"Where is there a place for students to choose their genres?"

Last spring, our school hosted literacy consultants Stevi Quate and Matt Glover to work with our staff for the same week. Stevi was focused on secondary literacy (MS/HS) while Matt worked with the elementary teams on their literacy units. Near the end of their week, they sat down with team leaders and the curriculum director to look over reading and writing units from K-12. A colorful matrix was created, color coding the different modes (narrative, informational, argument) and types of products (literary essay, realistic short story, etc.). 

When the dust settled, Stevi turned to me and asked this question of our middle school writing program, "Where is there a place for students to choose their genres?"

I looked her in the eye and answered, "No where." 

It's true, we have controlled every genre in every unit. We also control the type of product within that genre. We allow kids choice of topic within the structured genre and product type, but we don't have an "open" unit.  To make that happen, we would have to drop a unit, and the only one that is moderately "optional" is our poetry unit ("optional" because it doesn't neatly fit into the narrative/ informational/argument CCSS modes). 

I know my team feels strongly that the poetry unit is essential to our middle school writing program. Year after year, we see middle schoolers pouring out their hearts about big important issues in their poetry. Our struggling writers love the loose structure and low volume that poetry offers. Our strong writers embrace obscure references and hidden symbolism. Shy students perform proudly in front of audiences. Drama queens and kings slam their poems with gusto. 

And when we implemented the CCSS and revised our units to meet the standards, poetry worked for many of the language standards, especially those that addressed connotations and denotations of words, the power of strong verbs and nouns, and understanding and use of figurative language. So we felt good about keeping poetry in our year-long plan. 

But here's the thing: I still have Stevi's question in my head. If we want our kids to be motivated and self-directed writers, they should be able to choose a writing project at some point. 

So I offered a compromise: an after school creative writing club. Those writers that want a time and space and some feedback on their independent writing projects can join me an hour a week and get words on paper (or screens). Twelve enthusiastic writers signed up, most of whom had projects started or had an idea they've been waiting to write. One has already published her ongoing story on a fan fic site and gotten several hundred readers. All but one are in 6th and 7th graders (hmmm... what's up with the 8th graders?). 

I'm pleased there is interest out there for this open-ended writing club. I wish there were space in the year to extend it to all kids, but I just don't see how that will happen without a massive curriculum review/revision. For now, it's baby steps.

How do you balance the demands of the CCSS writing modes with open-genre writing units?

Holding kids accountable to home reading: Reading logs?

To use reading logs or not to use reading logs? That is the question! 

Our middle school English Language Arts program has a commitment to lifelong reading habits, which means that we expect students to have a book going at home at all times throughout the year. We are also committed to holding kids accountable for that reading, because we know that our reluctant readers need some kind of accountability system to keep them going. What that accountability system looks like varies from grade to grade, and even from classroom to classroom. 

Over the years, we 8th grade teachers have tried many things, but we've always started the year with paper reading logs that track daily reading statistics, and a weekly reading response. Based on the Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project's (TCRWP) recommendation, reading logs that track title, author, time of day, number of minutes, and number of pages read each day can become a data source for students to reflect on themselves as readers. Am I only reading at night and falling asleep with my book? Is that the best time to do active reading? Do I read in 5 or 10 minute bursts, when I'm in the car or waiting for the bus? Do I wait until the weekend and read for long stretches of time but don't read during the school week? Am I reading at a good pace, or am I slow (is my book too hard?) or fast (is my book too easy?)? How do I want to improve as a reader?

We only ask for the daily log to be completed for a limited time-- usually during the first couple months of school. During those first months, students do some analysis to look at their reading habits and evaluate how well they are meeting their goals. Later, we back off and ask students to track number of minutes and number of pages read each week, which they report along with their weekly reading response.

Here's the thing: Kids HATE reading logs! The good readers hate them because they just want to immerse themselves in their reading and not bother with tracking their minutes and pages. The struggling readers hate them because it's tedious and it shows that they aren't actually doing the reading they are supposed to. Mostly, it just seems like busywork without purpose. 

This led my colleague and me to really re-think reading logs this year. Something needed to change. Either we make the value of reading logs clearer to students (as TCRWP explains, just like athletes keep stats to find what's working and what needs improvement, so can readers use these stats to become better readers), or we find another way to hold students accountable for their reading. 

That thinking led us to this question: What do adult readers do when they want to have an active reading life? As active adult readers, here is what we do:

• We keep track of the books we read on a social media site (I use Goodreads). I post up a book when I start it, and then review it when I finish it.
  
• We talk about the books we read with others. I have been a member of an adult book club for almost 20 years. Knowing that I have to discuss a particular book on a particular day (and have something to say about it) holds me accountable to reading and thinking about that book.
• We get suggestions for our next reads from friends, through social media (like Goodreads) or from Amazon.com ("Customers who bought this item also bought..."), or by exploring more books by the same author.

Here is what we don't do: Keep a daily reading log, even a weekly reading log, of minutes and pages. We log the books we are reading as we change books. We are held accountable because we have people in our lives that follow our reading and talk to us about our books.

Yes, but... middle school students do need a little more accountability structure than I do as an adult reader with well established lifelong reading habits. Our compromise:

1. Students need to read at least 100 minutes (about 100 pages) each week. They will need to track this somehow on their own. They can decide when those minutes happen, although I will recommend that it's not all one chunk of reading on the weekend (there is value to smaller but more frequent practice).
2. They need to think about their reading, and show that thinking in a weekly reading response. I am afraid that waiting until the book is finished will result in very little writing about reading for reluctant readers. Writing weekly will keep them accountable for reporting their reading minutes/pages, and having to say something about what they read means they have to have read something. I will give them in-class time to complete this for the first month.
3. Writing about reading is a pointless task unless you use it as a way to communicate your thinking to others. We are going to have kids get into small Reading Clubs (3-4 students) who will hold short book discussions on Thursdays. We'll ask them to write their response first, and then discuss their books with others. 
   
4. Their written responses will be on Google docs, which they will share with members of their group (and me), so they can go back and see what they each read if they need a next book suggestion. We used to use Shelfari, which was a super easy and attractive platform, but they have merged with Goodreads and are not in use anymore. Goodreads is not very student friendly, and Google docs is familiar and easy for the kids because we use it all the time.

We are launching this next week. I hope the social aspect of Reading Clubs makes their home reading feel more fun and purposeful (and hold them accountable for doing their reading). I was reluctant to give up class time at first (so much to do! so little time!), but if I value the home reading program (which I do), then I should devote class time to it. We can ease off of weekly Reading Club time, and turn it into monthly Reading Club as habits get established. 

What do you do to hold kids accountable for reading at home? How do you track what and how much kids are reading? Do you use reading logs?

Using the Engage NY ELA Modules as Planning Models

This year we are implementing the CCSS reading standards in our units. Our upcoming reading unit is informational reading, using books that address social justice issues from 20th century U.S. history: civil rights, gender equality, Japanese internment, and child labor. I looked through the CCSS Informational Reading standards, and they seemed pretty do-able within the context of the unit. But like my students, I like to look at models of how other people have written units to get a sense of rigor and scope. I turned to Engage NY's Grade 8 English Language Arts units for guidance. 

image from goodreads.com

Right away I noticed that Engage NY's Modules include whole class texts, and that there is a mixture of genres within each Module. For example, Module 1 includes Inside Out & Back Again, by Thanhha Lai, as the core text (a novel written in verse), but students are also reading informational texts about the Vietnam War, the fall of Saigon, refugees' experiences, etc. Whereas our reading units are genre-based (short story, novel, poetry, informational, persuasive), the Engage NY Modules are thematic; Module 1's theme is "Finding Home: Refugees". 

We have a theme for our informational reading unit too, Social Justice, but the issue looks a bit different depending on which book students are reading. We use thematic questions to guide students' thinking about the theme:

1. To what extent does power or the lack of power affect individuals?
2. What creates prejudice and what can an individual do to overcome it? 
3. What allows some individuals to take a stand against prejudice/ oppression while others choose to participate in it?

Having thematic questions also allows for students to think about bigger concepts when they cross from one book to the next. We have a couple of mixed-book discussions built into the unit so that students who are reading about civil rights can hear about prejudice and taking a stand within in the context of gender equality and Japanese internment (and vise versa). These discussions help students find common characteristics that lead to understanding how these concepts can be applied in many different contexts, not just the context their book is addressing.

I also noticed how short articles, speeches, poems, etc. supplement and deepen students' understanding of thematic concepts in the Engage NY Modules. We do some of this as well when we have students do a little research about their social justice issue before they start to read their book as a way to build schema. Since our students have not studied these periods of history, any background knowledge they have is usually spotty or nonexistent. However, we usually confine the genre to informational sites (for example, reading the Six Principles of Nonviolent Resistance on The King Center's website), visuals (for example, the photo gallery on the Manzanar Internment Camp site), or short informational videos (for example, Child Labor in the United States in the early 1900s on YouTube). These supplemental resources help students visualize the settings and contexts in their books, as well as gives them a better idea of the issue.

I do wonder, though, about why Engage NY Modules use whole class texts. I can see how whole class texts make things easier for the teacher, because s/he plans each day's lesson around that text. S/he gets to know those texts very well, and can guide students to build their skills and knowledge around the thematic concept. Having a unifying something has its advantages, which is why we have thematic questions and a model text we use to demonstrate strategies.

However, it has long been established that student choice is a strong motivator for middle school students, and taking away any choice of what to read seems de-motivating. I also have a wide range of readers in my class, and I want my students to read books that are slightly challenging for their reading levels. Even if the whole class texts used in the Engage NY Modules have a range of levels, it doesn't make sense that my struggling readers will have to muddle through a super challenging text and my high readers have to slowly make their way through a super easy text. 

So now I wonder if there is a compromise: could we change out a few of our texts so they are all centered on one issue (probably civil rights, since we have more books on that topic than any others)? This would allow for bringing in some of the supplemental texts from Engage NY's Module 2: Taking a Stand, such as Sojourner Truth's, “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech (1851), or poems that relate to the theme that broaden and challenge students' understanding of the issue. It would bring unity and a common issue to explore. But is it worth narrowing the focus to only that issue, and dropping the other three? Social injustice is not just racial injustice, and I wouldn't want students to think that is the only issue worth studying. Hmmm... something to keep thinking about.

By looking at the Engage NY Modules, I see a different way to organize a unit, ways to implement the CCSS Reading standards, and learn about resources that I can use to supplement my own unit. There are parts that validate what I am already doing (having a theme, bringing in schematic research), and parts that make me think through other choices (book choice vs. whole class texts). Using the Engage NY Modules as a model for my own planning helps me reach a level of rigor and consistency with the CCSS standards. Although I won't throw out the baby with the bathwater and wholesale switch to their units, I am glad I had (free) access to quality reading units while planning.

What other quality, CCSS-aligned reading units are worth looking at?

C3's Informed Action: Making It Relevant

Teaching early U.S. History during a presidential election year makes for endless past-present connections... IF one is looking for them. The middle school brain has an uncanny ability to segment information into discreet categories, never the twain shall meet! So teachers need to provide students with the catalyst to open the doors of those categorized boxes and let things mingle. 

We recently finished our long journey down the Road to Revolution, past the Declaration of Independence, and arrived at our destination: The Treaty of Paris. We have less than three weeks until Spring Break, and a classroom full of tired kids. It doesn't seem like the time to jump into the Articles of Confederation, Shay's Rebellion, or the Making of the Constitution. Fortunately, we live in interesting times, and the C3 Framework gives us the structure to take advantage of it.

The C3 Framework includes a fourth dimension: Communicating Conclusions & Taking Informed Action as a way to communicate inquiry findings and connect to relevant democratic activities. Making a connection between the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the presidential election campaigns seemed very timely. The students are hearing a lot about the candidates on the news and social media. They are beginning to form opinions about candidates of their choice (or their parents' choice, since they are easily influenced at this age). We decided to grab hold of that current event interest and end the unit with an Informed Action project.

Super Tuesday: We started our Informed Action with a casual, motivational investigation on Super Tuesday. We threw out this question: Should presidential candidates tell the truth while they are campaigning? Students generally agreed that they should, but they already knew that candidates didn't always stick to it. I directed them to look at two websites: PolitiFact and FactCheck.org. These two sites check the accuracy of statements made by candidates and others related to them (e.g., Super PACs). The students were very engaged, looking up candidates they supported, those they didn't support, learning about those who they didn't know much about, and noticing differences between them. They especially enjoyed finding out which statements rated as "Pants on Fire" (complete untruth) via PolitiFact. After about 20 minutes, I brought the discussion back to the group. I asked them what they had found out, and several students shared discoveries. I asked them the inquiry question again, and got pretty much the same answer as the beginning of the class, so I flipped it around a bit: Which candidate is the most truthful? (as of that day, it was John Kasich with Bernie Sanders a close second). Which candidate is the least truthful? (as of that day, it was Donald Trump by a long shot). Students also brought up questions about why the websites would fact check some statements and not others, whether we could trust these sites, and who was finding out about this information. Great critical citizenship! 

Campaign Propaganda: Now that students had some sense of who the candidates were, we are turning our attention to campaign advertisements. The overarching inquiry question that connects back to past learning is What does "consent of the governed" and "alter and abolish government" look like? To start our inquiry, I showed a quick series of campaign ads from the previous week (found on P2016) and asked students to think about how they connected to the two ideals from the Declaration of Independence. They jotted ideas and questions on small slips of paper. We discussed afterward how the campaign ads were trying to persuade voters to give the candidates their "consent" to "alter" the government. The idea of "persuasion" led into the Mini-Q: Campaign Propaganda: Which Strategies Would You Use? Students investigate past presidential campaign ads to identify six propaganda strategies and evaluate them on how informative, effective, and ethical they are. Then they decide which three they would use to make a campaign ad. This builds student knowledge before we get into the project.

Public Service Announcement: It would make sense to have students make a campaign ad for the candidate of their choice at this point. However, we are holding off for now for two reasons: 1) We don't have enough time before spring break for the amount of research and production time they would need, and 2) Students don't have enough information about the electoral process yet to see how their candidate and their issues fit into the big picture. Instead, we are having our students make a Public Service Announcement (PSA) alerting citizens of propaganda techniques used in campaign ads. They will make a short movie/slidecast showing three campaign ads, identifying the propaganda technique the candidate used in each, and explaining how it is informative, effective, and ethical (or rather, how it is not those things). This fits into the role of informed citizenship, taking action for the greater good. 

In the spring, after we teach the Constitution and the electoral college, we will have another presidential project, probably making an advertisement. By that time, students will have time to dig into issues, see where candidates stand on them, and consider which issues are most important to address in order to get the most electoral college votes. The number of candidates will have whittled down a bit as well.

In past years, we connected The Road to Revolution to The Arab Spring through the question: When is it necessary for citizens to rebel against their government? We did interesting projects with this as well. However, rolling with the times and student interest can make for a much more relevant investigation. It will not be too many more years before these 8th graders will be eligible to vote, and perhaps they will think back on their inquiry this year as they do, and wonder, "What should I know about this candidate before I vote for him/her?" This is informed action in the real world!

Inquiring into Inquiry and the C3 Framework

I am attempting to re-write my third Social Studies unit to be more aligned with the C3 Framework, which has as its core the inquiry "arc": starting with a compelling question, students then explore a variety of source documents to answer the question, and then report out their understanding. It sounds simple enough.

Fortunately for me, the great borrower of others' work, there are lots of C3-aligned resources available for me to access via the internet. One that very neatly fell into my lap was created by Engage NY for their Grade 7 unit on the American Revolution. The compelling question, Was the American Revolution avoidable?, is pretty compelling. It is interesting to ponder whether change was inevitable, and if so, did there have to be a war to make it happen. The supporting questions are also interesting: How did the French and Indian War change British relations with the colonists?, How did British policies inflame tensions in the American colonies?, How did colonial responses inflame tensions?, and What efforts were made to avoid war? This unit comes complete with a variety of primary source documents to examine, formative assessments for each supporting question, a final project that addresses the compelling question, and a suggested informed action step to bring relevancy to the unit. I could just take the unit as is and start implementing it tomorrow. Sweet!

But here's my big question about inquiry: Do students get enough understanding of the content through their constructed responses to the primary source documents? Nowhere in this unit are students reading textbooks or other secondary sources to build background knowledge. Nowhere are they watching live action reconstructions to help them visualize the events. Nowhere are they putting themselves into roles to wrestle with the varying perspectives of the time. 

If I implement the unit as is, I can anticipate that I will be having to fill in a lot of knowledge gaps. I like to think of our brains as having a clothesline of background information in our long-term memory, and new learning gets hung on that line, connecting new learning to old to deepen understanding. Being thrown a bunch of data and newspaper articles and diary entries without the necessary background knowledge means students are trying to formulate concepts without anything to hang the information on, and those unconnected pieces just pile up in a jumble. There could be a lot of disconnections and misconceptions.

I anticipate that some students will easily make the necessary abstract connections and inferences to get the point, and others will just be confused. These are middle schoolers, after all, who are just now developing their abstract thinking brains. Some are there, some are still very concrete thinkers, and everyone else is somewhere in between. I will have to scaffold a lot of the deductive and inductive thinking required. 

I also wonder about motivation. Spending weeks looking at primary source documents to understand history is a historian's work-- I get that. But these are 13-year-olds, and they need a bit more action and excitement. They are immersed in YouTube and Instagram and movies; they play soccer and tag at recess; they sing and play instruments and act in plays. History needs to come alive to be interesting.

CC image from Shelbyhistorysite

So I am adding things to the Engage NY unit. I am adding textbook readings that relate to each supporting question to build their background knowledge. I am adding role play: Patriot, Loyalist, and Neutralist colonists debate their response during this "Road to Revolution" period in Town Hall Meetings. I am adding bits and pieces from History Channel's The Revolution and HBO's John Adams mini-series.

image from wikipedia.org

Maybe this isn't "pure" C3 Framework teaching, but I know my kids and I know what helps them learn. The inquiry arc is still there, the compelling and supporting questions are driving the unit, and they will be wrestling with a lot of primary source documents. But they will also be watching movies, reading background information, and debating a historical perspective in a role play activity. That gives them enough information to build on and deepen content knowledge and makes Social Studies fun and engaging. Both of these things make learning happen.

This is all new to me. If you are experienced in the C3 Framework and see that I am way off base, please help me out in the comment section below. How do you implement the C3 while also making learning complete and motivating for middle schoolers?

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!

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.

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.

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?

Confessions of a Struggling Conferer

I have a confession to make: I am a struggling conferer. I'm getting better, but it's still hard for me. I do best with thoughtful, self-reflective students who talk through their process with me, those that have a specific question in mind when I sit next to them. These students listen carefully, are more than willing to try out my suggestions, and show evidence that they are making progress. After those conferences, I mentally pat myself on the back, congratulating myself on my brilliance as a teacher. Yay me!

I'm also not too bad with struggling students who are trying their best. I usually have a plan in mind already when I sit down next to them: scaffolding the day's lesson, re-teaching a previous lesson, or filling in a gap that I know they have. They sometimes squirm and wiggle, giving me the "yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it" message when I know they don't really get it, or try my suggestion and still get it wrong. After these conferences, I tell myself to be patient, that they will get there, that my persistence will pay off in the end. Keep it up, me!

I struggle most with nonproductive students. These are students who are capable and don't have big reading and writing gaps. The work they produce is on the right track, but there just isn't much of it. I touch base with them a lot, checking in on what they've done so far, giving them the "keep going" message. We make plans, which they break more often than keep, so we make more plans. After these conferences, I sigh, and console myself that they did get a bit more done than they would have if I hadn't checked in with them. It's OK, me!

But then I stop and think: what did I really teach them that moves them forward in their learning? Usually the answer is: nothing. Not OK, me!

It's a bit of a Catch-22 actually. I am not sure what to confer with them about since they haven't produced much on which to base my conference. But they won't produce what they need to, at the quality I'm looking for, if I don't confer with them and move their skills forward. And they must be as tired as I am with talking about their work habits instead of their process or product. 

I need to monitor myself when I approach the nonproductive students. What am I talking with them about? Is it moving them forward as a learner or only getting them to get more done during work time? Both are needed. They deserve the same the amount of coaching as the other students. Adding a little reminder at the end, an encouraging "you can do it!" message as I leave, might be all that it takes to nudge them into productivity. And I can leave the guilt at the door.

Reflections on Revision in the Poetry Unit

Big sigh. We have come to the end of our two-month-long poetry unit (first month- reading, second month- writing). I don't know why, but the poetry unit seems to fit so well into the third quarter of school. There is a lot of tough stuff to dig into (assonance, consonance, figurative language, symbolism, allusion), with an overall sense of playfulness and rule-breaking. Students are comfortable with each other in the class and with me, so are willing to write poems from their hearts. As eighth graders, the world of Shel Silverstein is left behind while they tackle extended metaphors by Langston Hughes and Longfellow, the cryptic language of e. e. cummings, and the sound devices of Poe. This mix of challenging curriculum within the context of short accessible texts and manageable writing expectations lifts the confidence and skill of nearly every student in my room.

Students submit two poetry anthologies as their assessments during the unit: a reading anthology of poems they analyze for meaning and music, and a writing anthology of their own poems, two of which are analyzed for meaning and music. Each anthology finishes with a closing statement reflecting on their learning. I learn so much about students from the closing statements: their process, their thinking, their discoveries, and their attitude. As I read closing statements from the writing anthologies yesterday, I was struck by how many students mentioned the value of revising and how the hard work of revision paid off in much better poems. Here is a sampling from the fifteen I read yesterday (names withheld to protect anonymity):

"One of the most important things I learned was that my first draft will never be my final product. After I had written my poem, I initially found it hard to edit and revise because in my mind I felt that my poem was good just the way it was. When I started revising, I was able to make my poems much better"

"I wrote lots of poems this unit, but I only chose a couple to revise and make worth reading. There were lots of different ways I chose to revise. For example one way was to completely scrap the poem and start from the beginning, but still write about the same idea. Another way I revised was to change the line breaks to add or take away emphasis to words. When I was writing poems, I took a lot of time just picking the right words to fit into each line."

"Throughout this unit, one of the biggest things I learnt was that revising will do marvelous things for my poems! Before this unit, I was very lazy and closed minded about revising poems. After I learnt new ways to revise and tried them, I realized that a poem can turn into exactly what I imagined after revising!" 

"The revising process for writing poetry is pretty hard, but once you revise you will get a feeling of accomplishment that you don’t get very much. A good tip of advice would be that not all poems make it through, some poems are not going to work as well as others and some will not satisfy you. I threw away 17 poems because I spent so much time revising them and they didn’t convey the message I was hoping to have them convey. Poetry is hard, but if you write enough you will discover that some topic work better with you than others, and that is when you write a great poem."

"One thing that I think was very cool that I did during this unit, was transforming a first draft I wrote into something completely different and new. My poem: ‘Eyes’, originally was a mentor poem that had a completely different meaning, about how much I liked and also hated blank pages. After some major editing, that simple poem turned into a symbolic poem about life."

"Sometimes, it was hard for me to actually bring myself to go back and edit my poems because I generally thought they were good as they were. By going back on my poems I learnt that revision is really important because even the small changes such as different punctuation and word choice can make a big difference. I also went back and made other changes such as trying to add in different poetic devices, and creating line breaks so change the flow of the poem itself. Doing those sorts of edits really helped me enhance my poems."

"It took a while to come up with these ideas. They all started as mere ideas that had only a bit of potential to be bigger and better poems. Revising them was hard, as at first they seemed like regular poems that couldn’t be changed to make better. Later on, it became clear that they had to be changed. So I worked harder on these poems compared to most of my other poems and they ended up as some of my best work. I learned a lot from this. I realized it’s hard to edit poems to make them a lot better than before. When you first write a poem, you feel like it’s the best that it could ever be, and that you can’t really change it to make it better. After learning multiple techniques of revising poems, it became a lot easier to revise them, as you become more educated in using strategies to change. The longer and harder a poem is worked on, the better it becomes and the more it changes into becoming a better poem." 

I know! I was actually as stunned as you are at the willingness eighth graders had toward revising their poems. Only writers who are committed to their ideas will work that hard to make their writing as good as it can be. This is the first time all year I have seen that kind of commitment, and maybe the only time I'll see it. Poetry is a special genre, and has great power for middle school students. 

I need to end this with a quote from one of my most reluctant (male) writers, a boy with the typical "school sucks" eighth grade attitude, who scoffed at every "try-it" poetry generating idea, who covered his paper as I walked by:

"I have learned that poetry is within everyone and everyone gets something out of it. Like me. I get to write the truth and I get to get happiness out of it. I think that everyone would be more happy if they wrote poetry more in their life and realize what life really is and how wonderful life is just with a little poetry."