Category: Language News

Are you going to answer that call (to adventure)? Seeking the Epic Win Face.

This author has quite a thesis: Want to save the world? Play video games:

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/02/07/tech-report-good-news-society-needs-you/

This is link to her TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

Her thesis, that in the game world, we achieve, we overcome, we are better than our “real” selves, is a premise that may take me weeks to untangle. However you may understand, validate, approach, appreciate, endorse, discredit, repudiate, or just laugh at her findings and beliefs, (anecdotal, personal, or data-based), you must admit, this is defining a collective borg of the population. They/we do learn differently, they/we do problem solve with different pathways than perhaps they/we are used to.

Consider: I heard this story on the radio driving to work on Monday morning. Admittedly, was awake, but not in a place to write down much information. Her name and the story flew by so fast, that all I could do was remember to make a mental note of it, that it would be something interesting to listen to later.

When I had time, I went to the local radio station’s website, used every search word I could – nada. It linked me to NPR, again, all the search words, time of day, everything – nothing. I have had frustrating issues with NPR’s search engine before; I would say it’s user error, but I know how to find information. (Turns out it wasn’t an NPR program, but the local radio station that played it should have turned it up.)

Couldn’t find it anywhere.

So, I went old school on it. I called the radio station.

And having been so trained, so institutionalized, that when a real person answered the phone saying it was the business line, I immediately thought I should apologize and try another number. The kind woman said she could probably help — I told her my dilemma, gave her my name and phone number, and she said she would do some research, and give me a call back.

She did.

A human called me back. With information.

Why I find this astonishing I am not sure. We all need epic wins, real world and virtual world. How do we bridge the two so we are not working for the virtual world?

I have a lot more to think and say about this. But I am going to see some real faces here soon, so better get my game face on.

Monitor: Idiot proof.

This stream in my Reading Rockets’ feed caught my attention today:

Sound It Out

Monitoring self-monitoring

I recently read a post about recognizing, teaching, and supporting self-monitoring behaviors in young readers. The post describes two readers: David, who asks questions and self corrects word errors as he reads, and Frannie, who plows through text regardless of errors that either change the meaning of the text, include nonsense words, or don’t make any sense at all. The author stresses how important it is for readers to think about what they are saying as they read. “From the very earliest reading experiences that we have with children, we need to send the message that reading is supposed to make sense and that it’s their job to be checking that their reading IS making sense.” See more at Catching Readers Before They Fall.

This post resonated with me because of Becca, a first grader I just started tutoring. She’s an on-grade level reader (Rigby 7/8, Guided Reading E) but she REALLY wants to be reading chapter books like some of her classmates. Her reading speed (about 60 words per minute) suggests that her fluency is still developing. She’s still a choppy, word-by-word reader. So, although she’s a bit slow, it’s partially because she does a great job monitoring her reading. She frequently stops and self corrects herself. She questions when her decoding attempt results in a non-word. She listens to herself and expects what she reads to make sense. This is great, but it does slow her down.

As her tutor, I’m thrilled with her reading behavior. Moving forward, we’re going to focus on strategies to increase her fluency while maintaining the expectation that reading makes sense. Last week I introduced a re-reading chart (165 KB PDF)* from the Book Buddies manual on which Becca is using tally marks to track how many times she’s read the three books I sent her home with. This week, we’ll add new books to her rereading bag and try a timed repeated reading. I think she’ll like that strategy, although not every child does!

What do you do to help a child monitor their comprehension while developing their fluency at the same time?

“Begged questions:”

I have no issues or concerns with the author or article. What I’m digging into is this: why read at all?

When I pose this to students, I can gauge their level of maturity in their responses:

Immature: Because the teacher made me.

Mature: “Oh, Mrs. Love, The Hunger Games is SO GOOD – I read it all weekend and couldn’t put it down (this comes from both girls and boys). Do you have the next book? The next book? The next book?

I worked as a barista at a well-known world-dominating coffee establishment while I was working on my master’s. The cash register went to a symbol system, with codes, etc., and most instructions for the layout of the shop were “idiot proof.”

Be cautious, people: are we making the world so ‘idiot proof” that we marginalize ourselves even further.

I”ll just keep talking away – telling students that everything, and I mean darn near everything, is improved in my life because of my rich reading life: food, experiences, travel, time with family, conversations, know-how, confidence, friendships, choices, and any social interaction, writing, creating, crafting, developing, and breathing – it’s all better.

Perhaps I just answered my own question.

Summer lament.

sunset-surfer-7-by-david-cresine

"I have never surfed. But my inner surfer always feels this way, like a sad Beach Boys song, in August..."

Every August, for years, I felt that something ritualistic or noteworthy was missing to mark the occasion of summer’s end. The perfumed, yet sulferic combination of back-to-school supplies and popsicles doesn’t buff up the mojo as I would wish. Since becoming a teacher, I straddle both worlds, between anticipating the school year for myself, my students, as well as balancing emotions for my own children. And, yes, even for my own personal expectations.

What did I want to accomplish? Did I “relax” enough? (And in asking, that feels stressful in itself.) 

Fortunately, very timely, two bloggers I thoroughly enjoy recently posted their thoughts on summer’s end. One, Doyle, provides his viewpoint using all the sensory images, and sure enough, there IS a holiday associated with this time of the year! I KNEW it, I just KNEW it! There had to be….this time of year, between the summer solstice and fall equinox, had to be marked by some acknowledgment that the light is waning, and the sun is growing ever more shadowy and elusive. It’s called “Lammas.” “Lament” can be a verb or a noun.

The second writer, John Spencer, writes about how he spends his time in the summer. Or rather, doesn’t spend his time.

When I tally up what I did this summer, some of it will feel less like a harvest, and more like a molting. I chose to do nothing this summer, or at least the bare minimum. No conferences, no workshops, no professional development, no classes, and no thinking, really. I went to one day-long seminar to hear John Medina, author of Brain Rules, speak, at Seattle Pacific University. He had some golden nuggets to relate, but it was just as if not more valuable to catch up with some of my colleagues and talk with teachers and business people from around the state/country.

The only thing I have to do is finish up a unit, including incorporating the new common national standards, and making sure it makes sense to others. Sometimes a work of art makes a lot of sense to the artist, but not to the audience.

My musings take me to wonder, though, does the word “lammas” give us the word “lament?” Lament means to grieve, or a grief. There is always that long shadow cast over me this time of year, the end of summer. Maybe some Halloween candy will do the trick to ease the pain.

intransitive verb : to mourn aloud : wailtransitive verb 1 : to express sorrow, mourning, or regret for often demonstratively : mourn
2 : to regret strongly

http://doyle-scienceteach.blogspot.com/2010/08/lammas-again.html

Tricks of the trade.

 

 

magicianDoes technology help young writers, and teachers of writing?

http://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/technologyforwriting/

I am sure it’s helped me in teaching writing. Showing so many examples of writing, sharing my own writing, and using it to model/demonstrate workshop behaviors and protocol has been effective in allowing my students to find their own voices.

But with everything, if it’s the novelty that’s drawing students only, we all know how quickly that wears off. Tricks are fun, but quickly they see the man behind the curtain. Good teaching is just that — no matter the delivery.

But not only that, consider the world that’s brought to their doors, so they can find inspiration in their ideas.

Books You Should Read:

language_custom

Excerpt:

Chapter 20: Dying Languages

Speaking, writing, and signing are the three ways in which a language lives and breathes. They are the three mediums through which a language is passed on from one generation to the next. If a language is a healthy language, this is happening all the time. Parents pass their language on to their children, who pass it on to their children … and the language lives on.

Languages like English, Spanish, and Chinese are healthy languages. They exist in spoken, written, and signed forms, and they’re used by hundreds of millions of people all over the world. But most of the 6,000 or so of the world’s languages aren’t in such a healthy state. They’re used by very few people. The children aren’t learning them from their parents. And as a result the languages are in real danger of dying out.

When does a language die?

Measure Up.

The National Standards were released today:

http://www.corestandards.org/

I don’t know why this one took me by surprise–I mean, I knew the national standards were in the works months ago, but what was unknown was that they were in the works at all. Wait. That’s confusing. I didn’t know they were going to be developed. And when I learned that they were, they were already halfway down the road.

And as far as should or shouldn’t they even exist at all is something I’m not prepared to think about right now; on one hand, nationwide standards may help everyone finally get “on the same page,’ which is paradoxically its downside as well. Meaning: the more we tighten our grip on education standards the narrower the scope and sequence of creating the critical thinkers we so desperately want and need for our world’s future.

I have always been in support of my state’s educational standards, and even the state test. As far as Language Arts, the test, in my opinion, assesses reading skills every capable and willing child should know and demonstrate. (Here that students? Yes, you do need to read for your lives.)

I’ll look over the standards as soon as I can. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy watching my students group together for their end-of-year projects, talk to each creatively, and with enthusiasm. And prepare them as much as I can to launch them into young adulthood. I’m sure they’ll measure up.

Am I stifling your creativity?

young-artist

 There is a teacher’s blog I read that I really like. His philosophies are extreme, and I kind of like the unbalanced, spinning-my-head feeling after reading his writing. I certainly don’t agree with everything he believes, and I would guess he wouldn’t agree with anything I write. But I’m just trying to figure this out, and am a work in progress myself as a teacher, so maybe he’d be kind.

One recent post caught my eye, and it’s about how we teachers stifle creativity by expecting correct spelling. Well, there are two schools of thought on this one: The first is that when teachers expect correct spelling, or we stop your meanderings, scribblings, writings, and attempts at communication with correcting your spelling, punctuation, and grammar, we are making you feel bad and stifling your creativity. You proudly show us your efforts, and we then put on our stomping cleats and punch holes in your beautiful work. I’m sorry. My cleats were at the cleaner’s, so there hasn’t been an opportunity to step on your work. The second camp says that all work is good work, correct or not, and any attempt you make is worthy, valuable, and should be encouraged no matter what.

There is really a third option, which is where I think most teachers and parents are: your work is wonderful. Your drafts, sketches, pre-writes, discussions–all of that, is worthwhile and valuable. I sincerely believe that. I respect your thoughts. Every day I teach, I find new insights, and learn from you. Really – you rock on ice. But understand that the world is full of conditional love. And to find strength in your voices, you will need to learn how to communicate in standard English (at least in North American countries). I don’t give two potatoes if you spell “humor” like “humour.” But please try to know the difference between “their, they’re, and there.” Please?

 He makes an excellent point – he sometimes has a few mistakes, typos, and misspellings in his blog, but says he always has readers (over 8,000!). I make mistakes, too. Quite often I’ll re-read a post and edit it when I see something is amiss. No biggie. And yes, people do continue to visit his blog repeatedly, including me. But I wonder if I would be so inclined if the entire thing was consistently full of errors? Would I have the level of respect for him that I do? Probably not, and that’s just how it is.

And students of the new techno age: there are plenty of humorous ways to learn how to spell correctly. The blog, Hyperbole and a Half really sums up the use of “a lot” among other typing issues:

ALOT

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

You don't say?

Noah WebsterFrom The Writer’s Almanac, April 14, 2010:

But then two brothers from Springfield, Massachusetts, stepped in: Charles and George Merriam. They bought the rights to the dictionary and the unsold copies, sold it at a low price, and changed the company to “Merriam-Webster” because Webster had such name recognition. They printed the first Merriam-Webster dictionary on September 24, 1847, for a cost of six dollars.

But nothing deterred Webster, and he spent almost 30 years on his project. It took three years for the dictionary to be set into type, and finally, on this day in 1828, it was published. The criticisms of it had diminished, and it was greeted with great respect. But unfortunately, it cost 15 or 20 dollars, which was a huge amount in 1828, and Webster died in 1843 without having sold many copies.

My Huckleberry Friend.

From the Writer’s Almanac, February 18, 2010:

In the summer of 1883, Mark Twain wrote in a letter: “I am piling up manuscript in a really astonishing way. I believe I shall complete, in two months, a book which I have been fooling over for seven years. This summer it is no more trouble to me to write than it is to lie.” And on this day in 1885, Mark Twain published that manuscript, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Almost a decade earlier, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) had been a huge success, and the public was enthusiastically awaiting Twain’s newest installment, a sequel to the escapades of Tom and his friend Huck.

It was set to be published in time for Christmas in 1884. But in late November, someone in the publishing house of Charles L. Webster and Company realized something that had escaped the notice of Webster, the writer William Dean Howells, and Twain himself when they looked over the proofs: Somewhere along the way, someone had tinkered with the illustration of Uncle Silas on page 283, making it look like he was indecently exposing himself. Two hundred and fifty copies of the book had already been sent out, as advance reader’s copies; but 30,000 more were printed and ready for people who had ordered the book on subscription. The publishing house had to make a new plate, then go through every printed copy, cutting out the offending picture and replacing it with a cleaned-up illustration.

But eventually it was printed, and for readers who had pre-ordered a book, there were several editions available. There was a regular cloth-bound book in either olive green or blue, there was a sheepskin leather binding, or a sumac-tanned goatskin with marbled edges. Prices ranged from $2.75 to $4.25.

Although it was a big seller and got great reviews in England, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn got poor reviews in America. A San Francisco paper said that it was dreary, and “nor is it [a book] that most parents who want a future of promise for their young folks would select without some hesitation.” A Boston paper said that it was “so flat, as well as coarse, that nobody wants to read it”; another that it was “pitched in one key, and that is the key of a vulgar and abhorrent life”; and a New York paper that it was “cheap and pernicious stuff.” In 1885, it was banned by the public library of Concord, Massachusetts, and Louisa May Alcott explained, “If Mr. Clemens cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses, he had best stop writing for them.”

But Twain said, “The public is the only critic whose judgment is worth anything at all.” Three months after Huck Finn was published, in early May of 1864, Webster had sold 51,000 copies of the book, and as of today, an estimated 20 million copies have been sold.

huckjim

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also been on the list of top ‘banned books’ in the U.S. (meaning, people won’t allow other people access to reading it, it’s forbidden):

(I even made some revisions here, because I’m not ready to teach some of these difficult concepts yet – we need time and discussion):

In 1885, the Concord Public Library in Massachusetts banned the year-old book for its “coarse language” — critics deemed Mark Twain’s use of common vernacular (slang) as demeaning and damaging. A reviewer dubbed it “the veriest trash … more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.” Little Women author Louisa May Alcott lashed out publicly at Twain, saying, “If Mr. Clemens [Twain’s original name] cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them.” (That the word [sic] appears more than 200 times throughout the book did not initially cause much controversy.) In 1905, the Brooklyn Public Library in New York followed Concord’s lead, banishing the book from the building’s juvenile section with this explanation: “Huck not only itched but scratched, and that he said sweat when he should have said perspiration.” Twain enthusiastically fired back, and once said of his detractors: “Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” Luckily for him, the book’s fans would eventually outnumber its critics. “It’s the best book we’ve had,” Ernest Hemingway proclaimed. “All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”

Despite Hemingway’s assurances, Huckleberry Finn remains one of the most challenged books in the U.S. In an attempt to avoid controversy, CBS produced a made-for-TV adaptation of the book in 1955 that lacked a single mention of slavery and did not have an African-American portray the character of Jim. In 1998, parents in Tempe, Ariz., sued the local high school over the book’s inclusion on a required reading list. The case went as far as a federal appeals court; the parents lost.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1842832_1842838_1844945,00.html#ixzz0fzd0r1L8

I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in high school. It’s one of those novels that I was proud to have  “slogged through; ” remember, back in the day, teachers gave us book lists to read, and we answered tests or wrote book reports. There was no Internet, no “readers’ workshop” or book groups, no Oprah, no way of knowing if I was interpreting the themes and the author’s purposes except to buy Cliff Notes, which teachers back then considered cheating. I’m still not sure what was “cheating” about it–if I didn’t understand a concept, I was made to feel like a criminal and cheat. Not a great way to learn to love literature. We (students) read in isolation, and were made to feel ashamed when we were book worms or illiterate. There was no middle ground. What I was left with was a bad taste in my mouth for novels I didn’t immediately grasp or connect to. I didn’t even know the term “connecting” with literature. (Note to Mr. Spenser: Maybe that’s why I have an abiding love for To Kill A  Mockingbird – I got it, sans Cliff Notes.) 

Now that I think about it, we didn’t even have STICKY NOTES! Gasp! How did we EVER SURVIVE?

I will say, looking back, I’m glad that I had the chance to read Huckleberry Finn without the distraction of it being a ‘banned book,’ at least at my high school.  That meant I could work my way through it, and gain my own understanding, instead of being a rebel without a clue. I remember really liking the book. Did I love it? Not sure love had anything to do with it. Now that over twenty-five years have passed since I first read it, I think it’s time for a second read. The old saying of ‘you never step in the same river twice’ holds doubly true for reading classics. Our life experiences have taken us on a journey, and much like Huck and Jim, the journey isn’t idle, pleasant, or relaxing. There’s a shadow, a threat, constantly waiting to disrupt one’s peace and destiny.

On another note, I suspect the good people back in the 1880s were expecting another light-hearted tale of boyhood charm and mischief, like Tom Sawyer, from Mr. Twain, but instead, they got a mirror held up to their faces showing them as the racists they were (and still are, perhaps). It made them uncomfortable. They didn’t want to think about a friendship between a runaway slave and a white boy, both on equal footing and stature. (And it is a complicated friendship-no question about it. The examination of the friendship, however it’s defined, is fodder for much debate about race, class, and freedom.) Later, they didn’t want to think about young boyhood not being idyllic. Humanity is stinky, dirty, grubby, and unwashed. And yet further down the river, they (the book- banners) didn’t, and don’t, want to think about a time when the United States was ugly, racist, and deadly. Many consider that downright unpatriotic. To me, what’s unpatriotic is not learning how to have a civil discourse about tough issues.

 Falling from grace

And what’s even more unpatriotic is for our children not to learn how to read. I think I’m really most upset by the fact that I know many of my students aren’t ready to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn yet, though they’re almost in high school. They are working on the skills to understand dialect, setting, time periods, political and social influences, and develop the stamina to read a novel as long as Huckleberry. But many are not there yet, and I don’t know if I can push them harder. I try to provide as many contemporary, new titles for them, new classics that I think rock on ice, such as The Hunger Gamesby Suzanne Collins. I would be horrified if anyone tried to ban that book because it deals with tough issues, like putting children in mortal danger. Those stories and deeds have been done since the beginning of time. Heck, even Huck had an alcoholic father who beat him, didn’t feed him, so Huck had to learn to think by his wits. If we placed Huckleberrry in the Hunger Games along with Katniss, I’m sure he’d have given her a run for her money.

What are you ready to read?

What do you think about censorship and banning books?

One last thought (and I make no promises):

By Shelley Fisher Fishkin http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/teachers/huck/essay.html)

By the time he wrote Huckleberry Finn, Samuel Clemens had come to believe not only that slavery was a horrendous wrong, but that white Americans owed black Americans some form of “reparations” for it. One graphic way to demonstrate this fact to your students is to share with them the letter Twain wrote to the Dean of the Yale Law School in 1885, in which he explained why he wanted to pay the expenses of Warner McGuinn, one of the first black law students at Yale. “We have ground the manhood out of them,” Twain wrote Dean Wayland on Christmas Eve, 1885, “and the shame is ours, not theirs, & we should pay for it.”

Ask your students: why does a writer who holds these views create a narrator who is too innocent and ignorant to challenge the topsy-turvy moral universe that surrounds him? “All right, then, I’ll go to Hell,” Huck says when he decides not to return Jim to slavery. Samuel Clemens might be convinced that slavery itself and its legacy are filled with shame, but Huck is convinced that his reward for defying the moral norms of his society will be eternal damnation.

Something new happened in Huck Finn that had never happened in American literature before. It was a book, as many critics have observed, that served as a Declaration of Independence from the genteel English novel tradition. Huckleberry Finn allowed a different kind of writing to happen: a clean, crisp, no-nonsense, earthy vernacular kind of writing that jumped off the printed page with unprecedented immediacy and energy; it was a book that talked. Huck’s voice, combined with Twain’s satiric genius, changed the shape of fiction in America, and African-American voices had a great deal to do with making it what it was. Expose your students to the work of some of Twain’s African-American contemporaries, such as Frederick Douglass, Charles Chesnutt, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Those voices can greatly enrich students’ understanding of both the issues Huckleberry Finn raises and the vernacular style in which it raises them.

Love letters…

John Keats

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: The Writer’s Almanac, February 8, 2010:

Valentine’s Day is coming up on Sunday, and we’re celebrating all week with love letters from the literary world.

Poet John Keats (books by this author) lived to be just 25 years old, but in that time he wrote some of the most exquisite love letters in the English language. The letters were to Fanny Brawne to whom he became engaged.

He was 23 years old, recently back from a walking tour of Scotland, England, and Ireland (during which time he’d probably caught the tuberculosis that would soon kill him), and had moved back to a grassy area of London, where he met and fell in love with Fanny Brawne. During this time, he composed a number of his great poems, including Ode to a Nightingale. And one Wednesday in the autumn, he wrote this letter, considered by many the most beautiful in the English language:

My dearest Girl,
This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my soul I can think of nothing else. The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you against the unpromising morning of my Life. My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again — my Life seems to stop there — I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving — I should exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love … I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion — I have shudder’d at it. I shudder no more. I could be martyr’d for my religion — love is my religion — I could die for that. I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet. You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist; and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavored often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more — the pain would be too great. My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.

Yours for ever
John Keats

The following spring, Keats wrote: “My dear Girl, I love you ever and ever and without reserve. The more I have known you the more I have lov’d. … You are always new. The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest. When you pass’d my window home yesterday, I was filled with as much admiration as if I had then seen you for the first time.”

Keats and Brawne became engaged. He wanted to earn some money for them before they got married. But then he began coughing up blood. When he saw it, he said: “I know the color of that blood; it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that color. That drop of blood is my death warrant. I must die.” He wrote to tell her that she was free to break off their engagement since he would likely not survive. But she would not, and he was hugely relieved. But he died before they married.