My Dog Ate My Printer...

I've heard many excuses why students can't print their work, ranging from completely legitimate to completely silly. Here is one way I'm working around student printing woes.

Basically, you can email to your printer. You can print via any device that has email - cell phone, iPad, laptop, etc. - so students who type papers on their phones can easily submit them. Though it's heavy on the account set up at first, it's ease of use is worth it.

1. Set up a Dropbox Account

2. Set up a 'Send to Dropbox' associated with that Dropbox Account. It will give you an email - I renamed mine kkennettprintmeplease_****@sendtodropbox.com. Refresh your Dropbox tab, and you should now have an 'Attachments' folder in your Dropbox account.

3. Set up Google Cloud Print for the printer attached to your computer / Chrome sign in. You must be signed into Chrome on the computer that is hardwired to the printer.

4. Login to WappWolf and automate the following sequence:
      - Every time you put a file in 'Attachments'
      - Print via Google Cloud Print (choose your classroom computer option), and
      - Delete the original file (to find this, scroll to the bottom) - this is important so that student work doesn't build up in the folder.

5. Test it! Compose an email to your Send to Dropbox email and attach a file. It should:
      - go into your Attachments folder (you can watch this real-time if your Dropbox tab refreshes)
      - print out via your printer
      - delete itself from the Attachments folder

So, when students are having problems printing from home, simply have them attach their file to an email and send it to your Send to Dropbox account - within a couple of minutes it should print out!

Using Google Spreadsheet as a Online Rubric: Setting Up

This weekend, with a fresh pile of summer reading essays in hand, I began the process of setting up my students' digital writing folders.

First, I started with a Google Spreadsheet formatted of a rubric I use.

Then, I clicked 'File' --> 'Make a Copy' and titled the new copy    Last, First : Period : Rubrics

               Example: Kennett, Katrina : A : Rubrics

Yes, this requires making a copy for each of your students. But, now, through the year I will have the ability to grade within a master rubric and then 'push' the graded sheet to that student's spreadsheet. (Screencast coming soon)

Cons:
- time consuming at this point in the year

Pros:
- you can share the document with students with varying levels of editing permissions
- you can share / publish specific rubrics to parents, special ed, etc
- you can provide links to rubrics in emails
- you can lock specific spreadsheets if you don't want

Submitting essay: hard copies

Today you will be finishing your final draft and submitting your entire process. Your work is due at the end of the period - I will check in with you as class goes on to help you pace your time. 

12/18/12 - Sophomores: What should you have?

- metacognitive letter

- final draft

- rough draft #2 

- rough draft #1

- outline

- thesis development 

- 20-25 quotations (or whatever your class required) 

- paper proposal paragraph / idea development

Notes: 

(if you have a legitimate excuse for missing any of the above, write it on a separate piece of paper and insert it in the correct order)

(also, if your journal contains any of your process, take a post-it and clearly mark where I can find your work) 

When you print your final draft, make sure the MLA formatting is as follows (see below for model): 

- single spaced header

- title centered (please, a clever title?) 

- double spaced body text

- size 12 Times New Roman font 

- 1" margins 

- titles of books in italics - Lord of the Flies, Beowulf, Things Fall Apart, etc. 

If you have any question, please ask - I'm here to help!

KSK

Setting up Senior Project Blogs

Senior Project Blogs!

By the end of today's class, you will:
- establish and format a blog for Senior Projects
- draft and publish a post on this blog
- complete various blog challenges to help you get familiar with your blog

Get Started: 

1. choose a blog platform and sign into it -blogger.com or wordpress.com
2. create a clear title that describes the purpose of your blog (tagline optional)
3. format the blog's layout - change the color scheme, the main fonts, the background images, etc. 

Challenge List:

1. write a short bio in your profile or make an 'about me' page (the about me should be direct, professional, and quick) 
2. write your first blog post! explain why you will blog in Senior Projects and what your personal goals are for the blogging
3. attempt any of the challenges here (from Mr. Kulowiec's workshop!)
4. play with non-cluttering widgets (link lists, polls, twitter feed, etc) 
5. If you have an iPhone, download the free Blogger app and post a picture of this week's goals. 

Seven Steps to a Thesis

Paired with the Path to Purpose, Seven Steps to a Thesis is a concrete way to develop a robust and argumentative thesis statement.

The key to this graphic organizer is the easy first step - the threshold is so low that it removes the intimidation of producing an instantly brilliant thesis statement. Embracing the process of revision in its design, going through the Seven Steps encourages you to practice with intention, craft, and detail.

Seven Steps to a Thesis: 

First, sketch the whole graphic organizer

Then fill it out - as a class, in partners, or individually This example is from Lord of the Flies

Finally, choose one or two elements from each area

Using these elements, create one basic sentence:

From here, it's all about the revision process:
1. Ralph and Piggy called a meeting with the conch in an attempt to build a community on the island.
2. (reorder) In an attempt to build a community on the island, Ralph and Piggy called a meeting with the conch.
3. (reword) Trying to convene the survivors with the conch, Ralph and Piggy seek to build a community on the island.
4. (condense) Convening the survivors with the conch, Ralph and Piggy seek to build a community on the island.
5. (add new analysis) Establishing themselves as leaders, Ralph and Piggy convene the survivors in order to start building a community.
6. (cull the best from the previous sentences) Convening the survivors with the conch's call, Ralph and Piggy establish themselves as leaders in the building community.
7. (evaluate how strong your argument is and tweak word choice) By convening survivors with the conch's call, Ralph and Piggy establish themselves as leaders of the nascent community.

Important Take Aways and Points to Emphasize:
- start with a very simple sentence (it's ok! you have six more to work with...)
- embrace 'bad' writing through the steps - agonizing over the middle steps dries up your creative juices
- you do not need to do the steps in order - look at what each step needs to improve
- ask 'what am I arguing?' throughout the process
- many students want to stop around Step 4 - pushing through the Seven emphasizes the attention to detail in a strong argumentative statement
- once they have the seventh, they are more willing to revise as their paper develops (this is especially important for students who spend so much time making the 'perfect' thesis before they start writing and then are trapped by it when their ideas develop)


Overall, I find this process helpful both for students who enjoy revising and for those who agonize over every word. When scaffolding this process, I model the seven steps with the whole group, have students do them in small groups or partners, and move to students completing the steps individually. As formative assessment for both analysis and writer's craft, I learn how my students approach constructing arguments and what vocabulary and lenses they are comfortable with. With this knowledge, I can target specific types of revision the next time we go through the Seven Steps.

Path to Purpose

For the early stages of the writing process in my English classes, students use two tools to quickly gather their thoughts and effectively craft an argumentative thesis: the Path to Purpose and the 7 Steps to a Thesis. 

The first of these is the 'Path to Purpose,' a graphic organizer that is easy to sketch out.

Based on the five root question words, the Path to Purpose serves to unpack the nuts and bolts of a text. As a teacher, this is an especially useful tool for quickly seeing what students understand, and where their understanding breaks down.

Who - who is in the text, who wrote it, who is mentioned, who the author/narrator is speaking to
          What - what happened, what are the key ideas, what is the climax/resolution
                    When - where/when of the world of the text, where/when was it written, consider place and time flexibly 
                              Why - root words, big ideas - I aim for concepts here, and theme words, not lengthy explanations, at the core of it, what is this text about? 

Here is a Path to Purpose filled out using the anchor text of 'Out, Out-' by Robert Frost: 


You can use a Path to Purpose for mapping out elements of the Preamble to the US Constitution:


The Path to Purpose works for students as a way to organize their thoughts and refer back to the text for more details. They can compare their organizer with another student's to see what each thought was important. For teachers, the Path functions as a quick formative assessment and can easily be scanned for strengths and weaknesses in student comprehension. For using the Path as part of the writing process, check out my 7 Steps to a Thesis