Reading Programme

Hattie Ranking indicates that self-report grades plays major role in influencing student's achievement. The question is:

How do I combine self-report grades concept into my reading programme?

I am now trying social network as my medium of communication between the students. The main factor is the students like to be acknowledged of their achievement. Something they can boast about. In Kolej Yayasan Saad Melaka, I can say more than 60% of the students like reading books; fictions mostly. They share their books around, sometimes getting them back in a piece, some other times the book is not returned due to the unconditional sharing. Yet, by social network I believe the addiction can be snowballed. At the very least it can spark some interests to some uninterested ones.

I am using facebook as my main network because I am very comfortable with its system. I also believe that most students in KYSM has a facebook account. I create a page solely for reading club members. In the page they can share their views. Now here is the issue, how do I make a system where the students would achieve something out of their sharing session? I am sure they would want some recognition of their effort. I figured that by giving them level awards might do the trick.

The idea comes from Kobo; and app for both iOS and Android system. If we finish a book, it publish our achievement automatically (by setting) into facebook/ twitter. If we read a certain amount, we will get certain Kobo awards. They even record our reading time for special badges like 'Night Rider' if you read all night long, or 'Twain Award' if you read everyday for two whole weeks.

I will incorporate Kobo where the apps will monitor the students' reading activity and add 'manual' awards for those who writes summary reports on the page. 

To make things work and getting the ball rolling I would need some kind of marketing strategy to promote my activity. That I think needs more thinking and planning to make it materialized. For now I would stop here at preparing the medium. It will be great if you have any comments and ideas to my programme. I would definitely need it.

Cybersecurity Programme: Protect the students

I am surprised by the staggering rise of the statistic on cybercrimes.I was always being laid back when it comes to this matter. Infact I would always thought I will not be a victim.

I saw the statistic...the fastest growing age group of child pornography is aged 1-3. I am shocked. I never really realised that our world IS the virtual world. I can say "so what" if someone in Facebook gossips about me. But I can't say "so what" if someone put a photoshopped photo of me naked. That is still me and I have a reputation to protect for my career, family and friends.

The iPredators out there have countless methods to get our information. Just a simple sharing of a picture at my living room can prompt thieves to know my door structure/ alarm/ security of the house. I have actually given the info on what tools to bring to break into my house. I thought I shared minimal info...but an opportunist with a motive will see what we usually do not see.

Cyberbully, cybergrooming & identity theft does not stop from one end of the computer. It will follow you to the real physical harm because what's behind those computers are human. I will definitely prepare a lesson on this to raise awareness among the students. I need to make them paranoid just so they pay more attention to the urgency in my intention to protect themselves.

The effect of my Narrative Rubrics

I am high up in the sky. I am very happy to see my student's progress today when I used the Narrative Rubrics.

I have a student who is very weak in organising her thoughts. Her language is so-so, yet there is so much improvements recently. Her ideas are always good, only that she does not know how to arrange it well. Today, I introduced the rubric. I made sure I introduced it step by step so I won't overwhelm them. What I did was:
1. I asked volunteer to read aloud the requirement of scale 5, 3 and 1 for category Organisation.
2. I then asked the students to analyse where they are according to the details. Be honest with it and raise their hand when I call out the scale. I made sure to make them think it is more of making the first step to a better progress by admitting where they are. To tell the truth I want to make a mental note which students need extra attention when writing later.
3. Then only I explain what and how to achieve scale 5. I provided examples from other books/ movies and tv series that they are watching. I try to make the explanation practical as I could.
4. Then I asked them to write a narration based on any topic they are confident in.

I went to the students for extra attention and had a brainstorming session with their organisation and the planning of their story.

The girl I mentioned earlier had confusing moment on where to start her story. Her idea on her writing is fantastic (she wrote love story), I helped a bit in putting in the twist in the climax. She wanted to write about a boyish protective girl who fell in love with a naughty rich boy in school. At first she wanted to start her story from the beginning of the school - I stated it will be very dragging. She improvised and I am very happy with her new ideas that she came up with.

When the class was nearly over, she came to me to read her introduction. I was very surprised! I actually enjoyed the introduction. I would describe her starting as a very strong hook, which is very interesting and exciting to read. She started with the girl slapping the boy in front of the whole school and he was really stunted by the first girl who manhandled him. That is really good start!

I am hoping to read the rest of the story soon. I feel happy of this big jump. I think now she knows clearer on how to make her writing better. From the rubric, the good students would know what to do. However, the weaker ones need a very thorough guide and to show what the rubric really meant.

Scholastic Story Starters

Tracy introduced me a new website from scholastic for writing activity.

Scholastic Story Starters

The cute part is that the student get to write according to their luck. What I mean is they need to pull the lever of a wheel. From that they will get a mixed up match of things they need to write. For example, I got:
"write a suspenseful story about a babbling traveler who plays in an intergalactic football league".

If it sounds hard, I can just pull the lever again or change any part of the requirement, like instead of "who plays in an intergalactic football league" I got next "who lives on a space station".

Then I can choose in what format I want to write in. A notebook, letter, newspaper or postcard. I can insert pictures!

With that, I can start writing my article or essay or letter (depends on what the teacher wants - format that want to be learned).

The drawing however need to be scribbled. It has option like the paint only this one has less option. This might be, because they don't want problem with copyright pictures taken from other people websites.

Then when I am done I can either print it or even download it into my computer. From there, they can share it among themselves in edmodo.com.

I have not started yet. I will definitely soon because I have a lesson on writing a report. So most probably, for creative writing for introduction purposes I can use Story Starter to write a newspaper report. Then, I move on to a more formalised writing. The objective is for them to get cognitively ready for the real report writing.

Rubric on narrative writing.

As I remembered, I never had real writing lesson in my school days. If there was, not one that could stay vivid in my memory. Most of the time I felt like I was groping in the dark. I would usually use random grammar - anything that sounded right (I feel thankful I used to read a lot of story books when I was young) and made random sentence structure. I also wrote whatever that came in my mind first, never really about planning and how to make it purposeful. I made so many mistakes and I did not understand why I did them and how to fix it. I tend to get bored if I learn and revise something I already know, so I like fixing my weakness when revising. However, with English, I made little progress or none at all because I only see tick and squiggly lines here and there, some slashed out and certain times cross marks because I don't know why it is wrong. So I know now, in my class with my students, I cannot do what my teachers did back then.

I set writing activity for my students.

These are the criteria:

1. Narrative writing.

2. Based on pictures given (must use all in sequence) - I used Rumpelstiltskin pictures.

3. The story must be creatively designed different from the original version.

4. Organisation use good portion of each elements in plot: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution.

5. Good grammar and sentence structure.

I think this is what my students are facing; they are groping and they are bored with it. They know the form of the tenses during practice because it's practically a drill which is about doing the same thing over and over again. However, the practices are never about usage in various situation for writing and speaking. Then comes the sentence structure to convey their thoughts, they got the passive and active wrong and their direct and indirect speech is haywire too. To make things more complicated, they need to make the story pops out of page by using descriptive words and make descriptions vivid. In a nutshell, there are so many things to fix when writing and speaking a narration. They need formative and detailed comments on how they are doing.

Tracy advised in our training sessions to make feedback meaningful. This I highly agree. But how to go about this when there are so many students to attend to? If I need to go one student at a time it will take so much time and I don't even know if it's effective. Here, I am advised to use rubric. Use one that can show the criteria to get the perfect mark. Make sure to apply self-reported learning (which enhances their reflective thinking in their studies) so that I can learn more of the students' understanding and expectation of their work. Through the rubric they know what more they can do. 

This is the plan we discussed:

1. Introduce the rubric and the perfect criteria to get perfect marks.

2. Let them do the writing, to practice the new information.

3. Get the student to mark their own work. This gets them to analyse the level of strength and weakness. This also get them cognitively prepared to change their initial input with new ones once they know they are weak in the targeted area.

4. Then, I give them the mark. If there is a gap, the students can get to know my real expectation and the things they should do; in further details. I can get them to in sync their expectation with mine.

The rubric can be a bit overwhelming because of the criteria are explained in tiny details. Yes it is student-friendly, but it won't help them if they see it as too much information. So I will:

1. introduce 2 criteria at a time. Each criteria has 5 points scale.

2. introduce the 5th point scale first to set their mind on the type of excellent work I am looking for.

I am hoping the students can come forward and debate with me about their marks. That way, I can get more information about their individual writing tendency and they can get to fix their weakness.

This is my rubric: Narrative Writing 5-point scale Rubric - student friendly

storybird.com helps students to improve writing!

It has been more than a month since I put in any entry, however today I would like to report on a very positive progress that my students have made.
I have a student I teach since he was in Form 1 (that is 7th grade). Up until the middle of Form 2 (recently), his writing would usually achieve below 60%. I introduced storybird.com and I noticed he did his assignment. His work did not exceed my expectation. He made the usual errors and the organization is not very well arranged.

However, we had August Formative Test 2013 last two weeks. His work is among the good works! His grammar has improved drastically - making only minor or not-so-obvious ones. The progress went uphill with a very steep cliff.

I am very surprised.

These are my assumptions on how the improvements happen.
1. He has study group that helped him to catch up with his work.
2. He analysed his weaknesses and act upon it.

How does storybird.com and the usage of internet devices helped him?
I am certain it helped him by making lesson interesting again. To be in this school (KYSM, Malaysia), one has to go through 3 level of assessment that test on all of your skills. This student got through. The bad marks and the late hand-in assignment is because of his lack of interest. By using Edmodo, virtual classroom, e-learning and new experience in lessons made him intrigued and most probably sparked his desire to listen again.

Here are his marks on writing tests since the start of the year:
3.4/ 10 for descriptive writing
4.7/ 10 for recounting incident
8.4/ 10 for story-telling based on pictures with moral values!

Now, to tell a story a student need to be very descriptive and able to recount incident/ situations well. So he did well on both combinations. In fact, he outdid some of the good students (who did not manage to finish their short story in an hour).

I feel my chest inflated because I can see a very positive development in him. I hope he keeps up and most of all I hope I can still provide a better, meaningful and interesting lessons for the students.

Issue: attitude - missed class

Here we go again. The ranting on the missing kids.
I have noticed that students made it an excuse of their co-curricular involvement as the reason for not being able to hand in classwork/ homework. Some create such co-curricular activity just to get away. As a matter of fact, they would avoid the assignment at all cost. Problem is, this work involves important marks.

I remembered differently. Out of respect to the teachers (or was it out of fear...yikes) I would always make sure to not be highlighted as the kid who did not pass up work. And out of respect too, I made sure I do the learning parts by asking friends. Of course out of my conscience for my future I would always make sure important assignment that involved my mark is done (thanks to my father's non-ending nag on do-now-pay-later lecture)

So far this is what I figured out from my own experience on how to make a student commit.
- play by what is important for them. If it's their examination marks, make an assignment cost a partial of the exam result. (Done!)
- use their strength/ interest to set up the assignment. (This is almost impossible, as there are so many individuals I have to consider. But I figured that they like to use social network, so I set the assignment up in the same platform - considered done!)
- use fear. Yikes - my dad used fear. He said if I ever mention about wanting to miss a school he will immediately drop me out. I did not dare to even mention it even when I was sick! This, I am still figuring out what do they fear most.
- give do-now-pay-later lecture. At least if it gets through to half the class, I am reaching to a better attitude of students in the future. Yet a lecture is still boring, I bet they would sleep halfway.

My target is:
- my students send in the assignment.
- they send it in on time
- they follow up if they miss class
- no copying work just to get it done.

How? I need to walk my talk (more like threats)
Yelp yelp!