Category Archives: Writers

Missing Pieces by Meredith Tate

Books, Jackie Catcher, Readers Workshop May 14, 2015 Leave a comment

24903132I love receiving e-mails from students—not the “Is this due tomorrow?” or “Why do I have a zero in PowerSchool?” e-mails—but the ones that are written bleary-eyed, late at night (or sometimes early in the morning) from students who have just finished a book. Recently, Alyssa, one of my Advanced Composition juniors e-mailed me at 10:30pm after finishing Missing Pieces. She wrote:

“Wow, I just finished the book and I am completely shocked! Was definitely not expecting…[Can’t put this in because I don’t want to spoil it!]…I am extremely happy the way it ended! This was most certainly one of my favorite books that I read this year and if any of my friends ask for a recommendation I would without a doubt recommend it.”

As a teacher, finding a book students can connect with is a victory! But in this, case the victory was even sweeter. I grew up with Meredith Tate, the author of Missing Pieces, and even as children playing in the sandbox at our tiny four-classroom elementary school, Meredith knew how to weave a story.

Missing Pieces is the story of Tracey (Trace) and Piren, two best friends growing up in a dystopian world where they are matched with their spouses at six years old based on genetic compatibility. Despite Trace and Piren’s undeniable friendship and eventual attraction, they are paired with different partners. It is a fight between fate and free will.

While the plot might sound generic, resembling the many dystopian romances novels we’ve seen lately, Meredith succeeds in weaving together a distinctly unique story. Trace and Piren are flawed and frustrating and real. They live in a world of messy mistakes. As a social worker, Meredith doesn’t skirt around issues of alcoholism and abuse—instead she confronts them head-on, addressing the harsh, debilitating nature of addiction. I love that this book doesn’t cleanly fit into any distinct genre—it’s a romance, but it isn’t mawkish; it’s categorized as “new adult” but it begins when the protagonist is 14 years old; it’s dystopian yet it distinctly resembles modern society. Despite the numerous questions posed throughout the book (including those in the excerpt below), we learn that life is a series of difficult decisions; it’s the pure beauty of this rawness that makes this book relevant to teenagers.

“What if the one you’re supposed to be with, and the one you want to be with, are two different people? My entire life was mapped out for me before I was born. Is my only choice to silently follow the course already plotted? To blindly accept my future and walk that trail until I die? To smile and pretend everything is okay and I’m happy and in love with my Partner when I’m spiraling downward and drowning in my loneliness? I’m drowning, like in my childhood nightmares. Only this isn’t a nightmare; I can’t wake up from this life.”

Why Assignment Sheets Might Be Killing Your Students’ Writing

Jackie Catcher, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers, Writers Workshop May 13, 2015 Leave a comment

58090ec056811830ee936030edb1c9dbMy first year of teaching, I didn’t realize that the “five-paragraph essay” was a dirty phrase. My  internship year I painstakingly dragged my freshmen through the essay outlining process, watching them regurgitate homogeneous essays about symbolism in Lord of the Flies. At the end of our six-week study of the book, I slogged through 25 nearly identical essays, all of which had eloquent yet oddly familiar intro, body, and conclusion paragraphs. I’ll readily admit that despite the dull content, I felt victorious. My students had completed literary analysis essays and I had taught the foundation of essay structures.

It was that summer that my perception on structured essays changed. Two days into taking Penny Kittle’s writing course at the University of New Hampshire’s Literacy Institute, I realized that I had committed a cardinal sin of workshop teachers. Admitting to teaching the five-paragraph essay (let alone the sandwich method of paragraph-writing) was like confessing to enjoying McDonald’s burgers at an elegant chophouse: the cut (or concoction) of meat might serve the same purpose, to fill me up, but the quality was quite different. In turn, I was feeding my students homogeneous writing, a detailed equation to a subject that couldn’t be distilled down to simple mathematics. If I expected greatness, I needed to break beyond the boundaries of such a restrictive form of writing. After all, an introduction + body paragraphs + conclusion didn’t guarantee a solid essay; if anything, it guaranteed an entirely unspectacular essay.

This process of digesting the material and then providing a summary of the structure was far too easy for students. Not only did it place the onus on me to provide a set guide of instructions, but it also required me to complete the majority of analysis. Instead of my students engaging with the text and delving into the intricacies of structure and craft through individual exploration and group discussions, I was basically pre-digesting the material before offering it to them.

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Students analyzing an author’s craft in front of the class.

This year I have made a point to wean my students, particularly my juniors and seniors, off the assignment outlines they so desperately desire. Instead, my students now receive a half-page sheet simply telling them the type of essay they are writing (cause and effect, definition, personal narrative, etc.), the mentor texts they may refer back to, the page length requirement, and the due date.

Initially, they were frustrated with this format. As one student said during our career building unit in which we practiced writing cover letters and resumes for celebrities, “Ms. Catcher, do you have an assignment sheet for this or something?” When I pointed out the paper I had given to him previously, he replied, “No, I mean something that tells me how to write this paper.” We discussed the numerous mentor texts we had read and dissected and how these as well as our class discussions ultimately provided the basis we to develop our pieces. As a class, we asked questions of the text and author, starting broad by looking at the overall tone, voice, structure, intended audience, and progression of the piece. Then, independently or within small groups, we delved into more of the intricacies—what examples were provided, word choice, sentence structure, punctuation, and transitions. Students have gradually learned that there is no set solution for getting an A, which also means that they are forced to read and reread mentor texts to gain a firm understanding of a piece’s intricacies.

My problem from the beginning was that I was too busy telling my students how to write an essay to allow them to discover the messy albeit enlightening connection between reading, writing, and modeling. As we complete the last six weeks of school, I have noticed a significant difference in the structure and craft of my students’ work. They are relying more readily on mentors to help guide them in their process, and I can see both their group and independent analysis directly translate into their writing. For the past three years, I have harped on my students about showing rather than telling, but as the year comes to a close, I can finally say that I have internalized my own advice when it comes to my teaching.

How do you inspire students to rely on mentor texts instead of assignment sheets?  What steps have you taken throughout the year to make them more independent and confident writers?

Shelfie Saturday: Nonfiction #ShelfieShare

Books, Classroom Library, Shana Karnes, Shelfie Saturday, ShelfieShare May 9, 2015 Leave a comment

shelfieAs a young reader, I was a library-only kinda girl.  I browsed the mystery, fiction, and teen sections looking for distinctive spines–ones that had a pink “Classics” sticker, or an orange “Award-Winner” sticker, or a blue “Librarian’s Choice.”  These little guides led me to Jane Austen, Matthew Quick, and John Grisham, whose spines were not only colorful with library stickers but also well-worn from the hands of readers.

The thing about those spines was that none of them were in the nonfiction section, which loomed large with encyclopedias, reference books, and lots of sections about science, technology, or car repair.  Being a middle schooler who didn’t know about the Dewey Decimal System, I had no idea how to find interesting biographies, beautiful memoirs, or fascinating historical accounts.

Now that I’ve begun to love nonfiction and learn a lot from it, I’ve tried to simplify the search for great true stories in my classroom library.  We have one Nonfiction shelf and two Memoir & Biography shelves.  I try to keep collections, histories, and statistics-into-stories books all together on the Nonfiction shelf, while I move the stories of people’s lives onto the M&B shelves below it.  Sometimes the titles that belong on the Nonfiction shelf wind up on the Award Winners, Unique Teens, or Death & Dying shelves–because I love to mix true and imaginary stories in our library when they share themes.

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You can see that our shelf is varied–topics range from sports to how the mind works to humor.  Some authors are dominant–Jon Krakauer, Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink–but others are one-hit wonders whose titles are very popular–Mary Roach, Michael Lewis, Dave Cullen.  Their respective Stiff, Moneyball, and Columbine are three of my library’s most popular titles.

Our nonfiction shelf is also the home of the “Best American” series, which includes topics such as science, travel, and sports writing, but also a collection of simply “essays” from each year.  This series is a fabulous way to find a huge variety of good nonfiction mentor texts when students are doing informational or persuasive writing–there is always something to match any student’s interest.

This shelf is an eye-level shelf for good reason.  Students who wouldn’t normally gravitate toward the nonfiction genre find their eyes caught by interesting covers, titles, or topics–such as Missoula and It’s Not About the Truth, both of which deal with college rape culture, or The Sociopath Next Door, which attracts all my Sherlock fans, or Lost in the Meritocracy, which gives both motivated and disengaged students much to consider.  Once students discover this shelf, they often move toward the Memoir & Biography or Award-Winners shelves, which contain more sophisticated nonfiction structures.

I encourage all teachers of literature to build up their nonfiction shelves–their titles have much to teach our students.

Guest Post: How a High School Improved Reading by Building Little Free Libraries

Books, Community, Guest Post, Readers Workshop May 8, 2015 Comments: 3

busLast summer, I became a Penny Kittle convert. I originally didn’t know what I was signing up for, but something kept driving me to be sure I was where she was. Turns out, it’s been the best hunch of my teaching career. The mind shift I was searching for. A complete game-changer. And this is year eighteen.

After 2 ½ days with Penny, I spent the rest of my summer trying to keep up with my churning brain. I wrote more than I have since I was a slightly over dramatic, totally drowning-in-love teen. I read. And I read. And I read. I rediscovered that lust for story I had almost forgotten. I freed myself from the idea that pleasure reading was fluff and gripped the concept of reading what speaks to me as a means of improvement – just like I would soon ask my students to do.

In the midst of my mid-career crisis (maybe crisis is too harsh?), I found a tweet about the site littlefreelibrary.org. The various clever wooden boxes built for books captivated me. I loved the idea of a take-one-leave-one system designed to build community. What fun! I wanted one! Maybe a home project with my own children? Then, I had a thought. What if we put these book boxes in the hallway at our high school? What if this could be the reading take-over Penny Kittle encouraged? So, on my wild whim, I retweeted the link with that very suggestion.

Soon (which means mere seconds in the Twitter world), my teacher peers of all disciplines — math, sharkscience, history, technology, world languages — responded with enthusiasm! They wanted to build wooden cubbies! They wanted to donate books! They were all on board! So, the fun began…

In an August inservice session, I presented the idea to the full faculty, highlighting the importance of choice-reading in ALL classrooms. I used so many of Kittle’s words in an effort to begin a movement. We have to get all of our kids reading – the rich, the poor, the gifted, the challenged, even the ones who don’t eat their vegetables. And, in a school as diverse and unique as ours, we couldn’t wait another second. Of course, there was one small glitch; I didn’t know or have the means yet to build the little libraries. But I knew we could.

Following my first session, our new theater tech teacher immediately approached me, and he offered to have his tech class build the first set! I cried. I usually do at most sentimental things, but I just didn’t expect this outpouring. Books began to appear in my classroom from teachers and then parents. Some opted to write an inscription inside their favorite books, explaining to the future reader the special significance of that particular tale.

#hebronreads was born.

The theater tech class created the first five Book Nooks, as they are now called, from lumber and Slide2supplies donated by our community. In true theater style, the Nooks have flare – a shark, an Alice in Wonderland, a school bus, the Parthenon, and, of course, a book! All student created! All on pedestals in various niches in our halls. At our fall open house night, books poured in from parents who heard our call to promote literacy, and books continue to appear in my classroom like gifts from the Tooth Fairy.

Students in our advertising and marketing classes competed to create a campaign for the program. On World Read Aloud Day in March, we paused to read to our students, and we passed out bookmarks and talked books during lunches. Students have daily choice-reading time in math classes and business classes in addition to English classes. Another book drive is slated during our spring football game in May. A spring literacy night with former Hebron High School grad now YA author Lindsay Cummings is in talks.

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This is only the beginning.  

In my hopes and dreams, we will build more Book Nooks and litter the building with choices. We will continue the book drives until all classrooms have some sort of libraries. We will keep talking reading and promoting ideas via @hebronreads. And one day, when we are feeling pretty confident in our literacy push, we will make Nooks and take them filled with books to neighboring schools who need more stories in their lives too. Hebron High School is now a thriving community of readers, and it is truly glorious!

Parent quote:

“My son has always loved to read (‘loved’ is probably an understatement), so when he found these books in Hebron’s hallways, he was very excited.  He came home telling me what a neat thing this was — books for the taking, any book, all kinds. Once he understood the program, he commented on what a great idea . . . read a book, replace a book, or just bring it back. Great idea, Hebron!”    Carolyn Sherry

Donna Friend teaches at Hebron High School in Carrollton, Texas. She is making readers out of English III students and leads her department into the chaos of educational risk-taking. Currently, she is honored to be her campus as well as the Lewisville Independent School District’s Secondary Teacher of the Year, an accolade that, despite her 18 years of teaching, she doesn’t yet feel old enough to have earned! Her current favorite book is Jandy Nelson’s The Sky is Everywhere, and she is practicing being a regular reader and writer along with her students. She has a 9 year old son, a 6 year old daughter, a hubby, two cats, and a few fish. She once dreamed a young adult novel and still regrets not writing it down immediately after waking. Find Donna on Twitter @mrs_friend

Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future by A.S. King

Books, Shana Karnes May 7, 2015 Leave a comment

17453303John Green says that “A.S. King is one of the best Y.A. writers working today,” and who doesn’t trust everything John Green says?  (Except for when you trust him for 246 entire pages, and then your trust is shattered, and you ruin a book with your tears, but I digress.)

Having fallen madly in love with A.S. King’s writing during Everybody Sees the Ants, I have been waiting for my students to return Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future to my library so I could read it.  Without ever having booktalked it, its catchy cover caught students’ eyes and enticed them to dive right in.

Finally, yesterday, I spotted it on the shelf and took it outside in the sun with my class to begin reading.  Surrounded by seniors mere weeks before their graduation, I was in the perfect setting to immerse myself in Glory’s story, which takes place over two weeks bracketing her high school graduation.  She’s a photographer for the yearbook, keeping herself distant from her peers by hiding behind a camera.  Her only “friend” is her neighbor Ellie, who’s lived beside her ever since Glory’s mother committed suicide thirteen years ago.  Ellie doesn’t understand the worry Glory has that she’ll end up like her mother–and Glory is terrified of, dreading, trapped by, her own uncertain future.

That all changes after a wild night, after which Glory and Ellie can suddenly see the future.  Glory begins to record these transmissions, in which, upon eye contact with anyone, she can see the actions of their distant ancestors and descendants.  The glimpses of the future reveal a future American Civil War, the complete reversal of feminism, and a tangled web of people she knows mixed up in all of this.

“We were fed onto the stage like machine parts.  We were a conveyor belt of future.  We were an assembly line of tomorrow.  We were handed our diplomas and stood to face the audience and they were asked not to clap until the end, but some did anyway. … I stood and faced the crowd and heard a static of epic proportions.  Chatter of a thousand infinities all at once.”

Deciding to chronicle her transmissions through a scrapbook modeled after one of her mother’s creation, Glory writes her own “History of the Future,” and it’s bleak.  As the novel progresses, the darkness of the future becomes more certain, but so does Glory’s understanding of herself–a trade-off she’s not sure how to handle.

With beautiful language, dark humor, powerful lessons, and themes of mystery, love, redemption, friendship, and foreboding–all set against the backdrop of high school graduation–I can see now why this book is never on my shelves.  I’ll be happy as it continues to remain in the hands of teens getting a refresher on feminism, individuality, and the pursuit of happiness.

“Sounds so convenient, right? Me not having a mom and my dad being all great about it and stuff.  But it wasn’t like that.  The air was tense.  We still had no oven.  My cobbler still tasted like radiation, no matter how much ice cream I piled onto it.  I could feel the secrets in the soil here. … Something was about to sprout and grow from that soil.  I could feel it the same as I could see the mourning dove into infinity.”

Reflection, Rejuvenation, Rebirth

Professional Learning Community, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes, Talk May 6, 2015 Comments: 6

May and June always bring sunnier skies, feistier students, and more hopeful days.  Like Amy, I enjoy the last weeks of school, and often spend many of them feeling proud of my students, making big plans for the next year, and reading a ton in order to ramp up my booktalks.  This time of year is my time for reflection, rejuvenation, and rebirth.

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This spring, I’m excited that I have the opportunity to participate in a National Writing Project course, which is uniting me with other English teachers from my area.  Talking with them has helped to energize me even more so than usual at this time of the year, and some of their words have really helped me reflect.

First, my notebook musings during our first class led me to a powerful play on words–listening is at the heart of our teaching.  I’ve written before about the value of talk, but I’m thinking long and hard now about the power of listening…truly hearing our students’ hopes and strengths and worries and wonders.  I’ve paid special attention to emphasizing listening in my lessons these past few weeks, because I know I won’t get to hear these wonderful students’ words after the year ends.

Later in the NWP class, while assessing some of our students’ written products, we were asked to identify the skill we had been aiming to teach, and then evaluate how well our students internalized that lesson.  Claire, an elementary teacher, said that it was impossible to look for just one thing–“Writing is so…big,” she said.  I couldn’t agree with her more.  As I read my own students’ work, I saw themes of my own pedagogical beliefs running through their writing.  They were using beautiful language, inspired by our daily poem or craft-study quickwrites, in all of their writing–nonfiction too.  They were writing strong pieces thanks to the risks they felt safe taking in their choice of topic, genre, and style.  They were producing prolifically, writing long, short, funny, serious, sad, exciting, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, prose–everything.  Their portfolios are thick with creation.  Writing is big, indeed.

IMG_8049Rejuvenation

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, and with that came some delightful thank-you notes from my students.  One student made a list of things he was thankful I did, and he repeated how thankful he was for my “cool passionate thing for teaching…like seriously, the passion thing.”  I recently read an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that claimed the four properties of powerful teachers were personality, presence, preparation, and passion.  I like to think of passion as fangirling, which I do on a daily basis about books, student writing, authors, and all things bookish.  I’m never sure how much of that passion reaches students, but since this one specifically noted the “mega good booktalks,” I think it gets through to at least some kids.  This thank-you note really rejuvenated me, and now that I know my booktalks are working, I’ll keep at them with new gusto until June 12.

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Continuing to revise and change my curriculum doesn’t stop because the year is nearly over.  I’m still wildly out of control on Amazon, buying titles as I get ideas for new units, themes, or genres (like the huge list of novels in verse I jotted down during our #poetrychat Monday night).  A new focus on science fiction, poetry, and nonfiction has been what I’ve noticed in my cart of late.  I am changing as a reader and a teacher, valuing those genres more than I once did, making a strong effort to transfer that new passion to my students.

My teaching philosophy is constantly shifting, evolving, being reborn.  Its biggest shift this year, I think, can be best summed up with a quote from another NWPer from my class last week.  While talking about meeting and learning from great teachers at NCTE, he said he felt like they were “the Wizards of Oz, but they were inviting me to peek behind the curtain.”  I love this analogy, because while great teaching may seem like unattainable magic, I now feel like I understand how to be effective.  I’ve studied living, breathing mentor texts like Penny Kittle, Tom Romano, Amy Rasmussen, Jackie Catcher, and Erika Bogdany, and am looking forward to learning from Tom Newkirk at UNH this summer.  In the past two years, I’ve been reborn as a teacher, whose confidence has grown as I’ve continued to strengthen my practice by dissecting and imitating the successes of others, just like my students do when we analyze mentor texts in class.

Springtime is a time for reflection, rejuvenation, and rebirth.  Nature is no different from my teaching as I think about this year and next, and about the beauty of its constant blossoming and change.  I know our last six weeks will fly by, so I’ll enjoy every moment of them before the luxurious summer begins!

What are you reflecting on this spring?  What has rejuvenated you as the year comes to a close?  What elements of your teaching will be reborn this year or next?  Share in the comments!

Yes, I’ll Share my Reading List

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Book Clubs, Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop May 5, 2015 Comments: 6

Awhile back I wrote Aim Higher™: A Case for Choice Reading and a Whole Lot More in AP English. I am pretty sure I thanked everyone individually for the comments. If not, thank you for helping me think through this pedagogy even more. One reader asked for my reading list, and I’ve been derelict in posting that. I am sorry.

Since my classroom instruction centers on helping students identify themselves as readers and writers, I being Readers and Writers Workshop on the first day of school. We read and workshop a short piece — sometimes my AP English Language syllabus one-pager. We write and usually do a short revision workshop. Students learn quickly that writing requires revision.

In years past I’ve even provided each students with a writer’s notebook — just so we could get started taking ownership of it on the very first day. (That was the year composition books were 10 cents. I haven’t seen them so low since.)

I give students the following list of books and tell them that at each quarter they will be responsible for getting their hands on one of the titles. They may purchase the book, borrow it from a library, download it to their device, or in extreme circumstances, check out one of the few copies of each title I keep in my room.

We are a classroom of readers, so reading is the only option.

Note:  I didn’t facilitate four book clubs this year. We only had time for three, and we never got to the first list of books below. It took me a long while to learn how to fit my instruction into the schedule at my new school:  a 90 minute period where I see my students every other day and then every other Friday. I lost some time figuring it out.

Next year, I am going to put this list first, and we will analyze author’s craft as we learn about argument. I’m also thinking of only introducing Gladwell’s books. I’ll add David and Goliath:  Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, and maybe What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures after I read it this summer. That way students will still have choice as to which book they select, but all students will be reading books by the same author. This should work well as we study the moves of one writer, something I waited way to late to do this year.

Book Club One:

Outliers, the Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink, the Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point, How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

Freakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner

Quiet:  the Power of Introverts by Susan Cain

 

Book Club Two:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safron Foer

The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls (non-fiction)

Swamplandia by Karen Russell

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon

Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman

 

Book Club Three:

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Little Bee by Chris Cleeve

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Klaled Hosseini

 

Book Club Four:

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

Room by Emma Donoghue

Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer (non-fiction)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

Billy Lynn’s Long Half-time Walk by Ben Fountain

I am always reading some piece of compelling literature, always on the look out for the next book to add to these book club lists. My students did not enjoy The Bell Jar, although many students chose to read it, and no one chose to read The Things They Carried, even though I made as big a deal out of it as all the other titles. I just added Swamplandia this year, and then I forgot to talk about it, so it is still not vetted with students.

If you have any suggestions for compelling, complex, rich literature that engages adolescent readers, please share your titles in the comments. Thank you.

 

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

5 Ways to Enjoy the Last Month of School

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Conferring, Readers Writers Workshop, Talk May 4, 2015 Comments: 2

Today we start a fun two weeks. Texas state exams and AP exams dual for the attention and time of most every student and teacher in the building.

Two weeks of juggling tests with students in and out of classrooms. Teachers putting on hats as proctors and hall monitors, shuffling to teach in different rooms so students can test in theirs. Stress can make cranky even the calmest souls.

Two weeks until the end of school after that. June 6 is our last day. Some days that sounds like the equivalent of enduring 12 long winters.

smart-goals1I must make the choice daily to be optimistic, to see the possible in all the end-of-year chaos.

5 Ways to Enjoy the Last Month of School:

1. Talk about Books. I will double the amount of time my students and I talk about books and reading. Summer slide is real, even for students in high school and AP English classes. I wrote some thoughts about summer reading here. I want my students to enjoy the reading they do this summer. Most have read double, some even triple, the number of books they read last year. I cringe thinking that many may not read even one book this summer. (The AP English Literature required summer reading holds little promise with Brave New World and Beowulf.) If we talk about books enough, and if my students write down titles that sound interesting enough, and if maybe I allow them to take enough books from my classroom library home for the summer — maybe even my most reluctant readers will read at least one book before they come back to school in August.

2. Sit and Listen. Last week a student tapped on my door during my conference period. “Mrs. Rasmussen, are you busy?” I was but I waved her inside. I shut my laptop and turned my chair, and Mikaila began to talk. She told me that she’d been in her business class when an idea for her writing project “burst in my brain, and I started writing it down, and the more I wrote the more I imagined and the more I began to cry, and then the teacher looked over my shoulder and got worried about what I was writing. I told her, ‘I’m okay, I just need to go see my English teacher.'” Grinning, she finally took a breath. Mikaila stood and talked with me for the rest of the period. She’s got a lot of hurt in her, and she needed someone to hear it. That is all I did. I listened. I still had essays to read and leave feedback on, but that afternoon with this sweet young woman was the best I have had in weeks. I felt needed. During the next few weeks I will try to be still, open my door, and listen. I doubt Mikaila is the only one who needs to talk.

3. Allow Students to Self-Assess. When my students care about their topics, their writing is always better, but after 11 years of school, so many of my writers care more about the grade they’ll get than about the quality of their writing. I’ve tried to change that all year. For the next few weeks, my students will read and revise their own work again and again. They will read one another’s writing and offer feedback, and then they will revise again. We have done two rounds of this already, and with the exception of just a few kids who put forth little effort and scored their work high, most everyone wrote an honest assessment of their writing process. They are thinking about the thinking they do as they write on the page. That’s the best kind of assessment possible.

4. Begin Planning for Next Year. Not full-on planning, mind you. That would make me crazy, but I have started a list of things I will change. I know I need to do a better job with organizing writer’s notebooks and teaching vocabulary. I know I want to read more poetry, although I added a lot in my primarily non-fiction AP English Language class this year. I know I need to do the lessons we did just last week early in the fall. I’ll add tabs in a writer’s notebook that I can use as a sample with my new students in the fall, and I’ll tinker in Drive as I make notes in my lesson plans. Planning gives me energy, so it makes sense to note changes I want to make now instead of hoping I remember them later.

5. Confer and confer and confer. Like you and your students, the relationships my students and I have built all year are strong and trustworthy. I want to utilize this trust and push my students further in their reading and writing than I would have been able to do earlier. The only way to do this is to talk with them more one-on-one. Every day as students read their self-selected books and write their self-selected projects, I will pull up a chair and we will talk. “What are you thinking?” I’ll ask, and they will open up and tell me. They know I will listen and offer feedback that they can take, or not. That’s the beauty of teaching students to take ownership of their learning.

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

Dumpster Diving for a Book Shelf

Amy Rasmussen, Books, Community, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop May 2, 2015 Leave a comment

shelfieMy husband called, “Hey, there’s a book shelf by the dumpster. Do you want it?”

Funny that he asked. I know he knew I’d say yes.

I put the tall black shelf by the door to my room, which was pretty much the only open spot. But most of my classroom library sat cozy on the opposite side of the room. I did not know what books to put on this new shelf.

It sat empty waiting for three months.

There’s nothing quite so unsettling as an empty shelf in a bibliophile’s classroom, but my husband made me promise not to buy any more books. This is hard.

Finally, I got smart and labeled the shelves “1st period Suggests You Read,” “2nd Period Suggests You Read,” etc.

Slowly, I started moving books that students talked about, the ones they told me they liked. Then I Favorites book shelvesnoticed that a few students started returning their books to these shelves, and after we did Speed Dating with a Book a few weeks ago — we put all of our to-read-next titles on these shelves.

Now, instead of having most of our book choices on the bright green wall across the room, students walk past this shelf as they come and go.

Pretty good deal for a dumpster find.

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

Hey, Do You Want to Hear a Good Poem? #poeminyourpocket

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Community April 30, 2015 1 Comment

What makes a good poem?

I like to ask my students this question. They usually fumble with an answer.

That is what makes reading poetry with students rewarding. Eventually, even the hardest teenage heart will come to at least appreciate the complexity of language — maybe she’ll never appreciate the beauty of it, but she will appreciate the craft of the poet.

Sharing good poems with students on a regular basis proved a hard goal for me this year. (Better than last; not as well as I wanted.)

One go-to book is Garrison Keillor’s collection of Good Poems, as Heard on the Writer’s Almanac. It is a must for every English classroom. My wish list includes two other volumes:  Good Poems for Hard Times and Good Poems: American Places. 

I especially like how Keillor sets the tone of the selection with poetic lines in the introduction that describe what makes a good poem:

Stickiness, memorability, is one sign of a good poem. You hear it and a day later some of it is still there in the brainpan.

What makes a poem memorable is its narrative line. A story is easier to remember than a puzzle.

[Poems] surprise us with clear pictures of the familiar.

And this beautiful paragraph, an epigraph for Emily Dickinson, really:

To see poetry finding an existence that its maker never imagined, visit Emily Dickinson’s grave in Amherst. Here lies the white-gowned virgin goddess, in a cluster of Dickinsons, under a stone that says “Called Back,” and here, weekly, strangers come as grieving family, placing pebbles on her big stone, leaving notes to her folded into tiny squares, under small stones. Dickinson was a famous recluse who camped in the shadows in the upstairs hall and eavesdropped on visitors, and now there are few graves in America so venerated as hers. She is mourned continually because the quickness and vitality of her poems maker her contemporary, and when you make flies buzz and horses turn their heads and you declaim Wild Nights! Wild Nights! and give hope some feathers, you are going to have friends in this world for as long as English is read.

I just love that, and Dickinson isn’t even my favorite.

I am finding favorites though. So far, my favorites are the poets I know in person: Dawn Potter, and  Meg Kearney.

My students need the chance to find favorites, and that is why I must expose them to good poems. Reading aloud poems on a regular basis has the same effect as talking about books regularly.

Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day.  Will you participate?

Because I know I need to be more consistent with poetry, and even though we are in the middle of a giant writing project, my students and I paused this week and talked poetry. We read and questioned and laughed and loved being immersed in beautiful language.

We pulled the poetry books off the shelves, (I only have about 15, so far, so we had to share) and we wrote out poems on pretty paper to put in our pockets. I challenged students to share their poems throughout the day.

Some balked.

Some said sure

but meant no way.

Others will follow my lead:

“Hey, do you want to hear a good poem?”

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015