because simply having students fill out grammar worksheets probably will not teach them how to combine all of the rules and create a good piece of writing. Of course, students do need to be taught the correct grammar rules but they will be more beneficial to them if they can use it correctly. Students need to be allowed to think for themselves and be able to put it all down on paper. We have to let the students write without attacking them with red pens.

Indy Teach Lesson Plan

Book: Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice- A collection of articles and teaching ideas from many different teachers and researchers. (Pages 4-5, 38, 75)

Essential Question: How can we make our schools and classrooms to be “laboratories for a more just society that we live in now?”

Main Idea: The main purpose of this book is to show the students what they can do to make a difference. We want the students to not only study the progressive social movements and the current social problems but, to encourage the students to really think about what is going on around them and want to take charge and do something about it. It is important for the children “to see themselves as actors in the world, not just things acted upon.” (Rethinking Our Classrooms)

This lesson is to help students understand how our language can affect the ideas that we think about regarding different people. It is supposed to help us look at the different connotations and see how some of our phrases can be very harmful to prejudices.

Activity: First of all we would separate our class into groups or 4 or 5 and tell them that we are going to examine language. Have the groups think together of different phrases and words that contain the words black and white. And after 10 minutes or so have the groups go through their lists and mark each phrase or word as a positive, negative, or neutral connotation. Once they go through their lists, come back together as a class in a big circle and have the groups all share their lists. Then, I will have different definitions for the words black and white and share those with the class. After the definitions, we will have an open discussion with a few questions and finally we can have the students think about any other phrases or words that have prejudices lied within them and share those. As a homework or in-class assignment depending on how long the activity takes, you can assign a free-write about how the activity made the class feel about the prejudices that are everywhere.

The English Teacher's Red Pen

I actually have very mixed feelings about this article. I understand why they believe the "red pen" is evil but I see the other side too and am not exactly sure which side I stand on.
We know that we have had papers returned to us covered in red marks and how that makes us feel. When this happens, I'm sure some of us have just thrown the paper away never to look at it again and some have looked it over to see what we did wrong. And as crappy as this can make us feel, I also hate the feeling when I get a paper back with just a grade and nothing else. When this happens I feel like the teacher didn't even care enough to really read my paper and I can't learn what I did wrong when they don't tell me.
I'm curious to learn other ways to go about explaining to the students where they need to spend more time but I don't think the answer is to not circle the rough spots. I also really dislike red pens so to start I don't believe that we should use them for anything.
Practice makes perfect. So we must have our students write as much as possible but how do we teach our students how to write and help them grow in the writing process? How do we let them know what they did wrong without discouraging them from wanting to write again?

Useful Websites

teaching tolerance

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