Category Archives: Readers Writers Workshop

Mini-Lesson Monday: Learning Concrete Details with Independent Reading

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, AP Language, Narrative November 2, 2015 Comments: 3

More than any other writing, I love reading my students’ narratives. We start the year with narrative for many reasons, but my favorite is that I get to know my students faster than I can get to know them during one-on-one reading conferences or during group activities and discussions.

Here’s a short list of what I’ve learned from student stories just this week:

  • several of my male students wish they had a father who showed interest in their lives
  • a few of my girls live with their fathers because of their mothers’ poor choices
  • several boys and girls journeyed long and far, walking miles through jungles, so their families could escape oppression, rape, and murder
  • many of my teenagers have experienced heartache because of love interests, friends, and family members
  • a few are still grieving the loss of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends who died from suicide
  • at least one young woman still holds anger toward her mom because of the way she handled a brother’s addiction and abuse

Personal and powerful, all of these stories matter. My goal as a writing teacher is to help my writers harness the words so emotion reigns in the heart of the reader. The problem?

Abstract language.

Objectives — Using the language of the Depth of Knowledge Levels: Show understanding of the terms abstract vs. concrete; in your independent reading books, identify concrete details and figurative language; analyze the effectiveness of the author’s language; revise your writing to include fresh concrete details and figurative language as you create a text that evokes powerful emotions.


Lesson — Before the mini-lesson, students have already drafted a few pieces, narratives or poems. I abstractconcreteusually do the mini-lesson after silent reading time, but for this lesson I begin before because I want to give students a specific purpose for reading.

First, I write on the board ABSTRACT and CONCRETE and we review what these terms mean when it comes to writing. I try to use only abstract words as they begin to discuss this with me.

“Awesome, you might get it,”

“Wonderful, I think you know what I mean,”

“Hey, that’s pretty good…”

Eventually, they will pick up on what I’m doing, and we make a list of abstract words. Then I give each table-group a word and challenge them to come up with a concrete description that shows us that abstract word. They get 1-2 minutes, and then we share out as I write the concrete details on the board. We discuss the difference in how an author can create emotion.

Next, I ask students to pay attention to the concrete details in the book they are reading, and I give them each a sticky note. “As you read today find at least one sentence where the author does something really clever with concrete details and/or figurative language,” I say.

Students read for 15 minutes, pen in hand, paying particular attention to the author’s craft. When time is up, I ask students to share their sentence in small groups and to analyze the effectiveness of the author’s word choice.

AllieTate“Think about what he’s trying to do there. Why did he mention the color of the sweater, or the smell of the breeze?” If they feel like the author’s accomplished creating emotion, they put the sticky on the board (or as in the photo here –poster).

Students need to not only recognize the details and know that they create some kind of imagery, they need to think about how effective the word choice is for what the author is doing at that moment in the story. If I can get them to start thinking about this, I can get them to begin making purposeful choices in their own writing.

Next, I ask students to search their own writing for concrete details that create images and to add a lot more. “Where can you add a phrase or line similar to what you found in the book you are reading? Is there somewhere you can add color or shape or texture?”

And we revise.

Follow-Up — When students immediately apply learning we’ve practiced using their personal reading materials, they begin to see the connections between becoming active readers and purposeful writers. This is the kind of lesson I do again and again with a different literary or grammar skills students to master. Next up:  subordinating conjunctions.

A few lines from students’ published narratives:

“Each body turned to watch as the green army, blurry, entered the gate. The ground only knew sadness and the sky transformed into a dark night, roaming like a lion.” –Tha Sung

“My first impression when I met Lucila:  petite, chunky, short red-velvet hair, wearing a sweater that covered her sins, mysterious face with a sealed silent mouth.” –Karina Rangel

“My brothers slept like angels with devilish grins.” –Geovanni Medina

#FridayReads: Hot Non-fiction for High School Readers

#FridayReads, Books, Boys & Literacy, Readers Writers Workshop October 30, 2015 Comments: 8

I still have non-readers. We are ending the ninth week of school, and usually by this time each fall, my Hold Outs experience a shift. They start reading. I haven’t pinpointed exact reasons for the resistance this year — I think I’m doing as many book talks, conferring sessions, and cheerleading-moments-about-books that I have in the past, but something is up with a good number of my students.. They just do not want to read.

I asked Bryan about his reading yesterday. He said, “I only read when I have to.”

“What can I do to help you want to read?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

This is where it gets tough. I get to be a magician and a mind reader.

Or, I just need to know books and keep talking about them. I just need to keep encouraging my students to read and surround them with books they will find interesting.

A few weeks ago, Jackie wrote Top Books for Reluctant High School Readers, and I remembered Ready Player One, Gone Girl, and Perks of Being a Wallflower. I need to book talk those!

About two months ago, I wrote about the novels-in-verse I got for my classroom. Many of my students who had never read a book have read two, three, and four of those titles now.

I know many boys will read non-fiction when they won’t read “make believe.” Seems it’s time for an infusion of hot non-fiction books that might add some intrigue to my classroom bookshelves. I need books that students like Bryan will want to read.teen_school_boys_reading

I posed this question to my writing partners:

What are the hottest non-fiction titles in your classroom library?

Here’s our master list:

Jackie’s List

Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides

I’m Staying with my Boys by Jim Proser

Jarhead by Anthony Swofford

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Half-Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood by Julie Gregory

The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea

Hellhound on His Trail by Hampton Sides

Kick Me by Paul Feig

Shana’s List

Pretty Little Killers by Daleen Berry (two girls murdered their best friend at the other high school in our county…kids cannot put this book down)

Columbine by Dave Cullen

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink (about Katrina; pairs well with Zeitoun)

Missoula by Jon Krakauer

…anything by the great sportswriter John Feinstein (The Punch, Next Man Up, A Season on the Brink)

Stiff by Mary Roach

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty (similar to Stiff; about working in a crematory)

…my War shelf, featuring Lone Survivor, American Sniper, Redeployment, or any other autobiography of a soldier

Erika’s List

Lucky by Alice Sebold (account of her rape and healing)

The Prisoner’s Wife &  Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother’s Story  both by asha bandele

No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row by Susan Kuklin

Inside: Life Behind Bars in America by Michael G. Santos

Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Woman’s Prison by Piper Kerman

Yummy by G.Neri (graphic novel based on a true story)

Shaq Talks Back by Shaquille O’Neal

Raising My Rainbow by Lori Duron

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai (Adult and YA)

A Child Called It, The Lost Boy, The Privilege of Youth, A Man Named Dave by Dave Pelzer (four part series, but each piece can be read independently)

Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Journey to Reunite with his Mother  by Sonia Nazario

The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise & The Bond by Sampson Davis and George Jenkins

Destined to Witness: Growing up Black in Nazi Germany by Hans J. Massaquoi

Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir & Have You Found Her by Janice Erlbaum

Amy’s List

A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard

Little Princes by Conor Grennan

Letters to My Young Brother by Harper Hill

The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout

Heaven is For Real by Todd Burpo

American Sniper by Chris Kyle

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

Exactly as I Am by Shaun Robinson

The Good Soldiers by David Finkel

Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Journey to Reunite with his Mother  by Sonia Nazario

Life without Limits by Nick Vujicic

Do you know of any titles we left out?

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

#FridayReads: Learning to WRITE WHAT MATTERS with Tom Romano

#FridayReads, Books, Writers Workshop October 23, 2015 Comments: 16

IMG_9890With the release of his newest book, Write What Matters, this year marks the tenth year I’ve been reading and writing beside the words of Tom Romano.  If you’ve not discovered his wisdom on injecting writing voice into student work, his guidance about writing to discover, or his brilliance in coining multigenre…you’re missing out.

This summer, at the UNH Literacy Institutes, Tom Newkirk talked at length about the guts it took for Tom Romano to publish Clearing the Way in 1987–the first “teacher book” of its kind.  Guided by the research of Donald Graves and his contemporaries, Romano explains the text’s origins to his reader:

“This book is born out of my own struggles to write well and fourteen years of working hard with teenage writers.  Both the writing and the working have been worth it.  They are fine passions.“

Thus began my pedagogical education–I read Clearing the Way in my very first English methods course in 2005.  Chapters like “The Crucial Role of Conferencing,” “A Creative Current,” and “Literary Warnings” showed me the possibilities if I created a classroom full of passion and verve and real writers.

IMG_9889Next I happened upon Crafting Authentic Voice, in Romano’s own writing methods class at Miami University in 2007.  A quote from page five of this book hangs prominently in my classroom to this day: “Voice is the writer’s presence on the page, the writer’s DNA.”  I point to those words when I endeavor to help students develop voice.  Chapters like “Enter Craft,” “The Five-Paragraph-You-Know-What,” and “Imitation” have guided my teaching of writing, and I see in those topics the work of Katie Wood Ray, Penny Kittle, and Georgia Heard.

Blending Genre, Altering Style I read in my Master’s level writing methods course, again with Romano himself.  This book helped me flesh out the nuts and bolts of teaching multigenre, which remains to this day both the most effective, enriching work I do with my students, and their very favorite thing.  Reading and writing about chapters like “The Many Ways of Poems,” “Genres Answered,” and the practical “Evaluation and Grading” led me to present with Romano on the many possibilities offered by multigenre at NCTE13.

I’d been teaching five years and was already living in West Virginia when I read Fearless Writing, seeking more guidance about teaching writing.  Practical chapters like “Easing into Poetry Through Imitation,” “Crafting Narrative,” and “Self-Assessment: Raising the Blinds” pushed me to take my teaching of many genres to new heights, with wonderful student results.

Last year, thrashing in the throes of a difficult PhD program, I sought wisdom from Romano in Zigzag, where his chapter “Meltdown” showed me empathy, peace, and guidance.  “I’d never been more at peace with a big decision,” Romano writes of leaving his own doctoral program.  I did the same, and I’m at peace too.

Now, as I prepare to welcome my first child into the world, I’m contemplating where my career will take me.  I’ve long known I don’t want to try to sustain my level of involvement with teaching high schoolers while trying to be a mom.  But I don’t want to leave the amazing, sustaining, nurturing community of teachers and writers and thinkers I engage with here at TTT, or at NCTE, or on Twitter.  I don’t want to leave my tribe, as Penny Kittle says.

Screen Shot 2015-10-23 at 5.34.59 AMAnd, again, Romano is here to guide me through my next steps–Write What Matters: For Yourself, For Others is lately ordered from Amazon and on its way to me.  I know that chapters like “Trust the Gush,” “Risk and All,” and “Who Are You to Presume to Write?” will guide me as I wonder about my future teacher-writer identity.  I know that this book is what I need right now:

Many want to write. But sometimes they lose heart. They are cowed in the face of so many fine writers of fiction, memoir, poetry, columns, and creative nonfiction. Their confidence wanes. If you want to write, but are hesitant, let Tom Romano lift your confidence. In Write What Matters you will find discussions of writing processes that make sense, demonstrations of effective strategies to try, advice about developing productive habits to get your writing done, and examples of illuminating writing from fearless writers, both professional and novice. Your voice, your vision, your way with words matter. They are tied to your identity. You know that you are more alive when you put words on paper. Accept that you not only want to write. You need to write. Write What Matters will help you learn to dwell in your written words and craft them into writing worth reading by others.

Pick up Write What Matters, or any of Tom’s many other works of wisdom and power.  Let Tom Romano lift your confidence–in your writing, your teaching, and your passion.  His words, and he, have been my single most reliable, important mentors as I seek to be a teacher of writing, a teacher-writer, and a plain old Saturday-morning-notebook-storyteller.

Sharing Student Work — Making a Pledge to Do More

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, AP Language, Narrative, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop October 22, 2015 Leave a comment

For some time now I’ve thought I needed to do more. I ask my students to write a lot. I ask them to take ownership of their process, practice their craft, take risks. I hope they will care about their audience, but unless it’s a post on their blogs (and sometimes even then) I don’t think they consider much about their readers.

My colleagues here at Three Teachers Talk and I had the idea a few years ago to publish student work on this site regularly. We planned it all out. We’d hope for student volunteers that might want to produce something like a mini-Nerdy Book Club but with student readers and student writers. Then I did a little research:

I found sites like Young Writers Society, Teen Ink, Figment, Teen Lit, and of course, NaNoWriMo that publish the work of young writers and allow them to join online writing communities and learn about competitions, awards, scholarship, and more. This list of 40 of the Best Sites for Young Writers has even more resources.

I still want to do more, but what I need to do is introduce my writers to site like these and extend the invitation that they explore, discover, and get involved. I know a few will. Maybe many will.

In the meantime, here’s a sampling of the writing I’ve read this week. Not because I like the topic — it horrifies me on many levels — but because this writer shows heart, I want to share her work.  Read it. You’ll see why I know I need to do more to help my students write for audiences that will appreciate their craft.

Bruised-Knees by Alexia Alexander

It was a breaking point.

By the time my spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl, my face was wet with tears. I was sick, in part from eating, and in part from everything else. I had to cry quietly; I suffered silently in order to avoid questions, sometimes, even hidden behind smiles and laughter. The chocolate and caramel ice cream weighed my stomach down. I felt 200 lbs of milk, sugar, grief, loneliness, depression, cocoa, corn syrup, and artificial flavors. My entire 500 caloric intake itched in my throat. I felt heavy now. I felt worthless now. I felt defeated now. I ran as quickly up the stairs as I could, but voices, almost as loud as the screaming downstairs, followed me.

“Why’d you eat that ice cream? You’ve already had enough. You’re just going to GAIN weight if you eat something like that. You can’t you even starve yourself right,” I told myself.

Staying up late reading about it, I prepared myself for chaos. Although I laid under two blankets and behind a locked door, I found little comfort. In fact, I hadn’t even kept the monsters out; they began to creep inside of my head. I spent the nights crying, reading pro-anamia blogs, drowning my ears out in Maria Mena, and looking up the most fabulous ways to destroy myself, self-esteem first.

Now getting a chance to test my research, I rushed to the bathroom, still crying. I looked at myself in the mirror; I cried even more. I was sobbing and choking, sounding like that one kid in elementary that always forgot his inhaler on mile-day. I dropped to my knees, as if I were about to pray, but I couldn’t remember what people were supposed to say to a divinity.I gripped the sides of bleach-white seats, as if my faith would be found there, and hung over the porcelain throne, like a sea-sick passenger. The bathroom became dizzy in my eyes, and the pink walls were a blur mixed in the leopard print bathroom curtain. The white tiles painted my knees black and blue and staring at them made the wave of sickness more intense. In the reflection of the toilet-bowl-water, I even looked green and sickly, but I can’t say my self-perception was quite accurate in those days.

I had screenshotted instructions on my cracked iPod screen on how to do it. I looked up everything. I needed all the how-to’s before I went through with anything. I knew I could use a toothbrush or two fingers. I knew I could make markers in my stomach. I knew how many seconds it would take. I knew that it would sting. I knew the long-term damage the acid could do to my teeth. I knew how deadly it was. I knew how sick I was.

But I continued, another event to add to my list of “First-Times.”

Slowly shoving a finger in between my lips, I danced it around trying to find the spot. I felt the tickling as I touched the dangling piece of skin. I added a finger, this time gagging slightly, but knowing no matter hard I cried, I couldn’t take my hand out. I gagged again,  bringing up the bile taste in my throat. I couldn’t choke. I had to keep going. I gagged another time, body split over the toilet as I heaved.

I had found the food that comes up almost as easily as it goes down. The ice cream coated my throat, for a second time, and it still felt cold. It masked the normal taste of vomit, gladly, and I finally felt lighter;I equated that to feeling better and didn’t think twice about why I was still crying.

“Maybe you can be lovely now. See, you’re already feeling better,”  said the demons in my head, who told me things like this frequently. I tried to ignore them, but sometimes my own silent voice felt like a scream between my ears. I cried myself to sleep that night, still trying to convince myself I had done well.

I wish I had known then what I really was trying to rid myself of. I wish somewhere on that ground I really had some holy revelation, but wisdom like self-love and perseverance can only be taught from low moments like those. It took years to find what really weighed me down, more than food or fat. It took years to love myself and my body. It took years to get over the urge to skip a meal, and the shame after eating. It took years to face the demons and shut them up. But each moment that buckled me to my knees gave me strength, and brought me closer to where I am now. Moments I’d rather forget, have to remain real, so  I always remember my growth, and never repeat the past.

 

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

7 Reasons to Stop Asking about AP Test Scores

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, AP Language, Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop October 21, 2015 Comments: 9

The question took me by surprise.

I’d just spent an hour or so sharing how I facilitate readers and writers workshop in my AP English Language classroom. I’d shared a video that showed my students testifying to how much they like having a choice in the books they read and why they feel like they will learn through choice reading this year. I’d shared a mini-lesson on how I teach skills using the books students choose to read, even when they are reading 30 different texts. I’d answered a variety of questions asked by pre-service teachers in Dr. Leavell-Carter’s master’s class at the University of North Texas and started to pack my things.

“What about your AP scores, did they go up?” one young woman asked, “I mean, I just think that would be a double benefit,” she said with a smile.

They say there are no bad questions, but I’ll go to the mat arguing that this is one we really need to stop asking.

I answered as honest as I could: “No. . .well, yes, when I began facilitating writer’s workshop, my scores increased double digits, but I don’t put much stock in AP scores, any standardized test scores, really, there are so many variables, you know; the students and their abilities differ from year to year, and since I’ve only taught in Title I schools where open enrollment is an invitation for all students to take AP classes with no prerequisites or even any preparation for the rigorous coursework, it’s difficult to prepare all students all the time at the same level of learning…”

Then I kicked myself all the way home. Why was I trying to justify my test scores? I’ve written about this before. I have much better proof that workshop works than any kind of testing data:

  1. Many of my students read more during the nine months they spend in my class than they do in

    from Joseph’s reading self-evaluation

    all of the 10 years of school they’ve had prior to coming to me.

  2. Almost all of my students read more books the year they spend with me than they read the year before.
  3. Many students read their first book cover to cover their junior year in my AP English class.
  4. Most students move into complex reading on their own because choice not only gets students reading; it gets them reading critically.
  5. Students tell me every year, “Thank you for allowing me to love reading again.”
  6. My readers learn to see themselves, and to see beyond themselves, by participating in book clubs with peers in non-threatening conversations about literature.
  7. My writers take ownership of their writing and compose beautifully and skillfully crafted texts.

There is no test that measures what my student come to appreciate as readers or what they come to realize as writers.

Sure, I want my students who choose to take the AP exam to do well, but I do not believe it shows what they come to understand about language. (And after scoring essays in Kansas City in June, I believe that even less.) Sure, I’ll keep encouraging my students to take the exam, but I believe most of them will benefit from taking freshman comp in college — even if they read and write well enough to score a 5. At least one English professor agrees with me:

“AP-credits are not always an accurate gauge of student learning. High AP scores in chemistry, for example, may indicate that students understand the basic concepts, but that doesn’t mean they know what to do at a laboratory bench.” (Bobby Fong, college dean and English professor).

I say what’s true for chemistry is also true for English. That doesn’t mean they know what to do when writing an essay for graduate school or a blog post for their employer or reading a report for their business or a decree in a divorce settlement.

Let’s focus on the skills our students need to be successful in the lives that lay before them.

For me, readers and writers workshop helps me do that.

 

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

The Importance of Narrative: Stories That Stay With Us

Narrative, Shana Karnes, Writers Workshop October 20, 2015 Comments: 7

I was reading a weekly one-pager yesterday and came upon this little note from a student:

IMG_9850

This student, Aleigha, had taken an elective writing class with me as a sophomore.  Now, as a senior, she wanted to revisit the story she’d begun two years ago, and give it a different ending.  I was surprised that Aleigha had remembered that story, and that its ending had nagged her for two years.  I was even more surprised, as I started to read her one-pager, that I remembered her story, too–a fictional narrative in which two soulmates are torn asunder by circumstance.  She’d ended the story unhappily, leaving the two protagonists separate.  In this year’s one-pagers, though, she’s slowly bringing them back together.

Aleigha’s narrative was powerful to her, and personal, despite its fictional genre.  Her peers’ feedback indicated that her characters’ situations were relateable–that everyone wants people in love to end up together, because it’s something we all strive for as humans.  Narratives give us something to root for.

During a Google Hangout this summer, Jackie talked about her students’ writing of narratives, and how “the transformative power of common stories” brought out their best and most vulnerable writing.  “Every child has a story to tell,” agrees Don Graves.  Because of this truth, narratives are my favorite genre to teach.

We all have a story to tell–a story that stays with us, that we can’t get out of our minds, no matter how long it’s been since the idea was seeded.

As my students write their narratives, I’m shocked by how naturally the words are flowing out of their pens.  When the topic is powerful, I feel like I have little to do in the way of writing instruction–I simply have to get out of the way and let them write.  I have mini-lessons planned on pacing, setting, sensory details, and characterization.  But I’m finding beautiful writing already extant in their drafts:

“Every time I step onto the ice, it takes me to my childhood,” Mitchell’s story begins.

Kaylee stuns me with: “The musky smell of burning wood rose into the air as the sound of water crackling split the silence.”

“Realizing you’re gay, and accepting you’re gay, are two very different things,” another story leads with.

The brilliant Tom Newkirk explains why students are able to effortlessly write this way in Minds Made for Stories:  “The hero of the story is a narrative itself…Narrative is there to help us ‘compose’ ourselves when we meet difficulty or loss. It is there to ground abstract ideas, to help us see the pattern in a set of numerical data, to illuminate the human consequences of political action. It is home base.”

We make sense of the world by weaving its happenings into a story–by the time our students come to their notebooks with an idea, they’ve already rehearsed this story many times.  They are just bursting to tell it.  It is home base.

While narrative may not be considered the most “rigorous” of genres, I believe it is the most important one.  It is the writing that demands to be done–the genre that is the most personally fulfilling, the most emotionally wrenching to write, but the most necessary to exorcise from our minds.  Let your students write their stories–write your own beside them–and watch your community of writers bloom.

Mini-Lesson Monday: This lesson stinks, literally.  Teaching Sensory Details in Narrative Writing.

Jackie Catcher, Narrative October 19, 2015 Comments: 3

FullSizeRender-1I, like many of my students, am a kinesthetic learner.  Not only do I learn by doing, but for many tasks, I require a hands-on approach to fully grasp the complexity of a concept.  Yet as a teacher, applying kinesthetic techniques to English concepts can be somewhat challenging.  While we write and read and physically play with words, I try to create simulations and activities that allow my students to experiment with writing in unique ways.  This activity, which is one of my favorites of the year, uses students’ olfactory sense to stimulate sensory detail writing within their personal narratives.

Objectives:  Using the language of the Depth of Knowledge levels, students will identify personal memories associated with unidentified scents.  Recalling prior and newly acquired knowledge, they will translate their observations into descriptive writing by constructing sentences that rely on sensory details.  Finally, students will apply their understanding of descriptive writing to their own personal narratives.

Lesson:  This mini-lesson takes preparation, but students’ responses are worth the extra time.  First, collect the following supplies: Plastic cups (I use blue Solo cups), a permanent marker, tinfoil, a toothpick, rubber bands (optional), and a variety of objects that have a scent.  This year I used lime juice, perfume, scented wax blocks from Walmart, BBQ sauce, apple cider vinegar, garlic, mint extract, crayons, and Play-Doh.  Every year is different though and I typically rely on what I have around my home.

I put the scented sauces, liquids, and objects in each of the cups, cover the cups with tin-foil, and wrap a rubber band around the top to secure the foil.  I label each cup with a number and poke holes in the tin-foil with a toothpick.  Next I place the cups around the room. After taking some notes on the concept of “show don’t tell,” students walk around the room smelling the contents of each cup.  They must not peek (believe me they will try)!

FullSizeRender

My students were convinced I had a tiny Abercrombie and Fitch model in this cup. In reality, it was a block of scented wax from Walmart.

I provide each student with a grid in which they fill in the cup number, adjectives to describe the scent, and personal memories the scent conjures.  They must then write a two-to-three-line story or scenario in which they describe the scent without identifying what the scent is.  By the end of the activity, when we come back together as a group, students excitedly volunteer to read their sentences in order to reveal the contents of the cup.

Follow Up:  Following this activity, we identify sensory details within our independent reading books and take turns discussing these details within our groups.  Finally, during workshop time, students add sensory details to their personal narrative rough drafts, in turn “showing” images rather than “telling” them.  The process of digging into their narratives and writing in the margins reinforces the messy, step-by-step process of revision that many of my students struggle to grasp.  If time allows, students partake in a whip share in which we each share one line from our narratives that includes sensory details.

What are some untraditional writing activities you use? How do you get your students moving around the classroom?

#FridayReads: Whole-Class Novels to Teach, and How to Frame Them

Books, Jackie Catcher, Readers Workshop, Shana Karnes October 16, 2015 Comments: 3

This past summer Shana and Jackie found that we’d both taken on a unique experiment within some of our classes–we had decided to strip them of whole class novels and instead focus on independent reading, book clubs, and smaller whole-class texts.  As workshop teachers confident in the power of choice reading, we each felt that this shift would be both empowering and inspiring within our classrooms.  After our year of experimentation, we both left our classrooms with unique perspectives on the power of whole-class novels as well as how we would incorporate them moving forward.

Today is the third and final installment of our week-long discussion using Google Docs.  Please, join the conversation in the comments!

41Cx8mY2UNL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_Question 6: How is it different to be forced to teach a certain novel versus to be able to choose the ones you teach?

Jackie: I will readily admit that I am “forced” to teach To Kill A Mockingbird and Macbeth at the freshman level.  That being said, I love teaching both of them and am fortunate that my students respond well to both pieces.  The challenges are certainly different though.  I must create student buy-in or else my students will drag through the next four to six weeks of our unit.  I frame each lesson to fit their needs and I make sure to fit the book into a workshop structure the best I can to create consistency.

I do believe that teachers must have a choice in what they teach, though.  We must be allowed to tailor our lessons to fit the needs of our students.  Independent reading allows us to understand our students as readers and individuals, which in turn, allows us to further assess what books our students might connect with best.  Fortunately for me, the freshman team I work on is progressive and forward-thinking.  They’re always willing to try new things, which oftentimes involves integrating contemporary works.

Shana:  This summer in Tom Newkirk’s class, he innocently posed this question to our class:  “Why is the defining novel about race in our country written by a white woman?”  He was referring to To Kill a Mockingbird, of course, as many of us were discussing its lately-released sequel.  That question, so casually tossed into our midst, made me think about why the canonized novels taught in schools are often so heavily prescripted.  Why does Harper Lee have a voice of authority about being black in America?  Why do my rural students need to read a particular story about race?  I know why it’s important to read stories about people different than us–I would argue that it’s essential to building empathy and a broader worldview to read widely–but why does Harper Lee hold the monopoly on that topic, and not someone like Toni Morrison or Zora Neale Hurston?

As usual, I have raised more questions than I’ve even attempted to answer, but I’m still not sure of the correct solutions.  I think it’s preposterous to have a rote schedule of “books to teach” for all teachers in a school when it’s blatantly obvious that the community of every classroom is different, which means the culture of its students is always unique, which means that no child ever needs the same book at the same time.

Jackie: It’s funny that you bring up Tom Newkirk’s question.  As I was sitting next to you, I had one of those hide-your-face-moments when I thought, “Oh geez, I teach To Kill A Mockingbird!”  As I said earlier, I am required to teach this book, and while I love it, it does not meet the needs of all of my students.  Teaching in New Hampshire, I have a predominantly white population.  This means that their understanding of race relations and their exposure to diverse literature is rather whitewashed.  We desperately need new, diverse voices to help our students understand and empathize with a variety of individuals.  The precious few books we read together should be based on the needs and interests of our students instead of being dictated by a one-size-fits-all approach.

Question 4: What is the most effective way to frame a whole-class novel and create student buy-in?

Jackie: At the beginning of the school year I discuss the different types of reading we encounter as lifelong students.  I explain that, as a reader, I read for pleasure as well as for knowledge.  Oftentimes those two paths can and may cross, but typically my personal reading life looks drastically different from my professional reading life.  I love pouring through popular YA lit, but in the same breath, I can’t get enough of dissecting poetry with my AP Literature class.

This same pattern applies to my students’ reading within our classroom.  As a class we must learn to maintain a fruitful and engaging personal reading life that allows us to not only learn from our literature but to also explore our own interests and passions.  That being said, we mustn’t overlook the power of dissecting and discussing language and craft as a class.  Reading whole class novels reinforces the fact that no two people read a book the same way.

Shana:  If choice is the golden guide to teaching of reading, then I think the culture of a classroom must dictate the novel we read.  While A Raisin in the Sun was immensely popular in my inner-city Cincinnati classroom, it completely flopped here in West Virginia when I tried to teach it.  The inverse is true of Huck Finn; wildly successful in WV, but a total fail in Ohio.  Thus, I seek to hear the themes my students return to again and in again in their writing and conversations–this year, we are engaged in many discussions about political rhetoric, the origin of power, and the struggle that class/social/financial/ethnic differences create.  Thus, I’ll seek out novels that explore those themes to help us engage with them more fully.

In closing, we leave you with a list of the most successful whole class novels we have taught as well as a list of the books we would teach our current students if given the opportunity.

Most successful novels I taught, from Shana:28c4d1f2e8d048f702c3dbf0990aca8c

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

What I’d love to teach, based on my current students, from Shana:

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

Boy21 by Matthew Quick

Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Most successful novels I taught, from Jackie…(you’ll notice some repeats):51BWES5VL2L

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (read aloud and performed as a play)

On Writing by Stephen King

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

What I’d love to teach, based on my current students, from Jackie:

Sold by Patricia McCormick

Here, Bullet by Brian Turner

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Be sure to join the conversation today in the comments! We would love to hear your perspective on whole class novels and how you incorporate them into your classroom.

Click here to read day two of our conversation.

Click here to read day one of our conversation.

Whole-Class Novels: Why Do We Teach Them, Anyway?

Books, Jackie Catcher, Readers Workshop, Shana Karnes October 15, 2015 Comments: 2

This past summer Shana and Jackie found that we’d both taken on a unique experiment within some of our classes–we had decided to strip them of whole class novels and instead focus on independent reading, book clubs, and smaller whole-class texts.  As workshop teachers confident in the power of choice reading, we each felt that this shift would be both empowering and inspiring within our classrooms.  After our year of experimentation, we both left our classrooms with unique perspectives on the power of whole-class novels as well as how we would incorporate them moving forward.

Here is day two of our insights and discussion we’ve had over the past week using Google Docs (click here for day one).  Please, join the conversation in the comments!

Question 3: After a year without whole-class novels, how did you feel?MTI5MzY0OTk4NTM0MjQwNzM0

Jackie: At the beginning of the year, I felt like a rebel.  The thought of not only allowing but also empowering students through independent reading went against the entire curriculum within our department.  All of my colleagues taught whole class novels, which meant that none of my students had experienced the pure freedom of choice.  That being said, three-quarters of the way through the year, I missed whole class novels.  Despite having unique successes with the independent reading, my classes lacked the communal experiences of reading, discussing, and simply just enjoying (or sometimes hating) a novel together.  By the end of the year, I found that both my students and I missed some components of reading whole class novels.

Shana:  I reflected on my teaching after a year without whole-class novels (mind you, many novels were read through book clubs, literature circles, reading challenges, and independent reading), but I felt like the one thing that was lacking in all of my instruction was the idea of sustenance.  I wasn’t seeing my students sustain an idea for an extended period, or grapple with an issue over time, or try to live with a topic for more than two drafts and three weeks.  The case was the same in their reading and writing–I wanted them to have more length in their thought processes and I wanted us to engage in those long thought processes together.

Question 4: Why is teaching a whole-class novel valuable?  More specifically, why do we do it, and what skills are taught?

brave-new-world-bookShana:  I am not sure why I used to teach whole class novels, or, specifically, why I taught the novels I taught.  I know that there were valuable instructional methods behind the way I taught them (thematic units, Socratic circles, exploratory essays), but I don’t know if I had a sound rationale behind the obligation I felt to actually teach multiple novels to all of my students.

After a year without them, though, I find that the collective classroom experience of reading, interpreting, and discussing a novel produces a route for a unique connection to a text that cannot be achieved without reading as a group.  I missed the experience of coming to a new, shared understanding of a text as a whole class, and I felt that my students missed out on that experience as well.  I don’t believe that when I read plays independently in my undergraduate Shakespeare capstone that I would have comprehended, connected to, or engaged as passionately with those plays alone as much as I did through our frequent in-class discussions, activities, and writings.  I don’t want my students to miss out on that experience either.

Jackie: This year I am teaching AP Literature for the first time.  I took the challenge believing that this new course would be somewhat of a paradigm shift for me compared to my contemporary-lit based freshman English class.  The more I prepared, the more I yearned to discuss my thoughts, questions, and analyses of texts.  I went so far as to ask everyone around me to read these canonical classics and discuss them with me.  Preparing to teach AP Lit reinforced the social significance of reading literature.  At its base, dissecting stories as a group is interesting and engaging.  Beating the crap out of them is not.  I agree with you, Shana, in that the experience of sharing a text is one of the blessings of being in an English classroom.  Once students graduate from high school, they rarely have the opportunity to interact with texts in a classroom setting.

Shana: I love that the way you prepared to teach was to ask friends to read books with you, then discuss them.  You engaged in an authentic book club there, as I know you have your students do now.

More of our discussion will follow tomorrow.  Be sure to join the conversation today in the comments!

Whole-Class Novels: To Teach, Or Not to Teach?

Books, Jackie Catcher, Readers Workshop, Shana Karnes October 14, 2015 Comments: 14

This past summer Shana and Jackie found that we’d both taken on a unique experiment within some of our classes–we had decided to strip them of whole class novels and instead focus on independent reading, book clubs, and smaller whole-class texts.  As workshop teachers confident in the power of choice reading, we each felt that this shift would be both empowering and inspiring within our classrooms.  After our year of experimentation, we both left our classrooms with unique perspectives on the power of whole-class novels as well as how we would incorporate them moving forward.

Over the next three days, we will post our insights and discussion we’ve had over the past week using Google Docs.  Please, join the conversation in the comments!

imagesQuestion 1: How did you decide to get rid of of whole class novels?

Jackie: Last year I was faced with a unique opportunity: the English Department voted to end popular College Preparatory Advanced Composition course.  Despite the well established curriculum, I tossed aside the typical whole class novels in favor of independent reading. As a primarily freshman English teacher, I am required to teach one Shakespeare play and To Kill A Mockingbird.  Advanced Composition gave me the opportunity to focus on smaller whole class reads and mentor texts within daily writing workshops without devoting whole units to one book.

Shana:  After six years of teaching, I wasn’t really sure why I felt compelled to teach whole-class novels.  Every year, when I picked up Catcher in the Rye, I dreaded my job.  I hated that book, and I had no idea how to get my students to love it or connect with it.  It felt like a chore to drag my students through “reading” that text (mostly they were SparkNoting it, sometimes with the assistance of their football coaches–true story).  I knew that not every student loved every novel that I did (particularly Their Eyes Were Watching God), and I knew that I didn’t love every novel my students read on their own (particularly everything by Nicholas Sparks).  I started to wonder–what would my teaching be like if I didn’t feel compelled to teach a whole-class novel…merely because I should?

Jackie: The eye opening experience for me was definitely during my first year of teaching.  I began integrating independent reading into my curriculum and I suddenly found out how many voracious readers I had in class.  My teaching was getting in the way of these students’ education! I like how Shana puts it–I also knew that my students didn’t love the novels I did (Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson) and in the end, if I gave them freedom, I too would learn much more about literature, reading, and teenagers.

Shana:  I like that Jackie mentions the issue of devoting whole units to a book–I loved having the freedom to design units of study that weren’t anchored around a novel, but rather a different genre.

Rye_catcherQuestion 2: What were the positives of having no whole class novels and what were the negatives?

Jackie:  After a year, I have found both positives and negatives to removing whole class novels.  Getting rid of whole class novels allowed me more time to focus on the positive aspects of the workshop model.  Naturally student choice led to easier student buy-in, and I spent less time convincing students of the value of reading.  As a result, we spent more time cracking apart smaller whole class reads like essays, poems, and articles and truly contemplating the author’s choices and craft.  Additionally, I liked that I could assess students and discuss their growth based on their own reading goals and progress.  

I have yet to find a solution to the “be on this page by this day” debacle that comes with teaching whole class novels.  Too often whole class novels lead to less differentiation and more stress, which can lead to the “gotcha” feel that comes with discussing larger, longer texts.  

That being said, there was a lot that I missed about having whole class novels.  Losing a longer common text meant that students didn’t have the common classroom experience of connecting over both the successes and frustrations of working through a complex text together.  I was surprised by how much students want to discuss their reading with classmates.  While reading can at times feel solitary and maybe even isolating during the actual act, in reality, reading complex texts is a communal activity that unites groups through a variety of perspectives, opinions, and interpretations.

Shana:  The positives were that I felt like my curriculum map was much more relaxed and flexible, in contrast to the years where I felt like I had to teach a minimum number of novels and “fit them in.”  I also loved seeing my students’ love of reading skyrocket as they engaged in choice and challenges on only an independent or small-group basis.

The negatives were more nebulous–I just felt like something was missing.  Our learners crave a challenge, and navigating a difficult novel is a challenge all readers relish if they have autonomy in their reading of that novel.  Reading a novel together provides an opportunity for me to create instruction that scaffolds a student’s reading skills up to the level of that novel, allowing them to participate in a reading experience they may not have been able to enjoy otherwise.

I also really missed being able to ascertain the barometer of a class’s feelings on a certain theme or issue through discussions of a complex text.  Crime and Punishment explores issues of morality, regret, and psychology in a far more complex way than “The Tell-Tale Heart” ever could, and although both stories have very similar themes, the novel lends itself to the sustenance of thought, evolution of a character, and length of a reading experience that I so craved for my students.  I also think that some reading skills specific to stamina, fluency, and automaticity cannot be practiced or taught effectively without a lengthy text, so I felt that last year, my students missed out on practicing those skills.

Jackie: While we both feel similar in the value of whole class novels , I know that neither of us would return to a set list of novels.  Whole class novels allow us to engage in common discussions but independent reading lays the groundwork for students’ stamina and confidence.  I don’t start my first round of literature circles until the second quarter because of this.  As much as students need a communal reading experience, I believe they first need a taste of independence and success.
Shana:  I still haven’t figured out the whole reading schedule thing either, nor how to create buy-in for every single student so that they autonomously, independently want to read a novel.  I struggle with the this-page-by-this-day conundrum, too, mostly because I feel like that creates a certain accountability that kids get hung up on, because it relates to the dreaded word GRADES. 

More of our discussion will follow tomorrow.  Be sure to join the conversation today in the comments!

Click here to read day two of our discussion.