Classroom Artifacts
Restorative Justice Practices
My CT is a part of a discipline team that consists of teachers from every department. The team is trying to address the discipline issues at the school by experimenting with restorative justice practices in their classrooms so that it can later be used schoolwide. Last year, before I became her student teacher, the team analyzed how most of the infractions and discipline issues at the school came majority from freshmen and sophomore students. From this data, they noticed that these group of students was still transitioning from a middle school mindset into high school and that they are unaware of the school culture.
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The team normally meets bi-weekly and are currently in a book study using the book Better Than Carrots or Sticks as their core text. Although I was only able to attend one meeting, but I still continued to read the book and tried to implement some of the practices in the curriculum and through my interactions with students.
Classroom Meetings
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My CT and I experimented with weekly classroom meetings into all of our English I classes. These were just a weekly gathering to discuss important topics that will help build a classroom community and also help the classes become "better people".
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We always begin our meetings with any celebrations that our students might have in their lives. Next, we go over the norms s of our meeting by going over discussion expectations. Next, we go into our meeting with some activity or a short lesson about the topic we are discussing that day. We always end with a debrief or reflection.
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List of our lessons:
Introduction to Classroom Meetings and Classroom Expectations
Power of Words (Ban the R-word)
Bias
Discrimination
Self-Talk (part I)
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This artifact displays our PowerPoints (lesson plans) of our classroom meeting lessons.
This artifact displays one of the handouts we handed out to students about the power of words. It also has the questions translated in Spanish for our ESL students.
After we read and discussed an open letter regarding using the R-word, students wrote alternative words to say instead.
Identity Unit
Narrative Assignment
Prompt: Who are you? Describe a moment in your life that has defined you as a person.
Your job is to create either a short story or comic strip about your life that reflects a specific theme. You must follow the sequence in Frytag’s Pyramid. The story must contain figurative language, precise word choice, and sensory language/imagery. Your pieces will be read by other students, so please make sure you are comfortable with everything that you share and know that I would have to report anything illegal or dangerous to the proper authority, so be careful that everything you share is classroom appropriate.
Letter to an Author Assignment
Have you ever read a story that changed your life? Literature is a powerful tool that allows us to gain knowledge about the world around us, and understand perspectives we may not have considered before.
This is an opportunity to write an author and explain how their writing impacted your worldview.
Why is this book important to you? What did this book teach you?
Letters About Literature is a reading-writing contest that encourages students to write a personal letter to an author, living or dead, from any genre explaining how that author’s work changed your way of thinking about the world or yourself.
Student Advocacy Project
This artifact displays the Powerpoint introducing students to what is an advocate and Malala's documentary.
This artifact displays the KWL chart that students used before researching their topic.
This artifact is one of the weekly powerpoints. That week's lessons discusses how to find credible sources and understanding the author's purpose.
Infographic Assignment
Informational/Argumentive Unit​
The English I department and I transformed the informational unit from a survival theme to focus on advocacy. We used Malala Yousafzai's story as an example of a young advocate and watched her documentary He Name Me Malala to help students to become more connected to her story.
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After watching the documentary, students had to choose a topic that they wanted to advocate for. We provided students a KWL chart to get them to think about what they already knew and want to know about their topics before beginning their research. Students then spent three days finding sources to understand more about their topics and what they can do to support it. Students then created infographics to inform their classmates about their advocacy issues.
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Originally, for the argumentative unit students were going to create a project for an audience about their topic through speeches, letters documentaries, etc to a specific audience. However, due to the COVID-19 crisis which closed the doors to the school, we had to revise our schedule (TBA).
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