What I'm Reading & Teaching in December

My school operates on trimesters rather than marking periods, and our new trimester started when we returned from Thanksgiving break. My units align with our trimesters it's been nice to start something new upon returning from break. 

The end of first trimester was a bit of a let down. Despite all of the supports I have built into the essay writing process, the quality of many students' essays did not match what I expected to see after two weeks of work and many, many small group writing sessions. Similarly, the quality of students' final projects was also disappointing despite the step-by-step brainstorming and templates provided for students. Many projects were submitted incomplete and some students just didn't turn in anything despite knowing it was one of two of their final grades for the trimester.

That said, it's likely no surprise that my October frustrations with teaching haven't magically disappeared, but I am continuing to hold fast to my plans of keeping activities shorter and simpler to match student skill levels and stamina, using reading sprints to break up independent reading time into more manageable time chunks for students, and taking the time to deal with even the small behavior issues to keep things from spiraling. To help myself focus on the positive and not feel totally overwhelmed by the negatives, I also set a goal of sending home two good news notes per class period each day. 

Reading in December

I read 11 books in November, officially putting me two books over my goal of 104 books (2 books a week) for the year. I had high hopes of doing quite a bit of reading and relaxing over Thanksgiving break, but a bad head cold squashed that plan. Still, I'm also pleased that I am moving out of my reading slowdown from earlier in the school year. 

Here's what I'm hoping to read in December:

1. Ground Zero by Alan Gratz

2. Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

3. Torpedoed: The True Story of the World War II Sinking of "The Children's Ship" by Deborah Heiligman

4. To All The Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han

5. P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han

6. Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han

7. Attack of the Black Rectangles by A. S. King

8. The Girl I Used to Be by April Henry

Teaching in December

Our new unit for the second trimester focuses on the theme of facing fear. I start my units with shorter pieces: short stories, poetry, and short nonfiction readings. The nonfiction readings in this unit will culminate in an informational essay that is part synthesis and part research. And instead of then moving on to a whole class novel study, students will have a choice of six novels for literature circles.

The two short stories I start my unit with are "The Ravine" and "The Jumping Tree." With these stories we focus on conflict, characterization, and making inferences. We'll then read "Life Doesn't Frighten Me" by Maya Angelou and students will have a choice of imitating her poem, Shel Silverstein's "What If," or Rudy Francisco's "Honest Poem." After that we'll get into some nonfiction readings about fears and phobias and focus on main idea and details, summarizing, types of evidence, and nonfiction text features.

Just before Thanksgiving, we started on a choice writing piece I call "What I Love." I had high hopes this year of adding another choice writing piece between this one and the "Where I'm From" poem students write at the start of the year, but it didn't happen. Maybe next year. This writing piece involves a lot of list making at the start. We look at three mentor texts for their use of repetition, specific language, serial commas, and "interrupters" (complex sentences with parenthetical elements). Students then try out some of these "writing moves" with a topic of their choosing. After quote a few quickwrites, students will put together their ideas and then turn it into a polished piece.