In the Technology Groove with Google

I am totally in the technology groove these days. I love it when technology tools exactly fit the learning need, and especially when one tool just keeps on giving. This has been my experience lately with Google Classroom, Google Documents, and Lucidcharts.

I'm loving Google Classroom. I set up an assignment, I attach documents, and I give each student a copy of the Google doc to use which is already named and put into a folder for the student and me. No longer are Google docs "lost" because they didn't get placed into a folder. No longer do I get shared on 23 "Untitled Documents" or "Fantasy Story" documents without knowing who it belongs to. No longer do I send out a group email with attachments. Everything is organized and right at everyone's fingertips.

Google Docs is my best friend when it comes to formative feedback. For some reason, giving feedback to 46 documents feels much easier than facing a towering stack of 46 paper notebooks. Maybe it's the sheer weight, or the challenge of bad handwriting, or the difficulty of transporting all those bulky notebooks home that make them feel so intimidating. Maybe it's knowing that I have to take the notebooks away from the students to grade them (not quickly), which means they can't use them in the meantime, that feels bad. Google Docs fixes all those problems. I can dip in and out of the documents several times over the course of the unit, looking at draft work, making suggestions, staying on top of who is completing things on time and who is not, lifting everyone's level without taking their tool away from them to do it. 

image from commons.wikimedia.com

My new friend is Lucidcharts. I first asked students to use them in the fantasy reading unit as a way to track ideas across a longer text: character development, character interactions, setting and plot events, how elements interact. I had some kids who took off with this, adding shapes, color and keys to make everything connect:

When we moved from fantasy reading to fantasy writing, and we got to the planning stage, I casually suggested, "You know, a Lucidchart could be a good tool for this work. Or you can use paper, or make a timeline in your notebook document. But whatever way you do it, please make sure you get it into your notebook so I can see it and give you feedback." Many kids loved the Lucidchart idea and eagerly jumped in and even figured out on their own how to embed the chart into the notebook instead of adding a link. Here's one that sort-of blew me away:

I have to give credit here to our fantastic tech integrator who regularly checks in with us and asks, "So what are you guys working on? Are you interested in adding a little tech to that? Here, let me show you this tool..." All of these ideas came from her. I am not a huge techie, but I can learn new tricks from time to time, and with the sophistication that our students bring to these tools, it is becoming easier and easier to bring technology into my lessons.

What technology tools do you use that keep on giving?

Using Technology to Grade Book Club Discussions

My school has taken the plunge into standards-based grading. Well, maybe I should say: my school has waded in up to its ankles into standards-based grading. We are grading and reporting on a small, manageable number of "categories" related to standards rather than each individual standard. For English Language Arts, we've chunked the standards into Reading, Writing, and Speaking & Listening (Language standards are incorporated under Reading and Writing). So far this semester I have given 3 Reading summative assessments, 1 Writing summative, and 0 Speaking & Listening assessments. 

Luckily, we are finishing our novel unit this week, which includes their third Book Club discussion. This seems like a perfect opportunity to grade Speaking & Listening standards! But without "fishbowling" six discussions (and taking 2 or 3 class periods to do so), how can I fairly assess each group? Getting around and listening to six discussions for 5-7 minutes each may not catch the normally quiet student who said all their "good stuff" while I was with another group. 

image from commons.wikimedia.com

Technology to the rescue! Students recorded their first two discussions using either QuickTime or Garage Band, and uploaded the audio file into a shared Google folder. Last year we tried using the Photo Booth app on their Macs, but the resulting video file was too large to upload. We discovered that audio files are smaller and easy to upload, and really it's the audio we want anyway. 

The first two discussions were formative. Students received the Book Club Discussion rubric before they began so they were aware of what would be assessed. As students discussed (and recorded), I walked around and spent a few minutes with about 4 groups. I coded the discussion so I could have a sense of how it was going: NT- New Topic, Add- Added to previous comment, TE- used Text Evidence, I- interruption, etc. 

If things seemed dire, I would interrupt and prompt the group; for example, "I've been sitting here for a few minutes, and I've already heard three new topics. See if you can stick with one discussion thread for longer so you can really dig deep into your ideas." Then I would listen for a few more minutes and see if they could make the correction. In all cases, before I left I would interrupt the discussion and give feedback to the group: "So here is what I heard while I was sitting here: 'A' started a new topic about ___, and then 'B' added on with some interpretation, and then 'C' brought in text evidence. This was a great way to keep the discussion going. I also noticed 'C' kept talking and never let 'D' have a chance. Make sure you are giving everyone equal air time. That's everyone's job to monitor. If you notice someone hasn't talked, be sure to invite them in. If you know you've already said a lot, hold your thought until others have a chance to speak. If you know you haven't said much, make sure your voice is heard-- you have important things to contribute!" When the discussion time was finished, the group rated themselves and others for the four categories of Prepared, Quality of Speaking, Quality of Listening, and Behavior. They then made a group goal for the next discussion. 

During the second discussion, they reviewed their goal, and repeated the process. I made sure I sat with the groups I hadn't seen the first round, and went back to those that had the most trouble previously. Again, groups recorded their discussion, rated themselves and others, and made a goal for their final one.

Now that students have had practice in recording (we had some tech issues to resolve the first time around), are familiar with the rubric because they used it for reflection and goal setting, and have gotten teacher and peer feedback, they should be ready for the final summative discussion. On Monday they will repeat the process just like they did the first two times. I will walk around, but I will not interrupt or give feedback this time. I want this to be independent, but I can also get info about body language, preparation (do they have their books and notebooks with them?), and behavior which the audio recordings may not pick up.  

Then I can sit down with their self-rated rubrics and listen to full discussions from the audio files. I will be able to catch the quiet kid who is reluctant to talk when I am sitting with the group. I can hear the "good stuff" come up and not just judge the bits and pieces I overhear for a few minutes. Technology allows me to be everywhere at once, which means I can grade each student fairly.

How do you grade Book Club discussions?

Just the Right Mentor Text: Bringing the CCSS to Life

As I wrote last week, we changed our novel reading unit into a fantasy unit in order to more neatly implement the Common Core Reading Standards. We are now about half way through it, and I am noticing something big: my kids are finding the ideas in the more rigorous standards to be understandable and applicable to their own novels. Whew! In fact, they are kind-of looking at me like, "What's the big deal?"

Which brought me to another realization: With the right mentor text, complex ideas become comprehensible. OK, this idea is not entirely new to me, but as I venture into these new standards that I have to wrestle with first before I can expect my eighth graders to grasp, having the right text in hand has made a huge difference. 

cover from Amazon.com

We are using Rodman Philbrick's The Last Book in the Universe as our mentor text. Originally, I chose it because: 1) I'd read it a couple of years before and remembered that I enjoyed it, 2) it is a fairly slim novel compared to most YA fantasy and dystopian books these days, and 3) the chapters are short-- between 3 and 6 pages usually, which makes for about a 10-minute read aloud. Then I reread it once we had planned out the revised unit, and all of a sudden, examples of the standards were popping out everywhere! As long as the students found the story engaging, I thought I was golden.

The first chapters of the book take a lot of work. This surprised me because it is leveled at a guided reading level W and a Lexile of 740-- for our kids, this indicated a pretty easy read. But what neither of those levels reflect is all the contextualizing students have to do with both setting and dialect. Told from the main character, Spaz's, first person point of view, Philbrick uses a lot of slang terms as he describes his dystopian world: he lives in the "Urb" which is ruled by "Bangers" and people escape from reality by "probing", but there is another utopian place called "Eden" where the "prooves" live. Hoo boy! Fortunately, Philbrick is very good about explaining new words through context or direct definitions. And fortunately for teaching the CCSS literature and language standards, this is the exact kind of work we need to be doing: analyzing the author's use of word choice, including connotations, allusions, and figurative language, to create meaning and tone.

The Last Book in the Universe focuses on two main characters: Spaz, a 14-year-old homeless orphan living under the protection of one of the ruling gangs, and Ryter, an old "gummy" who lives near "the Edge" and owns nothing but a stack of papers that constitute the book he is writing. They strike a classic friendship of mentor and mentee as they go on a quest to visit Spaz's foster sister before she dies. Philbrick writes the dialogue for these two characters in contrasting ways; while Spaz uses a lot of street slang and short sentences, Ryter uses complete, complex sentences with academic words and literary allusions. This is perfect for the CCSS standard for examining how dialogue reveals characters, moves the plot forward, and provokes decisions. Their roles and the plot structure also fit nicely into the standard that examines how contemporary literature uses archetypes from traditional literature and "renders them new." We had a lively discussion yesterday about who the hero, mentor, innocent youth, and villain were in the story, as well as the archetype of situations such as The Fall and The Quest. 

But the best part of using this book as the mentor text? "Are we going to have read aloud today, Ms. Pohl?" "Can we gather in the reading corner?" "Will we finish this book? Please?" And when my answer is "Yes" to any and all of those, I hear a resounding, "Yessssssss!!!" back. 

Despite my interruptions for think alouds and turn-and-talks, my students are hanging on every word, analyzing as well as enjoying, empathizing for the characters and making predictions. Through modeling and active engagement using The Last Book in the Universe, students are seeing how the abstract ideas of purposeful author's craft and language analysis work, and then they apply them to their own fantasy novels. Having just the right mentor text has brought the standards to life!

Re-visioning the Novel Unit for CCSS Implementation

We are implementing the Common Core Reading Standards this year, which has caused some major revision of units—and not just revision as in add a bit of this here and a bit of that there, but re-vision as in totally re-thinking how to approach our units. We rewrote our novel unit so that it shifted from a social justice theme inquiry to a fantasy genre focus. We are basing the fantasy unit on the Teacher’s College Grade 8 Reading Units of Study from 2011 (still hoping new reading units will come out for middle school this year).

There are some major shifts in our new unit because of the CCSS Reading standards, many more shifts than we had to make in our writing units last year. Here are a few that stand out and how we dealt with them.

R.8.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.

            We decided to keep the social justice thematic questions from the previous unit, because they work with fantasy as well: 

• To what extent does power or the lack of power affect an individual? 
• When should an individual stand up for what s/he believes in and what is the best way to do this? 
• How do subtle issues of gender, race, class, and power function in society? 

These questions analyzing “power and resistance” became the theme to track. We introduced a new technology tool, Lucidcharts, as a way to track characters, setting, and plot across the book. Lucidcharts is part of the Google suite of applications, so the flowcharts and other graphic organizers that students develop can be shared with others in their Book Club. As the group moves through the book, they can collaboratively add on to their Charts and use them as talking points during their discussions.

R.8.5 Compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style.

R.8.9 Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new.

image from amazon.com

image from Gareth Hines wesbiste

            We are working with these two standards together. Fantasy novels, including science fiction dystopian stories, draw upon a long literary tradition. We are using a model text, The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick, to introduce these ideas. This book has classic literary character types: hero, mentor, sidekick, damsel in distress, as well as structure: a quest. We will have students look for similar character types and plot structures in their books. The model text also draws upon The Odyssey for some of its plot events: people who escape into a dream world (Lotus Eaters), a character who is “blinded” in his one “eye” (Cyclops), a band of boys who act like animals (Circe’s Island), a gang of beautiful women who are merciless (the Furies), a journey via a Pipe that used to carry water (Odysseus’ journey across the sea).  Over the course of the unit, we will present other traditional stories, such as Hercules, and ask students to compare their stories to the characters and structures of the traditional ones. Rich discussions in Book Clubs will bring forth the analysis portions of these standards as students make connections between their book and the traditional tales.

R.8.7 Analyze the extent to which a filmed or live production of a story or drama stays faithful to or departs from the text or script, evaluating the choices made by the director or actors.

            This seems like a “stand-alone” standard to me, and I question why the authors of the CCSS deemed this important enough to include in its “top 10” reading standards. All of the other reading standards are applicable to a variety of texts and genres, and in multiple units and  lessons. I supposed it’s a nod to the importance of media literacy in the 21st century; however, it still seems like a “one off” lesson to me.  Nevertheless, it is a reading standard and so we must address it. While planning, I drew heavily upon Christy Rush-Levine's article on the Choice Literacy site, "Embracing Standards in Creative Ways."

movie produced by Learning Corporation of America, 1982

Since our novel unit uses a Book Club structure, we have six different books going, and not all of them have a film version. Neither does our model text, so we needed to approach this one a little differently (see—one-off!). We decided to linger with the model text we used in our recently completed Literary Essay unit: “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury. Fortunately, there was an old film version of the story made in the 1980s. It deviated quite a bit from the plot of the original story, including extending the ending, which shifted the theme. Before watching the film, we did a quick look at some of the “director’s choices” available while making a film. Using A Quick Guide for Beginners: Movie Aesthetics by StopMo Wiki, we went over some film-making moves like focus, frame, flux, and sound, and thought about how authors also try to use those same moves but with words. Next, students made a quick t-chart with Same and Different so they could take notes as they watched the movie. They also pulled out the story so it was in front of them.

As we watched the movie, I stopped at the end of the exposition--which was very different, and we discussed why the directed added so many school scenes and whether the essence of the story was still coming through.  I stopped at the climax, and we discussed how the addition of a character allowed for the main character to say all that “inner thinking” aloud. And at the end, I asked whether students felt the film version, which was very different than the written version, stayed true to the story and why.

It was a rich lesson, and fun for the students. And now I can “tick” it off my standards list.

The other five reading standards are also being addressed, but they didn't take too much shifting. Of course we are asking for text evidence to support their interpretations. Of course we are looking at author's craft and noticing things like allusions, irony, and suspense. Of course we are noticing how dialogue and plot events move the story forward. These are things that we addressed, maybe not to this level or specificity, in past reading units. But the four above took a lot of thinking and rewriting to incorporate into our novel unit. The unit is more rigorous because of these, and it is exciting to read fantasy with new eyes. 

Does anyone else think the text vs. film standard is a stand-alone standard? Are there good resources to draw on for explaining "themes, patterns of events, or character types" from traditional literature? I'm in new territory here, and any suggestions are welcome!

How can I help at home? Parental Support Suggestions

I just finished meeting with 44 out of my 46 families during the two-day parent-student-teacher conferences last week. It was a marathon! Twenty-seven 15-minute conferences on one day, and 17 the next. Whew! Although exhausting, I was continuously impressed with the commitment shown by the parents to be involved in their child's education. 

image from room206lce.wikispaces.com website

One question kept coming up: How can I help at home? It's a tricky question for eighth graders. Most 13-year-olds do not want their parent hovering over their shoulder, "helping" them with homework. They know they can do it on their own, although some do need help with organization and time management. For those kids, we had a good chat together about structuring time, using organizational tools, and balancing homework and down time. Parents came away with some strategies to help their children with those needs.

What about the rest? And what about academics? Here are a few things I suggested:

• Help your child read by keeping books in his/her hands. This could mean giving time to get to the library, buying books at the bookstore or for e-readers, or suggesting books off of the family bookshelves.  
• Talk about what they are reading, not just summary, but questions about characters, author's craft, or theme. Compare this book to others: Do any of the characters remind you of any other characters in other books? If this is a book by an author you've read before, do you see a pattern emerging (is it formulaic)?
• Discuss the social studies content your child is learning. By "teaching" family members, students process and remember information longer. Asking clarifying questions, watching videos connected to the content, and looking at maps or other resources together enriches and deepens the information.
• Encourage authentic writing at home. I found this great chart that places best practices for teaching writing along side suggestions for teen writers (from Fleischer, Cathy and Kimberly Coupe Pavlock. 2012. "Inviting Parents In: Expanding Our Community Base to Support Writing." English Journal 101 (4): 29-36.). Here's an excerpt:

 

Parents want what is best for their kids, and they want to do what they can to help. Giving them tools that show them appropriate and authentic ways to support their children is a win-win situation. What other suggestions do you give to parents?

Scaffolding too much?

Last spring, literacy consultant Stevi Quate came to our school to work with our secondary English Language Arts teachers. While here, she did a couple of demo lessons in middle school classrooms, and then we MS teachers gathered to debrief with her. At one point in the conversation, she said something like, "I scaffolded too much." I thought that was a curious thing to say, because I certainly didn't think she supported the kids too much, and in fact, I thought she supported them less than I would have. But our time was short and I didn't have time to explore this idea with her.

image from Steve Wheeler on flickr

Since then, I have run across this question of "too much support" again. This article by Terry Thompson of Choice Literacy, "Are You Scaffolding or Rescuing?", got me thinking about the difference between planned scaffolds based on identified student need vs. "an overall pattern of teaching that included an impulsive need to sweep in and help at the slightest moment of difficulty". Thomson argues that rescuing takes away a student's agency as a learner and encourages the pattern of learned helplessness. On the other hand, scaffolding provides only enough support so that the learner can get to the answer themselves. A key question becomes: Who is doing the most work? If it's the teacher, most likely s/he's in a rescue situation. If there is an equal work load, or more on the student, then it is more likely it's a scaffolding situation. This article has really kept me on my toes as I conference with students, and made me watch my modeling, questioning, and level of "work" so I don't cross the line into rescuing.

"Too much support" also came up in Dorothy Barnhouse and Vicki Vinton's book, What Readers Really Do: Teaching the Process of Meaning Making (Heinemann, 2012), which I read recently. They advocate for a constructivist approach to learning, pushing the "Who is doing the work?" idea even further than Thompson. They suggest that teachers ask students to try something, notice and name what they are doing using immediate student work as models, and construct the teaching point from the student's work. Although both are former Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project Staff, they are turning the workshop model on its head. They contend that when the teacher does all the modeling first, students are passively learning the strategies instead of constructing the strategies based on their own application, trial and error, and/or struggle. Suddenly, teacher modeling during the minilesson has become "too much support." 

Barnhouse and Vinton also warn against pushing our own ideas onto kids' reading interpretation. They have noticed many teachers (I am guilty of this too) who hear students veering off in a different direction in their reading comprehension than the teacher's understanding, or ignoring "vital" pieces of text that "should" be attended to, and those teachers jump in, asking a million leading questions so that the students "get back on track"--in other words, the students are led to the teacher's interpretation. The authors suggest that this teaches students that reading has one right answer, and the teacher holds the key. If they know the teacher will lead them to it, why should they do any interpretation work themselves? They can just wait it out, until the teacher rescues them. Instead, Barnhouse and Vinton recommend going with the students' interpretation, scaffolding only enough to ensure they can support that interpretation with textual evidence and inferred thinking, and if they can't, then scaffolding their work to revise their interpretation to something that can be supported. They call this the difference between scaffolding and prompting. Prompting is a series of questions that lead students to the teacher's understanding of the text, whereas scaffolding leads students to notice and name strategies, and use those strategies to deepen their own understanding of the text.

With all this scaffolding vs. rescuing vs. prompting swirling around in my head, Stevi Quate returned to our school last week. Since she is the one who got me going on this line of inquiry in the first place, I asked her to help me understand its implications for my teaching. She did this through a focused observation of my (last period of the day on the last day of the week!) lesson. She transcribed my minilesson, and then interviewed the kids about what I do as a teacher that supports them as a learner. She shared that with me later and we talked about it. Here are some take-aways from that conversation:

• I still have questions about this idea of how much support is the right amount. Stevi even threw in the idea that kids need an appropriate amount of struggle-- another angle that bears investigation.
• Some concepts really don't need scaffolding, or maybe just a touch. In my minilesson, I threw in a quick strategy and had students practice it for a minute because I knew from their notebooks that they were ready (and very close). When I told them the strategy, their faces said, "Yeah, of course", and when they turned and talked, they could apply it easily. Without the quick minilesson, however, they wouldn't have done it. I didn't need to model it, or say my thinking aloud as I did the work, or even write the strategy on the anchor chart because it was so easily within their grasp.
• Some concepts are so new that without the scaffolding and modeling and thinking aloud, students would flail around in a confused manner. Perhaps some would get there eventually, but who has time for that? In my minilesson, I knew my second strategy would be one of those more complex and new strategies, so I took more time with it. I walked them through my process, I modeled, I included active engagement, I got some formative feedback. 
• The feedback from the kids is that almost all of them feel like the models and examples and conferences and charts are very helpful to lifting their level. They feel supported and comfortable in the work they are doing when trying new things in their reading and writing. Except for the one student who really wants more direction (rescuing? prompting? specific directions like, "Put two pieces of evidence in each 5-sentence paragraph"?), the overwhelming majority think the level of support is good.

Over the course of the semester, I am going to watch my "prompting" so that I don't lead my readers to my own interpretations. I am going to watch who is doing the work in my conferences, and back off if it seems like I am doing most of it. I am going to read up on the idea of struggle as a necessary learning force (but when is there too much struggle? Can't it go the other way?). The bottom line is for all students to grow and learn, and it's my job to help them do that.

Ancient Civilizations of the Americas: a Historical Inquiry Project

A couple of weeks ago, I shared my learning about the shifts needed for disciplinary literacy vs. content literacy in Social Studies. Since I am a firm believer in adapt and adopt, I decided to use the historian's process in our first content unit on Native Americans. I had found a lot of great (free!) units on the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) website during the Improving Historical Reading and Writing MOOC this summer, so I turned to the experts to see what was available and how they organize an inquiry-based "Document-Based Question" (DBQ-- I see I am talking in alphabet soup today).

Most of the SHEG DBQ units focused on the interaction between Native American groups and European invaders. Although this is important historically, I wanted to start earlier, and study the ancient civilizations of the Americas as they were before European contact. I did some searching and found a "Mini-Q" (shorter DBQ) unit on the Maya from The DBQ Project: "The Maya: What Was Their Most Remarkable Achievement?" The Maya were one of the six civilizations I wanted students to study (the others are Inca, Aztec, and groups from the Mississippian, Eastern Woodlands, and Southwest cultural regions), and this Mini-Q was set up in the inquiry-based structure I was after. I decided to use the Maya unit as my teacher model, and write my own Mini-Qs for the other civilizations. 

However, "Most Remarkable Achievement" wasn't where I wanted to focus. I wanted students to study the groups as legitimate ancient civilizations, as established and successful as Mesopotamia, ancient China, or Greece, validating their contribution to world history. Instead of achievements, I chose this question as our Mini-Q focus: Which elements were most essential for the ______ (ancient civ.) to thrive?

I divided the class into six groups of 3-4 students each: Inca, Aztec, Cherokee (Mississippian), Iroquois (Eastern Woodland), Pueblo (Southwest), and Huron (also Eastern Woodland, but important to distinguish from Iroquois for future history lessons). Each group got a packet set up in the same inquiry-based Mini-Q structure, but with information and artifacts related to their ancient civilization:

1. Cover: Question, Graphic Organizer naming 8 elements of civilization (Government & Law, Religion, Writing & Numbers, Trade & Economy, Architecture & Engineering, Art, Technology & Inventions, and Human-Environment Interaction), a quick overview, and a list of the 4 documents they will be studying.
2. Hook Exercise: What does it mean to thrive? Students were given a series of familiar scenarios which they rated from 1 (not at all thriving) to 5 (extremely thriving). They then picked one scenario and justified their reasoning for why it showed the most thriving. This exercise helped students distinguish between "surviving" and "thriving" so that their investigation would stay focused on those factors.
3. Background essay: Students had little to no background knowledge about their civilization, so before going any further, they had a short essay to read highlighting distinguishing characteristics. The essay also included a map to locate them in the Americas, and a photo showing one of the characteristics. Students answered some basic comprehension questions that held them accountable for the information.
4. Understanding the Question and "Pre-Bucketing": Students identified terms in the question that needed definition, and then re-wrote the question in their own words. This helped them process what the question was asking, giving them a better focus as they moved into the documents. Next, based on the list of documents and the information in the background essay, students predicted which three of the elements of civilization would emerge as most essential to thriving. This prediction gave them a "clothesline" to "hang" their new learning on, either confirming or re-adjusting their initial thinking.
5. The 4 documents: Each document included the name of the document (usually an artifact), a picture of the artifact, and a short write-up about the artifact and/or information related to it. Students went through the historical thinking process for each one: Check the source for reliability, access background knowledge related to the document, do close reading that names details (What do I see?) and considers their meaning (What does it mean?) and implications (Why does it matter?), and corroborate between documents (including the background essay). I then asked them to connect the document to two elements of civilization (I gave them the elements to look at-- it's early in the year, and there's a lot of new thinking happening on this page). 
6. Bucketing and Thesis: Once all four primary source documents had been analyzed, students made their final decision independently. They chose 3 elements most essential to thrive, and named the documents that provided evidence to support their decision. They then turned that into a "boxes and bullets" outline: the thesis is written in the box as the answer to the question, and the bullets are the elements with evidence (their reasons). I asked them to do this part independently because everything else had been done in a group, with a lot of support and scaffolding for struggling students. I wanted to see what they chose based on what they got out of working with the documents, not what their group members (especially the more vocal ones) thought.
7. Decision-making matrix: Group members shared their boxes and bullets, and then as a group
   rated the 8 elements of civilization for how influential they were for helping the ancient civ. to thrive. Members had to justify their thinking using evidence from the documents. This was a very high-level discussion, with students arguing their point, negotiating ratings, and compromising based on the strength of the evidence. By the end, they picked the three that the group ranked the highest, and justified them with evidence from the documents.
   
8. Reporting out: The group next made an 8-slide slideshow to report out their findings. Each student was responsible to explain one of the elements or the summarizing conclusion (groups of 4 = one "meaty" informational slide each), and one "thin" slide: The Question, the answer (thesis), bibliography of images, and group members. I did a mini-lesson with The Worst Slideshow in the World, to highlight tips for making good slides. Since students would be presenting the information orally, they did not need to put a lot of information on the slides themselves. The assessment rubric included multimedia, informational, mechanics, and oral presentation criteria. As students presented their slideshows, the audience took notes and asked questions at the end.
9. Synthesis question: When all student groups finished presenting, I asked them to answer the Mini-Q question as a generality based on their notes. I wanted to see if they could identify one- to three elements that repeated across several civilizations, and if they could explain why that element is so important for any civilization to thrive. By moving from specific (their own civilization) to a generality, students show they have built concepts.

I did a variation on this project in previous years. Students had to do their own research on two of the elements, take notes, and then share out to their group before doing the decision-making matrix (jigsaw). Yes, there is value in teaching research skills, and structuring the project with self-directed research did help hone those skills. However, I found that this year students' presentations were much more substantial and informational than in the past, where they were rather hit-or-miss. Having the whole group discussion focused on all four artifacts throughout the project, using the historical thinking and close reading skills during the process, and emphasizing again and again the need to show evidence, all contributed to more knowledgeable explanations. Although the students struggled through the document analysis, needing more modeling and reteaching than I'd anticipated, the struggle was worth it in the critical thinking work I saw happening with each group. I am pleased with the results, and looking forward to our next unit!

The Paradox of the Early Days: Building Trust and Respect

image from Uberallburo website

A few weeks ago, as summer was winding down and the new school year loomed, I came across this quote from Brenda Powers of Choice Literacy: "It’s a paradox that the early days of school fly by so quickly, yet it is still such slow, hard work to build trust and respect."

This resonated with me so much that I printed it out in large font on colored paper and pinned it to my (actual, real, physical) bulletin board by my desk as I started the year. I posted it because building trust and respect early in the year is such vital work, work that sets the tone for all other work for the rest of the year, and can easily get lost in the rush to jump into the business of curriculum. And I didn't want to forget to do it. 

Oh sure, the first week was full of get-to-know-you games and setting the expectations for all things school. But that's not enough. Here are some things I do to build classroom community throughout the first 6 weeks of the year:

image by hrlab

1. Share, share, and more share. Yes, part of the workshop structure already includes share time. But early in the year, share time IS the work. Write a little, share. Read a little, share. Reflect a little, share. "Pair-share with your elbow partner" is easiest, but it's important to get kids to share with others that are not in their immediate friend circle if you want to build classroom community. Other structures are: share across the table, two members of a table switch with two members at another table, mingle with music and share with whoever is closest when the music stops, make an appointment calendar with four other people and share with one of them, whip around the room so that everyone shares one small thing, and of course the classic (but scary for most middle schoolers) whole class share.
2. Reader-Writer Poster: Students make a poster introducing themselves as readers and writers. This includes a short About the Author bio, favorite quotes about reading and writing, an excerpt of a piece of recent writing, and 3 favorite books with blurbs and justification for inclusion. We do a gallery walk connection activity (another share!) where students look at each others' posters and have to find 4-6 commonalities between their own poster and others' posters (no repeats!). 
3. Six-Word Memoir: Students think about how they can capture their life philosophy, their hopes for the year ahead, or their past into six words. After drafting a few possibilities, they pick their best one, write it on a colorful sentence strip and share with others (remember #1?). These are posted on the wall for the first few weeks.
4. Writer's Workshop: I start the year in English Language Arts by launching Writer's Notebooks because we write about ourselves in our Notebooks, and then... yep, you guessed it, we share those stories with others! Students write memories, beliefs, entries about identity and pet peeves, important times in their lives, and rewrite earlier entries to practice craft. Although this is challenging for those students who are new to Writer's Notebooks, it is a great way to learn about each other through the first 3 weeks of school.
5. Reader's Workshop: Although it is already week 4, we are still building community and trust. Students think about their reading identities and... share those identities with others. What books do you like? What reading habits do you have? When do you like to read? What books made an impact in your life? This sets us up for a year of independent reading and book conversations. Students find others who like the same kinds of books (even if they are not "friends" socially), so that they can get recommendations and share their reading life with others who can relate.
6. Add in fun. Building community, trust and respect can be fun, and having fun together builds community. We know the get-to-know-you games during the first week are fun. But we often forget about fun after that. Share time is a great time to incorporate fun, even if it's just playing upbeat music while they talk. Get students out of their seats, have standing conferences instead of seated. Play rock-paper-scissors or a variation (I love gorilla-man-net instead) to see who goes first to share. Have kids high five or give an exploding fist bump after sharing as thanks to their partner. Build in stretch time after focused work by playing Simon Says. 

   

   image from Rizomatica website

English Language Arts is a scary place without trust and respect. I ask kids to write personal stories, take creative risks, bare their thinking, work collaboratively in groups. None of that important work will happen unless class is a safe place, not just with me, the teacher, but also with their peers. Building classroom community is important work early in the school year, and it takes time. Find the time, take the time, and your classroom will be a better place for it throughout the year.

Disciplinary Literacy in History: Thinking Like a Historian

There has been a lot of buzz in the education community over the past year or two about "disciplinary literacy" as distinct from "content literacy". In a nutshell, disciplinary literacy is doing the work of the discipline, and teaching students explicitly how to do that work. By contrast, content literacy is learning how to read and write in the content areas-- a valuable skill, but not the whole package.

I am an English Language Arts teacher by passion and training, and a Social Studies teacher by default. I understand teaching reading and writing. I understand how to teach reading and writing in Social Studies. What I haven't understood is what historians actually do when they read and write (beyond what I was already teaching). I decided I needed to find out.

CC0 by shotput on pixabay

Just as I was starting to poke around last spring for a workshop to take over the summer that focused on disciplinary literacy, I saw an announcement by NCSS for a MOOC they sponsored called "Improving Historical Reading and Writing." Ta da! Just the ticket (and it was FREE!). This 15-module course opened up the world of historical thinking to me. Here are some big "ah ha's":

Historians gather multiple pieces of evidence about a historical question they have. If they don't know anything about the historical question, they start with a general secondary source to get a sense of the event. Next, they try to find several primary sources (journal entries, newspaper accounts, photographs or paintings, maps, inventories, etc.) that can dig down into the details from people who were there at the time. Historians want to piece together the puzzle and find their own interpretation of what happened in the past.

• Historians do a lot of work before they even start reading-- a lot more work than ELA readers do. Historians consider the source: they search out the author, publisher, and date of the document first and consider questions of reliability: Who wrote it? Who published it? When and where was it published? Are these people biased or coming from a particular perspective? Can I trust this to be a reliable source? If not, can I use this source to gain an understanding of one particular point of view?
• Historians also access all the background knowledge they have about the context in which the document was published before they start reading. What was going on during that time? What background knowledge do I already have about this event or person that will help me understand the information? Adding this layer of thinking about contextualization also helps readers think about reliability, bias, and perspective.
• Historians do a lot of work while they read-- this is most like the work that ELA readers do. These days we call it "close reading." Historians are reading for the main idea and supporting details, but they are also watching the use of language to clue them into bias and perspective. They try to put themselves into the author's shoes to really dig into the human reality behind the writing.
• Historians do a lot of work after they read, comparing and contrasting the information they just encountered with what they already know. Is the author adding to or confirming what I already know? Is this information different than what I already know? If so, how does it differ, and why would it differ? Can I find any other sources of evidence that can help confirm or deny this information? This act of corroboration ensures historians are looking at the full story, not just the single story which can be distorted by time, selective reporting, or bias. 
• Historians tell other people what they found out so that their voice can add to the collective understanding of history. There are many ways to do this; book publishing is just one way. For students, this can mean debating issues, writing editorials, making public service announcements, starting or contributing to a social justice campaign, blogging, etc. 

image found on Wikipedia website

The Stanford History Education Group website has a lot of great resources aligned to this thinking process. I used their 5-lesson Introduction to History series last week, and my 8th graders loved it! Keeping my historical thinking hat on while I teach Social Studies this year will ensure that I am not relying on the textbook as my sole resource, and it will (hopefully) develop the critical thinking stance that students should take when encountering any source of information-- from the internet, the newspaper, advertisements, or even their friends. That is a valuable life skill!

Moving into Standards-based Grading and Reporting

Our school took the plunge into standards-based grading and reporting this year. Oh, we've had standards for years, and our UbD unit planning has ensured that we at least knew which standards connected to the unit. But until the grade book and report card demanded that we specifically connect a grade to a standard, we continued on our merry way hoping our assessments captured at least some of the standards, much like flinging a handful of pebbles at a target, hoping some will hit.

We took a middle road, though: we don't have to report on every standard, just on "strands". For English Language Arts, we settled on Reading, Writing, and Listening & Speaking. They make sense to us and how our standards are organized... until we get to those units where we are using our reading to inform our writing content (e.g., literary essay and research reports), or have cross-disciplinary projects (e.g., investigative journalism about environmental issues).

cc 2.0 by Colin_K on Flickr

So this is our first Professional Learning Team (PLT) investigation: How can you use one assessment to grade and report on more than one standard strand?

There are a few sub-questions here: 

• Is it fair to "double dip" (in other words, can one assessment be counted twice)?
• How specific should we be about dividing up the assessment into "strands"? Could we just use one holistic score and put it in two strands? Or do we have to identify which section goes into which strand and keep track of it that way?
• Do we even know which specific standards are being assessed on the assessment? If we were called on by a parent or administrator, could we justify the grade based on the standards assessed?
• Does going to standards-based grading and reporting mean that we have to create more assessments, such as "artificial" tests and quizzes that get us away from our authentic assessments, so that we have enough evidence for the grade in a particular strand?

My inclination is to go for specifics, analyzing the assessment to identify where each standard is assessed and then tracking those parts for depth of student learning. This would be possible with a fairly simple template, though it would take more time before and after the assessment. Doing this kind of analysis would ensure that all the standards got assessed (and yes, we may need some more assessments, or expand the ones we have, to include all standards) and that the grade reported is actually reflective of achievement on the standards.

cc by ePublicist on Flickr

As our PLT moves through our cycle of continuous learning, we will be wrestling with these questions and others that come up. I hope we will be able to look at some models from other schools and settle on a system that makes sense for our school. 

We would love to hear feedback about what has worked in other schools. If you have a suggestion, please leave a comment!

Workshop Strategy Learning from Stevi Quate

Last week Stevi Quate returned to our school for another round of in-house professional learning. This time, she did a couple of demo lessons as a way for us to lift the level of our workshop teaching. I always learn so much by watching master teachers teach, even if it's just a new management technique or a quick formative feedback strategy. This time was no different. Here are a few things I picked up from Stevi's visit:

image from Into the Marchand Archive

1. Pre- and post-assessment of the learning target: The learning target for the lesson was on the board and read aloud. Then Stevi had students line up depending on how well they could do the lesson: 1) I have no idea, 2) I think I can understand what to do, 3) I understand it but I can't do it, or I can do part but not all, 4) I understand it and can do it, 5) I really get it and can teach others with new examples. Once students were lined up at the beginning of the lesson, it was obvious how much scaffolding was needed to teach the lesson. By the end, it was clear how much learning had occurred and whether a follow-up lesson (whole group, small group, or individual) was needed. Quick, easy, no frills, and it got kids moving and thinking about the learning target.
2. Use visuals as models in minilessons: We are in the midst of a nonfiction reading unit, with an emphasis on summarizing and answering thematic social justice questions. We have a model text that we've been reading through to teach summarizing skills (see my April 19, 2014 post about this), which was unfamiliar to Stevi. She turned to a visual image as her model text to teach her summarizing minilesson. It was engaging, short, and worked for two different minilessons: choosing the most important details for your summary ("I have my main idea; now which details should I include that best show it?"), and using relevant details to build an answer to a thematic question ("I see all these details; now what do these details tell me about the extent that power affects an individual?"). 
3. Have students take notes on the teacher's thinking during a Think Aloud demonstration: After explaining the learning target, Stevi demonstrated doing it using a Think Aloud. While she was demonstrating the process, she asked students to take notes, not on the text, but on her thinking as she went through the text analysis. The goal was for students to pay closer attention to the demonstration, as well as having students construct the steps themselves instead of being told the steps. This was new to my students, and I think they were so caught up in the image and her analysis that they didn't get anything down. They also were not used to being asked to do that much noticing. At the end of her lesson, only a very few had anything down on their papers. However, despite the lack of response, this is a technique that I'd like to use more. Once students practice doing it a little bit, I think it will be a more valuable "brains-on" method than demonstrations without it.

Stevi demonstrated two lessons. After both, she said she felt she had scaffolded too much. Neither my teaching partner nor I thought the lessons were over-scaffolded. In fact, I thought she did less scaffolding than I usually do. I want to keep thinking about this comment because I think there is a bigger message here. Our students do ask a lot of questions and want very small, discrete, modeled steps to follow. The more open-ended the task, the fewer the students who succeed at a high level. I could look at this in two ways: 1) they need the scaffold to succeed, or 2) they need practice at open-ended, less directed tasks so that they can learn to be more self-directed and independent. I don't think I can drop all the scaffolds and go "cold turkey", but I do think I could do more (like the notes during the Think Aloud) to expect them to be more self-directed and better problem-solvers.

Using Public Service Announcements to Connect Early US History to Modern History

We had one week of school left before spring break. We had just completed an 8-week unit on the Road to Independence, which included the events leading up to the American Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, and the War itself. Our next unit would focus on creating the Constitution, the Constitution itself, and the Bill of Rights. I was not eager to jump into it knowing spring break would erase any learning we started. We needed something engaging yet worthwhile to fill that week. Our one-week window seemed like a great opportunity to make some connections from early U.S. History to the modern world.

image from U.S. History Images website

One essential question for the Road to Independence unit was, When is it necessary for citizens to rebel against their government? This question is applicable to many revolutions from history, including the Arab Spring rebellions. Living in the Middle East, many student know something about the Arab Spring movement, they or their family come from one of the countries, or they (at least) have heard of the countries involved.

My teaching partner and I brainstormed several possibilities for what we could do: news casts, Venn diagrams, informational essay, etc. Then we pushed pause and thought about what we really wanted students to understand by the end of the mini-unit, a principle of government found in The Declaration of Independence: When governments start taking away citizens' rights and freedoms, citizens can take action to try to change or get rid of the government. 

Suddenly, it dawned on us: a Public Service Announcement  (PSA) alerting the public to the dangers of tyranny and specific (nonviolent) actions that citizens can do to act against them. Students could use examples from both U. S. History (1763-1775) and one of the Arab Spring countries (Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, or Syria in 2010-11) to support their ideas. Here's how the mini-unit played out:

• Day 1: Build background knowledge about Arab Spring countries' dictatorship/ signs of tyranny. Students watched The Arab Awakening: Absolute Power (Al Jazeera English service, July 27, 2011, YouTube) and took notes in the center column of a 3-column note sheet:

 

• Day 2: Research one of the Arab Spring countries to discover why citizens rebelled and how they took action. Because we had such a tight time frame, and because PSAs don't need a huge amount of information because they are so short, we provided students a list of about 3 resources (one of them Wikipedia) to use for their research. These research notes were captured in the left column of the notes sheet.
• Day 3: Connect to U. S. History, understand the genre of PSAs, and work on PSA outline. Students worked with partners to brainstorm the U.S. History connections to the characteristics of a dictator, and then we shared out together (for example, filling the streets with soldiers to keep citizens controlled, like the British did after the Proclamation of 1763 and during the Intolerable Acts in Boston). They also reminded themselves of the actions the colonists took to try to get rid of the tyranny (boycott, petition, protest) and specific examples for each. Next, I showed several PSAs from the Ad Council and we analyzed the parts of a Public Service Announcement. This gave them a vision of what their product would look like. Finally, they used an outline template modified from the sample on the ReadWriteThink lesson, MyTube: Changing the World with Video Public Service Announcements. They would use the outline to voice over their visual when making their PSA movie. The outline my students used looked like this:

•  Day 4: Prepare the visual presentation. Each box on the outline translates into one slide on the visual presentation (4 boxes = 4 slides). We used Google presentations because then we teachers could be shared on it and nothing gets lost. We emphasized using Creative Commons and images labeled for reuse when selecting images for their slides. I reminded them how to cite images correctly. And then I let them go.
• Day 5: Make the PSA movie. Our technology integrator showed us how to turn a Google Presentation into a QuickTime movie with sound. Students scattered all around the hallways and courtyard to find a quiet place to voice over their slideshow. Using headphones with microphones allowed their sound to be much clearer than just using the computer's external mic. Once their 1:30-3:00 movie was done, they saved it into a shared Google folder so I could access it. 
• Assessment: Once again, ReadWriteThink's PSA lesson came in handy. I modified their PSA rubric to fit our project:
  Surprisingly, students found the PSA project confusing. They wanted models (of this exact project, not PSAs in general), which we didn't have because it was a new idea. I was sure the project was straightforward and clear. They have written many essays this year, and this was just another form of an argument essay with a thesis (Watch out for the danger signs of tyranny and act if you see them), reasons (characteristics of dictatorship and nonviolent citizen actions), and examples to support (Arab Spring and U. S. History). 
  
  
  As I graded the projects, I noticed that about a third of the students took this and ran with it, about a third got the general idea, but missed out on some of the components, and about a third make a PowerPoint presentation complete with a title slide and an introduction, "Hi, I'm ____, and I'm going to tell you about my Arab Spring project", completely missing the concept.
  
  
  I like this project, and I think it was do-able in the time frame we had. I like the way it took U.S. History and transferred the big ideas into a more general and modern context. I like that it connected to our region and directly to some students' lives. 
  
  
  There are some things I will want to change (always). I will show them a model of this exact project (I have a few good ones now). I will be clearer with the goal of the project and help them see how it's just another argument essay. Transferring those essay skills to different genres is essential. And I will (maybe) give it another day or two. Still, despite its rough patches, I think this one is a keeper.

"Here's my project! Hope you like it :-)" Adjusting Tone to Fit Audience in Email Messages

CC image by Guudmorning via flickr

As a one-to-one laptop school, and as an ecologically-minded person, I find that I am using technology more and more in my classroom. Students do much more writing within Google docs or Word documents than with pencil on paper. For example, at the beginning of our last writing unit as we were generating poems, I gave students the option to have an online writer's notebook using a Google doc which they shared with me, or to use their paper notebook. In one class I had a 100% online notebook return, and in the other, it was over 80%. Grades and homework are posted online for students to access whenever they want. Students email me with projects attached or when they have questions. Students are very comfortable with technology, I am loving the ease of feedback, and we are all saving a lot of trees in the process. Lots of wins!

As a one-on-one laptop school, we spend a lot of time guiding students on making good choices while using technology. We have lessons on multitasking vs. "single tabbing", using time productively, evaluating the source of information, detecting bias, how to cite sources for information and images, and note-taking and paraphrasing to avoid plagiarism. But one thing we don't do in eighth grade is talk about writing emails.

A few days ago, during spring break, I received this email from a student:

"How come my grade didn't go up after the revolutionary war test even though it was sumitive [sic].

I got a 83 on my first test and a 93 on my second shouldn't my grade be like 89"

That was the whole thing. There was no subject in the subject box, no greeting or closing, no spell check or editing for mechanics or grammar.

CC image by CollegeDegrees360 via flickr

I was a bit taken aback by the tone of this email, although I'd gotten others like it throughout the years. I read it to my (non-teacher) friend who I was visiting at the time, and she was shocked at the rudeness. She suggested that I write back with an instructive or corrective message, something like "I will answer your question when you can address me with respect." That was certainly tempting.

Instead, I thought about what it was that bothered me about this email. Here's what I came up with:

1. Tone: The student did not adjust his writing style to reflect his audience. The casual tone of this email reflects the way he talks to his friends, and is the kind of writing he does in a quick message. I am not his friend; I am his teacher. I expect a more formal tone.
2. Structure: The lack of subject, greeting, and closing make this email feel aggressive and angry. When writing a letter, especially to someone in authority, it is customary to include formal structures and social niceties. 
3. Care: This student obviously wrote this email in a hurry and sent it off. He did not take the time to edit or re-read before sending. This shows how little thought he put into the message, that he did not really care whether the message reflected the level of concern with which he intended it, and that he didn't consider that his reader deserves to read a well-edited message. 
4. Misunderstanding: This student does not really understand how the grading system works. Yes, the two tests he is talking about are summative, and therefore go into the same category in the grading system (weighted 65% of the total grade). However, the first test was 83 points out of 100, and the second was 18.5 points out of 20. Since one has 5 times the number of points, it also has 5 times the weight on the grade. If I took 30 seconds to tell him this, he would probably say, "Oh, OK" and move on. However, if he actually looked at the grade book, he could figure this out himself. Instead of taking the time to do this, though, he would rather shoot a quick email to his teacher to get it sorted out.

The student is an eighth grade boy, a category of humans well known to be impulsive. He lives in a world where quick text messages and quick queries yield quick satisfactory answers. As a person, I know him to be a hard worker, a thoughtful friend, respectful of adults, and generally a nice boy. O don't think he intended to be rude; it just happened. So rather than sending a reprimand, I think I should view this as a little teachable moment for me.

I never established my expectations for how to address a teacher in an email at the beginning of the year. I never taught the required structure or tone. Although I give instructions like, "Use academic language" when blogging or during tests (and have explained what I mean by that phrase), I never applied that to email messages. If this is a battle I want to take on, I should approach it in a serious manner, teaching the conventions of email messages to adults just like I teach the conventions of essays or poetry. In the best case scenario, I should do this at the beginning of the year when all class routines are established. However, even now, I can teach it with an eye toward high school: "Your high school teachers will expect you to address them in a formal way when you write to them. It's important for you to practice this skill now so that it becomes a habit that will carry you through high school, onto college, and even into the workplace."

And I should also review how the grade book works, as well as how to see how the grades are calculated (there is a .pdf report option that shows how the grades work out). This will calm students down and help them see where the magical percentage number comes from.

In the fast pace of our lessons, I often get attachments without messages, or at most, "Here's my project. Hope you like it! :-)" I haven't worried about it in the past. I'm not going to go on an email rampage with my students now. However, it is a life lesson worth teaching, and obviously most students need to learn it, not just this one. And if I don't teach it, who will?