I’m going through Lord of the Flies with my class right now, so I thought I’d write about it a little for this post.

Whenever I teach this novel, I face my students’ frustrations with the language. Golding uses very dense, descriptive language throughout most of the book. Students find this confusing and even annoying. I freely admit that I sometimes am tempted to zone out when I’m reading his descriptions too. However, I tell them that Golding does not spend so much time on strong descriptions just for the heck of it. From the beginning of the novel, I ask them to consider why Golding uses imagery the way he does.

This semester, we began the novel with a passage from Chapter 1 that is particularly descriptive. After I read it, I had the students draw whatever they could remember. They then compared their drawings to other group members. Finally, I had them go back to the passage we read and pinpoint the particular lines that were most influential on their drawings. In this way I called attention to the power Golding’s description has. There was not one student who said “I don’t know what to draw,” because Golding’s images do stick in your head.

Last week we read the first two pages in Chapter Three out loud. These pages are devoted to describing the character Jack as he is hunting in the jungle. We pointed out the imagery used, including how Jack is likened to a dog and an ape, and then I asked them what the point was. Rather quickly a student responded that Golding was showing that Jack is becoming a little savage, and describing Jack as an animal helps to further that idea.

A little later in the novel, when things started getting particularly nasty on the island, I am going to do an activity where half of the class notes all the imagery describing the island they can find in the 1st chapter. The other half will note all the imagery they see in a later chapter. When we compare the descriptions we will see pretty clearly that in the beginning of the novel the island is described as a beautiful paradise, but by the near end of the novel the presence of the boys and their descent into savage behavior has destroyed this paradise. The island becomes menacing, terrible, and literally destroyed. When I have done this activity before, students have been struck by this.

I think these activities help to get students to understand that authors choose their words carefully. Description is not just pretty; it has a purpose. In the case of Lord of the Flies, the imagery directly correlates with some of the major themes of the book.

All of these activities with my students help me as a reader too. I am much more interested in characters and ideas than setting descriptions. It’s just how I am. But by finding a purpose for description I gain a new appreciation of authors and what they are trying to do.

One thing I love about being a teacher is that I learn right along with my students. And what fun to keep learning about one of my greatest passions: reading!

I’m excited about the year to come in my school district. The past couple days have been Institute-type days. On Thursday we met as a district and as a school later, and the focus of both meetings was the idea that this year we are focusing on improving instruction. For a few years now the district has been putting together curriculum maps (which I greatly benefited from last year) and putting new software like Mastery Manager into place. Now, most maps are made, and we can focus on making those maps work in the classroom.

The biggest change in our district for this year is directly related to improving instruction. Every Monday we are going to start an hour late, and we are going to have meetings. Often our meetings will be in Course Learning Teams, groups of teachers who teach the same class. In these teams we will be attempting to discuss what we do in the classroom, and how it needs to change to help our students. We are going to use Mastery Manager to analyze data, share ideas and strategies, and come up with specific goals for our team.

If people take this seriously and are committed to the process, I think course learning teams could be very beneficial. I would love to get ideas from people and come up with specific plans that we want to try. I like the idea of analyzing data so we can help a greater number of our students succeed. I took a class on course learning teams this summer through the district, and they outlined clear steps that we can take to accomplish what we want to accomplish. It will be a big change, and I think I personally could benefit like crazy from such a reflective and goal-oriented process.

I’m a little worried people might not take it seriously, and our meetings might end up being just gabbing sessions. I don’t want that to happen. Even though I am just a second-year teacher, I’m really going to try to stop that as best I can. I’m fairly tactful, so maybe I’ll be able to redirect conversation in a friendly way. I just don’t want to waste this opportunity we’ve been given to get better at what we do.

I went through a lot of debate this summer about my syllabus. What should it look like? How extensive should it be? What should it cover? I did research and looked at examples from other people. I’m just not yet sure about what I want my Syllabus to look like, as well as what some of my class rules should be.

Last year I was so frustrated by the students in my first semester classes simply not knowing anything that was on in my Syllabus at all. I also hated taking time going through with it and getting those blank looks from everyone.

My “solution” (ha) second semester was to give a quiz on my Syllabus the day after the first day of class. That went really well…. It didn’t help at all; I’m not sure what I was thinking.

I changed my syllabus a lot for this school year, which starts the 25th of August. I’m relatively satisfied with the final result, at least right now.

Changes I’ve made:

-I’ve toned down my considerable rambling and taken out a section about “My Goals for this class.”
-I’ve taken out the overview of the semester, with specifics on each unit, that I had last year.
-I’ve really reduced my Class Rules. The only personal one I have now is “Respect,” which I plan to go into more detail about in class.
-I’m only making freshman parents sign it, rather than the parents of all my students.

Problems I think my Syllabus still has:

-I don’t spend a lot of time going into details of my expectations for random situations – like getting up to throw away something, sharpening pencils, eating a four-couse meal, etc. Should I be going into detail on all those possible situations as an avoid the problem before it occurs tactic? My syllabus would be five years long then I fear.

-I don’t give a class calendar or go into major specifics on assignments. Should I?

-I’m planning on trying to go over this briefly on the first day of class. My fear, of course, is that anything I don’t go over will be unknown to my students. That’s probably why I did the quiz thing last semester. I just don’t want to spend a lot of time on it. I hate those glazed looks; I want to get them active.

Here is my syllabus for the sophomores. I’d love suggestions or comments.

syllabus210

Of course, I am always curious about policies for late/missing work and things of that nature. I spent time researching that as well. Really, all class procedures are still a work-in-progress for me, since I have only had two semesters to try different things. Comments on those ideas are appreciated too.