Shelfari’s “Wish List”

Not too long ago, I posted a basic review of Shelfari and why I feel it has been and will continue to be a great tool to use in the classroom.  The last couple of weeks, as I’ve finished reading a couple of books, I think I’ve found something of a downside with Shelfari.

My Wish List is growing. Exponentially.

See, when I started using Shelfari, I was really excited to try finding every book I’d ever read and sharing it on Shelfari. I gave up on that idea fairly quickly. That’s just a lot of books. Once my “Books I’ve Read” shelf was up, I started adding books to other shelves – my favorites, books I own, etc. Two shelves have developed similar but different uses for me: books I plan to read, and the wish list. The former I use to create a lineup of the books I have on my shelf that I expect to get to soon. The latter, however, I use as a sort of “I’d like to read this once I clear out my ‘Plan to Read’ shelf” shelf.

As I’ve finished books and add them to the “Books I’ve Read” shelf, I noticed that, as I read books, I would see titles and authors mentioned that piqued my interest. I didn’t really want to forget them, and since half of my reading is at home, where I don’t have OneNote to keep the list, I started adding these books to my “Wish List.”

The problem I’m finally noticing is that, for every one book I add to the “I’ve Read” shelf, I add 2 or 3 to the “Wish List” and/or “I Plan to Read” shelves. Since I never used to keep a list of books I’d like to read (which is basically how I use the Wish List.

Long story longer, I think this phenomenon – my “Books to Read” lists growing longer than the “Books I’ve Read” list – illustrates one of my fundamental beliefs about education and learning. I think it’s best said by one of my all time favorite bands, Switchfoot: “The more we learn, the less we know.” In this case, it’s only a little bit different. I can honestly say that this is good evidence that the more I read, the more I realize I have yet to read.

Oi.

Ideas for “The Whale Rider”

First of all, thanks to ggratton and Tammy Gillmore for the tips on short stories! On top of their suggestions on the post on Short Story Mentor Texts, I discovered a couple of sites that might be helpful if you’re looking for short stories to use in a high school classroom:

• Timeless Short Stories for Middle School and High School
• Classic Short Stories Bibliography
• Twenty Great American Short Stories
• The Short Story – A Guide to the Greatest Works

Now that I have abundant short story resources from which to select mentor texts (I’ll be sure to share what stories I’ll be using as we get closer), I’m beginning to put together our first reading unit of the year. We’ll be using The Whale Rider to review basic literary elements such as plot, character, etc., and begin touching on symbols, motifs, and most importantly, theme. Part of my planning for this unit will involve Shared Inquiry, which I’ll be learning about at the Great Books Training I’ll be attending next week. I’m also hoping to figure out a couple of ways to begin integrating technology a little more completely by using SurveyGizmo or Google Docs for reading quizzes, and possibly trying out Animoto for Education (more on this another time). However, apart from those two elements, I’m struggling to come up with purposeful activities and meaningful assessments for this novel.

Since the last request went so well, I figured I may as well ask again: if you teach the novel, The Whale Rider, what sorts of objectives, assessments, and activities have you found work really well?

Short Story Mentor Texts

As I’ve been reading Write Beside Them, I’ve been very impressed with Penny Kittle’s use of mentor texts in her classroom. She seems to use great works of literature, both traditional and contemporary, to help demonstrate certain concepts or skills she wants her students to develop. She has even suggested a couple of mentor texts specifically up to the point I am at in the book – notably, Rick Reilly, one of my all-time favorite columnists and sportswriters.

One of our units is a Reader’s Workshop unit in which students select a novel of their choice that they will read and they use that book to compare to other texts and complete assignments on. Popular texts this past year included the Twilight books, Harry Potter, the Maximum Ride series, and other popular YA titles. Our focus in the unit is to help students dig a little deeper into conflict and resolution, as well as develop comparing/contrasting skills on a deeper level (we introduce symbols, motifs, and themes in previous units).

The problem I ran into is that I just didn’t use enough texts to compare their books to. After reading Kittle and listening to her describe how often she uses these texts, I realized I need a better sampling of good mentor texts that will help students better understand the concepts we’re studying. Since I don’t have a lot else to do, and since I feel like this unit can be infinitely better, I’m trying to get some ideas now (we won’t do this until late mid-semester).  A couple of writers that I am already looking into using are Sherman Alexie (my personal favorite), Ray Bradbury, and possibly Jonathan Swift (I’m itching to get “A Modest Proposal” into the class somehow).

Unfortunately, I don’t have a very broad background in short stories (our genre of choice for this particular unit), so I decided to reach out to my “other” professional learning community and ask for your help:

What short stories could I use to help students understand different types of conflict? What stories would provide opportunities for in-depth comparison with the books they choose? What short stories have you used with success in your own classroom? I’m open to any suggestions you might have.

The Social Web Comes to School

Back when I was in college (oh so long ago), a couple of friends got me onto this site called Facebook. I’d never heard of it before and it sounded silly, but I tried it out, mainly because it was geared toward college kids. The idea was that we networked with other students at our own schools and could create interest groups and do other things. It was pretty cool, but I wasn’t all that into it.

The idea was apparently a pretty good one. Facebook is currently one of the hottest companies in the world, largely because of the awesome demand for social networking. Along with MySpace (Facebook’s “tween” cousin),  the social networking site has spawned a sort of internet revolution.

Of course, there are plenty of well-documented issues with these sites that leave them blocked by school security systems (and for pretty good reason). But the concept still could have a valuable place in the classroom – imagine students networking with peers across the country or even in other countries. Now that would be cool. Realistically speaking, however, MySpace just isn’t going to provide that for our students for a number of reasons.

That’s why I’m a big fan of what my students called “BookSpace” sites – social book networking websites like GoodReads, LibraryThing, and my personal favorite, Shelfari. I started using Shelfari last year after hearing about a group at our high school using it. I was trying to find ways to engage the students in their outside reading assignment and this turned out to be a pretty good solution. Here’s a quick rundown on Shelfari.

What Students Like:

• Simplicity: I had initially tried using a wiki for them to post and share book reviews, but it was apparently too complicated.
• Intuitive Interface: it is structured much like MySpace, complete with profiles, groups and friends. 
• Visually appealing design: wood bookshelves house digital versions of your books. If you don’t have that cover, you can find the one you do have and use it instead. It’s almost eerie how similar it will end up looking to what you actually have on your shelves.

What Teachers Like:

• Book Reviews: I can see them from their shelves, but they are also posted under the book’s page. This means that if you go on and look for a review on one of the Harry Potter books, you will see one of my students’ reviews posted there (you might have to sift through a few pages to do so). I sincerely hope that this encourages them to give more consideration to their writing, as they are now writing for a purpose and for an audience.
• Groups: I created a class group, so I have all of their profiles in one place. I’m considering creating a group for each period next year to make grading a little more efficient
• Tags: A more recent addition, you can tag your books and browse tags. Students can use tag browsing to find other books they might be interested, as well as other users (and classmates) who have read similar books.
• Recommendations: If a student is not sure about a book, she can ask the community or just a friend if she should read that particular book, and receive responses.
• Loan Status: A recent Shelfari update allows you to keep track of who you’ve loaned out your copy of a book to. This is great for classroom books and even better for personal books. You can even print out a spreadsheet to keep handy.
• Fun: Face it, anything that gets the kids excited about reading a ton of books is a good thing. I watched several students read a book in class, then add it to their shelves over the weekend.

Downsides:

• Like all technologies, there is the potential for abuse. For example, before one student realized that books on his shelf appeared on my updates page, he added several editions of an adult magazine to his shelf, complete with covers. Fortunately, most of these sorts of actions are quickly identifiable and can be taken care of. In any case, one of the biggest concerns we must have regarding social networking like this is teaching responsible use.
• Like all social networking sites, students interact with strangers. In some ways, this is great, but not all families allow students onto social networking sites. As teachers, we need to understand and respect this, so I have and continue to offer several alternative or “choice” assignments

All told, I love Shelfari. I’ve continued to update my profile regularly (look me up – I’m “Mr. Hurt” with a capital H. The other one was a funny student) and I’m planning on using it again this coming year.

A snippet of my "Books I've Read" shelf, complete with ratings

Unpublished Posts

Something I’ve recently been experimenting with is not publishing all of my posts (like this one) right away. Initially, the idea hit me when I wanted to write a Voki post but was having trouble getting Voki to load properly (more of a computer issue than a site issue). In the meantime, I had a couple of ideas for posts and wanted to write them, but for some reason I felt weird about posting more than once in a day.

After writing a couple of posts and saving without publishing, I realized a couple of things. First, the pragmatic side of me realized that if I do this when I have time, I can just save posts and then publish them when I don’t have time to write something that day. This way, I keep my blog updated and receiving hits (insert maniacal laugh here).

However, the teacher side of me also realized (thankfully) that this is kind of like what I’ve been reading about in Penny Kittle’s Write Beside Them. I’m still early in the book, but I really liked her idea of having students free write daily to get them writing more frequently and, conveniently, to enjoy it a little more. I did several free writes last year, and I like to write with my students when we do, but doing it every day seemed a little extreme at first.

The way I’m coming to see it, however, is that these blog posts are no different than other writing pieces. When I write something down here, I can save it for later, but I don’t have to share it with somebody right away. Maybe I publish it for others to read a little later, or maybe I just keep it tucked away forever. In any case, it’s an opportunity for me to write down something that I’m interested and engaged in at that particular moment – exactly what Kittle wants her students to do in free writing each day.

Like I said, I’m not all that far into the book (chapter 3 in my note-taking reading and chapter 6 in my straight-through reading), but it is a “teaching writing” book par excellence thus far. If you want to know a little more about it, I recommend checking out huffenglish and JustRead!, both of whom recommend the book highly (plus they’re just great bloggers, too).

Interestingly, one of my drafts (that Voki one, coincidentally) just didn’t seem ready to be published. Go figure.