Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 3; Content Area Writing: The Rest of Chapter 3

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 49) “Unfortunately, many students continue year in and year out with the same mistaken notion that writing is easy for some and difficult for others.”
This is the same concept that students have about reading—they just think people are naturally good readers and don’t realize that good readers got that way because they read a lot. Just like our struggling readers need us to think aloud so they’ll know what should be going through their minds while they read, our students need to see us start writing from scratch, so they can see how it is developed from beginning to end.

Students seem to think the books they read are just churned out that way. They don’t realize how writers rewrite and edit their work tons of times before it goes to the publisher. With the leak of Midnight Sun on the Internet, author Stephenie Meyer urges fans not to read it not only because she wasn’t ready for it to be released, but also because “the writing is messy and flawed and full of mistakes.” The woman who has sold MILLIONS of copies of her book admits to her writing not being very good. (You knew I’d have to get a Twilight connection in there somehow!) So…we need to model, model, model for students, so that they’ll realize that a final product isn’t easy for anyone—it takes much time and effort!

Content Area Writing

The last three writing-to-learn strategies in this chapter seem to be geared for the visual learners. Every time I see stuff about using drawings for understanding, I always think about Jimmy Richardson sharing his students’ “sketch to stretch” drawings when they were studying different religions. I think only Christy and Claire were in his group two years ago when he shared it. My favorite was the student who drew Jesus rising up out of the tomb and someone else looking in it saying, “Yo, dog. He ain’t in there” for his depiction of Christianity. Funny stuff! Has anyone tried any of the strategies from Chapter 3? If so, share how it went!

Content Area Writing: Chapter 2 and 3 through Page 47

(Page 27) “It is entirely possible for a student to glance through a textbook and copy down these answers without ever reading the chapter, doing any thinking, or ultimately, having a glimmer of recollection—of anything.”
But it’s so eeeeasy to have them answer the questions and give them a grade for it! How many times in your school career did you have to answer the questions in the textbook? The answers could always be found in the order of the questions, and it was pretty simple to skim through until you found matching words. Well, simple for pretty good readers. When I first started teaching, I was amazed at how many of my resource students struggled with this. Part of the problem was their difficulty with reading and part of it was their difficulty with understanding how textbooks work. And so those students would end up with not so great grades. The teachers would then see a clear range of grades on the task and think there must be some merit to it because not everyone made a 100.

Think about how much more effective it is for teachers to use writing to learn activities instead. I like how the authors provide us with lots of examples of how we use such things in our everyday lives. I can’t tell you how many times I swear to myself that I’m going to remember something so I don’t need to write it down only to end up forgetting it completely. The reason I always think I’ll be okay is because the times that I do write something down, I end up not needing to look at it because I remember it. Well, duh! The reason I remember is because I wrote it down. How much more do you think your students would remember things if you just paused and had them write down what you had just discussed in class? Did anyone have the chance to try out any of the WTL strategies discussed in the book? If so, how did it go?

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 2; How to Teach Students Who Don't Look Like You: Chapter 2

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 37) “But there is another valuable reason why our students should be doing more writing across the curriculum: the act of writing extends knowledge. Putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) creates new thinking. The act of writing is generative.”

Y’all correct me if you think I’m off base here, but I think that many non-English teachers are hesitant about including writing in their classes because they aren’t very confident in their own writing and don’t think they know how to grade student writing. The thing is that teachers don’t have to be great grammarians to incorporate writing. Writing across the curriculum isn’t meant to make sure every student knows how to write an essay with no errors. As Gallagher points out in the quote above, writing helps students think, and isn’t creating good thinkers important? I think as we continue to read Gallagher’s book and the Content Area Writing book (if we EVER get it—did I mention I’m not responsible for ordering that one?) that we’ll discover tons of ways to incorporate writing into our class to extend learning.

How to Teach Students Who Don’t Look Like You
(Page 18) “The key to building the critical mass of students goes back to relationships. If you have a good relationship with your target students, you can begin to build a critical mass of students to focus on achievement goals.”
Don’t y’all think that our relationship with students is at the crux of everything we do with them? It seems to me that everything goes much more smoothly in the classroom if you take the time to get to know kids and show a genuine interest in them. Heck, if they know you care about them and you screw up something, they’re much more forgiving of you. I think that by getting to know them as individuals, you can get a better understanding of their cultures—and if they even adhere to any of the typical traditions within their cultures.

Content Area Writing: Chapter One; Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter One

Content Area Writing
(Page 4) “But for now, we need to admit: We are not tapping kids’ vast out-of-school authoring experience.”
I have been reading so much lately about the “Digital Divide” between students and teachers these days. The Digital Divide notes there are two kinds of people: Digital Natives (those—students and probably some of you younger teachers—who have always been around technology) and Digital Immigrants (those of us who are a bit older, haven’t always had the technology, and are learning it—okay, some of us are learning it). The problem is we Immigrants aren’t acknowledging just how important of a role technology plays and are losing lots of opportunity for good teaching because of it. I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t know how to text (nor can I understand how quickly kids can do it), but how cool would it be to have students write a text message conversation between two characters? What about creating a MySpace page for a historical figure? Or even have students create their own blog pages related to class? Kids do a whole lot more writing than we give them credit for, and we’ve got to start incorporating that into our lessons. Do they need to learn how to write traditional things like essays, resumes, etc.? Of course they do. But I think we can use the Native style of writing as a tool in our classrooms to extend learning as well.

A bit of extra commentary about this: Nicole, I think you are a Digital Native. I remember last year when we went to see Jim Trelease for a class, he used overheads for his presentation. I didn’t even give it a second thought, but I remember you commenting that you wished he had used something more updated like PowerPoint!

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 6) “…between 1998 and 2002, the scores of twelfth grade students declined, with lowest performing students showing the greatest declines. Only seniors writing in the 75th percentile or higher showed any growth from 1998; all other twelfth-grade students declined.”
This is one of my biggest concerns. I feel like we do a really great job on getting our students prepped for HSAP in ninth and tenth grades then once they finish, sometimes the attitude of “Okay, they passed, so they can write; we don’t need to spend any more time on that” takes over. The thing with HSAP is that just because you pass it does not mean you’re a great writer. HSAP writing is just one genre of writing and we need to make sure kids understand that. I’ve seen some pretty high scores for the HSAP with students who were not the most fabulous writers. So, how do we stress the importance of good writing beyond the tenth grade?

On another note, since Gallagher brought up the whole NAEP test and the State Department has just released AYP information, I wanted to make sure that y’all are aware of what the NAEP test is and its significance. NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) is a standardized test that is given to random schools across the country. Subtests are given on a variety of subjects including reading, writing, and math, among others. You know how we in South Carolina are constantly getting slammed about our lousy test scores, we have too many kids failing PACT and HSAP, blah, blah, blah? Here’s the thing that most people don’t get: South Carolina has some of the highest standards in the country and our definition of what basic, proficient, and advanced on our state tests are higher than what other states set for their tests. So, when our students take the NAEP tests, the ones who scored proficient and advanced on our state tests score about the same on the NAEP test. MANY other states have an inflated sense of what is proficient and advanced performance. Their students may score proficient or advanced on the state test, but when they take NAEP, they’re bombing out and scoring much lower…their students are really no different their ours; they just have an easier grading scale, so to speak, on their state tests.

Fair Isn't Always Equal: The Rest of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4

(Page 35) “Always err on the side of substance, not fluff.”
I love projects. I mean actually doing them myself, making something. I did a fabulous job last year on Ava’s “All About Me” project for her pre-school class. I’ll even go out on a limb and say it was the best one in the class. (Okay, that’s not really going out on a limb—some of the projects didn’t show the effort of any 3-D effects at all…they were just simply colored with Crayolas.) So what did I learn by doing, I mean helping, Ava with that project? (Other than cute cloth at a fabric store is really expensive.) Not a whole lot. While I do think the project is valid for pre-schoolers to do, when we assign projects in our class we have to ask ourselves, “What is the student going to learn from this?” or “How will this further the student’s learning?” I’ve seen some neat projects in my time but have wondered what the student learned in the process. Just because students are making some nifty project doesn’t mean they’ve necessarily learned anything. Don’t think I’m not guilty—I’ve certainly assigned pointless projects in my time. I think it’s Maya Angelou whom Oprah gives credit for saying, “I did then what I knew then. When I knew better, I did better.”

On another note, I like how Wormelli goes into detail about rubrics and how to design them (pages 44-48). After reading it, I definitely realized that the HSAP rubric is analytic—hence the reason why students can get different scores when different people score the responses. I also like how he suggested not to have five levels on the rubric because students tend to automatically think of the A-F scale. I had never thought about that, but it does make perfect sense. I think our clapping engagement in our first class reiterated the importance of giving the rubric to the students before they actually start the assignment.

Fair Isn't Always Equal: Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 through Page 32

(Page 13) “According to Nolen and Taylor, ‘…there are two ways to obtain sufficient evidence of mastery: 1) multiple assignments, and 2) tracking the progress of a few important works over time.’”

While it certainly is a whole lot easier, is it really fair to use one assessment to determine a student’s knowledge of material? Y’all know I’m not a big fan of EOC’s to begin with, but when I think about those exams and their high stakes, I always reflect back to a crew I had taking the Math Tech II EOC. I’ll protect the innocent (or is that guilty?) and spare names, but I had Student A who was failing MT2 out the wazoo and didn’t have a clue what was going on. (He shouldn’t have gotten credit for MT1, but that’s another story.) Though he failed the class overall, he ended up passing the EOC. Then I had Student B who was a pretty good MT2 student. The afternoon before he took the EOC, one of his good friends died in a car accident, so he wasn’t very focused on the exam and ended up failing it. Though he passed the class, the required exam did impact his final grade. Do you think it was fair that that test counted for 20% of each student’s final grade?

While having multiple assignments may add a little more to our plate, it definitely gives a better picture of what the student does or does not know. I think back to an undergraduate class I took at USC where we were supposed to read a novel each week and discuss it in class. Our grade in the class, however, was based solely on our written responses to only two of the books; one counted as the mid-term and the other as the final. Guess how many books I read for the class? If said two, you win the prize. Looking at my transcript you would see that I had a B in African-American literature and would probably think I’m pretty well-versed on such novels; if the professor had assessed me on multiple assignments, she would have quickly found out I neither read nor knew squat!

How many of know of great teachers who had a really tough time passing the Praxis or NTE (for us old-timers) to become certified? Or know of some not-so-great teachers who breezed through the test? Even though the ADEPT process seems quite daunting to those of us who did not have to go though it, I think the idea of it is much better at assessing new teachers than the old APT checklist. (Did I get my humor point in this post?!? )

Okay, so I think I’ve made my case for the support of multiple assignments. What are your thoughts on the topic and/or other parts of Chapter 2 and the first part of Chapter 3?

Final Thoughts

I am so glad each of you decided to join this year’s SCRI study group. It has been a great experience working with each of you this year; I have loved facilitating our classes and sharing in professional discussions. I just wish I could have been on campus more often so I could work with y’all more in your classrooms. In the famous words of Gamecock fans, there’s always next year!

As you reflect on the year, consider the following questions...

What has been the most valuable part of this course for you? Is there something in particular you learned that has been helpful in your teaching? Has your approach to teaching text changed at all? Have your views on reading and writing changed at all? Any other thoughts you have?

Subjects Matter: Pages 124-143; When Kids Can't Read: Chapter 8

Ahhhh…after reading strategies. I think this is the area we’re most familiar with when it comes to before, during, and after reading strategies. Of course for some folks (not any of us, of course!) the after reading is often limited to quizzes and tests. But what about the kids who can understand but struggles with the traditional tests???

Daniels and Beers give us a plethora of ideas to check for understanding as alternatives. We’ve seen some of these strategies before and some are new. And, as usual, Beers goes into much greater detail in describing the strategies. We’re all now familiar with exit slips in our study group, but has anyone tried using them in class to see how they’ll work with your students? Not only do exit slips give the students time to reflect, but it can help you become aware of problems the students are having with the work and what you may need to go back and reteach. Or, it may just confirm that you did a great job at executing a lesson!

So were y’all able to try to incorporate some of these after-reading strategies in your classrooms? Do tell!

Subjects Matter: Chapter 8; When Kids Can't Read: Chapter 14

Subjects Matter

(Page 184) “…to grow the community of lifelong learners around our schools, part of every school day must be devoted to independent reading. Period.”

I think we’ve established in class the importance of having students read every day at school, and some of y’all are having your students read even on non-SSR days. While all classes are supposed to be participating in SSR on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, I have heard through the grapevine that there are a few teachers who are not doing it. What do you think it will take to convince the faculty who are not a part of this study group daily reading really will improve student learning and make students more successful in all of their classes?
For those of you who do SSR in your classes outside of the school-wide variety: What do you do while the students are reading? In this chapter the authors suggest having conferences with students about their reading, but I always had difficulty keeping students focused on their own reading if I wasn’t doing the same. I found my students to be most engrossed in their books if I was reading along with them. This also gave me the time to read lots of YA literature and be able to make recommendations. Has anyone tried the conference thing with success?

When Kids Can’t Read
I love how Beers gives all of the features struggling readers like to find in books. Perhaps if my teachers had known this when I was in high school, I would have read some books. There always seemed like there were a million words on a page of those classics and there was practically no margin! I think students have been given so many books that carry no interest for them for so long that they tend to lump all books into one category: boring. The world of YA lit has exploded over the last several years and the choices are endless. I’m amazed at how much the section has grown at Barnes and Noble; it has doubled in size over the past few years. I think we also need to remember that just because a kid (or adult) doesn’t read a book doesn’t mean he’s not a reader. There are so many other types of material out there. How many of us know people who never pick up a book but read the newspaper every day religiously? How many of us read magazines? It’s important to recognize different types of reading. Does it really matter if a kid doesn’t read a novel if he reads tons of other informational text?

Why Teachers Must Become Change Agents

(Page 3) “Mastery involves strong initial teacher education and career-long staff development…There is a ceiling effect to how much we can learn if we keep it to ourselves.”

To me, so much of this article supported Airport’s mission in becoming a professional learning community. As educators, we’ve got to be able to admit that there’s always room for improvement, and we need to continue to learn new things (kudos to all of y’all for already doing so by taking this course!) and work together. Think about how much we’ve learned from each other in this class by having the opportunity to share our successes, concerns, and strategy spotlights. And how much have we accomplished by having time to work with our colleagues during delayed start? I don’t think there ever comes a point to where we don’t need to take another class because we already know it all. How would we feel if our physicians took this stance? Would we want to go to a doctor who was doing things the same way he did 15 or 20 years ago? What if he didn’t use any of the latest practices in his work? We would think such a doctor was outdated and couldn’t possibly serve us appropriately. When my husband and I were having all sorts of medical issues with Ava and she didn’t seem to follow the textbook on a diagnosis, I was thrilled when my pediatrician (who is absolutely wonderful) told me that he spoke with a few of his colleagues about her case to try to see if there was anything he was missing. By using that same method in education, we can become even better teachers and take our students to the next level.

Winter Literacy Conference

I hate I couldn’t be there with you all, but I hope you had a good time at the Winter Literacy Conference. Generally speaking, if you can take away just one thing from a conference to use in your classroom, it was worth your while. Obviously, everyone couldn’t attend all sessions, so with this post, share something you learned in one of the sessions you attended. That way others may be able to pick up something cool to use in their classrooms from a session they weren't able to get to. This post will serve as your exit slip for the conference since you didn’t have to put your name on the one you completed there.

When Kids Can’t Read: Pages 127-137; Subjects Matter: Pages 114-122

For me, the during reading concept often seemed to be the trickiest of the before, during, and after reading options. With before reading, you’re setting up the reading and providing the background information needed to make sense of the text. After reading, you’re checking for what they understood. So what’s up with this during reading stuff? If you stop and have students do something while they’re reading, wouldn’t that technically be considered an after reading activity since they had to stop reading? It all eventually made sense to me…with during reading process, we’re responsible for teaching the students HOW to read the text. On page 137 Beers writes, “Students often don’t know how to do all this thinking. For too long we’ve told them to ‘think carefully’ about what they’ve read without showing them how to do that thinking.” When using during reading strategies, it’s more of a formative assessment, so we can see where student thinking breaks down. If students aren’t using good reading strategies, they’re going to have difficulty understanding what they’ve read. The problem is that many students don’t know what they should be doing as they read, so it’s our responsibility to show them. And of course this goes back to why all content area teachers are teachers of reading—most English teachers would not be very proficient at explaining what thoughts should be going through one’s mind when reading a lab report or a word problem, just as the math or science teacher would probably struggle to analyze a poem or piece of prose.

So…questions, questions, questions. Which of the during reading strategies from Beers and/or Daniels did you try? What material were you using as your anchor text? How did your students do with it? Do you think it was helpful? What would you do differently next time?