Category Archives: AP English

A Feedback Protocol for Revision Workshop

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop, Strategies to Add Some Zip, Writers Workshop September 17, 2014 Comments: 5

I didn’t mean to make them cry, but that’s what soul writing can do to a person. (Soul writing is what my students and I coined as the type of writing that rips at our guts, makes pools fall from our eyes, and leaves us lurching toward the door to “take a little break.”) We are only into the third week of school, and I tried a new protocol for feedback; something I learned at The Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching, directed by Dawn Potter.

Giving honest and critical feedback to one another is difficult for many of my students. So afraid of offering offense, they either do not say anything, or they do the proverbial pat-on-the-back and mutter “good job.” I tell  them that when they refuse to be honest in their feedback, it’s cheating. They cheat their friends out of ideas that can help them grow. And that is what we want in a community of writers — we want everyone to experience opportunities to grow.

The tears today watered some tender little seeds. All afternoon I gushed about it to anyone who who listen.

We sat in a circle around the large table in the center of my classroom. Many students came to class without their drafts*, so I sentenced them to the outer edges and advised them to get their brains and their pens working. I told them to write silently, but they might want to keep an ear tuned to the conversations happening in the middle. If they did, they learned more than they could have from any one-on-one conference with me.

First, I explained that giving feedback can be a bit tricky. We want to be honest, but if we do not deliver that honesty well, we can cripple our writer. (I use the word cripple because that was my own experience. I’d spent months drafting a chapter for my book. I’d finally finished what I thought proved to be a powerful piece of writing. Then I asked a friend, someone I trust, for feedback. She gave it to me: honesty cloaked in sweet little daggers. When I read her comments, all my ideas crumpled, and my focus limped right out the door. I didn’t write another word for six months.)

The “I wonder ____” protocol is really very simple:

Those who offer feedback:

  • Listen carefully as a classmate reads her piece.
  • Think about ideas that might help her improve it.
  • Offer feedback that allows for the writer to “play with the possibilities” (Dawn Potter) by putting the ideas you have that might help the writer revise the piece into statements that begin with “I wonder ___”.

Those who receive feedback:

  • Read the piece loudly and with clarity. (Repeat if necessary.)
  • Listen to the “I wonder” statements made by peers and write yourself notes.
  • Try to just listen (This is hard because we tend to want to justify why we wrote certain things).
  • Play with these various possibilities while revising.

 

I asked for a volunteer to read her writing. Eyes darted all around the table until Jessica read her draft.

Jessica went first:

Jessica GoWorld story

Wow, right? She punched us right in the stomach, and we sat in silence. Finally, I said, “Okay, we’ve got some amazingly powerful stuff right here. How can we improve it?” and they looked at me like I had hornets on my head. I knew I better go first, or this feedback thing wasn’t going to work.

“I wonder if you need to tell us that Lori’s a woman,” I said.

Long pause.

“I wonder who ‘assigned’ her to you,” Mikaila spoke up.

“I wonder what she did that was so helpful,” Mariam said.

“I wonder how you survived,” said Daissy.

Jessica listened, answering a few questions, and taking a few notes on the comments her friends gave her.

 

And we were off . .

 

Daissy read next:

Daissy GoWorld story

 

“I wonder who ‘those’ are.”

“I wonder what the problem was.”

“I wonder what happens next.”

“I wonder what happened that made you change.”

And then Daissy could not remain silent any longer. She had to explain her stuttering, and how she’s worked so hard to overcome it, and how now wants to major in broadcast journalism and speak on live TV.

We forgot to preface our comments with “I wonder” when we all told her THAT is the story she needs to write.

revision corrections 2-7-12Feedback Magic happened with this “I wonder” protocol. And it happened in every class period, and so did the tears.

Students shared the honest writing from their hearts, and students gave honest feedback with tender and caring insight. Writing improved.

Even better? Imagine being in this kind of classroom with this kind of community of writers.

Heaven.

 

 

*Our mentor texts were VISA Go World commercials. I got this idea from an assignment I did at a class taught by Penny Kittle at the University of New Hampshire Literacy Institute. We watched several of the videos in class and discussed and analyzed the various structures of these very short, yet poignant, stories. Students were to watch and analyze a few more examples, transcribing the words to use as models for their own writing. Then they were to write their own, playing with word choice and syntax.

Sentence Imitation with We Were Liars

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Books, Readers Writers Workshop September 15, 2014 1 Comment

I listened to the audiobook, and liked the novel so much I had to go and buy it in hardback for my classroom library. The story still haunts me. (I read it soon after I read Jellicoe Road, and that story haunts me, too. These two books make an interesting pairing.)

The following is the beginning of chapter two in We Were Liars. It’s an compelling list of sentences that create the the basics of what we need to know about our protagonist. It will be an interesting passage to use for sentence imitation.

I wonder what my students will say about themselves.

 

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart P4

My full name is Cadence Sinclair Eastman

I live in Burlington, Vermont, with Mummy and three dogs.

I am nearly eighteen.

I own a well-used library card and not much else, though it is true I live in a grand house full of expensive, useless objects.

I used to be blond, but now my hair is black.

I used to be strong, but now I am weak.

I used to be pretty, but now I look sick.

It is true I suffer migraines since my accident.

It is true I do not suffer fools.

I like a twist of meaning. You see? Suffer migraines. Do not suffer fools. The word means almost the same as it did in the previous sentence, but not quite.

You could say it means endure, but that’s not exactly right.

 

 

 

The Power of (very short) Stories

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Writers Workshop August 20, 2014 Comments: 7

As soon as I created my own very short story, modeled after VISA’s Go World videos, I knew I would have my students create their own.

For our introductions at the Book Love class I attended with Penny Kittle this summer, she had us watch a few of the Go World videos, and then imitate one of the structures. This is harder than it seems.

Here’s a few of the ones I watched and transcribed. They all represent moments that matter in the person’s life, and they are only in 35 to 60 words.

Lopez Lomong started running when he was six. And he didn’t stop for three days and three nights as he escaped life as a child soldier. Twenty years later he was still running; he just had a different thing driving him every step of the way.

Hours before his race in ’88, Dan Jansen’s sister Jane passed away. He’d promised her he’d win gold. He didn’t — until six years later. Then he skated a victory lap with his daughter — Jane.

Derek Redmond didn’t finish in first place in the 1992 400 meter. He didn’t finish in second or third or fourth. He, and his father, finish dead last. But he and his father finished.

People had been leaping over the high jump bar the same way since the sport began until one day when Dick Fosbury came along and moved the whole sport forward by going over the bar backwards.

You should watch a few of you own. Then write down the words and look at the structure of these very short stories. Then, I challenge you to write your own.

Think about your writing process as you write. Revise in your notebook. Pay attention, so you can share your process with your students. I’ve learned that the best thing I can do as a writing teacher is let them see me struggle as I try to make meaning.

I ended up writing four different versions with four different structures before I wrote a version that pleased me.

Here’s mine:

I am introducing this writing activity to students next week. I thought about having them write a full-blown narrative first and then having them cut their stories down to their own Go World stories. That would be an interesting exercise in word choice. I decided instead to have students write and create their own videos first — then we will tackle descriptive writing and work on exploding our very short stories into ones with a little more substance.

I opted for the fast-track to build community.

Story does that, you know.

Any ideas on how you might use this type of mentor text with your students? or any others you’ve had success with?

Read Like a Writer

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop August 4, 2014 Comments: 5

Katie Wood Ray quoteI didn’t know what it meant to read like a writer until I stumbled upon Teaching That Makes Sense. I love that site, and I printed out every pdf doc available, reading everything as I punched three holes and secured them in a big fat binder. Honestly, I do not remember half of all those helpful things, but I am grateful that the light finally dawned, and I realized that reading like a reader and reader, and reading like a writer, are not the same.

How did I make it through my higher education and not know that? OR maybe I did, and I just didn’t flip the switch that made me realize the need to ‘pay attention’ and explicitly teach it to my students.

I am sure the simplicity of TTMS helped. I thank Steve Peha for that.

Reading like writers is the basis for analysis. I’d learned the importance of teaching students to analyze at the numerous Pre-AP workshops and AP Summer Institutes I’d attended. I’d never learned about how to teach students how to teach themselves how to analyze — quite simply by paying attention to how the author constructs meaning.

I’d been pulling passages from the classic texts we were (not) reading. I’d given released prompts and

http://www.laurahandler.com

asked students to complete timed writings. I’d done all kinds of cruel and unusual assignments because I didn’t get that to read like a writer is the crux of good writing instruction. (It’s also the crux of good reading instruction.)

Now, I teach my students to pay attention. As we read our self-selected books, we watch for the ways the author crafts meaning. We notice imagery and what it does for the author’s message. We notice figurative language that helps create this imagery. We might underline sentences that speak to us boldly or whisper to our souls. And we talk about how these elements create tone and theme. But more importantly, we talk about why these sentences speak to us as people.

In my class at UNH this summer, a classmate asked Penny Kittle if there was a list of examples from books to use for this study that Penny calls “play.” Penny shook her head and said:

“No list of books will ever teach this for you. You must change the way you read.”

I agree. Now, when I read, I look for gold. I read because I love the story, but I also read to find beautiful language that I can share with my students. I project passages on the board that we read together. Sometimes we just read and enjoy the language. Sometimes we write a response to the meaning of the text. Sometimes we analyze the elements, talking about why the author used the device and how that device affects the meaning.

Sometimes students model this language in their own writing. Most learn to pay attention as they read. Because once they get it, they are the ones projecting the passages they find, and sharing their own golden language.

Every other Monday on this blog I will post examples of the types of texts I use in my class for craft studies. If you have your own favorite passages, some kind of gold you’ve found in your reading, please share in the comments.

Cultural Literacy on the Front Porch

AP English, Heather Cato, Pedagogy July 29, 2014 Comments: 3

Screen Shot 2014-07-29 at 12.12.57 PM

So this weekend we hosted a block party on our street. While it was great fun, I’d be remiss if I didn’t take the event and apply it in some way to education. 😉

Here we are sitting in front of my house chowing down hotdogs, wishing away the summer heat when I thought to myself, “Well, this certainly doesn’t compare to one of Gatsby’s parties, but we sure are having a nice time!” WAIT – no I actually thought, “If Bradbury could just see us now! All these people hanging out together and not one of them mindlessly on a technological device! We sure are showing him!” WAIT – no, as I looked upon the diverse ethnicities of those represented in my yard I thought, “Man tolerance like this certainly didn’t exist for Atticus and even Scout growing up. What a shame.” And what is more embarrassing is that I know that had I verbalized my thoughts not one of my party goers would have known what I was talking about. – Such a shame!

GET REAL!

Not one of those things even remotely crossed my mind for a second! And even if they had would it seriously have mattered if no one knew what I was talking about because they themselves hadn’t read The Great Gatsby?

For over the last year much of my time has been spent in conversation around trying to get a real handle on cultural literacy. One sticking point teacher proponents of teaching the classics keep coming back to is that they want to equip their learners with key literary references so that as adults, they can be “in the know” when such references organically come up in social situations.

Let me just say, for over three hours we laughed, talked, told stories at the party and not once was a book quoted or referenced – directly or indirectly. In this case, not one hour that I had spent reading all those books of Cliffs Notes  about the classics in high school paid off.

But now, let me tell you what would have come in handy:

1. More geographic, economic, and cultural awareness of other countries. 

One lady and her husband had recently moved from the Dominican Republic. I hardly known where that is much less anything worthy to contribute to the conversation. I wish I had more context about her culture in order to find out from her what it was like growing up there.

2. The current state of American currency. 

One gentleman is a passionate coin collector and the only thing I could think to contribute to the conversation was some shallow joke about collecting the 50 stated quarters when I was a kid.

3. Anything about cats. 

I can’t say that I like cats, but learned that one of my neighbors is the crazy cat lady on the block. She has 10 cats! And while she wanted to talk to me about the importance of getting your animals spaded and neutered, I honestly had nothing of substance to contribute. The only thing I could think about was no wonder there are so many cats loitering around my house!

In all of these situations I was the one that felt uncultured and uneducated and I just couldn’t help but think that there is so much more to life than a classic piece of literature. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to learn from a classic text or any text for that matter, but if your only real reason for picking a classic text to teach is so that your students will have that experience in their back pocket for a “just in case opportunity,” you might want to have them read something else.

Why Workshop? It’s All Very Simple

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop July 21, 2014 Comments: 5

Attending the University of New Hampshire Literacy Institute for the past two summers has been one of the best blessings in my teaching career. I’ve remembered what it means to be a student, replete with pages and pages of reading assignments, almost nightly research papers, and the expectation that I will participate in class.

Sure, I earned graduate credit, but more importantly, I sat as a student. I remembered what it feels like to have a teacher present a task, encourage a discussion, require I read something. I remembered what it means to be the pupil. And I wanted to learn.

I think all students want to learn. I also think that many of them do not know how.

Last week I met with my new friend Holly. We shared ideas about our plans for August and how we will more fully implement readers/writers workshop in our classrooms. We discussed what it means to struggle as a student in an English class where English is not our first language, and reading books is a new idea, and the lack of food in our home is just one component of the lack of security we feel every single day. We talked about what it must feel like to these children to fail state tests year after year. Because they do. Holly will be teaching 10th grade for the first time, and her ESL background will benefit her students immensely. I will be teaching AP English Language, and all my students will be in the AVID program. I am convinced the AVID philosophy is one every teacher should embrace:

Hold students accountable to the highest standards,
    provide academic and social support,
 and they will rise to the challenge.

It’s a philosophy every good teacher I know applies in his classroom. It’s also why so many of us choose the pedagogy of Readers and Writers Workshop. Our high standards might be the same for all students, but the support we must give them to help them rise to the various challenges with reading and writing must be individualized. Their needs are different; therefore, we must differentiate. One-on-one reading and writing conferences become daily events. We encourage, and nudge, and teach the skills that a student needs at that moment, during that task. This is authentic instruction. And it invites authentic learning.

As I think about this new school year on a new campus in a new district with new colleagues, new administrators, and new schedules (block days versus the traditional eight period days), I want to remember what it feels like from the student perspective.

“I need you to notice me, support me, show me how to learn.”

I had a colleague ask me recently, “Which is harder to plan:  teaching the traditional way with teachers making choices, or your way with students making the choices?” I should have said, “Is that really the right question?” which would have been a better response than the one I gave him.

It is hard work being a teacher in a workshop classroom. I have to know my students. I have to talk with them and know what they do with their time outside of school, who their friends are, what their dreams are for after high school. I have to be a reader, and I often have to read books I’d never read except to try to match the right book with a student who hates reading. I have to allow choice in topics, and get used to feeling uncomfortable. I have to give up control, and let teens be real in an environment that invites their opinions, and sometimes their scorn. I have to write in front of them and show my vulnerability. They have to see me struggle because all writers do. I have to love moving students as readers and writers because ultimately, if I am their English teacher, and I am not moving readers and writers, I am not doing my job.

Is it hard? Absolutely.

But here’s the thing: It’s really not a have to as much as it’s a get to.

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”  ~Steve Jobs

“It’s all very simple. But maybe because it’s so simple, it’s also hard.” ~Natuski Takay

My AP Scores are Down, Now What???

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop July 16, 2014 Comments: 4

The comment on my post said: “I have been book talking, conferring, doing mini lessons, and incorporated the workshop approach, yet my AP Literature scores went down dramatically. Now what???”

My initial response sounded something very Donalyn Miller-like when she said to me a few years ago:  “It’s not all about the test, is it?” At the time, I thought it was, and her remark stung.

Now, I know better.

The letter below is how I responded to this very dedicated teacher who is doing her best to help her students be successful, not just on an exam, but in life. I can feel her earnest desires in first this comment and then in an email message. Chin up, my new friend, you are doing right by students because you are taking them beyond test prep and into adult learning. I applaud you.

Hello,
I feel your pain. I thought my students would do much better than they did, but then again — I think that every year.
Right after exam scores were released, I got a message from my colleague:  “My AP Lit scores are the worst they have ever been.” Although she is a good teacher, and I trust her ability to educate teenagers, she is not a workshop teacher. She allows little choice, and students only do the kind of writing in her class that they will do on the AP exam. My advice to her:  Choice Reading.
Now, I hear from you, and you say your scores plummeted. You have been doing elements of workshop, and my advice is the same but more:  More choice reading.
While I guess my voice is emerging as ‘an expert’ — probably because I post and talk about this so much, I must tell you:  I cannot base my expertise with readers/writers workshop in advanced classes on qualifying exam scores. I can only base it on my research on reading and on the personal experiences I’ve had with moving my students as readers and writers and preparing them for the kinds of reading and writing they will have to do in college. My evidence is the growth of my students, and that cannot always be measure by an exam — it rarely can.
I am used to teaching at a high poverty school that embraces the College Board’s Open Enrollment with no prerequisites. Pretty much any student who says she wants to take an AP class can — and does. I agree that every child should have the opportunity to take advanced classes, but I also think we do them a disservice by allowing them to attend a class when they do not have either 1) the reading and writing skills to engage in the learning, or 2) they do not have the work ethic to push themselves into engaging in the learning. Skill and will sit on that scale so precariously.
I know you know this already:  the AP exam represents one day of the student learning journey for that whole year. Students might be hot or cold or sitting in a luke-warm bath on exam day. I know that the majority of my students enter that room and take that exam as confident writers because I’ve seen them move from sometimes a -1 to a 5, or even a 6, on the writing rubric. But I cannot get non-readers to read the complex texts they must in order to get at least 50% correct on the multiple choice part of that exam. Of course, I cannot be certain because the score report does not show the break down between the essays and the multiple choice, but I know in my gut (and from what I’ve seen on mock tests), that my students who do poorly on the exam do so because they bomb the reading portion.
That is the basis of where I am coming from when I share with you what I think. It’s hard not to compare my scores with my colleagues’, but I have to remember:  it’s the luck of the draw which students end up in which sections with which teacher. It is rarely a fair balance of students’ abilities prior to them ever walking in my door.
Please know that I trust you are a fine educator. If you were not, you would not be seeking help to improve. And I will be honest, you have more years experience teaching AP English than I do.
I am going into my sixth year teaching AP, but I can tell you, I had disengaged kids, and I never moved more than a few readers and writers in those first couple of years. I made the choices, and most of them faked their way through the classic texts I selected. I just re-read the journal article “Not Reading: the 800-pound Mockingbird in the Classroom” by William J. Broz, and I wonder why I allowed those students to pass my English class. Broz says, “Not reading should mean that those students fail the course because they have no assignments to turn in.” I get that now.
Like you, I am a fan of Penny Kittle. For the past two years I have gone to the University of New Hampshire and taken a graduate course that she’s taught. This year she had us study reading theory. It was hard. But I am even more confident that allowing students choice in what they read and what they write is more important that the scores on the AP exam. That thinking takes a little getting used to, especially if you are used to getting high scores. We have to remember that the change in students’ lives, primarily because of their use of technology, has changed their willingness to engage with a book, and often their willingness to even attempt deep thinking, homework, and the like. Mark Prensky and Alan November’s work supports this. Prensky even asserts that students brains may be wired differently. I think I might believe that.
If you have not read the essays of Louis Rosenblatt, especially one titled “The Acid Test for Literature Teaching,” it will reinforce why you’ve tried to model Penny’s pedagogy to begin with — because you ‘get it’. At the end of her essay Rosenblatt asks these questions (the acid test):
Does this practice or approach hinder or foster a sense that literature exists as a form of personally meaningful experience?
Is the pupil’s interaction with the literary work itself the center from which all else radiates?
Is the student being being helped to grow into a relationship of integrity to language and literature?
Is he building a lifetime habit of significant reading?
I say that if we can answer with an honest yes to these questions — how much do our exam scores really matter?
The pedagogy of a readers/writers workshop classroom is in constant motion, continually fluctuating, because we plan and teach and move around the needs of our students. It is hard work because it is differentiation at mach speed. In her class Penny reminded me of a several things that I need to do better. I went through my notebook and made this list. Maybe this will help you, too (in no specific order of importance):
1. The pedagogy in a workshop classroom is 1/3 teacher talk and 2/3 student talk. Am I talking too much, or am I creating opportunities for students to think and debate and discover meaning with one another?
2. “Process is as important, or more important, than our product.” –the theory of Don Graves & Don Murray, UNH. How can I focus more on the process that students undergo to become writers than the writing itself? Do I talk with them as writers, or do I talk with them about their writing?
3. Have students think and analyze their process. “My process changes with genre.” Penny Kittle. If hers does, and mine does, then my students’ should. How do I help them understand why thinking about their process will lead to more accomplished writing?
4. One effective strategy when students say they “do not know”: Define yourself by what you are not. (This is a form of argument, taking on the counterargument from the get-go.)
5. “The hardest part of the writing process is figuring out what to say — when we give kids prompts we take away the hardest part.” Penny Kittle. How can I create a better balance of exposing students to AP essay prompts and free writing and quick writes that generates thinking for essays about topics students want to write about?
6. “Vocabulary from SAT word lists is a waste of time. The SAT draws from a bank of over 5, 000 words, even 25 words a week that you make kids memorize will never get them there.” PK. How can I help students create their own dictionaries, based on the ‘hard words’ they discover in their choice reading books? PK has her students find four a week.
7. Richard Allington’s research says that volume matters for struggling readers. He suggests that they should be reading at least 25 books a year. If that is true for struggling readers, how many books should college-bound students be reading?
8. Multi-tasking has been proven to be a myth. At least 10 minutes of silent reading time per day stills the silence, and a. helps students learn to focus, b. shows students that reading can become a habit.
9. Workshop classrooms are grounded in “Transactional Experience” theory. How do we invite students to have an aesthetic experience with a text?
10. “The success of our teaching is the willingness of kids to engage when we aren’t with them.” PK. How can I set up the learning expectations better so students know the end-goals more clearly? If colleges require 200-600 pages of independent reading a week, and most of my students will go to college, how can I help them engage in the practices that will help them do that now? [This year a group of students practically rebelled. They actually accused me of wasting their time because I refused to do test prep every day.]
11. “No amount of explicit skill instruction can replace the experiences of hearing, reading, learning, and living in a great number of stories.” Ariel Sacks. How can I helps students read like writers so they discover the explicit skills writers use on their own or in small groups? More talk.
12. “Independent reading should deepen thinking for writing.” PK This is where I fell short this year:  I didn’t have my students write about their reading. I didn’t make the learning connected enough. I need to have students write informal responses to their reading occasionally in their notebooks, and then they may choose one response to write into a more formal paper. What specific skills can I model as students write their formal responses? Remember Pk’s strategy with quotes across the board and how as students we made connections and then wrote about them. This was synthesis.
13. Mentor texts matter. What additional mentor texts can I have students study prior to major writing tasks? Need maybe 3-5 per genre– or more.
14. With each writing task, students must know the ‘end game.’ The end game is for them to demonstrate their learning. It’s about growth, so even the best writers must show growth, even those who come in my door as A-student readers and writers. How can I score more on process rather than product?
15. There are three types of conferences:  1. monitor the student’s reading life, 2. teach reading strategies, 3. challenge/increase complexity. I do #1 well. How can I improve the other two? If I can focus more on #3, I believe I can move readers into becoming the kind of thinkers they must be on the AP exam.
16. To analyze a text, we must read like writers. How can I teach over comprehension and get students to read as writers regularly? I must model what this means more clearly. This is where regular text studies with short passages matter.
17. “Students should talk regularly about their thinking both before and after writing. They will hear the thinking of others and this will help them extend their own.” PK.  How can I work more time for this talk into my daily lesson plans? Scripted questions?
18. “Model your writing. Let students see your struggles.” PK. I need to do this more. Idea from Penny:  project two run-on sentences from famous books on the board, i.e. The Goldfinch & ?. Ask:  These authors knew better. What was their intent in writing these run-on sentences? This will inspire thinking and talk, then students may write about their thinking. Better than writing “run-on” on their side of their papers.
19. Storyboards can be used to map a chapter, to read it rhetorically, not just for planning a narrative. How can I use storyboards to help students deconstruct a chapter? Then assessment is only looking for evidence of rhetorical reading (how &why).
20. “Put structures in their heads, so they read like writers.” PK. I just need to talk about this a lot more!
21. Ask:  “What have you learned about living from this book?” Leads students into reader’s response. This will tie into the human condition and the work as a whole that is needed for the AP exam.
22. Writing conferences. Writers control the conference; they say what they want help with. How can I get students to take ownership of this time to talk with me about their craft? “If you don’t leave a conference wanting to write more, there’s a problem with the feedback.” Don Murray
I hope you find these thoughts and questions helpful. Like you, I am always looking to improve. Every year I hope to open that webpage with exam scores and see all 3, 4, and 5’s. So far, those are a bit spotty, but I admit I am pretty proud of my 2’s. They’ve grown as readers and writers, and I’m okay with having some of my students just College Ready.

Questions about Readers/Writers Workshop

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop July 11, 2014 1 Comment

I just got the fourth request in two days for how I set up my readers/writers workshop classroom. I love getting these requests because it makes me reflect on my own practice, and it means that others are moving into allowing more choice for students. Happy day!

I thought it might be a good idea to share some of my responses and some of the questions I get from educators who want to create a culture of workshop in their own classrooms. If you are thinking about workshop at the secondary level, or if you just have questions, please leave a comment and ask.

Holly says that she’s been given permission to “go rogue” and do something different than the other teachers in her department. She’s been granted her desire to create a readers/writers workshop classroom, but she needs support. I love that she asks me for it.

Here’s my response:

Dear Holly,
How exciting for you! Sure, we can find a time to talk. I am in Minneapolis at an NCTE Affiliate conference this weekend, and next week if filling up fast. If it’s okay, let’s do a little thinking here first.
First, what is the shape of your classroom library? That is huge for a successful rwworkshop. Of course, you can utilize your library, but research says that to surround students with books, you should have a minimum of five books per student. So say in a class of 30, you need at least 150 books in your classroom library. How does yours look? That’s our first start.
If it’s sparse, consider creating a project for books at DonorsChoose.org. I’ve had two significant books projects funded. You can see a past project here.
Next, if you have not read Book Love by Penny Kittle, put it at the top of your reading list. Take notes. Everything I’ve learned about doing a workshop classroom I learned from PK — almost.
Think about how you want to structure your class time. Here’s what mine will look like with 85 minute classes every other day. Remember, I teach AP Lang, but much of this worked with my 9 and 10 graders last year, too.
10 min choice reading
     I conference with kids quietly during this time. We must mandate silence, and this takes lots of practice for many kiddos!
Three types of reading conferences: 1. Get kids into a book (This one gets repeated over and over and over again at the beginning of the year.), 2. Teach a reading mini lesson (The lesson is dependent on the needs of the student.), 3. Move kids into more complex reads (Again, this is dependent on the need of each student). All ideas from Book Love by Penny Kittle.
3-5 min poetry (new for me this year since I learned a TON at the poetry conf at the Frost Place I just attended)
     I will dictate a poem, or read aloud a poem, or ask a student to read a favorite poem. Mostly we will just savor the language of poetry. “To write well, students must be immersed in the beauty of language.” –Penny Kittle
2-4 min book talk. I book talk everyday, one of each fiction and non-fiction. Students record in their writer’s notebooks titles that they might want to “Read Next.”
10 min mini lesson on whatever writing we are working on, or max of 20 min direct instruction, if I am introducing something new.
Workshop time. Students work either independently, or in small groups, on their writing as I work the room talking with students as writers more than talking to them about their writing.
Last 5 minutes. Exit thoughts. Might be a whip around with a sentence from students work. Might be thoughts on a sticky note as they exit. Just something for closure.
More on Reading:  Besides choice reading all year, I include four Book Clubs where students choose a book from my short list. All books have similar thematic elements. Book choices include nf, fiction, classics, poetry. They read their books with a small group and discuss craft. We also conduct a whole class discussion around all of these books. When we shoot above comprehension, we get students to think at higher levels — reading like writers. (With my 9 and 10 graders I only did one book club, not four.)
Writing. We move through genres, one primary genre per quarter:
1. Narrative, includes description
2. Informational, might include compare and contrast, process analysis
3. Argument, includes persuasive, definition, examples
4. Multi-genre, includes poetry, all of the above, and more
That’s enough for now. Why don’t you make a list of questions, and we’ll go from there?
Oh, and it is so important to remember that a reading workshop classroom is all about process. And it’s a process, your own, as you figure it out. It’s taken me years to get where I understand the theory behind why all this works, not only to engage students, but to move them as readers and writers. Take it step by step, morph it to work for you and your kids — and you don’t even know who they are yet.
Blessings,
Amy

 

Poetry at The Frost Place: Don’t Stop Believing

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Writers Workshop June 27, 2014 Comments: 6

The Frost Conference on Poetry and Teaching is over. Those who didn’t leave yesterday left today after the Teachers as Writers workshops. The hugs good-bye were those of life-long friends, sad to part, but a little eager to get on the way. The small community grew so quickly. Sharing a love of language will do that to people.

I pull into the Kinsman Inn where I have shared a roof and a home-sized breakfast every day this week with, as Margaret said, “The kindest people I have ever met;” and the gravel lot is full with the cars of total strangers. I walk inside and even Sue the innkeeper says it is not the same. We feel it. The magic of the week is over.

I never cared for poetry. Looking back I know that attitude stems from the way I was taught. I never experienced the simplicity of words that I’ve experienced here. Even when I’ve taught poetry in class, especially those two years with my G/T students, I tortured them with bad teaching. I’m embarrassed to say I gave them a packet, and we read through the poems ‘analyzing’ as we went, never stopping to just listen. Listening is the secret I learned this week, but the secret was never meant to be locked a way so no English teacher could find it. It’s not even a secret really. Poetry is art; art has to be experienced. A packet doesn’t offer that to anyone. I’ll argue no matter the content, but that is an topic for another day.

Imagine this scenario:  Each morning you walk into the small Frost barn. You pull out your pen and wait

At the evening poetry readings at Frost's barn, the audience is invited to turn around and appreciate the view. Inspirational.

At the evening poetry readings at Frost’s barn, the audience is invited to turn around and appreciate the view. Inspirational.

for the morning’s dictation. Alyssa slowly reads a poem in her soft con-alto, stopping every so often to state a word that is capitalized or where to place a comma or period. You listen, and you write. You focus on the voice, the words, the phrases — the silence created by the pauses. You fill the page with this focused thinking.

After everyone arrives, you welcome the morning, and Teresa opens Robert Frost’s notebook and shares a significant line. “I don’t change my watch every time I see a watch it differs from.” We talk about living in the discipline — not in the product. Dave with a voice to rival God himself finally speaks out:  “We do not live in a culture that embraces silences.” We all nod.

We talk about poetry and teaching and teaching poetry. Then we share presentations filled with classroom practice or philosophy. Again we discuss — “civil engagement,” as Dawn coined it. Our notebooks filled with ideas we can use to give our students similar experiences.

The most impressive thing? We talk to each other like poets.

And that is what needs to happen in the classroom. So often we teach poetry and reading and writing when we should be teaching poets and readers and writers. Of everything I’ve absorbed this week, and this is saying a lot, I believe this simple thing will make the most change in mine, and anyone’s, classroom. 

Today several of us sat around in a circle and shared original poems that we’d composed yesterday. The only instruction for feedback:  What are the possibilities? No critiques. No corrections. Just suggestions on how the poet could play with words.

“If you do not play, you will never know,” Dawn reminds us. Isn’t that the best revision strategy ever? Just play with words, phrases, stanzas, rhythm, structure.

I want my students to play. I want them to have a tiny bit of the silence I’ve experienced this week. I will have them practice dictation — a sure way to quiet the mind and prepare for inspiration. I will continue to allow choice in reading and writing topics, and we will play.

Nicholas told me he never read a book on his own until college, but now he has an MFA and a knack for words. I can’t help but wonder if his gift might have come quicker — not the long sidetrack he took to get here — if in all his English classes he had been spoken to like the poet he is. That is worth a thought. Or two.

Today when I left The Frost Place for the last time, I turned the opposite direction on the road. I’d not gone this way all week. The lane was longer, but the view quite the same. But God must have been the one to turn the wheel because as I came to the T in the road, there stood the stop sign telling me “Don’t STOP believing.”

Don’t STOP believing. Can it be any clearer?

I won’t. I found the seat of my soul, and it is steeped in poetry.

Here’s my poem from the writing time today. I imitated the structure of Hayden Carruth’s poem “Twilight Comes.”

Twilight comes to the busy town

As season’s start. The tree tops

brown with leaves, which colored

And began falling during the heat,

Are moving again, and crack

under the wind’s breath. The buildings

from their place across the highway

crowd close again, as if for a

threatening glare, and with malice

An exposition as the sun slips

low. It is my fiftieth year. Horns

blare out one by one with a clashing

dullness, like the unfelt prayer

in church. I hear the dogs barking

pushing their noises into my peace —

I touch — and clearly — I am quite certain —

tightening muscles; perhaps hot iron

on the right side under my shoulder

or unusable rope on a sea-stuck ship.

It’s true. My man is on the phone,

there inside the living room. Clients

will close soon. I crack my paining neck

And bow my eyes to study the dead

root-bound pot on the patio

in the shadows. I sigh. Then

sigh again, just because it’s true.

I am going to be old. Too soon.

Ending Our Year with 60 Second Shakepeare

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Student Projects, Technology, Writers Workshop May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Sometimes we just need to celebrate. My sophomores just finished their Shakespeare projects, and a few of them are so fun!

Small groups chose one of Shakespeare’s plays. They read the graphic novel of it, read the summaries to be sure the graphic novel hadn’t left out any crucial information, read all the most familiar quotes from that play, and then had to get to work.

We watched examples of 60 Second Shakespeare found here. And we laughed and talked about our plays and the messages Shakespeare conveyed in them. We discussed topic vs. theme. (Mistaking the two is close to the top of my list of pet peeves.)

As a whole class we decided on the elements that we would need to include in our own 60 Second Shakespeare project. Students took ownership.

This is the guide they created that lead to their learning:

60 Second Shakespeare Project

I’m sharing a student project that surprised me. Two young women, both ESL,  who have struggled all year, made this four part set of GoAnimate.com movies for their project. Of course, five parts (Acts) would have been better, but still.

Twelfth Night

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Lest anyone think we didn’t give the Bard his due and read critically, analyzing symbols, word choice, and more, we did. We just did it with sonnets and speeches from a couple of his works.

All the Worlds a Stage argument essay ties the skills and the content for the unit together.

Thanks to students who were willing to take a risk with some Shakespeare, we’ve ended the year in Pre-AP English II with some laughs and deep learning. And they can for sure tell you why we read Shakespeare so many centuries after he wrote this great literature.

“It’s all about humanity and how we relate to one another,” said one student. He gets it!

P.S.  This one got presented late, but it’s too great not to share:  Hamlet