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msbrittonsblog · 5 years

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Helpful Resources: Teacher Edition

They always tell you never to start anything with a quote, so instead, I’ll start with the idea that every single day, you always learn something new, even when something doesn't match exactly what you wanted, you can actually learn quite a bit from it. Or, if you don’t receive as much as you were looking for, sometimes less is better.

After receiving two out of three emails back from my old high school teachers, I was able to look into some of the resources that they gave to me in preparation for becoming a teacher. Some I already was very familiar with such as Kahoot and Quizlet, but I challenged myself to find something new about them that I never once knew before. Some resources were Latin oriented because my old Latin teachers still want me to pursue a career involving Latin as I took it for four years in high school, and I was also a Teacher's Aide for my last two years. Even though they were Latin specific, I tried to see if I could spin it for my concentration, which I will later discuss. I also wanted to look into a book called “Boy’s Life” by Robert R. McCammon, which was recommended to me by my practicum mentor teacher, Mr. Smith. He swears by this book and thinks it is the best book to teach your students, and that it is definitely underappreciated as a resource to use in the classroom as it is his favorite book. Mr. Smith shared with me his story about encountering this book, and I thought it was only fair to dedicate some of my time in order to look into it so maybe one day I can teach it to my students.

The first resource I started looking into was one given to me by D-Whit, also known as Ms. Whitmore, my old advisor, who was also a Latin teacher. This was a website called “Maine Classics,” where a group of Latin teachers and classics professors run a site dedicated to “spreading the teaching of the classics in Maine.” At first, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to use a lot of the resources found on this site, but I then came across a newsletter called “Clamor.” Each newsletter discusses upcoming events, paraphrases what happened at recent conferences, and also in the March 2018 issue, they stated the top essays that won the recent competition based on a given prompt. The prompt stated was, “to compose a writing based on a quote from Lucretius and how he might respond to a recent report from NASA about three planets 39 light years away that may contain life.” This is where my interest was sparked. Yes, I wasn’t going to be a Latin teacher any time soon, but Latin and English have a wonderful relationship, and the prompt stated in this newsletter was quite engaging and innovative. I think Latin interests a lot of students in school, whether they want to take it or not because the culture is so interesting, and the fact that Latin is referred to as the “dead language,” really peaks people's interests. This site, because it is created by professionals in Latin and the classics, the information provided is very relevant to the subject. I think that as an English concentration, I could spin a lot of Latin prompts into one for English, as long as the Latin itself isn’t too complicated, and as long as I have a translation ready. I could also do prompts similar to this based on the characters of the book I plan on teaching, such as “How would Dr. Frankenstein react towards the recent news outbreak about the Corona Virus?” The prompt is relevant to recent events, and the students must really understand the character and their development throughout the story in order to provide their response. I think that I personally am going to keep track of these newsletters because I feel that doing lessons that cross into other subjects may potentially increase engagement and interest in students.

The other resources I have looked into were Kahoot and Quizlet. I have used both of these resources before and thought they were both very successful in how they were used. Kahoot, a lot of the time has been used as a fun way to refresh students’ minds on a certain topic being taught. The winner can also be given a prize i.e. the satisfaction of winning, some cool stickers, etc. I did learn that Kahoot can be played at home as they have premade vocabulary sets for many different subjects (English, history, math, science, etc.) as well. Another cool thing about Kahoot is that they have accessibility options that allow those who are “text-to-speech technology users, Braille users, and other users with sensory, cognitive, or other disabilities,” to have the opportunity to use Kahoot and have all the options easily available to them.

Similar to Kahoot, Quizlet also has premade flashcard sets. This site is used “To help students (and their teachers) practice and master whatever they are learning. Quizlet provides engaging, customizable activities with contributions from people everywhere.” I personally have used this site previously, and it is able to be accessed via an app on your phone (iPad, tablet, etc.) and also your laptop/desktop. I think this is a great option for at-home preparation for any type of memorization. It creates flashcards and offers different games/activities as well such as “learn”, where they increase levels with multiple choice and writing definitions; “write”, where you write definitions that fit the word or vice versa; “spell”, where Quizlet speaks the word/definition out loud and you have to type what you hear; “test”, where they create a mock test that you can choose what sections you would like, whether that be multiple-choice, matching, and/or writing definitions; “match”, a game where you match the word/definition to the correct one; and then the final game being “gravity”, a timed game where you have to drag the correct word to fit the correct definition listed below. I think this respects the multiple different learning types that students and even teachers have because they aren’t stuck using the standard flashcards. Quizlet provides options. And, allowing your students that option to find what best learning strategy works best for them, will help them not only in the future but also in your classroom.

For my final resource, I looked in the book “Boy’s Life” by Robert R. McCammon like discussed at the beginning of my blog post. My mentor teacher swore by this text, and looking into it (really only reading the first chapter, prologue, and summary so far), I definitely agree. Just reading the book description, I was hooked. Being a huge nerd for books about murder and the supernatural, this book has it all as it is about a boy and his father who see something no one should have seen, and now they are haunted by the traumatic sight until they find out the secrets their town has within. Through reading this book you get to investigate the mysterious murder along with the characters of the novel and “learn more about the meaning of both life and death.” Seen in the description, the opportunities for lessons on symbolism alone seem to be endless as a “green feather” is brought up due to it “leading [the boy] deeper into the mystery.” So far, this description has hooked at least one reader, two if you count Mr. Smith. This book’s genre (murder mystery and supernatural fiction) also seems to be popular amongst the age demographic seen in high school. I personally have not seen many books in this genre taught in English classes because I have really only learned from classic literature myself. Even though the supernatural aspects of the novel may not be real, as a reader, you can still learn a lot from the author’s choices. You can connect supernatural themes into something seen in today’s time if you analyze deep enough. And, if I were to teach this novel, I could turn this lesson into one focusing on reading comprehension and literary analysis in order to have students make connections to plots that may not seem relevant to real-life to something that is. Students are creative, and sometimes it takes something outside of the box to lure in students’ interests. This creativity, I think, could shine with the proper outlines and objectives, especially if you use materials that possibly no teacher has ever been willing to teach before because it is outside of the set curriculum/norm.

The variety of teaching opportunities that this novel provides is quite large. The first chapter itself practically uses a simile or metaphor every paragraph as the main character really likes to describe things through comparison. The time that this book is set in is also 1964, which was around the time of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. This opens up the chance to collaborate with your colleagues in the social studies concentration because you could do a lesson together (time period recaps, research project, connecting common themes from the book to current/past events, etc.). So far, I am really hooked by the book and I am very interested in reading the whole thing in order to see what I can do with it in the future. I already have many ideas, and this is just from reading the first chapter!

Sometimes something that may not seem as useful as another thing, it truly is if you dig a little deeper. This connects to all the resources I have received so far from my old high school teachers and now my current mentor teacher. I am continuously learning from my fellow colleagues and mentors, and I do not think that this will ever stop. To conclude this long discussion of teaching resources, I would like to say that each resource has provided me with a helpful tool/tidbit that I will someday be able to use in my own classroom. Whether that be a Kahoot filled with literay terms or quotes, a Quizlet containing a unit/lesson’s taught vocabulary, a newsletter that gives me an idea for a writing prompt, or a book that can have any type of literary/reading analysis learning objectives I can think of. Anything can have at least one take away.

All the love,

Ms. Kellsie Britton

#kahoot #quizlet #maineclassics #boy'slife #robert mccammon #practicum #threewiseteachers #helpful resources

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