Tag Archives: Readers Writers Workshop

Agh! Grading – Trying to Manage the Scary Beast

Readers Writers Workshop May 22, 2013 Comments: 2

assignmentI heard the discussion yet again today. It almost always gets heated. You’ve had them. I know you have.

Topic: Grading.

What is a grade actually for anyway?

While I don’t claim to have all the answers, I have a few that have worked for me.

 

 

Here are some thoughts that may help you on your own journey of deciding how your gradebook might look. (I’ll try not to rant, but I might.)

A grade should be representative of a student’s learning over a period of time (usually a six or nine weeks). If that is the case, taking off a bunch of late points because a student is disorganized shows not the student’s academic ability but rather their organizational ability. This thought, however, is somewhat idealistic and not always realistic. I still must find a way to hold students accountable for being responsible, lest they take advantage of me and never turn anything in on time. In my gradebook, I actually had a category called Professional Ethics and Responsibility. This category is where I would put in grades to reflect if a student was turning his work in on time. I also included a grade, or two, reflective of the student’s ability to be responsible–not only with the iPads but also with classroom procedures and norms. The grade counted as 10% of the overall grade. This would not by itself fail a student, but at worst it could drop his grade an entire letter grade. One thing that changed my thinking was the idea of practice (otherwise known as formative assessments). I still don’t understand why other educators haven’t had this Aha.

I know when I am learning a new skill, I want to be able to practice–free from judgement–so that I might build some confidence before I am formally evaluated. The same is true for kids. We should give them opportunities to practice and build confidence. If we create an environment for our students to practice without judgement but with feedback, we might think twice about what we put in the gradebook.

Transparency is important in grading, too. I wanted students and parents to understand the skills that were being taught not just a final score. In order to provide more clarity, in the gradebook I would include in the title of the assignment the skill that was being addressed (characterization, inferencing, critical reading, etc.). Then, in the description of the assignment I would include a bit more information about the specific assignment so that the student might remember exactly what the assignment was. This cuts down on arguments about what was and what was not turned in as well.

Did you know that most online gradebooks have an incredible ATTACHMENT feature? With relative ease, I was able to post rubrics and even the actual assignments directly linked to the assignment in the gradebook. Some parents (and students) love this!

I don’t know about everywhere else, but in my district discussions about grading have been a source of heated conversation for a while. Now, as an instructional coach I hear similar questions all the time:

How can we continue to hold students accountable for their learning all the while creating a grading system that is truly representative of a students mastery of a subject?

Certainly I don’t have it all figured, so I invite you to join in the conversation and post a comment about your thoughts on grading. Love it? Hate it? How do you manage it?

Photo credit: woodleywonderworks / Foter.com / CC BY

Reel Reading for Real Readers: SHIPBREAKER

Book Trailers, Readers Writers Workshop April 18, 2013 Leave a comment

20130207-190708Watching this book trailer, I am reminded of how much I loved this book when I first read it. I passed it off to my son who read it but also lost the book cover. Does anyone else have a difficult time getting kids to read hardback books that have no cover? Dark, thick, foreboding. I cannot get one kid to even try a book unless the cover is at least attempting to be cool.

So, a week ago I’m cleaning out closets, and I find the jacket to SHIPBREAKER by Paolo Bacigalupi, and I’m reminded of its protagonist Nailer and the beautiful girl who changes his life. I love these words in the front cover:

Even at night, the wrecks glowed with work. The torch lights flickered, bobbing and moving. Sledge noise rang across the water. Comforting sounds of work and activity, the air tanged with the coal reek of smelters and the salt fresh breeze coming off the water. It was beautiful.

There’s a mini-lesson on imagery in there, isn’t there?

Zombies and Test Prep–Who Knew?

Amy Rasmussen, Readers Writers Workshop April 17, 2013 Leave a comment

Let me tell you about my Zombie Project.

It all started when I heard my husband and sons talking about that one episode of “The Walking Dead.”

“Oh, man, I didn’t expect that ending.”

“Sheesh, he got it out of the blue, didn’t he?”

“Merle just died. Died. And he was the tough guy.”

I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, nor why they were so talkative. (I live with four men. It’s true: they usually use up their word allotment by lunch time.)

So, I slipped into my teacher hat and asked some book-chat type questions:  Tell me about this show that has you all riled up. Does this character remind you of anyone you know? Why do you think the show ended this way? Did the characters learn anything?

“Really, Mom?”

One thing led to another, and we were talking about how this zombie craze is a pretty good metaphor for our society.

Then, I talked to my friend Trista, and she told me she was doing this zombie project with her students.

Hmmm. I’m thinking.

Then, like a flailing limb, it hit me:  Standardized testing. Test prep. Zombies. Pretty good metaphor.

I teach English I to mostly non-readers. They are sweet kids with bright smiles and fun personalities, but they are below grade level when it comes to reading and writing. Many of them need a lot more help than I can give them. We have little time for one-on-one when my class size is 32.

Our state testing date is looming. I know I need my students engaged, and I need them thinking and reading critically, and I need them writing effectively. The Golden Question: HOW?

The creepy, undead, flesh eating answer:  ZOMBIES.

First, I made a list of the most pressing skills students needed to review, and then I became a zombie expert.

Did you know there are zombie poets and zombie poems?

Did you know there is an ongoing argument about which is more awesome zombies or unicorns? There’s even a Facebook page.

Did you know that a high school librarian, at a teacher’s request, can find 37 or so books that all have something to do with zombies?

Did you know that there are websites that “match” zombie-loving people to other zombie-loving people? and you can upload a picture and turn your image into a blood oozing zombie?

Really, now. Who knew?

So, I created this Zombie Project that included some pretty intense test prep and a whole lot of fun.

The video below is how I introduced it to my students. They watched it, and then on large poster paper at each table of four students, they did some silent thinking. I gave them each a different colored marker, and they had to write, based on the clues in the video, what they thought they’d have to do in the project.

You try it. Watch the video and see if you can come up with all the parts of the project. I’ll post more –handouts, articles, book lists, etc., as soon as I have a chance.

Mrs. Rasmussen’s Zombie Project

Writers on Writing: Thanks, I Needed This

Amy Rasmussen, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop February 19, 2013 1 Comment

Wow. Just wow. Maybe this won’t be new news to you, but I just found this awesome site:

Writers on Writing  –A complete archive of the Writers on Writing Column from the NY Times.

I decide to read a few of the opening paragraphs. The first link I open is Geraldine Brooks from July 2, 20o1:

My writing desk is a tankard-scoured tavern table that once saw service in an 18th-century inn. When I look up, the waved and bubbled window panes of my study offer a view that has changed very little in the 200 years since the glass was set in place. A small paddock rises gently to an apple orchard, the trees laced with white blossoms. An elderly stallion flicks at flies with a long, supple tail.

At this time of year boughs of unfurling oak leaves hide the black slash of electric wires. And that’s helpful; for every morning, after I turn off the urgent chatter of news radio — its breathless headlines and daunting traffic reports — I make my way up to this little room and attempt to leave my own time behind.

Tell me that’s not a tiny literary treat?

And this one from Jamaica Kincaid, June 7, 1999. It’s hard to stop at just two paragraphs:

How do I write? Why do I write? What do I write? This is what I am writing: I am writing “Mr. Potter.” It begins in this way; this is its first sentence: “Mr. Potter was my father, my father’s name was Mr. Potter.” So much went into that one sentence; much happened before I settled on those 11 words.

Walking up and down in the little room in which I write, sitting down and then getting up out of the chair that is in the little room in which I write, I wanted to go to the bathroom. In the bathroom Mr. Potter vanished from my mind; I examined the tiles on the floor in front of me and found them ugly, worn out.

 I open more, Annie Proulx, Amy Tan, Scott Turow, Kurt Vonnegut, and they all have elements of story. Interesting. I was just part of a Twitter chat where the question rose:  Can non-fiction help us make life-long readers? Some responded yes, most responded no. Me? I think yes. Good non-fiction dwells in story. It sucks you in and spins you around and opens your eyes to thoughts, emotions, facts that you’d never considered before the telling. These short texts are evidence of that. And these short texts are about to become mentors in my writing class. Thank you, Literary God, I needed this!
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Can’t Get Students to Write? Try These Mentor Texts for More Engagement

Amy Rasmussen, Books, Readers Writers Workshop, Strategies to Add Some Zip, Writers Workshop February 6, 2013 1 Comment

I had a dream the other night where I was in a conversation with my principal about student engagement. Of course, I’d just spent the day in Internal Rounds at one of the other high schools, specifically looking for and analyzing data that was supposed to show if students were engaged in their learning– not compliant, maybe committed,  and hopefully, taking ownership. In my dream I felt exasperated. I struggled, and I probably hit my husband in the head. I finally threw up my hands and said, “I can’t do it! You’ll have my resignation tomorrow!” and I huffed out the door.

What the heck?

Yes, student engagement. Those seem to be the buzz words I keep hearing lately. Well, those or student apathy, the ugly step-sister. I’d rather at least try to stay positive.

I teach 9th grade English. I try to teach students how to write. Sometimes I want to beat my head against the wall because I have so many kids who just don’t get into what I try to get them to do. I imagine this sounds familiar to some of you–at least I hope I’m not alone here.

In my search for ways to get students engaged, I’ve discovered a few texts that serve as friendly mentors to help me get my students to care about what they have to say and how they say it. These mentors have interesting text structures or themes–or, hey, they are short, which goes over well with my kids.

I shared a few of these during my presentation at TCTELA in Dallas last week. The Prezi posted two weeks ago called “Reading Writing Workshop in High School? Yep, the Shoe Will Fit” has images of the book covers, and the handouts have some excerpts and ideas from some of my favorite mentors: The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha, The Dictionary of High School B.S. by Lois Beckwith, Six Word Memoirs from SMITH Magazine, and  The Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krause Rosenthal. I’ve used excerpts from all of these and have had great success in getting students to take interest and ownership of their writing. We read the mentor, analyze the author’s craft–specifically looking for the moves he makes, and then we write our own version or addition to that text. Sometimes I require certain devices like metaphors or alliteration or parallel structure or whatever; sometimes not. Always I allow for student choice in the subject matter. I get the best student writing this way.

At the end of that presentation at TCTELA, I asked the audience to contribute ideas for mentor texts that they’ve had success with in getting students to write. Take a look at these fun books; you’ll see the value in how these can work to give students choice in what they write, while you give them say in how they write it.

(Thanks, Goodreads.com, for the synopsis and book cover images.)

Thank you Notes by Jimmy Fallon

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Thank you, slow walking family walking in front of me on the sidewalk. No, please, take your time. And definitely spread out, too, so you create a barricade of idiots. I am so thankful that you forced me to walk on the street and risk getting hit by a car in order to pass you so I could resume walking at a normal human pace.Jimmy Fallon has a few people and a few things to thank. In this brand-new book, the very first to come from his show, he addresses some 200 subjects in need of his undying “gratitude.” Each page will feature one note and a photograph of its recipient.
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World’s Shortest Stories by Steve Moss
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Murder. Love. Horror. Suspense. All this and much more in the most amazing short stories ever written each one just 55 words long! Consider for a moment 55 words. It’s an absurdly tiny number. No, it’s an impossible tiny number. It’s what O. Henry might have conjured up if he’d only had the back of a business card to write upon. You’ll find murder and suspense, horror and intrigue, love and betrayal, plus distant worlds and inner demons.
All in a measly 55 words.
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Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
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A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth.

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Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan  [This one fits the list appropriately after the last one. I read this book in one sitting. It’s tender and sweet, and the cover is AWESOME!]
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How does one talk about love? Do we even have the right words to describe something that can be both utterly mundane and completely transcendent, pulling us out of our everyday lives and making us feel a part of something greater than ourselves? Taking a unique approach to this problem, the nameless narrator of David Levithan’s The Lover’s Dictionary has constructed the story of his relationship as a dictionary.

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Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen427920
This first batch of Chicken Soup for Teens consists of 101 stories every teenager can relate to and learn from–without feeling criticized or judged. This edition contains important lessons on the nature of friendship and love, the importance of belief in the future, and the value of respect for oneself and others, and much more.
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Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite by June Casagrand
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What do suicidal pandas, doped-up rock stars, and a naked Pamela Anderson have in common? They’re all a heck of a lot more interesting than reading about predicate nominatives and hyphens. June Casagrande knows this and has invented a whole new twist on the grammar book–a laugh-out-loud funny collection of anecdotes and essays on grammar and punctuation, as well as hilarious critiques of the self-appointed language experts.

Do you know of any more fun texts to use as writing mentor texts? Please leave your suggestions in the comments.

Writing Instruction that Follows the North Star

Amy Rasmussen, Readers Writers Workshop, Student Blogs, Writers Workshop January 23, 2013 1 Comment
writing notebookCan you remember when you learned to write? I can’t. Not really. I remember the lined paper and the fat pencils. I remember trying to have the very best penmanship because I wanted my name listed on the chart that covered the side of my teacher’s desk. I remember that writing came pretty easily. I was one of those students. My teachers loved me because I was well-behaved, listened, learned, and made all A’s.

I do not teach those students. Well, maybe a few, but most of them would be my antonym if my student-self were a word.

When I began teaching, I had no idea that my students would not be like me. I know, funny, right? I thought I could teach them comma rules, show them where the commas went, and I would see beautifully crafted commas in all the right places. (Don’t even get me started on the period.)

I had to learn to be a writing teacher.

Thank God for the North Star of Texas Writing Project. Fortunately, for me and the hundreds of students I’ve instructed since, I’ve learned how to create a community that fosters a love (or at least some days, a tolerance) of the written word.

A couple of weeks ago, the leadership team of NSTWP met and crafted the tenets of our site. We decided that community encompasses and interweaves itself throughout our work, and authenticity, inquiry, modeling, dialogue, and re-visioning make it shine.

A few of us jumped on a Google doc yesterday to craft our proposal for NCTE 2013 where we defined our points and described how we would share them at the conference. This got me thinking about my own practice:  do I walk the walk as well as I talk the talk?

Here’s a glimpse into our thinking, plus a little of my own:

Community— Trust, communication, sharing, feedback, and transparency all lead to a safe place for learning. Community is the core of a workshop classroom, so it must be a constant focus. (National Writing Project, Gomez, 2010) Read-alouds, and classroom and school-wide book clubs, among other relationship-building activities, can all help build community.

Authenticity— How do we make learning real? By allowing for real life connections and experiences. When we expose students to real-life situations and allow them choice in topics, we can engage them more effectively, stimulate more critical thinking, and get them to read more abundantly. At the end of 2011 only three young people in ten now read daily in their own time, down from five out of ten in 2005 (Secondary Annual Literacy Survey, 2011). How do we change lives? We allow students choice. Just as in reading, students must have choice in writing; teachers must allow students to choose topics that interest and intrigue them, and they must allow students to publish in mediums and to audiences that students believe matter, i.e., student created blogs, ebooks, and portfolios.

Inquiry— An inquiry stance goes beyond the use of essential questioning and places the creative thought process into the hands of students, inviting them to questions in every aspect of literacy from responding to texts, engaging in research, to broadening their horizons as writers.  An effective response protocol that fosters inquiry can be adapted and applied to a myriad of literacy experiences.

Dialogue— Authentic conversation transforms classroom community. Learners take ownership of their craft and develop a sense of agency in a student-centered approach to dialogue.  In Choice Words (2004), Peter H. Johnston explains that language “creates realities and invites identities.” Thus, dialogue in our classroom becomes an essential part of student growth.

Modeling— An integral part of literacy instruction, modeling as reader and writer is essential to an effective workshop classroom. Mentor texts that engage students and provide for in-depth study of craft allow for authentic reading and writing experiences.

Re-visioning– NSTWP invented this word to describe the complexity involved in revising our instruction and engaging students in revision of their work. Adaptive Action, “the iterative process we use to leverage unpredictable change for individuals” is crucial to making workshop work. (Adaptive Action, 2013). Conferences, written feedback, and portfolios can all be managed and used to revise our classrooms.

For more information about North Star of Texas Writing Project LIKE us on Facebook.

Reading Writing Workshop in High School? Yep, the Shoe Will Fit

Amy Rasmussen, Presentations, Readers Writers Workshop January 18, 2013 1 Comment

TCTELA 2013

Handouts from the session: Reading Writing Workshop in High School

Click image below for the presentation

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Whew! It’s (Still) Monday! What Are You Reading?

Books, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop January 14, 2013 Comments: 2

Heather and I talk a lot about our work, and we talk a lot about what to write on this blog. We set goals. We schedule posts. Sometimes we do okay, and sometimes we simply (or not so simply) let the demands of school and home and family get in the way of what we really want to do here. In an attempt to DO BETTER, we are going to join the It”s Monday! What Are You Reading? meme.

If you look at the Book Journey blog, you can see the original idea, but really, it’s all about sharing books and outlining a weekly plan for reading. Our stacks of To-Be-Read Piles rival any of yours, but this is a little different. We’re actually going to commit to what we are reaching to read during any given week. By doing so, we can show our students that readers have a plan. Readers know what they will read next. It’s not just a willy-nilly wandering through the stacks of a library. (My students think this is the same as having a plan.)

Our friends over at Teach Mentor Texts host their own version of It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? with their focus on #kidlit — book reviews and suggestions for children’s literature from pictures books to all things YA. We’re going to tag along here for a while.  So. . .

Mon Reading Button PB to YA

I love dystopian novels:  Fahrenheit 451, 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, and this is a genre that lots of teens enjoy reading. Of all YA books, I’ll choose dystopian over any other. Three of my favorites, all of which are the first in a series (added bonus with kids and reading) and have been around awhile:

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Matched by Allie Condie

Divergent by Veronica Roth

This past week I read the ARC of Revolution 19 by Gregg Rosenblum. Interesting. Not quite 13667361as engaging as some others. The concept is I-Robot–ish. Robots have taken over society in an attempt to save humans from themselves. The character development was pretty good:  three siblings and a couple of friends. I guess the thing that weakened the appeal was the dialogue. I thought it was boring–real as in what kids actually say to their parents and one another but boring. Overall, I give it three of those five gold stars.

This week I am reading another ARC:  The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlquist. I am not positive it’s dystopian, but I have a pretty good idea based on these last few sentences from chapter one:

15721645“We heard Irene and stopped whispering. She came in, turned out the light, and bet over each of our cots in turn. First Isobel, then Caroline, then Eleanor, then me, leaning close to my face and whispering. ‘Go to sleep, Veronika.’

Then she pushed the spot behind my ear, with a click, like always, and I did.”

What’s next? I plan on tackling the pile of dystopian books I haven’t read yet. Some students are helping me sort and categorize the book shelves in my classroom. For now, we have labels taped around the whiteboard rails around the room and stacks of books beneath them. The dystopian stack is the tallest right after Teen Angst. I’d rather not tackle that stack for a while, but that’s just me rebelling against the teen angst I deal with every single day.

I’d love to know your favorite dystopian reads. Please leave your book suggestions in the comments.

Follow Through–the Books I Gave Away Today

Readers Writers Workshop December 4, 2012 Leave a comment

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First year teachers, wanting to build their classroom library pilfered a few unused titles from the English book room the other day. I kind of encouraged them–so many books sit without any readers. When I found this bag of books hidden in a corner of my garage this morning, I knew I needed to gift these books to my young friends. Mrs. Cato gave them to me, and I give them to you. I hope they find a way to jump off your shelves into eager hands as soon as possible.

Want to teach a kid to write?

Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop November 8, 2012 1 Comment

 

Want to create successful writers?  Want to raise them from seedlings, make them strong and resilient and capable of writing oak trees of essays, not saplings of deadwood?  The key has nothing to do with writing.  If a teacher wants to help their students to become successful writers, they must make their students into successful readers.  If a student isn’t a reader, they’ll never be a writer – no way, no how.  The reading should be both academic and for pleasure: students need to bask in the glow of words for fun, and struggle with a snarling sentence when needed.  They should delight in diction and syntax, but never be quite satisfied with them as-is – every student should always ask, “why this way?” and “why not like this?”.  And no, they probably don’t need to know what “diction” and “syntax” mean: we don’t need to understand the nuclear reactions of the sun or the tidal effects of the moon to enjoy a sunny day at the beach, and they don’t need to know anadiplosis or synecdoche to appreciate a well-written paragraph.  If we don’t put words in their hands and in front of their eyes, we’ll never get the words into their heads … and if we can’t get the words into their heads, they’ll never put those words onto paper.  So … want to teach a kid to write?  

Teach her to read.

~Tess Mueggenborg, Professor