Joyous Reflection

I spent the weekend grading literary essays based on short stories the students had read during our short story reading unit. Over the course of the previous three weeks, the students were guided through the writing process: they chose a story or two they felt strongly about, identified a thesis and topic sentences, found evidence to paraphrase or quote, drafted in essay form, revised for ideas and grammar, edited for punctuation and spelling, and published on our grade 8 writing gallery site. As I read and evaluated their final essays, I felt quite joyous. Here’s why:

Through conferring, I already knew pretty much what every essay was about, and the work the students did to grow as writers. However, leaving a student after a conference or after a minilesson is a moment of trust that s/he will actually try the strategy or follow the suggestion.  It really isn’t until the moment of grading that I give myself the time to truly see whether the student followed through or not. Here is where the joy comes in: they did it!

OK, not everyone did everything well, of course. But I saw so much that I could point to and say, “There’s the minilesson on quoting dialogue” or “There’s the conference we had about embedding your thesis in your topic sentences to stay focused on the main idea” or “There’s the small group work on adding an insight into the conclusion.” I can see the evidence of my teaching in front of me, and that’s a joyous feeling.

I wonder if the students know how much they have grown? I think I will give them back the literary essay they wrote on the first week of school and let them read it again (I can hear the groans already). Then I’ll give them back this essay and have them reflect on their learning using three stars and a wish: List 3 things you learned during the unit (the stars) and 1 thing you wish had been different (the wish). Finally, I’ll give them their graded Six Traits rubric and ask that they read my “love note” (I always write a “wow” and a “next time” comment on rubrics).

I hope the students can feel joyous after reflecting too. They earned it!

Enhancing Student Learning Through Meaningful Technology Integration

As our middle school prepares to move to a one-to-one technology model next year, I am trying to shift my teaching now by finding new ways to integrate technology into my English Language Arts units. Fortunately, I do not have to travel this journey alone. I am part of a department of teachers who are all on this same quest; our department goal for the year involves “enhancing student learning through meaningful technology integration”. I have a willing teaching partner who is by my side every step of the way, collaborating, encouraging, questioning, and investigating with me. I have a technology integration specialist available who understands the pressures and constraints of the classroom teacher, since she was recently a middle school Humanities teacher herself. And I have lesson suggestions and resources at my fingertips through organizations like NCTE, NCSS, NCLE, and ReadWriteThink.org.

At the beginning of each unit, our tech integrationist joins our department and gives us a manageable suggestion for how to add tech to our unit. Here’s what we’ve done so far:

• ·            Short Story Reading: Discussion Thread within our school’s Moodle site, open to each of our two classes of students. Students posted an interpretation about a story they read in class, and responded to others’ interpretations.
• ·            Literary Essay Writing: A grade-level-wide writing gallery Google site. Each student has a page, on which s/he publishes his/her final literary essay. Other students read and provide (constructive, positive) feedback on it. This site will be used again for other writing units, showcasing each piece.
• ·            Short Story Writing: Students write stories on a Google document, and share it with the teacher and two other students. Students get feedback through “comments” as they are in the process of writing their stories. Teachers can monitor the document’s history, ensuring that the story is the student’s own work and not being changed or edited by others.

These tech integration tools have not changed the actual process of reading or writing, or the written product. After all, a word-processed essay or story is not much different than a handwritten one. However, it’s the audience that has widened, and this has given students a chance to bounce partially-formed ideas off of many others, receive feedback about their ideas to help shape them for clarity and accuracy, and it adds authenticity to the publishing step because they are writing for peers as well as the teacher.

Collaboration and communication are two pillars of the 21^st Century Skill set. Using Discussion Threads, Google Sites, and Google Docs widens students’ audience, thus allowing them to receive more feedback during their literacy process. This is “meaningful technology integration” that “enhances student learning”.

"Dude, I spawned into an aircraft"

Last week I was riding in a van with ten eighth grade boys on our way to a zipline course. The trip would take about an hour, so I settled into my front seat and began a little informal data gathering: What do adolescent boys talk about in unstructured settings? Over the course of that hour, the boys discussed video games-- especially war-based games, movies-- war-based movies, horror films, and slapstick comedy, and TV shows-- South Park and Family Guy. The conversation was rapid fire: one boy introducing a topic, another offering a brief comment, a third jumping in with a new topic. No one topic lasted more than about a minute and a half. Some boys could never get a word in edgewise, while the same 2-3 dominated the conversation. Yet there was a sense of community and lots of laughter, quotes and shared memories.

I learned something by listening that day: Those boys are part of a culture that has its own vocabulary, rituals, and values. That culture is completely foreign to my culture; although I have heard of the games, movies, and TV shows they discussed, I have not participated nor viewed any of them. They used familiar words in new ways: "Dude, I spawned into an aircraft" (spawned?), and used terms I'd never heard of: "I used my MOAB to blow up the tank" (MOAB? When another boy asked, I learned it meant "Mother Of All Bombs"). They valued violence and competition, slapstick humor and special effects.

This is interesting to me because these are my students. They sit in my class every day and listen to me talk about the things I think are important. But what I am talking about has nothing to do with modern warfare weapons, gory violence, nor slapstick humor. I wonder if what I am saying is as foreign to them as their discussion was to me. I wonder how to bridge my middle-aged female academic culture with their adolescent male pop culture so that they can access the vocabulary and concepts in the curriculum. I wonder about the pace of the class, where one topic can last 20 or more minutes. Can they sustain their attention that long?

The boys in that van come from families like mine, have parents like me. Yet they have created a common culture that is foreign to me. Rather than assuming they are accessing all of the concepts presented in class, I must remember to find the bridge that helps them link my culture to theirs, just as I do with students from other foreign cultures.