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.
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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." |
AuthorMy name is Sarah Todd and I teach freshmen and junior English in Southern California. Archives
August 2018
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