Members of the Reading Club

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Planning for the Hard Work of Implementation

Here we are at the end of May, the end of another school year. It's a good time to look back and reflect on successes and challenges during the year, as well as look ahead to the work that needs to be done next year. At our May department meeting, the middle school English Language Arts and Social Studies teachers did just that, especially thinking ahead to next year and implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

Over the past four months, we participated in a book study of Pathways to the Common Core (Calkins, Ehrenworth, & Lehmann. Heinemann, 2012). We read the overview chapters, laying them alongside the middle school standards, to get a sense of what the CCSS was asking learners to do in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. We congratulated ourselves on already having a solid program in place, with many of the expectations already embedded in our units. We deemed the changes do-able and not intimidating or frightening. The discussion turned to the practical: How do we do this? When will we have time?

The last chapter of Pathways focused on strategies for implementing the CCSS in a way that fueled "whole school reform". The authors listed three targeted suggestions which we took to heart. First, don't try to add the CCSS onto an already full curriculum. We acknowledged that we will need to closely examine our units in a vertical way, noticing areas that we can release because another grade level is accountable for them or because they just don't fit the new standards. Only by creating space in our units will we be able to add the new pieces from the CCSS.

Second, look at your current program and decide where your strengths lie. This is the best place to start making modifications. We recognized that we will not be able to implement all areas of the English standards at once, and after a very quick discussion, turned our attention to our writing program, our area of strength. We decided that we will read the corresponding Pathways chapter and examine the standards about the upcoming mode before we start a unit of writing. We will work as a team to look at what we have that can continue as is, and identify places needing adjustments. Doing this work on an already strong program will teach us how to do it and get us ready for the next year's work: reading.

Finally, work fully and deeply to make lasting, significant changes. In order to reap the benefits of these challenging standards, a band-aid approach won't work. It will take planning, purposeful implementation, and reflection. We will need to look cross-curricularly to ensure we are finding time to teaching writing in all three modes and identify resources to use. We will need to focus on our formative and summative assessments to reflect on areas of strength and areas of needs. We will need to revise our rubrics and gather anchor papers. We will need to observe each other while teaching to lift the level of our practice. This is the hard work of implementation.

Fortunately, I have a team that knows how to roll up their sleeves and get down to work (after an initial bit of whining). We have supportive administrators. We have the new middle school Units of Study in Writing (Heinemann, 2014) coming during the summer and a consultant lined up to work with us next year. Some choices will be hard to make, especially releasing those lessons that feel so comfortable and taking on lessons that are totally new to us. I know that in the end, our students will be more challenged and our teaching stronger. We just need the courage to go for it!

Checking In On My Classroom Library Goal

I read 54 young adult books this school year (so far-- still 5 school weeks to go!), almost all of them from my classroom library. I expanded my classroom library by about 120 books this year, and made a professional goal to do a better job using the library as a teaching tool to encourage independent home reading. Reading is my passion, and I enjoyed reading almost all of the YA books, so I certainly don't view the task as a chore. Sometimes I read so fast, or the plot is so ordinary, that I forget I've read it. That's why I keep track on my Shelfari shelf. That's also how I know I've read 54 books this school year (so far). 

I like making my reading life visible to the kids. Some kids regularly look at my Shelfari and get suggestions from it. I also periodically put up a bulletin board called "Ms. Pohl's 5-Star Favorites" with book covers of those books, and then I display those same books on the tops of the bookshelves. I prop the books I recently read on a shelf by my desk before I re-shelve them. 

But the best part of this project is when I see a student browsing the shelf, and I ask, "Do you need a suggestion?" When the answer is yes, I love to ask, "What kind of book do you like?" or "What did you read recently that you really liked?" so that I can follow up with "Then you might like this one [as I pluck the book off the shelf] or this one [pluck]. I liked this one because..." And when I'm really on my game, I might say, "I thought of you when I was reading this because I know you enjoyed reading..." 

I'm getting better at the "If you liked this one, you might like that one" game. What I still need to work on is the "If you felt comfortable reading this one, you should try that one because it's slightly more challenging". This is more difficult, the push into greater text complexity. I am still reading the YA books with the lenses of 1) Is this a good story? and 2) Who would like this? I need to add a third lens: What is the work that kids would need to do in this book? What makes this book easy or complex?

If I have some lead time, I can come back with a suggestion that includes increasing text complexity. That's why I like having kids use Shelfari as their reading log. I can look at their shelf, consult the complexity guides (either Scholastic Book Wizard or the Lexile site), return to my inventory, and suggest a book that is similar to what they are reading AND is somewhat more complex. When it's on the fly, I'm less confident I will pick a book that will be at the appropriate level.

My goal of building book ladders and using the library as a teaching tool has made progress. I'm happy about getting familiar with the books in the library and having some tools set up to help me make better suggestions. With practice, I will be able to nudge more kids into harder books. For now, though, I'm ready to pick up #55!

p.s. I also read 18 adult books this year. Not too shabby!

Constructing Social Justice Concepts Through Reading

I have been reading student blog posts centered around the social justice theme questions from our Nonfiction Reading unit. Throughout the unit, students needed to answer the three thematic questions using their NF book for text evidence support. The three questions are:

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

It has been a journey for some students to construct answers for these questions. All of them have gotten better with identifying who has/lacks power and who takes a stand against/participates in prejudice. They can point to moments in their books where people were treated unfairly due to their race, age, or gender. They are even seeing how the characters' lives are affected by this treatment and times when they've made attempts to overcome prejudice.

The harder part is constructing the general answer behind the example, to come up with ideas such as "Lacking power pushes some people to action to gain the power they deserve", or "Prejudice is often created through the environment they've grown up in and their family's beliefs", or "The best way to overcome prejudice is to get lots of people on your side to protest against it". These abstractions are slowly built through book discussions, targeted questions during conferences or blog comments, by reading others' blog posts, and by mixing up book groups so connections can be made between books with similar themes.

Most students were able to finally construct generalized answers by the end of the unit. Some never quite got there. I think there is a bit of a developmental divide there. For all students, though, the time spent thinking about social justice issues is time well spent. It opens a little window into our imperfect world so they can look at modern-day situations with a more critical eye.

Or will they just compartmentalize all that thinking into "stuff I needed to know during the NF unit"? 

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I just finished reading Delirium by Lauren Oliver, a dystopian novel in which 18-year-olds are "cured" of the dangerous disease of love. Throughout the novel, Oliver constructs societal norms through propaganda, starting with revised nursery rhymes in childhood, through citizenship training in the schools, through reading Romeo and Juliet as a cautionary tale, through police raids and media messages. This propaganda blitz means that young people grow up eagerly anticipating the cure "procedure" so they can live future lives that are safe, predictable, and "happy". Of course the main character rebels against this, otherwise we wouldn't have a story.

But I was fascinated by the construction of the society, and how the social justice theme questions so neatly dovetailed into the events of the story. What creates prejudice (or thought control)? How can an individual take a stand against it? If all of society believes in the rightness of a wrong, what does it take to break out of that individually as well as systemically?

I hope that some of my students will begin to notice parallels between the books they are reading and the "big questions" we talk about in class. I hope that they notice parallels between the "big questions" and the events in our modern world. I hope they examine their own lives for bias or participation in oppression, and find ways to take a stand.

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.