Week 17: Sentence Wall and Cognitive Strategy Snowballs

Sentence Wall

On February 19th, I attended an all-day professional development workshop at Cal State San Marcos, as part of an on-going grant that Fallbrook High School is involved with. The second half of the day focused on grammar instruction, and as a side note to the strategies she was walking us through, the woman presenting (whose name I can't remember!) mentioned that, when she worked in high school, she had a "sentence wall" in her classroom. She explained that, while students were writing, she would walk around the room with a purple highlighter. When she saw a really well-written sentence, she would highlight it. Her students knew that if she highlighted one of their sentences, sometime during the period, they were supposed to go write the sentence and their name on a strip of paper and post it on the sentence wall. 

Her mention of the "sentence wall" was probably no more than 1 minute during her 90 minute presentation, but it stood out to me more than anything else she said that afternoon. It wasn't that the other strategies she gave us weren't good (they were actually extremely useful, and I look forward to implementing them in my classroom over the next few weeks); it's just that this was something I could do immediately, without much planning, especially since I had some unused bulletin board space in my classroom. Also, I really liked the idea of doing this with my ELD 2 kids because they work so hard to write complete sentences in English that it would be nice to do something to publicly recognize and display their hard work. 

So, at the beginning of the week, I tasked one of my TAs with cutting strips of paper, and I stole about 20 pushpins from another teacher. (I left her a note telling her I would repay her, but she emailed me to let me know I didn't need to.) I made a sign that says, "Super Sentences," and I stapled it up between 2 medium-sized bulletin boards; I labeled one of the bulletin boards for ELD 2 and the other bulletin board for English 11. When I got home that afternoon, I raided my desk for highlighters. (I didn't have any good highlighters at school, and we aren't allowed to order any supplies right now...) I found 3 green highlighters and 3 blue highlighters that were virtually brand-new, so I packed them into my school bag. I was set. 

I decided to start the strategy with ELD 2, and then I will roll it out with English 11 next week. Why? I don't know; it's just working out that way. Anyway... I told my ELD 2 students about it one day while they were working on writing their vocabulary sentences. I just explained to them that I would walk around with a highlighter, and if I saw a sentence that I really, really liked, then I would highlight it. Then, they would be responsible for writing it on a strip of paper and putting it on the wall. I demonstrated this with a sentence a student had written the day before - "At the sea, there is a considerable number of fish." ("Considerable" was the vocabulary word.) Is this sentence absolutely perfect? Not quite. It would be better if it said "in" instead of "at;" however, the student wrote it completely on his own after I explained what "considerable" meant, and he used the word perfectly. 

For the most part, the students seemed to like the idea. One student said, "Aw, Ms. Lewis, why are you doing this? Now we will feel bad if we don't write sentences you highlight." Another student, throughout class, kept asking me when he was supposed to write his sentence on the wall; I had to explain to him that I would let him know. I told them that all of their sentences were good, but the ones on the wall are just ones that I really, really like. He understood and went back to his work.

Here are a couple pictures of the bulletin boards:

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Ease of use: Since I already had the wall space, this was really easy to implement. It doesn't take very much thought or instruction to get the students used to the idea either.
Would I use this again: I am going to continue to use this throughout the year. My goal is for each of my ELD 2 kids to get a sentence up on the wall at least once (which shouldn't be difficult since I only have 13 students in that class).
Downsides: As my one student said, the students whose sentences you don't use may feel sad, that's why I'm going to make an effort to highlight a sentence by each student sometime during the remainder of the year. The woman who presented the strategy said that you could even highlight a sentence that you help a lower-level student construct as a form of scaffolding; the important thing is that each student eventually gets a sentence on the wall that has his/her name on it. Another downside... I am going to have make sure that I actually remember to keep doing this! Sometimes, that is the hardest part...
Applications: You could do a "sentence wall" in almost any subject area, especially now that with the new ELD standards, students are supposed to be getting language instruction in all subject areas. However, you could also tweak the strategy and call it a "problem wall" or "formula wall" or etc. and have students write down math problems that they were able to solve. The point is just to get good examples of student work up on the walls.
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Cognitive Strategy Snowballs

Ok... so since I used to train teachers in Advanced SDAIE, the snowball is not a new strategy for me. In fact, I used to use it All. The. Time. In fact, it used to be one of my go-to strategies. However, I realized that I have not used it at all this year, and I can't remember if I used it at all last year either. :( My poor students. 

To be honest, I didn't create this activity so that my students would get to make snowballs; I created it because I was getting bored with out reading routine. I've been having my students practice using different cognitive strategies (like making predictions, asking questions, etc.) to help them understand the texts we are reading. Sometimes, I would read out loud to them, stopping at different points in the text and asking questions that they would answer following the "think-write-pair-share" model. Other times, my students would read in groups, and at the end of a chapter, one student in the group would choose a cognitive strategy and ask a question, and everyone in the group would discuss the question and write down the answer in their notebooks. It was working well, but, as I said, I was getting bored. 

While they were reading in their groups on Wednesday, I went over to my computer and created a simple graphic organizer that looks like this:

I had the graphic organizers copied on two different colored papers - yellow and purple. On Thursday, after I read Chapter XXI of The Awakening out loud to the class, I passed out the graphic organizers, alternating between the two colors. I told them to fill out the first 2 boxes of the graphic organizer. Then, I asked them to crumple up their paper and throw it toward the front of the classroom. After everyone had thrown their papers, I told them to get up and pick up a "snowball" that was the opposite color than they had originally. They unfolded the snowballs and answered the questions. 

I didn't let them have an actual "snowball" fight this first time around, because I usually graduate them to this once I know that they aren't going to abuse the snowball fight and try to get away with throwing other items around the classroom. (I also usually play the intro to Van Halen's "Jump" while they are having their snowball fight; it is high-energy and about 30 seconds long.)

After the activity, there were exclamations from the class: "That was so fun!" "Can we do that again?" "Ms. Lewis, you're so creative!" So, again, to be clear, all I had them do was write a question, crumple up the paper, throw it at the front of the room, and then go pick up another paper. 

When 2nd period started, one of my students, who is notoriously pessimistic and sarcastic, said something along the lines of, "Can we please do something fun today?" I told him that 1st period really liked what we did, but he was still skeptical. After the activity, he said, "That was fun!" I'll admit that I did not stop myself from saying, "See? I told you so!" 

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Ease of use: The snowball strategy is really easy to implement, which is part of the reason why I used to use it all the time. I don't know why I stopped... maybe because we do so much in notebooks now, that the kids don't have papers they can easily "snowball."
Would I use this again: Yes. It's a great strategy, and, as I mentioned, the kids loved it even though I didn't let them have a real "snowball" fight.
Downsides: I actually printed 3 of those graphic organizers on each paper. We read 2 chapters, so we only did the activity twice. However, that was a good thing. If the kids had crumpled up those papers one more time, they probably would've started falling apart. It turns out you really shouldn't snowball the same paper more than twice. Also, some of the students were slightly appalled when I told them to staple the pages in their notebooks ("But... they're all crumpled up!"). I told them it was okay, but they were still annoyed by it.
Applications: What I really love about this is that I can use this same graphic organizer in a number of different ways. I can snowball it; I can have students trade with a partner; I can use it as a reading quiz; I can use it with fictional or expository texts; and the list goes on...
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Week 16: CATE 2015 and the Stand-Up Quiz

CATE 2015

Yesterday, I was in San Jose, CA for the 2015 CATE conference. It was a whirlwind of a day, flying up and back in about 12 hours. At the conference, I presented on the PostSecret project that I do with my students. I was a little nervous - more about whether or not all of the technology would work than actually presenting - but it wound up going really well!

Thank you to all those who attended my session. I have been playing around with the PostSecret Universe app today. I came across this video. I don't know why, but when I saw it, I felt the need to share it with you. It exemplifies the connections that are possible and the lives that can be saved through PostSecret and the people of the PostSecret community. If you have any secrets dealing with suicide, you should consider showing this video to your students.

If you didn't attend my session, but you are curious about the project, here is the presentation. If you have questions about how I use the project in my classes or about implementing the project with your students, please just ask. I encourage you to try the project and make it work for you and your students. In fact, here is a secret from the new app with a very interesting idea for a class project...

If you have never attended the annual CATE conference, I encourage you to do so in the future. It is a gathering of English teachers from all across California (and sometimes other states as well) who come together to talk about all the good things they are doing in their classes. For an English teacher, it is one of the few conferences that feeds your soul and makes you excited about returning to the classroom the following Monday. Next year, the conference will be held in Costa Mesa (Orange County), so hopefully a few more of my colleagues from Fallbrook High School will be able to attend; it would be wonderful if we could get a Fallbrook cohort together to attend these conferences regularly. 

Stand-Up Quiz

Okay... so back to what's going on in my classroom... 

At the beginning of this past week, I decided I needed to change my Monday vocabulary routine in ELD 2. Usually, I would give the students their vocabulary worksheet (here's an example) and then go through a presentation in which I gave them the part of speech, definition, synonym, and antonym for each word. Most of the time, I would leave the synonym and antonym portion of the presentation blank and, while presenting, ask the class to think of a synonym and antonym for each word. While this worked, as you can imagine, it did not engage the entire class. I would have one or two students who would shout out words while the others sat and stared blankly at the screen. (This is not an easy activity for students in ELD 2 because of their limited vocabulary.) A couple of times, I tried to make it into a game and had my TA keep track of how many words each student came up with, but I wasn't really satisfied with this approach. I needed to do something, but I also didn't want to completely abandon our routine. 

As I was preparing for class on Sunday evening, I decided I would go through the entire presentation and only give them the part of speech and definition for each word, and then I would have the kids work in groups to come up with the synonym s and antonyms. "Perfect!" I thought. "This will ensure that each kid is actually thinking. But how then what do we do? How do they share out?" I'll admit that I didn't come up with a solution right then; I decided I could just figure it out in class the next day.

In class, I told the students about the change, and they did not protest. I gave them the information I had for them and then had them turn their desks into their groups. I expected to see them all start working immediately, but they just sat there. Even after I told them to get to work, gave them permission to use their phones, and handed some of them dictionaries, most of them still just sat there staring at their vocabulary worksheets. Only one group really started working as I had expected - each student began looking up the words, they discussed different options for synonyms and antonyms, and they made sure each group member had the words they chose; they talked to each other and helped each other just like you would expect any group to do. The other two groups (yes, there were only three groups because I only have thirteen students in the class; ridiculous... I know...) just sat there. After much prodding, one or two students in each of those two groups began looking up words and writing down information, but the students who began working didn't talk to their other group members about what they were doing; they just worked as if I hadn't told them to work in a group at all. 

I walked around. I prodded. I encouraged. I assigned tasks. I thought, "Maybe they just don't know how to work in a group..." But then I realized that I had had them work in groups a million times prior to this, and they had not had any problem doing so. I honestly have no idea what the problem was, but it was painful to watch. Tomorrow, I think I am just going to split up the words, assign a chunk to each student, and then have them share what they come up with at the end to their group; I would prefer that they come up with the synonyms and antonyms together, but... it just did not work for those two groups. If you have any suggestions to get them working together, please, please, please let me know.

Anyway, once they all finally had a synonym and antonym for each word, I wanted them to share out, so we could discuss them, and I could check to make sure they actually understood the vocabulary word. I decided to use the stand-up quiz to do so. This is a strategy that I have only used once or twice in my time as a teacher, but it was a go-to strategy for our former ELD 1 teacher. I always liked the strategy; I just never remembered to use it. Basically, you have the entire class stand up, and then you start asking them questions. When a student correctly answers a question, he/she (or his/her group or row, depending on how you want to structure the quiz and how many questions you have) may sit down. (Since my class is so small, I only let the individual who answered sit down after volunteering to give me a synonym and antonym for a word.) You keep asking questions until everyone is sitting down. 

Even though the group work did not go well, this went beautifully! The strategy was exactly what I was looking for. All of the students were actively engaged; they were raising their hands to give me words; they were checking their papers to make sure the words they had were correct. So, while I still need to re-think how I get my students to work in groups on this assignment, I am definitely going to make the stand-up quiz a staple in our vocabulary routine. (And I will probably try to start incorporating it into my English 11 classes, as well.)
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Ease of use: The stand-up quiz is on of the easiest formative assessments to include in your instruction. You can prepare questions in advance, or you can just come up with them on the spot. You don't need any extra space in your classroom, like you do for an activity like "lines of communication" or "inside-outside circles", since the students can just stand at their desks. Easy, easy, easy. You just have to remember to do it...
Would I use this again: Yep. As I said, I am going to start doing this on a weekly basis. (I may even do it more often than that.)
Downsides: You need to have something that holds the students accountable once they are sitting down. If you do an impromptu stand-up quiz, you should tell the students to write down the questions and answers (or something along those lines), so they don't tune out once they are sitting down.
Applications: You can pretty much do this with any topic in any subject area. I did this with synonyms and antonyms for vocabulary, but you can do it with anything you want. You can do it with questions from all levels of Bloom's taxonomy. You can do it with math questions. You can do it in P.E. You can ask questions, or you can ask the students to demonstrate some skill. It is one of those wonderful strategies that is applicable almost anywhere. 

Week 15: Differentiation with Google Forms

I had just begun taking full advantage of the differentiation powers of Edmodo when I decided to switch over to Google Classroom. From the start, I was disappointed by the fact that Google Classroom did not allow me to put my students into small groups, like I could on Edmodo, and thus assign each small group a different assignment (or a different version of the same assignment); however, I was able to do virtually just that using Google Forms.

On Monday of this past week, my students were working on revising their writing. In order to effectively differentiate my instruction to best meet the needs of my students, I needed to split them up. When I was reading their original assignments, they naturally fell into five separate groups based on how they did on that assignment and the areas they needed to improve upon. The original assignment was to write three paragraphs summarizing and responding to an article. The five groups were:

1. Students who understood the argument and purpose of the text and just needed to make minor revisions to their writing.
2. Students who partially understood the argument but needed clarification on the purpose of the text before they could work on revising their writing.
3. Students who misinterpreted the argument based on something else that was mentioned in the article. It was obvious that these students understood some parts of the article, but they missed the big picture. These students needed to figure out the argument and the purpose before they could revise their writing.
4. Students who had trouble understanding the article. Their writing was very unclear and mixed up. They needed to work on understanding the article and then on making a clear point with their writing.
5. Students who had not completed the original assignment.

As you can imagine, each group needed individualized instructions. Rather than having each group wait patiently as I gave instructions to the other groups, I decided to use Forms to help me give the instructions and walk the students through some of the information I needed them to understand before they could start revising their papers. That way, I could focus on walking around the room and helping students individually and/or in small groups in dissecting the article and/or in revising their writing as opposed to wasting my time giving instructions.

Before assigning the form, I had students move so that they were in those five groups. I did this in case they wanted to work together and help each other AND so it would be easier for me to address common problems and questions to each group.


Here is what the form looked like on the students' end:

Page 1 of the form

The page students were taken to if they clicked on Group 1.

The page students were taken to if they clicked on Group 2. If they selected the wrong purpose, they were taken to a page that told them to re-read and try again. Once they got the correct purpose, they were told to start revising.

The page students were taken to if they clicked on Group 3. If they selected the wrong argument, they were taken to a page that told them to re-read and try again. Once they got the argument, they moved onto the same question on purpose that Group 2 was taken to directly. After understanding the purpose, they were told to start revising.

The page students were taken to if they clicked on Group 4. After correctly identifying the argument, they were given a sentence frame to help them write the argument in a clear sentence. Then, they were walked through identifying the purpose. I put them in a separate group, so that after they got through understanding the argument and purpose, I could sit down with them and focus on helping them clearly express their thoughts on paper.

The page students were taken to if they clicked on Group 5. This walked them through reading the article and identifying the author's argument and purpose. At then end, they are provided with a graphic organizer to help them with their writing that the other students received originally in print.

Here is the entire form if you want to click through it to see where it takes you.

And here is what the form looked like on my end:

Page 1 of the form - Notice that next to where it says "Multiple choice," I checked the box, "Go to page based on answer." This is what allowed me to direct my students to different pages and questions. I had to create those other pages and then come back here to specify where I wanted my students to be taken.

Here is another example. Once I had this question made, I could duplicate it if I needed to use it somewhere else by clicking on the icon that looks like one piece of paper on top of another piece of paper in the top right-hand corner; the copy would still direct students to the appropriate places. Notice that I also checked the box for "Required question" down at the bottom. This ensures that the students can't get away with skipping the question; they have to select an answer before they will be allowed to move on.

I had to insert one last page (which I just called "Last page") at the very end of my form. None of the other pages connect to this page, but for some reason, some of the other pages would not function properly without it. I am guessing this is just a glitch in the Google Forms software, but, for now, be advised that you may need to do this.

I will admit that I was up late on Sunday night setting up this form, but, when Monday rolled around, it made my life so much easier than it would have been if I had not done so. As I said above, I was able to assign this form and have my students start working while I wandered around, helping the students who needed it most. It was awesome. 

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Ease of use: If you are just getting used to Google Forms, I suggest you practice and play around making forms until you feel you have mastered the basics before you attempt doing something like this. It isn't that it is extremely difficult (Forms actually makes it quite easy) - it's just that there are a lot of little kinks that you may need to work out. Also, you need to make use of backward mapping for this. You need to have an overall vision of what you want your students to accomplish before you start so that the way you create and link pages makes pedagogical sense.
Would I use this again: Yes. The wonderful thing (and also horrible thing) about the Internet is that nothing ever really gets deleted. I've created this form, and I can use it whenever I want. I can also duplicate the entire form, so that the pages are still linked, and just tweak the questions and answers to fit whatever it is I want it to fit. Or I can create an entirely new form from scratch. The possibilities are endless.
Downsides: As I mentioned above, there are kinks that need to be worked out. Once you've created your form, you need to go through it, clicking on every possible answer, to make sure that it actually takes you to the place you want it to go. Don't rely on the fact that it says it will take you to a specific page, because it might not if you don't have a random last page of if you didn't click on of the right boxes. You need to test it before you can use it in class. That being said, once you've made it and have tested it, it and all future copies of it should work.
Applications: Differentiation! All teachers know that we are supposed to be differentiating in our classes, but we can't always figure out how to do it effectively, especially because you don't want one group doing nothing while you are working with another group. This helps because you can give the students more individualized instructions, and you can even build the re-teaching right into it! It's awesome. 

Week 14: Walking In My Students' Shoes

I am pleased to inform you that our independent reading program continues! Today, my students met for the third time with their partners to discuss the books they are reading. While some pairs discussed their books and then quickly moved onto other topics, many of the students were engaged in discussions about their books for a good 10 or 15 minutes. As I wandered around the room asking students about their books, I was happy to find that most of them are enjoying what they are reading; they might not be reading quite as much as I would like them to be reading, but they are reading nonetheless, and they are enjoying it.

Last week as I walked around, one student was very eager to tell me about the book he was reading - The Celestine Prophecy. In fact, when I first introduced the reading program the week before, he immediately asked me if I or the school library had the book; we didn't, so he wound up buying the e-book on Amazon. He tried to explain to me what it was about ... something about "a manuscript which tells us the purpose of life, but it's an adventure, and they're trying to find the manuscript, and I can't really explain it that well, but you should read it." It didn't sound that interesting to me, but I decided to order the book myself and at least try since this student was so enthusiastic about it.

At the end of the class, a few students shared out with the entire class what they were reading. Provoked by his partner, one student, who did not want to talk about the book he was currently reading, informed the class that his favorite book of all time was Dune. "Doom?" I asked. "Dune," he said. I hadn't heard of it, so I asked him what it was about. He explained a little and said I should read it. I told him I probably wouldn't like it because I am not very "big" on sci-fi. I am just not a sci-fi girl. Sure. I will admit that I love some sci-fi movies, especially superhero movies. (Do those even count as sci-fi? I don't even know.) However, I do not enjoy reading sci-fi. It just doesn't appeal to me at all. I like my books grounded in reality. I like to allow myself to get wrapped up in the world of the book I am reading. I am sure plenty of people can do that with sci-fi, but it is just too... fictional for me.

When the bell rang, the same student approached me with an old copy of the second book in the Dune series. He told me it included some information on the first book, so I should read it to see if I thought it would be something I would enjoy. I skimmed the page and reported that it "might be something I could get into." "Might be something you could get into? It's only one of the best sci-fi books of all time!" he exclaimed. "It is on par with The Lord of the Rings!" I flinched at this and then admitted, "I've never actually read The Lord of the Rings. I just can't get into it." He looked at me, with a mixture of disgust and disbelief on his face, and walked out the door. I sighed to myself, walked over to my computer, opened up Amazon, and ordered both Dune and The Celestine Prophecy. I decided that since I, as an English teacher, often force my students to read books they don't necessarily want to read (like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby) and try to get them to open themselves up to the possibility that these books could actually be good, that I should probably force myself to step outside of my comfort zone and read these books that my students recommended to me.

The books were due to arrive on Sunday, February 1st (thank you, Amazon Prime), so I took home The Fault in our Stars to fill the two days before they arrived. Why The Fault in our Stars? Well, I actually really wanted to read it. A student had just returned it and said it was really good. A lot of the other girls wanted to read it, but since nobody asked to take it home that day, I figured it was my chance. And while it was bit of a let-down, it served its purpose perfectly, and I finished it in those two days.

As of February 1st, since the start of the reading program, I had read 3 books - a total of 964 pages - in 15 days, which averages to 64 pages a day. Not too impressive, but not bad either.

And then I started reading The Celestine Prophecy. Why did I start with that one? Honestly, I was getting ready for bed on Monday night and asked my husband to go grab one of my new books. He asked if I had a preference; I didn't. I really didn't have any desire to read either of the books I'd ordered, so I just told him to choose one for me; that was the one he brought upstairs. Right now, I am on page 150, which means I have read an average of 30 pages a night this week - less than half of my average from before I started reading this book. It's not that the story isn't interesting. It is. But it is not go-upstairs-and-pretend-to-go-to-the-bathroom-but-actually-read-on-the-bed-and-then-quickly-go-to-the-bathroom-when-you-hear-footsteps-coming-up-the-stairs interesting. And I am not trying to sneak glances at the pages while my son is playing nor trying to convince him to read one of his books while Mommy reads her book (which never works from more than 30 seconds anyway). I just didn't feel any urge or impulse to read it at the beginning; I wasn't dying to read this book. (And don't even get me started about how not dying I am to read Dune...)

Now that I am 150 pages into The Celestine Prophecy, I am getting hooked and starting to read more, but it took me at least 100 pages to get to this point. What does that mean for my students? How many of them have the stamina to read a book that I (or anyone else) am telling them to read for at least 100 pages before they start wanting to read it on their own? Especially when they have so many other things they would much rather be doing and that they find much more interesting? No wonder I (we) lose so many of them when we try to get them to read something for class. Even when we read in class, it is difficult to hold their interest because the reading is broken up so much by everything else you are trying to accomplish in those 56 minutes, not to mention weekends, holidays, testing, etc. Despite the fact that I was able to effectively hook my students into the topic of the book before we started reading, I am dying right now trying to get us through The Awakening because I lost one instructional day this week and will lose five more over the next two weeks. At this rate, it will be at least two, maybe even three, weeks before (*spoiler alert*) Edna kisses Robert, and most of my students probably won't even care when it happens because they'll just be thinking, "Man... we're still reading this? I thought Ms. Lewis said this would be a short unit."

I would say that The Awakening starts to get really good about half-way through, when Robert leaves for Mexico, and Edna realizes she loves him. When I read the book in college, for a college class, I think I read it in a day or two because I read it on my own time. Yes, I had to read it for school, but really, I chose to read it. We all know that every college student picks and chooses what reading to do and what reading can be skipped; we do it to survive, but since we signed up for a class we were interested in the first place, what winds up happening is we read books and articles that we actually want to read. I wound up loving The Awakening so much that I decided to convince my boss to order a class set, so I could share it with my students. Have some of them wound up loving it? Yes. But some of them have also wound up hating it, and, unfortunately, since they hated The Awakening so much, they definitely weren't too enthusiastic about reading our next book - The Great Gatsby. And this is how we create non-readers. It isn't that my students don't read in my class. They absolutely do. And we have great discussions about the books. But the problem is that they don't all love what they read in my class, and since those books are the only exposure some of them have to any books at all, they think they just don't love books in general, and they don't even bother going out to look for a book that they do love. And I guess that's why I started the independent reading program in the first place.

The problem is that when we tell our students what to read, we are imposing our own interests onto them. We are saying, "I really like this, so you are forced to read it because I like it," which is essentially the same as someone saying, "I really like Brussels sprouts, so you are forced to eat Brussels sprouts because I like them," which is absurd. Why would you force someone to eat something they may not want or like just because you like it? You wouldn't, especially because you probably know that that is almost a sure-fire way to make the other person hate Brussels sprouts. Why, then, haven't we realized that this is also a sure-fire way to may students hate reading?

What do we do about this? I don't know. I am happy with the way my independent reading program is going, but I am not about to up and abandon teaching some of the classics. I think the key is to find a happy medium. Figure out a way that works for you to encourage independent reading outside of what you read in class. And figure out a way to only teach books you really love, because if you are teaching something you don't even want to teach in the first place, the kids will pick up on that. (It's like saying, "Here, I hate Brussels sprouts, but I am going to force you to eat them anyway even though they are the most disgusting thing that you will ever put in your mouth." That is obviously not a good idea.) If you start from a place of love, and you are encouraging the students to find things that they love too, while they may not wind up loving what you love, they will at least be able to respect and appreciate what you love. And I guess when it comes down to it, that's why I'm going to try to read Dune.

Week 13: Teaching Grammar Through Writing

Some of you who know me know that I am not the ... um ... most thorough when it comes to teaching grammar. Why? Mainly, because I hate teaching grammar. Also, because I was never actually taught grammar. I remember doing the occasional grammar activity while in high school, but, for the most part, we just read, talked, and wrote. In fact, when I interviewed to be a writing tutor at Santa Barbara City College, I had to take a written test which, in part, involved identifying grammatical errors. After the test, the interviewers mentioned that while it was clear that I didn't know exactly what some grammatical terms referred to, it was obvious from my writing that I had a strong command of grammar usage; I got the job.

I wholeheartedly agree with all the research out there indicating that the best way to improve one's grammar and vocabulary is through reading and writing. Furthermore, in one of my English classes during my Teacher Education Program at UCSB, the professor (Sheridan Blau) made some comment about the absurdity of teaching grammar that I have never been able to shake; he said something along the lines of, "To think that students' writing will get better by using those grammar worksheets and handbooks that show students examples of poorly written sentences using incorrect grammar is ridiculous." I'm sure he said it much more eloquently than that, but that was the gist of his point. It struck a chord with me, and, as I said, I've carried the idea with me ever since.

This was all well and good when I was primarily teaching English 11. Even though I taught (teach) English Language Learners in my English 11 class, by the time they get to me, they have already been in the United States, speaking and learning English, for at least 3-4 years; therefore, I could get away with not spending a whole lot of time on explicit grammar instruction and focusing more on reading and writing.

And then I was assigned to teach ELD 2...

I assumed, going into it, that I would need to do a better job in terms of teaching grammar since I had absolutely no idea what my students would come in knowing and not knowing. However, I was also teaching an entirely new prep with a brand new textbook, which meant there was no incumbent teacher who could tell me exactly what to do and when to do it.

At the beginning of first semester, I copied a bunch of pages from the textbook's accompanying grammar handbook, and I would pass one out any time we had a spare 10 or 15 minutes that I needed to fill. I would do a mini-grammar lesson, have the kids complete the worksheet, and that was about it. I know it sounds horrible, but if that's all I was doing, I can only assume there are quite a few other English/ELD teachers out there who are doing the same thing. Since the kids came to me with a strong foundation of skills, especially in regards to verb tense, and they were writing pretty good sentences whenever I had them write, I wasn't too worried about the damage I was doing by not teaching them more grammar. I was a little concerned by the fact that the worksheets did sometimes have the students fix mistakes in poorly written sentences, but, since I didn't have anything else to use, I decided I didn't have much of choice but to keep on keeping on.

When Winter Break rolled around, and I was buried under mounds of papers that needed grading before the start of the new semester, I came across another problem. Every Tuesday and Thursday, my ELD 2 kids have to turn in a "Watching Television" assignment and a current event, respectively. (I based both assignments off the "Noticias del Momento" they have to do in their Spanish Language Development classes.) As you can imagine, a good chunk of the work I had to grade during Winter Break was made up of the yellow current event papers and the pink "Watching Television" papers. (I like to color code different handouts, hence the yellow and pink.)

This frustrated me for a couple of reasons. First, why hadn't I just graded those assignments right away? They were relatively easy to grade, but I had let them pile up and had about a month and a half's worth to grade during the break. Second, since I had let them pile up, I hadn't been checking to make sure that my students were actually doing them well. (I did spend some time at the beginning of the year teaching my students how to write summaries in their own words, but I hadn't followed up on this during the last month and a half of the semester.) And since I hadn't been checking the assignments, I hadn't been using them to help the students improve their writing. What a lost opportunity...

And then it hit me! That's what I would do during the second semester! I would check their work immediately and on a weekly basis, have the students revise their own writing to fix their mistakes. I had actually started doing something very similar in my English 11 classes at the beginning of the year, and the students reported that it was helping them improve their writing. In those classes, I would have the students write 1/2 a page, skipping lines, on a given topic during the first few minutes of class on Wednesday. Then, I would go through and make corrections; I started by actually making the corrections for the students and then began just underlining mistakes for the students to figure out and fix on their own. I would then pass the same papers back out and make the students rewrite their original few sentences, fixing all of their mistakes. This allowed me to tailor my grammar instruction to my students' individual needs, it helped them see the mistakes in their own writing, and it pushed them to revise and improve their writing. Since it worked so well in English 11, I decided it would probably also help my ELD 2 students.

Now, instead of just collecting the weekly assignments from my students, I read through their writing within a few days of collecting the assignments. I underline and fix mistakes. (I am much more explicit about how to fix mistakes with my ELD 2 students than I am with my English 11 students, due to their level of comfort with and knowledge of the rules of English grammar.) Then I give the assignments back to the students before the end of the week (usually Friday after their vocabulary quiz) and have the students rewrite their summaries and personal reactions, fixing all of the mistakes they originally made. I told the students we would be doing this every week, which holds me accountable and forces me to actually read through them in a timely manner; otherwise, I would simply procrastinate as I did in the previous semester.

I know that, in a way, I am doing what those grammar worksheets do - I am having the students look at poorly written sentences and asking them to fix the sentences. However, since those poorly written sentences are actually their poorly written sentences, the task becomes useful and informative. The students understand that the activity actually helps them to directly improve their writing (especially since they try to not make the same mistakes on the next assignment, so they won't have as much to rewrite), as opposed to those grammar worksheets which often seem disconnected from their actual writing.

Don't get me wrong - I think it is very important for students, especially English Language Learners, to understand how to construct complete sentences. I am in no way advocating for an abandonment of teaching grammar altogether; however, I feel we need to create more authentic ways in which we teach grammar to our students to help them internalize what we are teaching into their writing and speaking.