2016

Table of Contents for the 2016 MEJ

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An alphabetical list (by author) of the contents of the 2016 Minnesota English Journal.

  • Birkett, Kelly–Five ways in which high-quality literacy instruction can increase student interest in our content areas–http://wp.me/p4coir-bg
  • Brandt, Melissa–Building Literacy in all classrooms–http://wp.me/p4coir-b8
  • Burns, Heidi–What is a civic-minded student and how can we foster this in our classrooms?–http://wp.me/p4coir-bj
  • Cook, Mike P., Morgan, Ryan, and Matthew Gremo–Implementing Tabletop Gaming in the English Classroom: Promoting Literacy through Interactive Gameplay–http://wp.me/p4coir-aH
  • Daly, Luke–Teaching Fiction: Craft, Composition Theory, and a Lie–http://wp.me/p4coir-aC
  • Daly, Luke–The Four Deaths of Mitchell Fish–http://wp.me/p4coir-ay
  • Kerekes, Mary Jo–Increasing Student Motivation in the Classroom–http://wp.me/p4coir-bb
  • MacBride, Michael–Infographic-making activity–http://wp.me/p4coir-bm
  • Rische, Adrienne–Making literacy teaching a priority in a culturally diverse classroom–http://wp.me/p4coir-b0
  • Simpson, Dr. Jennifer–The “Write” Track: Effectively Leading Your School to Incorporate Writing in Every Classroom–http://wp.me/p4coir-b5
  • Wee, Jongsun, and Barbara A. Lehman–Read Them Together: Paired Book Reading for Global Literature–http://wp.me/p4coir-aS

Infographic-Making Activity

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Infographic-Making Activity

By Michael MacBride

[pdf version here: MacBride-Infographic-activity]

Objective:

To encourage the use of charts, graphs, maps, and other infographics in student writing.

Approximate Time Required: 30 minutes

Materials Needed:

  • A computer with access to the internet and access to the video “Kurt Vonnegut on the shapes of stories” available a number of online locations, including: https://vimeo.com/53286941 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-84vuR1f90
  • It also helps if the class has access to a computer lab, or their own laptops, but this can be done as a handwritten activity also.

Rationale:

Just as photographs can convey complex ideas efficiently, so too can graphs, charts, maps, and other infographics. Students tend towards citing statistics and cluttering their writing with attempts to regurgitate difficult source material. Though summary and paraphrase should certainly be encouraged, having students create a graph, chart, map, or other infographic is a creative way to encourage them to employ the skills of summary and paraphrase without their realizing that’s what they’re doing. In order to create a unique infographic, students need to have conducted research and have the ability to understand what they’ve read and find a pattern (or sense of organization) in the material. Not only are these infographics insightful and useful to liven up student projects, but they are also deceptively complex to create (but very rewarding when completed).

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What is a civic-minded student and how can we foster this in our classrooms?

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What is a civic-minded student and how can we foster this in our classrooms?

by Heidi Burns

[pdf version here: Burns, Heidi–News Summary Activity]

(Burns also has a new book forthcoming, which contains similar activities ready to plug into your classroom. Check it out here: http://amzn.to/1U4195g)

Civic-minded students are those who are both engaged and informed about the realities that exist outside of their world as students. College composition classrooms are a great place to teach students how to engage in conversations on current events. In my own classroom, I accomplish this by using an activity called The News Summary (see below for assignment sheet). This activity incorporates a student learning management system with in-class discussions to foster civic awareness in the classroom while cultivating the skills of audience awareness, primary source evaluation, source summary, content analysis, and engaged dialogue.

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Five ways in which high-quality literacy instruction can increase student interest in our content areas

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“Five ways in which high-quality literacy instruction can increase student interest in our content areas”

By: Kelly Birkett

[pdf version here: Birkett-FiveWays]

Each year, on the day after Labor Day, the invasion begins.  We stand in the hall next to our classrooms at the sound of the warning bell, and feel the adrenaline rush through our veins as we hear the sound of excited chatter of our new students.  It continues to pulse through as we go through a checklist in our heads — are the seating charts finished? Is the bulletin board bright and colorful enough? Will our students actually get something out of our classes this year?  I know on that first day I think about the successes I have had, and I also reflect back on things I’d like to change.  I would like to fix those days when I felt like I would get more response out of a jello mold than my students.  In my first sentence I referred to the arrival of the kids as an invasion, and what I meant by that was it was an invasion of student robots.  They come in each day to sit at their desks or lab tables, and proceed to meticulously take the notes that I give them, or do the lab activity that I give them, or work on a project that I give them.  Yes, it is very teacher-driven, so, what happens when they actually have to…wait for it…READ something?  If our students are only doing enough class work to just get by, the likelihood that much of what they are reading from a disciplinary text is being absorbed into their eternal long term memories is, well, not very likely.

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Increasing Student Motivation in the Classroom

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Increasing Student Motivation in the Classroom

by Mary Jo Kerekes

[pdf version here: MaryJoKerekes-StudentMotivation]

How do I increase student motivation in my classroom?  It is a question that I ask daily.  Some students have a desire to “get a good grade”, others have a desire to learn something new, and others….well um…just really don’t seem to care.  They are in class because they “have to be” or “it was better than the alternatives”.  Some of these students become engaged as they progress through the course because they find that there are some interesting things to learn.  Some students just never get to that point.   I believe in them, do all that I can to encourage them, set high expectations for them, and offer them the best instruction I can think of.  The result?  These students don’t do the assignments, they goof around and disrupt those around them, and end up with a low grade in the class.  These students have the ability and most are well-liked by their peers, so I am left thinking, “What could I have done differently?”

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Building Literacy in all classrooms

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Building Literacy in all classrooms

by Melissa Brandt                   

[pdf version here: Brandt-BuildlingLiteracy]                   

As new teachers embark on the challenge of the classroom, they are given a barrage of guidance: be nice to students, but not friends; care, but be firm; establish rules, but let the kids work out the procedures; incorporate high-quality literacy, but keep it interesting. It’s enough to send the faint of heart running for the hills. There are plenty of resources available to help guide teaching in appropriate rule setting, but what about the incorporation of literacy? The good news is that there are resources for literacy challenges, too. Answers that will help keep kids learning without sacrificing interest in any content areas. In fact, all of these challenges can be accomplished through a change in mindset, an understanding of disciplinary literacy, and an inclusion of literacy techniques in a classroom setting.

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The “Write” Track: Effectively Leading Your School to Incorporate Writing in Every Classroom

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The “Write” Track: Effectively Leading Your School to Incorporate Writing in Every Classroom

by Dr. Jennifer Simpson

[pdf version here: Simpson-TheWriteTrack]

Currently, 42 states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity have adopted the Common Core State Standards (NGA).  Minnesota adopted the ELA standards, but not the math. Within the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts, there are specific writing standards that have been a traditional focus for the English teacher. In addition to this, writing standards are provided for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. This shift from writing typically being an “English classroom issue” to preparing all content teachers to teach writing is an issue for administrators specifically at the high school level. Additionally, administrators and teachers must strategically plan how to give writing instruction more time and focus each school day. A high school example of writing across the curriculum, and how to implement the model are described to offer some suggestions for leaders who want to focus on writing.

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Making literacy teaching a priority in a culturally diverse classroom

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Making literacy teaching a priority in a culturally diverse classroom

by Adrienne Rische

[pdf version here: Rische-LiteracyTeachingCulturallyDiverse]

Implementing culturally relevant pedagogy in the classroom has become an increasingly important priority for English teachers. In this piece, I will explore the difficulties that come with selecting culturally relevant texts and many of the misconceptions that teachers have about teaching literacy in culturally diverse classrooms. Continue reading →

Read Them Together: Paired Book Reading for Global Literature

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Read Them Together: Paired Book Reading for Global Literature

by Jongsun Wee and Barbara A. Lehman

[pdf version here: Wee-Lehman-ReadThemTogether]

Abstract:  The need for global literature is growing as the society rapidly becomes more diverse. This study documented American children’s responses to global literature when it was paired with a home country book. The data were collected in a third grade classroom in a midwestern state. The results showed that in paired book reading, the children naturally compared two books and analyzed the characters’ problems by comparing them with their situations. The children did not discuss the foreign settings in global literature unless they were prompted to talk about them. They also did not treat the main character in global literature as a foreigner. The results suggested that pairing global literature with a home country book may be helpful for children to understand the global literature. However, the teacher needs to intentionally direct students’ attention to global settings and the foreign character’s experiences and culture, otherwise, children may miss an opportunity to discuss those topics emerging from the global literature.

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Featured Article–Implementing Tabletop Gaming in the English Classroom: Promoting Literacy through Interactive Gameplay

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Implementing Tabletop Gaming in the English Classroom: Promoting Literacy through Interactive Gameplay

by Mike P. Cook, PhD, Ryan Morgan, and Matthew Gremo

[pdf version here: cook-implementing-tabletop-gaming-in-the-english-classroom]

 

Introduction

Table-top gaming, at its core, is simply a term used to refer to any social game that is traditionally played in person around a table. Over the years, the term itself has become an umbrella for all forms of board games, but in gaming culture it is most commonly applied as a label for various role-playing systems. While the concept of a role-playing system may seem like a rather complex idea to fully comprehend, it can most easily be explained as a traditional game that has been stripped of all of its fluff and niceties in order to exist as a system of bare-boned mechanics, which govern gameplay. The entire history of the characters within the game, as well as the entire story and how those characters interact with it, is created and executed by the players themselves while operating within this system of overarching rules and mechanics.

The onset and initial popularity of roleplaying systems can most easily be traced back to the 1974 publication of the original Dungeons & Dragons. Since the inception of the original D&D, however, a myriad other systems have spawned under the same guiding principal of creating the structure by which players could relate and interact with their own stories. One of the most popular of these systems was released by Paizo Publishing in 2009 under the title Pathfinder. While the system itself was a fairly direct reflection of one of the many modern versions of D&D, it varied in two very important ways. First, the system itself is more accessible, as some of the more complex and troublesome mechanics of the original D&D systems have been stripped in order to facilitate more streamlined gameplay. Second, and perhaps most important, Pathfinder offered free digital publication of all of its materials. While Paizo did, and still does, publish vast tomes of rules and mechanics for the Pathfinder system—in the same vein as D&D—all of the materials are available for free online to any player interested in engaging with the system. Because of these two very important differences, the Pathfinder system became the springboard by which our new roleplaying system could be created and implemented in the ELA classroom.

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Teaching Fiction: Craft, Composition Theory, and a Lie

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Teaching Fiction: Craft, Composition Theory, and a Lie

by Luke Daly

[pdf version here: Daly-TeachingFiction]

[see the companion creative pieces here: “The Four Deaths of Mitchell Fish“]

My first magic trick as a new lecturer of creative writing was reappearing three days per week. I disappeared too, at the end of every class, but the students didn’t seem to impart this with the same mystique.

“Daly!” sometimes they would shout, or I would imagine them shouting, as I entered. In my younger life, I was always running, always late, so I may have encouraged them to see this as a magical act. And then I’d say, “Today we’re going to talk about Point of View,” or something like that. And we would. Not only would we talk about it: identify it, discuss its concealing and revealing qualities in selected works, practice it during writing heuristics, and in general start to build it into our lexicon, but the students would come to class having read the right chapter from Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Or maybe that day it was the chapter on character. By all accounts, they would be ready to wring every drop out of Character into their own writing. But this was not the slam dunk case, as many educators will understand. One goal of this essay is to discuss why this gap occurs and how to work through it.

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The Four Deaths of Mitchell Fish

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THE FOUR DEATHS OF MITCHELL FISH

by Luke Daly

[pdf version here: Daly-FourDeathsofMitchellFish]

[see the companion essay “Teaching Fiction: Craft, Composition Theory, and a Lie“]

I. Oxygen

I slash in like a dull knife but don’t tip into the abyss.  Just wow at the Formica.  Some wrongful oxygen rises up the ways in my neck.  I do fall then

II. Oxygen

Slick Mick pushed in through the screen door, stopped in the middle of my eat-in kitchen with the brand new formica countertops his finger in the air like he was gonna say something.  Fell face first on the floor right where you’re standing.  If I’m telling the truth? I hoped he was dead. So I started sifting my hands like this through the bills and penny-savers on the formica, feeling for my cordless phone and hoping that if he was dead, I wouldn’t find the phone quick enough to save him.  And I saw him on Day One, charming as only a drunk can.  Previous to the nightly urination in bed and being too far gone to wake up and clean it.  Previous to driving my glossy black Oldsmobile into the Blue Earth River the day after I got it.  Previous to stabbing his hand with a steak-knife trying to show off for Jenny at Ponderosa.  That’s why Ponderosa uses knives with rounded tips now: My man, Slick Mick.  And here he was in my trailer, like a damned dead fish, oily from the car but no real work, just playing around with his nuts.  Go on and lie there, you sick duck.  I’ll call you an ambulance just as soon as I find my cordless phone.

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