TEACHING CLOSE READING & A SNOWBALL FIGHT | High School Teacher Vlog

Beginning a new unit on Lord of the Flies, teaching close reading and how to annotate a text, and throwing snowballs around the room for collaboration!
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[@reneeee16]

I'd love to see more videos like this where you show yourself teaching!!

[@TheCaffeinatedClassroom]

Renee Elizabeth Ok! I’ll try and do one a week!

[@sharonmarroquin2650]

Great energy! I definitely want to implement the snowball activity. Very creative!

[@jordanmitchell1749]

I love the idea of putting the text up on the board and annotating it as a class! This is a great strategy to teach annotation!

[@TheCaffeinatedClassroom]

Jordan Mitchell Thank you! I have found that short little passages FULL of deeper meaning are perfect for a think-aloud demonstration like this 👌

[@sliceoflifewithjanice]

Loved seeing you in your element. You are amazing. ❤️Love that you’ve been sharing your days with us through daily vlogs. Love you, friend!

[@TheCaffeinatedClassroom]

Janice Wan Thank you!!! It’s really fun, and I think it’s good for my students to see that teachers share ideas to make our teaching better, ya know?! ❤️ you, too!!!

[@pinkpunkclassroom6610]

I will be starting LoTF in a few weeks with my 10th graders. It's the first year I have taught it and I LOVE this idea for annotating. My kids are just not awesome at annotation and I think that the snowball fight is a good interactive way for them to get better at it.

[@TheCaffeinatedClassroom]

Pink Punk Classroom I like the activity of collaborative annotations so that students get a good mix of ideas - the snowball fight was a good way to randomize who shared papers 🤓

[@thormaxximus]

Lord of the flies it was a crazy movie and book

[@gabrielj.4084]

It's so awesome to see you teach, your lesson is nuanced and super engaging! I would be curious to hear you talk about engaging your students. Do you run into challenges making sure the reading is getting done? Are they involved in the conversation/responsive for the most part? Do you find it important they understand the relevance/real life application of your lessons (specifically annotation/analyzing theme)? Props to you for tackling a difficult concept!

[@TheCaffeinatedClassroom]

Gabriel Livingston Thank you so much!! I try to make sure I really explain the “why” for most lessons- for this lesson I explained that we were going to be close reading and annotating passages from LOTF together so that they could then turn around and do it on their own for their lit circle books... I find that engagement (particularly with reading) has a ridiculous improvement when students have some choice in their material, hence the lit circles... We will see how this unit goes! 🤷🏻‍♀️

[@bethh9192]

I wish we still did Lord of the Flies in 10th. They moved it to 7th. I used to have the kids play survivor throughout the unit.

[@TheCaffeinatedClassroom]

Beth H That’s so fun!! I normally do a game with challenges along with it, but since I’m doing lit circles this time I had to keep it simple 😳

[@Heyu7her3]

Gosh, your teaching makes me want to do upper middle school/high school, but I'm not experienced. I'm finishing up my pre-service program right now, and I feel like I'll be doing elementary school starting out with what I've been exposed to...

[@nichellerodriguez1524]

Go do the upper grades. If you don't like the experience, then go back to elementary. Find your niche.

[@nicholasknowles7036]

Love This Please keep doing Vlogs like this !

[@TheCaffeinatedClassroom]

Nicholas Knowles Yay! Ok, I will! ❤️

[@chelseamikail]

Hi! I have a question: I am going into my third year of teaching English, and I have been so frustrated by the conflicting definitions of "theme" that I have come across since starting to teach. In your video, you refer to themes such as "violence," "loss of innocence" and "coming of age." Before starting to teach, I would have always agreed that those are common literary themes. But since starting to teach, I have noticed that nearly every one of my colleagues insists that a theme MUST be a complete sentence that expressed an overall message or lesson about life. According to that definition "coming of age" would not be a theme. My colleagues would say, "What was the author trying to say ABOUT coming of age? THAT'S your theme!" This frustrates me to no end, because even in school textbooks, we are given this official definition of theme. HOWEVER, other parts of the textbook will casually reference the "theme of friendship" and ask students to analyze it, thus completely contradicting the definition that was given. I find this to be incredibly confusing for students (and for me!) How do you define theme? What are your thoughts on this idea that a theme must be a complete sentence expressing a lesson or message about life that the author wanted to convey? Thanks!

[@TheCaffeinatedClassroom]

Hi Chelsea! I have run into the exact same frustration as you are describing here, and it all made sense to me when a colleague explained it this way - "theme" is the big overarching idea VS "message" or "theme statement" (or even "claim/thesis") which describe the analytical one-sentence statement you're talking about. This is exactly how I teach it to my students - I hope this helps!

[@briannant]

I love the snowball fight idea so creative. I’m starting to regret elementary. Lol -B

[@briannant]

I need to read One of Us is Lying.

[@des5634]

I would love to have you as a teacher.

[@MrPeekPoetry]

That was interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[@TheCaffeinatedClassroom]

Mr Peek's Poetry Funtime ❤️❤️❤️

[@mrsambrosesclassroom]

Did you get the light filters? Was it too dark w just the extra lighting?

[@AGDinCA]

I do snowball writing with upper elementary students. An alternative is to let the students fold it into paper airplanes and fly them around the room. It shocked me how many 6th graders couldn't fold a paper airplane.

[@kennethwilkinson8244]

you are so pretty. when I was in school, I wish I had a teacher who looked like you.

[@KafoopleLand]

Just curious: do you always approach your text studies based on themes?

[@TheCaffeinatedClassroom]

I have been lately - I think that it helps students connect to characters and stories more deeply if they can see how these characters relate to ideas and situations that ring true in students' own lives.