English Grade 7

November 3, 2012

Dear Parents:

As promised, here is the first update from your child’s seventh grade English class. I send these updates periodically because it is often difficult for parents to elicit information from their children about school other than that it’s “fine.” So my aim here is to give you a taste of what we’re learning, doing, and thinking about in class.

We began the year by reading The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. This novel has it all: suspense, romance, family drama, violence, contemplation of the meaning of life. The students had a lot to say (and critique!) about the plot and its themes, and our discussions were designed to encourage them to build on each other’s ideas and construct theories about the characters’ motivations and the author’s intentions.

The Outsiders also allowed us to begin thinking about how we craft our writing. Over the course of two diagnostic writing tasks and a thesis paper, we paid close attention to our use of topic sentences and textual evidence, always looping back to two central questions: First, by reading only the topic sentence, can we predict what the rest of the paragraph will be discussing? And second, after completing the paragraph, is the reader left with any doubt about why the writer chose the example(s) they did? These are the two areas (and, so far, the only two areas) in the students’ written work that I have been grading, chiefly as a way of comparing their attempts over time and placing my feedback in a larger context unique to that student.

Our study of the craft of writing has also encompassed verbal storytelling. This strand of the curriculum culminated in our “outsider anecdote” presentations, the result of a week’s worth of planning, rehearsal, peer coaching, and revision focused on building to a climax and using variations in voice and pacing for dramatic effect. We had previously mapped the identity of the main character from The Outsiders based on his sense of being an “insider” or an “outsider” in different groups, and we proceeded to map our own identities in the same way. Each student then prepared an anecdote narrating a moment in their past when they felt like an outsider. We shared our anecdotes, sitting in a circle, a few days before leaving for the Caroline Furnace overnight trip. Afterward, I reminded the students that since they all have known the feeling of being an outsider, they could recognize when classmates on the trip were experiencing outsider moments and reach out to them.

Connections to Caroline Furnace continued upon our return, as we embarked on the Outsiders thesis paper. The students’ choice of writing prompts covered questions of peer pressure, stereotyping, learning styles, managing emotions, and other “real-life” topics. Each student composed a thesis paragraph based on one of the prompts and then discussed one supporting example from the novel and another from their own experience; many elected to use an example from the previous week at Caroline Furnace. We took the writing process for the thesis paper very seriously, evaluating three sample paragraphs of increasing quality (courtesy of our A-block student teacher, Ms. Gabrielson) and working through drafts during one-on-one conferences. I was impressed with the level of engagement and determination that each student demonstrated, and it gives me great optimism that by the end of the school year, we’ll have a group of inspired, purposeful writers ready for eighth grade.

Over the last few weeks, we have been reading The Circuit by Francisco Jimenez. Like The Outsiders, this book is written from the perspective of an adolescent who finds himself on the periphery of society due to circumstances beyond his control. The series of vignettes in The Circuit has allowed us to focus on a number of subtle storytelling techniques that we will eventually employ as we compose our own narratives next month. In class discussions, it’s been fun to watch students get excited as they figure out how various components of a chapter relate symbolically to one another. We are also using this book to help us structure analytical arguments more precisely, with another thesis paper on deck in the run-up to Thanksgiving.

And let’s not forget grammar! We have just wrapped up our intensive study of how to identify and fix run-on sentences; every student improved between our first practice exercise and our second quiz and should now be able to proofread for these types of errors in their own writing. We’re just now beginning a study of capitalization using our pop grammar book, Woe is I Jr., and our workbook. We’ll end the semester by deepening our understanding of punctuation before encountering more theoretical grammar study in the spring.

Besides more grammar and essays, the second quarter will feature the “parallel story” narrative project, which will challenge the students to incorporate the symbolism techniques we’ve analyzed in our novels and the grammar concepts we’ve practiced. This will be the third time I’ve facilitated this project, and the students always enjoy taking what they view as creative writing to a higher level, realizing that they must put the same amount of thought and strategy into it as they do for expository writing. After winter break, our focus will shift to poetry, To Kill a Mockingbird, and a bit of film analysis, as well. The end of the semester in late January will also give the students an opportunity to assess their performance in the class, evaluate their progress with independent reading, and set goals for the rest of the year.

I hope this update has given you a better sense of what your seventh grader is up to in English class. I’ll send a second update in a few months’ time; please let me know if I should send it to you at a different email address or take you off the list. In the meantime, I invite you to follow our class using our webpage, and don’t hesitate to contact me with feedback, concerns, or questions.

Sincerely,
Mike Fishback

December 20, 2012

Dear Parents:

Before we head off for winter break, here’s a second update from your child’s seventh grade English class.

When I sent the last update, our class was working with The Circuit, an episodic novel based on the author’s real-life experiences growing up in a family of undocumented migrant workers in California. The two writing projects we have undertaken since then, one expository and one narrative, have both been based on this book.

The topic for our essay on The Circuit came about as a result of interesting discussions the students were having about the ending of the book, where the narrator and his family get deported by the authorities. On one hand, the students felt awful about this turn of events, having come to know the family and its struggles so intimately through the book. On the other hand, many students insisted that laws are laws, and since the family had broken the law by sneaking under the border fence from Mexico, they had to suffer the consequences. To deepen our discussion, I asked the class to read last year’s much-talked-about New York Times essay “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jose Antonio Vargas. Vargas recounts his life of deception after learning as a teenager that his mother had sent him to the U.S. illegally, culminating in his journalistic success and decision to reveal his status publicly. This article sparked new and more difficult questions among the students. So our essay question became this: Is it ever okay to break rules, and if so, under what circumstances?

To sequence our arguments tightly, we practiced writing paragraphs in what I call the “BuRP” format. BuRP stands for blue, red, and purple. The blue section is the idea or opinion; the red section is the evidence or quote; and the purple section is an explanation of how the evidence supports the idea, just as purple contains elements of both blue and red. This color-coding became our way to test the cohesiveness of the body paragraphs in our essays: Does our analysis reference some blue and also some red, to make purple?

For the essay’s argument, each student cited evidence from the novel and/or the article; many also chose to cite a time from their own life when they felt conflicted about whether to follow a rule. The essays produced some quite sophisticated philosophizing, even as the chief aim was to practice writing with a strategic sequence. (And in case you’re wondering, about one-third of the class argued that it’s never, ever okay to break rules, with the other two-thirds making the case for various times when it’s acceptable.)

Our second writing project was the Parallel Story, based on the structure of two vignettes in The Circuit. “Parallel stories,” as we have defined them, have two plot threads that run parallel to each other all the way through, in order to enhance the story’s meaning and symbolism. Some students composed fictionalized versions of events from their own lives, while others crafted completely original storylines (perhaps featuring themselves as the protagonist). We approached the composition process with a high degree of structure, completing charts of our two-layered narrative sequence before we began writing. My goal here was to show the students that creative stories, like essays, can be planned out so that the pieces fit together purposefully. After the revision process, we published our stories on a website accessible only to those who know the address (and invisible to search engines, for maximum privacy). To prepare to read and comment on each other’s published pieces, we studied the art of writing website comments and providing feedback that is affirming and substantive. Feel free to post your own comment underneath any story on the site!

We also have continued our grammar studies with a unit on capitalization, followed by a series of lessons on the appropriate use of various punctuation marks. Part of the Parallel Story project was a Punctuation Challenge, for which each student selected three punctuation marks they wanted to gain more experience using and then incorporated them into the story. (Another requirement was to include at least three lines of dialogue, punctuated correctly and with appropriate paragraph breaks.) Along the way, we have continued to consult Woe is I Jr. and complete practice exercises in our workbook. We also continue to visit the library, review and chat about books on our discussion board, and take significant chunks of class time to sit and read for pleasure.

This week, our A-block bid farewell to our student teacher, Ms. Gabrielson, who has been present during most class periods this semester and has facilitated some of our most memorable lessons. She has taught us about paragraph structure, symbolism in literature, paragraph breaks within dialogue (using a clip from Finding Nemo as her chief resource), and proofreading for inconsistency in verb tense. Ms. G. has also been an invaluable consultant to each student during our writing and revision periods. Our students loved engaging with her original writing, and she in turn loved engaging with their original ideas. Beginning in January, Ms. G. will continue her student teaching at Madeira before embarking on a solo teaching career. We wish her all the best and hope she comes back to visit us!

Looking to 2013, our next novel will be To Kill a Mockingbird, which is itself a parallel story on many levels. Tomorrow I’ll give the students a list of books they might select for independent reading that are set during the Great Depression and involve children and/or the topic of race relations, in order to build some context for the setting of Maycomb, Alabama. We’ll also explore poetry, film, and grammar theory in the coming months. You can follow our curriculum, as always, through our course website. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with your feedback, concerns, and questions. Best wishes for a relaxing, joyous holiday and a happy new year!

Sincerely,
Mike Fishback

March 13, 2013

Dear Parents:

Spring break is nearly upon us, but before we leave for our rest and relaxation, I offer you this third update from your child’s seventh grade English class.

Since January, we have immersed ourselves in Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird. For many students, this is the first novel they have read for school that was not written specifically for children. Consequently, it is a relatively challenging read, and we have spent many weeks engaged in reading, reflection, and analysis.

Much of our study of this book is built around Atticus Finch’s timeless advice to his daughter Scout: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” As we reenacted the famous Tom Robinson trial during class, we used this quotation to capture the perspectives, motivations, and anxieties of each character. And the group project we are preparing for after spring break involves scripting and performing scenes extracted from the novel but featuring narration by a different character, showcasing how our understanding of a situation is enhanced by hearing another’s voice.

We have also used To Kill a Mockingbird to practice analytical writing, with two in-class essays over the course of the reading thus far. Our focus continues to be on how to fit together a thesis statement, supporting points, evidence, and analysis. As the students have become more comfortable with the sequence of an argument, I have given them more freedom, both structurally and intellectually. In their essays, students have used excerpts from the novel to discuss the metaphor of “killing a mockingbird,” to piece together Atticus’s moral philosophy, to evaluate the wisdom of exposing children to hate and injustice, and to examine the circumstances under which one has an obligation to stand up against prejudice.

Race is often the elephant in the room when classes read To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel is widely hailed as a civil rights era triumph, yet we hear from few black characters. The ones we do hear from are portrayed largely as victims: the novel’s hero, Atticus, is a white man who is heralded simply for acknowledging the humanity of the town’s black community, and the text is peppered with racially derogatory terms. To prepare to teach the book, I consulted closely with Mr. Grant, Potomac’s Director of Diversity and Inclusion, as well as Ms. DeFilippi, who teaches the other English sections. In January, we presented a lesson about “words that sting,” tracing the evolution and impact of a number of hurtful terms for different marginalized groups, including not only African Americans but also other ethnic identities, women, gay men, and people with developmental disabilities. By opening a genuine conversation about these words, we aimed not only to prepare our students for their encounters with certain words in the novel but also to educate them about a topic they often perceive as taboo. Thanks in part to this effort, the subsequent class discussions have been some of the most enlightened and respectful I have experienced when teaching material related to race, despite the inevitable discomfort that continued to linger in the room.

Many students were intimidated at first by the length of the book and the complexity of the text. The level of apprehension seemed to decrease after we collaboratively explored and annotated a complicated passage that turned out to describe a urination contest (see p. 57 if you’re curious), and we supplemented our reading with a series of vocabulary discussion boards on our website, to which we posted examples of how we tried to use unfamiliar words from the novel in our daily conversations. (Thank you to those of you who put up with your children’s overly sophisticated and/or colloquial speech over the course of a few weeks this winter!) While the book ultimately proved challenging for the class, most students enjoyed the opportunity to puzzle over the intriguing text and mature themes and dilemmas.

We have a busy two months ahead of us after spring break. After wrapping up some To Kill a Mockingbird activities and viewing the film version of the novel, we will spend time as poets and poetry analysts, revisit our grammar studies, and dabble in public speaking and persuasive writing. As always, please don’t hesitate to contact me with feedback, concerns, or questions.  I wish all of you a very happy spring!

Sincerely,
Mike Fishback

June 8, 2013

Dear Parents:

As your child’s seventh grade school year comes to a close, here is a final update from English class.

Upon our return from spring break, we conducted a few closing activities related to To Kill a Mockingbird. One of these was the collaborative “Adult Instruction Manual” I emailed to you back in April, focusing on what the novel can teach adults about how to communicate with children effectively. Each student drafted one section of the manual and revised a number of others, so that the finished product represents the collective wisdom and written expression of the class. Another activity was the scene narration project, for which small groups of students selected a scene featuring a minor character, scripted it from the perspective of that character, and then performed it for the class. We asked questions such as “What does this character see that Scout (the book’s narrator) does not?” and “Which experiences of this character influence how he or she views what’s going on here?” The objective was to promote empathy, practice close textual analysis, and draw inferences from the text.

In mid-April, we launched an exploratory study of poetry. We began by collaboratively examining a series of poems for about 45 minutes each, taking the time to notice, wonder, and theorize about them. Our poets ranged from Lucille Clifton and Sherman Alexie to William Shakespeare and Billy Collins. In class and in their journals, the students pointed out all sorts of subtle techniques and patterns in these poems, uncovering mysteries about why the poet made certain decisions and constructing a wide variety of theories about what the poem might mean. We then used this experience to help us compose our own poetry. The focus was on more than simply applying techniques; it also involved anticipating what others might wonder and strategically planting mysteries to make our poetry more interesting and intense.

To test our efforts, I distributed an anonymous version of each student’s poem to a student in one of my other English sections for use as the subject of an in-class analytical essay. I then emailed the finished essays, again anonymously, to the original poet. Often, the essay-writer picked up on unintentional yet impressive uses of language in the poem, or constructed a meaning from it that was entirely different from the poet’s intent. Our young poets had a fun time reflecting on these essays written about their own compositions; a number of them noted that the experience made them feel professional. I hope that through these exercises, the students developed an appreciation and an excitement for experimentation with language.

We also tackled grammar quite seriously this spring. Our class spent two periods outside playing grammar games. Part athletics and part theater, these games helped us visualize the abstract concepts of prepositions, subjects, and direct and indirect objects. We followed this with a series of challenging written exercises designed to test not only skills but understandings. Later, we examined the concept of passive voice using our newfound grasp of subjects and objects, debating when (if ever) it is appropriate to write in the passive voice.

To conclude the year, we embarked on a persuasive speech project. The requirements combined many strands of the year’s curriculum: writing with structure, purpose, and coordination; using language in creative and poetic ways based on your audience; and incorporating different approaches to phrasing and grammar based on the parts of the sentence you want to emphasize. We also discussed various persuasive strategies (logos, ethos, and pathos) and reviewed performance techniques that we first encountered during our outsider anecdote project and again for the scene narration project.

Students could choose any topic they wanted for their speech, as long as it was potentially controversial and could be supported by factual evidence. As they outlined their speeches, they scoured the Internet for data, excerpts from research studies, or anything else that could support their positions. In addition to composing two supporting argument paragraphs (mirroring the “BuRP” paragraphs they have been writing all year in their essays), they had to address at least one counter-argument, acknowledge its validity, and offer a rebuttal. In this way, the project emphasized one of the most prominent lessons from To Kill a Mockingbird: the importance of trying to see the world from another’s perspective, even if it’s not your own. We presented our speeches in front of the class after three weeks of outlining, revision, and rehearsal.

This has been an incredibly enriching year for me. I’ve enjoyed getting to know your children at these exciting moments in their lives, when they are curious about the world, eager to express their opinions, and not yet caught up in the complexities of later adolescence. I hope that English class has been a worthwhile experience for them, and I’ve greatly appreciated your feedback and communications through the year. I’m excited to announce that I will be teaching three sections of eighth grade English next year, so even if I don’t teach your child again formally, I’ll be working with all of them in some capacity as a member of the eighth grade team.

Best wishes for a relaxing summer!

Sincerely,
Mike Fishback