Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #Room407
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We had an eLearning Day yesterday so the first order of business today in #Room407 was to center our work around the idea of Black History Month. This is not "claps" or "likes." It's the thing I can do inside of the classroom that centers, captures, and celebrates this month.
The way we did this was to present CARTER READS THE NEWSPAPER by Deborah Hopkinson with illustrations by Don Tate. The book not only features Carter G. Woodson. The endpapers become a visual wallpaper of important figures to consider and share.
Again. This is about the month. This is about celebration. It's also about centering people and assuring that they can be seen in our working and learning space. Friends, this is work I was NOT doing in 2004. I can do it today. I will do it today. I will keep on doing it.
Today in PLC, a colleague described how she keeps a spread sheet of things that happen on screen. Like a cat walks across the screen. Instead of chiding the student, she records, “Student has a cat. Ask its name later.” That tiny little move is about relationship now and later.
Psst. This is why you all want us back in school. This is how we are going to win hearts and minds. But—mind you—note the teacher did this from a distance, at a distance, within distance learning.
I told seniors about our dog, Mia. They want her on-screen on Friday so they can turn on their cameras and mics to speak Words of Affirmation to an older, ailing dog. Gold Star Students. That’s what #Room407 students are. Gold star.
This is the Gold Star by our light switch in #Room407. Purchased at Goodwill for a quarter, it is a symbol of affirmation for our students as they leave each day. For two months, I watched as students would touch, tap, or gently palm the star as they left. But, then, one day. . . 
I came back after an absence. I turned on the light switch to find the Gold Star still on the wall but fractured. I was very upset. I felt as though a positive initiative on its way to new tradition had failed. All that held the Star together was the sticker and Command Strips.
I brought the fractured star home and I have kept it in this state for a few weeks now. Students have been upset. They wanted to know when the star would come back. I just didn’t know. Could we put it back and not acknowledge it’s having been broken? I couldn’t see how we could.
I'll break down this collage inspired by @halseanderson's SPEAK in the next few tweets. #SpeakLoudly #DisruptTexts #Room407 #THIS407
@halseanderson First, I want you to know that this "exquisite corpse" (some of you might call these floor or table "storms) came together in ten minutes. Tops. From one brand new magazine delivered yesterday (I didn't want you to think I had been sitting with this and pre-composed in process.
@halseanderson Artist friend Melissa Sweet asked me about "exquisite corpses" in the classroom yesterday. I had been thinking about floor storms in the past couple of weeks. Artists. In community. We seem to know how to tap into something latent in another. The question/invitation is the tap.
@FletcherRalph has a new book coming in September from @HeinemannPub @HeinemannPD (and I've pre-ordered, friends). The idea of the book has got me thinking and making this morning. Here is a quick collage to share and an idea to share. It will take a few tweets. #Room407 #THIS407
@FletcherRalph @HeinemannPub @HeinemannPD There used to a monthly magazine, MENTAL FLOSS, that I would pick up from stands. One of the features of the magazine was something called "1006 Words" which was really like a synthesis of ekphrasis and the 6-Word movement (inspired, according to folklore by Earnest Hemingway).
@FletcherRalph @HeinemannPub @HeinemannPD This is a quick collage I threw together this morning using an old Subaru ad, a crisp, beautiful backdrop of a bird feather and two phrases that seemed to work with the image. All of this is placed in an IKEA frame I got for a dollar.
Some English 11 pieces (Dear, __________") inspired by @JasonReynolds83's "Dear, Dreamer" this week in #Room407. You can find the ten-minute film at Vimeo.
@JasonReynolds83 Some have asked for the link to @JasonReynolds83 in "Dear, Dreamer" (ten-minute film). vimeo.com/338777680. While the film was running, I took down a page full of quotes and phrases from the film. Shared with students. Students used these captured lines as riff lines here.
There is a lot of interest in @GeorgeTakei's memoir in graphic novel format, THEY CALLED US THE ENEMY (mine included/book pre-ordered). In the interest of @ncte's #BuildYourStack initiative, I am sharing Larry Dane Brimner's VOICES FROM THE CAMPS (Franklin Watts 1994). #bookaday
Larry Dane Brimner's work here situated the reader six years after President Reagan's signature upon a national apology to those affected by the relocation of Japanese Americans in the early '40s. The voices invited and included in this book are still important to readers.
And this is not to spark debate around circulation/weeding (I recognize both necessity and the charge), but I bought this discarded book. From Berkeley. It's last checkout only four years after it's publish date. Who knows this book?
Today was our second day of selecting books for #Room407 students to read. And I knew that today. . .the very LAST day of junior year was going to be most difficult for two students in particular. Let me have a couple of tweets to tell you about these two friends. . .
These two have been inseparable all year. I would never see one without the other near or nearby. I've also known that one of these friends would be facing a difficulty decision at the end of the year in regard to staying at our school or moving away to be with her family.
The bond between these two is something you might read in a novel with a symbiotic relationship motif. So inseparable were these two, I started to call them "Twinkies" (coming two to a pack and sometimes sticking together). What book could I ever pick for them singularly?
In #Room407 today. . .as a last day activity, I pulled picture books specifically for each student and gave them a note card. They wrote the MLA citation of the book and then wrote why they thought I selected the book for them to read. This HAS to be a new tradition for the room.
While I had a sense of why i was choosing the book for the student, it was heart-warming to hear them share out why they thought I chose the book for them. In a way, it was like a self-assessment affirmed by the teacher at the end of the year.
I had them put the MLA citation because I want to give the card back to them a year from now so they will have the beginning of a picture book shopping list from the books that were in the room today. Each Orange 2 student got to hear their peers say something in response.
A student who will be new to AP next year stopped me to tell me she was "not a good student." This sparked an interest within me as I always want to know what is behind a student's value statement and how they have come to a notion like this.
First, I told her that there a number of "not very good students" who take college courses every year, but I was very interested in what made her think that she was "not a good student." And, then, she made me take a deep breath when she said, "Because I don't believe in myself."
And, I thought. . .there are two days of school left. What I say right now not only sets the tone for how we enter into the summer but how we enter into a challenging new course for the student in August. This is what we do friends. We must think fast. And we must think "move."
We've been writing Garland Cinquain in #Room407. If you know Cinquain, a "garland" is made up of five stanzas. A sixth that is made from the other five. S1/L1, S2/L2. Often this poetic approach can lead to a surprise breakthrough to thesis/guiding statement for a writing project.
We work a lot of poetic form into our inquiry-based, multigenre writing project, T.H.I.S. (#THIS407). Often, poetic forms give us just enough structure and rules and boundaries (syllable and work count and meter) to help us break into and through our prose thinking (sentences).
Done with intention, a Cinquain form and the Garland Cinquain can be generative. These can invite not only twenty-five points of entry into a project or new pieces, it can offer a surprise Thesis or Guiding Statement into a longer project. #THIS407 #Room407 @AmerCreedMovie @ncte
It comes with very little fanfare, @StudioJJK, but it does come with all of the gratitude of a classroom teacher. #Room407 #MrHankinsCraneAward2018
The Mr. Hankins Crane Award: This award given by little ole me since 2014 is given to a recent release whose very presence in the world lifts readers up. It is a small Crane inspired by the first book to get a Crane." #Room407 #MrHankinsCraneAward
2017: @amylvpoemfarm's READ READ READ #MrHankinsCraneAward2018
