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

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

CC image from pixabay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image of deforestation from Shutterstock via inhabitat website

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

Image of Asian elephants found on wikipedia

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

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

Reading Critically in Social Studies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Using Booksource's Classroom Organizer with My Classroom Library

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

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

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

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

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

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









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











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

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

Jumping into Scoring On-Demand Assessments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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