Tag Archives: Readers Writers Workshop

Ugly Cry Round Two – #FridayReads

#FridayReads, Books, Classroom Culture, Lisa Dennis, Readers Writers Workshop September 16, 2016 Comments: 3

Hi. My name is Lisa, and I’m a book hugger. “Hi, Lisa…” 

I feel like I can tell you this. Like you’ll understand and still let me sit near, if not at, the cool kids’ table. See, last week I was a dork. This week I’m a book hugger. Is that super dork? Literate dork? Biliophilic dork?

Either way, I’ll own it. That’s totally fine. In fact, if I know myself at all, as I hugged my copy of Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale this morning,  my eyes were probably a bit wild too, breath bated, satisfied smile projecting my hope that pens would fly across the pages of our “I want Read” lists. Basically, when I book talk, I feel like the author is standing next to me. “Get them interested, Lisa.  Get them thinking. Sell it. Put my book in their hands, and hearts, and minds.”

So obviously…no pressure.

One of my AP Language students, Zach, smiled as I stood hugging my book today.img_5539 “Mrs.Dennis,” he said with a coy smile, “you’re super emotional.”

Who? Me?

Well…ok. Maybe. I do love a good cry. The “cathartic, wring you out, snot on the back of your hand, tell everyone to read the book” cries are my favorite (Please see my unraveling at the hands of A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness). But I know that you know; you’ve been there. Whether the tears actually fall or not (and they should, trust me, it feels great), a book that captures you can feel like a conversation with a good friend, an exploration of pure emotion, and a learning experience that leaves you a better person. Talk about a worthwhile human endeavor.

So, I quickly reflected and responded to Zach’s observation. “True, true. Hallmark commercials make me cry, but with books, that shows a pretty deep connection, doesn’t it? When the characters in a book are so real that you feel their struggle. When their stories remind you of your own, even if their life experiences are completely different from yours. That’s what I want for you. That’s why I’m up here hugging this book. Human connection.”

With further reflection, it’s how I have chosen each of the books I’ve book talked so far this year. No, they haven’t all made me cry, or I know for a fact that I’d be missing a significant portion of my audience; however, they have all been books that have touched me in different ways, to different degrees, and in different parts of my life.

So far this year, I’ve book talked:

Mudbound by Hilary Jordan – This text started my summer reading and while it’s justly won acclaim for it’s themes surrounding racial tension in the south, betrayal, and the secrets that can bury a family, I spoke to my classes about the rich voice Jordan is able to give a wide variety of characters. With a new narrator each chapter, you see this story from all angles and each is more personable and heartbreaking than the next.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – I finished this book right before summer break and I book talked it then too. It has quickly become one of my favorites as a cautionary tale and an all too real examination of how gradually, but how drastically people can become complacent to the loss of personal freedom. I took students down a “let’s imagine” path by asking them which events in their daily lives they inadvertently take for granted, but would certainly miss if they were denied the privilege. What if it was the right to have your own money that was denied? Or the right to travel? Or learn?

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah – The characters became family to me. I realized that the terrible trials of World War II were occurring when my grandmothers were the same age as the main characters. Just because the pictures of the time period are in black and white, doesn’t mean the stories to come out of that time period are any less real. Or relatable. Or powerful (I hug what I love. I loved this book. It may be my current favorite piece of fiction). My three copies of this book disappeared today. I was tickled.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie – This is the first book I read this school year. I took it down in three days and could not stop laughing. I told my students that my connection to this book surprised me, and I think that’s part of the endearing quality of protagonist Junior’s voice. He hooked me with fart jokes. Certainly not my usual forte, but Junior’s search for hope is so real. And as I said to students, we all search for hope in different capacities. Junior searches off the reservation. I search the room during reading time. Just as Shana suggested, reading outside your comfort zone can offer some big rewards.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness – We’ve been well over this one. Ugly. Cry.
Though an additional sell, at the moment, is the forthcoming movie based on the book. My students want to take a field trip, but I’ve only committed to investigating the release date, if they get on reading the book. All six of my copies are currently gone from the library shelves. Win.

So, as I wrote last week when I was working to get to know my students, I feel it’s important to share who you are as a person, as much as you share who you are as a teacher, and illustrating you are a reader and writer is a part of that
img_5537-1opportunity/responsibility. With that in mind, showing you are a passionate reader is even more impactful. I feel like my students are getting to know the real me (dork and all). It’s the very best way to start building honest relationships. The kind that build trust, and thereby, community.

I’ve carefully chosen some of my favorite texts to book talk, followed my colleague Catherine’s lead in making my reading life visible, and jumped into this year with the goal of spreading my enthusiasm about books to another set of students through an honest look at what moves me, in a sincere effort to move them.  So far, so good. I just need some extra Kleenex boxes in room.

Reading Your Students’ Reading Lists by Amy Estersohn

Guest Post, Readers Writers Workshop September 14, 2016 1 Comment

guest post iconThe words “reading assessment” sound about as charming as “dental prophylaxis,” especially if you’re committed to free-choice independent reading and feel under pressure to prove to yourself that the kids really are growing.

A list of finished books is one of the best reading assessments there are.  Here are four questions I always ask when I review a list:

  • Is the student reading books that were published recently?   If students are reading fresh and contemporary titles that are hot off the bookshelves, that’s a sign that this student is already in the “in crowd.”  He isn’t waiting for the librarian to do a book talk to go ahead and finish The Fifth Wave series.  He probably visits bookstores and libraries on his own, has a sense of the kinds of books he enjoys, and has a stable of authors he trusts to create compelling stories.  
  • Is this student reading across a variety of complexity levels, and does the time it takes to finish the book scale to the complexity of the title?   My seventh grade students’ reading lives often mirror the myriad feelings and experiences they have over the course of the year.  In my case, I have students who might pick up a elementary-level comic book/ text hybrid like Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to Not Reading and follow it with  the adult book Unbroken.  It might take her one week to finish Charlie Joe and six weeks to finish Unbroken.   If she were only reading books that took her six weeks to finish, I’d wonder about her ability to self-select appropriate titles.  However, given that she has found “popcorn” books like Charlie Joe, I’m more confident that she understands herself as a reader to know what reading is like when it is easy and what it is like when it’s slower going.
  • Is this student listing a lot of series books?  If the student is clustering series books on a list in groups of 5 or more, I start to wonder about the authenticity of the list as well as the self-confidence of the reader.  Is this reader in love with Lisa McMann’s action-adventure series, or did he just write down “Unwanteds 1, Unwanteds 2, Unwanteds 3, Unwanteds 4” because he saw others reading the books? (Not to mention that the books in the Unwanteds series all have different titles.)   Students claim to stick very closely to series books are students I want to get to know early on.
  • Is this student listing books that are also movies or books that have a large online presence?  If her list prominently features Hunger Games, Divergent, and Maze Runner series, I also wonder if she has enjoyed these books for their own sakes or if she put the books on the list because she is relying on the movies to assist with comprehension.  Even without the movies or Spark Notes for assistance, a quick google search will get you the summaries and main ideas of many contemporary bestselling titles, enough so that a student could have a passable reading conference if she relied on this information instead of on the text.  You want to be aware of what’s out there when you see what books your readers are holding.

2008readinglistOkay, so how do you collect all this information on what books readers are reading?

Some of the teachers I work with rely on the Penny Kittle clipboard method, where a clipboard circulates around the room during independent reading time and students self-enter the book and page number they are on.    Others take the Nancy Atwell approach and record the book title and page number as part of the conference routine.

I did both and neither: last year I had students self-manage this information in their reading notebooks by giving them class time to do a reading log every day.   I did occasional graded notebook checks to keep students on target.   I also surreptitiously chose about 3-4 students per class to watch carefully over a period of 2 weeks or so to see if my notes and their notes lined up.

One of my goals for this coming school year is give my students more opportunities to find their books completed data as helpful as I do.

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

 

Try It Tuesday: Notebook Write-Arounds

Classroom Culture, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes, Try It Tuesday, Writers Workshop September 13, 2016 Comments: 3

Tom Romano calls writer’s notebooks “playgrounds, workshops, repositories” in Write What Matters.  As such, the writer’s notebook employed in a workshop classroom is much more than a place to store drafts, brainstorm ideas, or take notes.  It becomes a sacred space that is personal, meaningful, and enjoyable.  To fill it with writing and wordplay that spurs a love of language, I like to write around various artifacts in my notebooks, and urge my students to do so too.

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I cheated and wrote around a poem and a picture here

Write around a poem – In this lesson, inspired by advice from Penny Kittle (she told me her writing got more beautiful when she read poems more intentionally), I ask students to cut out a poem and glue it into their notebooks.  This activity can change with its purpose–sometimes students can respond to the language in a poem, sometimes they can write from a line, and sometimes they can work to analyze the text for literary devices and figurative elements.  The act, though, of gluing a poem into our notebooks keeps beautiful language at the center of our work, made visible when we flip backwards through our pages.

Write around a picture – Like Amy, I like to see my students’ notebooks full of pictures.  I ask students to bring in or print photos of any sort, then write descriptions, craft imagined dialogue, or narrate a memory the photo evokes.  In addition to being personal and meaningful, these quickwrite activities often serve as jumping off points for longer pieces of writing.

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Lisa sent me flowers, and I wrote around her note

Write around a note – My friends and I are big note-writers, and I’ve always had the compulsion to write “thank you for your thank you note” notes (maybe that’s just me, but Lisa is a dork so she might do it too!).  Because that’s socially awkward, I like to glue notes into my notebook and respond to them that way.  I also have students glue in their Bless, Press, Address responses from other students, or my own written feedback (like Amy’s Silent Sticky Notes), and respond to it in their notebooks.

Write around an object – Whenever I unearth something meaningful from the depths of my glove box, I like to glue it into my notebook and write around it.  I have Starbucks

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I’ve memorized my library card number, so I no longer need to carry it in my wallet…

sleeves, library cards, ticket stubs, and even an old necklace glued into my notebook, surrounded by writing.  In this era of electronic communication, I think it’s important for students to put physical objects into their notebooks–I still have shoeboxes full of notes from my friends in high school, and I like their tangible power more than just a series of saved text messages.

Write around an idea – A written version of the Four Corners activity, students write down a statement in the center of a page and then exercise some critical thinking around the statement.  The top left corner represents the “strongly agree” perspective, the top right is “agree,” bottom left is “disagree,” and bottom right is “strongly disagree.”  I’ve also experimented with just having students respond to the statement in general, but I like the Four Corners because it forces them to consider multiple perspectives.  Mostly recently, I asked my preservice teachers to respond to the idea that “Teachers are responsible for 100% of their students’ learning” using the Four Corners method–I can’t wait to see their responses when I collect notebooks next week.

What ideas or artifacts might you have your students write around? Please share in the comments!

Mini-lesson Monday: Remembering 9/11 and a study of language

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Readers Writers Workshop September 12, 2016 Comments: 2

Our students are too young to remember the events of 9/11. And while we are not history teachers, I do think we have a responsibility and an opportunity to help them try to make sense of the horrors of that September morning and how it impacts their lives today.

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Pvt. Hyrum Chase Rasmussen

In church yesterday, the congregation stood and sang three verses of “The Star Spangled Banner.” This song has new meaning for me since my son Hyrum joined the Army this summer. It may have new meaning for you if you’ve been following the Colin Kaepernick-taking-a-knee-event-fall-out-and-discussion. I want my students to be able to make sense of their world and one way I can help them do that is to provide them with thought-provoking pieces that help them make connections. Maybe one of these texts will help them find their own “new meaning.”

In honor of September 11, the every day people and every day heroes who lost their lives, the families who still mourn loved ones, the soldiers who valiantly died facing foes in foreign lands, and the men and women willing to serve today in a time of unrest and war, this is the lesson that I will share with my students today.

Objective:  Using the language of the Depth of Knowledge levels, students will react to a first-hand account of 9/11 in their writer’s notebooks. They will formulate ideas on how this one story relates to our growing theme of what it means to be courageously human. Students will then analyze a text and compare the writer’s use of language to a text read previously.

Lesson:  We’ve already discussed the question, “What does it mean to be courageously human?” a phrase I borrowed from a text we read last week. (I read Chequan Lewis’ piece as a read aloud, wanting students to just listen and enjoy his use of language. Then, later we read it again and analyzed the literary and rhetorical devices he uses to create the meaning. I modeled how to annotate and asked students to write their own notes in the margins — something I will expect them to do throughout the year.)

Today I will remind students to read texts with pens in hand, noting the writer’s interesting use of language, any points of confusion, any words they don’t know, the structure of the text, and any and all devices the writer uses to craft meaning. Today’s text is the masterful piece Leonard Pitts, Jr. wrote September 12, 2001.

After students have time to read, annotate, and discuss in small groups, we will come together as a class and craft an anchor chart that details the moves Pitts makes in comparison to those craft moves made by Mr. Lewis. I will charge students to model these moves in their own writing throughout the year.

Follow up:  The anchor chart will hang in the room as a reminder that writers are intentional in the moves they make as they craft meaning. Students will be expected to be intentional in their own writing as they work on various forms of writing in class and on their blogs this year.

How Conferring and a Book Solved the Tissue Issue, and Hopefully, Much More #FridayReads

Amy Rasmussen, Books, Boys & Literacy, Classroom Culture, Conferring, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop September 9, 2016 Comments: 9

You know the boys who cannot sit still? I’ve got a gaggle of them in my second period. Now, I’m not talking about elementary school kids, nor middle school. I’m talking about the juniors I teach in high school.

No sooner do I blink, and at least one of them is up walking to the tissue box. He’ll slowly take a tissue. Saunter on back to his seat (for about three minutes — I’ve timed it) and then waltz on over to the trash can to throw the tissue away and then mosey on back to his seat.

With eight of these guys, it’s constant motion. And I need Dramamine.

One class period. Five days. Two boxes of tissues. Gone.

At the end of that first very long week, I realized the reality. All kinds of memories flooded back from Tom Newkirk’s class “Boys, Literacy, and Popular Culture”at UNH Lit Institute the summer of 2015.  (If you haven’t read Tom’s book Misreading Masculinity:  Boys, Literacy, and Popular Culture, it’s insightful.)

My tissue-loving boys were posturing all over the place, and somehow I needed to stop the Tissue Issue.

It’s been easier than I thought. Really, it’s all about getting them into books they want to read.

On the first day of school, I’d prepped my room with stacks of colorful engaging books on every table. We did a book pass and wrote down titles we thought we’d like to read. I showed my passion for books and reading, and my students rolled their eyes at my request they read for three hours a week.

“No way,” I heard one young man mutter, “I ain’t reading.”

This attitude doesn’t deter me.

Even if they were faking it, after just a few days and lots of one-on-one mini-conferences, every kid in a class of 30 at least looked like they were reading. Except two.

I invited these two separately into the hall for private chats about their social PATT (party all the time) moves in the classroom.

“You know, they all follow your lead, right? I need you working with me to make this class work.”

Both agreed, and I asked them to shake my hand on it.

But old habits die hard.

Then, today — 13 days into the school year — gold.

Book gold.

“Hey, Mrs. Ras, can I talk to you in the hall?

“Do you think you could help me find a different book to read — one with music. You already know I like music.” I remembered his free verse rap at the end of class last Friday.

“So give me some ideas –”

“Well, something like that book JaBo’s reading…the long way one.”

“A Long Way Gone?” (I’m trying to remember if there’s any music in this memoir about a child soldier.)

Both of my copies were checked out. I had to think fast. Crash Boom Love, a novel in verse by Juan Felipe Herrera, National Poet Laureate, flashed in the corner of my eye. (Thank you, poetry shelf just inside the door.)

We flipped through the pages, and I explained that it’s a book written in verse — all poems that make a complete story.

“You mean like one long poem?”

“Yep. Do you want to trade me this book for that one?” I said nodding at My Friend Dahmer, the graphic novel in his hand he’d been fake reading for 12 days. (I know he chose it for the pictures. “It’s weird” is all he could tell me in our first conference.)

Not six seconds after we’d entered the room, I saw Kameron flipping through the pages and showing his new book to JaBo.

That’s when you know you’ve got them — or at least got a chance at getting them to read — when they do a book talk to their friend before they’ve even read a page.

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Meet Kameron. He may be a famous rapper one day.

I love this work with adolescent readers. I know we can change lives as we help young people grow in literacy skills, as we help them recognize themselves in books, and help them see others so different from themselves in the books they read.

It might be the only hope we have as a nation. Empathy, compassion, tolerance, justice, mercy, and love all wait for discovery like healing treasure and hope in the pages of the books we share with our students.

And when that book gold finally glistens — well, that’s when I have to cross the room for a tissue.

 

 

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I Prefer a Community of Confident Writers — Our Jump into Understanding a Writer’s Craft

Amy Rasmussen, AP Language, Classroom Culture, Community, Readers Writers Workshop September 7, 2016 Comments: 3

 

Before spring term was over, I’d written two pages of notes in the back cover of my writer’s notebook. I titled it “Remember to Do Things to do Differently.” I’m a bit ambitious — and I realize, often, too hard on myself. Although I knew my students learned last yearemember-to-do-things-differentlyr, I wasn’t confident that they couldn’t have learned more.

I imagine you’ve been there, too. Always second guessing.

One of the things I knew I needed to improve was my relationships with students — I needed them to be good and strong, faster.  I also needed to help students jump in quicker to the complexities of craft analysis without scaring the poor little dears.

So last week, the second week of school, I did what Lisa just wrote about yesterday. I “Encourage[d] Students to Start Sharing Who They Are,” and I did it by sharing a favorite poem by Wislawa Szymborska: “Possibilities.”

I asked students to study the poet’s language in each line and then write their own “Possibilities” poem, imitating the poet’s sentence structure and word play. I gave them a copy of my annotations and wrote my own poem as a model.

This proved to be an excellent lead into the rhetorical analysis students must be able to do in AP Language. I was able to see which students quickly understood how to look closely at an author’s craft — and which ones did not.

The best part though was what I learned about my students. All their preferences!!

Last Friday, when their poems were due, we did our first Author’s Chair share in class.

First, to help students build confidence, they read their poems to a partner.

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sharingpossibilitiespoems

Then, volunteers sat in our Author’s Chair and read their poems to the class.

While the student read his poem, everyone else sat with sticky note and pen in hand ready to offer “blessings,” things they liked about the author’s use of language, or connections they could make to his ideas.

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After each writer shared, the class flooded him with “blessings.” Smiles grew wide, trust blossomed, and the community that I felt was missing for too long a time last year took root.readingblessings

Bonus:  When students read their little notes, carefully crafted by peers who listened to
their writing, their confidence as writers grew. Too bad we ran out of class time. I might have run out of sticky notes if all students would have felt the desire to share.

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I wouldn’t have minded.

I would not have minded at all.

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I would love to hear your ideas on building community and/or introducing students to rhetorical analysis. Please join the conversation and share in the comments.

Try it Tuesday: 3 Easy Ways to Get to Know One Another

Lisa Dennis, Readers Writers Workshop, Try It Tuesday September 5, 2016 Comments: 12

“I’m pretty sure my students are going to know I’m a dork,” I said to my husband last weekend, “from day one.” 

I had been working on updating the pictures I include on my “Getting to Know Mrs. Dennis” PowerPoint (dork alert), and noticed how having a child has really brought out the dork I think I once tried to suppress. I’m sure my daughter, now only three, will delight in that fact someday.

I’d be lying to you if I said that I’ve lost my cool over the years. That becoming a mom turned me from Audrey Hepburn into Jill Taylor (90’s sitcom references only serve to solidify my dorkdom).  To be honest, I never really had the cool. I had the kind, the careful, the detail-oriented, the poofy hair, and the braces, but not the cool.

But cool isn’t me. Watching Stranger Things with a bowl of pretzels and a glass of milk is me. Reading The Nightingale at stoplights because I can’t put it down is me. Pretending to be a bear at the zoo to make my kid smile is me.

And this week, at school, I’ve been introducing my students to the real, dorky, punny, excitable, overly-optimistic me, and it’s going really, really well.

As I told one of my classes on our very first day together, “I’m going to push you all year to share yourself with this class, on paper, in discussions, through conferences. We need to build community in here so we all feel safe enough to share things that actually matter to us. And I’d be a hypocrite

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Gentetically linked dorks. Poor kid.

if I preached that to you, but didn’t clue you in to the deeply dorkish, flawed, silly, person I am. I’ll be endlessly dedicated and passionate to our growth as readers and writers this year, and I’ll be looking for the same from you. To start, we need to get to know each other. I’m Mrs. Dennis and I promise to be real with you.”

Building community is why I teach. I want my students to feel that self expression can help make them more comfortable in their own lives and thereby help them connect to others, regardless of the differences they once perceived. In building community, it’s so terribly important to be honest (though considerate) and real (though appropriate), that I spend several class periods at the start of the year working to make that possible for my students.

Here are a few of the first day activities that have my students learning about this new community we’ve just created. I tell them on the first day that our class is about the study of what it means to be human, so we start with getting to know the humans around us, as understanding breeds trust and comfort (key components to any successful group, but especially in a workshop classroom).

  • Share Parts of Who You Are: Last week, I introduced myself to students with the PowerPoint linked here. It includes plenty of pictures, a few policies and expectations, and a lot of who I am. I try to incorporate the people I love, the fun I had over the summer, and some of the background that supports the joy I find in the classroom. I encourage students to ask questions, and this year we had a few laughs over the antics of my summer with a precocious three year old. Horribly embarrassing public tantrums are hilarious in the retelling, thankfully.
  • Encourage Students to Start Sharing Who They Are: I also took Amy’s advice and made time for decorating our writer’s notebooks. I shared some of the pictures and song lyrics I used to decorate mine. We discussed the power of making something their own and turning an ordinary notebook into something that they would hopefully look forward to writing in. I took song requests for work time, students laughed about my complete lack of artistic ability, and we had fun. Rigorous, no. Important, yes. But we followed up that activity with a quick write where students chose to respond to either a quote about conformity from Marcus Aurelius or a quote about the origins of cruelty from Lucius Seneca. They supported their viewpoints with an example from something they’ve read and current events. Boom. 
ENGAGEMENT MATTERS
  • Keep Learning and Sharing Well Into the New Year: Over the years, I’ve done countless ‘get to know you’ activities. Three Truths and a Lie. Interview Questionnaires. Find a Friend. Scavenger Hunts (See below. It’s not pretty). This year, I combined a traditional questionnaire, a twist from a colleague, and a plan to use a little time each class period talking with kids about some silly things that make them tick. On day one, I wanted to get students writing. We have only 18 minute class periods that day, so time is precious. I had kids turn in summer work and get down to a quick write in their notebooks and chat with their classmates after drafting. To take attendance, I had students write their first names (as they would like me to call them) and last names on an index card. I collected the cards and then handed them back the next day to test my knowledge of students names. But I wanted more. I now plan to use the cards to learn about my kids and share some fun with them too. I had them flip the cards over and write:
    • Personal anthems (songs that capture your soul)
    • Spirit animal
    • Dream job when you were 5 and today
    • Book that speaks to your heart
    • Extracurricular passions

So far, I’m seeing smiles and enthusiasm, and hearing lots of discussion. Students are already talking about themselves as readers and writers. 

Not always so. In my first year of teaching, a colleague had me take my five classes of freshmen through a textbook scavenger hunt. They sat silently at their desks (model students) and searched their new textbooks for answers to the questions on the worksheet I’d run off for them on “fun” green paper. I’m bored just typing about it.

Thank the heavens and Fitzwilliam Darcy (Pride and Prejudice and Dorks – my forthcoming novel), I’ve grown to trust myself and the value I see in learning about my students and building relationships. The energy it brings to the start of the year has been incredible.

 

 

 

Reading Outside Your Comfort Zone (And Booktalking Beyond It, Too)

#FridayReads, Books, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop September 2, 2016 Comments: 7
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Ruthie the Riveted Reader

This summer, I was so overwhelmed by new motherhood that I barely found any time to read.  Instead of my usual 40+ books devoured by the beach, perused over afternoon coffee, or listened to while driving to a summer class, I finished maybe four or five books.  I found myself reading Corduroy, Go Dog Go, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar nearly every night…but I missed the solitude of my own reading life.

When I finally got Ruthie to start sleeping, I was ready (and able) to read again, but I wasn’t sure where to start.  Books that used to hold my attention just didn’t anymore.  So, my husband and I started a little game–I asked him to go pick me any book off our fairly full bookshelves.

After a few weeks of reading, I realized something: he was choosing only what he knew.

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Just a snippet of our bookshelves, arranged by genre (Jon always goes for the top left)

He selected for me In Cold Blood by Truman Capote; The Big Short by Michael Lewis; On The Road by Jack Kerouac; The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig; The King of Torts by John Grisham; The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell…are you noticing a pattern?  Jon reads nonfiction, with just a few legal or spy thrillers sprinkled in.  He suggested what he knew.

As I quickly got sick of reading nonfiction (which I faithfully attempted), I started to think about my own booktalks to students last year.  I kept a record of those booktalks on posters that hung on the back wall of our classroom, and I know if I looked at them for genre, I’d find some variety:  poetry, award winners, nonfiction, war stories, thrillers, sports fiction, classics, multicultural literature, and lots of YA.

But you know what I wouldn’t find?

Graphic novels (I only know a few).  Science fiction (beyond the popular dystopian series).  Fantasy (I just can’t keep all the weirdly-named characters straight).  Historical fiction (snooze, good sir).  Horror (I like to sleep at night, thank you very much).

Those just aren’t books I’d pick up on my own.  That means I’m less likely to put them in my classroom library…so I’m less likely to booktalk them…and I’m less likely to reach every student in the room.

Teachers must read beyond our comfort zones.  It’s important that we’re the best readers in the room, as well as the most prolific.  Our students’ reading success depends on our wide knowledge of books.  Conferring–the cornerstone of workshop–does no good if once we know our students we don’t know enough titles to match them to a book.

So, I made it my goal to branch out.  I attempted City of Bones, the first in The Mortal Instruments series, by Cassandra Clare–and I loved it!  Yes, there was talk of daemons and faeries and vampyres and a lot of other stuff with which I was unfamiliar, but I really liked the story.  Next, I tried A Murder in Time by Julie Mcelwain, a historical fiction account of murders in 19th-century England.  Again, I was surprised–I loved it!

Now that I’ve accepted the challenge of reading outside my comfort zone, my next step is to figure out how to learn about good books within genres about which I’m clueless.  I’ll ask students who say they like those genres to fill me in (I remember last year a student was horrified that I’d never heard of Dune by Frank Herbert–“What! It’s like the original science fiction!!”).  I’ll lurk on Goodreads to see what my teacher friends are reading, and I’ll pose the question on Twitter.

I know that if I don’t read outside my comfort zone, I can’t booktalk outside it either–and in that case, I’m disadvantaging students who don’t share my reading tastes.  That’s enough of an impetus to spur me to read something different, but beyond that…a little change is never a bad thing.

What genres are you unfamiliar with?  Share in the comments, and let’s help one another find some great new titles to booktalk this year.

Flexible Seating by Amy Marshall

Readers Writers Workshop August 31, 2016 Comments: 5

guest post iconFlexible Seating and a Classroom Redesign – The Beginnings

The August panic arrived this week. It’s that tipping point in the summer where I’m worried that I won’t be able to get it all done – the fun trips to the beach, the must-do household tasks, the back-to-school planning. I even had my first back to school dream. In this one, I attempted to teach the importance of Shakespeare’s use of soliloquy to a group of fifteen year olds while at the beach. It didn’t go so well. So with my mind beginning to circle around the upcoming school year, I’ve decided to lay out some of the main things about which my mind is preoccupied.

Foremost on my mind is my classroom configuration. For many years now, I have been using reading and writing workshops with a theme based question. One element that is so important to me is collaboration. But for some reason, it’s a real struggle to get the students to do it. It always seems that once they have glued themselves to their seats at the beginning of the period I can’t get them to move. If the person sitting directly beside them isn’t ready to collaborate on a task, then they think it can’t be done. I was sure that someone out there had a solution and the research began. My discovery? Maybe it’s my classroom configuration.

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1: Starting point in August

In the early 2000s, a group of school architects, child psychologists, and educators began to examine the environments in which our students work. They claim that educators need to consider the classroom environment as the third teacher (with the actual teacher being one, and the content being two). Students get their cues about what is important for learning from the things that they see in their surroundings. So, if there are individual desks in rows, they believe that they should be working alone. If there are groupings of four, and only those, they feel that they must work with the people at their table. In Kayla Delzer’s article “Flexible Seating and Student Centered Classroom Redesign” (Edutopia, 2016), she goes on to further explain the role of flexible seating arrangements for the feeling of fluid collaboration.

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2: Starting point in August

After reading that, it made sense to me. While I thought I had a dynamic classroom, it was really only dynamic in my mind. To my students, it still pigeonholed who their collaborators could be and when that could happen. To make matters worse (at least according to the flexible seating gurus), I had a huge teacher desk that dominated one whole corner of the room. Many educators see this as a barrier to students feeling like the have ownership of the space. It sends the message, “This is my place that I allow you to be guest in.” I can only speak for myself, but when I’m a guest in someone’s home, I’m reluctant to move freely about, helping myself to whatever I need. Usually a guest waits for the cues from the host. I don’t want my students to feel like they’re my guest when they are in my room.

 

Enter the first of my two big experiments this year – flexible seating. Oh, what fun! I spent much of the month of June, measuring spaces, harassing the custodian for stools and tables, designing furniture I wanted my husband to build me. My colleague, who teaches math next door, became excited and started gathering her own tables and stools. It was a fantastic, exciting time – until I saw the custodian removing the desks I had marked as no longer part of my plan. Then my nice, big, safe teacher desk was wheeled away. The final thought of panic arrived as it dawned on me that I won’t have my beloved seat plan.

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The hope for September

So, here I sit in August, wondering if this experiment will garner the results that I want – to make students realize the value of assessing what kind of learning they need to do that day and choosing their setting accordingly. The fluidity of the workshop model will finally be mirrored in the fluidity of my classroom environment. I’m nervous, but excited. Maybe by October I’ll be begging the custodian to give me back my desks.

Amy Marshall teaches grades 9 and 10 at St. Malachy’s Memorial High School in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. She has experienced all subjects, and grade levels from kindergarten to grade 12, but her heart is in high school English. A member of the NCTE, she believes in the power of collaboration amongst teachers and learning from each other. In 2015, Amy was a recipient of a Book Love Foundation Grant to grow her classroom library.

Contact:  Email:  amy.marshall@nbed.nb.ca             Twitter:  @armarshall    

Try it Tuesday: Silent Sticky Conferences

Classroom Culture, Conferring, Readers Writers Workshop August 30, 2016 Comments: 10

A burning question I seem to repeat year after year is “How do I talk to more of my students one-on-one beginning on the first day of school?”

I know the value of making eye contact with the adolescents who enter my room. I know the importance of making them feel like they belong here — like they are in a place where they can be themselves, a place where they want to learn.

I confer regularly with my students — about their reading lives and their writing lives — but every year it seems to take me a while to get in the groove. You know, get all the procedures introduced and underway, get students interested in books (and sometimes reading itself), learn names, set up our writer’s notebooks and our blogs and all the different bits of technology we use regularly like Google Classroom and Twitter.

I know all of these things are important, but sometimes I feel like I miss valuable moments of just I-want-to-get-to-know-you in my rush to get everything set up so we can finally begin to learn.

I know myself well.

So this year — I’ve slowed the pace a bit. And my students and I are passing notes.

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On the first day of school, I asked students to write their names big and bold on one side of a notecard. (I use these throughout the year to select non-volunteers to speak up and share their notebook responses and to answer questions. You know, like the popsicle sticks with everyone’s name on them idea.) Then, on the other side of the card, I asked students to tell me what they think I need to know about them as a learner in relation to the reading and writing we will do in this English class.

Silent confer1Some of my students’ notes were telling:  Many of them lack confidence. Few of them like to read. A couple feel ready for the complex texts they will have to tackle. Some explained in very few words a need to feel validated and cared for and something personal and important to them as learners in my care.

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I responded to each student’s note with a personal note of my own, written on a sticky note that I returned the next day in class. One young man questioned as I walked the room passing them out:  “Miss, you wrote to all of us?”silentconfer2

“Yes,” I told him, ” and I need you to carefully read what I wrote. Let’s see if we can start a conversation about you and what you need from me as a reader and a writer.” His grin grew as golden.

Silent sticky-note conferences have been the norm in my class for quite some time. They bridge the gaps between face-to-face conferences, build relationships, show we care enough to pick up a pen and pen a few words of encouragement or instruction.

With class sizes of 30 (sometimes 30+) we have to find ways to talk to our students one-on-one often. This passing little notes method fulfills my need to touch base with students, and it fuels their need to be recognized, validated, and hopefully inspired.

If you haven’t invested in sticky notes this year, hurry to the store while they are still on the back-to-school sales. I’ve got a whole crate of them.

Next step:  We’ll eventually move into larger pieces of paper, so I want to teach my img_1845students to fold notes like I did way back in seventh grade before the advent of all this technology. Texting friends just cannot be as fun as all those little folded notes.

What are your ideas for more face-to-face and one-on-one conversations with students this year? Please share in the comments.