Yesterday I saw my B day students. We worked with a prompt for our memoirs. The writing went well both as they responding and when they wrote long. Fifth period worked with the most focus. Sixth and seventh were a bit chatty. All of the classes hunkered down when it was time to spend time with one focus.
We also talked about how writing at home was going. The girls identified two problem areas. One a place to work which was conducive to writing. Lots of younger siblings. One student preferred writing among others. The other problem was what to write about. I will continue to share ideas for generating things to write about.
Today I met with my B day students. During first period I asked them to write about our speaker this morning and what they hoped to remember. Then we moved on to reading our recent entries with the hope of finding a topic that interested them. We wrote a tiny bit towards that. Then we discussed Naomi Shihab Nye's poem Kindness as a focus poem for Comfort. First period our discussion was great. The girls felt that they had a better understanding of what metaphor was after discussing the poem and identifying metaphors. They also saw how metaphors contributed to the meaning in a poem.
During second period we looked at our notebooks and identified an idea for our memoirs. The girls seemed focused and successful. They had some writing time. Our discussion of the poem was not as rich. The discussion did not seem to clarify metaphor in the way it did for first period.
Finally during third period we also looked at our notebooks for ideas for our memoirs. The class had several questions about what exactly they should do. Could have been my instruction. Once I clarified they went back into and most of the girls identified a direction. Writing time was extremely focused. Then we discussed the poem. Their discussion fell somewhere in the middle. Several of the girls had a greater understanding of metaphor others remained quiet.
Since I will use metaphor as a tool for deepening their reading experience, their understanding will be evaluated again. Need to stress when looking at Invictus, too.
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