What Students Remember

I know that I get caught up in making sure my students are learning, improving, growing, and preparing for the future. However, I strive to always keep my students' well-being first. No matter what, when class starts I always take a deep breath, look across the room at my students' faces and then ask "how are we all doing today?" The chorus of responses changes daily, and I enjoy addressing everyone. On some days, I reflect back on the class and say to myself, maybe I shouldn't ask that question. On the good days, these discussions take a minute, and on the bad days, these discussions have taken up to ten minutes. That's right, ten minutes of class time they could have spent learning and practicing skills. So I've been thinking, maybe I shouldn't take the time to address this question everyday, but then I read this great article. Enjoy.

What students remember. 

“Poetry lives in every crack, corner and corridor…”

 

The Poetry Slam Club and the Poetry Slam annual event was instituted here at Frontier Regional High School 3 years ago. My original intention in forming the community and the event was to generate a friendlier and more contemporary attitude toward poetry, at least as an oral tradition. The event has generated increasing popularity over the years, largely because of its entertainment value.  This year’s event, however, proved to have a different effect on the student body.

It is rare that high school students are willing to present in a genuinely confessional manner when it comes to writing anything at all. It seems that as the event has matured over the years, so have the students grown more confident and comfortable with risk. Further, whereas in the past, the most likely students to participate were high functioning students committed to literature in general, this year brought student athletes, and academically challenged students. Ironically, it was these students who pushed ahead in the rankings and, one in particular, walked away with the ultimate prize.

As I looked out at the audience, packed from aisle to aisle, I had to express my pride in the student body and the teachers for expressing their love and enthusiasm of the event. More so, I had to express my own amazement at how many had actually come out to support poetry.

As the few unknowns recited their poems from the heart, the audience rose to several standing ovations. A few of the contestants were surprised that they made it out of the first round.

In the end, those that stood out the most were the most genuine and heartfelt voices; voices that combined sincere sentiment with musicality, and occasionally humor.

This vital annual event has taken on a life in our middle school as well, where this coming spring, I will host the first middle school slam.

In a school dominated by athletes who exercise, in the conventional sense of the word, each day, a new kind of athlete seems to be emerging within the school’s community: the athlete of the word.

Gian Di Donna

Teacher spends two days as a student

This article is a nice reminder of what a day is like for our students. I like how this is also connected to block scheduling. Check it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/24/teacher-spends-two-days-as-a-student-and-is-shocked-at-what-she-learned/

Vertical Gardening in Schools

(Scroll down to the TED Talk link to get to the point of this post.)

Today in my 9th grade class, we were reflecting on the missionaries' effects in Igboland in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. We compared the different missionary groups and their approaches. After, we listened to this audio clip from NPR: Missionaries In Africa Doing More Harm Than Good?, which is a reflection on current missionary work.

Following the audio clip, we analyzed how missionaries can help, what methods they should go about to be most effective, and the possible negative consequences of missionaries. The students followed this discussion by imagining what steps a "missionary" should go through if he/she came to Frontier and wanted to help the Frontier community.

Their suggestions included:
-Observing classrooms, writing down their conclusions, and then showing their conclusions to the students and faculty to gain feedback
-Talk to the students and faculty to understand the culture of the school
-Consider what could be integrated into the school to help the community, rather than replacing existing models
-Conduct surveys
-Learning about the history of the school
-Hearing from students and faculty about what the school prides itself on

After this list was made, we discussed what the "missionary" might find the school wants to improve. In an overwhelmingly, unanimous response, all of the students said "the food."

Well, after breaking down the specific problems with the food and the causes of these problems, the students came up with some pretty awesome solutions. I know I just arrived here, but I also remember the food being the number one issue with students two years ago as well. I couldn't help but think about this amazing TED Talk I saw last summer. Here it is: A Teacher Growing Green in the South Bronx

What do you think? Do you think that vertical gardening is something that could be right for Frontier to supplement the cafeteria food?

How to Foster a Safe Class Environment?

Alright, so currently I have a great 9th grade class. They are actively engaged, do the reading, and participate in class discussion... unless it turns personal?

Has anyone else had this problem or know any strategies I can use to help the students feel more comfortable and supportive enough to talk about themselves?

I'm wondering if they just don't think what they have to say is important enough or if they are scared to share how they feel?

Each person will share their personal thoughts and reflections in partners, but won't do it with the group?

10-21-14 Follow Up: Yesterday I had a new approach towards the journal entry. After each student shared their views in pairs, I expressed how glad I was to see that everyone had so much to say about the topic and that it would truly benefit all of us to hear everyone's point of view.

I then continued on to reiterate my expectations for classroom discussion. Our mantra: "Be curious, not judgemental," was echoed and we investigated what that looks like in practice. I modeled the behavior and gave concrete examples of how you can respond when you disagree with someone.

From there, the discussion boomed! Everyone waited for each other to speak, and instead of expressing disagreements, the students posed probing questions, that really took our discussion to the next level.

Does anyone else have an activity you like to do to stimulate productive class discussions in your rooms?

Student Run Writing Center

Most of us has writing centers in college. We all knew them as the place you went to when you got stuck on a paper or wanted to get a really good grade on an essay. However, writing centers have begun to take place within secondary school as well. Might this be a good idea for Frontier or do we already consider Faytell’s room the writer center?

Here is an excerpt from an article from The National Writing Project. I have also provided a link, which has additional sources that evaluate writing centers and how to create an effective one within a school.

There's nothing particularly new about the concept of a writing center. For years these facilities have served as emergency rooms where struggling college writers have gone to get their writing "fixed." But that's not the way it is anymore.

For one thing, writing centers are no longer only a post-secondary phenomena. Increasingly they have become a part of school culture in high schools, middle schools, and even some elementary schools.

Also, they are not now considered primarily places where triage is performed on ailing compositions. Instead, staffed by enthusiastic and well-trained peer tutors, writing centers have become hubs of literacy, spotlighting the importance of quality writing across the curriculum.

Writing Project sites and teacher-consultants have been in the forefront of the writing center movement, with some sites forming partnerships with schools to provide support, training, and personnel to advance this burgeoning movement.

The NWP has collected resources that demonstrate how writing centers are one effective way to advance the teaching of writing in schools.

http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3584

Student Declamations

Texts have developed from the oral tradition in order to better share our important stories with others. We practice this idea in our classrooms by sharing important stories with students and discussing the implications of these stories and why we find them significant to our development as a human being, but how often do we actually orate our texts?

Some schools have a Declamation Day, where students orate a meaningful piece of writing, either original or not.

I know that we often call on our students to give oral presentation, read poetry, write and present oral speeches, and perform plays. However, I got to thinking what students could gain from orating other pieces of literature and what the process of memorizing and performing a piece of writing entails.

For example, in To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus delivers a moving speech in order to convince the judge and jury of Tom Robinson’s innocence. For a student to effectively perform that speech (or write and perform their own version of that speech), he/she would have to:

1. Have a working knowledge of the text.
2. Gain a thorough understanding of the character of Atticus, his personality, history, and motives.
3. Understand the complexity of the situation that Atticus is in (facing an all white court when trying to defend a black man accused of rape).
4. *Consider logic and reasoning that has worked in the past.
5. *Developed an understanding of useful and effective rhetorical devices to enhance tone.

* If writing their own versions of the speech.

Whether a project for declamation is done within the class, or short oral readings are performed, I'm thinking that there is, indeed, great value in breathing performative life into our texts, just as our ancestors did.

All Day HS Department Throwdown 10/10/14

The high school English teachers carved out PD time to complete rubrics and plan for online portfolio keeping.  We have three goals for today according to Sarah Mitchell:

"1. Complete rubrics for grades 9 - 12 in argument, narrative and information. The Calkins rubrics will be uploaded into Turnitin by the end of the day and shared with the entire faculty. One of you can bring up the incomplete rubric on the Smartboard (in your turnitin account) and you can fill in the missing columns. After the rubric is complete you can export it and send it to me and I will upload it and share the completed rubrics with the entire faculty.

2. Calkins Writing kits - Grades K - 6 are now using the Calkins Writing Program. The middle school English teachers have examined the kits and are using some components with additional adoption planed after they receive additional training. There is a grade 7 kit and a grade 8 kit. There are more than enough units to include grade 9 in the Calkins program and possibly grade 10. I am asking you to look through the grade 8 kit and tell me what you think. Can these resources be used for grade 9 and possibly grade 10 too?

3. Turn it in - Some of you have had a chance to experiment with Turnitin. Nancy Stenberg has agreed to assist you further with this website. You will have an opportunity to upload a few papers and then grade them using a rubric. I would recommend using the grade 8 rubric since your rubrics will not be uploaded into the system at this point." 

9:11am: Viewing a PARCC PowerPoint that is helping to direct our Argument and Informative rubrics.  We are now understanding our already completed Narrative rubric to include fiction and non-fiction subject matter.

11:30am-ish: Took a lunch break after trying to save the work we had done on the Argument rubric.  Had to back track a bit.

12:40pm: Starting again on the Argument rubric.  We have decided on a 9-12 format for all rubrics.  Our main strategy has been translating the language of the LC rubrics to create almost "bullet point style" elements for each rubric component.

1:20pm: Finished the "Proficient" category of the Argument rubric and are moving on to the Informational rubric.  We concentrated on the "Proficient" category because it is directly connected to our department goals.  We will have to expand to write the language of the other categories later.

2:15pm: Finished the "Proficient" category of the Informational rubric.  We now have a completed 9-12 Narrative rubric and the essential elements of our other rubrics to be completed later.

We still have a lot of questions about the direction of these rubrics, especially for struggling writers.  We are also not fully clear on the connectivity with what students use in the middle school.  During the process it was a nice reminder to consider how a student would interpret the language we were using.  These rubrics should be used as a tool of transparency.

HS English meeting 9/23/14

We are trying to clarify and potentially redefine the language of our department goals.  Makes sense since there is a new hire in the HS.

In clarifying the word "post" in context of the role of this blog for our individual and team goals:

• 25 blog posts will reflect HS meetings and independent instructional contributions

We are thinking about ways to align our online portfolio with the upcoming PARCC test.  We may choose to eliminate the "creative" portfolio piece in favor of a 3 piece portfolio with language that clarifies "argument" and  "explanatory (expository)."  PARCC uses "narrative, literary analysis, and research."

With the new Turnitin online space, online portfolios are becoming a reality.  We need to revise our individual and team goals to reflect the use of Turnitin.

We are going to ask for additional department time to collaborate on writing rubrics and changing our goals on mylearningplan.com.  Hopefully this Friday!

Professional Practice SMART Goal from mylearningplan.com

​Professional Practice SMART Goal

Is this goal an individual goal or a team goal?

• Individual

Describe the goal:

By June 2015 we will increase departmental communication, coordination and best practices, as measured by a blog and lessons posted to Atlas. We will meet 50 times over a two year period with a blog post record of communication. As a result, 20 lessons
will be posted to Atlas.

These are the parts of my goal that show it is specific:

Indicating the June 2015 deadline, meeting 50 times in a two year period with a blog post record, the Atlas mapping system.

Progress toward my goal or attainment of my goal will be measured by:

The blog record, Atlas

I will need to do the following (steps, process) to attain my goal:

Construct a blog platform, make lessons accessible,

Here are the results that will be achieved with my goal:

A greater understanding of my colleagues, streamlines department curriculum, Atlas

Student Learning SMART Goal from mylearningplan.com

​Student Learning SMART Goal

SMART: S=Specific and Strategic; M=Measurable; A=Action Oriented; R=Rigorous, Realistic, and Results-Focused; T=Timed and Tracked

Is this goal an individual goal or a team goal?

• Individual

Describe the goal:

By June 2015, 80% of students in grades 7-12 will be proficient, as measured by the district writing rubric, on 4 pieces of writing. One piece of each of four writing genres (narrative, argument, explanatory, creative) will be collected for each student
and represented in a portfolio.

These are the parts of my goal that show it is specific:

Measurement requirements of 80% proficient, the use of the district writing rubric, portfolio development, indicating the June 2015 deadline

Progress toward my goal or attainment of my goal will be measured by:

Formative assessments using rubrics, student portfolios, writing instruction and feedback, observations

I will need to do the following (steps, process) to attain my goal:

Create an organizational structure for each student that will streamline the drafting process and record-keeping.

6/25/14 (9am - 10am) Turnitin Training

(Meeting/training will be recorded)

Lisa Ohlen Harris: writer, teacher, trainer for Turnitin

http://turnitin.com/en_us/home

Agenda:

• What is Turnitin?
• Turnitin Overview
• Resources
• Q&A

It is NOT a plagiarism detector, but instead an "originality checker."  It will tell you how much of a paper matches up with work that is already accessible on the internet and other databases like papers that have already been submitted.
GradeMark facilitates interactive grading on the submitted document that matches up with uploaded rubrics. (Interfaces with Google Docs)

Can manually upload students to a Turnitin course or upload a student list (hopefully from Gradequick?)
Turnitin has its own grade book, calendar, discussion board, and library which interacts with the course.  Student work will remain in their account (presumably to be used for portfolio-ing)

The Match Breakdown color-codes sources where information may have been taken from other places.  It is up to the teacher to decide what to do with that information.

GradeMark has a grammar reading feature called "e-rater" that scans the paper for grammar mistakes.  In the document, the teacher has control over which comments are visible to the student.  The teacher can modify e-rater for FCAs.
GradeMark has a "comment bank" that is customizable for repeated errors.  There are also customizable general comments that the teacher can write for the paper overall.  And the teacher and student both have the ability to leave vocal comments.
The comment bank can be linked to the elements of a rubric.  Rubrics can be created or uploaded.  A favorite comment style is to write text directly, but these comments do not link to the rubric.  (Rubric scoring can be automatically exported to an Excel document, but we will need to find another tutorial for that.  GradeMark provides some rubrics.)
GradeMark can print, email, PDF graded papers for student review.

When creating a course and assignments, there are a lot of options for customizable grading.  Students can also submit by uploading different kinds of documents like spreadsheets, power points, pdfs, word documents, etc.

PeerMark is the peer review method.  (Lisa did not have a ton of experience with it, but will follow up.)
_________________

We are still trying to figure out how to set up portfolios with Turnitin.  How can we lock students out of their papers when they've submitted but still share with multiple teachers for the purpose of portfolio-ing?

To set up:
Give students the course ID number and the "join word" and have each student set up their own account.
(Turnitin has FAQs and turtorials for student account help)

Skype session with author and filmmaker Davy Rothbart

Today after school I had a Q&A session with author and filmmaker Davy Rothbart and my AP Language and Composition class.
I've been a fan of Davy's for almost a decade and I took the opportunity in this sort of "trial semester" of my AP teaching to present his work for academic considerations.  When we read essays from his memoir collection, My Heart Is An Idiot, our class was definitely struck by his narrative style but we started to wonder if the events that he wrote about truly happened.  So we collaborated on an email that used rhetorical methods that we've studied and sent it to him.  After a couple of weeks he replied and we emailed back and forth, setting up a Skype date.
It was really great to connect him with my students so they could ask him questions about his work and process.  Each of them came up with their own very thoughtful questions.  It was also a personal thrill for me to be able to speak with him myself and to bring some perspective to the Frontier community about what it means to work hard and get outside of our comfort zone.  According to Davy, it takes spontaneity, dedication, and being willing to "say yes." 

I recorded the whole session (~45 minutes).  It is too big to upload here, but if anyone would like to see it, I can make it available.

Check out Davy's work here:
My Heart is an Idiot Book  http://www.MyHeartIsAnIdiotBook.com
Medora Documentary  http://www.MedoraFilm.com

Washington II Washington  http://www.washingtontowashington.org/

FOUND  http://www.foundmagazine.com/

This American Life  http://www.thisamericanlife.org/contributors/davy-rothbart

21 Balloons Productions  http://21balloons.com/

JUNE 2014 Fun Link:

My Heart Is An Idiot—Santa Monica Pier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLXuX-lb64g

"The Saw of literature."

The Neurochemistry of Positive Conversations

I love reading about stuff like this:

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/06/the-neurochemistry-of-positive-conversations/

Faking Cultural Literacy

I read this article a couple of weeks ago and really appreciated the message.  I forgot that this blog is a great place to share things like this!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/opinion/sunday/faking-cultural-literacy.html

2/7/14 All faculty Collins Writing professional development

3 F's:
Frequency--of writing experiences
Focus--of instruction
Feedback--on strategic goals

Type 1: (Try to) Identify at least 5 of the 50 most important breakthroughs in human history according to The Atlantic. (Gary Chadwell often opens his presentations with an activity directly from the Collins Writing Program, like this one, to model teaching practice.  This activity involves a nonfiction text.)
Me:
car
internet
money?
photography
microprocessor
TV
------- Bill Canaday:
assembly line
environmental energy
guns
domestication of livestock
making glass
-------- Emily Lew:
printing press
compass
gun powder
touch screen

Type 2: Come up with 3 of the top 5 (all of the top 5 were mentioned in a group share)
Printing press
Electricity
internet
Actual:
Printing press
electricity
semiconductor electronics
optical lenses

After handing out the list of 50, we are prompted to mold the list into a potential activity for the classroom.
"Frequent quizzing promotes learning."  Sometimes we teach content and not enough how to access the content.  Highlighting, cramming does not work.  Practice testing DOES work.  Formative assessment.  Type 2 writing.

Active review technique for larger group:
Quiz - Quiz - Trade: (Slips of paper with a question on one side and an answer on the other)
1) Quiz your partner.  If they don't know the answer, give a tip.  Tip, Tip, tell.
2) Partner quizzes you
3) Trade questions
4) Find a new partner

Type 2: Identify at least one improvement you might make to this set of FCA's for an argument composition--
state your opinion--(identify the issue, acknowledge a counterclaim, give your opinion with reasons stated briefly; no "I" to write in an objective tone)
reasons to support (numeric value for quote sandwiches, properly embedded)
write with voice (figurative language, sensory detail, vary the beginning of sentences, vary the length of sentences, "write with an expert voice using at least 5 of our unit vocabulary words")

Create a Type 2 prompt that I could use next week in my teaching.
"Type 2: List 3 similarities that Siddhartha has with Vasudeva that are revealed during Siddhartha's time on the River."

Handouts: a revised Bloom's Taxonomy that includes gerunds instead of nouns; list of general academic vocabulary found in the common core.

Type 3: re-write your Type 2 prompt
FCAs -- specific (# in ?) {40 pts}
              1-3 GAV terms  {40 pts}
              Requires higher order thinking skills  {20 pts}

Revised: "Show the connection between Siddhartha and Vasudeva. Analyze Siddhartha's time on the River and delineate between the two characters by explaining 3 similarities or differences."

Instruct students to read Type 3s to themselves in a 1 foot voice and stop and put a check mark for each FCA that they find is met.  Give students a quota of check marks.

For going from a Type 3 to 4 to 5--
1) Three step editing:

• 1st paper teacher reviews
• 2nd paper peer reviews
• 3rd paper individual reviews

2) Peer review for FCAs and sign off ("Write 2-3 comments on your peer's paper that you think I would make.")
3) Turn Type 4 into Type 5-publish

How do you embed writing into your instruction?  Could it be better?  More efficient?
Handouts + Activity: Unit Planning Activity; Assignment Planning Sheet

Paired with others to get feedback on unit plans.

Finished at 1:50!!!!!!!!!!!

2/7/14 Professional Development with Gary Chadwell (History/English Departments)

Argument writing:


Using a Type 1 to choose a position on a topic and why.

          then

HELPS Focus sheet organizes claims

Focus Sheet HELPS: Getting and Organizing Your Reasons CATEGORIES OF REASONS FOR                      CATEGORIES OF REASONS AGAINST Focus Sheet
H Historic, Political, Legal	H Historic, Political, Legal
E Economic, Resource Utilization	E Economic, Resource Utilization
L Literary, Aesthetic	L Literary, Aesthetic
P Personal, Ethical, Religious	P Personal, Ethical, Religious
S Scientific	S Scientific
Three Part Claim: 1. Counterclaim 2. Claim 3. Reasons Although ____________________________________________ , (insert counterclaim) ___________________________________________ (insert arguable topic and position without using “I”) _______________________________________________________ . (succinctly state the category or categories of reasons without details in the order they will be presented in the essay)

The idea of "6 sells" (4 claims for, 2 counters) will keep students thinking about the importance of counter claims in their writing.

Acknowledge a counterclaim, state your claim, (identify the issue, include your opinion, stated briefly), write in an objective tone, don't use "I"

Chadwell favors templates for argument such as in Graff's "They Say, I Say" He claims that scaffolding is a good teaching approach.  Hand holding is okay to a certain point.  Even graduate students are being taught these templates for their writing.

Some students have trouble "weighing in" (Kenneth Burke uses the term "putting in your oar") perhaps because of the fear of risk, or the lack of understanding that people can disagree.

Chadwell recommends the book "Good, Bad, and the Difference" for position pieces with responses (?)

Common Core states that students' writing should be about 40% argumentation, 40% exposition, and 20% narration.  "We've got to help students read and write like a social scientist."  In elementary grades they use the word "opinion writing" and starting in 6th grade they use "persuasive/argumentative writing."

21st century skills: what do they do with the information once they get it?  Solve a problem? Create a new form of something? Develop an opinion?  Communicate?

Developing these skills will take numerous repetitions across the curriculum.