On the Shoulders of Giants

English Teachers: To Indent Or Not to Indent?

This is gonna be quick.  Is it just me, or is it starting to seem silly to teach paragraph indentation when no one uses it anymore? Think about the last time you indented a paragraph. Was it in the last 5 years? Emails, blogs, and news articles are usually written in business letter format, skipping a space between paragraphs. It looks better and reads easier than indenting.  I think indenting was probably once better than skipping a line because it saved paper. But guess what? Nobody uses paper anymore!

Anyway, I'm going to keep teaching the indented paragraph, but I think soon the conversation about leaving a line between paragraphs and the change that seems to be happening with formatting would be appropriate.  English teachers--is it just me?!

Data Dance

This year, I've gotten more hands-on experience with standardized assessment. At my school, we give students practice state ELA Benchmark tests in September and February.  The official state ELA exam is in May.   Throughout the year I've had to create regular interim assessments that are similar in format and content to specific sections of the state test to monitor the students' progress.  

Last week I gave a Reading Interim, in which I pulled only fiction passages and their corresponding multiple choice questions from a previous year's state exam. Because we've been reading and studying fiction all year, I was hoping to see some growth.  

I was heartened to see that, in fact, after tons of work all year on reading and responding to fiction literally, inferentially and critically, my students made serious growth in their ability to answer multiple choice questions on random fiction passages correctly! (The class average jumped up about 30 points since September) I would not say that I have been "teaching to the test" much at all this year in terms of how I've approached reading instruction and literature studies.  I now have some data that shows that my students' authentic learning in reading has been able to translate to improved performance on a standardized test.  PHEW!

Figuring out how to get useful data has taken a lot of time.  I've learned to use SchoolNet, a program that allows me to create tests and link every test item to a state standard, electronically grade multiple choice questions, and collect and view the scores in a variety of ways.  I can also create short answer or extended response questions; I just assign a point value for the question and bubble in a score for those questions on each student's test.          

In addition to learning the program, it turns out that learning to select or write your own test questions that will yield useful data is another skill I've had to work on. For example, in order to get an accurate picture of how well students seems to be doing on one standard, you need several questions that are tied to that standard.  Otherwise, you may have a "bad" question--either too easy, too hard or unclear--and draw a false conclusion about students' mastery of a standard based on one invalid question.  

My first set of data was not particularly useful because I only had one or two questions on each standard and couldn't conclude much from them. I also miscalculated the timing of the test. I did not give students enough time, so many of them didn't complete the last two questions, which would result in a score of zero on two writing questions.  This made it look as though students were failing miserably on the standard to which those questions were linked.  This time, I was able to make necessary schedule changes and get help administering the new listening/writing test for a double period so time would not be an issue.  

I am curious to see how I will feel about testing by the end of this year.  At the moment, I feel pretty good about how I'm balancing authentic learning experiences and true intellectual development in my classroom with the need to prepare students for a standardized test at the end of the year. I hope I can keep that up.

What about my own time?  Is learning to write a good Interim assessment a good use of my time?  It seems better than giving an assessment I know nothing about.  Am I assessing the skills that matter most?  To be continued...

 

[image credit: logic.stanford.edu]

The Sick Day Dilemma

Today, was our first snow day of the year...sigh... and for me it was much needed.  I came down with a nasty cold yesterday that took over my nose and head--ugh. I was constantly sneezing and blowing my nose, and I felt like I couldn't even hear properly.  I was really in need of a day of rest.  

That brought me to that familiar spot: the sick day dilemma.  See, as much as my body needed to spend a day resting, my classes were blazing forward in student-driven discussions of novels.  My missing a day would break the momentum of the work.  I'd have to plan something appropriate for a substitute.  I'd be wondering who would be with the kids and what would be happening in my absence.  I'd have one less day to get where I want to be in the curriculum by February break.  Often, being absent for a day means you come back to an extra hard day of work catching up on whatever you missed.  And I'm not Thaaat sick, am I?  Do I really want to use up a sick day for this? 

But I've had this difficulty since I was little.  In my mother's words, I "run myself ragged" doing everything I believe I need to do--often revolving around the needs of people or entities other than myself--and then I often neglect my own basic needs.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm not the martyr type.  I mostly run myself ragged for things I really enjoy.  I just find it hard to slow down when I need to.

And then, the heavens opened up and dumped ten inches of snow on an already stressed NYC plow system.  Bloomberg closed the schools, thus solving my sick day dilemma.  

I do think, more than in many other professions, teachers are hesitant to take time off.  We muscle through 'til we arrive at our vacations.  Sometimes this is admirable, sometimes it's just ridiculous to think that the world is going to end if we are absent for a day--and sometimes, though incredibly rarely, it snows.

 

[image credit: hausofjj.wordpress.com]

 

MLK Day and an Experimental ELA Class Period

Last Friday, before the long weekend, I wrote in the homework section on my board, "MLK Day Monday!  For Tuesday, read pgs..."   Throughout the day several students in each class asked what MLK was.  When other students or I told them those were Martin Luther King's initials, most students said, "Oh yeah," but a few added, "Wait, who is that again?"  

I thought about this throughout the long weekend and decided to devote some time during Tuesday's class to the words and work of Dr. King.  I started with a quote from his "I Have a Dream..." Speech in 1963:

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

We talked about that line from the Declaration of Independent (which they had learned about recently in social studies class), what it meant, when it was written, and whom it excluded.  We talked about how long after that line was written that slavery was abolished, about the rise of legal segregation and Jim Crow Laws in the South and the long struggle to end those.  Then we watched a few minutes of the speech itself. It was an interesting environment to discuss the vision of desegregation King describes in his speech. My school is very diverse racially, and I think this allowed students to reflect on that positively and in more depth than usual.

Students were struck by how huge the audience was in the March on Washington, how triumphant the tone of the speech was.  I felt like they got to see what a real social movement looked like in those days.  Then we watched a few minutes of Dr. King's final speech in 1968.  We talked about the triumphs of the civil rights movement, but also the constant struggle--the fact that there were regular citizens as well as people in positions of power who supported the civil rights movement and others who opposed the vision of MLK and his supporters, which ultimately resulted in his death.  Students wanted to know more about that, so we projected a google search and read together the account of the assassination.

We talked about the response of Americans when Martin Luther King was killed--the devastation and anger--and the role of musicians, such as James Brown, who began giving free public concerts to get people to stop rioting and help sooth their pain.  One of my students shared that her grandfather had been a civil rights activist who worked with Dr. King.  She even showed us a picture she had on her phone of a photograph of him after being arrested for protesting.

Students were very interested in the discussions and video footage. It visibly sparked something in them. What was meant to be a half-period  presentation and discussion easily turned into an entire period. It seemed that everyone had learned something about MLK at some point in elementary school, but now were able to think about the meaning of his life and work on a different level, as seventh graders developing critical thinking and social consciousness.  

It also occurred to me that I had not had the opportunity to learn about the civil rights movement in school at all--until college, and at that point it was by choice.  In high school, I did learn about it on my own from media--movies, music, books, etc, and from my parents and grandmother who had some first hand experience with it.  It was not part of my formal education, because we never "had time for it" chronologically in history classes. 

Seeing my students' interest in Tuesday's class made me hopeful about this generation finding their own way toward making positive change in this country/world.  We certainly need social leaders with vision and the courage to stand up for their beliefs.   

Teaching 2030 Needs You! Interview and Other Great Stuff

Check out this interview featuring Barnett Berry and myself on the book Teaching 2030 by fellow TLN member, teacher, author, and blogger extraordinaire, Larry Ferlazzo!  It is an interesting discussion of the ideas and process that went into the creation of the Teaching 2030 book--out in book stores this week!--written by Berry and twelve teachers from around the country, including myself.  

The interview process was interesting, because the questions were good, and it was the first time I was asked to summarize the book and say what it means to me.  I've had a lot of ideas kicking around my head for the last few months, and this was chance to put it all together.  

The day after this interview was posted, the 2030 team and Barnett had a live webinar with education futurist Steve Hargadon.  Unfortunately, I couldn't make it, as it was ELA/humanities exhibition night at my school, but it's possible to access the recording here on Hargadon's blog, and it is well worth the listen.  Scintillating conversation going on there!

Also, Barnett Berry just published an oped in Ed Week, "We Can Create the Profession Students Need," which presents many of the ideas of Teaching 2030, but with an emphasis on what we can start doing now. It is also a great read, and there are some good comments happening there.  

Happy reading & listening!  The future of teaching needs you. Join the conversation!  

[image credits: top pic from greylynn2030.co.nz  & future photographer by  Diyana Kamaruza]

 

 

 

What's the Story? Another Rebuttle to Grant Wiggins on Boys and Fiction

Note: It has come to my attention that Wiggins' article was meant as satire, but most people missed that, myself included. Here is my response, nonetheless.

Recently, education consultant Grant Wiggins made the suggestion that we might be better off banning most fiction books from schools, because they don't prepare students for careers and they apparently bore boys.  Though I do believe that reading non fiction is important for male and female students alike, I disagree with both assertions about fiction.  In this post, I'd like to share my confusion at the notion that fiction bores boys.  

Does fiction bore boys? Not the boys in my classes!  Boys are some of my most voracious readers.  Series like Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Artemis Fowl, Secret Series, Pendragon Series, A Wrinkle In Time Series, and even Diary of a Wimpy Kid, are hugely popular with the seventh grade boys in my classes. So, I just find Wiggin's comment to be an untruth.  

Have I met boys who appear to be bored by fiction... who would rather read nonfiction books about bears, wars,  skateboarding, etc?  Yes. Should they have the opportunity to read the non fiction they are interested in reading? Yes.  

Do I believe that these boys are actually bored by fiction because they say most every fiction book they pick up is boring? No.  

Why? Because these same boys love stories.  How do I know? Well, let's look at their taste in movies.  Are they more interested in watching documentaries about nature, World War II, or skateboarding than they are in watching the latest action flick?  No!  Do these boys get bored when I show a dramatic, character-driven film (like "Smoke Signals") that may as well be a novel, in visual form?  No. Do they get bored when I tell the class a folk tale, asking instead for non fiction?  Absolutely not!  They are riveted by stories.  

Every boy I've ever taught--every adolescent, in fact--loves stories. There is a developmental need for stories.  Research shows that reading fiction is an subjective experience in which the reader has an active role in the co-construction of the story in his or her imagination.  

The problem with boys and reading (girls too) is that in school we so often take away that subjective part of the experience--we take away the students' power over the stories they read (there are several ways in which we do this to stories--more another time).  We turn reading into something else: a series of skills to be mimicked, learned, regurgitated, measured, evaluated.  The teacher takes a very active, exhausting role in this, but the student's imagination is marginalized. Reading becomes a passive activity, and for many boys that is a problem.

The way we interrupt a student's experience of stories, imposing right and wrong answers and mandatory strategies is a problem when it comes to fiction, because fiction is meant to be an alternate universe, lived for a prolonged amount of time through the imagination via the written word.  

Nonfiction, however, is read mostly for information.  The interruptions, the checking for understanding, the strategies, the right and wrong answers, do not pose a problem in the pursuit of the goal of gathering information.  In fact, they help many readers feel more power over the texts they read.  Thus, students who are most concerned with power, especially those who've been made to feel powerless throughout their schooling, often times boys, may prefer reading non fiction.  But this is because of how we've defined and designed "reading" experiences in school.  It has nothing to do with boys' lack of love for stories.

 

[image credit: creativeeducation.co.uk]