Jim Burke’s “Composing a Curriculum”

            In Jim Burke’s “Composing a Curriculum”, we literally get a bunch of information on unit planning, putting pieces of a whole unit together, suggestions for thinking of the smaller pieces that go into small detailed parts of unit planning and even a sample unit lesson. This text was great just because of that. Because of all the information provided. Like many of these teaching based readings though, the information gets a little cloudy in my head if I don’t write down my favorite parts while reading, which is exactly what I did while writing this and those are the points I will discuss in this post.

            The article starts with basic steps for creating a unit. Burke suggests to begin with the end, so you know what your goal is from the start and you’re not running blind throughout your lessons. Everything planned out after this point has a purpose and is all centered on one goal. Burke also suggests giving as much rationale and reasoning behind your lessons and assignments as possible. I really liked this because I know how much it benefits students to hear why they’re doing something instead of just hearing “because I told you to”. You should also create a timeline for each unit, lesson, class, and assignment. Timelines should consist of time frames based off assumptions of possible amount of time each task will take and reasonable amount of work students can do within a period and night for HW, how much time would a unite take to complete, and should take into considerations other unites time frame and dates as well. Other things the article discusses for unit planning is needs (what other things will you need like support sources, copies, other articles, where will you get this from, etc.), backup plans, planning assessments ahead of time based off of what you will try to asses by the end of the unit and anticipating any obstacles that might come about through out the unit. These are all very helpful tips and kind of revolve around planning ahead of time and thinking things through thoroughly which is what prepared teachers should be doing anyway.

            Other parts of the article go into saying how a lesson should be broken up time wise and what should go into each time frame. Kind of like a break down of the period. The first 5-10 minutes is getting the students’ minds to think in the way or direction you need them to be focused in for the next 40 minutes, and getting them to start writing or begin a mini lesson on some aspect of the curriculum. The next 30-40 minutes proceed into the daily unit work and should discuss how its linked to work done on previous days. Some instruction might be simpler than others (pick up where they left off yesterday), other instruction might be more detailed (starting new novel means telling kids what to expect and transitioning into activity or discussion or assignment). This is bulk of class and this time may be interrupted to remind student what is the point of this; what we are trying to accomplish. Basically making sure students understand the objective. The last last 5-10 min: determine where students are and where they need to go next. You might decide to maybe change the homework assignment for that night to something else or have them do reflection cards, communicate on assignments, or some sort of closing out basically. 

            Lastly, we also get a sample unit titled “The Dictionary of the American Mind”. This lesson was actually really interesting to me when I read it and one I’d love to be able to do in my own class in the future (Like I’m seriously saving this article as we speak for this lesson alone). Basically, the class is exploring words they think make up the “American Mind” and using evidence from novels to explore these words and their link to American minds. I love this lesson because it kind of helped me see how books and novels are not the main part of an English class but a way to get to the main parts of the class. They are tools, not the lesson in a way.

Christensen's "Essay With an Attitude"

This week’s assigned reading consisted of 3 readings discussing how to write essays. The one I will focus on in this post is the one by Christensen titled “Essay With an Attitude”. I really liked this reading because it’s a kind of step by step guide on how to best teach students how to writ essays. In this reading Christensen gives multiple tips and activities as well as examples for each tip/activity. She gives so many that after a while of me repeatedly saying in my head “oh, Karen that’s a good one! Remember that!” I just pulled up my notebook app and started writing them all down. Fortunately, that’s going to make this post a bit easier to write since I have note references right next to me. The three topics I guess I’ll break this post into are some of my favorite writing strategies she discusses as well as some talk about the examples she uses.

Christensen talks about NUMEROUS strategies she uses in order to help her students produce the best essays they possibly can. These strategies (some-what) follow an order but are also helpful separately and make good activities to help students write better as well. The first one that I gently loved and was what hooked me into her reading was when she said “What makes you angry? What gets on your nerves, under your skin?”(68). She uses these questions to probe of lists of possible topics and themes that her students create and can write about. She does this because she believes that writing is a “rehearsed argument”, and I couldn’t agree more. Essays are best when you know your argument and understand it is your job to defend your position. The reason I love this strategy so much is because when you ask teenagers “What makes you mad”, you’re doing so many things! Firstly, you’re giving them a choice in writing topics. You’re also allowing them a platform to voice things that make them upset, and YOURE asking them. Many teenagers don’t have someone to ask them, what makes you mad? What don’t you like about our world? Because many people don’t think that kids have opinions about our “adult world”- but they do, they have plenty to say! My first thought was “I would love to do this with my kids” I was already imagining the lists they’d make “I get mad when we can’t play basketball on Fridays because there’s an event in the gym, I hate when my mom checks if I’m in the program or not, I can’t stand when my people complain to me about my little brother”, they’d have a field day! And that’s another thing you’re doing, you’re actively engaging the students in an exciting way to their writing. Cause honestly, teenagers love venting.

Another strategy I thorough enjoyed was Christensen’s jumping from topic to evidence, instead of introduction as usual. I thought this was really valuable to remember because it is something I’ve noticed students struggle with too. They put so much stress and emphases on the introduction and don’t even realize they have no evidence in their essay (or concrete evidence) to back up their claim. It sounds so annoying even writing that sentence because of how many times I’ve heard teachers say “where’s your evidence?” but its true. And, it should be one of the first things students focus on. Its one of the first things I focus on anyways. When I create my outlines, I start by listing what I want to say with my essay or what the assignment is asking me to say. Then I start to gather whatever information I have on that topic and see what these pieces of information can help me say, like seeing how they fit into what im trying to prove. Then I work on making a clear and concise statement. Its kind of like saying you want to make a cake and knowing you need eggs, milk and flour, without checking if you have any. Then when you make your cake you realize you’re missing some ingredients and the cake wont come out as delicious…Did that make ANY type of sense? I don’t think so. But you get what im trying to say right? The evidence is the bulk of the essay, and although the introduction come first, its also just a summary in a way of what you want to say. Evidence is way more important that introduction paragraphs, therefore they should be given more time and priority over introductions. This is actually the strategy that directly follows the “what makes you angry?” probing question strategy but these aren’t the only great strategies offered in this text. Christensen goes on to talk about ways to ask students hard questions to moves their thoughts deeper and help their paper get ahead of just superficial answers, using your own writing as examples of drafts, revisions, etc, editing and revisions and so much more.

The last thing I want to talk about from Christensen’s text is her use of student examples. What’s interesting about Christensen’s essay is how the examples she uses aren’t nice cookie cutter examples. I feel like she also uses the examples of her students work to highlight their work against their struggles. Its never something that’s just an example of good whirring. Its also an example of a child’s life. I’m not sure if this is done because the writing is so well or if Christensen is trying to bring awareness to the reader of the lives of these kids, but I like it. She writes “This is life in my school, and I try to take advantage of knowing the reality ahead of time” (72). She is aware of the reality her students face outside of school and seem to accept and use writing as a way for them to openly talk about their lives. I think this is cool because often times I felt my writing in school had to be filtered. We all know what was going on in each other and our own lives but for some reason had to write about dumb things like dates and fights between dead old men as if their lives were more important than our own. I’m not knocking on the importance of some of these “dead old men”, just saying that our students have real and important things going on in their lives. Its our job, as teachers of writing, to give them a place to express it, and defend it, and make them feel as important as those dead old men.

Write Beside Them- Penny Kittle

The chapters we read from “Write Beside Them”, by Penny Kittle were actually a lot more entertaining and relatable to read than I thought. She writes things that you just find yourself agreeing with as an aspiring adolescent English teacher and other things were you’re just like, wow, this lady has a point! Ill be taking quotes that really stood out to me from the first few chapters and discussing why I think these are important points or advice.  

            In the first chapter, Kittle writes a lot about the impact the teacher makes with their students. One of my favorite lines is when she says “One parent said to me, “Why should she graduate from this place? None of us ever did.” We can’t fix that attitude, but we also can’t despair, throw up our hands, or ever say “There’s nothing I can do.” This reminds me of the challenges I would face if I worked in my community. I work now in an after school program with children grades 6-9. Recently, an incident happened in the school where some students got arrested and one of the parent’s response was very rude and uncaring. She basically felt that it wasn’t a big deal although her kid committed a serious crime and was hurting others. This is what children deal with, and Kittle says that we can not allow these situation and parents and other unchangeable circumstances to stop us as teachers form doing our jobs. I love when she writes “because teachers are more powerful than parent pressure, any textbook, workbook, curricula, or central office directive”. This is something very hard I think, for me to accept sometimes because I hear so many stories of teachers grade and jobs being graded off these test and curricula and it’s a very radicle idea to say “I am the teacher, this is my classroom, you do not matter, but these children do”. But that’s exactly what kittle does, and maybe more of us should start thinking like that too.

            In chapter two, Kittle emphasizes the importance of actually writing while you teach writing. I love the analogy she uses of new drivers. She writes “there’s no grace in beginning drivers and without a good coach showing them the moves, they won’t improve much. Neither will writers”. This, I think, is how everything is in life. You can’t really do anything greatly (or even good) from only looking and learning about it. It’s the same for cooking, drawing, and most other things in life. You need to actually “do the thing” (this is a line from a movie who’s name I can’t remember right now, but always pops into my head) to learn correctly. Another thing Kittle said was how she’s wasn’t supposed to be a writer, just someone trying to write. I want to add to that by saying that although we may not all be published writer’s like Kittle, I think we have more expense than our students because we’ve had to write for college and for more years. So we can share with them experiences and tips that help us as writers OR ways for them to find what tips would help them