An Approach to Using MY HERO in the
7th to 10th Grade Classroom
by Susanne
Nobles, English Chair
Fredericksburg Academy
Fredericksburg, VA
|
Ms Nobles' students give
feedback from their experience in using
the MY HERO Website. |
A Philosophy of Teaching
Writing
A Philosophy
of Teaching Writing
My students undertake their
study of heroes in the third quarter of a
year of writing. They are confident about
publishing their writing to the national audience
of MY HERO because we have talked about effective
style and worked on mastering mechanics through
many different writing activities. I am always
amazed at the developed and detailed writing
freshmen can create, so I am probably even
more confident than they are about showing
what they can do to a national audience!
The specific types of writing
my students do are not as important as the
path we take with each assignment. My students
write eight major pieces a year, interspersed
with shorter, less detailed writing assignments.
For each major writing assignment my students
do, I build in four stages:
-
choice
in topic while I limit the genre
-
specific
grammar lessons on new skills
-
a study
of published writing in the genre the
students are tackling with the goal of
discovering effective style techniques,
such as engaging introductions, effective
support integration, descriptive details,
and conclusions that bring a piece to
a satisfying end
-
publishing
opportunities to an ever-widening audience
(classmates, the student body, the community,
…)
Each of these
pieces is a crucial step to developing students’
love for and skills in writing.
At the end
of each year, my students write reflective
letters as introductions to their writing
portfolios. Over the years, one thing students
write again and again is how they really liked
that I never told them what to write. This
always gives me a good laugh because of course
I told them what to write, but I did not tell
them the subject they had to write about.
It is through these student comments that
I have come to understand the basic importance
of giving students as much choice as possible
when it comes to their writing. Through choice,
students take ownership. This ownership leads
to increased engagement in the writing process,
and this in turn leads to better writing -
period.
At the school
where I teach, our students do not have grammar
textbooks; instead, they have writers’
handbooks as references for grammar and mechanical
skills. But, as I emphasize with parents at
the start of every school year, this does
not mean we do not teach grammar. For every
major writing assignment, I have at least
one full period of grammar instruction followed
by a peer or self revision period to work
on this new or review skill. I try to "jazz
up"” these lessons by creating
funny stories about the students as our examples
to correct, but they are truly traditional
grammar lessons; I hold the students accountable
for these skills throughout the year. While
those select few master the skill right away,
it takes the majority two or three papers
to either understand the skill or to really
believe that I will keep marking them down
for inconsistent verb tenses. My students
do not master all of the grammar skills we
have in our ninth grade curriculum, but they
have worked on each. Grammar confidence and
mastery comes through focus, repetition, and
cognitive development, so the students are
off on the right track.
The ninth grade course
at Fredericksburg Academy is the typical
freshman course focusing on the different
genres. I have taken this organization and
put a writing assignment at the end of each
literature study, allowing the students
to experience writing about what they just
read. Therefore, when we read short stories,
we are not only talking about the stories’
themes and plots, but we are also looking
at what introductions work well for us,
what level of description is satisfactory
but doesn’t cross into burdensome,
and the many other style traits of short
stories. When we get to the MY HERO essays,
the students read examples on the page,
ranging from younger authors than themselves
to adult authors.
This approach to the literature
accomplishes two things. First, we are reading
the literature to gain insight into the
world around us, discussing the meanings
and thoughts these works bring out in us.
Second, we are also studying the literature
for the very concrete reason of trying out
some of the same style techniques ourselves.
I find that my students who are lovers of
reading enjoy both ways of approaching the
literature, while my students who are still
more literal and struggle with literary
analysis enjoy seeing how they can learn
as writers from what we read, even if the
deeper meanings of the literature elude
them.
When students
write for what they see as “real”
audiences (i.e, pretty much anyone beyond
their teacher!), their care for their writing
takes on new urgency. For each writing assignment,
I have built in a publishing opportunity,
moving from publishing for classmates up to
the national audience of MY HERO. Part of
this process is also doing regular and focused
peer evaluations, so from the start of the
year, students are sharing their writing with
at least one person other than me. I have
had my share of bad peer evaluation experiences,
ones where the partners say “Great!”
As a result, I have developed concrete processes
and questions for the students to teach them
what types of suggestions they can offer to
another writer. This first step of sharing
with one classmate always makes at least of
a few of my students very nervous, so it is
an important step to publishing, even it is
only to the class as a whole.
I do not want to sound
like I take credit for inventing all of
the ideas in my philosophy of teaching
writing. But as I have “stolen”
from many teachers I have had the fortune
to know, I hope many of you can “steal”
an idea or two from what I do. My students,
as I see in their final reflective letters,
leave the ninth grade feeling at least
like competent writers, while many of
them are actually enjoying writing, blossoming
into full-fledged authors themselves.
And I cannot ask for more of a success
than that.
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By using the MY HERO Website, students bring their study of
ancient and/or classic heroes into their own
worlds. Students begin with a study of the hero,
such as King Arthur (or any suitable hero from
the literature you teach), and work to apply
and expand the hero traits he exemplifies into
their own world. Ultimately, the students discover
their own hero qualities and new modern heroes
to have in their lives.
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Objectives:
- To discover hero traits
from the past and apply them to the modern
world
- To discover a personal
modern hero
- To write an engaging
and concise descriptive essay
- To develop Internet
research skills
- To develop technology
skills through the use of the MY HERO process:
saving and citing Web images, citing Websites,
and uploading
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Resources/Materials:
- The Once and Future
King or any suitable novel with a distinctive
hero character (Some traditional titles for
9th graders are A Separate Peace,
Lord of the Flies, Romeo and
Juliet, or Call of the Wild.)
- Internet access for
both teacher demonstrations and student use
- A computer for each
student and the teacher
- A computer projector
- Optional: the computer
brainstorming software, Inspiration
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Daily
Plans :
Day
#1: Establishing Hero Traits
- Have the students complete
the hero brainstorming sheet with a partner
(Appendix
#1)
- Discuss their answers
on the hero brainstorming sheet guiding them
towards:
- a generic definition
of a hero, tying in the 5 general traits
of a hero: Fearless, Applied, Instructed,
Tireless, & Humble
- the connections
of the King Arthur (or other classic hero)
hero traits to modern day heroes
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Day
#2: Introducing the MY HERO Project
To do this lesson, you will
need to have established an account for
a hero page on the MY HERO site under your
name for demonstration purposes.
- Discuss the MY HERO
assignment sheet (Appendix
#2).
- Start your students
on the path of discovering their own heroes:
- The students take
out their hero notes from the previous
class as a starting point for their
hero definitions.
- They create their own
personal hero maps using the spider map/webbing
brainstorming style (the computer program
Inspiration is a great way to do this).
On these maps, they should leave their
center circles empty as they do not yet
know who their heroes are. All around
this empty circle they should choose traits
that they feel their heroes should have
(see sample map, Appendix
#3).
- After they have completed
this first layer of traits, the students
complete a second layer of their hero
maps brainstorming what types of things
this hero might do to show the traits
they chose. This layer will give them
search terms to begin finding people who
meet their hero traits (see sample map,
Appendix
#4).
- Once the students
have completed their maps, the students
pair and share their maps to see if
there are any traits they want to add
to their own maps.
- As the last step of
the map, students brainstorm what type
of people might hold the traits on their
maps, putting these ideas into the center
circle.
- Students may complete
their maps for homework or the next day
if they do not finish in class.
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Day
#3: Beginning the Hero Search
- Have your students
complete their map work from the day before
if it was not finished as homework.
- Have your students
begin searching for a person to fit their
hero qualities using their ideas in their
center circle as search terms on the Internet
(see suggested Web sites, Appendix
#5) with the goal of having their choices
by the next lesson. You may decide to give
more than one class period to this research
or to assign it for homework.
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Day
#4: Researching the Heroes
- Complete the “Researching
Your Hero” sheet (Appendix
#6)
- Students write
down their hero choices.
- Review together
the information they need to find for
their Web pages.
- Discuss how
to write the essay using essay(s) on
the MY HERO site as example(s):
- how to link the
hero qualities to examples of what
the people have done
- how to select
and organize the information into
a concise 5-paragraph essay
- how to craft the
most effective introduction using
your own personal hero search to
introduce how you discovered your
hero
-
Begin researching heroes
- Have the students
create a folder on their computers to
store all of their research data and
images.
- Discuss how the
students must save their research data
and their images along with the Website
information and where they found it so
that they may upload the research onto
the MY HERO site and cite it appropriately.
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Day
#5: Researching the Heroes, continued
Continue hero research.
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Day
#6: Researching the Heroes, continued
Continue hero research.
You can assign finishing any remaining research
for homework.
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Day
#7: Writing the Hero Essays
- Have the students
open their computer folders with their saved
research for you to look over while they
are writing.
- Begin writing the
first draft of the hero essay.
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Day
#8: Writing the Hero Essays, continued
Finish writing the first
drafts and turn them in for teacher feedback.
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Day
#9: Revising the Hero Essays
- Hand back the hero drafts
for them to revise for a final copy.
- You can determine how
much time in and out of class you wish
to give to complete these final copies.
On the due date of the final essay, students
need to come to class with the essay,
Web links, and images saved in their computer
folder.
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Day
#10: Creating the MY HERO Web Pages
- Create Web pages on MY HERO
- Students turn
in their final hero essays for a writing
grade (see grading rubric, Appendix
#7.) You may decide to have these
final copies due a few days before the
class is set to upload the pages so that
you can grade the essays and make final
comments and the students can do a third
and final editing before publication.
(see sample final essay, Appendix
#8)
- To walk them through
uploading their information onto the MY
HERO Website, you will need a computer
and projector. The process is very well-explained
by the MY HERO site. Working with 15 students,
it takes about 45 minutes to get them
through the process.
- MY HERO then uploads
the pages onto their Website within a
few days, so you will want to plan a future
day for everyone to visit the MY HERO
site and see their own pages plus their
classmates’ pages. To find all of
your student pages, type your town name
into the MY HERO search engine.
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Assessment
- The descriptive hero
essay (see grading rubric, Appendix
#7)
- Successful uploading
of the MY HERO page
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Appendices
- Hand-out:
“Who Is the Hero?”
-
Hand-out: “Discovering Our Heroes”
-
1-layer brainstorming chart example
- 2-layer
brainstorming chart example
- Hand-out:
“Discovering Your Hero”
- Hand-out:
“Researching Your Hero”
-
Evaluation sheet for the descriptive essay
- Example
hero essay
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