Today was one of those days. No, my students weren’t bouncing off the walls in anticipation of winter break; they were completely silent.
I hate it when this happens. I hate being the awkward voice in the room, pulling teeth for a raised hand. I haven’t been teaching long enough to feel completely comfortable with silence like some of my colleagues. I can’t sit and wait for hours, (minutes, really), for a student to put their hand in the air.
In my 8th grade honors class we’ve been discussing the way an author uses tone. Yes, I know, exciting stuff. My students thought the same thing. Last week we took notes, did some practice activities together, and this week we are putting our knowledge to use by reading a couple short stories & comparing the tone in each story by writing a comparison paper. Again, I know, real exciting stuff!
I tried to make this more interesting by picking two stories that have some humor. I picked an African folk tale & a story about a bear taking a rabbit hostage and demanding a ransom for his return. The second story is my favorite because there’s a big mix up between the words ransom and handsome & the rabbit’s family keeps insisting for the bear to stop demanding their son is handsome……. pause… I’ll wait while you catch your breath from your giggle fit. (As lame as this sounds, these stories are actually in the 8th grade literature textbook & they are actually at grade level).
So, today, we read the African folk tale out loud together. After we finished I asked if anybody had a guess as to what the story’s tone would be considered.
Crickets.
This is bizarre for my honors group. They are a chatty bunch that LOVES to hear themselves talk. But I literally looked out at my classroom of middle schoolers and felt like I was staring at a bunch of statues. I had 27 blank faces, with droopy eyes, and absolutely no electric buzz of energy in the room. Great…
I waited for a couple minutes, asked the question again, and once again, heard nothing but the rattle of the jack hammer down the hallway, (remember, my school is a construction zone). So, I did what I do best and yelled, “stand up!” (& got a loud groan from my 27 adolescents).
Teaching Tip #2: Keep your students discussing
My Honors students had me as a teacher last year, so they are used to this activity. How it works:
1. Tell all students to stand up.
2. Ask the question that is up for discussion. In my case, What was the tone of our story, Brer Rabbit, Brer Lion?
3. If a student knows the answer they can sit down – you are allowed to call on any of these students, & they must proudly say the answer to the discussion question and provide evidence which proves their answer. If a student does not know the answer, they are left standing, must find a student sitting nearby, and ask a question about the topic for discussion. The question MAY NOT be “What is the answer?” The question CAN be, “Where can I look in the story to help find the tone?”
4. As the teacher, I give about a minute or so after starting this activity, and then I call on three or four different people at random to tell me the answer. This ALWAYS leads to students speaking up and adding to the thoughts of the students that shared.
I usually repeat this process a couple more times with all my discussion questions. (Where can we find example phrases that prove the tone of our story? What example language could we consider exaggerative? Humorous? How does the author use imagery to develop his tone? Etc…) My 8th graders pretend that they hate this activity, but by the end of the discussion, I have students voicing their opinions loud and clear and majority of hands in the air; it basically wakes them up, shakes them out of their lazy, sleepy attitudes, & creates an environment of learning. I also like this activity because it gets kids out of their desks.
Students need movement, people.
Try it out! Make your rules and adaptions. I’m off to enjoy a burger with my grandma – peace out.