Category Archives: Maggie Lopez

Poetry Out Loud

Maggie Lopez, Poetry, Readers Writers Workshop February 10, 2020 1 Comment

As a teacher, we tend to teach what we like and what excites us.  As I confessed before, poetry is hard for me to get into.  I get more jazzed up over nonfiction or an engaging book.  But this year I have pushed myself to be uncomfortable with poetry at times because my students need and deserve poetry.

And you know what, so far so good.  I have enjoyed the challenge of challenging my teaching range and comfort.

This year, aside from dissecting and discussing poems for the AP Lit exam, we have written beside poems like “Desiderata” and “Lost Generation.”  We’ve watched spoken word performances.  We have written poems about our names and heritage.  We have discussed thematically related poems in small and jigsawed groups.  We have created Book Spine poems that connected to another work of literature.  We have found and shared poems connected to our independent reading as a way of book talking those books.  We have read poetry for the sake of hearing words and enjoying them.  We have also participated in the annual Poetry Out Loud competition.  

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As a national competition sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Out Loud has been around since 2006, with the goal of promoting exposure and participation in poetry and spoken word.  Simply, it is a recitation or performance competition that begins at the classroom level with students reciting one or two poems, then progresses to the school, regional, and possibly national level. When started in 2006, only classic poets (think Dickens, Dickenson, and Front) were featured, but the program has since expanded greatly with hundreds of diverse, living choices for students to recite.

My school participates each year, starting at the classroom level.  Top performances from each period are then selected to compete among their peers in the same English class period (freshmen through seniors), with the top performances then competing at the school-wide assembly.  The winner of the school-wide assembly, which is judged by a panel of non-English teachers with Poetry Out Loud’s official rubric, goes on to represent our school at the regional level, possibly national.

While many students are shy and hesitant to perform in front of their peers, the competition has great benefits.  

  • It is a unique way to incorporate speaking and listening standards and a related performance task.
  • There are ample mini-lessons to incorporate with each student’s choice of poem you can pull from your poetry teaching archives or the website.  We researched the poets and their inspiration, examined how diction creates tone, where to place emphasis when performing, and how one creates a verbal tone that mirrors the message of the poem.  
  • The entire competition is student-centered and differentiated–students are selecting the poems, working to understand their poem beyond memorizing the words, and performing the poems.
  • The competition cultivates an appreciation for performed poetry and exposes all participants, myself included, to new poetry.  This year, I really loved hearing new poems. Some of my new favorites: “How to Triumph like a Girl” by Ada Limon, “The Delta” by Bruce Bond, “The End of Science Fiction” by Lisel Mueller, and our school’s winner, “Rabbits and Fire” by Alberto Rios.

While I still have more ideas for more poetry in the classroom–mimicking a style or genre, weaving a poem with original art, creating blackout poems, crafting poems from chapter titles or lines–Poetry Out Loud adds another dimension to poetry in the classroom. 

Check it out and put it on your school’s calendar for January 2021!

 

Maggie Lopez is currently reading “Bringing Up Bebe” and “The Coddling of the American Mind” as she awaits her baby girl in April.  She will be taking a hiatus from writing for the blog, but looks forward to reconnecting in the fall.

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A Return to Flexible Seating

Classroom Culture, Community, Maggie Lopez, Readers Writers Workshop January 13, 2020 Leave a comment

After introducing flexible seating into my junior/senior English classroom last year, I reflected in July about what I liked and didn’t like about the classroom arrangement.  After implementing some changes of my own and many reader suggestions (thank you!), I wanted to reflect over another semester of flexible seating.

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What I changed this fall:

  • Furniture Arrangement:  This year, I made smaller pods of seating. I got rid of the large round tables that ate up a lot of the room and actually moved in more traditional desks (partially due to larger classes).  With the additional space, I was able to fit two smaller tables and a set of chairs for students to work, providing more options for spaces. The room has a nearly-equal balance of seats that require students to use clipboards for writing and desktops or tables.
  • Expectations:  We had a discussion about the purpose and role of flexible seating in the classroom at the end of the second week of school and set guidelines together versus rules.  Students were granted permission to move the furniture to better facilitate group work or sight of the whiteboard, with the stipulation the room comes back to order when the bell rang.  We also discussed the importance of creating a single classroom environment, not one of multiple little pods, and facilitating that through direct eye contact.  I also shared my goal that the classroom feels more like a home than a place of rigid learning, but that homes are to be respected.  
  • Ownership:  While I still reserve the right to ask a student to make a better seating choice, I started the year by asking students to change seating areas each day for the first two weeks.  I believe this established that no one has a “spot,” but we share the space based on need and how we are feeling each day. Additionally, students are required to select a seating new area of the classroom every six weeks or so, which coincides with our school’s midterms and quarters.

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With larger classes this year, the room is more crowded, but feels more, well, flexible.  Removing the large, cumbersome tables also makes re-arranging the desks and chairs for a Socratic Seminar much easier.  I also have enough desks to facilitate an inner circle of desks and an outer circle of chairs. With smaller tables, groups are naturally formed which is a time saver and I can check in with one area at a time for conferences or work checks. Additionally, with less traditional seating available than with last year’s set up, my students and I have utilized the luxury of the cafeteria tables right outside my door.  While one class period a day may not be able to access these additional workspaces because of the lunch schedule, the cafeteria tables have become an extension of our classroom and great for spreading out groups or when we need more table space.

With very few reminders, students have been respectful and able to flow between small group learning and whole-class learning.  I notice students craning their necks to look at their peers or myself when talking and students.  While some classes are more open to moving daily than others, I find more students are switching around where they sit every few days, are moving based on what we are doing in class, and voluntarily switching seats to accommodate peers.  Students this year take responsibility for their seating choice for the day and have not “claimed” a seat as students did last fall, sitting there through the spring. Sometimes, I confess, the classroom does feel disjointed, like when students are working independently and chatting with those close to them, but I remind myself that at least they’re in a community, not isolated desks of individuals.

While the set-up and general facilitation of non-traditional seating is not always easy and I’d love to make my own place in the classroom just as flexible, students unanimously responded across six classes that they prefer the arrangement and choice to rows of desks, especially for reading time.  So if it works for them, I will make it work for me!

Maggie Lopez wishes everyone a happy, productive 2020 full of excellent books!  She is currently reading “The Lost City of Z” by David Grann after thoroughly enjoying “Killers of the Flower Moon.” You can connect with her @meglopez0.

Text Talk: Ink Knows No Borders

Maggie Lopez, Poetry, Readers Writers Workshop, Talk, Text Talk November 29, 2019 1 Comment

In American Literature this year, we are taking a “disrupted” look at the American Dream, noticing its failings and shortcomings through the literature we read as a class. 

After discussions over the summer reading titles and a gallery walk to generate our thinking around the American Dream, we watched an abbreviated version of Chimamanda Adichie’s TedTalk “The Danger of a Single Story” before identifying and discussing the “single stories” in our lives and our world.

We then dug into selections from Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience. The collection of poetry features a range of perspectives on adjusting to life as an immigrant as one tries to stay connected to their home culture while adapting to a new place. The poems are both heartbreaking and heartwarming tributes to the courage of the authors.

With a packet of assorted poems, students first processed one poem with their peers, spending time deciphering meaning and making connections.  We then created jigsawed groups where students taught and discussed their poems with a new set of peers. Together, the jigsawed groups began to track thematic connections across the differing, yet similar experiences of the authors.

The poetry offered alternative perspectives while being accessible and real. The poems about names and traditions resonated with my refugee students from Africa, while other students related to the burden of balancing two cultures, one at home and one at school. We Googled more information about the current situation at the Mexico-US border, and one student was brave enough to share his family’s story of obtaining citizenship while another student shared that she fears ICE will take away her parents every day. 

When we discussed the poetry as a full class, students came away with an understanding that often in our country, there is a single story told about immigrants. Students came to the insight that this was misguided and unfair because immigrants founded our country and the United States often promotes the promise that the dream is achievable to all. Students overwhelmingly agreed that we should be more understanding, welcoming, and helpful to people who want to make a better life because we all have stories and hardships.

This text worked well because students discovered new perspectives, connected to their lives and our world, and also gained low stakes poetry exposure, one of my goals for the year. Plus, our conversations made me so happy and hopeful to teach resilient, inclusive young people in this time of division.

Maggie Lopez is grateful for her digital colleagues and an incredibly rewarding profession.  You can find her on Twitter @meglopez0.

 

Integrating Sketchnotes into Annotations

Maggie Lopez, Readers Writers Workshop, Strategies to Add Some Zip, thinking November 18, 2019 Leave a comment

When any unit is designed, I intentionally consider what important academic skills I can either teach students or reinforce to support critical thinking in preparation for academic endeavors after high school.  While the majority of my juniors and seniors are familiar with annotating, we still practice making our internal thinking and interactions with the text visible on paper no matter what we are reading.

An idea presented at NCTE last year was sketchnoting, which is the practice of creating visual annotations to develop meaning.  Students are encouraged to draw pictures and symbols or icons instead of writing their thinking in the margins, like a visual poem write around or visual 1 Pager.  While I am certainly no artist, just stick figures over here, sketching annotations adds a different dimension to meaning-making.

I love that sketchnotes provide an opportunity for more creative interactions with a text and provide an opportunity to use the right side of the brain.  Sketchnoting simply offers another mode for students to create meaning and retain information (You can watch a great overview from Verbal to Visual and utilize the free resources, too).

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As we dig into our first full class novel, students are assigned pages to annotate or sketchnote as we read, these pages then prompt our TQE (thoughts, questions, epiphanies) discussions.  I started out with a think aloud model for students with the first (rather dry) pages of The Great Gatsby.

While most students begin with traditional annotations, highlighting and marginalia, because that is what they’re more comfortable with, many slowly branch out into adding pictures or visual notations with more practice and after seeing their peer’s examples.  

Aside from having students intentionally interact with a text and build their annotation skills, the annotations and sketchnotes provide scaffolding for the final project, a visual 1 Pager or a “graffiti wall” that encourages students to display their learning visually.  I did this project two years ago with juniors who read –I may challenge this year’s crew to use fewer words.

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Visual notetaking can be a more compelling way to lure students into making meaning with a text or other content.  I am hoping more sketchnotes start popping up on the pages of students’ notebooks and other assignments, in my classroom or others.

 

Maggie Lopez is awaiting the snow and start of ski season in Salt Lake City, but wishing she was attending NCTE 2019 this month.  She is currently reading Into the Water. Follow her @meg_lopez0.

Book Snapchats

Maggie Lopez, Readers Writers Workshop, Strategies to Add Some Zip, Technology October 21, 2019 Leave a comment

While I’m a little bummed I’m not attending NCTE in Baltimore this year, NCTE 2018 in Houston was awesome–I’m still going through my notes nearly a year later!  Not only did I get to meet a handful of Three Teachers Talk contributors in person, snag new books, fangirl favorite authors, and catch up with former colleagues from Lousiville and Houston, I headed home challenged by new ideas and armed with new activities to implement in my workshop.  NCTE is truly a magical event for educators–enjoy if you’re heading to Baltimore next month!

Like many of us, I am always seeking different, engaging ways students can interact with and analyze a text.  One such activity from Charles Youngs (@Charles_Youngs), an educator and instructional coach in Pennsylvania, was Book Snaps.  Students are tasked with finding a significant page in a text, then creating an analytical “snap” via Snapchat.  While we work on annotating and sketchnotes throughout the year, Snapchat opens the arsenal of analysis tools students can access to create meaning.  There are stickers, filters, animated gifs, color tools, stamps, and other features I don’t even know about which students can use to digitally annotate.  Last year, I used the activity to study the minor characters and themes in The Bluest Eye in small groups.  This past week, my students created a snap about their independent reading book as the quarter comes to a close.

Bethany’s Snap about Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Anthony’s Snap about Inexcusable by Chris Lynch
Diego’s Snap about Outlaw Platoon by Sean Parnell
Hanna’s Snap about First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

As students spent time finding the page that would “sell” their book, the discussion surrounding gifs and stickers turned analytical.  Students asked one another for advice on the features and, in the process, discussed the characters, conflicts, and themes with one another.  I didn’t expect to hear such thoughtful commentary while students were creating.

If students did not have Snapchat, I offered the opportunity to take a picture of the page then edit it on Google Slides.   Once students completed and downloaded their Snap, we compiled them on one Google Slide deck.  Don’t worry if you’re not Snapchat savvy–your students definitely are!

Owen’s Snap about 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Maggie Lopez only sends snaps of her dog Bounder to her husband and is currently reading The Spy and the Traitor by Ben MacIntyre.  You can find her on Twitter @meglopez0.

A Reverse Approach to Multiple Choice

AP English, AP Language, AP Literature, Maggie Lopez, Readers Writers Workshop, Strategies to Add Some Zip, Talk, thinking September 23, 2019 Leave a comment

I know–yuck.  Multiple choice?  On a blog about workshop?  This post may seem like the odd man out or the one that doesn’t belong here, but please keep reading!

While a multiple-choice assessment is certainly not a form I want to use in class, it is inevitable my students practice the format for the AP exams.  The challenge for us teachers is to make the practice meaningful without taking practice tests over and over again (No thank you, “Drill and Kill”). This year, instead of making these exercises something we do, I want students to see these as something we workshop.

First, my language has shifted from “Let’s complete this multiple-choice practice” or “Let’s working on our timing” to “Let’s dig into this passage and create meaning together.”  I am hoping students begin to see the passages as a challenge to unlock and discover as they inquire about meaning rather than a 15-minute task.

I am also shifting how we work through the passages, igniting the workshop mindset of reading, questioning, re-reading, and making connections.  Sometimes we will read the passage together out loud, look up unfamiliar terms, paraphrase, and annotate, creating meaning together before examining the questions.  Othertimes this close reading is done in pairs and students work the questions together. Another strategy, done in peer groups, is what I call “Reverse Multiple Choice.”

Although the process takes a bit of planning and sometimes typing on our end, I think it is worth it (there is a sample linked at the end to get you started, too!).  In summary, students are grouped and given each part of a multiple-choice selection–the passage, the question stems, and the answer sets–one at a time, then asked to answer the questions after a lot of process thinking.  

Students have enjoyed working together to break the monotony of practice selections as this becomes about thinking and talking with one another while still developing the thought-patterns necessary for working through passages on the exam.  Starting this practice early in the year, I notice students immediately learn to share any thinking or ideas surrounding the “gray areas” of a text and to not shy away because they aren’t sure of the correct answer (that is exactly where they should be in the fall!).

Here are the steps as you would implement them in your classroom (please note the time required will be determined by your students or your expectations of how quickly they are to work, the times provided are just suggestions and will differ with the text):

  1. Group students into clusters of 2-4 with their desks circled.
  2. Distribute a multiple-choice passage and ask students to independently read and annotate as they would on the exam (7-9 minutes).
  3. Once completed, ask students to chat about the gist of the passage in their groups, allowing time for questions and clarifications (2 minutes).
  4. Pass out the passage’s Question Stems, without answers, in random order.  Invite students to work through the questions as a group, referring back to the reading and writing what they believe the answer is as if they were open-ended questions.  Some questions may require students to think in reverse (i.e., students may list what elements are present if the question stem asks “Which is NOT present…” or a similar variation), but all questions will get students talking about their thinking (10-15 minutes).
  5. Once completed, pass out the Answer Selections, again in jumbled order, and ask students to pair the appropriate Question Stem and Answer Set together.  I like to use numbers for the Question Stems (step 4) and letters for the Answer Sets (step 5), so students know to pair a letter to a number (3-5 minutes). 
  6. If you’d like, you may check that student groups paired the Question Stems and Answer Sets correctly before distributing the full question set for the passage.  Students then, using all of their thinking and notes, work together to answer the multiple-choice questions (8-10 minutes).
  7. In whatever manner you’d like, reveal the correct answers.  I have found students want to understand questions they missed and other student groups can often explain the thinking that led their group to the correct answer.

I am hoping these varied, workshop-esqe approaches build student’s ability to process challenging texts through the processing of each component separately and build their confidence for making sense of the gray areas in challenging texts through the peer to peer talk.  This approach can be adapted for any test-prep we may be required to work in for state exams or standardized tests, too.

Here is a sample of the process using the 50 Essays Multiple Choice for  “Letters from a Birmingham Jail”

 

Maggie Lopez is:

A) Enjoying being back into the swing of the school year.

B) Currently reading How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer.

C) On Twitter @meglopez0.

D) All of the above.

To Flex or Not to Flex:  I’ve Been Thinking about Flexible Seating

Classroom Culture, Maggie Lopez, Readers Writers Workshop July 4, 2019 Comments: 16

Being a new teacher at school this past year, I was the recipient of the “new English teacher classroom” that has been passed down for the last two years.  This classroom is located at the far end of the cafeteria, literally in the cafeteria, and came stacked with rows upon rows of forward facing desks, equally spaced in rows, all facing the front.  So industrial revolution-esqe. So not ideal for cultivating a welcoming environment where students to take ownership of their learning by interacting with one another to question and create meaning.

In the hopes of making my corner of the school more welcoming and conducive to English work, I slowly began to create flexible seating areas.  I built this up over the school year, finding more cozy chairs, lights, and touches of home to add, but I will confess: I don’t love my flexible seating classroom.

 

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Isn’t this how we want all students to read in a Book Club?!

 

Let me explain, as there are pros and cons to everything.

Positives:

  1. Students are pretty chill and calm in class (also see Issues #1).  Students are relaxed because the lights aren’t blazing overhead and the furniture creates a homey vibe.  Students enjoy a break from sitting in the rigid desks that are too small for some or built for right-handed writers.  They also have more space for their books, laptops, and notebooks.
  2. Students can settle into our reading time.  I’m not sure about you, but I don’t read for pleasure at home in a rigid desk, sitting straight up.  I read on the couch settled to my gently snoring dog, or I read in an armchair with my slightly overweight dog, or I read propped up on pillows in my bed with my dog who sprawls out to cover half the space.  While I can’t bring Bounder to work (I wish!), I can create the transference of reading atmosphere from school to home.
  3. Students have a choice over where they sit depending on how they’re feeling or what type of work we are doing.  I had a few students who changed seats every day, and some who stuck with the same place. Sometimes a student would move to a new seat halfway through the class, usually to a desk or table after reading time.  This makes seating charts completely unnecessary and beside the point (woo!). Students also exercise soft skills, like compromise and problem solving, when they negotiate their daily seating choice.
  4. I can easily circulate around the room, accessing each student without having to disturb their neighbors in the tight rows of desks littered with backpacks.  Students also have access to one another.

 

Issues:

  1. Students are pretty chill and calm in class (also see Positives #1).  Sometimes the siren song of the plush armchair is too much to resist, and even my most engaged students are sucked into a nap.
  2. Students cannot see all of their peer’s faces at one time.  I didn’t realize how much it would annoy me, but I realized that to me, eye contact equals engagement.  Sometimes, this led to group conversations versus whole class conversations, as one side comment turned into a table chat.  While there is less of a “front of the room” as students are not all facing the same direction, this can be an impediment to the building community at times.
  3. While student seating is flexible, room configuration is not. I only have one projector and whiteboard, so there is a distinctive front of my room, which all the chairs have a vantage point of.  I have a collection of regular desks, two large tables with, a small table with chairs, and a living room set up with larger chairs and a coffee table. There isn’t much flexibility for reorganizing the shape of the classroom to support instruction, aside from group work.  Moving the furniture into an inner-outer circle is near impossible, especially given the four minutes between preps or short precious 40 minutes I spend with students.
  4. Creating these flexible spaces costs money out of my budget.  In total, I think I spent a little over $200. I debated–$200 in books for my classroom or $200 to buy old furniture.  I debated, that is a lot of book money, but figured options for seating would help me cultivate a welcoming, comfortable classroom environment.
  5. Students are always jostling for the biggest, most plush chair, which I suppose cuts down on tardies, but also calls for a bit of regulation of the most coveted chair on campus by me.  This guy: 

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I learned a lot from this experiment and while room 104 has received a total facelift, there are some kinks to work out.  In the fall, I will set guidelines, not rules, to help form clear expectations for next year for how to navigate our space.  I will encourage students to select a new seat each week, so one group doesn’t always sit around the coffee table and students are mixing the voices they’re hearing.  I will also teach the importance of connection and looking at the speaker. Not doing so creates pods that are isolated versus cohesion as a full group.  I will continue to reserve the right to ask students to make a new or better choice in their seating, as well as use the sections of the classroom to a group and regroup as it best fits instruction.  I will also scour the local Goodwills for smaller tables and different chairs that are both more comfortable and flexible.

Aside from the lack of flexibility in the layout and money borrowed from my book budget, I believe creating a classroom with flexible seating was worth it for students. I adapted the “weird classroom in the cafeteria,” as one junior put it, into a space students feel welcome to breathe and relax a little during the day–there is something about being out of a desk and making a choice.  At the end of the day, if students are happy and like the setup, I can be satisfied with that.

Any flexible seating transition suggestions, guidelines, or ideas?  Please share them!

 

Maggie Lopez is enjoying summer vacation and hopes all of her teacher friends are doing the same.  You can find her on Twitter @meg_lopez0.

 

I’ve been thinking…and thinking and thinking about Repeated Writings

Maggie Lopez, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop June 6, 2019 Leave a comment

During undergraduate studies (with Shana!), Dr. Alan Frager, a favorite professor of literacy at Miami University, assigning a repeated readings fluency experiment to my fellow pre-service teachers in which we had to have a peer read a poem multiple times and track their fluency improvements.  While During student teaching, I worked with a reading intervention group and later relied on the practice when teaching in my own classroom to improve student fluency and comprehension.  If repeated readings work to improve student reading–what about repeated writings?

I had a theory that if we ask students to write the same type of piece or over the same topic a few times, perhaps they would gain fluency in the mode or achieve more depth of thought with more opportunities to practice and process.  I noticed this to be proven true with my AP Literature and Language courses, as we practice the same style responses throughout the year, working to deepen analysis and improve craft but wondered what impact repeated writings would have on creative, analytical, and reflective pieces.  We do repeated readings or re-readings of texts to glean and gain more information. We ask students to practice their speeches, presentations, and pre-writings. We practice writing high quality, thoughtful questions for Socratic Seminars. Why not challenge students to “lap,” as Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher would say, around the same pieces?

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Photo by Mohammad Danish on Pexels.com

Throughout the past school year, juniors practiced quick writes, many from Linda Rief’s The Quickwrite Handbook and creative responses inspired by mentor texts.  We journaled in topic notebooks about our independent reading books.  I also assigned multiple iterations of the same writing assignment in the hopes that, like repeated readings, style and content would improve as students gained confidence.

The repeated assignments, usually chunked into 3 to 5 practices, created a series of thought and writing improvement that could be tracked throughout my informal study. During the year, students practiced writing responses about editorials in the news three times over three weeks to hone our argumentative skills.   We worked on literary analysis chunks that paired with choice novels which culminated in a mini-literary analysis when strung together. This spring, students wrote four reflective one-pagers that synthesized The Bluest Eye, the documentary “13th,” and their understandings of the world each week.  We reflected on growth with quarterly Reading Ladders, too.

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Repeated writings provided opportunities for improvement and depth.  Once students understood the type or style or writing, they were able to shift their cognitive focus to their ideas and voice versus the parameters, requirements, or purpose of the assignment with repeated practice.  I noticed students moving away from the five-paragraph essay and templates to infusing voice into their argument. I saw a synthesis of ideas across texts. I noticed more different syntax and academic vocabulary, as well as moments of writer’s craft rule breaking.  Most importantly, I saw students become more confident in their writing–there was much less “Is this right?” and more “I can’t wait for you to read my paper!” or “Can we share these in groups?”

While one must strike a balance between assigning the same task over and over again to the point of monotony, repeated writings worked like repeated readings with the most gains being in confidence and identity as a writer.  

 

Maggie Lopez is enjoying the slow mornings of summer break, sunshine, and endless reading time on the back porch.  You can find her on Twitter at @meg_lopez0.

 

The Great Debate: Summer Reading

Maggie Lopez, Pedagogy, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop May 10, 2019 Comments: 4

While there is still snow resting on the peaks of the mountains and skiers claiming they’ll ski until the Fourth of July, summer in SLC is approaching rapidly.  The sun is hanging around later and later, the trees are blossoming, and students are ansty. The end of the school year always comes with bittersweet excitement, reflection over what was accomplished and what was not, tons of hastily written ideas on post-it notes, and summer reading.

Summer reading was both an authentic and assigned part of my summer growing up, as I was always reading and read what was asked of me for the upcoming year.  Assigning summer reading has been a part of my teaching career, too. I understand the intention for students to fend off the “summer slide” by practicing reading skills that, perhaps when a text isn’t assigned, may dwindle.  Shared books also provide an entry point into learning at the start of the school year and the beginning of collective knowledge among classes.

But this year I am questioning it all.  

After nine months of promoting choice reading and working with individual students to develop reading identities, giving my students their summer reading requirement for next year’s class feels like a step back from work we’ve done.  Likewise, assigning books to the upcoming juniors feels out of step with the work we’ll do together next year.

Assigned summer reading titles doesn’t put the individual at the center.  Students are reading texts I curated before I have even met them. Who knows if they’ll enjoy one of the books? I wonder if I’m turning them further off from reading before we have begun or if they have the reading skills and stamina to be challenged, but also be successful.  

Additionally, students are reading texts meant to be discussed and shared in isolation.  This vacuum creates an independent literacy endeavor versus one shared within a community like the one we will strive to build all year.  If a student doesn’t read, for whatever reason, they start the year a little further outside that community. Learning should be inclusive, not the catalyst for creating an exclusive group.  On the flip side, I don’t want to bog student readers down with a task or assignment because authentic readers engage without assessment.

Within a school year, week, or day, we are familiar with student schedules.  I have an idea of what students are involved in academically and after school.  I don’t know these students, let alone their summer schedules. What is my place in dictating their three-month break?

The issues with required summer reading are evident when your classroom adapts the workshop model.  The solution takes work. We have to be so driven during the school year to create authentic readers, that the summer is viewed by students as a time to read more of what they want, a time to check books off their “to read” lists versus their “must read” list.  

 

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American Literature Summer Reading Selections:  We will all read Into the Wild as a study of independence and freedom, then students will select either Homegoing, The Book of Unknown Americans, or Behold the Dreams to read as inquiry into the changing American Dream.

 

I haven’t dismantled the system (yet).   My incoming juniors do have summer reading.  I hope one of the offered choices is THAT unique book that hooks a reader or makes them curious to come to class in August.

I hope my outgoing juniors have developed enough of a sense of who they are as readers and will engage with books of their choice this summer.  Before the year is out, we will complete our reading ladder reflections, share our favorite books of the school year, book talk, add to our “To Read” lists, compile a list of “must have” titles for my library, and during our final conferences, I will ask students what they plan to read this summer.  I will continue to invest in individual readers next school year so we can re-think and re-configure summer reading assignments.

From my Three Teachers Talk Community, I’d love to know how does your school or department handle summer reading?  What strategies do you have for making summer reading authentic and engaging?  What has been the result of your school doesn’t require summer reading?  What successful changes or modifications have you made recently to support authentic reading?

 

Maggie Lopez has a full summer reading schedule of sought after titles planned, like On the Come Up and Internment, as well as vegan cookbooks, travel books, and whatever else she can get her hands on.  You can follow her on Twitter @meg_lopez0.

Managing the Paperload with Essay Edit Rotations

AP English, AP Language, AP Literature, Maggie Lopez, Readers Writers Workshop, Revision, Writers Workshop April 12, 2019 1 Comment

IMPORTANT NOTE:  I went to a session about managing the paper load in AP courses at the convention in Las Vegas in 2013, and a presenter shared different strategies for having students write more, but grade less.  This session was packed, and rightfully so. We all left with a wealth of ideas, and I  wish I could find the handouts to provide proper credit–I believe they were safely stored in my AP school box that went missing between our Houston to Chicago move.  If this was your session, you are a goddess! (Also, please message me!).

Right about now, the stretch after spring break into AP exams, I find myself wanting to provide students with as much practice writing as they feel they need to be confident in transferring their skills to the exam in May, but not bog myself down with essays upon essays to review as the weather becomes warmer and the days are longer.

Enter “Essay Edit Rotations,” a way to include timed practice but not grade every piece.  There are two simple components to this instructional pacing. Part 1: Students write. Part 2:  Students learn more about how they write.  

Here is how the rotations work:  Set aside one day a week for a timed writing session.  Students come in and write, then those timed drafts are collected and reviewed for trends/misunderstandings, but not scored.  Repeat this over the course of four weeks, so students have four essays in total to edit. That is Part 1: students are practice writing without grades.

Part 2 involves editing those drafts from Part 1.  I provide students with the same number of options for how to study their writing as they have timed writings and typically set aside 3-4 class days to dig in.  Students select which edit to apply to each one of their essays, “rotating” through their pieces, with one of the timed writings is always revised and typed to be scored by me for a stand-alone AP grade.

You can tailor the prompts/essays to what your students need practice on, just as you can create as many different edits as you need and scaffold over the course of the year.

I have utilized a variety of editing strategies over the years, including:

  • Scored Second Draft:  Students edit, revise, and rewrite one essay to be submitted as a stand-alone AP  score, graded by me. I typically always ask students to complete this edit.
  • Peer Editing/Conferencing:  This unfolds so organically as students grow in their writing–they’re able to help their peers assess and improve their writing based on experience and mentor texts/exemplars
  • Reflective Annotating or Writing:  Students can utilize a rubric or create a +/delta chart based on their noticings. Often, I ask students to assign themselves a score based only off the adjectives used on the AP scoring (see below).

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  • Analyze the Components:  Students color code and highlight each element of their essay (i.e.: Claim, Evidence, Analysis, Transition) to understand how they are layering their ideas by reflecting on the visual structure, as well as the ratio of evidence to analysis.
  • Oral Editing with a Peer:  Have students pair up and read their essay, verbatim, to one another.  Students can hear what sounds inconsistent or where a thought trails off.  Students then revise these murky areas with
  • Grammarly:  Students can upload their essay (requires typing) and receive feedback.  I typically have students reflect over the commentary and identify trends and next steps for implementations.
  • Focused Revisions: I am pinpoint a specific area we have been playing with, such as varying our syntax for emphasis or upgrading our diction, and ask students to only revise those elements.

 

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Bella used one of her Book Club prompt responses to complete an edit focused on diction and syntax. Students are asked to highlight every other sentence, list the first word of each sentence to note repetition, count the number of words in each sentence, determine their evidence to commentary ratio, find transitions, and a myriad of other tasks to understand how they craft their responses.  While tedious, this edit creates discussion points for amazing conversations!

 

You can browse a wealth of recent Three Teachers Talk ideas around editing here, here, and here! Oh, and earlier this week, too!

Rounds of Essay Edit Rotations support the foundational ideas, practices, and benefits of a workshop-based classroom:

  • Low stakes writing practice:  Students practice in a timed environment, but know they will have a chance to review and edit their essays.  This workshop approach to the timed writings becomes about the edits and what students learn from their writing versus what is produced within 40 minutes.
  • Students are writing more than we are grading:  As only one of the essays will be graded by the teacher, after revision, students are benefitting from writing practice yet we are not grading each one (I do complete a quick review the essays after each writing period and provide feedback, usually in a +/delta format, before they write again).
  • Students understand themselves as writers:  Test writing is different from regular writing.  There is a rubric, yes, and a goal, but there is also pressure.  With the opportunity to edit, students can gain insight into their habits when they write for this purpose and make improvements accordingly.  Students also have the autonomy to select what edit to apply to their writing, curating their learning.
  • Builds skills for test transference:  Timing is often the most anxiety-inducing component of any standardized test.  Students can practice writing coherent, intriguing ideas within 40 minutes safely so they can find their rhythm before exam day.
  • Creates space for writing conversations and conferences:  I typically have students do their editing in class over 3-4 days so students can ask questions, work with their peers, and meet with me.  It feels like a true writer’s workshop with students tinkering away, shuffling through multiple colored pens, highlighting, adding post-it notes, and conversing with peers.

In the past, I have had students practice Part 1 with the same style of open response question, mixed up the questions, given students choice over what question they practice with each week, and have done a full exam using the three prompts over the weeks.  After that round, students assigned themselves a formative score to use as a conference conversation to set goals for moving forward. I have also implemented this during the fall when AP writing seems scary to students, in the middle of the year for review, and in the spring for low-stakes practices.

Every time, these Essay Edit Rotations work like a charm.

So thank you to the amazing writing teacher who presented in 2013.  You have saved me hours upon hours and fostered conversations around writing in my classrooms around the country.  Thank you.

 

Maggie Lopez is saying goodbye to ski season and hello to spring in Salt Lake City while keeping her juniors focused with choice reading, low stakes writing, and student-driven conversations as we build to the end of the year.  She just finished Everybody’s Son by Thirty Umrigar, an NCTE conference find, and began Tayari Jones’ Silver Sparrow yesterday.  You can find her on Twitter @meg_lopez0.

 

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