Heather Carreiro
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Research planning document for long-term projects

9/7/2018

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For any long-term research paper with middle schoolers, I like to provide the students with a step-by-step planning document. Their job is to look at their calendar and to fill in the dates that they should finish each step. After each step is completed, they bring the paper to school, show me the completed elements, and get my signature.

This approach had mixed results the first time around. The most organized and motivated students found it to be a good way of keeping track of their progress and getting continual feedback. Other students lost the sheet and still tried to do everything at the last minute, even though the project required process feedback. I hope the more I use this type of planning sheet, the more the students will get used to it and take responsibility for their own planning. If the students had laptops, I'd shift this planning sheet to Trello or another online platform.
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research_planning_document.pdf
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Phineas Gage Unit assessment: Brain Brochure

9/6/2018

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For an introduction to academic research in Grade 8, I decided to kick it back old school and teach the students the notecard system. Partly this is because our students are not allowed personal laptops, but I also like the kinesthetic element of using physical note cards as opposed to virtual note cards. Either way, the students had their very first taste of using research databases and citing sources in MLA format.

The Learning Targets

My learning targets combine the Cambridge KeyStage 9 Standards (KS9) and the International Baccalaureate Approaches to Learning (ATLs). You can easily swap these with any English Language Arts or Information Literacy standards that you're using.
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Research Project Assessment Rubric

Students were asked to choose one part of the brain during a class sign up. I did not want more than one student assigned to the same part of the brain in any section. They then had to learn to use the notecard system to research the brain using only 3 carefully chosen sources, of 3 different text types. They were required to follow along with a research planning document and to physically write at least 30 note cards before they started their actual writing & design. The final project was graded using this rubric. The colors and categories correspond to the skills and standards listed above. I use a scale of 4, 3, 1 for a total maximum of 24 points.
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Resources for Students

I teach students the notecard system with introductory videos and samples. After that, it's a lot of library time and computer lab time with hands on feedback. If you can have 1 or 2 additional teachers or librarians assisting during these times, you'll be able to double or triple your feedback. I always felt like 22 students were all calling my name or swarming with their note cards! It was fantastic to see the energy and seriousness they brought to learning these new skills. We also did a short review on the difference between paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting. I made clear that I wanted 90% paraphrasing for this project.

1. Overview of Note Card System - Source Cards, Paraphrase Cards, Quote Cards [VIDEO = 10 minutes] 

2. How to Write MLA Citations - 8th Edition [VIDEO = 3:38 min]

3. Knight Cite - MLA Citation Generator 

4. Taking Notes Using Note Cards - PikeSchool [PDF - 3 pages]

5. Research Bib & Note Cards - How To [VIDEO - 8 minutes]

Student work samples to come - I have a desk full of note cards and brochures that look amazing and have shown up as 100% original writing in similarity index checks! Success!
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Teaching Phineas Gage by John Fleischman

9/6/2018

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For my work in revising the Grades 7 & 8 curriculum at my current school in India, I wanted students to deeply interact with longer works of nonfiction. For Grade 8, I built a unit plan around Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science by John Fleischman.

Student interest in the book was high from the beginning, with several students picking up the book early and reading it during the summer break. If you haven't heard of the man Phineas Gage, he was a railroad foreman in Vermont who in 1848 had an iron rod blast through his skull and his brain. He survived, but his personality drastically changed. He became unable to manage social interactions and control his anger. He may or may not have joined Barnum's circus as a human exhibit, and he did end up in Chile driving stagecoaches prior to his death. His body was exhumed and his skull is still studied today. It's a fascinating story about the early days of neuroscience and what we have learned since.

Fleischman masterfully integrates history and science with this compelling narrative. The book is filled with stunning visuals demonstrating 19th-century beliefs about science and medicine. We spend about six weeks on the unit, culminating in an individual research project about a part of the brain.

Unit Plan Materials

We start with an overview of various parts of the brain, including the difference between the left and right hemispheres. Students complete an anticipation prompt considering what their brains do for them, and how they might be affected by a brain injury.

I delve into the text by reading Chapter 1 aloud to the class, making sure they understand the main events. Then students re-read the chapter independently using Guided Reading questions.

Chapter 1 Guided Reading Questions

I then continue the unit by having students work in groups to work through chapters 2 and 3 with the guided reading questions. We extend chapter 2 by making a chart of the philosophies of the Whole Brainers and the Localizers. This is done using primary source visuals that I place on a bulletin board.

Chapter 2 Guided Reading Questions
Chapter 3 Guided Reading Questions

To tackle Chapter 4, I teach students the technique of making a dialogic journal. We do 2 or 3 entries together using a think-aloud demonstration on the board, and then they continue reading the chapter and writing 5 original dialogic journal entries. This works well, as the final chapter is more reflective. I use the letters QTC to help remind students what can go on the right side of their dialogic journals. Question - Thought - Connection.

Throughout the reading assignments, I intersperse vocabulary work with words related to academic research. For example: plagiarize, cite, parenthetical citation, analyze, works cited. Students choose a part of the brain and start working on a research project using the library databases and physical resources.  This project involves a lot of steps, so I'll share the process and the results in another post.

Have you taught Phineas Gage? What did you use for a unit assessment?

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Shakespeare's Context "Para-Pres" Assignment

9/3/2018

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While teaching IGCSE Literature, I wanted to give my grade 9 students a broad yet deep understanding of the historical and personal contexts in which Shakespeare's Macbeth was written. I had also realized that many students had weak paraphrasing  and summary skills, so behold the "Para-Pres" assignment.

In this project, I photocopied and cut up the sections from Stephen Greenblatt's introduction to the Norton anthology of Shakespeare's tragedies. You could use any college-level scholarly introduction.  Each section is between 1 and 3 pages. For my highest-level students who needed a challenge, I also added one full-length critical article, Greenblatt's "Renaissance Self-Fashioning."

On the first day, I gave the students their assigned jigsaw reading sections in pairs. Their first goal was to create a poster, using note-taking and paraphrase skills. Their second goal was to give a poster presentation on the main points of their context area.

In order to check the paraphrasing work, students had to create a draft before making the final poster. This involved a lot of me running around the room, checking individual passages against the original and getting students to rewrite.
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See below some of the finished presentation posters, which were then recycled to make a classroom bulletin board for reference during the Macbeth unit. You can use this assignment with any jigsaw reading. Here's an editable version of the Para-Pres rubric. Make a copy and make it your own! You will see that the majority of the points in this rubric go toward the writing and creating the poster, and only 20% is on presentation skills. Adjust the weight of each category or add specific presentation skills if you want to prioritize the oral presentation aspect of the assignment.
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Hooking the reader: writing fantastic first lines

9/3/2018

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One thing I love to work on with my middle school writers is how to write a fantastic first line. First we start by brainstorming what type of things might make an interesting first line. Then, I set out copies of the "50 Best First Lines in Fiction" as collated by Gawker.

Each student or pair of students choose a line that they find interesting. Then, they use the First Line Analysis Worksheet to think about why the line grabbed their attention. What senses did it appeal to? What information did it give away about the novel? What tone did it set?

I set all of these fantastic first lines and analysis up as a bulletin board for students to review. Then, when they write their own first lines, we continue to workshop them until they have that punch. Finally, I choose the strongest one and run a contest, asking other students which novel they would be most likely to read, based on just the first line.

The students had so much fun voting.

50 Best First Lines in Fiction - Printable
First Line Analysis Worksheet
First Lines Bulletin Board
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    Heather Carreiro is an international educator currently based in India.

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