Thursday and Friday we experienced a series of stations designed to help us empathize to those with struggles and to learn how to advocate for ourselves and others -- how to bring help and ask for help.
This is a continuation of the work we did with Lawrence Hill's "What Are You, Anyway?" the work with growth and fixed mindset, multiple intelligences, and "Who Am I (Right Now)?"
BTW. Next week we have a Roots 2 Quiz on Wednesday and Thursday. Heads up. It's over BOTH ROOTS 1 & 2.
Here are the stations and some pics from each.
GO & GET.
BUILD A LEGO SET.
ORGANIZE THE INSPIRATION SHELVES
JENGA THE ROOTS
And one class was able to play JUST KEEP TALKING
We debriefed about what we discovered about our challenges, our successes, advocating for others and ourselves. All of this is heading toward our first big design challenge next week around need finding, understanding ourselves and more . . .
1. LEGO my POP CULTURE pics and explanation
2. OREO CHALLENGE pics and explanation
3. MUSIC ROOTS playlist, visuals, and explanations
4. DESIGN A BAND Post One (the band)
5. DESIGN a BAND Post Two (answering the critical thinking questions)
Here's a video to help you post your links to your individual posts on the blog tracker. The relevant info goes up to minute 13 -- this is from last spring's class.
We ended the day on Friday with looking briefly at why people LISTEN to music and why people MAKE music. We did some work on post-it notes with this. More next week . . .
We started a empathy & self-advocacy two-day experience in English on Tuesday and Wednesday. Our goal is to build up our capacity for understanding the struggles of others, helping them find solutions, and better understanding our struggles and strategies for asking for help.
That's a lot of commas.
Here's what we've done so far . . .
We started with an anonymous Google Form and gathered up examples of struggles we know folks -- and ourselves -- experience. Here are screenshots of the results.
We conducted a Notice (Observations)/Wish (Reactions)/Wonder (Questions) with this data. Here are a couple of the results from this work.
Mrs. Grohoski then distributed index cards with a struggle on one side and a blank on the other. We made three columns on the blank side: Difficult, Easy, and Help Needed. We tried to get into the POV of someone with that struggle and list tasks that might be difficult, those that might be easy, and help that person might need.
After a minute or two to process on your own, you circulated around the room and gathered input from several folks, adding to the columns.
You then had five minutes to write/record from the point of view of a person with this struggle. Imagine what a typical school day morning is like for this person. Use 1st person point of view ('I got up this morning . . . ) to create a journal/video/audio.
We synthesized that point of view into trying to fill out a scholarship application from the point of view this same character. We did not give you much guidance in filling it out because we want you thinking about what it's like to struggle when you are unsure of an answer -- what do you do? What would this person do? How might they respond to this challenge?
Period 4B managed get into a little jenga block roots 2 activity.
Next class, we will have four new stations, we will be practicing self-advocacy and we will be getting caught up on blogging and putting evidence of learning in our Eng 9 IN folders.
Due Today.
8 Box. Who Am I (At This Moment)
Notice/Wish/Wonder over "So What Are You, Anyway?"
Make a list of bands and artists that you believe have really great names. Even if you don't love the music or consider them a favorite, you hear the name and think, "that's a great name." Throw in good names of movies, good names of books, TV series, while you are at it.
Put three of your favorite names -- music or not -- and put each on a sticky note and up the marker board.
I notice. I wish. I wonder. We'll look at those band names up on the board and discuss using only those stems to start our thinking.
EMPATHY.
Partner with someone you don't know particularly well.
PART 1.
4 Questions
1. How big of a role does music play in your life?
2. When do you listen to music?
3. What sorts of music do you listen to in those times? Bands or artists
4. Tell me about a time you remember listening to band, going to a concert, or having another experience with music that you really enjoyed.
PART 2.
3x3 Interviews. Three questions. Three subjects.
1. What sorts of fonts appeal to you? Handwriting? Block? Serif? San Serif?
Collect your responses and include them on your blog post when you discuss the album art you create. Use what you know appeals to others visually to inform your choices.
EXPERIMENT.
Create-A-Band Process
I'd Give Credit to the Creator of this Process But It's From a While Back & I Can't Recall the Link! #arghface.
1. Go to the Random Article link on the Wikipedia front page. (You can find it in the top left navigation menu.) The title of the random article is your new band/artist's name.
2. Go to the Random Quote link on the Quotations Page front page. (You can find it in the left side navigation menu.) You will get a list of random quotes. Pull either a full or partial quote from that page. That is the album title for your band's latest release. (You might also find some song titles this way as well.)
4. Pull that information together and then use an app like Pages, Google Draw or Google Docs, a photo editor like iPhoto or Gimp, or any other application that lets you manipulate words and images, and create your album cover. Export your finished work as a .JPG and post it or PDF and screenshot it and post it on your blog.
PRODUCE.
5. On your blog, create a context for your band. Who are the members? How did they form and when? What genre(s) do they play? What was the gig that led to them making this album? Where do they play? In other words, what is the story behind the band?
Here's the big huge giant challenge of this creative endeavor: take those random elements from above and make them all seem intentional. How might you create sense out of what might be nonsense by applying the filter of music to it? What does this say about the power of music?
6. In a separate blog post, choose an artist or band you enjoy. Select an album by that performer. Explore the relationship between the artist's name, the album's name, and the cover art for that album. To what extent do they align? Where do you see a clear relationship between the visuals and the music? Where do you see it not working out? What about the band's logo or the font used on the album cover?
One to two descriptive paragraphs with visuals to illustrate.
Extra helpful? Embed some Vimeo links or Spotify links or other ways of proving your point through the music.
You might get some inspiration for your album covers here
Last week we started our year long theme, though I didn't say anything about it being our year long theme because . . . uh . . . I'm not sure why. But I didn't . . .
Who Am I (at the Moment) and Who Do I Want to Become is all about exploring our identities, our personalities, our values, our abilities, as they are right now, determining who we want to become in the future, and asking the most important question: how might we get ourselves from here to there?
Last week we looked at our multiple intelligences and our mindsets.
We used this survey from LiteracyWorks to help determine our multiple intelligences and took screen shots of our results. Here's an example:
Later in the week we examined to extent to which we have growth and fixed mindsets. We started by looking at objects in the room that represent how we feel about our intelligence. We each chose one, took a picture of it that highlighted how it represents our feelings, and then put it back.
We watched this video that helps explain the difference between the two.
Two of the three classes did some work with scenarios, looking at how someone with a growth mindset would respond to a situation vs how someone with a fixed mindset would respond.
We took screenshots of the results again. This time, however, we also found a sentence from the results that we believe describes us very well -- the inventory nailed it -- and a sentence that we were not so sure accurately describes who we are -- ehhhh..not sure sure about that one- -- and put those sentences in a Google doc.
To bring it all around full circle, we then wrote about how the object we found at the beginning represents our mindset -- whether fixed, growth, or somewhere in the middle. We put that on a Google doc and then some folks started to copy and paste that information to their blogs.
Here's a sketchnote of how we went about doing this work.
If you were able to get all of this work done in class last Thursday and Friday, you did not have homework. Otherwise, you needed to finish completing the survey, finding the sentences that describe and do not describe your mindset, and then explain how that object represents your mindset.
It should be on a Google doc and placed in your English 9 IN folder.
Also in your English 9 IN folder should be your super power/kryptonite writing.
Now . . . Monday and Tuesday . . .
Tuesday may look a little different but here's what happened on Monday . . .
We explored the basics of sketchnotes!
Then we worked with poetry Jenga and created a few poems in the moment.
Then we started reading "So What Are You, Anyway?" by Lawrence Hill, a story about a young woman on a plane dealing with some less than kind fellow travelers. I explained how the Notice/Wish/Wonder graphic organizer works.
Then we broke into 4 Stations, each of which are described on the sketchnoted signs below with instructions. Anything that was not completed in class became homework due at the next class.
