Learning About Fantasy Writing with Eragon

Winter break fell smack-dab in the middle of the fantasy writing unit. I am taking advantage of this opportunity (look at the sunny side!) by asking students to read a fantasy book by the end of the break in order to keep their minds on the genre. When we return, I'll ask them to do some reflection on their reading based on the genre definition we constructed at the beginning of the unit. Then I'll have them apply those ideas to their fantasy story drafts to ensure they are writing in the genre. 

image from Amazon.com

In keeping with my do-what-the-students-do philosophy of teaching reading and writing, I am reading fantasy over the break. I picked Eragon by Christopher Paolini, a book I have heard about for years from students and my own children, but one which I haven't felt motivated to read. At nearly 500 pages, I knew it would take me some time and stamina to get through it. Besides, I am a little tired of the traditional magical fantasy genre-- after Lord of the Rings, what else is there to the hero's quest story? 

But if I only read young adult books that I knew I'd like, I would be missing a huge opportunity to connect with students who like to read other things (like quest-based magical fantasy books). So I packed it into my backpack along with my journal as I set off for my winter break travels. 

One week later, and I'm on page 440. Here are some things that I noticed about Eragon as a fantasy book (spoiler alert-- I may have to reveal certain plot events to make my point):

Luke & Obi Wan from pinterest

• Eragon and Brom are like Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi (Star Wars): novice and master, orphan and substitute father figure, novice thrust into adulthood before he's ready when the master dies.
• Eragon and Murtagh are like Frodo Baggins and Aragorn (AKA Strider) (Lord of the Rings): The young hero is suspicious of the unknown and seemingly dangerous stranger at first, but is in a situation where he must rely on him for survival and help. As they journey together, they learn trust and respect, even brotherhood.

  

  Aragorn from wikipedia.com

• The idea that True Names have power (every being has a True Name which is not the everyday name that is used in the world-- when one knows another's True Name, they can control the other) is in a lot of books, but I think Ursula K. LeGuin did it first in her short story "The Rule of Names". 
• Dragons and Dragon Riders communicate telepathically was seen in Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrider series. It is a convenient device, however, so that Eragon and Saphira can "talk" things through without those around them listening in on their conversation. 
• Eragon's world is like medieval times, a common fantasy setting. People ride horses as transportation, the cities are filthy with no modern conveniences, food is meat cooked over fires and bread with few vegetables, weapons are swords and knives and bows & arrows (and magic). 
• Anything goes. I guess this is a basic tenant of fantasy. Eragon becomes an amazing swordsman in mere months. He learns magic and is incredibly powerful with very little training. He and one other defeat deadly fierce Urgal creatures with only bruises and scrapes to show for it, although they are outnumbered. The good guys show up to rescue them just in the nick of time! Whew! Eragon meets the girl of his dreams (literally) after only a short search.

I am not sure how all these noticings will help my short story. I guess the message is that it's OK to borrow elements from other texts as long as they are remolded into your own story. After all, the stories we are writing during our writing unit are a way to practice narrative writing techniques. The goal is not to be the most creative or original with our ideas. If a young writer (or an old one like me, but one who needs the scaffold) needs to start with a familiar plot line, that's OK. We are still learning how to do all those other narrative things like writing dialogue that reveals character traits, and structuring the plot either chronologically or with flashbacks, and using inner thinking to help get the message of the story through to the reader. If, along the way, a creative and unique idea emerges, then that's cause for celebration and wonder! 

Musical Jingles as a Social Studies Presentation Tool

One of the things I like about the Teacher's Curriculum Institute (TCI) materials is that it suggests brain-based learning activities that are developmentally appropriate. One of my favorites is the Colonial Fair: students promote their colony to prospective immigrants. Students in teams of 4 (ish) design a poster that includes labelled visuals of at least 4 of their colony's best features and includes a slogan, they write a sales pitch, and they write a jingle which they have to sing during the fair. Although students hate that it is low-tech ("There weren't any computers in 1700! You know what an ear of corn looks like; you don't need to look it up on Google Images to be able to draw it!"), I love that they are using so many modalities to manipulate the information.

During the Colonial Fair, the groups split into two teams: one stays, the other strays (one team presents, while the other team visits the other booths), and then they switch. Visitors have a rating sheet with them so they can rate each colony for how enticing it is: 5) Leaving Today!, 4) Saving Money for the Trip, 3) Choice Between Paris and Here-- Can't Decide!, 2) Going to the Beach Instead, or 1) Staying Home and Reading a Good Book (thanks to Lee Piscionari for the rating sheet!).

Once everyone has visited the booths, they answer this question in writing: Based on your experience at the Colonial Fair, which colony would you want to move to and why (provide at least 3 reasons)? I do a quick share-out as one last review opportunity.

Fun, right? And a great brain-based multi-modality learning activity!

One of the hardest parts for students in past years has been the jingle. They just didn't really get what a jingle would include or how to write one. I was thinking about this when I stumbled upon Mr. Betts' Class historical song parodies. The original one I stumbled upon was 'What Does John Locke Say?' (based on "What Does the Fox Say?"), but then I noticed titles that related to the work we were doing with the colonies: "Moving to the Colonies (Miley Cyrus/ 13 Colonies Parody)" and "Pennsylvania: The Quaker's Delight (The Lion King Parody)". Aha! This would be a great way to introduce the jingle concept!

The results were magnificent! Here are some favorites:

Pennsylvania [To the tune of "Call Me Maybe"]

I moved to Pennsylvania
I have more pay and more rights
Now I can say what I feel
I truly love my life
We're treated fairly now
and with religious freedom
where you are equal as well
I was searching for this
So come and join us
Live free
be accepted
the forests
and hills call you
so come and join us here maybe
Hey I just met you
And this is crazy
but live here with me
we can be wealthy
It's hard to think of life not like this
so live here with me
we all have freedom
we don't support war
and love equality
we farm and lumber
or we build ships
unless we're merchants
or trade with tradesman

(and it goes on for 6 more verses!)

Virginia [To the tune of "Rude"] 
Hey, it's Virginia, we are the first
successful English Settlement
Our religion is Anglican and we pray
in the Church of England
Our winters are cold but they're not that bad
Our summers are ho-o-ot
We're self-governing with elected assembly
     (House of Burgesses)
Our economy is farming, plantations, and small independent farms
but there's more
    (to talk about)
Our settlement thrives on the sale of tobacco because there's
a lot of land and there's more to plant
Come on and move to Virginia!

New York [To the tune of "Lazy Song"]
Today I just landed in New York colony
I just want to earn some money
I bet you didn't know we were named after the Duke of York
Cause he gave us a lot of land for this colony
We have religious freedom and that's a good thing
We gotta ton of jobs for you and the fam
Too bad for the settlement of New Amsterdam
Oh yes I said it! I said it, I said it cause I can
New York is the best colony over here
(whistle) 

Hahahaha! I love it! I think I will dip into more Mr. Betts' Class parodies as we move onto other topics. It definitely got the students engaged and thinking about how to communicate the essentials of their information in a new way. I wonder what they'll come up with for The Constitution?

Teaching Argument Through Primary Source Evidence

A couple of weeks ago, a literacy consultant, Stevi Quate, came to our school to work with the middle and high school teachers. Our Director of Curriculum and Professional Development invited her, knowing that the English departments at both levels were implementing the CCSS, as had the Math departments, and that Social Studies and Science were soon to follow. Literacy is a big push for all those subjects in the CCSS, and Stevi would be a great jump-start into improving our practice.

Stevi sat down with my co-teacher and me one morning to help us think through improving argument skills in eighth grade Social Studies: Early American History. One of our big units of the year is The Road to Revolution, during which students take on the role of a historical Patriot or Loyalist, and debate, during a series of Town Hall meetings, the issue of rebellion. Over the past few years, the results have been something like this: "Um, so I think we should rebel because, you know, the Stamp Act was really unfair." "Yeah, me too. The Stamp Act and the Quartering Act." (Etc.) Uninspired, mindless repetition of textbook content.

Stevi introduced us to the work of George Hillocks, Jr., and his text Teaching Argument Writing, Grades 6-12 (Heinemann, 2011). In the sample first chapter, Hillocks demonstrates his methodology for teaching students how to notice evidence, explain the "rule" (he also calls it "warrant"), and draw conclusions. He uses crime mysteries-- narrative plus illustration-- as his hook to teach the skills. He asks the question: "Is Queenie (the victim's wife) telling the truth?" Then he walks students through the deductive reasoning process.

Chart adapted from Hillocks, 2011.

We just finished two big writing units: Literary Essay (use evidence to support an idea) and Investigative Journalism (find out evidence to help you explain an idea). We also did some work with "The Historian's Process": using primary and secondary sources to draw conclusions about historical events. This Hillocks method seemed like a very natural next step to develop arguments and do even better work with primary source documents. As you know, I am a great believer in adopting/adapting good ideas.

My co-teacher and I decided that the crime mystery in Hillocks' chapter would not be a good fit for our community. Besides, I like practicing skills on things that are actually part of the curriculum; it's a two-for-one kind of a thing. So we decided to use the primary and secondary source materials from our next Social Studies chapter, Life in the Colonies (US Through Industrialism, TCI, 2011) as the texts to use for learning deductive reasoning skills.

The textbook activity directions say: "Acting as investigative journalists, you and your partner will investigate life in the American colonies. You will travel to eight places to examine primary and secondary sources and uncover the truth about what life was really like in the colonies." Each "place" has a visual and a written document, and a "headline" (fictionally) published in the English press about what life was like in the colonies.

To introduce the students to Hillocks' method, I will show them a 3-minute clip from the BBC show Sherlock, in which Sherlock Holmes, "consulting detective", explains to his new room mate, Dr. John Watson, how he knew so much about him when they first met. In his explanation, Sherlock names the detail he noticed (for example, Watson's haircut and stance), explains why it is important (suggests time in the military), and draws a conclusion (combined with his tan line, it could only mean he was serving overseas: in Afghanistan or Iraq). This engaging clip, combined with their recent work as "investigative journalists" and "historians", will lead us into the day's work.

Using the Gradual Release of Responsibility method (basically, workshop minilessons), I constructed a slideshow so that I could model the technique, have students try it out with my guidance, and eventually release them to do the work on their own. With each source and using the form above, students have to find evidence, the rule (why the evidence is important), and draw a conclusion about how accurate the (fake) English headline is. Students will need 3-5 pieces of evidence before they can confidently "prove" that the headline is either true or false. I will go through at least one visual and one written source to model/practice. Here is a sample visual slide:

Image by Janet Pohl adapted from TCI, 2011 and G. Hillocks, Jr.

The important part of this process, and what has been missing from my previous instruction, is the "rule" (or "warrant"). Students were giving evidence without explaining why it was important or how it proved anything. In their literary essays, we did some work on this using sentence starters like "This illustrates...", "This shows...", "This is important because...", "This connects to .... because...", and "Consequently...". If students can transfer some of that language and thinking into their Social Studies debate skills, their debates will be much better. So will their constructed answers on tests, and on future essays.

The next part of this process will be to teach them how to prove their point with logic, and, even more difficult, how to pick apart someone else's argument. But that's for another blog.

Investigative Journalism: an Integrated (?) Unit

"Let's do an integrated unit together," my math/science colleague suggested when he returned from the NSTA conference in Boston last spring.

"Uhh, OK. On what?" I tentatively replied, thinking about my Early US History Social Studies curriculum. Where's the science in that? What could he do in science related to my SS units?

"I could teach the science content and you could teach the writing part of a project!" he replied. He was very excited, fired up from a workshop that encouraged writing in the disciplines-- probably Common Core related.

Immediately, my chock-a-block ELA curriculum flashed in front of me. There was no wiggle room to add an integrated project. And besides, what did that mean anyway: I would teach the writing? What would it be? Who would grade it? I already have more writing to grade than time needed! And why couldn't he teach the writing in the discipline? Isn't that the direction that Common Core is nudging us?

"Well, maybe we could do something around Week Without Walls," I countered. This was the only wiggle room in either curriculum-- an undefined something related to our eighth grade trip to Thailand. Over the past years, the WWW project has taken many forms (sometimes so formless it was non existent), with a tenuous link to the SS curriculum via a "Global Citizenship" benchmark. 

"I was thinking I would move the Environmental Science unit to the beginning of the year. That could be our WWW content, environmental issues." I liked the idea of an environmental focus for the trip; we do a lot of activities related to the natural environment while in Thailand. We agreed we would discuss it further when school started up again in the fall.

image of elephant conservatory by Janet Pohl (author)

But it was not exactly on my radar as school started in August. We were tasked with implementing the new CCSS English standards, and we were handed the Calkins et. al.'s Units of Study in Writing as a resource. As a department, we started the year with a flurry of unpacking standards, adjusting writing units, exploring new rubrics, and closely reading the densely-written Units of Study. We were about two days ahead of the students. 

Meanwhile, back in science, my colleague was happily going about his Environmental Science unit. A month or so before our trip, I finally had the head space to talk with him about his integration idea. I learned that his unit would be finished about a week before the trip. Students focused on 5 different environmental issues each: what they were, how they were caused, and some solutions. None of the research about issues was specific to Thailand. Take it away, ELA/SS!

After a weekend of wondering how this was at all integrated-- after all, I was taking on the responsibility of continuing the authentic science writing product and science took on nothing of my curriculum, I decided to look on this as an opportunity. The one unit in the new Units of Study in Writing that puzzled me the most was the Investigative Journalism unit (how is that narrative?). Since the content of this WWW piece was securely on the shoulders of science, I could focus completely on the process of writing a new genre. Surely we could use the environmental issues as a content base and build in "field research" from our trip to write in an authentic journalistic style.

image of Chedi Luang Temple by janet Pohl (author)

I looked for models in the world, and found that Time for Kids has very accessible articles about science topics which would match the kind of writing I wanted from my students. I considered what topic I would use when I was modeling lessons, and decided against an environmental issue (I didn't want to do someone's work for them). Instead, I focused on Buddhist monks in Thailand; we visit a temple and participate in a "monk chat" while in Chiang Mai, and selecting Buddhist monks as a topic allowed me to introduce background information to students before we went. The issue? It turns out that the number of monks in Thailand is rapidly decreasing because the economic boom and falling population rates have drawn men away from the traditional commitment of ordination. Oh, and did I mention "Global Citizenship"?

I spent the first day expanding their Google search skills so that they could find relevant, readable, reliable sources about how their issue related to Thailand. Then I got them taking notes in the "5 W's" structure (who, what, where, why, when, and how), which they had to summarize in a "lean" or "dramatic" journalistic style to synthesize the information and to practice the new writing style. I left them to continue researching at home, and turned the lessons over to writing up the general science information in a "background information" way, incorporating their Thailand research when they were ready. Before leaving on the trip, we worked on interview questions-- they were required to take pictures and interview at least one person about their issue while they were there. This was the "field research" part.

Once we returned, lessons centered on incorporating the interview, writing leads that hooked readers, and writing endings that left readers with something specific to do to help solve the problem. We discussed headlines and always always focused on meaning-- What is the message you want your readers to understand when they finish reading your article? Finally, we made e-zines and students made their pages for their articles. More tech lessons helped them understand layout options, citing and usage rights with images, embedding pictures and slideshows, and hyperlinking to organizations related to their issue. Several rounds of peer review took place-- remember, the world will be reading this! You want to look as smart on paper as you are!

For a giant experiment all around, the e-zines turned out well. Students worked hard to make them attractive and engaging. Of course, the articles have a variety of proficiency, as the writers themselves do. They are eighth graders, after all.

Next year, I would like the science teacher to take on the Thailand research link, and to help grade the content part of the article. That would make it a little more integrated (and fairer) in my view. Overall, though, I like the project and the writing genre, and it made the students view Thailand with more than tourist eyes. It was also a way to get more writing into the year, and in a fresh, new genre. There's a lot of good in that!

Using Checklists for Self-Reflection, Goal-Setting, and Formative Feedback

We are in the final week of our first CCSS-aligned writing unit: Literary Essays. Throughout the unit, I have been using the student checklists provided by the Units of Study in Argument, Information, and Narrative Writing (Heinemann, 2014). The only modification I made was that I took off the grade level indicator from the top of the checklist. Since we are in the first year of implementation, I did not want students to feel stupid because they were not yet working up to the Grade 7 CCSS expectations at the beginning of eighth grade. Instead of the grade level indicators, I labeled them Semester 1 (Grade 7) and Semester 2 (Grade 8). We will use these checklists again at the end of the year with our Position Papers unit.

CC image from pixabay

I first had students assess their on-demand argument writing piece using the Grade 7 Argument Writing Checklist. They rated themselves as "Not Yet", "Starting To", or "Yes!" for each descriptor under the categories of Overall, Lead, Transitions, Endings, Organization, Elaboration, Craft, and Mechanics. I had also rated their on-demands using the checklist, but I did not share my scoring with them-- I wanted them to think honestly about what they saw they were capable of achieving and where they saw their writing had gaps. I noticed that the students were fairly accurate in their ratings, although they tended to rate themselves higher on some of the more complex areas than I did. I think this is probably because they didn't have a good sense of what the target was yet.

Once that was done, I asked them to choose 2-3 of their "Starting To" areas, and write goals for the upcoming unit. I asked them to target the "Starting To" areas because those were skills they felt they had some competence with, and those were areas that they could see immediate progress and success. Goals that are baby steps-- that lift the level of current writing-- are more motivating than trying to take a giant leap into the unknown and hoping you get there, uncertain where to even start. 

The first bend in the Literary Essay unit focused on writing a Theme Essay. Over the course of seven lessons, students analyzed short stories for theme, wrote their thinking in their reading notebooks, made a plan for the lit essay, drafted the essay, and revised for strong topic sentences, making evidence logical, adding counterclaims, and learning more about internal punctuation. During the course of the daily lessons, I conferred with students, and often used their goals as a starting point for the conference: So, how's your goal going? Can you show me the work you've been doing to improve ___? This helped the students to keep focused on the goal and to keep ownership in the learning process.

On the day the Theme Essay draft was due, students received a new checklist: the Grade 7 and 8 Argument Writing Checklist (the two checklists are side by side, so students can see where they need to go next-- like a continuum). Again, they scored their Theme Essay draft using the checklist, and used it to write some goals to carry them forward to the next half of the unit. I also asked them to do some reflection on their first set of goals by completing this sentence: I used to _____, but then I learned how to ____ by _____. Interestingly, most students chose something that was brand-new to them (e.g., adding a counterclaim, or using logic in their body paragraphs) rather than reflecting on the success of their goals. I guess these were their big new "aha!" skills.

Bend II: The Author's Craft Essay. Last week, students collected author's craft analysis entries in their reading notebooks, and created a plan for their next lit essay draft. They will write with flying fingers on Sunday, using all they learned from the theme essay section in their next draft. They will work to lift the level of this draft by keeping their goals in mind.

But now it's my turn to work with the checklist. I believe that timely, specific feedback does big work in moving students forward. I don't want to wait until their final draft and the summative rubric to give them feedback about what they are doing well and what they need to improve on. I also don't want to tell them "what to fix" in their Theme Essay. As Lucy Calkins reminds me, "Teach the writer, not the writing." My feedback needs to be useful to them as they move into the next essay (and all the rest across this year in all subjects, and beyond) rather than dwelling on the last essay. 

So this weekend I am reading Theme Essay drafts with the self-assessed Grade 7 and 8 Argument Writing Checklist in hand. I am marking with green highlighter what I see they are doing, and where I see they fall in the "Starting To", and "Yes!" ranking, for each descriptor. I am marking 3-4 descriptors as "Not Yet" or "Starting To" with pink highlighter where I think they need to do some work to lift the level to where it should be. Then I am writing next to that descriptor how to do it (if they already knew how to do it, they would have done it already!). I tried to pick descriptors that I knew I'd already taught into, so that I could send them to a chart or model as a scaffold for using the strategy. For example, if I highlighted Transitions, I would write "Use the Thinking Prompts sentence starters as transitions to link your reason, your evidence and your analysis." My feedback on the checklist will also be the starting point for conferences and small group work over the course of Bend II.

The Literary Essay unit ends in five more lessons. By the time they turn in their finalized, self-assessed (yes, once again) essay, they will have used the checklist at least three times: before the unit to set goals, mid-unit to reflect and set new goals, and at the end to reflect on their growth as writers over the course of the past four weeks. I will have given each student two pieces of written feedback (I also wrote comments on each early draft regarding their thesis and topic sentences) and several verbal conferences. Between the descriptors on the checklists and the model texts, students have had a clear target to shoot for, and feedback to guide them along the way. I am fully expecting to see significant growth in their essay writing skills in their final essay.

Investigative Journalism: an integrated Science/Social Studies/Language Arts Unit

As you know, dear reader, if you have been paying attention these last few months, we are implementing the CCSS writing standards in middle school this year. As part of the implementation, we bought the Units of Study for Argument, Informational, and Narrative Writing (Heinemann, 2014) developed by the staff at the Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project.

The grade 8 kit includes these three units: Unit 1: Investigative Journalism (Narrative), Unit 2: Literary Essay (Argument), and Unit 3: Position Papers (Informational). My teaching partner and I sat down with these units at the beginning of the year, and laid them out next to our existing units. Literary Essay-- check! A very close match. Position Papers-- We did a research-based argument essay, so we definitely see how a Position Paper would be an extension of that, so... check! Investigative Journalism-- ?? Our narrative writing unit was fantasy short stories, a really fun writing genre for eighth graders who had been writing realistic fiction short stories since third grade. We were reluctant to give it up, although Investigative Journalism did sound like an interesting unit. Hmmm... could we do both? If so, how?

Step in my Math/Science colleague. After returning from the NSTA conference last spring, he was very keen on doing an integrated Science/LA project this year. He suggested that Science could work on the content side of a project while LA could work on the writing side. Interesting suggestion... especially when he proposed doing it with the unit focusing on human impact on the environment and discovering solutions. All of a sudden, the geography theme of Human-Environment Interaction emerged from Social Studies. And how could we apply that to our Week Without Walls trip to Thailand, which we do a project with in SS anyway? I know you know where this is going...

Image of deforestation from Shutterstock via inhabitat website

So here we sit, my teaching partner and I, gazing at the Investigative Journalism unit, and with the integrated unit suggestion in my back pocket. Couldn't we have them write investigative science news articles that explained the human impact problem and the proposed solutions that they had already researched in Science, layered on an application piece of "What does this problem/solution look like in Thailand?" through more research in SS, and finally add in the field research piece of interviews, photos, and experiences while on our trip? They could write it all up using a journalistic style and publish the articles on an online science news magazine website that they would design (did I mention technology integration?). Voila!

Image of Asian elephants found on wikipedia

We are leaving out an important element of the original Investigative Journalism unit by teaching this way. The first "Bend" of the unit is about finding stories around you, living life like a journalist, noticing the everyday dramas that can turn into news stories. I understand the purpose behind this: helping kids lead a wide-awake life, keeping kids connected to the topic through choice and relevance, making it more authentic to what real journalists do. There is certainly value in that. Perhaps we can address a little part of that while we are on our trip, helping them see the connections between their experience and their news topic, helping them find the drama and personal angle to be highlighted within the story.

In any case, students will be exposed to a way to write information that is engaging, informative, and concise. Our job will be about teaching the writing skills (LA) and making a connection to another culture (SS). And we still get to do our fantasy short story writing unit (with a bit of revision to make sure we are lifting the level to meet the CCSS narrative writing standards)! Win, win!

Reading Critically in Social Studies

Starting the year in Grade 8 Social Studies: Early American History means setting up ways of thinking and doing while tackling content at the same time. Two basic skills in particular are used continually throughout the year: reading primary source documents and thinking critically about perspective and bias within sources. Therefore early in the year it's important to establish strategies for reading informational texts and to consider context while reading.

Our first unit is Residents and Invaders (AKA Native Americans and Explorers). The first textbook chapter focuses in on Native Americans before Europeans arrived. It discusses how they arrived in the Americas and how different regional groups adapted to their environment. As with all textbooks, the information is general and limited, but gives students a basic understanding. It also does very little to address primary sources and bias. 

Therefore, I open the unit with a slideshow that addresses the idea that there is a lot of bias and stereotyping of American Indians in society today. I list the many different terms used, including Indian, American Indian, Native Americans, and First Americans and ask students to consider which term seems to fit the best, and which one the worst. I show images of sports mascots and children's coloring book images that negatively stereotype them, and ask them to discuss what these images are actually showing. This opens them to the idea of considering popular terms and media images with an eye to bias and racism. Then I throw out the question, "If I wanted to know what name to call them or what they think of these images, how could I do that best?" Of course, at least one of my brilliant students comes up with, "You could ask them!" (also "You could Google it!"). 

As I was transitioning through Dulles Airport a couple years ago, I wandered through the Smithsonian Museum gift shop (so cool!). They had a display from the National Museum of the American Indian, and I bought a book called Do All Indians Live in Tipis? (2007). This question and answer book addresses the most commonly asked questions the museum guides hear, and all the answers are written by American Indians. Here was a way we could "ask them!" I knew immediately that this could be my resource for opening the door to primary source documents, and also reading informational texts because the articles are short and at approximately a sixth grade reading level (easy enough for almost all of my students to read independently with good comprehension). I chose four articles to read over the next couple of weeks: "What is the Correct Terminology: American Indian, Indian, Native American, or Native?", "What's Wrong with Naming Sports Teams Indians, Braves, etc.?", "Where did Indians Come From? How Did They Get to the Americas?", and "What is the Relationship of Native Americans to the Environment?".

I taught students how to annotate informational texts using the gradual release of responsibility model (I do it, we do it together, you do it). I started by reviewing the seven major reading comprehension strategies, as outlined by Harvey Daniels and Nancy Steineke in Texts and Lessons for Teaching Literature (Heinemann, 2013):

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT WHILE READING:
·            What I understand right now (short 1-sentence summary)
·            Personal connections that I am reminded of
·            Visual or sensory images I am experiencing as I read
·            Questions I have (including new words)
·            Answers to my questions (including predicting word meanings)
·            Parts that seem especially important or interesting
·            The main idea or message of the whole text

I modeled how to make "margin notes" to capture thinking about the reading while I read, including noticing new vocabulary words and guessing meaning before continuing. Students were good at underlining and highlighting parts that stood out for them; they were less skilled at noting why they marked those particular passages. I gave them a "notes goal" for each passage (usually 3-5 depending on the length of the piece), and asked them to write a main idea summary at the end. I collected the articles with their annotations, and gave them feedback to help them progress. 

One common error that I continually wrote feedback, and taught follow-up lessons, about was the main idea summary. Students often wrote what the article was "about", for example: "This article was about how Native Americans came to the Americas and settled there". True, that is what the article was about, but there is no actual information embedded within that summary. Did they even read it beyond the title? I was looking for the three scientific theories and the Native American's perspective captured within the summary statement. If students followed the "about" statement with main idea details, that would have been fine; however, they rarely did. Nancy Boyles, in this article from Educational Leadership says this about close reading of texts, 

"Paraphrasing is pretty low on Bloom's continuum of lower- to higher-order thinking, yet many students stumble even here. This is the first stop along the journey to close reading. If students can't paraphrase the basic content of a passage, how can they dig for its deeper meaning?"

Students made progress, but there is more work to be done here. We are about to do a short text set unit that will investigate whether Christopher Columbus was a hero or a villain. Within this mini-unit, we will continue our work with text annotations and main idea summaries, as well as noticing how authors include bias in their texts. The foundations laid this first quarter will set us up as we read primary documents from the colonial America era as well as current event articles and research. Each successive reading experience gives me the opportunity to review past skills and add on an additional layer. Hopefully by the end of the year, they will be skilled readers of primary documents and critical thinkers about sources and bias.

I

Using Booksource's Classroom Organizer with My Classroom Library

Today I want to put a plug in for a great new tool I've started using with my classroom library: Booksource's Classroom Organizer. This is a free book check-out system that also generates handy teacher reports.

All set up and reports can be managed via the teacher page:

The first thing to do to get things set up is to import your classroom inventory using an Excel spreadsheet. You can choose which categories to include for the books. It's easy to add additional titles individually once the big bulk of the inventory is imported.

Then you need to add students to your list so they have permission to check out (and check in) books electronically. They can do this from the student page:

Admittedly, the graphic is a bit elementary for eighth grade, but the tool is worth it. So far, students have been very responsible about using the system independently (once I posted all the login information in two or three places around the room). One super nice feature is that students will get an email every three weeks reminding them that they have a particular book checked out. This frees me up from looking at the hand-scrawled sign-out paper and trying to monitor that myself. Often just this little reminder is enough to get them to return the book to the library.

I haven't used the teacher reports much yet, since we've only been in school a month. Here are the options









This is my favorite report, Current Books Checked Out. This also gets sent to me automatically via email every three weeks so I can keep track.











This is what the Student Checkout Detail looks like for one prolific reader. I can see he is a dystopian reader mostly, but graphic novels also catch his attention.

I've been very pleased with the hand-off nature of the Classroom Organizer system. There is still an honor system in place for kids to actually do the check-in/check-out process instead of just walking out with a book. But it's no worse that it was before. The Classroom Org. system takes a little time to get set up, but their tech support people were super helpful when I ran into a glitch. For teachers who are trying to track students' reading lives, levels of text complexity, variety of genres, or volume, I highly recommend this system.

Jumping into Scoring On-Demand Assessments

I am about to jump with both feet into the hard work of analyzing student work to make my teaching better. This work is made harder because I am using a new tool, the rubrics in the Units of Study in Argument, Information, and Narrative Writing (UoSW) for grade 8 (Heinemann, 2014). These rubrics are written as a continuum of skills along categories that match the CCSS writing standards' performance indicators. There are categories for leads, endings, transition words, organization, elaboration, craft, mechanics, and an overall category. Although these are things I evaluated using our modified Six Traits rubric for the past four years, the wording is different and open to interpretation in places. 

Rubric excerpt from Units of Study in Argument, Information, and Narrative Writing (Heinemann, 2014)

I now have 43 on-demand pieces of argument writing to analyze before we jump into our literary essay unit in a couple of weeks. Because the rubric is so unfamiliar, however, I am looking at this stack with trepidation. I feel unready to tackle this task without a better understanding of what I'm supposed to look for. I need a plan.

I already tried out the rubric once with my department team members, as we collaboratively scored a seventh grade student sample. It didn't go well. We had so many questions like, "How is 'clearly articulated' different from 'logical' evidence?" "The rubric jumps from one thing to another. Is it supposed to be a progression?" We were definitely not comfortable with the tool, nor did we come to any clear understanding of how to use it with any grading consistency. 

I think I need do one more "training" exercise before I try to score my own students' writing. The UoSW provides annotated teacher-written exemplars that meet the grade level standards. I think I need to sit down with the grade 6, grade 7, and grade 8 exemplars as well as the rubrics, and try to match them up. Where the annotation says this is the "clearly articulated" evidence, what does that look like? How can I see it in my students' writing as well? I want to have all three levels in front of me because I know my students will be all over the place depending on their past experiences and their developmental levels. Even my better writers may be at a sixth grade level in some areas, and my struggling writers may reach the eighth grade level in others. In general, though, I expect I will see mostly seventh grade writing, which makes sense because we are just starting eighth grade!

By getting a clearer image of what the rubric descriptors look like in a writing sample, I hope to do a better, more consistent job scoring my students' writing. I also hope that once I get on a roll, I will start being more efficient with my time. I expect the first few (5? 10? 20?) will take about 20 minutes each as I work through the descriptors and make judgments about what I'm seeing in front of me. Getting that down to 10 minutes each would be much more comfortable.

In the end, I will have a bank of data that can lead me into making better teaching decisions during the literary essay writing unit itself. I can plan whole class mini-lessons to target general needs. I can plan small group work where I see clusters of need. I can confer with individuals to move them from where they are to where they need to go. I don't need to guess or wait until mid-unit when I look over drafts. 

I can also ask students to use this writing sample as a way to set some goals to work on during the unit, identifying a few areas to really pay attention to and work to improve. The process of reflecting on oneself as a writer, identifying needs and goals, and working to improve is an act of self-actuality. It puts the responsibility to learn and grow as a writer actively on the students' shoulders, instead of passively waiting for the teacher to tell them what to do. Isn't this the goal of becoming a lifelong learner?

So. Big work ahead, but good work. Important work. Work that will strengthen my teaching and strengthen student learning. Deep breath! 

Building Classroom Community

The first week of school is over. This past week has been filled with community-building activities, communicating rules and procedures, and establishing routines. I'm itching to get started with curriculum, but I know that these past four days are vital preparation for a smooth year ahead. Here are some of the things I did last week for Get-to-know-you/ Community-building games: 

• Seating Challenges: Middle school students tend to stick to the people they know, especially early in the year. If allowed to choose seats on the first day, they would sit next to their friends, leaving the new kids and those who may not have any friends in the class to fend for themselves and feel left out. Not good! The series of seating challenges in this article makes sure that every day for the first 5 days of school, seating is mixed up and students work with different seat mates. It takes about 10 minutes of class time, but by the end of the 5 days, students are better able to work as a group, I have a good sense of leaders and followers, and the set-in-stone seating friendship spots are never allowed to start. It also gets students in the habit of looking at the front of the room for any instructions they need to do right away.
• Gorilla-Man-Net: This is also known as Gorilla-Man-Gun but I am trying to reduce violence in the world so we use nets instead of guns. Basically, this is a variation on
  
  rock-paper-scissors. Students stand back to back, say, "Gorilla, Man, Net, Go!" and on "Go", they spin around, assuming one of the positions-- monkey arms for the Gorilla, fashion-model pose for (hu)Man, or swing an invisible net for Net. Gorilla beats man, man beats net, and net beats gorilla. As students are preparing to play, I shout out a category, for example "food", and the winner has to tell their favorite/best, and the loser has to tell their worst. Students find new partners while music plays, and then go again with another category (movies, books, bands, vacation spot, sport, color, etc.). It's fun to end up with a whole group share, "What did you learn about someone that you didn't know before?"
• Alliteration Name Game: Although this is an old and familiar game, it quickly teaches everyone's name to everyone in the room--including me. Students think of one thing they like that starts with the same sound as their first name, for example, "Ms. Pohl likes playing piano." Students sit in a circle. One person starts, then the next person has to say the first person's name and likes before saying his/her own name and likes. This continues around the circle until the last person has to say all the students' names and likes before his/her own.
• Six-Word Memoir: The idea of telling one's story in only six words appealed to me as a quick way to learn something meaningful about each other. We studied a selection of six-word memoirs and analyzed the kinds of stories they told: passions, recent activities, life philosophies, past lives (memoirs), feelings. I shared a few of my own: "So many books, so little time." (passion), "Changing 'should' to 'am' is hard." (working on some life goals this year), "Setting up house for college boys." (the story of my summer). I had students work with partners to write one or two six-word memoirs about the first day of school as a way to practice the genre without any personal risk. I read a few aloud (anonymously). Finally, we watched Gigi McAllister's class video sharing their fourth grade end-of-year six-word memoirs to look at more examples. Students were then let loose to draft several that captured a passion, a life philosophy, or a memoir. I asked them to choose their favorite to write on a brightly colored sentence strip, which they read out to the class before sticking to the wall around the room.
• Where in the World? As international people, one of the hardest questions we get asked is,

  

  Image from 4shared.com

  "Where are you from?" On the surface, it seems easy enough, but to those of us who are expatriates, there are lots of different angles to it: Where were you born? What passport do you hold? Where do you live now? What's your "home" country? Each question could be a different answer. For those students who have mixed-culture families, it becomes even more complex. For this activity, I have students answer each of those questions above on an index card. I post continent signs around the room (excluding Antarctica). Then I call out one of the questions, asking students to go to the continents where the country of their answer resides. Once in those groups, they share where they lived, learning something new about each other. I finish with the whole group, asking, "What did you learn about someone that you didn't know before?"
• Workshop Agreements: This came on day 3 after students had done other community-building games both in my class and in other classes. We are starting the year launching Writer's Workshop, so I asked the students to think of a time when writing was going well for them, when they were immersed in their writing, ideas were flowing, it was all good. What were the conditions that allowed that writing to happen? Think of environmental conditions, mental conditions, etc. They brainstormed a list in their writer's notebooks for about 5 minutes. Then I turned it around and asked them to think of a time when writing was bad for them, stuck for ideas, unable to focus, not productive at all. What were those conditions? They wrote for another 5 minutes. Students shared out while I made one list of conditions for good and conditions for bad. I reminded them that we were a community of learners, and we needed to make some agreements for how our class would be run so that everyone was able to do their best work, which meant doing those things on the "good" side and trying to avoid those things on the "bad" side. I asked them to notice that not everything on the "good" side was something we as a class, or I as a teacher, could control, such as having a plan before writing or having too many thoughts to settle on one. But there were several things on there that we could control, so we highlighted those: quiet to work, time to get help from partners (talk time), comfortable seating/ temperature/ lighting, organized materials, good seating choice, focused and on-task behavior to meet deadlines, participation in conversations. The next day I wrote them up as agreements and went over the list, giving them an opportunity to ask clarifying questions or to object to any of the items. Finally, I asked them to give a thumbs up if they could live with those agreements. These agreements will form the foundation of my classroom management for the rest of the year.
• Reader-Writer Poster: One of my main objectives as an English Language Arts teacher is to promote lifelong habits of reading and writing. The Reader-Writer Poster is a project to
  
  showcase who students are as literate people (and as a message: Everyone in this room likes to read and write! You are a member of the literacy club!). The components of the poster are: a photo of yourself, an "about the author" blurb, a self-written one-sentence philosophy statement about reading and another one of writing, a quote from someone famous that you like, a piece of writing from the past 5 years (or excerpt), and 3-5 favorite books, each one with a short summary and a quote (and a book jacket picture if possible). One of the books is marked "favorite", and that blurb needs to explain why it's your favorite. Any program can be used to make it (a technology diagnostic assessment!), or it can be done by hand (also a piece of technology diagnostic information). Students lay them out on top of their table, and then go around the room for a gallery walk looking at others' posters. They complete a graphic organizer finding connections to other people in the room who have similar taste in books or life experiences, etc. I like finishing the class with a whole group share: "Who did you find a connection with? What was that connection?"

I had a lot of fun last week playing the games, learning bits and pieces about the kids, and watching their personalities. I will continue to learn more about them academically over the next couple of weeks as we do beginning-of-year assessments. I feel good, though, about getting the year started on a positive and fun note. We have plenty of time for seriousness!

Setting Up For a Year of Learning

Here we are again, poised to open our doors to a new batch of learners on Monday. This year, the batch of learners needs to include the middle school English Language Arts teachers as well, while we launch the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) writing standards. Over the past month, I immersed myself in leadership training, learning techniques and thinking through how to help the department in this journey.

In true Understanding by Design fashion, I identified our goals:

1. Become familiar with the CCSS writing standards and related language standards, including noticing what was similar and different with our last set of standards as well as noticing what elements built up from year to year within the CCSS strands (unpacking the standards).
2. Identify and understand how to use the new Units of Study in Writing (Heinemann, 2014) on-demand performance assessments and learning progressions as tools to identify student strengths and needs (prepare for student data analysis). 
   
3. Become familiar with the new Units of Study in Writing (UoSW), including mapping out the sequence of units across the year and across curricular areas, noticing similarities and differences with our last set of units, and tips to lift the level of our teaching in those units (prepare for new teaching).
4. Make a departmental goal that guides our learning together and supports our efforts of professional growth as well as impacts student learning (goal setting).
5. Gather student data and analyze it so that it informs our teaching in ways that improve student learning (student data analysis).
6. Teach the new units, reflect and get feedback on our practice, and look for improvement in student learning (implementation of curriculum).

Our teacher inservice week focused on setting up Professional Learning Teams across all school divisions, during which we learned a cycle of continuous improvement as a way to work in our PLTs:

1. Analyze student data for areas of strength and areas of need
2. Identify a curriculum standard related to the area of need and unpack it
3. Identify a student and teacher goal to address the area of need
4. Professional learning to address the area of need
5. Implement new learning and gather assessment data
6. Analyze student data to see if student need improved

This continuous improvement cycle fits well with my goals for the department. Once we've decided the year-long calendar, we can gather student data through on-demand assessments before the unit starts, unpack the related genre-based writing standard for the unit we're about to launch, and make our student and teacher goal. We can spend our professional learning step digging into the unit itself as well as other resources such as Pathways to the Common Core and TCRWP videos. We can implement the unit in the classroom, get feedback from peer observation, and bring student data back to the team for further analysis and reflection.

I am excited by this school-wide initiative, and how it supports the work we teachers need to do this year. We have always been a strong team, and this protocol will help us become even better.

Members of the Reading Club

image from openclipart.org

Finally! We are approaching the last two weeks of school. In eighth grade, that means students will be reviewing content and skills to prepare for final exams, taking exams, spending the last week of school filling time with end-of-year wrap-ups, games, and the all-middle-school field trip to the water park, and finally, 8th grade Commencement. There's not much time for teaching in there!

Fortunately, I was able to wiggle things around early enough this year to carve out three days last week after the heavy research-based argument writing unit and before the above-mentioned madness begins. I needed to find the perfect balance for those days: something interesting enough to keep them going, but not heavy or boring (or something needing feedback or grading for my sake!), and also not too fluffy or they would quickly descend into off-task, summer-fever-brained adolescents (oh the horror!). 

I settled on Looking Forward, Looking Back: Setting Up for a Summer of Reading. On the first day, I talked about leaving a legacy for the incoming 8th graders. The current 8th graders are now experts at what 8th graders like to read, and the new 8th graders need some guidance. I asked them to look back through their Shelfari shelves and think about all the books they've read this year, both in school and out, and choose one book (yes, only one) that they could label The One Book Every 8th Grader Should Read. There was quite the buzz of excitement as they jumped into that task: "Which one should I choose? I can't decide!" "Oh, you're doing Ender's Game? Well, then I'll do Ender's Shadow." "Can we choose nonfiction?" It was interesting to see the range of books chosen, from Alex Rider to City of Bones to Goal! to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to The Fault in Our Stars.

Next, I went over characteristics of book reviews, looked at some student-written reviews published in Voices from the Middle (NCTE), and the students noticed how they matched up with the list of characteristics. Finally, they wrote a book review justifying their choice, and published it with a book cover graphic (properly cited). Once printed out, they became my end-of-year bulletin board display, and will become my beginning of the year display in August.

The second day bridged Looking Back and Looking Forward via a mini author study. I asked them to choose one of their favorite authors and to think about patterns across their work. Do they write about the same theme, moral, or lesson in all their books? Do they use the same elements: same setting, same kinds of hero/ine, same plotline, same genre? Do they have a unique style of writing that is seen across all their books? I showed them Laurie Halse Anderson's webpage (she was our visiting author this year-- we're so lucky!) as a way to introduce them to the idea that authors had webpages (who knew?). Laurie's has book blurbs, video book trailers, reviews, a blog-- lots of great stuff! I invited them to add books to their Shelfari shelf if they came across new books by their author that they wanted to read. Their exit ticket was a write-up of what they noticed about patterns, which they added to one of the author's books that they had on their Shelfari shelf (either one they'd read previously, or one they just added to read later). 

Again, there was great excitement and a lot of buzz: "What? Orson Scott Card has a whole other series focused only on Bean? I'm adding those to my shelf!" "I noticed that John Green always has love in his books and that at least one of the characters is damaged in some way." "I wish Ransom Riggs wrote more books. I loved Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children! I guess I'll have to choose another author..." "I don't know if I should read The Heroes of Olympus series. I read the Percy Jackson series and I'm a little tired of those characters, and the plot is always the same. I might try his Kane Chronicles since it deals with other characters and other gods."

The third day was purely a Looking Forward day. I talked about the value of summer reading, and the dangers of a summer without reading (summer slide!). I mentioned that lifelong readers always have a book on the go and know what to read next. I reminded them of the book reviews on display on the bulletin board. I showed them how to use the tags on my Shelfari shelf and the librarian's to look for recommendations. I encouraged them to go to their friends' Shelfari pages and see what they had read. I showed them how to use Amazon.com's "Customers who bought this book also bought..." as a source of recommendations. And I gave them a variety of outside sources that recommended books for young adults. I challenged them to get at least 5 books on their "to read" shelf by the end of the period. Then I let them loose.

The book talk was golden! "Have you read (insert name of book)? I really liked it. You should read it." "I read (title), and I should probably finish the series." "You added that book? You should talk to (name) because she loved that book." "I'm looking up biographies of athletes because those are the kind of books I like to read" (fair enough). "I've already added 20 books! Should I stop now?" (NO! Keep going!)

To be honest, there were a few (struggling, not interested) students who did not get into this work. However, by approaching them as if they were members of the reading club, with a little nudging they at least thought about books they liked, authors they were interested in, and they added a few books to their shelf. Who knows? Maybe when boredom hits in the middle of July, they will pick up one of those books and start to read. That will count for something!