Quest for Questions

Today we discussed a song from Scotland called "Farewell to Tarwathie."  This is a song about the whaling industry from the nineteenth century.  Last year I wrote a blog about my discussion with the class about the difference between the original version of the song and the version recorded by Judy Collins in the 1970's.  Today I would simply like to post some of their questions that they thought of when I played the song for them.  We discussed many of these questions as well, and I was not always the one answering the questions that they asked.  It is the beginning of student centered learning while creating a safe place for questions to be asked by all members of the class.

What is the meaning of the song?
Where or what is Crimond, Mormond Hill, or Tarwathie?
Why does the singer keep mentioning the whale?
Is this song meant to be happy or sad?
What does "Signs of Time" mean?
Is this a pirate song?
Is it about love?
Is it about whales?
Are they going to Greenland?
What does Adieu mean?
Why do they want to hunt the whales?
Where was this song written?
What is the time period this song is from?
Where was this song written?
Why are they saying "Farewell to Tarwathie?
How old are they?
Do they have families?
Do they all die in the end?
Do they plan to fight each other?
Is Tarwathie a real place?
What is a comrade?
What is mountain and vale?
What is seedling?
What is whale hunting?
How old is this song?
How long of a sail will it be?
When is this in time?
Is the crew all men?
Are they Dads and Moms?

What I notice is that these are still all factual questions with one correct answer, or maybe two.  But the questions did generate some real discussion, where we talked about whaling and it was directed about their knowledge and adding to their knowledge instead of lecturing.  I have never been one to lecture anyway, but I have spent a lot of time manipulating the discussion to go the way I want it to go, so I am going to continue to experiment with this technique and see if it doesn't continue to generate more student centered discussions rather than teacher directed discussions.  I will be back with more soon.
Corries Farewell to Tarwathie

El Condor Pasa

Today I worked on teaching students how to ask more thoughtful, probing questions to help discussions be more educational and inspiring.  My learning targets were "I can discuss and sing a song from the Andes Mountains" and "I can talk about how questions can be useful or probing or thoughtful or instead, factual."  I chose to work with a song called "El Condor Pasa" because there are a few different interpretations of this song, and it also has many questions embedded in the song itself.  It is a song about love, and it is compared to a condor flying through the air, and how it comes and goes.

I had the students listen to the song and study the lyrics while they listened.  What is the meaning of the song?  That was the "Do Now" .  Then I talked to them about the learning targets, and reminded them of the questions we asked ourselves and answered for "The Magic Flute".  The students remembered that well, and they talked about the questions they had asked.  I got them to understand that most of these questions were "factual" questions with only ONE answer to them. Who is Pamina for example, or what happens to the queen at the end of the opera?  Do we have another type of question we can ask?   How about a question with more than one answer to it?  We had a few questions that were more factual questions about the song, like where did it come from, and why was it in Spanish, and what were the instruments that were played in it.  The tables turned when a student asked, "What inspired the composer to write the song?"  We kept on with this idea, and it is more of a process than I ever imagined.  There is a lot of Metacognition that is required for this exercise, yet if they begin to understand it better, then I will teach less, and they will learn more.

We sang the song after this, and we discussed the differences between sections A and sections B.  These were interesting questions, because there was room for interpretation, and some opposite ideas.  Some students thought the first section was happier, but some thought the second section was happier.  If you are to look at this song from a completely musical perspective, the second section is in major and higher on the staff, so it sounds happier.  Also, it is questionable as to whether the first section is happier or sadder..the story is about nostalgia, where we feel happy about the past but we also feel sad that we have lost the love we had.  The second section is both happy and sad, because the question is: Will love come again? We don't know.  Just holding opposite ideas in one's head at the same time is a complicated, and perhaps too sophisticated idea for this age group, but if I don't ask for it, I cannot expect to ever find it from these students?



My realization is that the idea of generating questions from students is a metacognitive experience.  It is not something that can be mastered or even attempted in one lesson, and it is something that I am even more intrigued by as I continue this quest for teaching and learning, thinking and singing, reading and dancing, all in one class experience.
El Condor Pasa the ultimate version

I am poems, quarter two!!

I am poem

I am 11 years old

I am a basketball player

I am a student

I am a cat lover

I am a brother

I am a democrat

I am a percussionist

I am a baseball player

I am a Celtics fan

I am a Red Sox fan

I am a son

I am a kid

I am a gamer

I am love sports

I am a guinea pig lover

I am a Trump hater

I am a Hillary supporter

I am poem

I am athletic and intelligent
I wonder what the world will be like in one million years

I hear the leaves rustle

I see the river flow by as I watch the leaves fall

I want a clean world for all the animals

I am athletic and intelligent

I pretend to find life on Mars

I feel powerful and strong

I touch the fallen leaves blanketing the ground

I worry about what our new president will do

I cry when death approaches

I am athletic and intelligent

I understand the new president but do not support him

I say save the animals

I dream to one day have a family of my own

I try to make the world a better place

I hope to live to 100

I am athletic and intelligent

And in case you needed the Exemplar..by ME

I Am

I am a grandmother

I am a mother

I am a runner

I am a knitter

I am a classical singer

I am a piano player

I am a teacher

I am a sensitive person

I am thoughtful, wise, kind

I am a fiancee

I am a daughter

I am a sister

I am a mother-in-law

I am a motherless woman

I am a stylish dresser

I am a lover of bright colors

I am bilingual

I am a hard worker

I am a thinker

I am a believer

I am a facilitator of music

I am helpless sometimes to change the world.

I am someone you can count on

I am flexible

I am a graduate of Smith College

I am a graduate of Northwestern University

I am a passionate reader

I am a choral singer

I am a soloist

I am an opera lover

I am a moviegoer

I am an aunt

I am a cousin

I am someone who does at least one thing

I am fair

I am an art appreciator

I am lover of naps

I am a pop music lover

I am a concert-goer

I am a friend

I am a confidante

I am a listener

I am a walker

I am a laugher

a giggler

I am a giver of light

I am a perfectionist, a risk taker, a leader

I am an ocean lover, an island lover, a dog lover.

I am lover of the songs of birds

I am a sunrise and sunset worshipper

I am a list maker

I am well-educated, an intellectual, a lifelong learner

I am sensitive to the moods and emotions of others

I am a dancer

I am a food lover

I am a baker

I am critical of mistakes of my own and others

I am compassionate

I am a composer of songs

I am a writer of poetry

Short Blog on what is going on lately..

I have not written in a while because I have had to handle some situations which have made it impossible to keep up with everything here.  I am back and strong, however, and will be finding some wonderful topics to discuss very soon.  This past week was the first week of putting out grades on our new Powerteacher program.  It was complicated, because we are trying to tailor it to our needs, to our use of proficiency based learning, and grading, and it was not originally built for this purpose.  I believe it has potential, and I appreciate being able to write comments on every project or habit of work and learning that my students are working on, but I am also wishing that it would show what it is we are trying to show, and it would calculate only what we need to have it calculate.  Let us hope that quarter two is better for this and that we are in good shape to work with students on making their standards work for them and for us in Quarter 2!! Have a great day!

More Monologues

Monologue Statement:

It’s Good To Practice

If you never practiced. You wouldn’t get all the things you want. If you didn’t practice, and another person did, they might get better things, and might do better. For example, if you had a math assessment, and you never did your homework, and someone else did extra homework and was ahead of the class, they would probably get all the answers right. If you played an instrument in band, such as trumpet, and you never practiced, you would probably be making a lot of mistakes. If you were riding a bike for the first time, you would need a lot of practice riding it. Practicing will usually  help you understand things and learn better. If you practice, it will help you. So everyone should practice the things you like to do, plant to do, and want to do.

I disagree with the statement: I prefer Winter over Summer. I think Summer is better because during winter when I have to play football it gets cold and the ball is hard to throw. Also the weather deflates the footballs. You see this is why summer is the better choice. When it’s warmer and, ok there’s bugs but really who scared of a caterpillar, Sure Winter can be great with skiing and stuff. But come on, make the obvious choice SUMMER. You could chose Winter but what happens when you open your door and 5ft of snow falls on you. 3 hours later someone finds you passed out covered in 20 pounds of snow. Or you might be taking a nice walk. When someone throws a snowball at you and knocks you out. Then you wake up in the hospital. With the guy who threw the snowball at you sitting there. Those are some reasons why I think Summer is better than Winter. But if you still like winter I hope you also like getting white washed.

Monologue: What do I Stand For: I prefer Fall Over Summer

I prefer Fall over Summer

I prefer fall over summer because, during fall you start drinking pumpkin spice lattes and wear over sized sweatshirts. During summer you have to always have the air conditioner on and get millions of bug bites. During the fall you can watch binge watch 5 seasons of a show on netflix. You can't do that in the summer. You can wear uggs and make leaf piles. During the summer if you try to do something you always are late to sport practices. During fall harvest cup starts, you pretty much play soccer until you die. During the summer you can swim in oceans and go to lakes but even though it's summer the water still manages to be cold. Fall has perfect weather because you can go outside and not freeze to death. During the summer you get so hot you want to jump into a bowl of ice. Fall is fun because there are a lot of events that happen. Apple picking, cider donut eating, having intense netflix sessions. In summer you sometimes run out of ideas of what to do. In fall you don't.  Say you go bridge jumping and accidently slap you arms on the water do a painful belly flop off of 103 because you feel daring that day. I prefer fall over summer because you don't have to belly flop off of 103!  

More Monologues: Being yourself is better than fitting in with the crowd. ...

I agree with the statement, being yourself is better than fitting in with the crowd. That’s because you don’t want to laugh and cry in the same way everyone else does, when you can have an original laugh like this… or a cry like this… Why not? Join the club and be unique, with me. Being yourself helps you to develop self confidence because you have to be brave enough to do what you think is right, rather than just going along with what the crowd thinks.

Plus, it's easier and better to just be yourself, than to let others tell you what to do and what to be. People who don’t just go along with crowd, are more likely to believe in themselves. Also, not being in the crowd, you are more likely to be an upstander and not a bystander to bullying.That’s because if you feel like you have to be like everyone else, then you probably won’t get help or be help to people who are getting bullied because you either think the bullies will just start bullying you too or you think that everyone will be like that kid is weird because he is standing up for different kids. So, following the crowd is not always the right thing to do because say everyone jumped off a cliff. Would you? In addition, if everyone and everything was the same, than if someone said guess my favorite number. They would say 4 because everyone is the same so, everyone’s favorite number would be 4. Or, Heah guess what I have for lunch! What. A sandwich! Oh, yeah, Bill, Tom and I had that too, and so did everyone else in the world. But, if everyone is different… Dude, guess my favorite color! What. Green. Nice bro, mines Turquoise. Radicle. That’s why I think being yourself is better than fitting in with the crowd.