The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo

Books, Jackie Catcher March 19, 2015 Leave a comment

10460266Marjorie Richards could be my student. In fact, she could be anyone’s student. The seventeen-year-old main character of The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo haunted me for weeks after I finished the book. I had seen her before, lingering in the eyes and mannerisms of some of my teens. The fact that she was so relatable yet so distant was disturbing.

Marjorie’s story is complex and multilayered. She lives in rural New Hampshire where teen girls are being abducted. Her abusive parents are so isolated from society that they have developed their own obscure dialect of language, a language that earns Marjorie the name “the talk funny girl” amongst her classmates. And her town has fallen under economic hardship with the closing of the local mill; in turn, she is forced to take on a job with a stonemason building “a cathedral” to support her unemployed parents.

Marjorie’s transformation is raw, inspiring, and cathartic. Her story is riddled with poetic lines that provide this quiet character with a strong internal voice. In one passage she says, “I had my protective shell of funny talk and shyness, but underneath that lived a wilder me, a girl who would take punishment, and take it, and take it, but who would never let go of herself all the way, never completely surrender” (Merullo 87). As a reader, I both relished and resented her authentic responses to her surroundings. At times she was open with her emotions, clear and contemplative. Other times I struggled yet understood her willingness to stand silent. This ebb and flow made her even more real.

Merullo found balance between maintaining a plot that lasts over years while also intertwining a thread of suspense. I began the book expecting one storyline and was forced to revise my predictions with the turn of every page. In the end, Merullo’s vivid writing, unique dialogue, and brilliant character development left an indelible mark.

Students Need Real-Life Writing

Jackie Catcher, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop March 18, 2015 Comments: 2

suit-and-tieWe live in a technical world. People rarely see one another face-to-face anymore, which is why writing has become our hypothetical suit-and-tie. To get a job, one uploads and sends a cover letter and resume. To apply to college, one submits a college essay. To correspond with a colleague, one sends an e-mail. To be engage in online discussions or to communicate on social media, one must post or blog or tweet or comment. More than ever before, we are our words. We live in an age where we can look and act like slobs behind the screen while our words tell a different story. It’s empowering and liberating but also terrifying. Terrifying because too often our students don’t understand the value of formality in writing.

This has become even more apparent as I, a 26-year-old, am both exposed to and part of a generation of socially illiterate people. We, as well as our students, understand text language, chatting, posting, and tweeting, but our colloquial language seeps into our every day interactions, handicapping us in other ways.

While students can effectively communicate with their peers, they have not received the training to engage in formal written conversations—the types of conversations that drive the academic and business world. In turn, students arrive in college lazily piecing together informal e-mails to their professors that poorly represent their abilities and knowledge. We assume that because they have grown up as Internet babies and that because they are constantly on their phones, they understand the unwritten rules of Internet writing, but they don’t. This year I have made it a point to inject the discussion of voice, formality, and audience into my reading and writing units in an attempt to widen my students’ understanding of and comfort with writing.

In all of my classes I have sought to push my students outside of their comfort zones by exposing them to diverse mentor texts and assignments that force them to play with words. For many students, voice is a challenging concept. They struggle with finding a voice in their own writing, which makes it even more imperative students be exposed to comedic, sardonic, opinionated, and academic pieces. The only way to develop voice is to study it. Not all of the pieces I show my students are high brow; I pull from a variety of sources ranging from blog posts to articles from The Atlantic. But the pieces I choose are intended to show that a wide range of writers and voices exists. The more students understand that there is no one-size-fits-all structure, the sooner they will be willing to dabble in their sarcastic or silly side.

In learning about voice, students must also understand the value in formality and audience in their writing. Too often the e-mails I receive from students look like a long rambling text message. We’ve all received them—the ones riddled with grammatical errors, making us cringe and wonder if they’ve learned anything this year! Teens quickly become comfortable with the fact that teachers are the only people reading their writing. Students become overly comfortable with teachers reading their writing at times. We’re seemingly safe and familiar; we know their quality of work. Exposing their writing to new eyes and ears increases the stakes and makes their work more relevant.

This year, I was determined to push my lower level freshmen beyond the classroom and get them engaging with mentors. I could tell my students to work hard, which I did many times over, but in the general scheme of things, I was their teacher (akin to their mom). So I recruited a Navy Seal, an elementary school teacher, a forensic anthropologist, a photojournalist and others to do the job for me. Students were required to research a career. While they completed their research, I sat down with each student and helped him or her to draft an e-mail that they would send to a professional with which I paired them. Oftentimes I would return to find my students’ e-mails plagued with the same grammatical errors I’d seen so many times before,Depositphotos_7626816_m only this time, I was with them on the sending end.

My mini-conferences turned into minilessons on the importance of editing and the impression it had on the e-mail recipient. Students struggled with how to start their e-mails, how to address the recipient, and how to sign their name at the end. We practiced online manners, thanking the professionals for their time and answers while also noting something the student found to be interesting or appealing from the professional’s answers. In the end, their attention to detail paid off. A forensic science professor who teaches college students included the following in his e-mail:

“I was taken aback when I saw that he is only in ninth grade; I have students much older who do not bother to write properly and it disappoints me.  I am not your friend on FB nor are you texting me so no need for brevity at the expense of complete and correctly written sentences.  Salutations?  Maybe next year.

I have a 12 year old son so I think I will have him peer over my shoulder as I write to Carter so he can see how polished someone so young can be.  Thanks!”

Our students are going to college arguably without knowing or understanding the importance of voice, formality, and audience. To prepare them for life beyond high school, we must strive to incorporate real-life writing assignments into our classrooms. While some of my students may never write a research paper after they graduate from high school, I know that nearly all of them will use e-mail, apply for jobs, and engage on social media.

My role as an educator is to help mold and train productive and intelligent citizens and while giving them lifelong skills that translate beyond the classroom. Part of this is continuing to develop and adapt my classroom to better fit the needs of 21st century students. So regardless of what my students do in their free time whether they enjoy lounging in sweatpants with a tub of Doritos or taking selfies in a bathroom mirror, I want them to sound like poised, intelligent, and confident individuals. I want the world to be open to them—both online and in real-life.

The Value of Talk

Book Clubs, Community, Conferring, Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes, Writers Workshop March 17, 2015 Comments: 20

Talk is one of the most powerful tools at work in my classroom.  Now, I’m talking about talk—not discussion, sharing, peer editing, Socratic seminars, think-pair-share, or any other structured form of communication that might occur.  The simple act of letting our students just talk is invaluable, and we must create spaces in our curriculum for it to take place.  Here are three ways I encourage talk in my classroom.

Conferences – Reading and writing conferences aren’t just about assessment.  They’re also a valuable time for teachers and students to just talk to one another, getting to know each other as the humans that we are.  Creating a space for talk breaks down the teacher-student barrier, humanizes both parties, and by and large erases discipline problems in my classroom.  I begin every conference with a simple, “How are you today?”, and after genuinely listening for the child’s answer, direct the conference from there.  Some conferences, we don’t talk about books or writing–we just talk, because the student needs to.

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Students chat during the ‘Book Bistro’

Book Clubs – Not every book club meeting requires structure or an agenda to be valuable.  During this most recent unit, I simply asked students to keep the conversation going for 20 straight minutes.  They sometimes had to cast about for topics, but they always found something to discuss–mostly their books, but often text-to-text/self/world connections they’d made, which spun off into generalized, real-life conversations between kids who wouldn’t ordinarily find themselves chatting.  After finishing book clubs, Ana wrote, “I loved our book clubs because I felt like I got to know everyone better.”  She wrote other things about how she grew as a reader and writer…but she LOVED the unit because of the TALK that happened.

Root of the Writing Process – My journalism students consistently talk out their ideas at the very beginning of the writing process.  They chat in groups, usually starting with, “so what should I write about?”  It takes a few minutes, but enlightenment inevitably follows–the other day, Shay threw a few silly ideas out for Kenleigh about bathroom graffiti, but then they got serious about that as a story idea.  “You could call your piece ‘Signs from the Stalls,'” Shay said.  “AHHHH, that’s a great idea!!” Kenleigh enthused.  What kids like to talk about is often what they’d like to write about, and they need to talk to get to the heart of those topic ideas.

Talk builds community.  Talk is the tool that made my former student Emily say, “I felt like by the end of the year, everyone in the class became my best friend, including you.”

How do you see talk improving your classroom and its community?  What spaces do you create for talk in your classes?

I’m hosting #engchat March 23 7:00ET: We’re Talking Poetry as More Than a Unit

Amy Rasmussen, Twitter March 16, 2015 1 Comment

poetry answer-quote

Before I attended The Conference on Poetry and Teaching at The Frost Place last summer, I was a reluctant, resistant teacher of poetry. Sad to say, I never had a memorable experience with poetry until I was in my 50th year.

At The Frost Place, I listened and joined in conversations with working poets about language and their craft. My heart changed. I finally understood because I lived that language for a glorious week surrounded by these people with poetic souls and a view of the White Mountains smiling down on me. Oh, Franconia, NH. (Read about my experience here.)

By no means am I an expert when it comes to poetry in the classroom; however, nobody has to be! Our job as teachers is to help our students grow in literacy skills. Poetry helps us do that.

We bring a beauty into our classrooms, a peace that our world is so often lacking, when we allow poetry to be spoken, heard, shared, and felt.

#engchat is Monday March 21, 2015 at 7:00 ET. That’s 6:00 CT for me, which is why I forget and rarely make it to this chat. The family dinner hour for me in Texas. I’m eating out and early on the 21st though.

TOPIC: Immersing Poetry into ELA Instruction

Questions for Our Chat:

Q1: What are some ways, other than a poetry unit, that you use poetry in your class? #engchat

Q2: “Play is what we want to do. Work is what we have to do,” said W. H. Auden. Poetry is both of those things. How do we use poetry for work and play? #engchat

Q3: We can teach most any skill with poetry that we can w/ prose. Agree/disagree? If agree, what skills do you teach with which poems? #engchat

Q4: Last question. What resources can you share that will help us all immerse our students in beautiful language, daily? #engchat

 

Do you have any other questions you’d like us to talk about during #engchat? Please leave a comment.

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

Guest Post: Changing the Reading Culture in Our School One Book at a Time

Guest Post, Pedagogy, Professional Learning Community, Readers Writers Workshop March 16, 2015 Comments: 5

Both Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher have transformed my thinking as a high school literacy coach.  As a former elementary school teacher, I had always used reading/writing workshop, literature circles, and choice in my classroom.  When I transitioned to being a reading specialist/literacy coach in a high school, I really struggled with the whole class novel approach.  It didn’t work for me with the little ones and I saw more and more of my students struggle with it at the high school level.  Attending workshops offered by Gallagher and Kittle, along with reading everything they have written has given me the reassurance and the research that this approach CAN work in a high school.  Here is what has happened at my high school in just six months:

 

More and more teachers are trying it…

It all starts with one teacher and the support of a department chair.  Last spring after sharing what I learned at Penny Kittle’s Book Love workshop, one teacher decided to drop everything he has been doing in English and take on the “Book Love” approach.  He had so much success getting students to actually read books and improve their writing that two other teachers decided to jump in second term and teach English through choice and mentor texts.  The results were astounding. Word spread at lunch and in our PLCs – students were engaged and excited to come to English class.  Then at the beginning of term three, we had four more teachers jump in.  I am not sure if it was the “positive peer pressure” or hearing about students’ engagement, but little by little teachers have been asking about how to structure their classes in a way to make this work.

 

Teachers are reading more and talking about books…

At times during lunch teachers used to vent about the struggles they had motivating students to complete the reading from the previous evening, or how students bombed the reading check, but now the conversations are about books. We are talking about what we are reading, what our students are reading, what mentor texts we are using, and what changes we see in our classrooms.

Thanks to one teacher’s organization and determination, staff members are swapping rooms once a week and book-talking to students that they don’t teach.  The other day the principal’s secretary came in to our freshman class and book talked The DaVinci Code.  After she left, I saw that several students had added that book to their to-read list.

None of this would even be possible if our teachers weren’t willing to read new books.  Teachers are setting their own reading goals, keeping to-read lists, creating book trailers, etc.  For the past two years we have had “I am Reading” posters outside of our classroom doors, but this is the first year teachers are updating their posters more often and students are noticing the books.

 

Our library is busier than ever before…

We have a beautiful library that has a lot of books that just didn’t get checked out.  This year that has changed.  Last year from August until the end of February, only 4821 books were checked out and 63 books were placed on hold.  This year in the same time period 7333 books have been checked out and 137 books were placed on hold.  That is over 2500 more books being checked out and 74 more books being asked to be held.  Why the change?  Student choice!

Students now come to the library with a purpose.  They have a to-read list (some that are pages long) and if all the books they want are checked out, they can give us a good idea of what they want to read next.  As one of our English teachers told me, “They are thoughtful about what they are looking for if they go to the library.”  He doesn’t worry anymore about students going up to the library trying to “leave class” or “waste time.” Another teacher shared how his students “know their favorite authors and/or recognize titles that have been book-talked.”  They are talking to each other about books and recommending new titles to each other.  They are even checking out 2-3 books at a time.

Our library staff is also trying hard to find ways to get books in our students hands.  Our librarian has shared ARCs with classes and spends time in the classrooms promoting tons of books – the new ones and some of the oldies but goodies that haven’t been checked out in a while. The staff has started creating competitions each month to encourage students to read (Abe Lincoln Award voting, March Madness book bracket challenge, etc) new books.  The library is no longer just a place for students to come and get homework done.

 

Students are reading….

They really are reading and not just the “YA” books that naysayers worry about.  Prior to taking this approach, students came into classes either as students who read all the time (1-2), students who only read assigned books, students who fake read assigned books, and students who didn’t even try fake reading the assigned books.  As one teacher pointed out to me, “As soon as choice became an option, reading, for the vast majority of the students, became fun again!”  They began forming a reading habit that had been lost so long ago.

The issue is no longer trying to get students to read anything. They are reading more consistently than ever before.   Instead of dealing with them reading zero pages in a week, teachers are finding ways to increase student stamina from 50 to 150 pages in a week. That in itself is a huge success.  Students come to class early and start reading their books.  They can even be found reading as they walk down the halls. One boy almost knocked over an upperclassman in his attempt to finish the chapter of his book.  Once a week I co-teach in a freshman English class.  Of those twenty-one students, I think only two students have finished three books.  The rest have read an average of six books in nine weeks (snow days and all). Instead of worrying how to encourage our students to read common texts and pass the reading checks, the challenge is having enough books that interest all of our readers.

Our students ARE challenging themselves – reading more, picking nonfiction, moving up the reading ladder, and trying new genres based on what others have recommended to them. I had one boy in my homeroom start with Hatchet by Gary Paulsen in January and stretched and read Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden for book two.  It was definitely challenging for him, but he didn’t give up on it and was so proud when he finished it.  Other teachers are finding the same thing – students are willingly picking up books from Fitzgerald or Vonnegut, or Hemingway and are able to have real conversations about these books from their perspectives. Students are talking about books with each other AND coming up to teachers and discussing books with them. Because of the location of my office (the library), I tend to do book talks quite often when kids come upstairs and are looking for something new to read.  One of my favorite memories from this winter was a girl who had seen my Goodreads list and made her to-read list off of some of my favorites.  After she finished To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han, she asked her teacher if she could come find me and talk with me about it.  She had loved it so much and wanted to thank me for introducing her to that book.These students aren’t afraid of looking smart or nerdy – they are proud.

 

The culture is changing…

Students are now immersed in books wherever they turn.  Between our March Madness Book Bracket challenge, I am Reading posters, Classroom Reading Trees, the Health class independent reading project, random teacher book-talks, etc. students are reading more than ever before.

Melissa Sethna @msethna23 is a high school literacy coach in Mundelein, IL. She has always had a passion for books, technology, and working with adults. In her free time, she loves to read.  She’s a strong believer in book choice and sharing her joy of literature with her family and students. She says, “I wouldn’t be the teacher I am today without my reading heroes: Penny Kittle, Kelly Gallagher, Kylene Beers, Bob Probst, and Donalyn Miller — who inspire me to take risks, and I try to encourage others to do the same.”

The Modern PLC

Amy Rasmussen, Community, Pedagogy, Professional Learning Community, Social Networking March 15, 2015 Comments: 5

Sometimes things stay with you. In December I got this message:

I have been working with three teachers this fall who have transformed their classrooms (all ranging from freshman level to AP Lit and AP Lang) from the traditional class to a readers/writers workshop approach.  Your blog posts always show up in my email box at the exact right time when they are in need of inspiration to keep going and figure out what to do in their classes.  They realized very quickly how fast they were able to get through “old curriculum” when they dropped the class novel approach and were then scrambling to find new and exciting mentor texts, books to share, and additional writing ideas. Their students have read thousands of pages and enormous amounts of books which never happened in their classes before.  Students were writing them thank you letters for inspiring them to become true readers and writers.  Penny Kittle’s books got them started on this path, but your real life teacher posts have helped them validate what they are doing.  So… thank you and keep those posts coming.  They are making a difference in our classrooms.

I could write a book about the value in that feedback (Probably will). Feedback should make writers want to write more. That is exactly what Melissa Sethna’s kind words did for me and my friends here at TTT.

Her simple thanks also made us want to follow her work, support her even more, watch how she helps other teachers. We’ve become colleagues with a united purpose. We’ve become friends.

And that is the beauty of the modern PLC.

A literacy specialist in Mundelein, IL sends a thank you to a teacher/blogger in Lewisville, TX, which makes the teacher/blogger want to become a better teacher so she becomes a better writer so she writes more inspiring and instructional blog posts for other teachers and so on.

Teachers supporting one another as we do our best to do right by the children that we teach. As ELA teachers the best way we know how to do that is through balanced literacy practices in readers and writers workshop.

That’s the foundation for the Three Teachers Talk blog, which started as three friends committing to stay in touch by sharing our work through our writing. We are four teachers now — writing, sharing, and growing. And participating in a Professional Learning Community that’s been redefined, refocused, and restructured by connected educators around the globe who are just like us.

Thank you, readers, for being part of the best PLC on the planet.

 

Note: Melissa Sethna posts as a guest blogger here tomorrow. Her work inspires us.

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

March Book Madness for Choice Reading Books

Books, Community, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes March 13, 2015 Comments: 6

Can you believe it’s already the middle of March!?  This school year is flying by…and so is the list of titles I’ve booktalked so far.  I’ve exhausted the bestsellers of YA, dystopian sci-fi, classics, books for the beach, war books, and sports books.  At this point in the year, I’m starting to booktalk new purchases, which means I’ve often not yet read them–which means that sometimes, the quality of my booktalk decreases.

FullSizeRenderSo, because I want to shift the balance of not just grading from myself to my students, but also some of the teaching, I’ve turned to my own version of March Book Madness.  I heard about this competition from Tony Keefer’s Nerdy Book Club post, and I pitched it to kids, but they wanted to choose their own titles for the bracket.

So, blank brackets were printed, and to fill them, the guidelines were broad:  in each of my four English classes (which worked out well because they each get one corner of the bracket), students could choose a book and a partner to face off against.  Simple.

That was all I said, but as students began penciling in round one of the brackets, I was impressed mightily–they intuitively paired related books together, much like I do during booktalks.  Two boys in 8th period paired the excellent graphic novels Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Maus by Art Spiegelman.  Two girls in fifth period paired John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and Gayle Forman’s If I Stay–two viral tearjerkers.  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie will face off against Mexican White Boy by Matt de la Pena in sixth period.  And so on.

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Shae vs. Mariah in the Battle of the Tearjerkers…TFiOS vs. If I Stay

As book battles began, I laid out equally simple guidelines for voting.  Each student in a faceoff would give a short (1 minute) booktalk about their chosen text, and audience members could vote for one title based on any criteria–their own experience reading that book, the person’s booktalk, the presenter’s enthusiasm, the book’s stats on GoodReads behind the presenters, etc.

This modification to our daily routine–which is that students begin with reading, then hear my booktalks–has accomplished several wonderful things in our classroom.

First, students’ what to read lists, which had recently plateaued, are lengthening rapidly once more.  The sheer social capital of having a kid share his or her own reading experience of a book makes certain titles more tantalizing than I ever could.  Matthew Quick’s Sorta Like a Rock Star, for example, never quite flies off the shelves after I booktalk it.  It’s only after one or two kids read it and enthusiastically share it that it goes viral–and it does–year after year.  I see the same thing happening now during March Book Madness with lots of other books.  Kids are clamoring, suddenly, for several of the same titles.

FullSizeRender[1]Second, students are learning more about one another’s reading tastes.  They look at the brackets from other classes every day to see which books are advancing, and are sometimes surprised by who’s booktalking what.  “Huh…I didn’t know Jordan loved A.S. King too!”, I heard Hannah say yesterday.  “You read that book too!?  Wasn’t it awesome?!” Tyler said to Hunter, as he stood up with Ned Vizzini’s Be More Chill.  Despite my efforts to make their reading lives transparent with reading groups and notebook passes of book blogs, some of my larger classes haven’t quite unearthed the darkest corners of one another’s reading preferences.  MBM is fixing that quickly.

Third, this is not for a grade.  This is just a semi-structured celebration of books, with bragging rights as the purely intrinsic reward of the whole endeavor.  The five or so minutes we spend on this in class daily are a worthy time investment for the revelatory feel they bring to the start of our learning.  Kids are excited and upbeat after the two daily faceoffs, and excited to often add one or more of the four daily books discussed to their to-read lists.  The post-winter doldrums are quickly lifting…and the sunshine certainly isn’t hurting, either.

Is anyone else doing a version of March Book Madness?  How’s it going?  Please share in the comments!

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

Book Clubs, Books, Readers Workshop, Shana Karnes March 12, 2015 Comments: 5

315425I grew up as a reader, but I was a steadfast reader of fiction only–especially series.  I remember receiving my PSAT score report in high school, which strongly suggested that I begin reading more nonfiction in order to improve my vocabulary and reading comprehension.

So, not being informed about the wonderful nonfiction tomes I now know about, I began to read the newspaper.  That probably contributed to my majoring in journalism, and now teaching that subject in addition to English.

But it wasn’t until I took Penny Kittle’s class at the UNH Literacy Institute in 2013 that I fell in love with nonfiction (pardon me, Mr. Lehman and Ms. Roberts!).  I read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and was enamored of his use of narrative to help me understand seemingly disparate facts.  I quickly read all of Gladwell’s other books, then devoured the rest of the booklist from Penny’s class–The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, and plenty more.

However, it’s not since Gladwell that I’ve found another nonfiction author whose collected works I’m dying to devour…until now.

I recently asked my students to brainstorm as many nonfiction genres as they could, then select three for us to focus on for this quarter.  One of their selections was a recipe.  I wanted to show my students lots of examples of writing about food, so I purchased Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.  I picked up In Defense of Food first, and was left defenseless.

This book rocked my world, and my worldview.  It’s a book about the food we eat, where it comes from, how it’s different than other cultures’ foods, and how it’s good and bad for us.  I learned about the wild inaccuracies of food science, the nutrient-depleting process of processing food, and the government’s allowance of all this because of their dependence on food marketers’ money.  I also learned about the evolution of America’s food culture–from farm fresh to TV dinner to fast food–and its deleterious health effects on our population.

So, after Pollan sufficiently freaked me out and made me swear to myself that I’d never eat any processed food again in my life, he presented a clear solution to my fretting and outlined some rules for eating healthily (the subtitled Eater’s Manifesto).  I learned how to shop smart, defy the American diet’s unhealthy customs, and consider my foods in the contexts of their meals, which can completely transform their nutritional value.

It wasn’t just the topic that fascinated me (admittedly, I love to cook)…it was the writing.  From knee-slappingly incredible food puns like “let them eat Twinkies” and “the silence of the yams” to his deft skill at citing other writing to support his own arguments, I was convinced.  The clear organization of the book mirrors his three basic rules about eating well, which he states in sentence number one:  “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.”  The complex narrative he weaves makes perfect sense, but is incredibly layered.  Through it all, Pollan made his claims and supported them sturdily, leaving me not only swept up in a great story, but thoroughly knowledgeable about what real food is and isn’t in America today.

I can’t wait to bring this book to my students through book clubs, a reading challenge, or a craft study mini-lesson…so I’ll booktalk it tomorrow to my Funyun-munching students with as much fire and brimstone as I can manage, and hope they hop on the Pollan diet with me.

Grading vs. Feedback

Conferring, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes, Writers Workshop March 11, 2015 Comments: 17

Let me be honest:  I hate grading.

Hate hate hate it.

I hate it, but you know what I love to do?  Read my students’ writing.  Talk to them about their reading.  Absorb the creative projects on display after they’ve completed a reading or writing unit.

So, if I love to listen to and read and wonder about their work, why do I hate to grade it?

The idea of reducing a piece of student work to a number, or assigning some arbitrary value to a reading conference, or trying to measure precisely the growth of a writer from one genre to the next is not only intimidating to me…it also seems a little ridiculous.  Unnecessary.  Trivial.  The beauty of a learner’s work is its creation, its completion, its courage.  It’s out there…for me to read, for their peers to see, for their creators to reflect on.

But, too many of my students only know how to think in numeric terms when trying to measure their own achievements.  Few are well-versed in knowing how to feel proud of finishing a tough book, or pleased with the revision of a piece of writing, or excited about the hard work that went into a project.  They don’t know how to authentically self-evaluate, because for years, they have relied too heavily upon someone else’s assessments of their work–mainly their teachers’.  I keep wondering how that’s fair.  I’ve had conversations recently with the lovely Amy about this, and Jackie wrote a great post about this same dilemma last October.

FullSizeRenderLast week, this tweet from the always-wonderful Kelly Gallagher helped to focus my wondering.  His words are not only true of writing, but of all other acts of learning as well.  A grade can’t improve a student’s skills.  Only feedback can do that–authentic, speedy, specific feedback.

So now, thanks to the combination of conversations with fellow teachers, Kelly’s words, and my own wondering, I know what I need to do.  I need to focus more on feedback and less on grading.  I know if I do less of the latter, I’ll free up time to do more of the former.

So, I’m pondering how to shift the balance.  I’d really like to return written drafts with my comments and questions, but no number or letter grade at the top.  I’d really like to have just one reading conferences without hearing the question, “what grade do I have in here?”  I’d really like for students to abandon the habit of looking to me for grades, and instead look within themselves to figure out how they’re doing.

Because I can’t entirely forsake grades altogether (we need to update our gradebook weekly), I’ll move my focus toward improving my feedback instead.  I’ll do this in three important ways:

During reading or writing conferences.  Until now, I’ve tried to stay fairly quiet during conferences in order to let my students do most of the talking.  Most of my talk is in the form of questions.  Now, I’ll shift to giving students more feedback–much more than the one or two statements I try to make at the end of a conference, which usually are to give suggestions about where to go in terms of goals and growth.  I’d like to comment more on my observations of students’ growth, strengths, weaknesses, and skills, so they can learn the language to begin evaluating themselves more effectively.

In writer’s notebooks.  Although I collect notebooks every two weeks, I don’t read everything my students write–I don’t have time, and shouldn’t–they should write much more than I could ever read.  Generally, I thumb through the pages, check that students have given a good faith effort in all of their various sections, and give a completion grade.  Now, I’d like for each student to flag one page in their notebook they’d like me to attend to–maybe a woefully short to-read list, a favorite quickwrite, or a particular reading reflection.  That way, they can decide what’s important to them, and I can give feedback accordingly…just comments and questions, mind you–without the pressure of a grade for reader or writer.

Through monthly “Meta Meetings.”  I’d like to sit down with each student about once a month and just have a whole-person conference…not a reading or writing conference.  Just a little checkup, to see how their brains and hearts are doing.  I adore alliteration, and I want these chats to encourage my students to be metacognitive…so I think I’ll title them Meta Meetings.  I’ll ask students a few questions about their strengths and weaknesses, and try to get to the heart of all the little bits of the language arts they’re curious about…strengthening their similes, or finding a system for keeping track of found vocab words, or writing metaphorical recipes (all questions I’ve had from students at random times).  I also think that during these meetings, I’ll get lots of awesome curricular ideas–what do my students want to learn how to do?  What things are they really wondering about that I might be able to help them discover?

What are your suggestions for improving feedback?  Shifting away from grades?  Providing more authentic evaluation?  Please share in the comments!

Five Steps to Fostering Balanced Literacy in Your American Lit Class

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Book Clubs, Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop March 10, 2015 Comments: 4

How does your district handle classes that are very content specific? For example, I teach Honors/Pre-AP American Literature. This is a sophomore (with accelerated freshmen course) that has a pretty traditional literary movement focus, which includes several of the classics (The Scarlet Letter, Huck Finn, Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, The Things They Carried). And while I feel I have made great strides over the years in terms of student driven lessons, focus on discussion and annotation, skill vs. content based assessment, the one area I continue to struggle with as I look to workshop is how to facilitate the choice. 

This post is Part II of my response to those questions I received via email. See Part I here: Choose to Become a Classroom of Writers

I’ve thought about your query about your “content specific” American literature class a lot, and I keep getting stuck on one question:  Does the class have to revolve around full-length American novels?

I ask this for a couple of reasons. First, in my experience, many 11th grade teachers, in Texas at least, think that they have to teach English III as a survey of American literature; however, the  curriculum standards (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills or TEKS) do not mandate that. Yes, there is a standard that requires students read American literature, plus another that says American drama, but there are 11 other reading standards (plus Fig.19, which is a whole other story) and at least that many writing standards.

All of these standards are classified as either readiness (they will be tested on state exams) or supporting (they may be tested). The standards mandating American literature are supporting — meaning perhaps that they might not carry as much weight as readiness. Yet many teachers design their whole year’s worth of reading around one American novel or play after another, at times ignoring all the other reading standards that state that students should read a variety of other texts — fiction and non-fiction. Seems to me that if we do a mash up of all the reading standards we’d come up with one overarching goal:  Create readers. All adults should take note

How can we create readers if students are not reading? More and more research proves this is so.

Many of the junior level teachers here teach the American literature survey because that is the way it has traditionally been done — prior to the changes in the standards, almost 10 years ago, and our new state tests, three. Most have not learned how to do anything differently — like facilitating readers and writers workshop.

So, I wonder about the standards that drive your class. Are they like the TX ones that require some American lit, or is the class designed by your campus and/or district to be one focused on a survey of American Lit?

If it’s the first, give yourself permission to let some of those whole class novels go. You can step right into allowing more student choice. You can select short texts to read together, conduct book clubs where students still get choice but with your parameters. Imagine the possibilities for short stories and passages where you can teach the same skills you focus on when you teach those full-length novels.

If it’s the second, I wonder what you can do to change the course design. Would your administration be atticus finchokay with you taking a more balanced literacy approach and only reading some of those whole-class texts? You will have more time for writing, and you’ll have a better chance of moving students as readers because odds are you’ve got many students who are not reading those books. We’ve all been there.

If you haven’t read the English Journal article Not Reading: The 800 Lb Mockingbird in the Classroom, it is a fantastic piece that reiterates the problems of students faking their way through their reading.

Another great article is this one by Tim Pruzinsky, an IB teacher at an international school in Thailand. IB mandates specific texts, but Tim still manages to get all of his students reading novels of their choice.

Here are some ideas that might help as you continue to transition your instruction. The moves you’ve already made are probably much harder than these:

Five Steps to Creating Balanced Literacy in your American Literature Class (in no particular order):

1. Intentionally decide which of your current novels are nonnegotiable. Which book do the majority of your students read? Which book adds the most to your reading community in terms of discussions that build relationships? Which book are you able to teach the most skills that students can apply to their own independent reading? Keep that novel (or a couple of novels) as your whole class texts.

2. Decide to read fewer whole class novels and increase your reading of shorter whole class texts. How can you teach some of the skills you normally do with novels with short stories, poems, and a variety of non-fiction pieces?

3. Decide what type of writing will benefit your students most. Choose mentor texts that relate thematically to the novel/s you let go. You can still have the rich discussions surrounding a text and teach annotation skills without mandating another whole class reading assignments.

4. Select a short stack of books and facilitate Book Clubs. Students choose a book from the list to read and discuss with their peers in small groups. Visit each group and briefly join the discussion to hold students accountable for their group time. You might conduct Book Clubs 2-4 times a year to allow for choice with parameters and to ensure that all students reach for books that meet your ideal of complexity.

5. Decide to promote reading in your classroom and take no excuses from students. Talk about books and reading daily. Devote 10-15 minutes of self-selected reading time at the beginning of every class period. Confer with students about their reading regularly. Read a lot, so you are able to match students with books that they will want to read.

 

Anyone have other ideas to help make the move to more balanced literacy? Please leave a comment.

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015