Readicide: Chapter Three

(Page 65) “I am not advocating that we allow students to self-select everything they read. If I did that, none of my students would read Hamlet. Every student should read Hamlet.”
I was so thrilled when I read these words from Gallagher (the first sentence, not necessarily the last) because there seems to be some sort of movement by some for teachers not to use one novel with an entire class; the proverbial they think students should be able to choose what they want to read. The thought is that we choose what we want to read as adults, and if we want to develop lifelong readers, we should have them start the practice in school. There was an article on the front page of the New York Times back in August spotlighting a teacher who allowed students complete choice. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/books/30reading.html?_r=1&emc=eta1)

Y’all know I’m all about some choice for students, but I had wondered if there wasn’t some benefit with kids reading the same text—and sometimes a text that students wouldn’t tackle otherwise. I think Gallagher makes the point when he writes that none of his students would read Hamlet if he didn’t have them read it. I read Hamlet my senior year of high school (in addition to Macbeth…I think my teacher was of the Gallagher thought that every student should read Hamlet, so we got to read two Shakespearan plays). The thing is I actually liked the play, but I certainly would not have read it otherwise. As students, we were even excited when the Mel Gibson version came out in theatres that year and we went to see it (for five bucks in the evening, I might add). And I was much better able to appreciate the Gilligan’s Island episode when producer Harold Hecuba is stranded on the island, so the castaways create and perform Hamlet: The Musical. It's absolutely one of the greatest episodes ever. (God help us all if any of you young chicks have never seen an episode of Gilligan's Island!)

I think the key to all of this (as is the key to most thing in teaching) is the delivery. If the teacher has a genuine interest in a text, I think she can get the students excited about it as well. I swear if the opportunity presented itself, my literacy coach friend Sonya could make me love The Scarlet Letter. On my own, I don’t see that happening. Was I supposed to read it in high school? Sure. Did my American Literature teacher do anything to make the text accessible or relevant to me? Absolutely not. Other than the general symbolism that “everyone” is supposed to know about the scarlet A on Hester’s chest, pretty much the only thing I remember about The Scarlet Letter is watching the movie in class and Pearl (Hester’s daughter) having a meltdown in the woods. So, if we choose to teach a difficult text (read: most classics), we must find that balance of making it understandable to students without beating it to death!

Readicide: Chapter Two

Do-do-do-do-dooooo. I’m lovin’ it! I swear if I was smart enough to know how to get that McDonald’s theme song playing on here, I’d do it. This book is just awesome!!! I have so much highlighted in this chapter, I’m finding it difficult to narrow a quote down! Let’s just go with this one…

(Page 40) “Novels are not part of the problem; the problem lies in how the novels are taught.”
Who can tell me who Atticus Finch’s first two clients were when he became an attorney? C’mon, most all of us have read To Kill a Mockingbird. Surely, having that information about Atticus is important, right? It gives us information about Atticus’ abilities as an attorney, right? Ugh! WHO CARES??? I think this is the kind of stuff Gallagher is getting at with the problem of how novels are taught. Sometimes we get so caught up in teaching the novel itself instead of the theme or what we learn from the novel. When teaching a particular novel, ask yourself this question: What do I want my students to get out of this book? By focusing on the theme, we can relate it to students’ lives and make the book more relevant (particularly those books written by the Dead White Men who did not write for a teenage audience). Once we know what we want our students to get from the book, we need to make sure our final assessment reflects that. If we want students to realize the signs of abuse when reading Breathing Underwater, then why ask them who Nick’s best friend is? (Sidebar: I’ve read that book at least a dozen times, I can’t think of the name of Nick’s best friend off the top of my head.) Also, by focusing on the theme instead of the details of the book, I think it helps with students who don’t necessarily love the book. It’s not very often you’ll find a book that absolutely everyone loves, so if it’s approached as using it to examine a theme, then it becomes more of a tool for analysis than just reading a book because it’s supposed to be good. Also, with the classics, there needs to be lots of teacher support for instruction. Again, these are not novels that were written for teenagers, so why would we just have them read the pages without much help? Would you want to read a tax code book without any guidance from an accountant???

Oh, and just in case you’re dying to know about Atticus Finch’s first two clients…they were the last two men hanged in Maycomb county. And just so ya know, I’ve read To Kill a Mockinbird several times but didn’t know that about Atticus. I had to break out the book to come up with that question.

Readicide: Introduction and Chapter One

I’m so excited that you all wanted to continue with the professional book blog. And I’m even more excited that we’re reading more of Kelly Gallagher! Seriously, how fabulous can one person be? McDonald’s words best describes my feeling about Readicide: I’m lovin’ it! As usual, Gallagher packs so much punch into a small space that I had a hard time choosing just a couple of quotes to pull. I didn’t want to use more so I wouldn’t steal what someone else wanted to bring to light. I ran into Christy last week and she wants to get together just to talk about the book! So, keep that thought in the back of your mind…we may have to have a study group reunion and chat! It won’t have to be at school. This reading is by all choice—no grades or anything attached—so we can go somewhere fun if y’all want! On to the text…

Introduction
(Page 2) “Today, more than ever, valuable classroom time presents the best opportunity—often the only opportunity—to turn kids on to reading.”
I think I’ve told y’all before, but one of the things I miss about being in the classroom is getting to read for 90 minutes every day. (3 classes x 30 minutes of SSR each day = 90 minutes) Life outside of school is busy—for teachers AND students. How many students do we have who have to take care of siblings after school? Work to help pay the bills? Involved in extra-curricular activities? Just deal with crazy drama at home? All of that other stuff can make it difficult to have time to read. By giving students that time at school (hence school-wide SSR) we are introducing students to the world of reading just for the heck of it. My only concern about school-wide SSR is the teachers who don’t value the time, and the students don’t value the time as a result of teacher behavior. I’m not saying everyone needs to read a novel—that’s not realistic real world reading. But how can we get the teachers who are not so excited about SSR to realize that they do actually read—be it the newspaper, magazines, et cetera—so they can translate to students that reading is important?

Chapter One
(Page 21) “Less than 14 percent of low-income students are reading at grade level.”
Alright, let’s think about this for a minute in terms of Airport. We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of our students on free and reduced lunch. Free and reduced lunch is an indicator of poverty. That means roughly 840 of our students are low-income students, so when going by the statistic Gallagher provides, we’ve got about 720 students who do NOT read on grade level at Airport High School. If around half of our population are not able to read on grade level, why in the world would we assign them textbook reading without any guidance? Why would we have them read classic novels—that were written for an adult audience—for homework and expect them to understand what they read? I’m not saying that we shouldn’t set high expectations for students and not utilize the resources. (Well, okay, maybe I wouldn’t mind skipping most of the classics!) What I am saying is that if we are going to use these materials, we’ve got to provide MUCH support IN class, so that students can get something from it. Are students learning how to think from the material we’re using, or are they just “playing” school? Are we just dispensers of knowledge, doling out what we think students should know, or are we letting students discuss readings with their peers and the class so they can THINK and discover new knowledge?

Content Area Writing: Chapter 8 and Final Thoughts

(Page 188) “Fact is, we struggle with coverage versus depth every day. We can tell ourselves we must get to it all for the standardized test, but if the kids don’t learn from a quick buzz-through, they still won’t do well on the test.”
I think the breadth over depth issue is one of the biggest problems we have to tackle. It always seems like more and more is added to what we’re expected to teach, and we don’t have time to get it all in. But are the kids really learning anything just because we can say we went over it? I once heard a presenter say, “Oftentimes when we cover the standards, we cover the standards.” He meant that we end up smothering what it is that we’re supposed to be doing—TEACHING the kids! I think the writing workshop concept can sound a bit intimidating to do in class, but Daniels et al did a pretty good job of breaking it down, so that it can be very doable. It definitely provides an atmosphere where students are supported in their writing and have the opportunity to get some feedback. If mastery is our goal, as we talked about when we read Wormelli, then doesn’t it seem obvious that something is going to have to give? I don’t think we’ll ever have enough time to effectively teach every single standard in our given subjects, but what we can do is teach effectively so that students can benefit from our instruction even after they leave our classrooms.

I know you all are broken up that this is your final blog post for SCRI. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with y’all, and I hope you have enjoyed the study group just as much. As you reflect on the last year (or two or three), what do you think has been most beneficial to you in regards to being a part of our study group?

I came up with an idea this evening, and thought I’d throw it out there to y’all to see what you think. I promise my feelings won’t be hurt if you don’t like it or aren’t interested. Since I’m sure some of you will go through withdrawals not having to write a blog anymore (I’m sure they’ll be as bad as the ones for not having to complete SCRI surveys), is anyone interested in reading a professional book next year and just blogging about it? I was thinking perhaps we could do Gallagher’s new book or maybe one of the ones we looked at during the book pass. Obviously, school money is going to be tight, so everyone would have to purchase their own books, but I’d be happy to order them all and get a new blog going if you’re game. Granted I won’t be at Airport, but I would be happy to do it as a community service project. Let me know what you think.

Teaching Adolsecent Writers: Chapter 7; Content Area Writing: Chapters 7 and 9

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 142) “…the goal for each student is the same: everyone improves…it is unrealistic to think I am going to make every one of my 165 students a strong writer. It is realistic, however, to begin each year with the goal that every student of mine, regardless of ability, is going to get better.”
I love this thinking—it’s achievable for both the student and the teacher. (Claire, I know you love it because it reminds you of the movie Summer School…did I just reference that movie two blog posts in a row?!?) The thing I especially love is that as usual, Gallagher doesn’t just tell you this theory; he give you some strategies to use to put it into practice. Does it require some extra work? Certainly. To show that you’ve made improvement with each student means you have to know where the student was to begin with and what his weaknesses were. Otherwise, how will you know he improved and in what specific areas? Keeping this type of data on students can be powerful. While mid-to-late year a student may realize that he still isn’t a terrific writer, how great would it be to show him how far he has come?

I do want to mention one thing on Tenet #6 that Gallagher writes about on page 150-152 with the Independent Correction Sheet (Figure 7.5). When I heard Gallagher speak in December, he said he has slightly modified the form from the example in the book. If you look at the figure, you’ll notice that in the first column the student writes the sentence where the problem occurred. He no longer has students do that because it seems to just reinforce bad habits…they’re once again writing a sentence incorrectly. Instead, the student simply writes the sentence correctly and notes the problem he originally had.

Content Area Writing
Two of the writing projects I liked featured in these chapters are the newspaper front page and multi-genre project. I like the newspaper front page because I think students can get as creative with it as they would like and show clear understanding of text read. I like how Daniels et al provide an evaluation checklist on page 179, so the student can see if they have elements of a real newspaper. I must say that I’m not too impressed with the MS Publisher template and student sample shown on pages 180-181…I think it leaves a bit to be desired.

I’m also a fan of the multi-genre project. The only time I had my students do it was when I went out on maternity leave. They didn’t have any face-to-face instruction from me, so their final products weren’t exactly exemplary, but I could tell they put some work into them. While the book suggests having students complete the multi-genre unit on a topic, I had my student do it on a book they read for SSR. This allowed students to look at the book from a variety of perspectives. That was the last quarter I was in a classroom, so I didn't have a chance to try it out with another group of students where I was able to guide them through the process better.

I’m telling ya…if I had had a the internet, a computer, and an inkjet printer when I was in high school along with these types of projects, I would have been completely loving life. I love creating stuff like that!

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 6; Content Area Writing: Chapter 10

Teaching Adolescent Writers

(Page 122) “When students understand the real-world purposes for writing (instead of simply writing to meet the next school assignment) they begin to internalize the relevance of writing, and more important, they develop an understanding that writing is an important skill to carry into adulthood.”

There are tons of different types of writing people use in the real-world, and there are some things we’ve just got to teach students to do or else they’ll be at a huge disadvantage when the graduate, particularly since so many of our students go into the workforce directly after high school. What if all senior English teachers taught the art of writing a thank-you note? How relevant would that be for seniors as they are receiving graduation gifts at the end of the year? It’s also an opportunity to teach them some etiquette—believe it or not, some people don’t know that they’re supposed to send thank-you notes for baby or wedding gifts. How many of you have seen the movie Summer School with Mark Harmon? (Other than Claire—I know it’s one of her favorites.) The gist of the movie is that a PE teacher (Harmon) is required to teach remedial English in summer school. He doesn’t know how to teach them but does find that relevance makes a difference, so he has the students all write complaint letters to companies they’ve had problems with. He teaches them how to write that letter and the language they must use—including using their real names instead of nicknames. (One student was named Francis, but everyone called him Chainsaw.) In the end, Francis received free sunglasses for his letter in regards to his faulty ones. What a great lesson! How many of us have ever been dissatisfied with a product or service? Teaching students how to properly write a complaint letter (i.e. including telling them that using the word “sucks” is not a good idea!) could benefit students tremendously once they graduate. Goodness only knows how many free dinners and gift certificates my sister has received because she knows the art of complaining in writing!

Content Area Writing

(Page 253) “Some tests encourage teachers to race through content never slowing down to help students think deeply about the material, thus encouraging endless data bytes promptly forgotten once the test is over.”

Anyone else, besides me, cram for tests in high school the night before, make a good grade, and don’t remember a dang thing from it? I remember those wretched vocabulary workbooks all too well. Twenty new words on Monday, complete the “exercises,” during the week, and test on Friday. I think I remember two words (deluge and prelude) from my four years of completing those books. What’s the point??? On a side note, I heard that if a student is given 20 vocabulary words a week every week from 1st grade through 12th grade and actually learns every one of them, it only makes up for 6% of the student’s vocabulary…he gets 94% of his vocabulary from other means, i.e. everyday conversations. Paul Thomas from Furman is the one I heard that from, but he didn’t cite a source, so I’m not sure if he’s the originator.

Anyway, we’ve got to teach students to think. We don’t need teach them to think like us…we just need to teach them to think! Many years ago, Paulo Friere equated teaching to bank depositing. Teachers give students information (deposit it) and expect them to spit that information back. What good is it, really, if students just regurgitate everything we tell them? Wouldn’t it be better for them to be able to learn how to think about our class topics and apply that information to other situations? If we just teach them random facts and want them to tell us that information on the test, very little of that information will be retained. But if we teach them how to think and analyze and give them those sorts of questions on the test, then they’ll “get it” and be able to apply that understanding to other things.

Fair Isn't Always Equal: Chapters 10 and 11

(Page 136) “If we’re basing our decision on the ‘real world’ outside of school, then the answer is clear: Allow students to redo work.”
I’m really thinking we all will like this chapter because it doesn’t tell us that we ALWAYS have to let students redo work; it is at our own discretion. We’ve had the conversation before about students in the elementary and middle school just automatically being able to retake a test—they often don’t study because they know they’ll get another chance to do better. I think Wormelli makes it clear that we aren’t required to give students a retake if we think they’re taking advantage; we offer the option when it’s the fair thing to do. This is where the ART of teaching comes in to play. While you may do different things for different students, you still have to be able to justify it if it becomes necessary. We can’t arbitrarily refuse to let students redo work, but if we can explain why we wouldn’t let Johnny redo a test even though we allowed another student to do so with good reason, then there will be no problems. Making such decisions is like good teaching—you know why you’re doing what you’re doing!

I must admit that Chapter 11 did get a little wordy for me. I suspect you mathophobics were really thrown with all that number talk early on. I see the point of not giving a zero, but I don’t know that I’m completely sold on the “just give ‘em a 60” idea either. I think I could live more with giving a 50, but I’m thinking that would have to be at my discretion much like the idea of providing the opportunity of the redo. Wormelli gives the example of the kid who does nothing and gets all 60’s still ends up with an F. Well, that’s if the kid does absolutely nothing. What about the kid who is smart but lazy, so he has half A’s and half F’s? That child isn’t going to get an F. Again, I think the whole things deals with the art of teaching. For some students, they do deserve a 0, but others deserve the 50 or 60. I’m definitely one who believes in giving a kid hope. If a student has a horrible grade first quarter that is mathematically impossible to bring up to passing, I absolutely believe that he should be given the opportunity to redeem himself and that number should be adjusted if the student is willing to do a turn-around. What are y’all’s thoughts on this issue?

Content Area Writing: Chapters 5 and 6

(Page 126) “Content-area teachers will rarely have time to teach all the aspects of composition; we’ve got our subjects to cover! Still, the more we understand the writing process and the qualities of good writing, the more we can help our students.”
These chapters cover lots of components of writing, but I think the authors do a good job explaining that every teacher doesn’t have to teach everything about writing. To me, it gets to that whole depth over breadth notion. Sure, you could whiz through everything and say you “taught” the writing process, but did anyone really learn anything? It’s sort of telling students every fact that could possibly be on the EOC just so you can say you covered all the topics, but did the kids really learn anything? By choosing just one or two of the steps to focus on and spending a substantial amount of time on them, then students come to understand and retain how to do different components.

I particularly liked the “Four Corners” strategy discussed on page 128. I think the use of this one is not limited to writing—it could be used with a variety of things. In fact, we may have to do this in class one week before the year is up! It’s a great way to find where people stand on particular subjects why keeping them from just sitting in their desks. It also forces students to come up with a response instead of being lethargic and not participating at all. Even if students don’t say a word through the entire process, you still know what they think. So, based on what you teach, what parts of what Daniels et al wrote about do you think you could use in your classroom?

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 5; Content Area Writing: Chapter 4

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 91) “Choice generates a welcome chain reaction: it creates student buy-in, which in turn generates writing motivation, which in turn causes students to write better.”
Imagine that—giving students choice in writing actually has the same effects as giving students choice in what they read—they’ll actually want to do it! On page 90, Gallagher makes an excellent point in that we often have students do the type of writing they’ll neither do nor often see in the real world. Yes, yes, yes, I haven’t forgotten that we have those standardized tests looming over our students’ heads, but if someone is just a plain good writer, they’ll be able to do fine on those standardized tests. But if a student can only generate good standardized test-style writing, how is that going to benefit him after he graduates? I will go on record as saying the one thing I liked about our old exit exam versus HSAP is that the old one offered students a choice in their writing; they were given two prompts and had to choose one. However, with the HSAP, the scoring of it is not as rigid as the old one—there is not as much emphasis on conventions, so students have more leeway in how they write. Yes, they have to have a beginning, middle, and end, but they don’t have to necessarily format that into three or five paragraphs.

I love how in his traditional way, Gallagher doesn’t just tell us the problem. He provides lots of options that can be used in the classroom to generate student choice in writing then goes on to give ways to merge requirements with choice. Did anyone try one of the ideas Gallagher wrote about, or have you done something he didn’t mention that would be beneficial to us all?

Content Area Writing
I decided to go with having you all choose four of the eight strategies to read about in this chapter for a couple of reasons. First, I thought some of you may already be familiar with a few of the strategies. Second, I think the way Daniels et al present each strategy makes it easy to skim through the “What It Is” section of each to decide if that’s something useable for your classroom. So, did you have a chance to try out any of these strategies on your students, or how do you think you could incorporate one (or more) into your classroom?

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 4; Fair Isn't Always Equal: Chapter 9

Teaching Adolescent Writers, Chapter 4
“Voluminous reading alone does not make the writer, but those students who are readers come to the writing task with a marked advantage.” (Page 75)
It is rare that you have a student who reads a great deal but still has something lacking in his/her writing. (I actually can only think of two people I personally know that have this problem—one I taught and the other is an adult.) As students read more, they begin to adapt what they see in text to their own writings. This is yet another reason why SSR is so important. When students are given the opportunity to read what they want to read then they have writing models that they can learn from. Now, I am in no way whatsoever saying that I come close to the great J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye) when it comes to writing, but when I read his book as a teenager—one of only two books I read as an adolescence because I wanted to—I discovered a whole new way of writing, and without realizing it, I started using things in my writing that he does in his. Giving students lots of opportunity to read gives them the “polished” models they need as examples of good writing, but we need not forget to model our own writing process so they can see how messy it is to get to that final piece.

Fair Isn’t Always Equal, Chapter 9
“Is the teacher in the classroom to teach so that students learn, or is he or she there to present curriculum then hold an assessment “limbo” yardstick and see who in the class can bend flexibly and fit within its narrow parameters?” (Page 114-115)
I know this book isn’t nearly as entertaining to read as Gallagher’s, but it does provide a lot of things to think about. I had us complete the anticipatory guide in class last week to get you thinking about some of the ideas in this chapter and to hopefully make it a little easier to read. I’m not saying I necessarily agree with every little thing Wormelli writes (is there anyone you agree with 100%?) but as a result of reading, I will definitely change the way I do some things when I return to the classroom. I definitely have a different view of having students redo work for mastery after reading the second principle, “Avoid penalizing students’ multiple attempts at mastery.” Why should we expect all students to master the same thing at the exact same time? While most will probably fall within the parameters of what we are looking for, we do need to take into consideration those who take longer to develop. I’m not going to say any names, but I can think of a couple of students who took longer than their peers to be able to handle diploma-track classes. In fact, one didn’t pass one of the HSAP subtests until two years after he finished his finished all of his classes. But guess what? Even though it took him longer to get through, he finally “mastered” the test and is now a high school graduate!