{"id":998,"date":"2019-10-08T20:43:22","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T00:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/?p=998"},"modified":"2019-10-08T23:00:10","modified_gmt":"2019-10-09T03:00:10","slug":"beyond-the-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/2019\/10\/08\/beyond-the-content\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Content"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Students recently had the pleasure of reading both Sandra Cisneros’ “Only Daughter” and Ken Liu’s “short story “The Paper Menagerie”. While the essential question focused on the theme of identity, students also worked on developing their skills in two essential standards, Words in Context (10.4) and Choosing Evidence (10.1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I say it often, but as a Language Arts teacher, I take my responsibility to help students grow as readers and writers and thinkers very seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m so lucky that my discipline allows me to choose texts which can impact students on an emotional level as well – to grow as human beings capable of reflection and empathy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a graduate of Wayne State University<\/a>‘s Education Program, reflection is an integral part of my practice as a teacher. Over the years, I have seen the impact reflection has on my students’ growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When asking students to reflect on their on-demand writing piece from last week, here is what students (in my 1st hour) had to say: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Today the tenth grade Language Arts team reflected on the prompt posed to students on the theme of identity. We conclusively agreed that despite how well students may have understood the pieces, the question could have been much clearer. The results from the survey support our conclusion. Teachers, like students, are always learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Of course, as teachers, we do our best to offer students multiple modes to interact with the content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s what students (in my 3rd hour) said helped them the most:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lastly, I asked students what the most important lesson they learned during this unit – and many asked me to clarify: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Did I mean from the story? <\/li>
  • Did I mean as a student?<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    And that’s the thing – it’s one thing for teachers to guide students’ thinking, but it’s an entirely different thing to offer students the opportunity to make the learning theirs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Here are some of my students’ responses: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    • “From holding onto the people you love, cherishing moments, understanding your identity, and staying connected with family, the most important lesson to me was understanding my identity and what built it.”<\/li>
    • “The most important thing I learned was the life decisions you make are the things that affects your future.”<\/li>
    • “This unit helped me to learn the importance of annotation, connecting and reflecting to everything, even if it seems obvious or if I already know the meaning. This would help me have more details and things to work with for questions and discussion.”<\/li>
    • “The most important lesson I learned from this unit is how to analyze a story and find evidence that is strong enough to support a claim. Doing this helped us better understand what we were reading and how to find meaning behind the author’s word choice and the way he chose to write the story. From the story, I learned to cherish the time I have with my family and to be more understanding. In the end, they are all we will have and we should treat them with respect and kindness.” <\/li>
    • “Your culture will always be a part of you, how much it affects your daily life depends on you.”
      “The most important lesson I learned from this unit was that experiences will always shape our lives and identities- whether we take those experiences and make them into something positive (like Sandra with her writing) or negative (like Jack with disconnecting from his mother) is up to us.”<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n