Thursday, October 31, 2013

Using Flipgrid for Responding to Literature

A few weeks ago, I introduced my students to Flipgrid.com.  It's a free web-tool that allows teachers to post questions which students then answer by recording 90-second videos.  It's often used by teachers of online courses, but it can be used in a variety of ways.  

At first, many students were nervous about filming themselves, and they didn't like hearing their recorded voices, but after a number of tries, they've become more comfortable with it.  

In English 12, we're reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon.  The main character and narrator, Christopher Boone, has Asperger's Syndrome, and throughout the narrative he demonstrates and reflects on how his mind works.  

I posted this assignment for my 1A class:  "Chris says his memory works like a recording device.  Use a different simile to describe how some aspect (memory, thought-process, imagination) of your mind functions.  Be specific!"  You can see and listen to their responses here.  

Most of them managed to find interesting ways to describe the workings of their minds, and they've learned to think ahead about what they want to say.  Some of them are (somewhat obviously) reading from a script they've written, and that's okay.  They were also quite specific and provided good examples, which is what I wanted.  They packed quite a bit of information into 90 seconds!  

One other nice thing about Flipgrid is that it was created at the University of Minnesota!

One Thing Leads to Another, Part Three

Bud on Pink Pixie orchid opening up
I'm hoping the Senior Class Blogs will soon reach an even larger audience (you can now access them on the Parent Portal page of the school website).  Writing for an audience is a lot of fun, especially when you get feedback, in the form of comments (hint, hint!).  I'm also hoping that the students will begin to feel a stronger sense of ownership over their blogs.  

To that end, I've asked them all to write a post on the topic of their choice.  They can report on their college search process or how their athletic season is going; they can post work from another course that they're proud of.  The possibilities are almost endless.  A couple of students already have ideas for a series of posts, and I hope they'll follow through on that...  

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Orchids & Insects: Using Narrable.com to Tell Stories

English 12 students will soon be working on a project in which they use several webtools to combine images and audio and written text.  One of the tools the students can use is Narrable.com.  Narrable allows one to upload images and then record narration to accompany the images.  It's very easy to use and creates a slick little product.  I made one myself last night.  It's about orchids, of course, and here it is!  Click on the photo, and after it loads, click the photo again.


Tuesday, October 15, 2013

And Then This Happened...

So, after the AP students performed "A Monstrous Manifesto" by Catherynne M. Valente for the Upper School morning assembly on Friday, the 11th, Ms Weaver (the Middle School Counselor) asked me if they might be interested in performing for the Middle School students on Monday, the 14th.  Well, they were interested, and so we did.  We performed for a Middle School Advisory wrap-up session in the Chapel, a space that provided some challenges.  We also had only a limited time to practice, but we made it work.  It was a good lesson in improvising.  (I can't wait to take these kids on Random Acting tours around the school this spring!)

The students really loved seeing the reactions of the younger kids, and in the video below, you can see some of those reactions.

Before the performance, both Mr Breen and Mr Neblett stopped by (was it only a coincidence that I was dishing out slices of chocolate pie at the time?).  Mr Neblett spoke briefly to the students about how nice it was to see seniors taking the lead on educating their peers about important issues.  At some point during class, Emily Paul, older sister of class member Erin Paul, stopped by and watched a practice session.  (I always love it when former students stop in!)

After the performance, while we were finishing up our pie, the students talked about wanting to do even more, about maybe developing some kind of anti-bullying presentation to go along with the poem, or perhaps creating a website where students (from any school) could share stories anonymously and support each other.  Some of us had talked earlier that day in Advisory about how the most powerful anti-bullying messages come directly from kids, not from adults.  (Hmmm...I'm thinking there's a Senior Project in there, somewhere...)

I'm also hoping that the class will want to write some kind of message to Ms Valente, to let her know what her poem has inspired them to do...  (Let's see who's paying attention:  somebody should open a  GoogleDoc and share it with the class and with me...)

Anyway, the video is below.
Enjoy!


Friday, October 11, 2013

So, This Happened Today...


Sometimes, lesson-plans turn out much better than one could ever have imagined.  I had my AP students read Catherynne M. Valente's "A Monstrous Manifesto" in class the other day as part of our Frankenstein unit.  I thought we'd have maybe a 15-20 minute discussion of the poem and how it connects to the novel.  I also thought that maybe I'd ask the kids to write a manifesto from the Creature's point-of-view, but we never got that far (perhaps we will still do that).  

Almost immediately after reading the poem, someone (was it Erin P?) said it would be cool to perform the poem at an assembly, and things quickly moved on from there.  

Everyone was full of ideas about how to do it:  Maddie S wanted to do it flash-mob style, with people popping up out of the audience as they spoke their lines, and Jake K wanted to start with one speaker up front who would then be joined gradually by more and more speakers, for a cumulative effect, in keeping with the poem's refrain: "Come stand by me."  Without any help from me, the students found a way to combine both ideas, as you'll see in the film.  

At the end of that class period, we went into the auditorium to practice, and the staging developed even further.  People decided where to sit and who would say each line or phrase.  This is obviously a poem people connect to immediately and deeply:  students eagerly claimed their favorite line (I was just hoping squabbles wouldn't develop over who got to say what!).  The kids made the connection with the school's Bullying Awareness initiative.  (To tell the truth, I hadn't made the connection myself until the kids realized how perfectly the poem would drive home that point.  Call it synchronicity--sometimes, the Universe works with you!)

We practiced over and over, and I urged folks to enunciate and project ("Natasha!  I still can't hear you!").  Catherine offered to write up a statement to read after the performance, and I've included that below (I didn't help her with it at all--when kids have something REAL and really important to say, they don't need any help).  

Everyone agreed to memorize their lines, and I offered to give them a half hour of the next class period (which turned into 45 minutes) for another practice session.  I arranged with Mr Neblett for some time at the assembly, and we were good to go.  

In the second practice session, the students had their lines memorized, and we must have run through the poem at least a dozen times.  The students decided to wear black tops and blue jeans, blue being the designated color for "Stomp Out Bullying" and National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month.  One of the students provided blue ribbons for the rest to wear in their hair or tie around their wrists.  

And the only glitch this morning was a last-minute panic about whether Asher would show up, but he did, and it went off without a hitch.  

Here's the video.



The students, in order of performance, are Cat M, Natasha K, Meggan G, Maddie S, Asher N, Calvin K, Gunnar R, Jake K, Cara H, Ian P, Mary B, and Erin P.

Here's Catherine M's statement:


This is Dr. Nygaard’s AP English class.  The other day, we read this poem by Catherynne M. Valente called “A Monstrous Manifesto” and I think it really spoke to a lot of us, especially during anti-bullying week.  Someone came up with the idea of presenting, and from there, the next class periods were spent putting this together.

We’ve all experienced bullying.  We’ve all seen bullying, been bullied, or even been the bully ourselves.  This poem captures the basic idea that we are all flawed.  We are all monsters, but we have also all been broken.  This fact is what connects us to everyone in this room, yet too often it is what divides us because we refuse to understand each other’s pain, even when it’s so familiar to us.  We pretend we don’t see; we pretend we don’t understand.

As anti-bullying week comes to a close, remember this idea and carry it with you throughout the rest of the year.  Take a stand; don’t stand by.  Thank you. 


(I think they deserve a chocolate pie, don't you?)

Thursday, October 10, 2013

English 12 Students! Read This (Part Three)!

I've asked the students in AP English to go blog-walking through your posts, looking for apostrophe errors!  They will be leaving comments when they find such errors...Of course, you could do some editing and try to fix them before the AP students have a chance to find them...just a suggestion...

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

English 12 Students, Read This!

We're about to start reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.  The main character in this novel has Asperger's Syndrome, which, among other things, makes it hard for him to read and understand other people's facial expressions.  

I recently came across this quiz in The New York Times which measures one's skill at reading expressions.  Take the quiz and see how you do.  Make a note of your score--I'll want you to have it for class. 

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Frankenstein: Why Do the Film Versions of the Novel Always Fail?


Boris Karloff as The Creature
twm1340 / Foter / CC BY-SA


My AP students have finished reading Frankenstein and will soon start to write their papers on that novel.  Often, at this point in the year, students ask me if I can recommend a good movie version.  Perhaps someday a really skillful director will make a film version of Frankenstein that really captures the complexity of the novel, but so far, I haven't found one...Why is it so hard to make a good movie from this novel?  Well, here's my answer to that question.

Shelley sets up a conflict between narrative and spectacle, between hearing and seeing, between the Creature’s story, which is attractive, and his body, which is repellent.  Film is an almost entirely visual medium and therefore cannot do justice to all of Shelley’s creation.  

Like Victor Frankenstein, filmmakers want to create life (or the image/illusion of it), and for them, as for him, movement is equated with life.  Historically, film comes into being—comes to life, as it were—when artists/scientists animate photography, when they make still photographs into moving pictures.  Victor likewise animates a (heavily edited) corpse.  Filmmakers fall in love with Victor’s ambition because they share it.  

Thus, the filmmakers turn the process of creating and animating the Creature into a lavish spectacle and put all their effort into exaggerating the Creature’s horrible visage and stilted movements; in so doing, they see (the Creature) first and listen (to him) later—if at all.  They encourage viewers to stare and be repulsed, rather than to listen and then understand. 

The novel, on the other hand, lets us (along with Robert Walton) see the Creature only after we have listened to him.  As we read his narrative, we see the world through his eyes; we don’t look into them.  Consequently, instead of staring at his body, our thoughts paralyzed by his horrifying appearance, we see past his body and think along with him about what it means to be human.

Young Frankenstein:  great film, but not
really about the novel...
ralphhogaboom / Foter / CC BY-SA
The mind’s eye is more sympathetic than the body’s eye.  The mind’s eye can only see when it listens, and it creates an image of the Creature based on his narrative, and so sees his spirit, while the body’s eye, like the camera, often sees only the body and fails to capture the spirit.  And all the body-language in the world, no matter how skillfully captured on film, cannot convey the depths of misery and the pains of isolation that the Creature articulates so eloquently in his narrative and which we can only perceive and understand when we read it.   

So, I'm still waiting...maybe someday...