Vittoria!

Friday, Dec. 3:  I have just completed my two best days yet at YOKA.  All four of my seventh grade English classes had a narrative writing assignment.  We had just finished the story “Amigo Brothers” by Piri Thomas.  This short story tells about best friends Felix and Antonio who are paired up in a boxing championship.  The story is more about their friendship than about the sport of boxing, and at the end, after a brutal fight, they embrace and leave the ring together.  The story does not reveal the winner.

The assignment to my classes was to write “The Next Chapter” for these two friends.  First they had to make a storyboard telling what happened in the year after the winner was announced.  They did this in pairs, and when they finished their storyboard each pair got a laptop so they could go to the online writing program (MyAccess.com) and write a narrative based on their storyboard.

This was a substantial assignment with two major parts.  They had to work with a classmate to get it done.  It involved thinking up a story, rendering it into little drawings, logging onto an online program, and writing a narrative of 300 words.    I was a little nervous about getting them through all of this, and so I was pleasantly surprised at how well it went. 

First of all, the chance to work on the laptops was a great motivation for getting the storyboard done.  The attraction of the computers is awesome.  Second, they worked well in pairs.  Some pairs were lopsided with one student doing most of the work, but even in those pairs both students were engaged in thinking up the story.  Third, when they finished the story board and got into the writing program, they were actually enthusiastic about writing down what they had come up with. 

I remain very impressed by the effect that computers have on these boys.  The computers focus and engage them in a way that teachers and paper books do not.  It isn’t just the games, although they love to sneak over to the games, but also the writing itself that they are more engaged in.  They are also getting used to all of the corrections that the computer program indicates.

And so this lesson went very well in all of the classes, even my very difficult sixth period.  I called the principal up in the middle of sixth period to invite him to come see how it was working.  He has invested a lot of school funds in getting this online writing program for all teachers, and I wanted him to see how it could work.

I’ve done a lot of yelling at all these classes, so I took the time at the end of each period on Thursday and Friday to compliment them on how well they worked on this assignment.  I was still exhausted, to be sure, but for the first time when Friday, 3:24 pm came around I felt very satisfied at how the week had gone.