Who Needs Recess

Instead of hanging around for the 20 minute recess after lunch, the sixth graders at Laurelville have decided to get fit. Students have volunteered to give up their recess in an effort to get in shape. They are walking and/or jogging every day for twenty minutes after lunch.

What started as an idea to just give the opportunity to walk to students that were bored during recess has evolved into one of the high points of the day. Some students jog, seeing how many laps they can make around the gym. Others get with a partner or group and talk as they walk.

The biggest benefit seems to be in the classroom afterwards. Students are more attentive and mentally alert, while being more relaxed and restive in their seats. Their output in the first hour after walking has noticeably improved.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that fewer than one-quarter of children engage in daily vigorous activity. In this class lately, 100% of the students are getting busy each day. Taking turns carrying the pedometer, students are charting the miles. So far, they are averaging about 1.3 miles/day.

According to WebMD:

1. Exercise Boosts Brainpower
2. Movement Melts Away Stress
3. Exercise Gives You Energy

4. Fitness Can Help Build Relationships
5. Exercise Helps Ward Off Disease
6. Fitness Pumps Up Your Heart
7. Exercise Lets You Eat More
8. Exercise Boosts Performance

This sixth grade class is going to see the benefits of exercise, if they keep up the pace each day during recess.

Great job to the McGuire's Milers!

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Why Skimming Matters Most

Is skimming the most important skill needed by readers today? In the technology driven, Web 2.0 world, readers are faced with information overload. Just the number of words thrown out at readers on the Internet causes an overload for struggling readers. Web pages are jammed with facts, opinions and statistics. Links to everywhere just wait to lead the reader astray.

Just looking at the main page of the Reading Workshop blog must be daunting for someone struggling to get through the words. On top of that, you have the words in different colors and in different places. The day of just reading from top to bottom and left to right is over. Now readers must know, at a glance, what is relevant.

This week as we began reading and writing persuasive essays, the challenges of just a simple Google search overwhelmed some struggling readers. Limited vocabulary made for unsuccessful or irrelevant searches for many students. Even when provided with key words, the need to quickly skim the results and evaluate for relevancy, was quite a challenge.

Determining whether or not an article was just on topic, or if it provided information to support a persuasive essay was another challenge. Students searched for facts to support their opinions. Just this part of the writing/reading process was hard work.

In order to search successfully, students needed to follow these steps:

1. Choose appropriate search terms,

2. Skim the search results,

3. Find links that most likely fit the topic,

4. Determine if the web pages provided appropriate information,

5. Decide if sites might include facts to support their opinion,

6. Go to the websites and skim for facts and information,

7. Save appropriate information and sources,

On top of these tasks, the ever-present web filter blocked many search results, and students only had 30 minutes of class time. Even faced with all of these obstacles, many students found research results with statistics and facts to begin to build a convincing persuasive essay.

As students continue their search today, maybe the best topic to write about would be "Skimming is the Most Important Reading Skill."

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Twilight, For Only the Right Audience

With all of the buzz surrounding Twilight, I decided to see what the vampires did for me. Students were going crazy for the books about the cold ones, and now that the movie is out, they are obsessed.

This series of books, written by Stephanie Meyer tells the story of Bella Swan, the main character, who moved to Forks, Washington. She did not want to be here. She's not fond of her father and missed her mother. She was miserable.

Magically, her life was saved by Edward. She found out he is a vampire and immediately they're in love. And it all happens in the first few chapters. Meyer then spends the next 400 pages telling how handsome Edward is and how much Bella is in love. Finally in the last 100 pages, there is some excitement and action.

With each book (I almost made it through the first three) in the four book series there seems to be an abundance of fluff with too much repetitiveness.

However, I must admit, even though this series wasn't a good choice for me, the affect it has had on occasional readers is amazing. Students that couldn't hardly fake read themselves through a 100 page book, are spending countless hours engrossed in this series of books. If nothing else, Meyer's ability to reach her audience is note-worthy.

If you are a graying, male teacher with an appreciation for complex stories, this may not be a good choice. BUT, if you are a teenage girl, looking for a great romance book, dive in to Twilight and enjoy!

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Unbelievable Readers

In the last three weeks, Heather, a student in Reading Workshop has read 1,448 minutes at home! Plus, she read 30 minutes each day during SSR time in class. She read Falling From Fire, Six Months to Live, the Kidnapped series, and the six Spiderwick Chronicles books.

What started as a conversation about what students would read over break, turned in to an unbelievable accomplishment for one class. Students piled up on books the last day, as they prepared to leave for winter break. BUT, I never would have dreamt that they could read anything close to the amount that they read. In fact, 80% of the students earned an A for their read at home grade.

Even more surprising is the total minutes read by a number of students. As I looked over reading logs, student after student totaled up a significant amount of reading and a great collection of books.

Here is a tally of the top readers:

Taylor 465 minutes

Desire' 690 minutes

Kyndrah 1,000 minutes

Collin 664 minutes

Christian W. 1,115 minutes

Heather 1,448 minutes

Tyler S. 445 minutes

Rachael 361 minutes

Students from some of the other classes racked up the minutes:
Jessica 455 minutes
Emma 450 minutes
Kara 544 minutes
Makayla 520 minutes
Corbit 403 minutes
Ryan 511 minutes
Lily 685 minutes

One thing that I know for sure, these students will have a lot of academic successes ahead. Students that read this much will benefit from an ever increasing vocabulary, increased knowledge, and a broader view of the world. Great job to this bunch of unbelievable readers.

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Freak the Mighty - the Mightiest Read Aloud

Freak the Mighty strikes again. Each year this book is students' favorite read aloud. This book, written by Rodman Philbrick grabs the reader into a story about two boys that are the most unlikely friends. The only thing they have in common is that they are both misfits.

Max begins the book with, "I never had a brain until Freak came along." He is the biggest kid in the school, but one that has always been labeled as the dumbest. Kevin aka Freak is a "crippled kid" with amazing intelligence. Together they become Freak the Mighty.

Students relate to Max and Freak, feeling united with the challenges they face. This is surprising considering how most students are so different from these two characters. But, everyone can feel the pain of not fitting in with the crowd, and being picked on by peers.

We will spend a lot of time discussing character development in this book, especially the way Max changes and grows. In the first chapter his low self-esteem jumps out at the reader. His loneliness is evident with his tears of joy after eating dinner with Freak and his mom, the Fair Gwen.

As we progress through the book, questions upcoming in the online journals include: How would you react if you met Max? If you met Freak? How would Kevin and Max be different, if they attended school at Laurelville?

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Getting in the Groove

There is nothing like a nice long break to help feel rested and rejuvinated. BUT, boy is everyone slow getting started. It seems like brains are moving in super slow motion (mine included).

Students were eager to come back from winter break on Monday morning. Everyone had stories to tell from Christmas. There was a lot of bragging about winning at Wii and tales of who slept in the latest. By 10:00 though, students started to sag. Those that had been getting up at noon every day, looked sooooo tired.

Students wrote goals for 2009 in their online journals, but I am thinking maybe we should have waited a few days. The ability to think ahead and plan for the rest of the year seemed to be a daunting task for many. Just getting through the day seemed to be an insurmountable challenge.

The sluggish response after just two weeks off made me think about coming back from summer break. This losing momentum and loss of learning is the strongest reason the idea of year-around school often gets mentioned. I can't see that happening in the near future in Ohio, but it is an interesting idea?

What do you think? Should we avoid the summer slow slowdown and go to school year around?

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