On Twitter this weekend, Heinemann Publishing quoted Kylene Beers: "You can not improve competence until you improve confidence". This is a reality from the get-go in my classroom. My students walk in with little confidence in their abilities as students, and some of them, with no confidence in themselves as people. They have struggled in school since they can remember; have been in remedial reading classes for years with no hope of getting out; and they have forgotten any strengths and love of learning they may have started out with. They do not see themselves as people with purposes, but as failures.
My job in Literacy Seminar is to awaken my students sense of purpose, their strengths, their desire to learn and grow, before I worry about their fluency, their comprehension, or their miscues. Luckily, authentic literacy work does all that. Reading about characters helps human beings learn about themselves. It teaches us to empathize, to understand, and to look deeply into our own lives and see what is there. When I help my kids find books they connect with, they have a chance to envision themselves in new realities - similar to their own situation, but perhaps with different paths or outcomes than those they have considered before. The same goes for choice of topics and styles in writing. When students pursue their own questions and explore their own thinking in their Writer's Notebooks, their sense of self, their sense of being a human in this world with something meaningful to contribute, grows.
The way I see my year unfolding is this:
- We begin with narrative, the power of our own stories and those of others. We study characters in short stories and novels as we write our own truths. We look at characters' beliefs, their choices, the impact of life on them. And we do the same with ourselves. What events have impacted us deeply? How do we make choices? What shapes our lives? Who and what guides us? What do we need to learn? Who do we want to learn from? Our writing is primarily in our Writer's Notebooks, but also might extend to blogging. We choose pieces to publish in various ways, depending on individual desires.
- Then we turn to more nonfiction/informative work, where we decide what is worthy of study and who our teachers and mentors will be. What nonfiction texts do we want to explore? Who are experts we could study and learn from? How can we reflect on and share our learning with ourselves and others? This work might also lead us to more in-depth studies of fiction - authors who call to us because they create characters we connect with; genres that fit what we wish to learn; media texts - podcasts, videos, audio texts that meet our needs. We write to explore and expand our thinking, and we also write to share our learning with others, both in class, perhaps with buddy classrooms at a nearby elementary, and on-line.
- Finally, we are ready for argumentation, impassioned with purpose - primed to dive into causes we have discovered we care greatly about - we want to educate other people and get them to consider making changes. We continue our reading and learning from books, but extend our writing to include larger audiences of classmates, the community and on-line.
My time-line feels uncertain at this point. I love Gallagher's structure of: swim, study, emulate. Will this journey be cyclical, weaving from one to the next at student's own pace, or will it need to be more structured with whole class studies and guided lessons? Will it be a combination of both? I don't want a rigid, "must-be-adhered-to" timeline where we all feel pushed by deadlines. I want students to have more control than that. But I also want to meet kids' needs. And, sometimes, an umbrella structure with classroom energy poured into a certain type of learning helps more. More thinking to do on this...
Monday, June 29, 2015
Friday, June 26, 2015
Notebooks
I have long been an advocate of Writer's Notebooks. During every year I taught middle school, students wrote weekly in their Writer's Notebooks. I paralleled the Notebook to independent reading, where students chose books they loved, soaked in stories, and grew their fluency. The Notebook was a place for student choice and free writing. Students explored ideas, chose the topics and played with language, form and content. Their minds could wander or stay on one topic. The impact of the notebooks was huge. My students grew in confidence, pens safely traveling across white, blank pages because the pressure of perfect and correct were gone. They always had ideas for writing because the Notebooks were full of their own thinking on topics they cared about. Students were so proud to skim their Notebooks at the end of the year, marveling at the volume they had produced.
When I came to high school, I abandoned the Notebooks for a while. I thought they might be too young (silly me!), and I thought I didn't have time for them. Second semester I brought them back. Students again wrote freely, but without the beginning of the year introduction, the notebooks didn't have quite the same momentum and power.
Last year, I abandoned notebooks altogether. After all, I was only teaching reading, and I thought I should focus on just that. Writing was set aside except for responding to texts. Gone were the leisurely pages, the surprise thoughts, the dreams that emerged from nowhere. I felt the void, but the kids didn't. They did not expect to write in reading class.
In that Notebook-less year, my own thinking and learning have demanded that I rethink using a Writer's Notebook again. I attended a session with Aimee Buckner at the Write To Learn Conference in February and was flooded with ideas and a desire to have my students writing again. My class is not just reading class. It's LITERACY Seminar, a course designed to improve the reading, the understanding, and the thinking of my students. Reading improves students' writing, for sure. But writing also improves their reading. These two belong together. They've missed each other this past year.
The Notebook must return.
The question then is how to use it. Here's what I think right now:
Our Notebook (what to call it?) will have two sections:
1) Reading
2) Writing
The reading section will be for responses to texts students are reading - letters to me, thoughts jotted to track thinking across a text, deeper reflections upon finishing a text. This writing will help students understand their reading better, and it will help them understand what authors do in their writing to impact readers. Finally, they will gain deeper meaning from their reading by regularly reflecting on it. Having a notebook where students consistently respond to texts will also allow them to look at their thinking across time and reflect on their own growth.
The writing section will be a place to emulate authors - trying out genres, styles, wording - and a place to write on topics and in genres the students want to try out. Students will do lots of free writing in this section - some of my choosing, some of the students' choosing. The purpose of this section will be to deepen students' understanding of author's craft and to strengthen the tools they have in crafting their own writing. Ultimately, this section gives students more power to express themselves - to clarify and extend their own thinking. And because it is kept in a notebook, we can easily see growth across time.
I'm breathing easier already knowing Notebooks will be back full-force this year.
When I came to high school, I abandoned the Notebooks for a while. I thought they might be too young (silly me!), and I thought I didn't have time for them. Second semester I brought them back. Students again wrote freely, but without the beginning of the year introduction, the notebooks didn't have quite the same momentum and power.
Last year, I abandoned notebooks altogether. After all, I was only teaching reading, and I thought I should focus on just that. Writing was set aside except for responding to texts. Gone were the leisurely pages, the surprise thoughts, the dreams that emerged from nowhere. I felt the void, but the kids didn't. They did not expect to write in reading class.
In that Notebook-less year, my own thinking and learning have demanded that I rethink using a Writer's Notebook again. I attended a session with Aimee Buckner at the Write To Learn Conference in February and was flooded with ideas and a desire to have my students writing again. My class is not just reading class. It's LITERACY Seminar, a course designed to improve the reading, the understanding, and the thinking of my students. Reading improves students' writing, for sure. But writing also improves their reading. These two belong together. They've missed each other this past year.
The Notebook must return.
The question then is how to use it. Here's what I think right now:
Our Notebook (what to call it?) will have two sections:
1) Reading
2) Writing
The reading section will be for responses to texts students are reading - letters to me, thoughts jotted to track thinking across a text, deeper reflections upon finishing a text. This writing will help students understand their reading better, and it will help them understand what authors do in their writing to impact readers. Finally, they will gain deeper meaning from their reading by regularly reflecting on it. Having a notebook where students consistently respond to texts will also allow them to look at their thinking across time and reflect on their own growth.
The writing section will be a place to emulate authors - trying out genres, styles, wording - and a place to write on topics and in genres the students want to try out. Students will do lots of free writing in this section - some of my choosing, some of the students' choosing. The purpose of this section will be to deepen students' understanding of author's craft and to strengthen the tools they have in crafting their own writing. Ultimately, this section gives students more power to express themselves - to clarify and extend their own thinking. And because it is kept in a notebook, we can easily see growth across time.
I'm breathing easier already knowing Notebooks will be back full-force this year.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Feeding My Brain
Reading books by other teachers feeds my brain, floods it with insights and ideas which I then must process, explore and question before the insights drift away and settle in that dusty cabinet in the back of my mind with all those other great ideas I was going to try. This is my year to stop wasting what I've learned, to stop partially doing what I believe, and to jump into best practice with both feet. This is the year that I have enough resources and enough ideas to experiment, to question and to do.
I just finished Kelly Gallagher's latest book, In the Best Interest of Students, and it is a great place to start digesting and planning. I'll start with a tiny piece of my learning and reflect on how I will put it into action this year:
I loved Gallagher's break-down of the CCSS reading objectives into three simple parts:
1. What does the text say?
2. What does the text do?
3. What does the text mean?
As I reflect on this, I see that my struggling readers spend most of their reading time with number one. Reading, to these kids, is nothing more than getting what the text says, or guessing what the teachers want them to think it says. Part of this is because my struggling readers are expected to read a lot of books across their day that are too hard for them. Classroom books are often years above the reading abilities of my students, so they don't even try to read the books. Instead some of them attempt to piece together the "what it's about" by listening to classmates and teachers talking. Others don't make this much effort; they simply stop doing anything. They utter my least favorite line, "This is doin' too much," put their heads down, and turn up the volume on their music.
The other part of why kids only get what the text says is that teachers drop their expectations for struggling kids. We think the kids can't do it, so we ask them to think less, and we tell them more. We don't let them discover, explore and think.
I'm teaching summer school right now, and I see how wrong all this is. My classes are very small right now so I have space to listen deeply to each student. I have found kids who are smart, capable and who want to be seen for who they are. Deep under those armor-clad exteriors are hidden readers. They are eager to tell me about books they loved back in elementary school and those they secretly love now. One asked me if I could get him the third book in James Patterson's Witches and Wizards series; another holed himself up in a corner for five days, lost in The Mark of Athena; and still another found Walter Dean Myers One Shot and eagerly asked if it was OK if he reread that because he read it a long time ago and remembered that it was good. And their faces lit up when I said of course, they could take the books home and read them. These are the kids who failed English. I have to wonder how much more engaged these students would be if they had a voice in selecting the books they read during the school year, and if the discussions, writing, and thinking they did about books went beyond just what the book is about. What would happen if we trusted the kids to explore the "moves" the author made in crafting such engaging stories? What if we had all kids thinking about the meaning of the text, the worthiness of reading it, the life-rehearsals it offers? What if this deeper thinking is what our kids need to re-engage with reading?
Last year I offered my high school kids more choice, more time to read, and more drop-in conferences than I did the year before. More, but not enough. I still felt the "this is high school" pull of the question, "Is it rigorous enough that they're just reading books?" And so I stuck in stuff: notes, and assignments, and other teacher hoops that may not have been the best choices. The independent reading was in the background. What if I pull it to the foreground? What if independent reading is the real, rigorous stuff we do? What if we dive deeper into the books students like, the books they are able to read, and then add the layers of author's craft and discovering meaning and life lessons?
So, what will this mean for my classroom next year? Two things:
1. Independent books will be the foundation of our reading, thinking and writing all year, not just in short chunks.
2. I will stretch my students thinking beyond what the text says and spend more time helping them explore what the text does and what it means.
Now back to my mentors to explore more of the how, the vehicles I will set up to help structure our thinking.
This is what I love about writing. It clarifies all I've taking into my head, allowing ideas and plans to float out of the muck.
I just finished Kelly Gallagher's latest book, In the Best Interest of Students, and it is a great place to start digesting and planning. I'll start with a tiny piece of my learning and reflect on how I will put it into action this year:
I loved Gallagher's break-down of the CCSS reading objectives into three simple parts:
1. What does the text say?
2. What does the text do?
3. What does the text mean?
As I reflect on this, I see that my struggling readers spend most of their reading time with number one. Reading, to these kids, is nothing more than getting what the text says, or guessing what the teachers want them to think it says. Part of this is because my struggling readers are expected to read a lot of books across their day that are too hard for them. Classroom books are often years above the reading abilities of my students, so they don't even try to read the books. Instead some of them attempt to piece together the "what it's about" by listening to classmates and teachers talking. Others don't make this much effort; they simply stop doing anything. They utter my least favorite line, "This is doin' too much," put their heads down, and turn up the volume on their music.
The other part of why kids only get what the text says is that teachers drop their expectations for struggling kids. We think the kids can't do it, so we ask them to think less, and we tell them more. We don't let them discover, explore and think.
I'm teaching summer school right now, and I see how wrong all this is. My classes are very small right now so I have space to listen deeply to each student. I have found kids who are smart, capable and who want to be seen for who they are. Deep under those armor-clad exteriors are hidden readers. They are eager to tell me about books they loved back in elementary school and those they secretly love now. One asked me if I could get him the third book in James Patterson's Witches and Wizards series; another holed himself up in a corner for five days, lost in The Mark of Athena; and still another found Walter Dean Myers One Shot and eagerly asked if it was OK if he reread that because he read it a long time ago and remembered that it was good. And their faces lit up when I said of course, they could take the books home and read them. These are the kids who failed English. I have to wonder how much more engaged these students would be if they had a voice in selecting the books they read during the school year, and if the discussions, writing, and thinking they did about books went beyond just what the book is about. What would happen if we trusted the kids to explore the "moves" the author made in crafting such engaging stories? What if we had all kids thinking about the meaning of the text, the worthiness of reading it, the life-rehearsals it offers? What if this deeper thinking is what our kids need to re-engage with reading?
Last year I offered my high school kids more choice, more time to read, and more drop-in conferences than I did the year before. More, but not enough. I still felt the "this is high school" pull of the question, "Is it rigorous enough that they're just reading books?" And so I stuck in stuff: notes, and assignments, and other teacher hoops that may not have been the best choices. The independent reading was in the background. What if I pull it to the foreground? What if independent reading is the real, rigorous stuff we do? What if we dive deeper into the books students like, the books they are able to read, and then add the layers of author's craft and discovering meaning and life lessons?
So, what will this mean for my classroom next year? Two things:
1. Independent books will be the foundation of our reading, thinking and writing all year, not just in short chunks.
2. I will stretch my students thinking beyond what the text says and spend more time helping them explore what the text does and what it means.
Now back to my mentors to explore more of the how, the vehicles I will set up to help structure our thinking.
This is what I love about writing. It clarifies all I've taking into my head, allowing ideas and plans to float out of the muck.
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