Designing a Unit in Workshop: Just Try It

Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes, Try It Tuesday November 15, 2016 Comments: 6

The NCTE Annual Convention begins this week, and as always, its onset has prompted me to try and synthesize a year’s worth of thinking around one pressing topic.  What I’ve been considering this year is the value of units of study within a workshop classroom–the hows and whys and what ifs of planning for complex, themed units.

So, we know that teachers who engage in a workshop classroom often have many of the same routines in their schedules:  time to read, time to write, time to talk.  They often have many of the same components:  mini-lessons, booktalks, mentor texts, conferring.

These are all good things.

They are all engaging practices on their own, but to take on real power, they need to be strung together, applied again and again, over the course of units of study and throughout the year.

When I work with teachers who are diving into the workshop model for the first time, I model as many of these components as I can.  Teachers are engaged–they write, they read, they look at the craft of poetry, they analyze articles.  They are energized and enthused to try these strategies with their students.

But every time, I see one smart teacher, her brow furrowed, her face concerned, in the back of the room.  She tells me, either in person or on her evaluation card:  I don’t see the rigor in this model.

And she is right.  In one day’s work, students are only advancing incrementally.  If we just have fun every day playing with words in our notebooks, listening to podcasts to study their craft, or doing book passes ’til the cows come home, our students are not growing by leaps and bounds as readers or writers.

And that’s where designing strong units of instruction comes in.

Whether it’s reading or writing instruction, harnessing the daily moves of a workshop routine to build toward an authentic product is where rigor lives.

I like Kelly Gallagher’s words to sum up the idea of starting at the end when designing a unit:

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Begin by thinking about what you’d like your students to achieve.  Did you just hear an amazing commentary on NPR?  Wow, what a great writer that guy is–I want my students writing like that.

Start with your vision.  That’s where you begin.  Then you ask yourself:  what do my students need to know in order to write like that?

That’s where the workshop routines come in:  booktalk examples of strong nonfiction writing.  Teach mini-lessons that get at the craft of strong commentary writing.  Flood your students with mentor texts, both published pieces and each other’s work, so they can see both the process and the product.  Let them experiment with drafts in their writer’s notebooks–lots of ungraded, low-stakes practice should live there.

At the end of the unit, don’t destroy all of your hard work by trying to “grade” everything objectively with a rubric.  Our beautiful mentor Penny Kittle sums that up nicely:

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When best drafts land on your desk, ask:  how do I know students achieved what I wanted them to?  Utilize self-assessments, celebrate the writing, respond authentically.  Consider how each student advanced individually.

Our students deserve high quality instruction that offers them choice, volume, and authenticity.  They deserve units that will allow them to continue to build on their constantly-increasing mastery of their reading and writing skills.

I’ll be sharing more about planning units in an Ignite Session on Saturday morning, from 9:30-10:45, in room A412.  

And I’ll discuss how and why to build rigor into your workshop units in more depth on Sunday afternoon, from 1:30-2:45, in room B211.

Will you be at NCTE?  Please let us know in the comments.  We would love to meet you!

If you can’t make it to Atlanta, you won’t be missing out–tune in to Twitter using the hashtag #NCTE16 during our session times to join the conversation.

 

Mini-lesson Monday: A Matter of Perspective

Amy Rasmussen, AP Language, Classroom Culture, Community, Readers Writers Workshop November 14, 2016 Comments: 2

I am thinking about the importance of perspective. Mine and others.

To truly understand how the world works, why decisions are made, what issues matter to individuals, when things do not go our way, we have to be willing to peer into the thinking of those who think differently than we do.

Sometimes — no, most of the time, this is hard.

It is especially hard for the sixteen year olds I teach. They wear their bias like badges, and they often silence those who disagree with them with blatant disregard. I fight against this every day, but last Friday we took a few steps forward. I want us to keep moving.

Objective: Students will formulate ideas while writing from a perspective other than their own: Who? What? Where? When? Why?; draw conclusions based on observations and interactions with peers.

Lesson: First, we’ll write. Students will take out their phones and take a photo of the person sitting across from them. They will then write for ten minutes, trying to convey that person’s point of view about their future. What do they want to do after high school? Where do they see themselves in five years?

We will then share our writing and discuss how difficult it is to know another’s thinking without ever having a conversation. We will tie this thinking into the conversations we had last week about stereotypes and making judgements.

Next, we will do the Crossing the Line activity as outlined here by Vanderbilt University. Of course, I will have to change some of the questions:  Coke vs Pepsi? Pshaw. This is Texas! I will have to say Coke vs Dr. Pepper.

This activity will inspire discussions about our similarities and our differences, and the poem will allow for even more discussion, analysis, and critical thinking around a text.

Follow up:  As we move into choosing topics for our Poetic Rhetoric unit, I will remind students of the importance of investigating all sides of a topic and the importance of considering alternate points of view as they compose their poems. I did not do this last year, and this will add a critical element to their arguments. Too many of the spoken word poems I’ve listened to seem like rants against some issue instead of including a shift or two that lead toward solutions.

In times like these, we definitely need solutions.

NOTE:  Shana, Lisa, Jackie and I are presenting at #NCTE16 this week. If you will be with us in Atlanta, we’d love it if you attend our session on Sunday, Nov. 20 at 1:30 pm. Room B211 of the GA World Congress Center. I will start our presentation with more on the value of perspective and how it relates to Advancing All Students in Readers-Writers Workshop.

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‘Gray is the Only Way’: A Different Kind of #FridayREADS

Readers Writers Workshop November 11, 2016 Comments: 9

It’s been a rough week.

Certainly an understatement. I know we are hurting, scared, worried.

My emotions have kept me mostly mute, and I struggled with what to write today. I’ve started over five times. Then, I found something that helped me put thoughts into words, so I’m going to try. I’m also going to ask you to read something.

Before you read any further, know this:  I am not a Trump supporter, nor am I a Clinton supporter. I am an American invested in finding solutions to the issues that divide us as a people.

I am an Army mom whose son pledged to die fighting for my rights, and yours.

I am a Christian, and I’m pretty tired of being called intolerant, a homophobe, a racist, a bigot, and the like. My life speaks the opposite every single day.

I am a teacher. Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Indian, refugee, documented and undocumented, children enter my door every August, expecting to be taught critical thinking skills and to grow as readers, writers, and communicators. I am good at my job.

I love these children. These children are our hope.

But I wonder:  What kind of examples have we set for them lately? This election brought out the worst in so many of us.

I’m reminded of the TV commercial a few years ago where the little boy follows in the shadow of a man all day. Everything the man does, the little boy does. Cussing, smoking, drinking. I can’t remember, but probably giving people the bird, too.

I’m reminded of the book Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Mathew Quick where Leonard follows adults around — on the subway, through the mall, on the way to work –to see if anyone is truly happy.

What have our children seen in us this week?

Have they learned to graciously concede, even when they do not win or get their own way?  Hillary Clinton set a beautiful example when with composure and grace she delivered her concession speech. Of Trump, she said “We owe him an open mind and a chance to lead.” She urged unity. Not the protests and especially not the looting.

I believe we can be better than we have been.

I read this post last night, and my students and I read it together today. I urge you to read it and pass it along:  What a Gay, Muslim, Pakistani-American Immigrant Learned Traveling to Rural Alaska a Week before the Election.

 

Riaz Patel’s position gives me hope. What if every American “decided [they] needed to understand the election from a perspective other than [their] own”?

Imagine what we could learn “by listening. Listening. Not waiting to speak. Not waiting to disagree or refute.”

In our lightening-like, digital world, we have lost the art of listening.

What are the possibilities if we could all remember to practice Patel’s idea to “PERSONIFY the people we think we hate”?

I agree with him, maybe “Grey is the only way.”

Every American had skin in this election. Every American has skin in the country we choose to create.

We have to figure this thing out, or we may destroy one another.

The generalities and absolutes we have seen during the election  — and this past week — are opportunities for us to teach children that NOT ALL is sometimes more important than some.

 

My second period made a NOT All list as a way of thinking through the stereotypes and bias we see and experience every day:

Not all Mexicans are illegal

Not all white people are rednecks

Not all black people rob

Not all cops shoot black people

Not all Asians are smart

Not all Mexicans cut grass

Not all Asians are good at math

Not all white people are good at English

Not all Blacks have food stamp cards

Not all Blacks like chicken or watermelon

Not all Blacks are drug dealers

Not all Mexicans are rapists

Not all Muslims are terrorists

Not all Hispanics speak Spanish

Not all rednecks are racist

Not all black men are deadbeats

Not all Hispanics are Mexican

Not all Mexicans distribute drugs

Not all blondes are dumb

Not all black girls are ‘ratchet’

Not all black boys are gangsters

Not all Asian parents are strict

Not all Whites are drug addicts

Not all boxes are square

 

 

 

Not all boxes are square. And I think we can do better in proving that is so.

Enjoy the weekend, my friends. Joy cometh in the morning. Psalms 30:5

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Three Good “Ninja” Books About Children of Alcoholic Parents by Amy Estersohn

Guest Post, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop November 9, 2016 1 Comment

downloadI’m always on the lookout for ninja books – the kinds of books that address tough issues directly, but are also swift and subtle in how they go about doing it.  These are books that have middle school-appropriate characters, plot points, and pacing with some high school-ish themes.  See also: author Kerry O’Malley Cerra’s #mggetsreal campaign.

Without further ado… here are three terrific ninja books about children of alcoholic parents:

Shug by Jenny Han

Shug (nickname for Sugar) is stuck between being a child and being a teen, and she’s in the unfortunate situation of having a huge-o crush on her male best friend, Mark.  While Shug is primarily an optimistic if awkward tween relationship novel, astute readers will pick up on Shug’s mother’s social withdrawal and her tendency to rely on wine to solve problems.  This novel reminds us that chemical dependency can affect anybody without regard to class or gender.

The Seventh Most Important Thing by Shelley Pearsall

This book is about a boy named Arthur Owens who throws a brick at an old man’s head, nearly killing an old man. Whenever I booktalk this book, there’s always a reader who says, “Surely it was an accident that Arthur threw the brick.”

To which I smile and say, “No, Arthur really meant to throw that brick.”

The Seventh Most Important Thing just might be my favorite book ever, if I really had to choose a favorite book.  It’s a book that transformed me; it’s also transformed some of the readers I’ve worked with, readers who have never felt compelled by any particular text until THIS ONE.  (Note that this book isn’t some magic cure-all, as some of my readers find it a little too character-driven and not cliffhangery enough.  But still.  This book.)  

I won’t give too much else away here, but I will say that Arthur’s father did his best to be a good dad to his children despite a struggle with alcohol.

This Side of Home by Renée Watson

Watson has written a book I can only describe as a gentrification romance.  Twins Maya (named after Maya Angelou) and Nikki (named after Nikki Giovanni) are watching their Northeast Portland neighborhood change before their eyes.  It’s becoming more white, the stores are changing, and their neighbor and best friend Essence’s landlord has started remodeling the bathroom and kitchen … before raising the rent on their apartment.   Maya wants to go to Spelman with Essence, while Essence isn’t sure she’ll be able to leave Portland and her alcoholic mother, who constantly needs her help.

Each of these three books gives a different lens into how different characters may cope with an alcoholic parent, and each of these titles could appeal to younger and older teens.

Amy Estersohn is a middle school English teacher in Westchester County, NY.   She also reviews comic books for http://www.noflyingnotights.com.   Follow her on Twitter at @HMX_MSE.

Try it Tuesday: Building Fluency (And Relationships) One Page at a Time

AP English, Lisa Dennis, Logistics, Readers Writers Workshop, Try It Tuesday, Writers, Writers Workshop November 8, 2016 Comments: 6

I got to know Bennett because he “grew up” in my classroom.

I got to know Kathy because she discovered how much reading could challenge her thinking.

I got to know Austin because his sense of curiosity,  coupled with his sense of humor, brought him back after graduation to share his insights on college level critical thinking with my students last year.

I got to know Trevor because he had lost his love of reading, and workshop helped him find it again.

I got to know Abbey because I unknowingly played a part in developing her confidence.

We get to know our students in countless ways and through countless circumstances. Through conferences, writers notebook entries, overheard conversations, questions, books in their hands, and sometimes simple nods and smiles, we better understand the humans we as teachers are blessed to work with everyday.

And it is my belief that understanding (connecting with, acknowledging, listening to) students is the component that makes true growth and learning possible. As in life, building relationships breeds understanding, compassion, insight, tolerance, empathy…the list goes on and on (and as I’m typing this, is strikingly similar to a list of reading/writing benefits as well. Coincidence? I think not).

Yet, there are plenty of students I feel like I never get to know as I should. In fourteen years of teaching, I’ve had the opportunity to know roughly 2000 students. That’s 2000 unique life experiences, desires, learning styles, and needs, and I’d be lying if I said I connected, to the degree I might have wanted to, with each and every one, or even most.

But workshop does bring me closer. I talk more with students than at students now, and it makes a world of difference. I’m also offering up more opportunities these days for students to have real and honest connections with the classes I’m teaching. They share who they are in what they choose to read, how they respond to it, and what they write in far more meaningful ways, because the personal connections they create with the material allows for more depth.

My task now is to match those personal connections to learning through assessment of their acquisition of skills.

Sounds simple.
Not simple. Not at all simple.

But you know this. I’m pushing at an open door.
And yet, I would wager, it’s rarely easy for any of us.

So. How to keep students honestly sharing, deeply thinking, connecting to their reading, and growing as writers?

The one pager.

Shana wrote about weekly one pagers about a year ago, and I first started them with my AP students last January. It’s a simple concept. Students write every week. They write what they think, feel, and want to explore.

My modification for my AP students is to have them write weekly about what they are reading independently or specifically for class. The emphasis is to contextualize a chosen quote that they find impactful in some way and then react to it. Part craft study, part reflection, part magic. Beyond that, I encourage students to let their writing flow. 500 words (ish). Single spaced. Analysis. Reflection. Once per week. No exceptions.

Since the point is to write more (and more, and more, and more), I try to keep in mind that I don’t need to read every word. With four sections of AP Language this year, totalling 81 students, I’d be in way over my head. So instead, I keep the scores formative, rotate through the classes to comment on one section of the four per week, and give completion scores for those I skim over. Students use turnitin.com to submit the writing each week, so it’s organized and in one place. Occasionally, we’ll discuss our quotes in small groups and/or use the writing for some craft study in class.

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Those are the logistics.

My favorite part of this practice, however,  is the way it provides a safe place for my writers to grow, and when they really embrace the exercise, fantastic things happen.

At the start of this school year, I received an email from Simrah, a former student who finds herself in college this year:

Mrs. Dennis,
     I hope you are doing well. I’m having a wonderful time in college and have been meaning to email you to say thank you for having us write one pagers. In English these first two weeks of school, we have been writing one pagers on different readings. Doing so last year was very helpful. We continue to write one page type essays in my class as a grade and being able to do it without question has been great! You can tell you AP Lang students I said this. Thanks again and I hope you have a wonderful school year. Hopefully I’ll stop by the school some time to say hello personally 😉 ❤

Sincerely,
        Simrah —– (a very thankful one pager writing college student)

Just this week, as I introduced my AP Language students to their upcoming “opportunity” to grow as writers, I received an email from Charlie, a young man whose heart is big, his desire to learn is bigger, and unfortunately, this week, he had an unexpected topic emerge for his one pager that turned his piece into an outpouring of emotion that he desperately needed and brought tears to my eyes.

Charlie lost his grandfather this past weekend. Up to this point, Charlie and I have laughed together, as he is a wonderfully personable young man, but I wouldn’t say we had particularly connected. Then he emailed me Sunday to (can you believe) apologize for going over the word limit on the one pager and share with me a picture of how striking the resemblance is between his grandfather at the same age Charlie is now.

Charlie’s writing touched me. He quoted Dr. Seuss in saying, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened,” and went on to detail the events of the past week and his deep thinking/feeling about them.

When I hugged him this morning, he smiled again, and then hung back for a few minutes after class to tell me more about his grandpa, how the family was doing, and how he was doing. It was a conversation he needed to have and I was honored to share it with him. He joked on his way out the door that it would be hard to top his first one pager this coming weekend, but he would try.

Earlier in the weekend, Charlie had ended our email exchange by saying, “I am so lucky to have a teacher like you who cares so much.”

Well, Charlie, you’re sweet to say, but really,  I’m the lucky one.

Because I’ve gotten to know Charlie, Bennett, Kathy, Austin, Trevor,  Abbey, and I’m learning more and more ways to know more and more students.

I’m getting to know them in ways that truly matter.

As readers.
As writers.
As learners.
As people.

As writers of one pagers. Simple assignments that can be simply amazing.

Have you tried “one pager” writing in your classroom? How do you work to build fluency in your students’ writing. Please share in the comments below. 

 

Mini-Lesson Monday: Great Sportswriting is Worth Two Reads

Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes, Writers Workshop November 7, 2016 1 Comment

In fifth grade, I attended a writing workshop with sportswriter Paul Daugherty at the helm.  A columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, he encouraged we wee ten-year-olds to think about how we might revise more quickly and do our prewriting in our heads.  He spoke about his experiences writing half a story while watching a game unfold, sometimes being tempted to write the ending before the ending had even occurred.  At age ten, I found him eloquent, mysterious, and inspiring–I decided then that I wanted to be a journalist.

Although I dropped my journalism major after one year in college, I still enjoy Daughterty’s columns in the Enquirer and occasionally Sports Illustrated.  And as an adult, I see his process in his product.  The craft of Daugherty’s writing is one of the things that made me enjoy sportswriting, and now, strong pieces about America’s most-loved athletic pastimes are some of my favorite things to read.

So, when Tom Romano sent me this piece from the New York Times, I thought immediately of how students would love the “metaphorical, descriptive” writing “with quotes and assertions and a great final line.”

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Tom Romano’s great description of this piece in the Times.

Objectives: Identify patterns in the author’s writing to characterize his voice; find where the author cites evidence that supports his claims; infer the writer’s process; apply concepts of writer’s voice and strong argument writing to your own nonfiction pieces.

Lesson:  I’ll distribute copies of “Twitchy, Sweaty, but Triumphant” by Michael Powell for students to read, but I’ll also have the piece projected on the Smart Board so kids can see the great accompanying photography.

Because ’tis the season of moving past narrative and into nonfiction writing (in which we often harness the power of narrative, by the way) students will have already been immersed in a study of making claims supported by evidence, crafting a clear and purposeful structure, and maintaining a voice and style that defy the conventions of a five-paragraph you-know-what.  This article will serve as a mentor text that features all three, plus some insight into that long-ago lesson I learned from Paul Daugherty: the speed of a sportswriter’s process.

“We’ve been studying a variety of nonfiction pieces that have great style as well as strong claims–commentaries, columns, and speeches.  And here’s another example of those traits in this sports article.

“As you read it, look for the writer’s voice and the way the writer makes claims and supports them with evidence, as we’ve been doing throughout this unit,” I request.

We take ten minutes to read through the article, annotating quickly and noting writerly moves that jump out at us.  I model on the document camera, noting what I see–the unnamed players throughout the first paragraphs of the piece, creating a universal scene; the sheer entertainment of his vocabulary (words like gluttonous, beatnik, facsimile that you wouldn’t expect in a sports article); his unique turns of phrase.

I then ask students to share in table groups what they noticed about craft and claims.  After they share and we debrief, I return to the article.

“One of the things I find fascinating about sportswriting is how quickly it has to happen.  The turnaround is so quick–we spend a few weeks polishing pieces of this length, but these writers only have a few hours.”

(In keeping choice central to my curriculum, students always get to choose either their process, genre, or topic.  Because in this unit students are constrained to one genre–nonfiction–I will make an effort to help them choose their own topics and processes.  That’s wisdom I gleaned from Writing With Mentors.)

“I want to consider the writer’s process, and I found some good evidence of it:  let’s look at Powell’s tweets from during the game.”

I pull up Powell’s Twitter account and we scroll down to see his game-time tweets, many of which contain some of the same phrases  in the article: the Dead End Kids, the Lackawanna freight train rolling through, the pitchers being gassed.  Students notice these unique phrases immediately.

“What could you infer about Powell, given that this game ended at around 1:00 am and his piece ran at 9:00 am?”

I elicit students to share:  “He was already writing a bit during the game.”  “He writes sports all the time so he can already pull up a lot of the jargon quickly.”  “He really loves his subject, since he’s up watching the game and tweeting and having fun with it.”  “He’s knowledgeable about the history of these teams–maybe he did a lot of research beforehand or maybe he just knows it from writing about it a lot.”

Now, students have painted a picture of the piece’s author.  We can go into the reading warm, not cold.

“So, let’s read again, and consider his process this time,” I ask.  “Look now to see how his tweets–evidence of his prewriting–are in the article and what that teaches you about his process.”

We read the article again, a fresh purpose for reading helping us see the writer’s process come to life.  Once we’ve finished, we talk in table groups and then debrief as a whole class about the evidence we see of Powell’s writing process based on his tweets and what we know about sportswriters as a group.

These two reads give us three things:  another example of writer’s craft, more examples of claims with supporting evidence, and an example of process.

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I love this great photo of the Cubs’ moment of triumph from the Wall Street Journal. 

Follow-Up:  After students read this piece, there are many opportunities for follow-up.  One is to simply have them apply its writing lessons to their own nonfiction pieces.  Another is to have a lengthy conversation on writing processes, and how they can be short yet incredibly effective–students can see that prewriting doesn’t have to take the form of a web or an outline, but that it can be tweets, too.

Daugherty’s work, the now-defunct Grantland, and The New York Times sports section are some of my favorite places  to find great sportswriting.  What are some of your favorite resources for finding great nonfiction for your students? Please share in the comments!

11 Nonfiction Titles to Use Across the Curriculum

#FridayReads, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes November 4, 2016 Leave a comment

We’ve been saying it for years–teaching reading isn’t just the job of English teachers.  In an ideal world, it is a nationwide cultural endeavor to produce a literate citizenry who is both able to decode words and passionate about responding to their meanings.

The Common Core, for all its flaws, attempts to get students there–the standards say that kids should be reading 50% nonfiction altogether (that’s not just in English class; it’s across the curriculum).  In that vein, here are 11 nonfiction titles that could be used across the curriculum–or booktalked by any teacher in an English class.

img_5198Science –

The Double Helix, a fascinating biography by one of the discoverers of DNA, hooks me every time by bringing the textbook personas of Watson himself and his partner Francis Crick to life.  Many of my students interested in a career in the biological sciences were hooked by this text immediately.

Being Mortal forces the reader to ask some tough questions–should I really prolong my life as much as medicine enables me to, through decades of pain and suffering?  Or does that run counter to the human spirit?  Gawande uses all of his knowledge as a practicing surgeon to get the reader to question the industry that is medicine.

Into Thin Air, an oldie but a goodie, is Jon Krakauer’s harrowing first-person account of the deadliest season on Mt. Everest in history.  Its early promise that most of its characters would soon be dead grabs my students’ attention every time.

A Short History of Nearly Everything, aka the longest but most interesting book about science ever, explains everything I never understood about the subject from The Big Bang to the possibility of someday colonizing Mars.  Students are always wildly impressed when I flip through the list of Bryson’s references in the back.

Social Studies –

Hiroshima is John Hersey’s unflinching masterwork, a journalistic symphony of six survivors’ stories of the dropping of the first atomic bomb.  It is powerful and devastating and horrifying and beautiful all at once, and just reading the first page aloud to students gets them wide-eyed and entranced right away.

henrylouisgatesjr1Colored People, Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s biography of growing up black in rural West Virginia during the Civil Rights movement.  It’s a book that hooks my students because of its ties to our home state, but it’s universally appealing in that Gates creates a colorful cast of characters early on in the book, most of whom he defies in order to graduate summa cum laude from Yale University.

To Sell is Human is a favorite for students in Psychology class as it brings the social sciences to life in a very Malcolm Gladwell-esque way–short stories and then quick aphorisms make complex ideas simple to digest in this quick, fascinating read by Daniel Pink.

English –

137717Will in the World, written by everyone’s favorite long-winded Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt, brings William Shakespeare to life in this detailed biography of both the playwright and his Elizabethan London.  I love reading this book as a shameless English nerd and London-lover, but my students love it because it’s a classic tale of an average guy succeeding against all odds.

The Mother Tongue, the second book by the excellent Bill Bryson on this list, is a glorious history of the English language.  My students especially adore the chapter on swear words.

Math –

imgresMoneyball, one of Michael Lewis’ earliest books, hooks students often because it has a great movie adaptation to accompany it.  But when you sit down with the book itself, it blends both narrative and statistics, the least “mathy” part of math that I can understand.

The Hot Zone, a terrifying account of the origins of the Ebola virus, will give you actual nightmares if the ideas of biological warfare or global pandemics freak you out.  It’s a very detailed narrative of the virus’ structure, symptoms, and Hail Mary-type treatments that “proves that truth really is scarier than fiction.” (Tell that to Stephen King.)

What titles do you use to introduce your students to subjects across the curriculum? Please share in the comments!

Try it Tuesday: Taking a line

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, AP Language, Community, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop November 1, 2016 Leave a comment

My AP Lang and Comp students have been writing. A lot.

We’ve analyzed arguments and written short analysis essays. We’ve read powerful OpEd pieces like this and this and this, and we’ve written responses and modeled these writers’ craft moves. We’ve written arguments on our blogs and had a bit of fun modeling Neil Pasricha’s Awesome writing as we practiced using figurative language and specific examples in our essays.  We’ve read about the importance of serious reading, and written one-pagers to defend, challenge, or qualify. Lately, we’ve studied the work of Bryan Stevenson in Just Mercy and watched his TED talk.

I sensed my students needed something a little different, but I needed to keep them writing. So with just one class last week, instead of using a full mentor text to inspire great writing, we used a sentence.

I pulled this quote from Stevenson’s talk:

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And then I asked students to write anything they wanted: poems, essays, stories, whatever. The only requirement? Use that line somewhere in your own writing.

Then, on Friday, students moved to our “writer’s chair” and shared their writing. Our community responded with sticky note blessings.

Several students were reluctant to share. “Mine isn’t good,” more than one student said.

“We are a community of writers,” I encouraged. “This is a safe place, and we all want to know what you have to say. Truly, no pressure.”

After a few volunteers, Martina finally rose to share her response to Stevenson’s quote. Her voice was soft yet powerful:

It’s the sigh of relief and relaxed muscles from knowing you did the right thing. It’s liberating and lightweight–the world suddenly doesn’t seem to be positioned heavily on your shoulders. It can be the doubt and little knock of guilt on the back of your head knowing you did the wrong thing. It’s the tempting feeling of doing correct actions, but not being able to when you’re being held against a wall by your own conscious.

It’s difficult to see greener grass on the other side of the horizon when it’s fertilized with the negative aspects of your actions. Learning to realize and move on from what cages you in is the only form of developing into a healthier person–sometimes this ends up being all it takes for it to be “The right thing to do.”

“Always do the right thing even if the right thing is the hard thing”

As kids we grow up with love from family, the goodnight kisses from your parents after a bedtime story, the reassurances of  “It’s Okay” after a tumble on the playground, and the form of love that lingers in the atmosphere when you’re around the individuals that raised you. As we grow our love transforms into something deeper, something more emotional, something dangerous. It might have started with a crush on the new individual at work, the butterflies twisting and turning in your belly are a pure indicator that you’ve deeply fallen in a midst of hearts and dazy clouds of love.

Often times, things go wrong. Abusive relationships exist and they are common amongst the men and women in our society. Nearly half (43%) of dating college women report experiencing violent and abusive dating behaviors, Nearly 1.5 million high school students nationwide experience physical abuse from a dating partner in a single year, and one in seven men age 18+ in the U.S. has been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in his lifetime.

The right thing in this case is following your heart. Men and women trap themselves in abusive relationships because loving the one person that hurts you seems to be the right thing. Other times, allowing yourself to step away from the relationship/situation is not an option and it becomes a tough obstacle to get out of the arms that hold a restricting grasp on you. There’s always help, there’s always somebody there. Reach out for the right motives even if it’s the hard thing to do.

Never let a person of interest degrade your actions or make themselves superior to you. The most damaging thing to do–and often hardest–is staying in an abusive relationship. Love is a beautiful thing, don’t let anybody damage that for you. Instead, do the right thing for your health, mind, and body without the harm of anyone or anything. 

Two students shared poems, others shared why they think that quote is important, and others wrote arguments of a sort like Martina’s. All were important reminders to me to let students choose how they show they are learning.

Of course, the shared experience of reading their work was pretty fabulous, too.

One of the best things I can do as a teacher of writers is to offer opportunities for students to share their writing. I know the more we share with one another, the better our writing will become. If I remain the only audience (or even mostly their only audience — my students do write on their blogs and leave feedback for each other), some students may never make the connection between writing and truly conveying meaning. Too many just care about the grade.

By just taking a line last week and then asking students to write whatever they wanted, and then sharing… we built trust in our community and we celebrated that we really are on our way to becoming better writers.

What have you tried lately that improved some aspect of your classroom community? Join in the conversation and share in the comments.

 

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Mini-Lesson Monday: Friendly Competition

Common Core, Common Core Writing, Lisa Dennis, Narrative, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop October 30, 2016 Leave a comment

Having just watched my beloved Green Bay Packers hand the game to the Atlanta Falcons, my belly is full of delicious chili, but my heart is heavy. Now, I’m watching the Cubs possibly beat Cleveland and getting an odd thrill over a game I have absolutely no stake in. I’m not usually such a sports enthusiast, but all the excitement has me thinking.

img_6450The thrill of competition, win or lose, can make the ordinary far more fun. This typical Sunday night, for example, involved good friends, good food, and a good amount of jawing about a sport none of us have ever played, but still feel the need to critique. Any other Sunday night would find me waist deep in student papers. A different kind of fun, for sure.

Competition in the classroom puts a spin on the ordinary as well. It’s been my experience that a little friendly competition can turn the most aloof high students into passionate, enthusiastic, albeit candy-crazed participants. When the “prize” is stickers, watch out. The stakes are suddenly cutthroat.

For this relatively ordinary mini lesson on narrative techniques, I took advantage of the fact that I have a class of 28 students. While there are countless techniques that a writer can use in order to advance the chronology of his or her piece, my sophomores were going to be focusing on the basic idea that chronology can be linear or nonlinear, utilizing techniques like foreshadowing, flashback, building suspense, and reflection.

One of my collaborative team members came up with the idea to have the kids make the anchor charts for the lesson (thanks, Weston!), and I ran with that img_6454idea for the active engagement section of the class.

Objective: After researching in small groups, students create anchor charts for narrative techniques related to chronology and use them to determine which techniques could apply to their own stories during revision of their current draft.

Lesson: Having researched their randomly chosen terms in small groups, students pooled their findings and created an anchor chart that included the name of the technique, a definition, a purpose for using the narrative tool, and an example or two. 

With a larger class, I was able to have two groups work with each term, meaning we could have a little friendly competition.

img_6448Students completed their charts and we distributed them around the room. With their small groups, students traveled to each poster pairing and took notes on the techniques, discussing with their classmates places in their own stories they could utilize the technique. In addition, students were deciding which poster they felt more accurately covered the technique and would fit in well with the logical detail needed for our classroom anchor chart wall.

There was a lot of great talk that followed and students writing notes and ideas down in their notebooks too. I loved listening to their ideas of how the technique could be incorporated in their stories and where/how it might best fit.

The voting process even made me smile. The class suggested that they should have an official delegate from each group come forward to vote and then hang the winning poster on the wall. It was very…democratic.

Follow-Up: Students worked during workshop time to identify the chronological steps taken in their papers already and then strengthen the purposeful inclusion of chronological techniques in their pieces. Next class period, we’ll be doing some peer editing involving the specific inclusion of these elements. That exercise and their final submissions will both involve assessment of the writing (peer assessment and self assessment) using the same rubric I will use to grade this portion of their papers.

Proficient Level Narrative Chronology:
The text creates a logical progression of experiences or events using some techniques—such as chronology, flashback, foreshadowing, suspense, etc.—to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole.

How do you utilize friendly competition to engage students? Please feel free to share in the comments below. 


Thanks for the Great Read #FridayReads

#FridayReads, Classroom Library, Community, Lisa Dennis, Logistics, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop October 28, 2016 1 Comment

I think it was a “thank you,” of sorts.

My associate principal, the ever-smiling, ever-supportive, Anita Sundstrom, had asked at the end of last school year to borrow some books to read over the summer.

I sent her home with Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale (and I swear to the heavens and Nicholas Nickleby that Ms. Hannah isn’t paying me to write about her book. Though I may have mentioned how it made me weepy here, and how I broke the law to read it here,  and how the lovely Erin Doucette – who is so very lovely that she helped me with the title of this post at 7:31 a.m.- and I book talked it for the whole school here).

Only a few days later, I received a text from Anita. Something about reading until two in the morning and then not being able to fall asleep for fear of Nazis.

As I said…I think it was a thank you.

She couldn’t put the book down and immediately wanted another recommendation.

Translation: A book captured a reader and fueled a desire to keep reading.
Further Translation: The deepest desire of each and every English teacher fulfilled.

However, it wasn’t until I went to book talk The Nightingale for my current students a few weeks back, that I noticed the Post-it stuck to the inside cover of the book: “Thanks for the great read. – Anita” 

It made me smile. And want to pass on the book love.

So, when I did the book talk, I shared the brief reading story above and showed that Post-it to my students. I joked that Mrs. Sundstrom’s note added street cred to the book. After all, she’s a former science teacher.

Translation: The book has a wider appeal than just a tearful (though sincerely passionate) English teacher.
Further Translation: I now had an idea to help “sell” more books.

Next to the book return bin in my classroom, I placed a stack of Post-its and a few pens. I introduced the idea that we could all help each other better understand the books in our library and their appeal by leaving each other notes in the text. 

These quick little reviews could reach out to readers in search of a book. Those souls searching for a little connection to the readers that have gone before them. Swaying back and forth in front of the bookshelves. Staring. Now, they would have the recommendation of fellow readers right there in the book. The book that would already be in their hands.

Sometimes those Post-it notes can recommend a book I’ve not yet book talked. Sometimes those notes can recommend a book before I can get over to the shelves and help a student select a text. Sometimes those notes lend cred to book when a cover/title/description doesn’t do it justice.

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So…
Read a book.
Love it.
Leave your name and your thoughts on a sticky note.img_6677

Simple, right?

Helpful too.

Now I tease kids that their old school Post-it note reviews might find their way to Mrs. Sundstrom’s office, which is better than finding themselves in Mrs. Sundstrom’s office.

My hope is that the inside covers of my books end up looking like our writer’s notebooks: colorful, messy, informative, creative, and full of inspirational, deep thoughts.

So, thank a peer, thank a friend, thank a reader, thank a book. #FridayReads and then pass it on.

How do you capture students’ thoughts on books they love? Please share your ideas in the comments below!