In My Imagination...

Imaginative writing is a pretty big section of the HSC Area of Study and, for those students undertaking Extension 1, it's 50% of their course work. Whether you teach juniors, Standard, Advanced or Extension 1, I've got a few ideas on how you can engage students in creative writing to develop their ideas into something great.

Piclits
Heard of this website? It has a whole heap of images to prompt creative writing ideas and students can drag and drop words into the image to brainstorm ideas. Alternatively, teachers can choose images and insert a single word that they want students to focus on. A great Web 2.0 tool for visual learners and lots of different ways it can be utilised in the classroom.

3 Minute Images
This was an inspired idea I took away from professional learning at the AIS. Put together a series of images to do with belonging, or whatever topic you so choose, in a powerpoint or keynote presentation- you'll need 20 or so images. You can source them yourself, or ask the students to each email you a picture with the website they got it from so you can ethically reference it. In class, tell the students they will have 3 minutes per image to start a creative writing piece. Each image should inspire a DIFFERENT and ORIGINAL idea. The beauty of this task is that they are writing continuously for the whole period in silence, completely focussed on the development of new ideas. The purpose of the task is for the students to consider many new ideas about belonging- some good and some bad. At least from what they come up with here, they may choose a few to actually write about later on.

Handy Hints
This document is a standard one that I give out to junior and senior writers to assist them with how a short story will differ from an epic novel. It illustrates the importance of starting very close to the complication and other ideas.

Writing Portfolio
This is one of my faves and I thank my colleague Andrew McHugh for giving me this idea! This is a great revision task for HSC students, to get them thinking about different text types, characters, audiences and settings. It requires them to have a 'bank' of ideas that they can mix and match and pull ideas from.

Teacher- Guided Writing
This activity will take the whole lesson, at my school, 55 mins. If your lessons are longer, I'd recommend spending an hour on this and then getting the students to move off and start putting the pieces together. Ask students to each bring in two images around the following guidelines:

Love not Lust
Faith not Religion
Trust not Obedience

These are just to avoid pictures of pets, girlfriends and boyfriends and other teenage nonsense really! But you can put your own guidelines on what you want them to bring in. It's important they arrive with a hard copy as these will be placed on the floor and students sitting in a circle around them. The students sit in silence as you guide them through with the following instructions, spaced out to allow them time to write:

1. Each student should choose an image from the collection- one that is NOT theirs.
2. First, consider the setting of your scene in the image. Where is it? WHEN is it? Students to have a clear understanding of the time and space that their story is going to be set in.
3. Using descriptive language and imagery, write 2-3 sentences to describe the place and time. Play with sensory imagery: what does this place and time sound like? Smell like? Taste like? Feel like? Look like?
4. Next, think about a character for your story. If there are people in the image, who is going to be your protagonist? If there is not a person, how can the setting shape a character for you?
5. Consider the age, sex and back story of your protagonist. Write a character profile for them, about a paragraph. What do they look like? What is their occupation? Family situation? Marital status? Likes and dislikes? etc. 
6. From here, it's important to get the students thinking about the plot. In the context of the AOS, it needs to link to Belonging so plant that seed in their heads at this point. Students should decide what is happening in the image right now and what happened just before this picture was taken. Here, you're trying to get them to decide upon a complication that hopefully has to do with belonging! 
7. Now consider what happens just after this picture is taken. How does this progress the plot?
8. Next, think about other people that are in the image. Who are they? How do they relate to your protagonist? What part do they play in the plot? If there are no others, why not? What does that suggest about the concept of belonging? I don't recommend students develop any more that 2 characters; when they do, the stories become bigger than Ben Hur. 
9. Consider a symbol or motif that could recur through their piece. Is it something from the image- a necklace? Colour? Or is it a phrase that is repeated throughout? Write a paragraph on the symbol/ motif. Describe it's significance and purpose. Analyse it like you would if it were in your core text. How does the protagonist interact with it?
10. Students put their image back into the centre and choose another one. How does this new image suggest a new direction for your story? From here, get the students to start writing if there is time, using all the prompts and brainstorming they have completed thus far.

In my classroom, I establish this task the lesson before and let them know that when they arrive they are to be completely silent and focussed. I reiterate this when they enter the room by putting my finger to my lips and speaking calmly and quietly when guiding them through. It's supposed to be a focussed and reflective activity where the answer to all their questions is YES, so really, there's no point in asking any. 

Hopefully some of these ideas will inspire those of you out there that are looking for new ways into creative and imaginative writing!

Belonging Related Materials

This post is about 5 months later than anticipated- that's always the way right? The school year just floats away from us! Oh well. It will be useful for Year 12 teachers in preparation for trials and HSC revision, as well as teaching belonging at the end of the year.

It's always a challenge to get my students sourcing appropriate and sophisticated related texts at first; being girls, their brains immediately jump to all the cliches Disney, Finding Nemo, Mean Girls. So it's a good idea to have a really good bank of resources that you can present to your class as models of GOOD related texts.

I used to ask my students to create a 'logbook', which documents the collection of related texts and their writing on it. But these days, the whole 'book' thing seems pretty out of date to me, especially since we run a highly successful 1:1 laptop program. So these days, I proudly run a paperless classroom, preferring to upload word documents and PDFs onto our Moodle Intranet for students to type straight into and file away. "But what about their handwriting? The HSC is still hand written after all!" I hear you cry. I still ask them to hand write essays, class tasks, creative writing. It's about finding the balance between convenience and skill.

Attached here is the logbook task that I have often used for both Standard and Advanced. It's got a number of tips for successful sourcing of texts as well. I also ask students to fill out a template for each text that they find, to demonstrate their understanding of the aspects of belonging present in the text and to start analysing the forms and features of the text.

While I can't publish online works which are not my own, I can give you a pretty good list to run down as suggestions! So here are my failsafe belonging related texts, some which are really well-known, others which are a bit more obscure and good to model for students. That said, contact me directly and I am happy to send you out my copy of these resources, including film study guides.

Newspaper Articles:

SMH Good Weekend 2 of Us: a great source for both Standard and Advanced students and with one published each Saturday, they are always up to date and OFTEN feature a great story on belonging!

Television:

Australian Story: Check out the ABC website for a back catalogue of episodes. Great to teach film techniques and the documentary features. Perfect for Standard and Advanced and only go for 30 minutes! I highly recommend the following titles from the past- The Highway Man, Reality Bytes, Her Terror and Her Beauty.

Films:

Gran Torino
Juno
Aquaporko!
Into The Wild
Little Miss Sunshine

Poems:

A.D Hope: Australia
Jennifer Martinello: Emily Kngwarreye
Jennifer Strauss: Migrant Woman on a Melbourne Tram
Imtiaz Dharker: minority
Eva Johnson: Spirit belong Mother
Wondimu Mekonnen: A Refugee
Anne Sexton: Unknown Girl in a Maternity Ward

Short Stories:

Helen Garner- My Hard Heart
Helen Garner: The psychological effects of wearing stripes
Tim Winton: The water was deep and it went forever down
Tim Winton: Distant Lands
Thea Astley: Coming of Age

Attempting to Belong in the Web 2.0 World

Another year of the Area of Study: Belonging and, after teaching it for 3 years so far, am keen to take a fresh approach with my Advanced Year 12 this year.

As a starting point, I talk through the rubric with them. They need to understand from the get-go that the HSC questions come directly from the rubric. So in theory, if they understand the rubric then they will understand the question! After this, we brainstorm a range of synonyms and antonyms for belonging and 'not belonging' (hate that term!) and I used a great Web 2.0 Tool called Visual Thesaurus. This tool allows students to type in a word and it will visually mind-map all the related words. It's a paid tool- you need a subscription but you can get a trial account for about 2 weeks. Well worth it!

After collecting a whole heap of words, I get them to create a Wordle for homework so they have a visual representation of these words. I mandate that they have to be printed out and put somewhere where they are going to see it everyday, such as the front of their folder, under the clear plastic case of their laptop or as their desktop background. Here is a sample I created:

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Wordle, it's really straight forward and a good way in for both Standard and Advanced students.

Something that worked really well last week was getting my students to write their own definition of belonging using the BOS rubric, dictionary definitions and their own ideas. I really wanted them to be thinking about the different aspects of belonging- including 'not' belonging and the factors that influence this. Further to this, they wrote 3 thesis statements about any aspects of belonging. I found this a really beneficial exercise to see the depth of ideas they are currently coming up with and this also assisted me in continually gauging my students range of abilities within the Advanced course and identifying individual student learning needs.

Finally, I cannot recommend enough the benefit of printing off all the related Belonging words they come up with and making A4 flash cards that you post up around your classroom. I had mine printed on different coloured paper and laminated back in 2009- and they have been invaluable every year since! It gets my students thinking about DIFFERENT words for belonging and is an easy way to broaden their vocabulary. Great for both Standard and Advanced, even better for ESL I would think. Here's a photo of my current classroom wall:

I hope these few tips are helpful to those of you who are a bit new to the whole AOS thing. Next week, I'm going to do a post about related texts and will suggest some solid texts to be used with classes.

An  a day...

So a few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be asked to present to a group of Apple Distinguished Educators (ADEs) and some bigwigs from Apple about how I use technology in my classroom. It was a really exciting prospect for me to think quite purposefully about how I incorporate ICT to enhance student learning and what I might choose to present to other teachers.


The presentation really gave me an opportunity to reflect on my own experience of teaching with laptops, specifically Macbooks. It's been a little different to others in my school as I was a Mac lifestyle user previously. So for me, it really came down to time to play in the sandpit. I taught myself how to use a lot of the apps when I first got it- iMovie, Garageband, Photobooth etc. And as far as teaching goes, that's what the students need as well- sandpit time. It can often be difficult to factor in time to let kids play with new software and applications- but it's absolutely necessary if we want them to be knowledgeable and skilled users of technological tools. Slowly, the quality of the work they produce using these tools improves.

I touched on these ideas last post- creativity. excitement. skill. These are the three key concepts I presented to the ADEs a few weeks ago about why the Macs (but also just laptops in general) are so goddamn awesome in the classroom.

creativity.
With the Macs at their fingertips, the opportunities for students to let their imaginations run wild are limitless. They have so many choices about HOW to present their ideas, which automatically gives them an outlet for their creativity. This has been a driving force behind my creation of resources and activities for the English classroom.


excitement.
Students have a desire to show off their skills to each other through peer tutoring and learning. Without realising it, they're also demonstrating to their teachers their knowledge of content and enthusiasm for learning. Students have a true sense of ownership over what they have created and produced because the tools belong to them.

skill.
All of sudden, these kids are easily making links between the skills they need in English and other KLAs! They are coming to realise that their technological skills are absolutely transferable. As well, they are keen to share their skills and work collaboratively with each other.

The student samples I've selected here are activities which invite students to make their own learning decisions. As a teacher, I think it's becoming increasingly important to hand over the knowledge and power to our students and empower them with choice. In creating some of these activities, I admit, I didn't know how to use some of the tools I suggested to them. But they did, so it didn't matter. Importantly, these sorts of activities have had implications for my own professional learning, giving me the chance to explore how to use new Web 2.0 tools.

I've posted the PDFs here so if you like 'em, use 'em. I am also happy to email through .docx copies as well if you're interested so just let me know. As well as the tasks, I've also included some examples of the students' work. I'm pretty proud of what my girls have achieved here and I hope you'll be suitably impressed as well :)

ICT Character Study- Skellig by David Almond

Example of student work here:

The thing I love about this particular example is "Making Up Mina" at the end- this extra piece was not part of the brief, however the fact that the students CHOSE to make and include it just goes to show their enthusiasm and excitement for using technology in this task.

ICT Context Task- To Kill A Mockingbird
Podcasting Activity- To Kill A Mockingbird
ICT Visual Representations- Whale Rider Film Study- this needs to be opened with Adobe Acrobat Pro to see the embedded media.

Creativity. Excitement. Skill.

It's the end of the year- probably not really the right time to be starting an educational blog right? With the academic year winding down it seems the freedom to take risks in the classroom is more available than ever! So while I was checking out some educational blogs, I came across Project PLN which was seeking schools from all over the world to get students redesigning their learning spaces, based on what they perceive as their learning needs. "What a great end-of-year challenge," thinks Miss Lizzio. And thus began Project PLN with my Year 8 Extension English class.

Let it firstly be said that our school is already exceptionally well-resourced in terms of technology, learning spaces and facilities for staff and students. We've been a 1to1 Macbook school since 2010 and the kids love them. As a teacher passionate about technology, I saw this as a great opportunity to get the kids using their Macbooks to show off their technological skills and gain some new ones as well. The excitement grew in all of us when we realised we were the only school from outside the USA that was taking part!

We broke into 4 committees:

• Facilities- gym, pool, bathrooms & change rooms, common rooms, lockers
• Landscape- grassy areas, sporting fields etc
• Classroom Redesign
• Indoor/ Outdoor Areas

Within those committees I let them go. No joke. They were completely self-monitoring. Sure, I looked over their shoulders and gave guidance; we discussed what our school already does well and what's not worth altering. But basically, what they devised was 100% their own original ideas. They chose which technological tools best suited them in order to present these ideas- and in some cases, these were coloured pens, paper and a scanner. Some used iMovie, Garageband, Adobe Acrobat Pro, Photobooth... all apps they're highly skilled in. But they also experimented with Web 2.0 technologies that I wasn't familiar with, such as Sketchpad and some Architect design suites which they found on the net.

The outcome? A thoroughly interested and engaged class for the last 5 periods of Year 8 in 2011. They finished everything yesterday and today, I had a thorough look over what they created. I could not be prouder.

The lesson? Goddamn these kids get it. Technology gives my girls the opportunity to show their creativity, be excited by what their doing, and become highly skilled in using the tools they'll need throughout their schooling.

Attached is a short video the girls made of themselves working on Project PLN. We're all pretty excited about it being published on the Project PLN website later in December so look out for us!