Tag Archives: AP English

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

Choose to Become a Classroom of Writers

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Community, Pedagogy, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop March 9, 2015 Comments: 2

Note:  I enjoy emails with questions about my teaching practice. They help me clarify my thinking, and they often lead to new posts here. This post is Part I of my response to this question:

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. 

Do you have a similar class in your district? Are any of these texts still used as whole class works? As options within specific unit studies? Or is the year open to student choice throughout? 

First of all, while my district ELA coordinator would love for all teachers to move to readers/writers workshop, and he has introduced that idea through various means, many teachers are not there yet and some are determined not to budge. Like many other issues related to change in schools, they nod their heads and keep doing what they’ve always done. We know that sometimes this is best for kids (I’ve done the nodding and door closing, too), and sometimes it is not, which is the case when it comes to continuing to make all the choices in English classes at the expense of student readers.

My own department manager reminds me often that we have to take our movement one step at a time. This is my first year on this campus, and while most everyone is making positive and impacting change. It’s slow, and I get antsy. I’ve been doing readers/writers workshop with my students for seven years now, and I still work on refining plans, lessons, mentor text selections, mini-lessons, and more. Truly, workshop is constant motion, which I am sure, if you practice it, you already know.

Recently, I was asked, “What is the one step that will give us the most movement as we continue this transition?” I paused for a moment, and then the answer focused clearly:

Become classrooms of writers.

Many high school English classes are literature laden. All the lessons revolve around specific texts, mostly whole class novels, and sometimes teachers spend five, six or nine weeks reading and discussing that one text. Sure, they might include other instructional practices and activities, but the most common mode of writing taught is analytical (the least likely of all the modes of writing students will use in their lives after English class. Teachers, when was the last time you wrote an analytical essay for your job?).

When we move to becoming classrooms of writers, teachers realize that if we want to practice other modes, read mentor texts, model the writing process, lead revision workshops, publish our best work, and truly live the lives of writers, we simply do not have time to devote class after class time to the study of one particular book.

A mentor once told me:  “You choose to do this, which means you choose not to do that.”Faulkner on reading

Say I choose to create a unit where my students write narratives (I always start the year with narrative because it is builds community, and contributes so much weight to other modes of writing. See tom Newkirk’s book Minds Made for Stories.) I prepare by gathering a variety of narrative texts of various lengths. I can use passages from an assortment of books in my classroom library, or I can pull passages from popular short stories, or classic novels. [See note on this at the end.]

Some passages I will use to teach leads. Others I will use to teach how authors deal with time. I may pull out specific parts and teach effective use of dialogue or character development, setting, whatever. [Gathering a variety of texts in different genres around the same theme is another way to approach the same type of reading then writing task I describe here. I’ll write about this soon.]

First, we read like readers. We practice comprehension strategies and discuss the meaning of the text.

Next, we read like writers. We deconstruct the text and discuss how the author makes that meaning.

In my AP class, we almost always talk about these texts via a Harkness discussion. Students do the thinking and speaking after I’ve done mini-lessons and modeled answering focusing questions. I’ve learned to trust that students will discover the elements and devices that I hope they will. Sometimes I have to prod, but they rarely never get there.

The skill I need to teach determines the reading passages I select. That’s an opposite approach to how I used to plan when my teaching was driven by various pieces of literature.

And now, I have time to talk about books, allow students to select books they’d like to read, and confer with students about their reading. They read tons more than they ever did before, and they become much more effective writers. Win/Win.

cool quote memes from our friends at http://www.TeachMentorTexts.com

Watch for Part II of my response soon.
 ©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

Finding the Right Book for Growth in AP English

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Book Clubs, Books, Pedagogy, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop March 4, 2015 Comments: 11

Several tiles similar to this one dot the ceiling in my classroom.

Sometimes I just want to say: “You are wrong.”

Of course, I try to be a little more diplomatic than that, but really, many critics of balanced literacy are that — wrong.

The argument I hear the most against allowing students to choose which books to read in AP English is that they will never choose to read anything other than Young Adult fiction and graphic novels. To that I want to say “So?” (For a great list of graphic novel titles, see Donalyn’ post Comic Book Girl.)

What I do tell those who assert this nonsensical claim is “I wish you could visit my classroom and talk with my students.”  Here’s what they would see:

Everyone in the class is reading. Everyone except Rebecca. She stands in front of the book shelf I’ve labeled “Literature at Its Finest.” Between bookends on the top are paperback classics; authors ranging from Ray Bradbury to H.G. Wells. The first shelf is stacked with anthologies from my university studies in literature: Homer, Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton –the Complete Works, and more texts from the canon: The A Tale of Two Cities, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Awakening, To Kill a Mockingbird. And many I have never read: 1984, Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, A Farewell to Arms, Brave New World.

I walk over and ask, “Whatcha looking for?”

“I want to read a romance,” she says.

“Why are you looking on this shelf?”

“I need a challenging book.”

“So you want a romance that’s a challenge?” I say.

“Yes, they make those, right?” she answers, and we both laugh.

I pull Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights. I hand Rebecca each book as I talk a bit about them. Why I love Jane Austen and a little about the Regency Era, a quick bio of the Bronte sisters, and a tad about Gothic literature.

She asks, “Which should I read?”

I answer, “You decide. Read the back covers and the first few pages of each. See which voice you like best, and go from there.”

A few minutes later, I see that she has the clipboard where students sign books out from our class library. Rebecca has decided to read Pride and Prejudice.

A week passes. I meet with Rebecca for a conference. She tells me that this book is hard. She has to re-read parts of it for it to make sense. We talk about her strategies for comprehension. She says she is not giving up.

Two weeks pass. I ask students to share out with the class what they are reading. Rebecca says P & P and smiles as she declares that she’s finally figured it out. “I get it now, and I am getting better at reading it.” When I get a chance, I walk over to her desk and ask her what she means.

“The characters, everything,” she says. “It was the language that was really throwing me, but I understand the story now. I like Jane — her attitudes and opinions.” I make a note to follow up on this conversation.

Critics may say: So, she’s reading Pride and Prejudice. She won’t understand the nuances, the humor, the satirical elements, or even the social commentary without guiding questions and class discussions to help her.

They are right. Rebecca probably won’t get all that. But she and I are fine with it.

We have learned how to look at language and deconstruct texts, analyzing as we go with short texts we read and study in class. If I asked Rebecca to select a page and analyze some aspect of Austen’s language, I know that she could do it. She is a a critical thinker and a competent writer.

And she has challenged herself into a beautifully written complex piece of literature. And she likes it.

We read, discuss, and work with other titles in book clubs to understand and be able to analyze the scope of a novel. (I facilitated #APLangchat on the topic of book clubs. Here’s the planning for that and the Storify. And I wrote about little about my class book clubs here and here.)

I want students to love literature. I want them to become readers. The best way I know how to accomplish both is to let them choose the books they read.

I surround my students with rich literature. I talk about books daily. They talk with one another about what they are reading regularly. We build a community where they know my expectations for them as readers, and they evaluate themselves — setting, reviewing, and adjusting expectations for their own reading lives often.

When we model the life of a reader, students will follow our lead. Like Chris who chose this National Book Award Finalist.

We are well into the school year, and more and more students have moved into more complex books, and they are thinking about their reading choices.

Chris:  Currently reading Station Eleven. Chris asked me recently to recommend a book. He said, “I’ve liked everything you suggested so far this year.” I asked him what he liked best, and he said The Curious Incident in the Nighttime, which was part of our first book club. Somehow the conversation turned to my book club with some colleagues at my last school. I showed him my copy of Station Eleven with the marked and dogeared pages. He asked to borrow it, and we’ve since talked about the multiple story lines and how the author eventually ties them all together. He gives me updates as he’s making sense of this story that is unlike anything he’s read in the past.

Jasmine:  Currently reading Let the Great World Spin. Jasmine asked me for recommendations for books with multiple story lines. She’d read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in our first book club and A Thousand Splendid Suns in our second. I mentioned Colum McCann’s Pulitzer Prize winner, and she noted the ceiling tile that decorates our classroom. Jasmine reads about 120 pages a week and told me in her last conference: “In the next two weeks, I plan to up that number to 200. I also want to find more books with intertwining story lines so I can be motivated to read each week.” Station Eleven is already on her To Be Read Next list.

When we talk about rich literature and use passages to teach skills, some students will choose to read the whole text.

Doreen: Currently reading The Goldfinch. Doreen is quiet, studious, sometimes even somber. I used a passage from The Goldfinch when I introduced rhetorical analysis. I wrote about it in the post Starting with the Ending. My copy sat in the front of the room under a potted plant until one day it was gone. Doreen had swiped it, and is currently about half way through. When we did a quick whip around the room to share out and rate our current reads today, she rated it a 9 out of 10. I’ll talk to her soon about why Donna Tartt doesn’t get a ten for her Pulitzer Prize winner.

Other students are reading just as complex and important books:  Nawoon/The Thirteenth Tale, Neydy/The Great Gatsby, Lillian/The Scarlet Letter, Pedro/Dracula.

Do I have other students reading YA fiction? Yes, and that is okay because they are reading.

Ivan finished Winger by Andrew Smith last week. He told me, holding out the book with tender care:  “This is the first time I have made a connection with a book. I get what you mean about literature now.” He is in an 11th grade AP English class!

Last summer at UNH Literacy Institute, I wrote a piece that references the reading theory of Louise Rosenblatt extensively. Below is an excerpt.

I believe this with all my heart:

What does it mean to experience literature? First, we must define “literature.” A text can only be considered such if the reader “responds to it in terms of sense and emotion and thought (106). If a book is “to be considered “literature” for any students, it must be experienced” by them (94), and it requires “a particular kind of reading process” (89).

All too often teachers of English and those who set the “critical theories dominating the college and university teaching of literature…” simply intensi[fy] the tendency to hurry the student away from any personal aesthetic experience” of it (102). We see this as teachers select the books students will read, usually in whole class settings, assigning reading homework with the expectation that students will read primarily complex literature outside of the classroom. These teachers often give reading quizzes as an assessment of their students’ reading lives, and make the only experience a non-reader has with the text punitive. This is detrimental to the growth of the individual. This is contrary to “our main responsibility” as the educator:  “to help the student to find the right book for growth” (67).

How are you, the expert in the room, helping students find the right book for growth?

 

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

Craft Study and a Book Club Addition: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Book Clubs February 27, 2015 Comments: 6

I needed a book for my next student book club. I knew the book had to deal with war, literally or figuratively, in some way, so when I found Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain, I had to crack the pages and give it a try.

I can see why Khaled Hosseini said this:  “Such a rich book. It’s angry, it’s moving, it’s compassionate, it’s dead serious, but it’s also really funny.” (I just finished re-reading A Thousand Splendid Suns as part of my students’ current book club. I trust this author.)

I’ve only read half of Fountain’s book, and I’ve marked almost every page.

Literature lover heaven.

Here’s a review in the NY Times in 2012. You can read how someone else likes this National Book Award Finalist, too.

Honestly, the last time I read something that struck me so emotionally was Yellow Birds, and I rave about it, too.

The story takes place at Dallas Cowboy Stadium on Thanksgiving Day. Bravo Squad is on a national tour “to reinvigorate interest in the war.” Billy Lynn, a specialist in Bravo, experiences moments of “pure love and bitter wisdom” as he meets the owner of the Cowboys, a born-again cheerleader, and various “supersized” players eager for a vicarious taste of war” (back cover).

Maybe I love this book so much because I’ve been there — sat in Cowboy’s Stadium and sort of thought similar things.

“The Goodyear Blimp is making labored passes overhead, bucking like a clipper ship in a storm. The Jumbotron is airing a video tribute to the late, great “Bullet” Bob Hayes, and displayed along the rim of the upper loge are the names and numbers of the Cowboys “Ring of Honor.” Staubach. Meredith. Dorsett. Lilly. This is the undeniable big-time, there is no greater sports event in the world today and Bravo is smack in the frothy middle of it. In two days they will redeploy for Iraq and the remaining eleven months of their extended tour, but for now they are deep within the sheltering womb of all things American — football, Thanksgiving, television, about eight different kinds of police and security personnel, plus three hundred million well-wishing fellow citizens. Or, as one trembly old guy in Cleveland put it, “Yew ARE America.”

…

They take the steps two at a time. A few people call out greetings from the stands, and Billy waves but won’t look up. He’s working hard. He’s climbing for his life, in fact, fighting the pull of all that huge hollow empty stadium space, which is trying to suck him backward like an undertow. In the past two weeks he’s found himself unnerved by immensities — water towers, skyscrapers, suspension bridges and the like. Just driving by the Washington Monument made him weak in the knees, the way that structure drew a high-pitched keening from all the soulless sky around it. So Billy keeps his head down and concentrates on moving forward, and once they reach the concourse he feels better” (21).

Not that I am in any way comparing my experience to a soldier’s. I just mean I’ve felt the hollowness of that place, and as I sat there in the leather seats of that stadium, I kept thinking: “Oh, the classroom libraries the money for this place could have filled.” Seriously. It’s huge. And frivolous in an embarrassing kind of way.

Maybe I love Fountain’s book because my four sons are football fans. My oldest son played on a state championship team. Huge deal. If you know Texas football, you know exactly what I mean. For almost two decades my husband I lived high school football — sometimes three games a week. That’s like nine hours on a bleacher.

Maybe I feel a tug into Billy Lynn’s story because two of my sons plan on joining the military. I’ve got about two years before that becomes a reality. (Right now they are serving missions. One in Puerto Rico and one about to leave for Taiwan. Missions then military. Both far from mom.)

I’m trying to show my students how literature can touch us, take us by surprise, raise our awareness, make us feel things we never imagined. That’s what is happening as I read Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.

That’s what I want to happen to them.

So I keep reading to find books for my student book clubs. Our next one starts after spring break. Students will choose to read one of the following. I am pretty confident everyone will find something that speaks to them (and we can practice analysis skills with pretty much anything.)

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer

ROOM by Emma Donoghue

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Do you have any suggestions for books that have particularly moved you? I’ll add your suggestions to my TBR mountain.

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

Book Clubs to Move Readers is the topic of this week’s #APLangchat

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Book Clubs, Professional Learning Community February 23, 2015 Comments: 2

I volunteered to host #APLangchat this week. My reason stemmed from these three things: 

1.  Some of the best PD I’ve experienced has come from Twitter chats.

2.  I am hit and miss when it comes to regularly engaging in chats. Being facilitator should make me show up.

3. Many of the questions left in the comments on my post a couple weeks ago, Aim Higher: A Case for Choice Reading and a Whole Lot More in AP English, can be answered in a chat about book clubs; however, by no means do I have all the answers. I need help, too, so a discussion with my PLN is the best place to turn.

If you are available Wednesday evening at 7:00 CT, join in. You do not have to teach Advanced Placement to contribute. Every educator’s voice matters. You do have to remember to use the hashtag #APLangchat.

Here’s the plan for a finger-flying, Twitter frenzy of idea sharing on Wednesday:

Topic:  Book Clubs to Move Readers in AP English

To spark some thinking, consider these texts:

“Not Reading: The 800 Pound Mockingbird in the Classroom” by William Boz, English Journal (2011)

“Boys and Reading” video interview with male students by Penny Kittle (2013)

“Why Book Clubs Matter” English Language Teaching, University of Michigan Press

“From a Classroom to a Community of Readers: The Power of Book Clubs” by Jessica Cuthbertson, Center for Teaching Quality Blog (2013)

“Book Clubs: NYC Department of Education” Unit of Study

To ponder and prepare, consider these questions:

Warm Up:  What are your habits as a reader? What do you read? When do you read? Who do you talk with about the books you read? #APLangchat

Q1 MC on the exam =hard, esp for non-readers. Besides close reading activities in class, how do we move kids into complex texts? #APLangchat

Q2 Many teachers have moved to balanced literacy w/choice reading as core. How might book clubs engage this pedagogy in AP? #APLangchat

Q3 Logistically, what do book clubs look like in a class of 35? #APLangchat

Q4 What book club book choices lead to the most reading, insightful discussions, best growth in student readers? #APLangchat

Q5 What does assessment look like during and after book clubs? individual and/or collaborative assessments? #APLangchat

Q6 What else do you need to know to feel comfortable facilitating book clubs with your students? #APLangchat

Book Clubs in AP English: Re-thinking Authenticity

AP English, Book Clubs, Readers Workshop February 19, 2015 Comments: 6

Tonight we discussed Station Eleven, a National Book Award Finalist, wherein humanity is just about destroyed by a killer flu, and a troupe of Shakespearean actors who call themselves the Symphony travel the countryside performing for various survivors in various small towns.

I loved it in an English-teacher kind of way. The prose is lovely, and I found beautiful passages with beautiful sentences, like this one:

This is my soul and the world unwinding, this is my heart in the still winter air (194).

And this: Hell is the absence of the people you long for (144); followed by this a few pages over: If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it? (148).

I am certainly not an end-of-the-world kind of book lover, but I did love this book.

Tess did. And Amber did. (She even wrote about it here because she wanted to.)

But not everyone in our book club did.

Heather and Alli read a few pages and called it a pass. “I couldn’t get into it,” one of them said. Whitney listened to the audio and said, “I respected it but didn’t love it.” At least she powered through.

Two members of our group were not there. No word on if they liked the book or not. I figure if they had loved it, they would have at sent that word.

So I come home this evening thinking about the book clubs I ask my students to participate four times a year. I want them to enjoy the books they read, but I also want them to be able to enjoy the art of conversation. More than anything, that is what our gathering was tonight. Five educators, sharing a meal, and talking about a book. No cell phones (until we looked up our next read). True face-to-face time.

No one will ask any of us to write an essay, craft a project, complete a timed writing, present to the class.

I’m glad about that.

I need to re-think how I hold my students accountable about their reading. Or not.

It’s not like Heather and Alli are getting a grade, and they didn’t read.

 

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

5 Reasons Why Reading Conferences Matter — Especially in High School English

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Conferring February 16, 2015 Comments: 15

The Attention. Every child needs one-on-one conversations with an adult as often as possible.  Adolescents, by nature of their age, struggle with identity, fairness, stress, and a slew of other issues that contribute to all kinds of problems. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University. reports that “9 out of 10 Americans who meet the medical criteria for addiction started smoking, drinking, or using other drugs before age 18.” This is not surprising since according to this study, “75% of all high school students have used addictive substances, including tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, or cocaine.”

I know there are many reasons for teenagers to partake in these substances. I also know that many students think that adults do not care, or will not notice, if they are in class, participating in class, or lucid in class. One way to show our adolescent students that we care is to talk with them. And face-to-face conversations about books and reading is a pretty safe way to do so, not to mention that we model authentic conversations about reading when we do.

Try questions like:

  • How’s it going? (Thanks, Carl Anderson)
  • Why did you choose this book?
  • Do you know anyone else who has read this book? What’d she think?
  • How’d you find the time to read this week?
  • What’s standing in the way of your reading time?

The Relationship. Once students know they can trust us, they will tell us things about their lives, their struggles, and their hopes beyond high school. According to the Zur Institute, teen internet and video game addictions, violence in the media, online bullying, and violence in the home top the charts as some of the major influencers of teen behavior. On the Zur website, there’s a section titled “What You Can Do.” We find language that mirrors the words and phrases that lead to the most effective reading conferences, like “learn what [it] means to your children by talking with them about it,” and “be genuinely curious about what draws them to [whatever it is],” and “discuss balance,” and “keep the conversation active.”

We hear so much talk in education circles about engagement. Engagement comes as a result of relationships. When we talk to our students about their lives and the things that matter to them, and we help them see that somewhere in some book a character has experienced similar situations, conflicts, and heartaches, we show our students that literature is a living breathing source of hope. This Psychology Today post explains it clearly:  “Books are friends we can choose without restriction,” believed John Ruskin, an English art critic of the 19 Century who influenced Marcel Proust “who developed the idea of a novel that was not just a friend, but a friend who enables us to become intimate both with other minds and with our own.” Proust called readers of his own work “a sort of magnifying glass … by which I could give them the means to read within themselves.”

My students and I talk about windows and mirrors. This is why we read literature:  to learn what it means to be human. How do you see yourself in the characters, conflicts, situations, and how do you see out into a world that is very different from your own? The more we grow in empathy, the better relationship we’ll have with our friends, our families and all other people we associate with — at least the idealist in me will cling to that hope as I continue to talk to students about books and reading.

Try questions like:

  • What character reminds you of yourself or someone you know?
  • What part of the story is the most similar/different to your life?
  • Why do you think the author makes that happen in the book?
  • What does he want us to learn about life?
  • How does this story/character/conflict/event make you think about life differently?

The Learning. There are times when I’ve done a mini-lesson, I feel like I’ve talked to myself. I see little application of a skill I know I’ve taught. Sometimes students completely miss the point of the lesson. However, when I take the time to talk to each student individually, and reinforce the skill in a quick chat, the application of that skill some how seeps into their brains much deeper. And you know those students who are super apprehensive — the ones who have to ask “Is this right?” and show us a teeny bit of work before they will really produce any work? Holding a regular reading conference has solved this problem.

Students know they will get a chance to talk with me about their progress, and they are more willing to take risks than when we talk infrequently. Time for reading conferences, and conferences timed to meet the needs of each one of our learners solves many at-risk behaviors and promotes deeper learning.

Try questions like:

  • Tell me about _____ that we learned in class today. How does that relate to your book/character?
  • Remember when we learned _____, tell me how/where you see that in your book.
  • Think about when we practiced ___, where does the author do that in your book?
  • You’ve improved with ___, how could you use that skill for _______?

The Literacy. Sometimes I think we forget that the purpose of our instruction must be to develop the literate lives of our students. We must provide opportunities for our students to grow into confident and competent readers and writers in order to handle the rigor and complexity of post high school education and beyond. We must remember to focus on literacy not on the literature — just like we must focus on the reader not just on the reading. We must validate our readers, ask questions that spark confidence, avoid questions that demean or make the student defensive, and at the same time challenge our readers into more complex texts. We can learn if a child has read a book, or the assigned pages, with a few quick questions. Then we must turn the conversations to the why, the what, and the how that will get students to choose to take a step up the ladder of complexity.

When students know that we care more about them as the person than we care about what or how much they have read, they will trust us. And it’s trust between the adolescent and the adult that creates the most movement as a reader, a writer, a student, a young person emerging into adulthood. Students will read the rich literature we bless because they know we are leading them into literature that will in turn bless their lives.

Try questions like:

  • On a scale of 1 to 10 how complex is this book for you? Why?
  • What do you do when the reading gets difficult?
  • Of all the books you’ve read this year, which was the most challenging? Why?
  • How’s it going finding vocabulary for your personal dictionary?
  • Tell me how you are keeping track of the parallel storyline?

The Reward. We can experience powerful rewards as we meet with our students in regular reading conferences. (I wrote about one here.) Every year, after students get to know me a bit, they tell me things like: “We were scared of you at first. You seemed so strict,” and “You intimidated me, and I was afraid to talk to you.” I get how students see me. I’m tall for one thing. For another, I get right to the point and state the learning that will happen in my classroom. Structure and routine are important for the work we do here, and I explain what that looks like within the first twenty minutes of day one. We work bell to bell with very little down time. I get that many students are not used to such habits, especially in our 85 minute classes.

My students experience breakthroughs regularly.  It’s during our reading conferences that they tell me my instruction works. “Miss, I only read two books in all of 10th grade. I was so behind. This year I’ve read SO many. I can’t count. You’ve helped me so much. I wish I could go back in time and read this much in 10th grade,” one girl tells me. Another says,  “I never thought I would like to read. Now, look at me,” as she shows me the copy of Anna Karenina she bought over the weekend. (We’d done a mini-lesson on beautiful sentences, and I talked about the books our mentor sentences came from — not really expecting anyone would want to read that one. Oh, they can surprise us!)

I ask students about their confidence levels in our little chats, and they tell me they know they have grown as a readers. This is the best kind of reward.

Try questions like:

  • How has your confidence grown as you’ve read this year?
  • What do you think is the one thing we’ve done in class that’s helped you improve so much as a reader?
  • How will the habits you’ve created in class help you in the reading you’ll have to do in college?
  • Why do you think you’ve grown so much as a reader the past few weeks?
  • What’s different for you now in the way you learn than how you learned before?
  • Describe for me the characteristics you have that make you a reader.

What kinds of questions work for you in your reading conferences?

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

Aim Higher: A Case for Choice Reading and a Whole Lot More in AP English

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Pedagogy, Readers Workshop February 9, 2015 Comments: 68

I’m going to just say this right up front:  I hope to challenge some thinking.

I asked some friends for feedback on this post and got opposing advice. I let it rest for half a week. I prayed about it. And then today I read this post by Donalyn Miller, author of The Book Whisperer and Reading in the Wild. I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure she wrote it in a response to a comment on this post by Amanda Palmer, Secondary Language Arts Coordinator in Katy, TX. I’ve written about my own students and their experiences as they’ve grown as readers before at Nerdy Book Club and on this blog; and I’ve presented on how I advocate for choice in AP English at conferences.

I hope I can be a voice of reason and an inspiration for the good of all students. So, if you’ll hang with me here, I’ve got a case for choice reading in AP English.

“I wish my daughter was in your AP English class,” my friend told me. “She has to decorate Kleenex boxes in hers.”

We’d had this conversation before:  I am an advocate of self-selected reading, and I fully embrace readers and writers workshop in my AP English Language and Composition classroom; Sarah is an advanced reader in an AP English course where the teacher chooses all the texts and assigns “clever” ways for the students to show that they are reading. Anyone who knows Penny Kittle’s work, and Donalyn Miller’s work, and my work, which is so much about helping students develop as life-long readers, understands that Sarah is not having the kind of experience in her English class that we advocate and hope for all children.

Making the Move to Move Readers

Many teachers and administrators across the country have recognized that students in secondary classrooms are not reading. If students are not readers, they tend to struggle in all academic subjects — not just English. Schools adopt interdisciplinary practices, whole school vocabulary instruction and stop-everything-and-read programs in an attempt to improve reading scores on standardized tests. Many have moved to readers and writers workshop, where choice-independent reading is key, instead of the traditional secondary-English pedagogy where the teacher selects all the texts, usually classics, and all the writing topics a student is expected to write about for class. Those who have made the move will tell you that choice matters, along with time to read and write, when it comes to student engagement and real movement in our teenage readers and writers.

However, from what I’ve seen and heard, most of this choice is happening in general education classes — not honors and AP English. The teachers in most advanced classes I know of are still making all the choices. It’s like we do not trust our high-achieving students to move themselves into complex texts. We focus on the literature instead of the literacy. And we rob children who already have a grasp of language, who already have many of the study skills they need to pass English classes, with the opportunities to grow as much as they are able.

We make changes in our pedagogy that allow our reluctant and struggling learners to grow but not our proficient kids? Where is the sense it that?

Evidence that Readers and Writers Workshop Works

One day last week, I sat and listened to my district’s ELA director share our state re-tester data. I usually hate this kind of meeting, but our gains are huge — due in large part because of the redesign of tutorial lessons, many of which teachers have adopted into their mainstream instruction. The ELA director changed the model and worked closely with North Star of TX Writing Project to produce writing workshop lessons (most of which came out of my classroom and pedagogy) that broke the mold of Response to Intervention. The dramatic increase in re-tester scores (an average of 200+ point increase per student) proves the lessons are working to move student readers and writers. Workshop-style writing lessons and a campus-wide, district-wide commitment to independent reading is working.

Making the Move in Advanced English Classes — or Not

The next day I sat in a meeting with the AP English team on my home campus. (Important note:  The same day that in second period a young woman asked me to recommend her a book of classic literature because she wanted to read something more complex. She and I stood in front of my “Challenge Yourself” shelf, and in about six minutes while the rest of the class read silently, I taught a mini-lesson on Gothic literature and the Regency Era and book talked the Bronte sisters’ books and Jane Austen. Rebecca left class with Pride and Prejudice, a book she chose to read because she wanted a romance that sounded interesting.) In that vertical alignment meeting, the conversation bounced around to what students must know and returned a few times to the books “all students must read.” After a while, someone asked me what I thought.

“Is it really about the book, or is it about the reader?” I asked.

“Well, it’s both,” two teachers answered.

“Then why does the book matter as much as the students’ abilities to read the books?”

“Because they will never read these books on their own, and they have to read a storehouse of canonical texts in order to write on the AP Lit exam,” they said.

“So you’re basing the reading lives of all pre-AP students in 9th and 10th grade on one open-ended question on the AP exam their senior year?”

“Well, they also have to analyze a passage,” one teacher added.

“Yes, and that’s like studying lists of SAT words hoping students learn the few out of 5,000 that might be on the SAT exam. It’s a total crapshoot.

“Shouldn’t we be more concerned about students being able to read at complex levels than deciding which books they must read?”

Another teacher joined in “I want my students to be prepared for the kinds of reading they will be expected to know when they go into college classrooms. That is providing equity. If they know The Iliad, Beowulf, Dante, they will be on equal footing as those classmates who read those things at the affluent schools across town.”

“Shouldn’t the equity be in the skills our students possess? Can they read and understand complex texts like the students across town?”

 

How Do We Know If Students Are Reading

I know that many, if not most, of those students at other schools are not reading those books. Few high school students read the assigned texts in English classes. Ask them. I have student writing from the past five years that tells me in their own words about their reading habits in high school. And there are plenty of well-researched articles like this one from the English Journal that concur. It is true: few high school students read the assigned texts in English classes. Why doesn’t this matter to their teachers?

“How do you know they are reading the independent reading books you let them choose?” a teacher asked me.

“Because I talk to them about what they are reading,” I answered.

“I do that, too, about the books I assign,” she said, but I am pretty sure that her idea of talking about books with students and mine are very different. I call it conferences. She calls it lectures.

I felt disheartened and sad for the honor student at the outcome of that vertical alignment meeting:  AP teachers deciding what four books teachers in preAP 9th and 10th grade must teach in order to prepare students for Advanced Placement in 11th and 12th grade.*

I fear that students will be just as prepared as they have been, which in my one-semester at this campus is not much. At the most, they will read four books a year, and the only students who will read the assigned texts are the ones who are readers anyway, who are studious enough, or care about their grades enough, to do what the teacher says. Everyone else will read a little and Sparknotes a lot, listening in to class discussions, and learning enough to pass exams that cover the conflict, plot, symbolism, and theme of the assigned text. Few, if any, will grow as readers who fall in love with words and characters and the beauty and the texture of carefully crafted stories.  It happens over and over and over again.

We deprive the students who take advantage of the College Board’s open enrollment policy, the students who voluntarily agree to more rigor, and we allow them to make it through high school English without growing as readers. I would argue that in many cases, there is high probability that they regress as readers.

How does that make any sense?

 

Looks Like the College Board Advocates for Readers Writers Workshop

The College Board provides course descriptions for each of the 34 AP courses and exams it offers. The descriptions reflect the course material that might be taught in a comparable college course. This makes designing a curriculum relatively easy for many of the courses taught. Biology and World History, for example, have definite knowledge-based skills that must be covered throughout the course. AP English courses are another story. Since first-year college composition courses are so diverse and vary from college to college, the structure of these classes on high school campuses can be diverse as well. AP programs, and even individual teachers, may design their courses based on their own interests and desires. Of course, the AP classes must reflect and assess college-level expectations, but that’s pretty much the only requirement. There are no prescribed essays that students must write, although there are suggestions of form. There are no required novels to read, although there is a suggested list of authors. Suggested being a key word. Teachers have a great deal of freedom in how they design their courses and what they put on their syllabi. See

AP English Language and Composition Course Overview

AP English Literature and Composition Course Overview

We can still read texts spanning from the 1600’s to the 21 century. We can still read literature that we deem important to our literary canon. But do we have to make all the choices in our Advanced Classes?

We can foster literate lives if we will take the same approach to literacy that is working in thousands of classrooms across the country:  Readers and Writers Workshop where choice matters and time to read and write mean deep and lasting learning.

So What’s the Real Deal

After talking this over with several of my peers, I’ve decided on a few reasons why honors and AP English teachers refuse to “drink the Kool Aid” (Isn’t that a nice derogatory way of describing readers/writers workshop? I hear it often):

  • Some teachers loved the experience they had with literature in their high school English classes. This is the reason they chose to be English teachers. (I am one of these teachers.) They want to duplicate those positive experiences for their students. A worthy ambition. However, I wonder if they have considered how many of their classmates experienced the same excitement at reading (or not) the literature that the teacher mandated.
  • Some teachers are not readers themselves. They love the books they’ve chosen to use in their classes, but rarely do they read anything from a best-seller list, or an awards list. They want to stay with what is known and comfortable. Many times these teachers mistake their duty:  to teach the child and not the book.
  • Some teachers believe that certain pieces of literature must be read by every student on the planet. “If I don’t teach this book, then these students will never read it” is a statement I’ve heard many times. My answer is always “Yes, but many are still not reading it when you teach it.” We ruin the the taste of great literature for many students when we force books on them that they are not ready for. I’ve asked all of my students this year about their reading in 10th grade. Not one of them has said they love To Kill a Mockingbird, one of two books they had to read last year. Why would we want to turn students off of a much beloved book like TKMB?
  • Some teachers believe that 10 to 15 minutes of sustained silent reading at the beginning of class is the same as instruction with choice reading. Sure, this reading time, especially if students are reading books that they choose, is important. It is a step. But it is not the same as structuring instruction around readers workshop where students not only read books that they choose, they think about them, talk about them, learn within them. They confer with a teacher intent on moving the reader in the best differentiated instruction possible.
  • Some teachers are afraid of giving up control. They fear that if students are all reading different texts they won’t know how to manage the class or guide the learning. This is a valid concern, but it is also something they can learn how to do. Many of us are doing it. We are happy to share how.

I am sure there are other reasons, and really, I mean no disrespect. I know my colleagues are hardworking and loving educators. I like them a lot. I respect them for the work they do, and I am sure that their students are learning in their classes. I know this is true for many other teachers and classrooms across America, too. I just really want to challenge some thinking.

What if we can do more?

 

Let’s Allow all Students the Advantages of Choice

More than anything, I want all students to have opportunities to rise above the norm, and maybe, just

~Joseph, AP English Language and Composition Student

maybe, we will see many more students, not just our struggling ones, immersed in books they love, and thinking about their reading in ways we’ve never imagined. Their engagement will improve. Their growth will astound us. They will develop as critical thinkers, accomplished writers, and as empathetic individuals ready to take on the challenges of college and their world.

I mentioned at the beginning of this post that I shared a draft of it with my writing partners. This response from Shana is important:

“I was an AP Lit kid, and an Honors English kid.  I SparkNoted The Scarlet Letter, Beowulf, Iliad, Catcher in the Rye, and the rest.  I never read a bit of it.  In fact, I didn’t read ANYTHING that was assigned to me simply because of the fact that it had been ASSIGNED.  I was stubborn like that.  And I got A’s all the way through.  And a 5 on the AP test.  All the while tearing through John Grisham, Elizabeth Peters, and the entire Bestsellers section of my public library outside of class.

“Then, my freshman year of college, when I took a workshop class in which I was allowed to self-select what I read, I chose the Scarlet Letter and thought it was the most beautiful love story I’d ever read.  I finished it and read it again.  Since that day, when I realized that because I was one of those AP kids and I COULD read those works, I’ve discovered that I LOVE them.  But I never read a single one of them until after high school.  My well-known love for Jane Austen didn’t emerge until I wrote a paper on Pride and Prejudice and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for my Shakespeare capstone.  I just read Mockingbird last summer for the first time ever.  [Note: I read it when I was 40.]

“I was never allowed to choose for myself in AP or Honors English, but had I been allowed to…I would have read all of those books, and arrived at a deeper level of love and reverence for literature, much earlier in my reading life.

“One thing I might add — I totally disagree with that AP Lit teacher saying that students needed to draw from classic lit for the test.  Many of my AP kids who got 5s wrote about modern classics…Oscar Wao, Life of Pi, whatever.  You don’t have to know CLASSICS to ace the Lit exam…you just have to know how to write authentically about complex texts, and that’s what we do in workshop, and what kids should be doing in AP classes.”

I know there are others who have made the shift. I got this in an email message just today from Jeannine in CA. We had a nice chat at NCTE:  “Thank you for our November communication. I have altered much of my instruction to incorporate choice reading.  The students are soaring!!!”

Another AP English teacher trusting herself and her students enough to make a change and see where it takes them.

 

Why, Yes, There’s Research to Support This Pedagogy

I mentioned Donalyn’s post at the beginning of this long one. It is all about the research, the theory that outlines and supports what it takes to grow readers. Allington, Atwell, Krashen, Moss, Fisher, Ivey, and Kittle, and Gallagher and more.

I add another:  Last summer at the University of New Hampshire Literacy Institute Penny Kittle had us read Making Meaning with Texts, Selected Essays by Louise Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt’s research spans decades and is just as applicable today as when she wrote it years ago. I challenge every English educator to read the whole of Rosenblatt’s essay “The Acid Test for Literature Teaching, published in 1956. Or, at least to respond honestly to Rosenblatt’s conclusion. Odds are you will make the shift to choice, if you haven’t already:

“As we review our current high school programs in literature, we need to hold on to the essentials, or take the opportunity as re-adjustments come about, to create the practice that will meet the acid test:

Does this practice or approach hinder or foster a sense that literature exists as a form of personally meaningful experiences?

Is the pupil’s interaction with the literary work itself the center from which all else radiates?

Is the student being helped to grow into a relationship of integrity to language and literature?

Is he building a lifetime habit of significant reading?”

 

*In an email after I’d written this post, I received the notes from that meeting, and I am happy to say that there were no specific book titles listed, just the admonition that students in 9 and 10 grade preAP classes read 3-5 whole class texts of a complex nature. And students need to read 15-20 books a year to grow as readers. (Yes, I did throw in that bit of research while in that meeting.)

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

Embedding Poetry in Core Literacy Instruction

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Presentations, Strategies to Add Some Zip January 27, 2015 Comments: 7
TCTELA2015

Selfie at our session. –“The Sound of Sense: Putting Poetry at the Core of Literacy Instruction”

Saturday Heather and I presented a session on poetry at the Texas Council of Teachers of English Language Arts. When I wrote the proposal last year, I had been accepted but had not attended The Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching, and I had hope that my life would be transformed through poetry after my stay in Franconia at the end of June. I knew I’d have ideas to share with other teachers at this conference. I was right.

That’s how faith works.

I shared the strategies that have shaped my teaching into fine points for skills acquisition since I learned them at the

Frost Place:

Dictation. When we dictate a poem, slowly, speaking each word and each line with care; when our students write each word, each phrase, each metaphor and simile, they take ownership of the language and see into the craft of the poet. In this ever-moving world, our students need to s-l-o-w-d-o-w-n and feel the beauty of the print on the page. Words become tangible and approachable. Comprehension improves. Analysis advances.

Arguing a Tone. My friend Margaret shared this strategy:  Choose a poem that begins with “how” or “why” or one that you know can be read in opposing tones. (Dickinson’s “How gentle is the little brook” works well.) Divide the class into two teams, and ask one side to read the poem with a tone of anger. Ask the other side to read the poem with a tone of happiness. Instruct students to find text evidence that supports their given tone then hold a debate. After discussing, students can then take their thinking to paper and write paragraphs that show analysis of the tone.

I Wonder for Revision. At the Frost Place, I loved being in the company of working poets. They inspired me with their thinking and their calm. I learned as I listened to their language. One afternoon we sat in a circle as a poet shared his work. We listened and offered feedback in the form of “I wonder…” He listened and took notes. And he left with a page of possibilities that he might have wanted to play with as he revised his poem. I’ve used this strategy with my students and had great success. I wrote about it here: A Feedback Protocol for Revision Workshop.

At the end of our session on Saturday, I read my poem I wrote modeled after Meg Kearney’s poem “Creed.” Just like at the Frost Place, I cried when I read about my mother. Poetry is emotion. And it’s an emotion that we need to help our students see and feel and play with. Sure, we can reserve a unit in our curricular year to devote to poetry, but our students will love it, understand it, and appreciate the wonders of language when we embed poetry in every unit throughout the year.

It is possible, I know, because I do it.

What are some of your ideas for embedding poetry in your core instruction? or, what are some of your favorite poems to share with students?

Dictation in AP English — It’s a Quiet Your Mind Kind of Thing

Amy Rasmussen, AP English January 20, 2015 Comments: 4

The sign on the door of my classroom

I asked my students to turn to a new page in their writers’ notebooks. I told them that I would read aloud a poem. Slowly. I would repeat each line twice. I would spell words that I thought were difficult. I’d tell them where the punctuation went. I’d tell them where the line breaks were. I’d give them time to write.

All they had to do was listen.

You would not believe the moaning.

I explained that to truly understand language they would need to listen to how language works. They needs to hear the words, the rhythm of the sentences, the length of the sentences. They needed to quiet their minds long enough to block everything out but the sounds of each and every word.

“The sound of sense, then. You get that. It is the abstract vitality of our speech. It is pure sound–pure form. One who concerns himself with it more than the subject is an artist. But remember we are still talking merely of the raw material of poetry. An ear and an appetite for these sounds of sense is the first qualification of a writer, be it of prose or verse.” ~Robert Frost

I didn’t expect students to understand so much Frost’s meaning, but I did realize the value of getting students to find a center and make the words their own as they write them down.

I’d experienced this first hand at the Conference on Poetry and Teaching at The Frost Place last summer. Every morning, we’d sit on metal chairs in the small barn behind Robert Frost’s house and listen and write what we heard.

The practice is called DICTATION. “It’s a slowing down and feeling the language in your bones,” says David Cappella, co-author with Baron Wormster of A Surge of Language — Teaching Poetry Day by Day. (Here is a sampling from Heinemann.) Wormster explains, “[Dictation] is a kind of reading aloud to think aloud so you can live out loud. Poetry is life in the slow lane. Poetry tells us to slow down and to pay attention. Poetry directs our attention.”

I have used dictation three times with my students so far this year, and three times we have experienced a calming of the mind that moved us to specific and powerful learning.

1. We focused on word choice, paying particular attention to words we found interesting and unique. This lead to better word choice in our Go World video stories.

2. We focused on sentence length and variety, paying particular attention to the rhythm in the poem. This lead to more purposeful syntax patterns in our next blog post. (All of my students manage their own blogs. See this post here to know more about our blogs.)

3. We focused on figurative language, paying particular attention to the sensory words that created the images. This lead to more colorful, intentional and moving language in our notebook play leading up to narratives.

My second semester starts today. Today I will dictate a poem to get us started, I think it will be this one by Anais Nin:

Screen Shot 2015-01-19 at 5.17.58 PM©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015