Category Archives: Writers

At the Heart of It All Is Literacy by Sarah Morris

Guest Post, Readers Writers Workshop March 7, 2018 Leave a comment

The recent teachers’ strike in West Virginia has me thinking about my Grandmother, Mercia Dunmire. She taught in a one-room schoolhouse in Monongah, West Virginia, a community framed by mountains and mines, teaching the children of coal miners and subsistence farmers in a multi-grade classroom.

As family mythology tells it, after noticing children coming to school hungry, Grandma Mercia organized an effort to feed everyone every day. Parents who could do so donated from their gardens and pantries, and older students cooked lunch, learning to prepare food and sustain the group by working and eating together. In the guise of a daily home economics lesson, Grandma Mercia’s students learned service and community, caring for each other as an act of equity. She fed others’ children even while she struggled to feed her own, racking up debt for groceries on credit at Manchins’ store after her husband died, sealed in a fire-filled mine.

Grandma Mercia was like that–she saw opportunities out of need and struggled to help her students in ways beyond teaching them to write and read. She filled my shelves with books, but, more importantly, she influenced me to be aware in the world, to see and struggle against injustice, and to teach.

In 2007, I represented West Virginia as our state’s Teacher of the Year, attending several events and conferences where teachers from all US states and territories gathered together to learn from each other and raise our collective voice. At one of our events, we dressed to represent our home states. Given that so many recognizable costumes related to West Virginia are caricatures grounded in stereotype, I wanted to choose a memorable and impactful way of representing our heritage and history.

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Mother Jones

I dressed as Mother Jones. I pulled my hair in a bun and donned a black dress and wire rim glasses. I carried a sign marked with her words: “Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts.” I found myself explaining many times who she was, what she meant to miners, what she meant to West Virginia, and what she meant to me. Like Grandma Mercia, Mother Jones taught me through her legacy about how to be in the world.

Today, I’m thinking of Grandma Mercia, Mother Jones, and teaching in West Virginia. This week, teachers are picketing and rallying, closing down the schools, fighting to raise pay from 48th in the nation and for adequate healthcare for all public employees (myself included, since I’ve moved to the university classroom).

Today, our governor owes more in back taxes than a teacher will see in a lifetime, our state legislature refuses to pass a severance tax that could fund public health insurance, and a coal boss runs for senate with the blood of 29 miners on his hands; our world doesn’t look much different now than it did 100 years ago, echoing with injustice.

Today, it’s our teachers, red bandanas around their necks and holding signs, who are waging the fight, yet they are still caring for students, even out of the classroom: packing lunches, spreading word about how we can help through organizations like Morgantown’s Pantry Plus More who are feeding students while they’re out of school.

These are my thoughts and my experiences, but I know they resonate with other teachers. This is just my story, except when it’s not. I can see, in this moment, that West Virginia teachers are standing in the light of Grandma Mercia and Mother Jones. Whether she is a hellraiser heroine on the picket line or an everyday activist peeling potatoes for the soup, a West Virginia teacher is an agent of change and a fierce advocate for students.

download.jpgAnd, at the heart of it all, is literacy. Reading is revolution. Writing is power.

We must remember, as Mother Jones said: “reformation, like education, is a journey.”

Teachers do the work of progress every day, in and out of the classroom. Especially in this moment, our teachers are educating us: these strike days are readings in civic literacy, in social movements, in what it means to be a West Virginian. The teachers walk the line, writing the people’s history, and we are students, all.

NWP@WVU Co-Director Sarah Morris teaches undergraduate writing courses and is the associate coordinator for the Undergraduate Writing Program at West Virginia University. Her research interests include human science phenomenology, embodiment, writing process, and student-centered teaching. Follow Sarah on Twitter at @drcerelyn. 

The Battle of the Canon

Amber Counts, AP English, AP Literature, Books, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop March 6, 2018 Comments: 11

I recently found myself entrenched on a familiar battlefield. After making what I thought was an innocuous statement about needing more texts that my AP Literature students would enjoy reading that would also represent “literary merit,” and noting some contemporary texts that would meet these criteria, another teacher began to lecture me on the necessity of requiring students to read canonical British literature.

Her unyielding tirade provided some insight into what it must feel like to be a student in that class – in which choice is something the teacher makes, books are taught (not students), and the teacher is the sole purveyor of knowledge.

Before I continue, let me say that I truly believe that this teacher truly believes that she is doing what is best for her students. Her primary argument, in fact, was that we are doing our students a disservice if we do not expect them to read “hard texts.”

To her, rigor means old. She explained that if students are not struggling to decode classic books such as Beowulf or Cantebury Tales, they are not being challenged enough. She said that any book they read that’s not canon is a waste of their time.

But herein lies the rub: many students from different English classes eat lunch in my classroom, and I listen to their honest conversations about school. I watch as they use Sparknotes to fill out question packets on classic texts. When the focus is on a specific book, and the assessments are designed to elicit responses about the plot, students do not have much incentive to read the book. Thus, they find answers they need online and wait for the teacher to tell them what they should have learned from the text.

While I held back from sharing such observations, I did agree that students benefit from reading challenging texts. MRIs have recorded all of the brilliant ways the brain lights up with activity when reading the works of Shakespeare! However, I offered the suggestion that students need not read full novels as a whole class to receive this benefit. I often pull excerpts from classic texts to analyze in class so that the focus is on the writing craft and on ourselves as readers. We explore passages in depth to build reader confidence, look for literary devices and discuss their functions, and connect to theme. I provide them with incentive to read other than “because it’s tradition,” and – more importantly – I encourage them to find their own reasons for connecting to texts.

Screen Shot 2018-03-05 at 9.10.07 PMAmy Rasmussen and I have engaged in numerous conversations about the magic that happens when students choose the books they read for our AP English classes. Sure, students will often choose a contemporary text if given the chance because it’s easier for them to read and it seems more relevant to them. What’s wrong with that? Books like The Kite Runner and Never Let Me Go have been referenced by the College Board on the AP Literature and Composition exam®, so why do some teachers still cling to the classics as if nothing written after the turn of the 20th century has merit?

My students regularly start with more contemporary books like The Help or The Road and then choose, for various reasons, to explore books from the canon. Often, they have built confidence due to the work we do together in class with shorter texts and from their own choice reading, and they feel comfortable taking on a challenge. Sometimes, they decide that they want to read books they’ve always heard about. I currently have students who have chosen to read Wuthering Heights, Oliver Twist, and Les Miserables on their own. When we have book talks and the students begin speaking with excitement about the books they’re reading, you better believe that others will want to read these books, too. I’ve seen it happen for several years in a row; students read more canonical texts due to choice than they ever would if the books were strictly assigned.

Many of us speak and write about the benefits of a workshop classroom, and the idea of choice in reading has been explored by leaders in education such as Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle. So why are some teachers so afraid to let go of their perceived control? What do they think will happen if a student walks out of high school without reading Beowulf? I would rather see my students leave my classroom having read several books they chose to read than having faked their way through a list of classics, and based on the honest feedback I get from my students, they prefer it this way, too.

I left the battle of the canon feeling that we had reached a stalemate. Until I can convince nonbelievers of the benefits of choice in the AP classroom, I will continue to provide a safe space for any students to come in and talk about books, even as some Sparknote and Google their way through the classics.

 

Amber Counts teaches AP English Literature & Composition and Academic Decathlon at Lewisville High School. She believes in the power of choice and promotes thinking at every opportunity. She is married to her high school sweetheart and knows love is what makes the world go around. Someday she will write her story. Follow Amber @mrscounts.

Research In Search of a Claim

Community, Katie Maguire, Readers Writers Workshop, Research Writing, Strategies to Add Some Zip March 5, 2018 Comments: 7

Why do high schools feel compelled to create their own “headings” for how students should format their papers, in spite of an English curriculum that calls for teaching MLA style? Oh, never mind. Put like that, I can see that this contradiction is in line with what we are tasked with every day in our classrooms: to machete through convoluted curriculum standards so we can lead our students to some real learning. This particular contradiction usually preempts any teaching energy I might have at the beginning of “The Research Unit.” As I plan, I am haunted by images of students typing their research questions word-for-word into Google, scrolling aimlessly through search results based on what they are most likely to click through to infinity, and finally just quoting from Wikipedia or that first Google blurb (attributed to “Google” and a 400-character URL in a triple-spaced Works Cited page presented in a hodgepodge of fonts from the cutting and pasting). Sigh.

It’s not their fault. This work can be rather uninspiring. Last year I tried to shake things up by offering another option to the traditional research argument: Students could compose a “research narrative” by using story form to trace their process of developing a claim. I spent hours developing model texts and elaborate instructions, devoted precious class time to comparing the two forms and creating anchor charts. Students dutifully complied with this. They complied again by completing a traditional research paper filled with information they mostly already knew or will have quickly forgotten. I dutifully (and wearily) returned papers filled with equally uninspired feedback they may or may not read and a grade that left me feeling morally compromised. Sigh.

So … no. How can we get away from Google as a first-resort and turn instead to our own minds — and each other — as we develop topics? And how can we make use of all the writing work we have already done and blend it with the research “unit” so that it feels less like a “unit” at all? Where can we look for topics that might inspire some meaningful, lasting learning?

Instead of starting from scratch, I had students turn back to their “Writing Territories,” the areas in their lives and in the world they identified earlier this year as potential writing topics. (Nancie Atwell is a continued inspiration–“Writing Territories” comes from Lessons that Change Writers). I modeled using my own territories to extract 1-2 potential research topics, and students did the same. I wanted to develop a sense of community and investment in each other’s topics, so I adapted an activity from Kelly Gallagher’s Teaching Adolescent Writers: 

  1. Students write their topics at the top of a piece of lined paper and pass the paper to the person on their left.
  2. This person reads the topic and writes one open-ended question about it.
  3. Papers continue around the room until each student receives their own paper back.

Even just this movement was energizing. After some initial fumbling, papers began moving through the room (almost) smoothly. Even better, students began talking to each other about whose topic was whose, and competing to write obscure and original questions to “stump” each other. Students took their own papers home, and were tasked with thinking through the questions and deciding on a few focus points within their topic in order to move forward.

So, this was fun and students had a bunch of interesting questions to explore. But that vision of students typing those interesting questions into Google still loomed large. I felt they still needed more of their own entryways into their topics, entryways into authentic thinking beyond search engine results. And as usual, I borrowed. This time, I adapted a poetry exercise from Georgia Heard: the 9-Room poem. I asked students to move through “9 rooms” of preliminary research that I hoped would lead them to consider their topic in terms of themselves and their own worlds.

Research_NotebookPrompts

My intention was for students to move through the rooms to establish a basic foundation of information (rooms 1, 3, 5, 7) and to explore their topic through a more creative lens (rooms 2, 4, 6, 8). As with the question swaps, perhaps the most valuable outcome of this exercise was the conversation it generated around the room. Students are talking about their topics with each other, even excited about being quoted in each other’s work!

So, here’s where we landed for now. Stay tuned for student examples as we move through this process toward formulating a claim. And, of course, proper MLA format.

How to Confer Like a Ninja

Conferring, Jessica Paxson, Readers Writers Workshop March 4, 2018 Comments: 4

NinjaConferring.

We all know it is the true Special Sauce in the workshop classroom.  Without conferring, it’s just Silent Sustained Reading, which ironically does little-to-nothing to actually SUSTAIN READERS.

However, we also all know #teacherlife.  When we get into the thick of things, it’s easy to lose our groove when it comes to consistently and effectively conferring with students about their reading lives. (Writing lives matter, too, but that’s another post.)

So, enter my new tutorial, How to Confer Like a Ninja.  I know many of you are imagining me in something resembling an all-black suit and stealthily skulking around whispering, “What are you reading? Why’d you abandon that book?”  I hate to disappoint you, but my students know I’m anything but graceful.  I regularly trip over Chad’s backpack with his tennis racket sticking out the top.  That thing is a weapon of mass destruction.

Instead of the stealthiness of a ninja in terms of moving about the room, I’m going to teach you how to ask questions that students would NEVER even know are conferring questions!!

For all other ninja-moves, please see Coach Moore, or maybe Lisa, or Shana’s daughter Ruthie.  They seem–stealthy.

Anyway.

Here are my four favorite questions for conferring like a ninja:

  1. How’s it Going?  I could write an entire book on this question alone.  Lucky for me–and you–Carl Andersen already did.  This is a completely low-stakes question that leaves room for the student understanding that you respect them as a reader–even if they are a struggling one–rather than feeling like they’re in the middle of a spotlight and interrogation room situation.  Ninjas are nice.  Ninjas are welcoming.  Ninjas just want students to become readers.  (Okay, so my analogy is breaking down a bit, but stay with me.)
  2. What’d you think?  This one I usually pull out in the hallway when a student runs to me in between classes to tell me they finished a book.  I usually get one of three responses: 1) “I’ll have to tell you later, I don’t have enough time!” 2) “Eh, it was okay.” 3) “Ugh!  Mrs. Paxson, I’m so mad!!” All three of these are great because it gives you an entrance–like a ninja–into a larger conversation.  Yes, even the “eh” response is perfect ground for finding them their next great read.
  3. Would you recommend this to a friend?  The answer to this question tells a lot about the journey of a reader.  If they would recommend it to a friend, that means they really do like it and they would risk being ridiculed by said friend if they thought it was boring, weird, etc.  Students don’t often risk that for just anything.  Also, if you can get a student to recommend a great book to one of your holdouts, they are scientifically about 83% more likely to actually read that book.  Yep.  That’s right.  I said SCIENTIFICALLY.
  4. Would you read it again?  Okay, be careful with this one.  I can feel you getting a little eager over there, and you can’t just pull it out of nowhere.  This is the perfect question to test the true level of a book in a reader’s mind.  But, THAT’S the ticket.  This question is for readers.  I would not pull this question out at the beginning of the year, or with one of my reading holdouts.  If I asked one of those students this question, they would stare at me, appalled that I would suggest such a thing.  However, real readers re-read.  It’s a true test of love for a book.  So use this one sparingly, but it will allow you to examine if a reader liked a book, or truly developed an undying love and will miss the characters long after the fact.  Our biggest nemesis in workshop teaching is time, and everything else that is competing for it in our students’ lives.  If they volunteer the information that they would be willing to spend MORE time reading something they’ve ALREADY READ, that means we’ve got ’em.  Take that, cat videos on YouTube.

All of these questions are part of my favorite aspect of a workshop classroom–the in-between.  Its difficult to quantify the leaps and bounds made within any given reading and writing workshop, but don’t let that distract you from the magic of the inconspicuous–or some people call it “normal”–conversation.  Getting to know our students, their reading tendencies, and their journey is part of what shows them that we are different.  We care about teaching them how to learn instead of just what to learn, and we are willing to support them on that journey as often as we can.  Even in the hallways, in transition time, and everywhere in between.

Happy teaching!

Jessica Paxson teaches English IV, AP Lang, and Creative Writing in Arlington, TX.  She runs on coffee and exaggeration, a deadly combination at 7 in the morning. Her students frequently describe her as “an annoyingly cheerful person who thinks all her students can change the world.”  Yep, pretty much. 

West Virginia Teachers are #55United: About the Strike

Shana Karnes March 1, 2018 Leave a comment

img_7280This week and last has seen my wild and wonderful state in the news quite a bit more than we’re accustomed to. Today marks the sixth day of a statewide teacher work stoppage brought about by decades-long frustration over legislative inaction to prioritize a long-term solution to problems with teacher benefits, salaries, and qualifications. As a result, every single school in all 55 counties of our state is closed.

Since I’m not teaching K-12 anymore, I’m a little removed from this strike, but as a teacher who is invested in public education, I’m very much aware of the reasons teachers are protesting.

A good place to get acquainted with the reasons behind the strike is this lovely post by Jessica Salfia, our West Virginia Council of Teachers of English president.

The skyrocketing insurance premiums Jessica mentions are a large part of teachers’ frustration. The proposed changes to the Public Employees Insurance Agency, known here as PEIA, would impact not just teachers but all public employees. The new premium and deductible schedule, created when state funding for PEIA decreased, would mean a huge increase in monthly insurance premiums, annual deductibles, and maximum out-of-pockets.

For my family, for example (PEIA is our only insurance option, since my husband and I are both state employees), our monthly premium would increase from $140 a month to $308 per month. Our annual deductibles would increase from $1025 per person to $2600 per person.

The legislature initially offered a 1% pay raise per year over 5 years–$404 per year, which is 1% of the average teacher salary, and is all they’re offering to every teacher, regardless of their salary or experience. Even over 5 years, that raise would not offset the proposed increases to PEIA costs. Educators–and all public employees–would effectively have their paychecks cut.

In addition, legislators had bills on the table to lower teacher certification standards to fill some of the 700+ teaching vacancies in our state, to remove seniority, and to reduce the power of unions in West Virginia. This is all on top of the fact that West Virginia teacher salaries rank 48th in the nation–the 3rd lowest in America.

img_7278It’s clear why teachers are frustrated, right?

Fast forward to Tuesday of this week, when Governor Jim Justice announced that he would find the funds to offer a 5% raise immediately to teachers while a task force worked on a long-term solution to the PEIA problem. This article from The Atlantic details Justice’s expectation that with this solution, teachers would return to work this Thursday. (The article also does a wonderful job explaining the strike in more detail, with context given by my friend and colleague, Audra Slocum.)

Today is Thursday…and schools are still closed. As I drove to work this morning, teachers were still lining the major roadways with their signs waving in the cold rain. A chorus of horns drowned out my radio in support of the teachers’ efforts.

The strike continues.

My students and I will watch this video message from John Green in class today, and we’ll discuss what education might look like if Green’s vision of public education–a vision in which all citizens valued their right to a quality, free education and were willing to collectively fund it because they believed in its importance–were reality.

img_7279That is the heart of why teachers are protesting, in my opinion, and it’s why I support the #55United effort. Our students’ right to a high-quality education is of paramount importance. It is with that education that they can enact change, as the students of Parkland have this week. When we value education and educators, we show our faith in our young people. West Virginia seems to lack a commitment to high-quality education when it proposes to lower teacher certification standards, salaries, and benefits to an unrealistic, and damaging, level.

I became a teacher because I wanted to change the world for the better. I wish the taxpayer base, legislative bodies, and voting public who can influence the direction of public education in this country believed that of all teachers, so that our profession could be elevated to its full potential.

What are your questions about the West Virginia teacher strike? Please leave your questions or messages of support in the comments, on our Facebook page, or on Twitter!

Shana Karnes lives and teaches in West Virginia, whose students, teachers, and mountains are wild and wonderful. She works with preservice and practicing teachers at West Virginia University and is a proud member of the National Writing Project at WVU and the West Virginia Council of Teachers of English. Find Shana on Twitter at @litreader.

What Does it Mean to Read like a Writer?

Affiliate links, Amy Rasmussen, Informative Mentors, Mentor Texts, Multi-modal Mentors, Readers Writers Workshop, Technology, Writers Workshop February 27, 2018 Comments: 5

It’s a startling reality, but many of my seniors do not know how to read like writers. I spend a good part of the beginning of a semester helping students look at how an author crafts a text.

This still surprises me.

The seniors I have in class this spring have all passed their state mandated English exams. A big chunk of these Texas state exams, both English I and English II, ask questions in the reading portion about author’s craft. (I haven’t explicitly studied the question stems in a few years, but I am guessing at least half.) In trying to get students to talk about the writer’s moves, most of my students get stuck talking about meaning.

Of course, meaning is important — but not when we are using a text to help us move as writers. In workshop lingo, we call this using mentor texts.

How do we learn to write anything well if we don’t study the work of writers who write well?

When I was first asked to write recommendation letters, I studied well-written recommendation letters. When I begin to write a grant proposal, I study how to write an effective grant proposal. When I need to write a speech, I study well-written inspiring speeches. There are solid examples for every kind of writing.

I want my students to know this. If they learn anything from me this spring, I hope it is this:

We learn how to write well by studying effective writing. To quote Kelly Gallagher: “Before you can film a dogfight, you have to know what one looks like. Before our students can write well in a given discourse, they need to see good writing in that discourse”. (Read Gallagher’s “Making the Most of Mentor Texts” for an excellent detailing of how.)

 

Yesterday Charles wrote about scaffolding a reading lesson. The same type of lesson, but with an eye toward reading like a writer, worked recently with my seniors.

It all started when I saw this tweet: TweetofGIFGuide

I thought: “Okay, this may be a relatively painless way to get my writers into writing. We will use this text as a mentor and write our own GIF guides.” (Quick change in lesson plans on the drive to work.)

First, we started with a conversation about GIFs. This NY Times Learning Lesson has some good questions. We wrote our thinking in our notebooks and shared in table groups. Then, not quite as planned, the conversation shifted to how to pronounce GIF. “Um, it’s JIFF, Mrs. Rass, the creator of them said so.”

In case you are wondering:  I think the creator is wrong. But, does it really matter? I just wanted my students to use GIFs as an entry point into writing using mentors.

To help students understand how to study a text for a writer’s moves, I copied the text into a document, and removed the images, so students would focus on the language. Then I crafted a list of questions. Taking a cue from Talk Read Talk Write by Nancy Motley, I cut the questions up and gave a set to each small group. They spent the better part of a class period studying the text and using the questions as a guide.

Later, we brainstormed topics we thought would work, eliminating some that were too broad, and discussing ones that would lend well to a how-to or informational type of writing. Students then completed this document, so they could see my expectations for the writing task, and I could approve their topics.

Students talked. They wrote. I taught mini-lessons on introductions and sentence structure. Students revised. Some taught themselves how to make GIFS.

Most surprised me with their finished GIF guides. Here’s a sampling of a few. (Disregard the citing of sources — that’s still on the Need-to-Learn list.)

Students, no matter their age, will write when we give them the tools and the time they need to be successful writers.

Sure, not all of my students produced solid writing — yet. But I am hopeful. We are only a about a month into the course, and most students now have a writing success story.

That confidence matters.

For a great read on helping students write, read “Children Can Write Authentically if We Help Them” by Donald Graves.

I’d love to know the fun or interesting mentor texts you use to get your students to take a chance on writing. Please share in the comments.

Amy Rasmussen teaches English IV and AP Language at a large senior high school in North Texas. Go, Farmers! When she’s not skimming the news or her Twitter feed for mentor texts, she’s reading books to match with her readers or thinking about the rest she might get during spring break. Eight days, but who’s counting? Follow Amy @amyrass and @3TeachersTalk, and she invites you to follow this blog if you aren’t already.

 

 

 

Making the Leap: How one text supports another.

Charles Moore, Mentor Texts, Modeling, Narrative Mentors, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop February 26, 2018 Comments: 3

cactus2

This past summer I took advantage of an extraordinary opportunity. I mentioned it in my first ever blog post and my thoughts about that experience are unwavering.  The Summer Institute reinforced some of my already held readers/writers workshop beliefs and clarified many others.

One experience was particularly profound.  Meggie Willner and I found it so evocative that we based an entire professional learning presentation around it that we presented at our district  Profession Learning Day in August and even submitted a similar presentation for consideration at TCTELA this year.  Unfortunately, we weren’t selected for TCTELA, but Meggie and I still talk about how much this lesson taught us and how we still reach back to that lesson as this year moves forward.

On Day 7 of the institute, Amy presented us with a piece called “The Cactus,” by O’Henry.  I’m not intimately familiar with O’Henry’s works, but Meggie is and her opinion is a favorable one.  Amy took us through the exercise of discovering the beautiful language and writer’s moves that exist in the piece and we shared our thoughts and “workshopped” the text the way we should with our students.

At some point, Amy stated that this was a text we needed to present to our STAAR Camp students and Meggie and I simultaneously turned to each other in fear.

Meggie 2

Our initial thoughts were identical.  We knew our students very well and we knew that this text was far too difficult for them to conquer.  Meggie and I weren’t sure that we could shepherd them through this text and as soon as the session ended, we hustled up to our classroom to find something with which we were more comfortable and something we felt would engage the kids.

We quickly found a story called “Checkouts,” that was both easier to dig through and thematically similar to “The Cactus,” and away we went.  The lesson went beautifully, the students engaged with the story and we were able to guide them through discovering the writer’s moves and the thematic ideas in the text.  Meggie and I both agreed that we made the right decision for our kids.

Early on Day 8 Amy said something to the effect of: “I noticed many of our teacher teams chose not to use “The Cactus” in their lessons yesterday and went with texts that were less complex.” (I’m paraphrasing this because I don’t remember the exact words Amy used, but I remember feeling my face turn red and Meggie and I slow-turning to each other with matching looks of horror.)

Meggie1

Amy continued her thought by telling us how important the complexity of the text was to our readers and how texts that our kids would encounter on the STAAR test would match the complexity of “The Cactus.”

As soon as that morning’s session ended, we scurried up to our classroom with our tails between our legs and sat down to develop a plan to present “The Cactus” to our students.

We planned the activities that are typical of workshop to go with this piece. We drafted  questions that we thought might prompt their thinking and help them engage the text.  We looked at the text with an eye towards anticipating the places they would struggle with the language.  Looking back, we prepared well for this lesson.

Our preparation paid off when the students dug into the text. If you haven’t read “The Cactus,” please take my word for it that there are many difficult to understand words and this is what made us feel apprehensive. To our great joy, a piece that we thought would stump them turned out to be accessible and engaging and they found insight and nuance in its words. They floored us!!!

We discovered something too: our idea to present them first with “Checkouts” provided a scaffold to “The Cactus.”  They were able to digest the complexity of the more difficult text because they were comfortable and familiar with its thoughts and themes.  They trusted us because we built that relationship with the more easily accessible text. They learned that they don’t have to have understanding of every single word in the text to experience mastery of the text.  They can still engage in the nuance of theme and voice and other important skills. Once they found success engaging “The Cactus,” we could see their confidence build and they were able to enjoy the text in the same way as the adults in the room; as readers.

This is such an important lesson for me to learn.  Often, I take for granted that the students will engage with a text or just assume that they won’t.  My thinking, instead, should be about I can move them into a text by using what they already know or what they are interested in.  This may be obvious to other teachers, but I’m not a trained reading and writing teacher and I still have many lessons to learn.

Charles Moore still can’t figure out how to stay off of Amazon.com on snow days.  He is currently reading Warcross by Marie Lu and Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson and keeps his eyes open for suggestive cacti. His almost daily musing can be found on his twitter page @ctcoach

Creating Community One Story at a Time

Classroom Culture, Community, Modeling, Pam McMartin, Readers Writers Workshop, Reflection February 23, 2018 Comments: 6

My son started Grade 6 this year at a brand new school. This was a nerve-wracking shift for us as he had been attending his previous school since preschool. His fears were largely centered around finding new friends and fitting in, but as a teacher/parent my fears centered more around the learning environment and if his new teacher would conduct the class in a way that fostered inquiry and creativity.

After the first few weeks of school, it became clear that this teacher had a different style of teaching than the ones at my son’s previous school and  I fretted that he wasn’t learning enough and that he was going to be bored with this new style of instruction. In one of my particular moments of panic and after just finishing a lengthy text to rant to a teacher friend of mine about my fears in regards to the way my son was learning, my wise sage of a friend responded with a simple response – yeah, but how much do you really remember what you learned in Grade 6 content wise anyways? What you should really be asking yourself is what type of classroom community is being fostered.

Just that one simple question quelled the storm of concerns and made me reflect. What was my son’s new classroom community like? So, when he came home from school each day, I stopped listening for what he learned and focused more on the tidbits he shared with me about how he is learning. Once I started listening for the how, I realized the gift that his new teacher was sharing with him was the gift of story. I soon saw that my son who so often answered questions of “what did you do at school today?” with a shrug and an “I don’t remember” was now answering the question by sharing the stories he learned.  You see, his new teacher has created a classroom steeped in story and story is a powerful community builder. Every day he tells the students stories of his life, stories of the past, and stories of his hopes for the future. He also surrounds the students with stories with a huge classroom library that the students are free to access at any time. Most importantly, however, is the culture he has created by one simple habit- everyday he reads aloud to his Grade 6 class. I soon began to realize that my son was excited to tell me the stories that were being read to him and his classmates and recounted them with a verve and detail he has never had before when talking about school. Will my son remember the content of his Grade 6 Social Studies lessons? Maybe not, but he will remember the power of those stories being read aloud to him and what they made him feel.

In her blog and in her book Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child, Pernille Ripp discusses the importance of reading aloud to our students and the importance of providing joyful reading experiences. When we read aloud to our students, we model our own enjoyment of reading, tap into the inherent human love of story, and provide a joyful reading experience for our students. Why then do we stop reading aloud to our students as they get older? This was the question that came to mind when I thought about my own teaching practice. Do I read aloud to my students? In reflection, I realized I do read the practice sample reading paragraphs to prepare for the Provincial Exams to my Honours English 11 class and I occasionally read out samples of strong essays, but this would hardly count as joyful reading. I quickly realized that I had fallen into the mindset of the senior English teacher – the one that does not see reading aloud to her senior English students as a valuable use of time.

For more detail on techniques to bring read alouds alive in your senior classes, please read Amy’s post on the topic.

Once this realization hit, I went straight to my senior English department colleagues and started to brainstorm ways that we can bring the joy of storytelling into our senior classes and these are the first steps we took.

Besides integrating daily reading time to each class, we also focused on how we can bring storytelling into their lives. Our school is a K-12 school and our senior students are fortunate enough to have many connections with the junior students. One program we have is a Kindergarten/Grade 12 buddy program where our Kindergarten students and our Grade 12 students meet once a month. Right away, I knew this was a perfect opportunity to allow my Grade 12 students to share stories. Prior to our next buddy meeting, I took the Grade 12 students down to the library and set them free in the picture book section with one simple task – find a story to read to your buddy. Off they went and magic quickly happened. As they were searching the shelves, stories started to present themselves to them. They found their favorite picture books they read as a child or ones that were tied to special reading memories. These were the books they choose to share with their buddies – the stories of their childhood. As they read the stories to their buddies the pride and the joy of sharing stories was evident.

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Before starting our living library, I read my Honours English 11 students the amazing picture book I Am A Story by Dan Yaccarino to get them in the story telling mood. We also made little campfires to tell the stories around to further create the atmosphere of sharing stories around a campfire. Some of my Grade 11 students were a little shy to tell their stories, so they enlisted the help of our school library puppet collection.

Another storytelling initiative I took on was having my Honours English 11 students create a living library for the Grade 3 and 5 students at our school. A living library is where students become living books with a story to tell. The Grade 3 and 5 students circulate around the library and “check out” an Honours 11 student and listen to the story the Grade 11 has prepared to tell. The purpose of the living library is not to ask questions or to engage in conversation with your audience, but simply to share your story. My Honours students have recently been studying how authors create voice in their writing and what better way to study voice than to create story using our own voices. When I first proposed the idea to my Honours students, I presented it as an exciting opportunity in storytelling and I was met with less than enthusiastic groans. They wanted to know if they really had to do this (the answer being yes, I want you to try) and “are we being marked on this” (the answer being no, but it will help you develop voice in your storytelling). Despite their reservations, they all actually showed up on the living library day and ended up having a blast. Upon reflecting on the experience afterwards, my students talked about how they had to change their stories to suit the different audiences that were listening to them. In some cases it was because they had an older or a younger audience, but in many cases it was because of the way the audience was reacting to the story. At the end of the experience, all of the Grade 11 Honours English students could agree on one thing – they loved telling their stories and they wished they could do this every class.

While running a living library every class is not really possible, this experience reminded me how I need to weave story into my daily classes more because story is a powerful tool. By reading aloud to my senior students, by giving them opportunites to read aloud, by sharing my stories, and by allowing them to share theirs I can help foster a class community that is steeped in the joy of story and storytelling.

Pam McMartin teaches Senior English, is the English Department Head, and the Senior School Teacher Librarian at a school in Tsawwassen, British Columbia Canada. When not trying to balance her many teaching roles, she loves sharing stories with her students, her son, her dogs, or anyone who will listen. She tweets at @psmcmartin.

 

Five Ways to Publicly Celebrate Student Reading

Classroom Culture, Julie Swinehart, Readers Writers Workshop, Strategies to Add Some Zip February 22, 2018 Comments: 10

Once our students start reading, start setting personalized goals, and start to develop healthy reading lives, it’s important to acknowledge their progress. Big, culminating classroom celebrations are a fun way to do it, but there are also ways to celebrate that don’t take a ton of precious class time, and can mark the smaller moments worth celebrating along the way.

1. Penny Kittle encourages the book stack. Students gather the books they’ve read over the last semester, quarter, or other period of time that they’ve been reading. They stack the books up, which gives a visual representation of what they’ve accomplished with their reading. My ninth grade students recently did the book stack, and their smiles and pride were inspiring.

  1. While some students loved the book stacks, I had a couple of students who had done much of their reading on e-readers, so the book stack wasn’t such a great option for them. Our solution was the digital collage. Students gathered images of their book covers and collected them on a document, creating a digital quilt or collage. They then printed them on our color printer, and we made a patchwork mural in the hall with them.

This visual representation celebrates not only what individual students have been reading, but also serves as a hallway meeting place and inspiration for conversation about books. It’s a great way to build a reading community.

  1. Our learning support teacher encourages her readers with a creative, ongoing visual representation. She has a paper “tree” on a wall in her classroom, and as students read books, they add “leaves” to the tree. On each “leaf” the students write the title and author of the books, and it serves as both a reminder and inspiration for future reading. IMG_61004. That same teacher also keeps a quote wall on her white board. The words we read can reach us in beautiful ways, and when students experience that kind of moment, they are encouraged to share those lines on the white board. It’s another public display of a healthy reading life. It’s a conversation starter, and it helps build a sense of community within the classroom.

 

quote-wall.png5. Another teacher in our department keeps poster paper on her walls. Students add titles to the lists as they complete their books. Because names are attached, students can reach out to one another with questions or when they want to talk to each other about a book that they read, too. It’s another public acknowledgment and conversation starter, which is part of what we need when we build reading communities.

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The common thread with all of these ideas is that they are public, they are deliberate conversation starters, and they help to build our precious reading communities.

 

I think it’s important to create opportunities for students to celebrate their reading accomplishments in a risk-free, nonthreatening way. Time is precious, so creating these opportunities in a relatively quick way within our classroom communities can be found time. Our classroom walls should reflect the needs and values of our classroom communities, and I find that these five strategies help move students forward with the development of their healthy reading lives.

How do you enable and encourage your students to publicly celebrate their reading lives and reading communities? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

Julie has been teaching secondary language arts for nineteen years, spending the first fifteen in rural Central Oregon, and the last four in Amman, Jordan. She’s thrilled to report that she and her family will be moving across the agua to Managua, Nicaragua next year, where a new adventure will begin.

Follow her on twitter @SwinehartJulie

Follow her blog https://adventuresinhighschoolworkshop.wordpress.com/

Everyday Activism: Enacting Change in Your Classroom

Community, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes, Talk February 21, 2018 Comments: 6

I’ve waged a war between sadness and hope this week in my teaching life. Sadness that yet again, another mass shooter took the lives of students and teachers. Hope that this time, the response would be different.

This is the first mass shooting I’ve followed news coverage of since becoming a mother, and accordingly, my sadness is magnified a thousandfold. I cannot imagine losing one of my precious children; I could imagine it even less before I had them.

But, my hope is greater after this tragedy, too. I’ve been so warmed by stories of students who survived the shooting mobilizing to enact change, like this one from NPR. “This kind of activism feels really different, compared with past mass shootings,” says journalist Brian Mann.

These passionate students-turned-survivors have spurred me toward activism, too. I don’t think there’s a simple solution to this complex, multilayered problem–and I don’t think our national conversation should attempt to polarize the issues of gun control and mental illness. I don’t know the right way to deal with either of those issues, but I do know a place where we, as teachers, can begin to enact change.

That place is in our classrooms, where students like Nikolas Cruz can sometimes go unseen for so long that they transform from lonely teenagers to angry gunmen before our eyes.

Our classrooms, where so often we have students so busy working toward meeting standards that they barely have time to meet our eyes, or one another’s.

Our classrooms, where, yes, great learning happens–but where teen realities like bullying, rejection, and failure happen, too.

Are you seeing these layers to your students’ identities? Seeing beyond who they are as readers and writers, and into who they are as friends, sons, daughters, boyfriends, and girlfriends? Who they are as social beings outside our classrooms?

We must see our students this way. We must make every effort to foster conditions of inclusivity, to teach in culturally responsive ways, to, simply, see our students as people and not just learners. When we do, we transform from spectators to activists.

Desiring to build community is no longer just a nice goal to have in addition to covering content standards. The ramifications of leaving students alienated are becoming more and more significant.

Inclusivity is no longer just a buzzword–it has become a matter of life and death.

Our teens are unhappier than ever, bombarded by apps that promise connection but in reality deliver isolation. They feel so lonely that they are spurred toward violence–toward themselves or others–in alarmingly increasing numbers. Nikolas Cruz is just the most visible product of this horrific trend.

There is so much we can do to see our students, to help them feel seen. Glennon Doyle writes here about a way her son’s teacher thoughtfully fosters inclusivity and interaction in her classroom by “breaking the codes of disconnection” she unravels when she really sees her students.

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I must have felt that message keenly when I planned my classes this week, since I packed in as many small-group or partner talk- and feedback-filled activities I could. My students wrote to one another–about having patience with and faith in our students–in their notebooks. They got into groups to talk about ways to individualize curriculum, and created anchor charts with their takeaways. They formed different groups to devise a list of creative alternatives to traditional tests, so every student could feel successful, on a Google doc.

My students also wrote their autobiographies this week, and workshopped them with a partner they don’t usually talk to. As I scanned through their comments on one another’s work, I was filled with joy:

“This makes my heart happy!” one student wrote in her response to a classmate’s heartfelt description of his fiancee.

“I feel sorry for anyone who will be Alex’s colleague–in a good way! She’ll be one of the best teachers at her school and will push her colleagues to be the best that they can be.”

“I’d love to work with a teacher like you.”

I watched my students read their peers’ comments, and little smiles stole over their faces.

A huge, happy grin stole over mine.

In response to violence, I drew my students closer–to one another, to our subject, to me. I wanted them to have the chance to see one another, to feel seen, and for me to see them more clearly as people and not just students. Workshops like these bring students together. They work, and if you’re skeptical, here are five reasons you’re wrong. When we teach into our students’ needs–both academic and personal–we make a difference. We enact change–every day.

And maybe, we save lives.

Please comment and share ways you help your students see one another and feel seen. We’d love to know how you do this important work.

Shana Karnes loves her work with preservice teachers at West Virginia University, with practicing teachers through the National Writing Project at WVU, and with her amazing thinking partners here at Three Teachers Talk. She is hopeful that this generation of students and teachers will be better, kinder, more open–and she will never stop trying to make that hope a reality. Connect with Shana on Twitter at @litreader.