Author Archives: Amy Rasmussen

6 Ways to Confer in the Crowded Classroom

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Conferring, Readers Writers Workshop March 30, 2015 Comments: 8

“My biggest struggle right now is that I have 36 students in each class (60 min periods). There’s not an empty seat in the room! Any ideas?”

Maybe this sounds like you. I’ve been there –trying everything to make workshop work in my over-flowing freshman and sophomore classes. Last year I had 38 sophomores in my 8th period. Talk about ending the day exhausted.

My principal said at the first of this year: “40 is the new 30” regarding class sizes. Most teachers I know deal with bulging class sizes every day. We have to adjust to the new normal.

In the Middle: New Understandings about Writing, Reading, and Learning. 2nd ed. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1998.

Last week I read this English Journal article from 2000 (timely with Nancie Atwell recently winning that awesome teaching award), and I was reminded of how Atwell talks about the tension in a workshop classroom.

I’ve said it many times before:   readers and writers workshop is constant motion, and sometimes the tension becomes a tight rope under my feet as I try to provide my students with the best instruction possible.

I believe it’s student conferences that steady the bouncing rope, but how do we confer with all of our students regularly when our classes are so large?

A few weeks ago, I wrote this post about reading conferences in high school. Mrs. Thompson wrote that plea at the top of the page in the comments. I’ve thought about it ever since.

These are black board speech bubble brooches. How cool is that? See gadgetsin.com

These are black board speech bubble brooches. How cool is that?
See gadgetsin.com

I am fortunate to have small classes this year, but balancing the tension is still not easy. Below I share six ways I confer with students. I had to be inventive to confer with those rowdy 38 sophomores. Maybe some of these ideas will help my friend Mrs. Thompson.

1. Start before the Bell. Several of my students enter my room two or three minutes before the bell rings. When I am behind in my conferences, which is more often than I’d like, I can talk to a few more students a day when I begin before the bell.

2. Go to Them. My students sit in small groups with their desks clustered in fours and fives. When I want to speak to students individually, I go to them and kneel beside their desk. We talk in hushed tones for a maximum of two and a half minutes. If a student wants to talk longer, before the end of class I pass her a sticky note with an invitation to come in during my lunch. Sometimes she does.

3. Bundle Them Up. Instead of speaking in hushed tones, when I know the topic of the conference will benefit all students in a small group, we speak a little louder. This way I can easily turn to the other three or four students and invite them into the conversation. “You might want to try that, too.”  or “Do you have a question similar to Mark’s?”

4. Make it Voluntary. I know I am not the only one with students who need to talk before they’ve really even started. When I begin conferences with an invitation — “If you’re having trouble getting started, meet me at the sofa, and let’s talk” I can spend five minutes with five to six students, often clarifying ideas or validating their thinking. Once I model how to talk about their work, students learn to effectively give one another feedback. I can leave them talking and confer with a few other students. Five to ten minutes later, I return to the couch. More often than not, these students are now ready to work on their own. They just needed some talk to get them started.

5. Group Them through Feedback. I learned this one from Penny Kittle. Say you are reading through student drafts, and you see the same trouble spots over and over again. Make a note on the bottom right corner, maybe a code like TH if you’re seeing not-so-powerful thesis statements. Then during conference time, ask everyone with a TH on their paper to meet you at the center table. You save time by re-teaching or doing a mini-lesson on thesis statements only with those students who need the refresher. (This works for reading conferences with my most resistant readers, too.)

6. Keep it Silent. Sometimes I get more information about what my students need when they write it out instead of talk about it. I’ve learned to give some of my quiet students the option to confer most often in silent conversations. I leave them notes. They leave me notes back. This is similar to Chris Tovani’s conversation calendars, which when I tried to do with the whole class, challenged my ability to be consistent. When I make the notes optional, those students who want this type of conference take advantage of it — and I can read student notes and respond after the class period.

Do you have other ideas for conferring with students in large classes? Please leave a comment.

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

How to Teach Writing

Readers Writers Workshop March 29, 2015 1 Comment

I might have actually reblogged this post before today, but I was searching through the TTT dashboard and found a draft I’d written reflecting on it. I miss conversations with Tess Mueggenborg, one of the best teachers I know. She pegs my thinking here, exactly. I don’t even need to share my reflections, but I would love to hear yours. Please leave your thoughts in a comment.

profmueggenborg's avatarProf. Mueggenborg

Want to create successful writers?  Want to raise them from seedlings, make them strong and resilient and capable of writing oak trees of essays, not saplings of deadwood?  The key has nothing to do with writing.  If a teacher wants to help their students to become successful writers, they must make their students into successful readers.  If a student isn’t a reader, they’ll never be a writer – no way, no how.  The reading should be both academic and for pleasure: students need to bask in the glow of words for fun, and struggle with a snarling sentence when needed.  They should delight in diction and syntax, but never be quite satisfied with them as-is – every student should always ask, “why this way?” and “why not like this?”.  And no, they probably don’t need to know what “diction” and “syntax” mean: we don’t need to understand the nuclear reactions…

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See the #Storify of #engchat March 23, 2015 — Fantastic Resources for Poetry

AP English March 23, 2015 1 Comment

Thanks to @Drama_Chick for this Storify.

For one very fast hour this evening, Twitter blew up with the talk of poetry as English teachers near and far shared ideas for immersing their students in the beauty of words. So many fantastic resources and such great thinking! Thank you to everyone who participated, and thank you for taking a look here even if you didn’t.

I remembered one thing I wanted to share and didn’t. It comes from the book  A Surge of Language–Teaching Poetry Day by Day by Wormser and Cappella. I modify this list a bit and use many of these questions with my AP Language students as we look at non-fiction passages for rhetorical analysis.

Ten Questions to Ask About Words

1. What word intrigues you most?

2. Is there a word that confuses you?

3. What word surprises you?

4. What word seems most metaphorical?

5. Is there a word that seems unnecessary?

6. What word is most important?

7. What is the most physical word in the poem?

8. What is the most specific word in the poem?

9. What is the strongest sound word in the poem?

10. What is the most dynamic verb in the poem? (12)

I believe that poetry can make us better humans. If every person immersed himself in beautiful language, we’d all find much more peace. Be more kind. Loving. Genuine.

Let’s try it.

Challenge on.

They Taught Me the Lesson Here: It’s About Time

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop, Talk, Writers Workshop March 23, 2015 Comments: 3

Please tell me I am not the only one in a rush. Every spring I feel this pressure to teach more, do more, assign more. I know part of it is the AP exam date creeping closer and closer. I know my students are still not ready.

We still struggle with rhetorical analysis. Most students are getting better at recognizing devices in the texts of others, but when they try to analyze the effect? Well, the light bulb is still quite dim. And I have to practically beg to get students to add a device or two in their own writing. So many are afraid to take risks or to explore with words and sentences.

As a way to help students play with language, I turned to POETRY. (Yes, even in my primarily non-fiction AP Language class.)

We read Meg Kearney’s “Creed” poem together, and we talked through the moves she makes to craft it.

Students noticed the sound devices, the contradictions, the little story, the concrete details. They did a fine job of noticing.

But we have to do much more than notice. And that’s the hard part.

I found this “Creed” assignment by a Mrs. Rothbard online, which fit my hopes for my students exactly, and I asked students to read and study the poem themselves and then mirror the moves of our poet.

I still cannot believe how difficult this was for some of my students. Some simplified the assignment and just wrote their own lovely poems. Others made beautiful lists of their personal beliefs — but that was not the assignment. Others modeled Kearney’s first few lines and then rambled on about angst-filled beliefs that the student writers didn’t even care about when they read them to the class. (Note to self: Revision workshop must last much longer next year.)

But, some…some student writers took ownership of their own craft and composed lovely poems, modeled after our writing coach and poet Meg Kearney.

Here’s the links to Jerashia, Guillermo, NaWoon, Doreen, Josh, and Sydney-Marie‘s blogs where they posted their poems. They’d love it if you’d read them and maybe leave a comment (actually, they will probably die because they think publishing to the WWW makes them anonymous–so much scarier to read their poems aloud in class, which is a topic of another post I need to write.)

I learned some valuable things as a result of this writing task, and I am glad that my students talked to me about what worked and didn’t work for them. I am glad I took the time last week to let them talk.

The comment that will guide our learning the rest of the year came from a table in the back when one of my quiet ones said:

“Could we slow down? We need more time to write with you in the room to help us.”

Yes, I know that.

If I want to truly help my students grow as critical readers and writers, I must devote the time to letting them think, draft, read, write, revise, re-do, share, and all of this again and again with me in the room as their coach, their mentor, and their cheerleader.

My students need to talk to me and to their peers like I talk to my husband and my collaborators when I am writing.

I thought I had this down by now. But what I think is enough time is obviously not what my students think is enough time, so I’ll listen, and starting today.

Class time will be different.

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

I’m hosting #engchat March 23 7:00ET: We’re Talking Poetry as More Than a Unit

Amy Rasmussen, Twitter March 16, 2015 1 Comment

poetry answer-quote

Before I attended The Conference on Poetry and Teaching at The Frost Place last summer, I was a reluctant, resistant teacher of poetry. Sad to say, I never had a memorable experience with poetry until I was in my 50th year.

At The Frost Place, I listened and joined in conversations with working poets about language and their craft. My heart changed. I finally understood because I lived that language for a glorious week surrounded by these people with poetic souls and a view of the White Mountains smiling down on me. Oh, Franconia, NH. (Read about my experience here.)

By no means am I an expert when it comes to poetry in the classroom; however, nobody has to be! Our job as teachers is to help our students grow in literacy skills. Poetry helps us do that.

We bring a beauty into our classrooms, a peace that our world is so often lacking, when we allow poetry to be spoken, heard, shared, and felt.

#engchat is Monday March 21, 2015 at 7:00 ET. That’s 6:00 CT for me, which is why I forget and rarely make it to this chat. The family dinner hour for me in Texas. I’m eating out and early on the 21st though.

TOPIC: Immersing Poetry into ELA Instruction

Questions for Our Chat:

Q1: What are some ways, other than a poetry unit, that you use poetry in your class? #engchat

Q2: “Play is what we want to do. Work is what we have to do,” said W. H. Auden. Poetry is both of those things. How do we use poetry for work and play? #engchat

Q3: We can teach most any skill with poetry that we can w/ prose. Agree/disagree? If agree, what skills do you teach with which poems? #engchat

Q4: Last question. What resources can you share that will help us all immerse our students in beautiful language, daily? #engchat

 

Do you have any other questions you’d like us to talk about during #engchat? Please leave a comment.

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

Guest Post: Changing the Reading Culture in Our School One Book at a Time

Guest Post, Pedagogy, Professional Learning Community, Readers Writers Workshop March 16, 2015 Comments: 5

Both Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher have transformed my thinking as a high school literacy coach.  As a former elementary school teacher, I had always used reading/writing workshop, literature circles, and choice in my classroom.  When I transitioned to being a reading specialist/literacy coach in a high school, I really struggled with the whole class novel approach.  It didn’t work for me with the little ones and I saw more and more of my students struggle with it at the high school level.  Attending workshops offered by Gallagher and Kittle, along with reading everything they have written has given me the reassurance and the research that this approach CAN work in a high school.  Here is what has happened at my high school in just six months:

 

More and more teachers are trying it…

It all starts with one teacher and the support of a department chair.  Last spring after sharing what I learned at Penny Kittle’s Book Love workshop, one teacher decided to drop everything he has been doing in English and take on the “Book Love” approach.  He had so much success getting students to actually read books and improve their writing that two other teachers decided to jump in second term and teach English through choice and mentor texts.  The results were astounding. Word spread at lunch and in our PLCs – students were engaged and excited to come to English class.  Then at the beginning of term three, we had four more teachers jump in.  I am not sure if it was the “positive peer pressure” or hearing about students’ engagement, but little by little teachers have been asking about how to structure their classes in a way to make this work.

 

Teachers are reading more and talking about books…

At times during lunch teachers used to vent about the struggles they had motivating students to complete the reading from the previous evening, or how students bombed the reading check, but now the conversations are about books. We are talking about what we are reading, what our students are reading, what mentor texts we are using, and what changes we see in our classrooms.

Thanks to one teacher’s organization and determination, staff members are swapping rooms once a week and book-talking to students that they don’t teach.  The other day the principal’s secretary came in to our freshman class and book talked The DaVinci Code.  After she left, I saw that several students had added that book to their to-read list.

None of this would even be possible if our teachers weren’t willing to read new books.  Teachers are setting their own reading goals, keeping to-read lists, creating book trailers, etc.  For the past two years we have had “I am Reading” posters outside of our classroom doors, but this is the first year teachers are updating their posters more often and students are noticing the books.

 

Our library is busier than ever before…

We have a beautiful library that has a lot of books that just didn’t get checked out.  This year that has changed.  Last year from August until the end of February, only 4821 books were checked out and 63 books were placed on hold.  This year in the same time period 7333 books have been checked out and 137 books were placed on hold.  That is over 2500 more books being checked out and 74 more books being asked to be held.  Why the change?  Student choice!

Students now come to the library with a purpose.  They have a to-read list (some that are pages long) and if all the books they want are checked out, they can give us a good idea of what they want to read next.  As one of our English teachers told me, “They are thoughtful about what they are looking for if they go to the library.”  He doesn’t worry anymore about students going up to the library trying to “leave class” or “waste time.” Another teacher shared how his students “know their favorite authors and/or recognize titles that have been book-talked.”  They are talking to each other about books and recommending new titles to each other.  They are even checking out 2-3 books at a time.

Our library staff is also trying hard to find ways to get books in our students hands.  Our librarian has shared ARCs with classes and spends time in the classrooms promoting tons of books – the new ones and some of the oldies but goodies that haven’t been checked out in a while. The staff has started creating competitions each month to encourage students to read (Abe Lincoln Award voting, March Madness book bracket challenge, etc) new books.  The library is no longer just a place for students to come and get homework done.

 

Students are reading….

They really are reading and not just the “YA” books that naysayers worry about.  Prior to taking this approach, students came into classes either as students who read all the time (1-2), students who only read assigned books, students who fake read assigned books, and students who didn’t even try fake reading the assigned books.  As one teacher pointed out to me, “As soon as choice became an option, reading, for the vast majority of the students, became fun again!”  They began forming a reading habit that had been lost so long ago.

The issue is no longer trying to get students to read anything. They are reading more consistently than ever before.   Instead of dealing with them reading zero pages in a week, teachers are finding ways to increase student stamina from 50 to 150 pages in a week. That in itself is a huge success.  Students come to class early and start reading their books.  They can even be found reading as they walk down the halls. One boy almost knocked over an upperclassman in his attempt to finish the chapter of his book.  Once a week I co-teach in a freshman English class.  Of those twenty-one students, I think only two students have finished three books.  The rest have read an average of six books in nine weeks (snow days and all). Instead of worrying how to encourage our students to read common texts and pass the reading checks, the challenge is having enough books that interest all of our readers.

Our students ARE challenging themselves – reading more, picking nonfiction, moving up the reading ladder, and trying new genres based on what others have recommended to them. I had one boy in my homeroom start with Hatchet by Gary Paulsen in January and stretched and read Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden for book two.  It was definitely challenging for him, but he didn’t give up on it and was so proud when he finished it.  Other teachers are finding the same thing – students are willingly picking up books from Fitzgerald or Vonnegut, or Hemingway and are able to have real conversations about these books from their perspectives. Students are talking about books with each other AND coming up to teachers and discussing books with them. Because of the location of my office (the library), I tend to do book talks quite often when kids come upstairs and are looking for something new to read.  One of my favorite memories from this winter was a girl who had seen my Goodreads list and made her to-read list off of some of my favorites.  After she finished To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han, she asked her teacher if she could come find me and talk with me about it.  She had loved it so much and wanted to thank me for introducing her to that book.These students aren’t afraid of looking smart or nerdy – they are proud.

 

The culture is changing…

Students are now immersed in books wherever they turn.  Between our March Madness Book Bracket challenge, I am Reading posters, Classroom Reading Trees, the Health class independent reading project, random teacher book-talks, etc. students are reading more than ever before.

Melissa Sethna @msethna23 is a high school literacy coach in Mundelein, IL. She has always had a passion for books, technology, and working with adults. In her free time, she loves to read.  She’s a strong believer in book choice and sharing her joy of literature with her family and students. She says, “I wouldn’t be the teacher I am today without my reading heroes: Penny Kittle, Kelly Gallagher, Kylene Beers, Bob Probst, and Donalyn Miller — who inspire me to take risks, and I try to encourage others to do the same.”

The Modern PLC

Amy Rasmussen, Community, Pedagogy, Professional Learning Community, Social Networking March 15, 2015 Comments: 5

Sometimes things stay with you. In December I got this message:

I have been working with three teachers this fall who have transformed their classrooms (all ranging from freshman level to AP Lit and AP Lang) from the traditional class to a readers/writers workshop approach.  Your blog posts always show up in my email box at the exact right time when they are in need of inspiration to keep going and figure out what to do in their classes.  They realized very quickly how fast they were able to get through “old curriculum” when they dropped the class novel approach and were then scrambling to find new and exciting mentor texts, books to share, and additional writing ideas. Their students have read thousands of pages and enormous amounts of books which never happened in their classes before.  Students were writing them thank you letters for inspiring them to become true readers and writers.  Penny Kittle’s books got them started on this path, but your real life teacher posts have helped them validate what they are doing.  So… thank you and keep those posts coming.  They are making a difference in our classrooms.

I could write a book about the value in that feedback (Probably will). Feedback should make writers want to write more. That is exactly what Melissa Sethna’s kind words did for me and my friends here at TTT.

Her simple thanks also made us want to follow her work, support her even more, watch how she helps other teachers. We’ve become colleagues with a united purpose. We’ve become friends.

And that is the beauty of the modern PLC.

A literacy specialist in Mundelein, IL sends a thank you to a teacher/blogger in Lewisville, TX, which makes the teacher/blogger want to become a better teacher so she becomes a better writer so she writes more inspiring and instructional blog posts for other teachers and so on.

Teachers supporting one another as we do our best to do right by the children that we teach. As ELA teachers the best way we know how to do that is through balanced literacy practices in readers and writers workshop.

That’s the foundation for the Three Teachers Talk blog, which started as three friends committing to stay in touch by sharing our work through our writing. We are four teachers now — writing, sharing, and growing. And participating in a Professional Learning Community that’s been redefined, refocused, and restructured by connected educators around the globe who are just like us.

Thank you, readers, for being part of the best PLC on the planet.

 

Note: Melissa Sethna posts as a guest blogger here tomorrow. Her work inspires us.

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

Five Steps to Fostering Balanced Literacy in Your American Lit Class

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Book Clubs, Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop March 10, 2015 Comments: 4

How does your district handle classes that are very content specific? For example, I teach Honors/Pre-AP American Literature. This is a sophomore (with accelerated freshmen course) that has a pretty traditional literary movement focus, which includes several of the classics (The Scarlet Letter, Huck Finn, Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, The Things They Carried). And while I feel I have made great strides over the years in terms of student driven lessons, focus on discussion and annotation, skill vs. content based assessment, the one area I continue to struggle with as I look to workshop is how to facilitate the choice. 

This post is Part II of my response to those questions I received via email. See Part I here: Choose to Become a Classroom of Writers

I’ve thought about your query about your “content specific” American literature class a lot, and I keep getting stuck on one question:  Does the class have to revolve around full-length American novels?

I ask this for a couple of reasons. First, in my experience, many 11th grade teachers, in Texas at least, think that they have to teach English III as a survey of American literature; however, the  curriculum standards (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills or TEKS) do not mandate that. Yes, there is a standard that requires students read American literature, plus another that says American drama, but there are 11 other reading standards (plus Fig.19, which is a whole other story) and at least that many writing standards.

All of these standards are classified as either readiness (they will be tested on state exams) or supporting (they may be tested). The standards mandating American literature are supporting — meaning perhaps that they might not carry as much weight as readiness. Yet many teachers design their whole year’s worth of reading around one American novel or play after another, at times ignoring all the other reading standards that state that students should read a variety of other texts — fiction and non-fiction. Seems to me that if we do a mash up of all the reading standards we’d come up with one overarching goal:  Create readers. All adults should take note

How can we create readers if students are not reading? More and more research proves this is so.

Many of the junior level teachers here teach the American literature survey because that is the way it has traditionally been done — prior to the changes in the standards, almost 10 years ago, and our new state tests, three. Most have not learned how to do anything differently — like facilitating readers and writers workshop.

So, I wonder about the standards that drive your class. Are they like the TX ones that require some American lit, or is the class designed by your campus and/or district to be one focused on a survey of American Lit?

If it’s the first, give yourself permission to let some of those whole class novels go. You can step right into allowing more student choice. You can select short texts to read together, conduct book clubs where students still get choice but with your parameters. Imagine the possibilities for short stories and passages where you can teach the same skills you focus on when you teach those full-length novels.

If it’s the second, I wonder what you can do to change the course design. Would your administration be atticus finchokay with you taking a more balanced literacy approach and only reading some of those whole-class texts? You will have more time for writing, and you’ll have a better chance of moving students as readers because odds are you’ve got many students who are not reading those books. We’ve all been there.

If you haven’t read the English Journal article Not Reading: The 800 Lb Mockingbird in the Classroom, it is a fantastic piece that reiterates the problems of students faking their way through their reading.

Another great article is this one by Tim Pruzinsky, an IB teacher at an international school in Thailand. IB mandates specific texts, but Tim still manages to get all of his students reading novels of their choice.

Here are some ideas that might help as you continue to transition your instruction. The moves you’ve already made are probably much harder than these:

Five Steps to Creating Balanced Literacy in your American Literature Class (in no particular order):

1. Intentionally decide which of your current novels are nonnegotiable. Which book do the majority of your students read? Which book adds the most to your reading community in terms of discussions that build relationships? Which book are you able to teach the most skills that students can apply to their own independent reading? Keep that novel (or a couple of novels) as your whole class texts.

2. Decide to read fewer whole class novels and increase your reading of shorter whole class texts. How can you teach some of the skills you normally do with novels with short stories, poems, and a variety of non-fiction pieces?

3. Decide what type of writing will benefit your students most. Choose mentor texts that relate thematically to the novel/s you let go. You can still have the rich discussions surrounding a text and teach annotation skills without mandating another whole class reading assignments.

4. Select a short stack of books and facilitate Book Clubs. Students choose a book from the list to read and discuss with their peers in small groups. Visit each group and briefly join the discussion to hold students accountable for their group time. You might conduct Book Clubs 2-4 times a year to allow for choice with parameters and to ensure that all students reach for books that meet your ideal of complexity.

5. Decide to promote reading in your classroom and take no excuses from students. Talk about books and reading daily. Devote 10-15 minutes of self-selected reading time at the beginning of every class period. Confer with students about their reading regularly. Read a lot, so you are able to match students with books that they will want to read.

 

Anyone have other ideas to help make the move to more balanced literacy? Please leave a comment.

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

Choose to Become a Classroom of Writers

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Community, Pedagogy, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop March 9, 2015 Comments: 2

Note:  I enjoy emails with questions about my teaching practice. They help me clarify my thinking, and they often lead to new posts here. This post is Part I of my response to this question:

How does your district handle classes that are very content specific? For example, I teach Honors/Pre-AP American Literature. This is a sophomore (with accelerated freshmen course) that has a pretty traditional literary movement focus, which includes several of the classics (The Scarlet Letter, Huck Finn, Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, The Things They Carried). And while I feel I have made great strides over the years in terms of student driven lessons, focus on discussion and annotation, skill vs. content based assessment, the one area I continue to struggle with as I look to workshop is how to facilitate the choice. 

Do you have a similar class in your district? Are any of these texts still used as whole class works? As options within specific unit studies? Or is the year open to student choice throughout? 

First of all, while my district ELA coordinator would love for all teachers to move to readers/writers workshop, and he has introduced that idea through various means, many teachers are not there yet and some are determined not to budge. Like many other issues related to change in schools, they nod their heads and keep doing what they’ve always done. We know that sometimes this is best for kids (I’ve done the nodding and door closing, too), and sometimes it is not, which is the case when it comes to continuing to make all the choices in English classes at the expense of student readers.

My own department manager reminds me often that we have to take our movement one step at a time. This is my first year on this campus, and while most everyone is making positive and impacting change. It’s slow, and I get antsy. I’ve been doing readers/writers workshop with my students for seven years now, and I still work on refining plans, lessons, mentor text selections, mini-lessons, and more. Truly, workshop is constant motion, which I am sure, if you practice it, you already know.

Recently, I was asked, “What is the one step that will give us the most movement as we continue this transition?” I paused for a moment, and then the answer focused clearly:

Become classrooms of writers.

Many high school English classes are literature laden. All the lessons revolve around specific texts, mostly whole class novels, and sometimes teachers spend five, six or nine weeks reading and discussing that one text. Sure, they might include other instructional practices and activities, but the most common mode of writing taught is analytical (the least likely of all the modes of writing students will use in their lives after English class. Teachers, when was the last time you wrote an analytical essay for your job?).

When we move to becoming classrooms of writers, teachers realize that if we want to practice other modes, read mentor texts, model the writing process, lead revision workshops, publish our best work, and truly live the lives of writers, we simply do not have time to devote class after class time to the study of one particular book.

A mentor once told me:  “You choose to do this, which means you choose not to do that.”Faulkner on reading

Say I choose to create a unit where my students write narratives (I always start the year with narrative because it is builds community, and contributes so much weight to other modes of writing. See tom Newkirk’s book Minds Made for Stories.) I prepare by gathering a variety of narrative texts of various lengths. I can use passages from an assortment of books in my classroom library, or I can pull passages from popular short stories, or classic novels. [See note on this at the end.]

Some passages I will use to teach leads. Others I will use to teach how authors deal with time. I may pull out specific parts and teach effective use of dialogue or character development, setting, whatever. [Gathering a variety of texts in different genres around the same theme is another way to approach the same type of reading then writing task I describe here. I’ll write about this soon.]

First, we read like readers. We practice comprehension strategies and discuss the meaning of the text.

Next, we read like writers. We deconstruct the text and discuss how the author makes that meaning.

In my AP class, we almost always talk about these texts via a Harkness discussion. Students do the thinking and speaking after I’ve done mini-lessons and modeled answering focusing questions. I’ve learned to trust that students will discover the elements and devices that I hope they will. Sometimes I have to prod, but they rarely never get there.

The skill I need to teach determines the reading passages I select. That’s an opposite approach to how I used to plan when my teaching was driven by various pieces of literature.

And now, I have time to talk about books, allow students to select books they’d like to read, and confer with students about their reading. They read tons more than they ever did before, and they become much more effective writers. Win/Win.

cool quote memes from our friends at http://www.TeachMentorTexts.com

Watch for Part II of my response soon.
 ©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

Yes, You Can Get Teens Reading: One Senior High Campus Proves It

Amy Rasmussen, Community, Pedagogy, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop March 6, 2015 Comments: 2

My department manager is wise, and I admire her leadership skills. She often asks, “What is your temperature?” to see how I am adjusting, coping, feeling, managing, dealing, doing with all that I must at my new school. Thankfully, although it’s my first year here, it rarely feels new anymore.

I like that Rhonda asks me questions about my readers and writers workshop classroom. She asks me to participate in discussions and professional development sessions. She validates me as an individual and as an teacher. I trust her, and I know she trusts me.

Trust is the greatest gift in the life of an educator.

We are an 11th and 12th grade campus. We are moving to a workshop pedagogy. Our district has changed the model of intervention by bringing in local National Writing Project consultants to write curriculum and train teachers. (I write about that in part in this post.) The ELA coordinator also hosted trainings with Penny Kittle and Donalyn Miller, two of the brightest minds in workshop, last summer. Every time we meet as an English team, we talk about some aspect of reading, writing, and workshop in our classrooms.

Suggesting that we might like The Color of Law by a homegrown TX author

Suggesting that we might like The Color of Law by a homegrown TX author

Teachers are trusted to get their students reading. At LHS in every English class, visitors see students reading during the first 15 minutes of the period. Teachers have had training on giving book talks and conducting reading conferences, and we’ve started building classroom libraries.

I got an email message today: “What’s the title of that book, Story of Angel, or something. My copy has gone missing.”

“The Book of Life by Angel,” I replied. It’s a hot title in my classroom, too. I have to replace it every year.

Our students are reading, and behaviors are changing for the better.

I heard one teacher say to another, “I like how reading at the beginning of class helps my students calm down. We get started with ease because they know to come in and get their books out.”

To build a culture of readers, we must trust that students will read when we give them time to so. We must model what that looks like.

Sharing a love for the work of R. A. Salvatore

Sharing a love for the work of R. A. Salvatore

We must trust our teachers to be readers themselves. How can we talk about books to kids if we are not reading them? Children of all ages revere authenticity.

Each week when we meet in our department meeting, a teacher gives a book talk. They share a bit of the passion they have for an author or a book.

Jeremy shared his love of fantasy, and Jayne shared a bit of Dickens in her fun fake British accent then talked about a new book she enjoyed by a Texas author. Karen read from The Yellow Birds and The Things They Carried and talked about how they made a nice pairing, and, most recently, the baseball coach Mike talked about a book he loved. (I wish I could remember what it was, but I forgot to write it down.)

Administrators must trust that when visiting classrooms they will, and want, to see rooms of students silently reading. What better activity in a class designed to improve literacy skills than to see all students engaged in the practice of it?

Students come to trust that reading and books provide value to their lives because the adults in which they trust value it, talk about it, model it, and, if necessary, enforce it.

Too many teenagers claim to be non-readers. Ask them, if you haven’t. They will tell you truly.

They will also tell you when they experience a shift in that thinking. They are surprised — and grateful.

an excerpt from my student Joseph’s last independent-reading evaluation

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015