Alicia+Journal

Alicia Journal

Tues 2/05:

Our tenth grade PLC is implementing a choice reading program based on Penny Kittle’s Book Love, and other readings which Kelly may elaborate on in her post.

Today we worked on answering the prompt "Critique your novel so far." I provided a model response and tried to verbally list/discuss the types of things that a critique might discuss in a critique such as believable/memorable/complex characters, characterization, language and word choices,voice (whew! -- tough concept),authenticity, pacing, conflict and more. Some students took to this swimmingly while others felt bewildered and overwhelmed. I modeled some, but I need must collect mentor texts for students to imitate.

Also, vocabulary practice (tier 2 words) was very illuminating to me. Students used my large student response boards (individual white boards) to draft sentences using antagonize, arbitrary, taboo, and one word of choice from their lists. Students drafted a sentence, then read and gave feedback on the viability of those sentences to each other to their table mates (groups of 3-5) My lower level readers REALLY struggled -- the sentences of the average to above-average students were natural or slightly awkward, but the sentences of the low level students were so off that they were almost impossible to tweak with feedback. Although I don't have time to dwell on grammar lessons (taught fairly thoroughly last year), part of the problem was that the striving readers were using the words in the wrong grammar slot. They couldn't transfer the information provided in the sample context sentences to understand that a word was a verb or an adjective or a noun. I really need to THINK about the correlation and a best course of action. One of my chief complaints about student writing is the simplicity of the vocabulary.

Interesting Event: Also, Kelcey dropped The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants as her self-selected book today. She replaced that with one recommended by a friend. I told her that she needed to record that in her journal and requested that she include why she was dropping it. I admonished her to not simply state that it was boring. She immediately said, "I am dropping it because it was confusing." I asked for her to think about why it was confusing and responded quickly that different people are telling the story and that it was too difficult to keep it all straight. I want to explore this idea some more -- both in reading and writing. I want them to be able to articulate the struggle and to be able to write about it.

2/19/13

Our tenth grade PLC is implementing a choice reading program based on Penny Kittle’s Book Love, and other readings which Kelly may elaborate on in her post.

I have much to review and contemplate as we have finished three weeks of independent reading and journal work. This week and last, we began learning the six Notice and Note signposts outlined by Beers and Probst in preparation for our first whole-class shared reading, _Things Fall Apart_. I am contemplating what sort of writing assignment should accompany our novel. I am leaning towards a big questions like What does it mean to be civilized? But I am still learning my students.

Our recent Discovery Education benchmarks provided a sprinkling of surprises with regard to reading scores and levels. In particular, one student surprised me because he scored very high on the reading even though he has told me multiple times how he hasn’t read a book since elementary school; however, after re-reading some of his writing-prompt responses, I noticed that he said that he mostly read magazines. I questioned him after class and he had subscription to quit a few sports magazines that he read faithfully. This may sound trifling to someone outside the classroom, but it is very illuminative to me. Kids don’t just magically become good readers because we as the teachers will it or because we provide amazing lessons. The bulk of the work of becoming a “reader” has to come from the student.

Reflecting on the benchmark scores, out of the students with high scores (4), only two have not excelled in the choice reading program. Those two have yet to finish their first novel at three weeks in to the program. The remainder of the students who scored 4s on the benchmark read between 4-7 novels in three weeks. From student conferences and writing, I have noted that they have clearly embraced identities as readers although that level of reading interest tends to draw some ridicule from their peers (“They have no life.” “I’ve got too much to do to read that much.” “That’s really sad.”) With all of that said there were surprises the other way; some students who seem to be churning through the books – albeit more middle-grades material – did not score as well as I thought that they would. They seem to love to read and have adopted a reader’s identity but there are apparently some comprehension problems. Are those issues caused by the lack of challenge in their reading repertoire? Or are there some underlying matters that need to discovered and addressed before they can successfully read more complex, challenging texts?

I have noticed that as students who considered themselves non-readers have finished their first novel, their affection for the reading program has increased. By reading in class with their peers, they are sharing book titles, borrowing books from friends, and vying for the privilege of being next to read the more popular titles. Overall, there is an atmosphere of achievement and confidence in the room as medium-level students, who confess to not reading much at all, are finishing their second and third novels.

Reading is truly a victorious cycle and it affects a student’s vocabulary and writing skills.

I am beginning to scaffold our writing instruction by beginning with open-ended prompts that must be supported with evidence from the text. Last semester, it took weeks upon weeks for students to get past the idea that that there can be more than one right answer. They needed experience after experience of having their (evidence supported) responses accepted. It also took a great measure of restraint for me not to dispute some of their arguments, but I knew at that time that I needed to build my reluctant writers’ confidence so I limited my constructive feedback.One great lesson I took from Andrew Pudewa's Institute for Excellence in Writing training is the idea of one-correction feedback. I imagine that coaches work much the same way, asking athletes to adjust one thing at a time. The great thing was that the more comfortable they felt with that concept of their answers being valid (read “correct”) if they could support them, the quicker they could craft an answer to a constructed response.

I will begin grading journals this week, using a rubric that I distributed at the beginning of the semester. I am anticipating a range of quality. Although all of this is first-draft writing, many of my students are saying that they have never written this much before (if true – then sad). Most of the journal prompts have been of a reader’s response nature, thinking and reflecting on the author’s craft.

03/02/13

The day has finally come in which I have to face dark underside of teaching English: grading. How unpleasant! Of course, I appreciate the opportunity to learn the strengths and weakness of my student's writing so that I can push them of the continuum of complexity and competence, but assigning a grade seems harsh and counterproductive. Still at the high school level, if you don't grade it, they won't do it, so I charge ahead hoping that I can fairly assess student writing without crushing their spirits or drowning my own.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">As I began to tackle piles of reader response journals, I noticed two things. First my rubric is requiring twenty minutes per student to implement. Since I am already consumed with teaching and instructional planning from 7:30 until 5:00 or 6:00 every day, that means I will need to carve 29 hours out of my weekends or evenings to assess my student's journals, which constitute only one component of my overall instruction. Plus, I was hoping to assess journals every other week -- completely unfeasible under the current circumstances. To make matters worse, I am not seeing the quality of responses that I had hoped to see from my students. I am not so concerned about usage and mechanics, as I am concerned that high school students need to be challenged to think deeply about the texts that they read.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> After reading Susan Brookhart's __How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading__ over the weekend, I am persuaded that my rubric is fundamentally flawed and that I need to carefully consider what learning outcomes I am hoping to facilitate with the choice reading and reader's responses. For our final assessment, a state End of Course exam, my students need a certain level of comfort with analytical reading. I was hoping that independent reading (monitored, encouraged, validated, celebrated, and developed) would create a level of fluency and that writing responsively would encourage analytical thought and language. I need to adjust my thinking about the assignment so that students are producing writing that demonstrates a depth of thought. I also need to develop a rubric that allows me to evaluate my students more efficiently because I am overwhelmed with assessment.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">On a side note, it sort of feels as if writing journals in composition books is a bit outdated, but our community lacks technology. Many of my students do not have internet access at home making digital assignments prohibitive. We also have limited computer access at school, so computer time has to be scheduled in a lab. I would love to move some of their responses to a digital format. On the other hand, if their journals are considered first draft writing then composition books are portable and convenient way for students to collect their thoughts about their reading and writing.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">(Addendum, 3-15-12) <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">I am uploading my new journal prompt criteria should allow students flexibility in their responses, but still focus their writing on analytical and develop their higher order thinking skills. Earlier this semester, I would create a single, whole-class prompts, and then spend our writing time working out alternatives with students who claimed that the day's prompt did not apply to their choice reading. We have not begun using it in class, but should begin next week.

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<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">3-03-2013

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Alicia, I agree that the journals are crucial as a response to reading. This article states that, "Writing is to reading as waking is to sleeping...." [|Writing as a Response to Reading] I think that keeping a handwritten journal may feel more intimate than a digital journal, so it might create a stronger connection between the reading and the writing. Just a thought. -Kelly

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Alicia, you might be interested in this: [|Grading Student Journals]

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">3-12-13

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">This has been a most interesting two weeks as my students have been reading in both their choice reading and in an assigned novel, __Things Fall Apart.__ The majority of my students dislike the book for various reasons that they have been sure to tell me about in their reading reflections. With all due respect to Chinua Achebe, I think that __Things Fall Apart__ will end up on their "Top Ten Worst Novels Ever" list, which they maintain as part of their journal. I have peace with that. We are looking at the author's craft, and TFA has a complexity that many of them would never approach on their own. They are struggling through foreign names, foreign customs, and a foreign perception of time. In fact, one of my students mentioned today that the chapters he just read were his favorite because they were told chronologically, without jumping from the past to the present.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">To help solidify their thinking and to them accountable in their pacing, we have been writing chapter summaries daily; however, I have done little in the way of scaffolding. Please remember that these are college-bound students, who have are expected to have a certain competency in language arts. I do have a reason for withholding my own commentary; I am preparing them for a series of Socratic seminars on the text. I feel a small victory since most have readily confessed to fake-reading assigned texts for many years now -- just listen to the teacher and the students-dumb-enough-to-do-the-reading discuss it, and you can at least score a C, perhaps even a B if you're a good with language. We've not had one whole-class discussion to date. Our first one will be during our seminar, and they are writing the questions for the seminar. In class, we watched a Teaching Channel video that featured students conducting a discussion with the teacher on the sidelines monitoring. Instant by-in! If they weren't persuaded to do the assigned reading before then, the idea of puzzling it out themselves with some measure of accountability was enticing or frightening enough to convince them. I have only about 5 out of 88 who are not up to date with the reading, a percentage that I pined for my first year teaching when only one third of my students actually read the assigned class novels. So what is the difference? I can't help but think that the momentum that they have built with their choice reading has helped carry them along. In fact, many wrote in their reflections about the struggle of switching between an assigned and a choice novel during the week. I think that sort of facility is something that ELA teachers take for granted because it comes so naturally for strong readers. I am happy to report that, as this semester goes on, I am seeing an increase in the number of students who are choice-reading multiple books, switching from one to the other before finishing either. While I discuss my list of "all the books that I am currently reading" with my students, this is not a task many of them have ever needed to or cared to develop.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">We will be writing about the novel after the seminar although I am still grappling with appropriate topics and questions.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">POWER POINT PRESENTATION FROM CONFERENCE:
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