Blog Archives - MR. MAYNARD READING

2015-2016 School year: day 17 Recap

9/30/2015

As Sam says as the community garden in Seedfolks becomes needlessly segregrated, "From the Garden of Eden, it had turned back into Cleveland."

In short, Wednesday was an awesome day in the classroom. In reading class, students performed a close read of the story of the Garden of Eden, which was alluded to in our novel Seedfolks and will serve as a great point of comparison tomorrow. After students read independently and annotated the text, they formed groups and created SWBST summaries based on one of three characters in the story: God, Adam and Eve, or the serpent. We then did a second close read, performing some reader's theater of

the story with students taking on different roles (My oh my! How they all want to be God! :-)) In all seriousness, we read the story of the Garden of Eden strictly as a story and did not discuss religious beliefs.
In social studies, we wrapped up Chapter 1, Lesson 1 of our textbook and watched CNN Student News, learning about a family of refugees who has been sadly divided as a result of fleeing ISIS in Syria. In writing class, I provided students with some final tips on knocking out the final draft of their 9/11 reflection, including pushing their details to the next level. After school, I froze outside but had a fun time watching and timing the Dore kids as they competed in their first cross country meet at Hale Park. Continue after the jump for some great pictures of Wednesday's close read and the cross country meet.

2015-2016 School Year: Day 16 Recap

9/29/2015

The answer better be an emphatic "Yes!" from my students!

As I catch up on what we did last week, here is a quick recap of what happened last Tuesday. In reading class, students took their second vocabulary quiz of the school year. In social studies, we dived into Chapter 1, Lesson 1, on the first Americans, with the kids doing a great job working in groups via various roles, including Group Previewer, Reader, Vocab Definer and Fact Finder. In writing, we focused on the comma, including the many rules that accompany this common form of punctuation and leading to the terrible picture joke to the left. As for all of my jokes, whether corny, truly funny or surprisingly controversial, they are always in good fun, which gives me an excuse to share this fun, catchy and ironic song from the summer. Enjoy.

"anne and emmett" lunchtime review

9/28/2015

During lunch today, sixth-graders, Mr. Lee and I discussed the play "Anne and Emmett" that we saw on Saturday afternoon at the DuSable Museum of African American History. Overall, the reception of the play was very positive, with the students adding some interesting thoughts.

For example, one student noted how she was surprised how the tone of the play shifted so quickly from humor to sadness, wonderfully noting how that showed how quickly life can change in just a moment, as sadly seen in the case of Emmett Till.

Another student explained how she wondered how the play would intertwine the lives of Anne Frank and Emmett Till, and was impressed with how the play did so through this setting known as Memory.
Several other students were especially saddened by the gruesome death of Emmett Till, but touched by how his sacrifice helped spark the Civil Rights Movement. While I thought I knew a lot about Emmett's death, the detail in the play was frightening and truly disturbing, leaving me with an uncomfortable feeling all of Saturday night.
As a group, we discussed how Anne's father and Emmett's mother never let the memory of Anne and Emmett fade by championing their children's lives and the issue of equality until the days they died.
Mr. Lee and I wondered shared our concerns that the play was too graphic at points but came to the conclusion that history can sometimes be ugly and the truth needs to be told honestly. At points during the play, I felt like I had transitioned from a teacher to a parent, watching how the students reacted to some of the language and scenes in the play. I quickly came to the conclusion that these students were more than capable of handling such difficulties.
I expressed my gratitude to the students for being so mature during the play. I felt very lucky to attend with such a great group of kids.
In regards to why the play mattered, we came to the shared conclusion how prejudice, stereotypes and racism are never warranted, though still a big problem today; how we need to remember the past so that we can help make the present and future better, especially for those who are suffering; and to appreciate our differences in respectful ways.

All in all, attending this play was one of the major highlights of my relatively short teaching career, and I look forward to future opportunities with such a great group of kids.

2015-2016 school year: day 15 recap

9/28/2015

Despite the school copiers being temporarily done and out for the count, it was a good Monday in the classroom, as this quick recap shows.
In reading class, we began by reviewing the week three vocabulary words from Friday's word sort in preparation for tomorrow's vocabulary quiz. As I gave some clues, students used their whiteboards to write down

the word that best fit. From here, we continued on with Chapters 5-8 of Seedfolks, exploring some benefits and new challenges that were rising in the community garden and continuing with our SWBST summaries of our next group of characters.

"Sam wanted to plant some pumpkin seeds in the garden, but he was 78 years of age and too old to do such hard work. So Sam hired a teenager to plant the seeds for him. Then Sam agree to split the profit with the teen."
"Virgil and his father wanted to grow baby lettuce in the community garden to make some quick money and get an 18-speed bicycle, but Virgil learned that summer was the wrong season to try to grow lettuce. So Virgil got mad at his father for this poor planning. Then Virgil felt bad for his dad, who didn't put too much research into this get-rich quick scheme, and prayed into the locket that he found in the garden that the lettuce would grow, somehow, someway."

     In social studies, the students took their first CNN Student News quiz of the school year. We then watched CNN Student News for the day, learning about the big U.N. meeting in New York City, the resignation of John Boehner, and the unsealing of the Doomsday Vault. Don't worry. It's not as bad as it seems. Tomorrow we will jump into the textbook for our first lesson in chapter 1 on early hunters and gatherers, which I am quite excited about.
     In writing class, we did two DOLs and then reviewed our punctuation quiz from last week. We then examined the final rubric for the 9/11 reflection that will be due on Monday, October 5th before returning to our "subject" packets and selecting new classroom jobs.
     While all that might not see like that much, it was a quite productive day in my opinion. Until tomorrow!

Reading Field Trip to Anne and Emmett at the Dusable Museum of African American History

9/26/2015

       Today several of my sixth-grade students, their parents and I had the wonderful fortune of attending the play "Anne and Emmett" at the DuSable Museum of African American History. The field trip was a reward for those students who finished in the Top Five of My NewsELA Summer Reading Challenge. Basically, students had to read articles on NewsELA each week throughout the summer and take quizzes to earn points.
       Overall, the play was amazing as Anne Frank and Emmett Till met in a place called "Memory" and discussed their tragic, but never forgotten, lives, including some haunting details that I did not know about but am glad to have learned. The information on Emmett Till was especially enlightening and very hard to swallow 60 years after his terrible death.
         It has been nearly four hours since the play ended, and I am feeling a bevy of emotions that are really hard to explain. One thing that I can definitely convey is how proud I am of my students for the maturity and sensitivity that they displayed as the play tackled some very uncomfortable issues that needed to be discussed. I am glad that we were able to take this trip and look forward to talking to my students about their reactions during lunch on Monday.
         Additionally, I wanted to thank Ms. Romo and Mrs. Aviles for helping drive students, and Mr. Lee for attending as well.

2015-2016 school year: Days 13 & 14 Recap

9/25/2015

Faster than a speeding bullet...the 2015/2016 school year thus far!

On the way to lunch today, one of my sixth-graders commented to a fellow classmate how this school year is flying, and she couldn't be any more right. Despite this nasty sinus thing that made the last two days feel like a blur, another week has come and gone pretty quickly. Here's a quick recap of what happened in reading, social studies and writing on Thursday and Friday. Enjoy the weekend everybody!

Sincerely, Mr. Maynard :-)

2015-2016 school year: day 12 recap

9/23/2015

Rocking stylized haircuts and fashionable clothes, Room 307 hit the red carpet for picture day (which ironically is one of my favorite days as a teacher but was one of my least favorite when I was a student). The kids

looked, felt and acted great, having one of our best days of the year as they pushed their minds through challenging vocabulary and punctuation quizzes in reading and writing, respectively, and came up with an amazing definition for the the term history ("looking back at the past to improve our lives in the present and make things even better in the future") as we began our class definitions of these terms.
I was especially proud of the way the sixth-grade students behaved while waiting in the hallway to take their pictures, leading to compliments from several other teachers. I always speak to my class about representing themselves the right way while transitioning through the school, and this group has really taken that message to heart early in the school year, especially with the transition to the new modular. I have been quite impressed and am grateful for having such an amazing group of kids.
For a snapshot of some picture day moments, click after the jump.

2015-2016 School year: day 11 recap

9/23/2015

Here is a very quick synopsis of what happened in sixth-grade on Tuesday as I am unfortunately dealing with a minor sinus infection that hit me like a ton of bricks this afternoon and apparently led to me having a bad hair day, at least according to my witty students during writing class today.

Speaking of those witty students, they were quite sharp in their responses and ethic today, leading to a great day.
In reading class, students started the day on fire by sharing some very intriguing and insightful responses about some possible problems that may develop within a community garden (per our close read on "A Farm in Chicago?"). Here are the pictures showing the insightful thinking from Rooms 307 and 308. Please click on the image for a close-up of the student responses.

2015-2016 School year: Day 10 Recap

9/21/2015

This weekend zoomed by.

Wow! That was a very fast weekend, from attending a meeting on Saturday morning to helping my Dad pick up a new motorcycle the rest of the day (including trailing him back from Indiana for three hours) to listening to

the Bears go down in defeat while doing some cooking early Sunday to prepping for this school week. Before I knew it, it was 8:00 p.m. on Sunday night, and the weekend, like my Dad's new bike, was a shadow.
In all seriousness, if there is one thing that I have learned the past three years, it's that time flies when you are a teacher. These last three school years have been the fastest years of my life, and this year is off to another quick start.
As for what matters, here's what happened on what was mostly a very positive day, with the exception of some missed vocabulary homework! We all had busy weekends, I guess (totally just kidding). :-)

2015-2016 School year: day 9 REcap

9/18/2015

   The first full week of school is officially over, and I am going to celebrate with...a short blog post and good night's sleep. As you can see, my greyhound Garrett has the right idea.
    Honestly, students finished the week on a strong note as we did our first vocabulary word sort activity, started diving into our Social Studies textbook, and learned how to write an introduction for our 9/11 reflection.
    Here are some cool pictures of the students sorting their weekly reading vocabulary words based on definitions, synonyms and antonyms. Room 308 especially kicked behind when doing this activity, as all groups were ready to rock and roll and sorted the words quickly and efficiently. Of course, I would be remiss not to thank Room 307 for cutting out the strips for all of us at the beginning of the day.

See what happened in Social Studies and Writing by continuing after the jump.