It's been a year since I posted anything on my blog. I've started and scrapped at least ten blog posts but nothing felt right until now.
I'm very fortunate to have technology in my classroom. This is the second year of having chromebooks for my students and every student has a district issued Google account. I set out a lofty goal for myself for the year and it was simple, or so I thought: Be Paperless! I thought being paperless meant I was being innovative, even when I knew it didn't. But I was giving my students the 21st century classroom experience they expected and deserved. Students were making Flipgrid videos to demonstrate learning, writing responses to works we read using Google Docs, making Screencasts, annotating digitally on Newsela and other sites, there was not one assignment completed on paper the whole first semester of my class this year and I noticed something, something I didn't expect, students were not turning in the work. For example, in a class that had 35 students, only 20 submitted the assignments on a regular basis and to make matters worse the work that was being turned in was failing to meet the goals of the assignment. I decided I needed feedback from my students as to why this was the case and many of them said they did not have internet at home and were using their phones to complete assignments but were using too much data. Without meaning to, I had alienated an entire cross-section of my class. I give my students a survey at the beginning of the school year asking about internet access and everyone responded in the affirmative, so I thought I was good until it turned out I wasn't. I decided to make a change, one of my weekly assignments is an Article of the Week. I give students an article in which they read, annotate, and write a response to said article. The first semester, this assignment was 100% digital, but students were missing critical elements of the assignment. One of the goals of the assignment is to be able to identify the author's main idea, or argument for their piece and my students were struggling with that skill. Cue the old-school highlighters to paper task. We worked on the skill repeatedly and we went through the protocols of how to do this online through websites like Newsela and using online highlighting tools like Diigo. The remarkable thing that happened when I changed the assignment from 100% digital to paper was now the assignment was being turned in and I could better evaluate the skills being demonstrated. I'm still learning how to blend the technology and traditions within the classroom. This school year has been a difficult one. I started thinking about how much of what made this year so difficult for me was a product of my own creation. I got so caught up in trying to do everything asked of me that I broke. I stopped caring about almost everything. I spent my time focused on what would improve test scores and how best to prepare students for an AP exam that I made myself crazy. I really felt like quitting. I am fortunate to have understanding friends who work in the same field and they listened to me complain, repeatedly, about my plight. I also have a very supportive husband who makes me feel like I am the most important person in the world and helps me any way he can to do everything. Lastly, I am grateful for a child whose struggle to learn what the world expects of her in a way that is counter-intuitive to her doesn't dampened her free-spirit and it continues to inspire me to do better. If she can learn how to put a story in sequential order, I can learn how to make that digital breakout or Screencastify video. She never loses heart. Even when she's crying with frustration, she will try one more time to do the work correctly. A recent disappointment left me with a decision to make, fight it or accept it. Whenever I find myself stuck like this, I think of a poem my father shared with me years ago. The poem is called "What Will Matter" by Michael Josephson who is a renowned scholar and lawyer focusing on ethics education. As I read through the poem, again, it reminded me that I have been called upon in this life to serve others. My life of service affords me the ability to help students and colleagues alike, become the best version of themselves. At times, it is difficult to be humble and not wish to have something else or something more but it is nice to know that when someone needs a hand, they know mine is there willing to assist. I am going to "choose a life that matters" and embrace the coming school year with all the fervor I have in me. I will worry less about standards (shh) and worry more about the learning. I will use what I have learned from mentors both in real-life and the professional development books I read to become better at helping students achieve success in the learning so that they too can "choose a life that matters." This is what I've learned this year and I look forward to more "learning out loud" with you, dear reader, in the years to come. Two weeks ago we began testing season at my school. Our goal this year is to increase our scores in English by 20 points and Math by 7. Since I have very little to do with the math test, I will not discuss it except to say that I hope our students perform well on it. Our English testing scores last year were dreadful by comparison to the other high schools in our district and we were taken to task by our Superintendent in regards to our less than stellar performance as a result. It was the first time really that our school has faced the reality of poor results. I can't speak for the rest of the school but these results had me reeling. I was angry, frustrated, embarrassed, and ashamed of our performance. There was some finger-pointing, not at individuals but at our circumstances, as we were going through some changes administratively and had an accreditation visit. I felt like these were easy cop-outs and I understood why our admin team was making them but the bottom line was, we stunk and we needed to make changes if we were going to improve our scores.
I know that for many who read this blog the focus on a test score sends you into a tailspin as we know that the test scores are not the end all be all of an education but I have to say, at the end of the day, test scores matter to people whether they should or not. So, what were we going to do? We needed to change our practices pedagogically. We were still teaching for the 20th century, not the 21st. We were focused on a curriculum (in high school these are the pieces of text we teach, not a how to) and covering everything (old standards), instead of having student dig deeply into the texts (new standards) and risking perhaps, running out of time for the old texts. We needed to be united in our quest for improvement, but how? We decided to come together and have a day where we explored our expectations as a department for what students should be able to do from year to year (with the standards in mind) but also bearing in mind what the standards aren't expecting that we as teachers are. For example, we have department writing standards that some people weren't even aware of, yikes! We did this and we built common finals for each grade level using SchoolCity and the results were astounding. Our students did not perform well. It was an eye-opener for all of us. Rather than wallow in our results we made a plan for how we were going to support students to improve these areas of in need of growth. We got to work. Collaborating on assignments that would be beneficial to students both short and long term. Really just taking the time to focus on improving the skills our students would need, not just for the test, but for the rest of their lives. I do not know if our scores will reflect the changes we made but I'm confident they did. Regardless of the results, I am really proud of my students. We've faced incredible obstacles this year and we just keep pushing forward. Our writing unit continues this week as we focus on various aspects of narrative writing. I am using Kelly Gallagher's Write Like This: Teaching Real-World Writing through Modeling & Mentor Texts (2011) to guide me and creating some assignments where there was direct instruction before. I will be the first to admit that teaching writing is a challenge but I like to use Gallagher's modeling because it helps me. Here's today's lesson and assignment. Students read through the notes on their own and then complete the work, I am using this to determine if the students can identify the purposes for writing. Identification is so low on the DOK chart but we have to start somewhere. After they complete the assignment, we start on the next activity which is to write for a real-world purpose. We start with Express and Reflect, we've written six-word memoirs before so now we write Twitter memoirs, using the 140 character constraints. I do not allow emojis or gifs for this either (it's a writing task) and I expect proper spelling and punctuation (semicolons are fun). Students share these using the discussion forum on Google classroom and students can see each other's memoirs, we haven't discussed protocol for interacting with someone else's writing. Once we do that, then I will open it up for comments. Also, this is possible to get through in one period thanks to block schedule for CAASPP. Now We Write
For the last three quarters my students have read the various text types and we have written a little bit here and there, but nothing too specific. Why? I have found that most 9th grade students really need work on the foundations of reading a text and working on deeper understanding for the purpose of analysis. I've always felt like the best writers are at the core, readers. So, with the time I have left with my students this year I wanted to spend it focused on writing. They're ready now because we've worked on the skills. I decided to use the NEAT method for reviewing and preparing for writing tasks ahead. NEAT is an acronym for the four text types: narrative, expository, argumentative, technical. This activity uses old-school technology of pen/pencil to notebook paper. Here's how it goes:
I started this post months ago but shelved it for awhile. I am posting it now because the work my students did last semester is relevant to what they're currently working on. Enjoy!
I've been spending the majority of this semester teaching my 9th graders about text types. One my professors at CSUN, Kathleen Rowlands @KathleeRowlands, in her Issues in Reading course suggested that if students know what to expect when approaching a certain text type: poem, letter, essay, etc. that students can notice when the author plays with the form as well as where to look for shifts in the narrative. Dr. Rowlands gave us this poetry example. You take the text and make all the letters X's (it takes awhile, but it's worth it). One Art BY ELIZABETH BISHOP The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. When the entire text is a single letter, students are looking at the formatting of the text and not trying to figure out what it means. Where are the shifts? What makes you think that? Since I started teaching text structures, it has made reading materials more accessible to students. It takes time at the beginning of the school year to teach these but as Jon Corippo (@jcorippo) says, "If it's difficult, we need to start the first day." The first day of the California Association of Teacher of English 58th annual statewide conference is in the books. This year's conference is focusing on Text and Tech: Blending Tradition with Innovation which all teachers are looking to do in the 21st century classroom. This is my third year attending the conference and I plan to continue attending for as long as I am able.
Troy Hicks, @hickstro on Twitter, kicked off the day with his presentation "With Literacy and Learning for All". You can see it and other great materials from Dr. Hicks by going to his website hickstro.wikispaces.com/. A new tool Dr. Hicks shared I plan to play with more is called Popplet, this tool can be used for digital mind-mapping as well as vocabulary development, or anything you mind can imagine to use it for. The activity I liked best and felt I could incorporate into my classroom practices immediately is the 4C's Collaborative Summary in which students read a text, the example Hicks uses here in his is nonfiction but I think it's suitable for fiction as well. Students then respond to the questions and have discussions and work on building understanding. Connections: What connections can you draw between this idea and others that we have been studying? Challenges: What ideas, positions, or assumptions do you want to challenge or argue against? Concepts: What key concepts or ideas from the text are valuable and worth holding on to? Changes: What changes in attitudes, thinking, or actions are suggested for you or others? What I love about this is the simplicity of it and it reminds me of how good teaching does not have to be chock full of tech stuff. After that I attended a session by Heather Dean from Cal State Stanislaus and she talked about close reading and using tools like Kahoot and Quizizz to reinforce close reading practices. I never thought of using these fun tools in this way and really am motivated to try it. Finally, I attended a session from Jen Roberts @JenRoberts1. She talks really fast but she has great information for those more familiar with GAFE. You can find more from her at LitandTech.com. When I attend these conferences I am always blown away by what other people are doing in their classrooms and it inspires me to do more. Push a little more, work a little smarter/not harder. Tomorrow's Super Session presentation is from Catlin Tucker, Spotlight Sessions from Jon Corippo and Lisa Highfill. I plan to share tomorrow's learning as well.
For the first time in my life I have chosen to focus on a word as a guiding force for the year. While words like kind, encourage, and love bounced around in my mind, there was one word I kept coming back to and that word is PRESENT. To me, present means to be focused on the here and now. Acting in the moment, not reactionary per se, but with intention and purpose. Many changes await my life personally this year, my daughter begins kindergarten this August, to name one and I started thinking about the time I have missed with her being a teacher. Focusing on building my education by going and getting my Master's degree took precious time away from my daughter when she really needed me to be there with her. While I do not regret my decision to go back to school, especially with the recent increase in salary as a result of my degree, I've come to realize that while it is difficult to leave my students for a day or a class period, whatever, the time my daughter deserves to have her momma with her is critical to her development.
As a teacher/colleague, I think my determination to be present will allow for better choices and decision-making. While researching images for the word present, one will see many images of gifts, insert cliche phrase here, but I was looking for something more insightful than that. In college, I studied Buddhism for one semester, and there has been a phrase running through my mind ever since: "Don't dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." I think this attention to what is happening now will help me become a more competent leader in the classroom. Take a deep breath and be present.
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I started blogging in earnest six months ago. When school started in August I thought I would be able to maintain my regular posts but my schedule has made it challenging to post every month. In an effort to keep our spirits and creative juices up fellow blogger and PLN member @AldoCacagno suggested Flash blogging (like a quick write, with editing). This month's question:
If you could have any gift for your class, what would it be and why? My head immediately goes to the stuff that I want for my classroom: new furniture, books, etc. When I really think about what my class, my students, need; the only thing I really can of is TIME. Every day I work with my students, especially my AP students, I wish I had 15 extra minutes or an extra hour, one more day, one more week to help them grow as students. It seems like every week I run out of time to get through everything I had planned because the students ask a question I hadn't anticipated and it takes us time to discuss that question and it feels like it was a two to five minute discussion and I look at the clock and we have five minutes of classtime left and I have to move today's activity to tomorrow, over and over again. What would I do with the time? Conference with students about their writing, reading, and academic progress in class. Have more student-led discussions, such as Socratic Seminar, and give students the chance to reflect after the discussion and debrief through writing without having to wait until they get home to write. Allow students more time to do inquiry projects and work with teachers in other subjects to create more meaningful and content-rich activities. Until that day comes when I'm miraculously gifted with time, I will continue to make the most of what I'm given. |
AuthorMy name is Sarah Todd and I teach freshmen and junior English in Southern California. Archives
August 2018
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