End of Year Reflection

We have actually been out of school for a week now, but as soon as I turned in grades and finished cleaning my room, I immediately headed up to Santa Barbara for a bachelorette party and a mini-vacation. Now home, I finally have some time to write a post to wrap up this school year and reflect on some of the tools I have tried this year. Here goes...

Top 5 (in no particular order)

1. Google Forms (1, 2, 3) - I love Forms. 
2. Focusing on "difficulties" while reading - I love this method because it really allowed me to remove the scaffolds I had been using all year with my students. I plan on introducing this earlier on next year, because it really helps to create a student-driven and student-centered classroom. 
3. Socratic Seminar - I know... it's kind of funny that I avoided this for so long, but I really enjoyed it. More importantly, my students really enjoyed it. On my end-of-year evaluations, one student wrote that I should do more activities that force the entire class to interact together (as opposed to just working in small groups); I think this is a perfect activity for doing just that. 
4. Doctopus and Goobric - Oh my goodness, the amount of time Doctopus and Goobric saved me in grading essays this semester! I can't even begin to express my love. 
5. Google Classroom - This one doesn't excite me that much, but since it is so easy to use AND it allows me to easily use Doctopus and Goobric, it is in my Top 5. 

Definitely Using/Trying Again

• TextHelp Study Skills
• Group Thesis Writing on Mini-Whiteboards
• Allowing students to choose their method of "active reading" - I like this a lot. However, I will not rely as heavily on it next year because I will move more quickly into focusing on "difficulties." BUT I think I will give students choice in marking/noting their individual difficulties, which is why I kept this in this particular list.
• In-class 1-page summaries to hold students accountable for their reading
• SparkNotes Reading Quiz
• Problem and Solution Projects
• Attending and maybe even presenting at the CATE Conference - We have all been through professional development that is not at all applicable to our classrooms. The beauty about CATE is that it is comprised of English teachers talking about the best things they are doing in their classrooms, so I was able to apply what I learned at CATE to my teaching almost immediately. Also, I think I eventually want to go into teacher training, so making sure I keep up my resume by presenting at these types of things is in my best interest. 
• Stand-Up Quiz
• Cognitive Strategy Snowballs
• The UCI Highlighter - Helping students SEE just how much they were relying on summarizing in their writing was a game-changer. I will use this with almost every writing assignment next year.
• Refocus Form
• Teaching students how to apologize
• The 20% Project
• TED Talks as a form of presentation

On the Fence

• Peardeck - I liked this a lot when I first used it, but then the second time, it didn't go as well. I think you just need to really know what you are doing and be sure that this is the best method of presentation to match your purpose. Also, this isn't something I would do all the time anyway, because part of its appeal to students is its novelty. 
• Newsela - Newsela has partnered with some big names in news, such as the Washington Post, which I like. I just have to figure out a better way to use this and present it to my students. 
• The rhetorical précis - I need to be honest: I absolutely hate the rhetorical précis as it has been stuffed down the throats of both high school educators and students. I hate it. I do. I am not against the real rhetorical précis as it has been used in higher ed institutions, and I understand that, in some disciplines, students are expected to frequently write them. For example, when my husband was in a Master's program at CSUSM in History, he had to write them weekly. However, what he wrote (and always earned A's on) never looked anything like the 4-sentence ridiculousness we feed to high school students. Now... since I undoubtedly will have to teach the précis in the future, I will use the method I used with my ELD 2 students. But I will still hate it. 
• Independent Reading Program - Don't throw virtual tomatoes at me. I like having an independent reading program. I just need to figure out how to better implement next year. That's all. That's why I'm on the fence. 
• Sentence Wall - I kept this up for a few weeks and then slowly started forgetting to highlight student sentences. I like this. I just need to make sure that, if I use it again, I implement it with fidelity from the beginning of the year.
• Fiction Jigsaw - Eh. I like this when in a bind, but I would much rather have students read the entire text.  
• Virtual Question Box - Only 2 students made use of this. I can't decide if I want to bother next year or not. It's not really hurting me to do it, but... I don't know... I need to decide.

Won't Bother

• Google Docs Websites - These were extremely easy. However, I mostly teach 11th grade, and my students are fairly proficient with other forms of technology. Next year, instead of allowing them to use Google Docs, I am going to force them to use something a little more complicated like Blogger or Tumblr. 
• Teacherspayteachers.com - Don't get me wrong. The lesson I got off of teacherspayteachers was awesome. My problem is that I don't really have time to peruse the website to find other resources I may want to use. They frequently send me emails about 10 free downloads, but I haven't taken advantage of any of them. I think it can be helpful, but... like I said, I won't bother using the site in the future. 
• Turnitin - This was the BIGGEST disappointment of the year! I had been rooting for my school to get Turnitin because I really wanted something that would catch plagiarism for me and save me time in Googling suspicious sentences. Unfortunately, it didn't catch everything (or even close to everything), and I still had to spend my time researching on my own. I had my online class use it throughout the semester, but I didn't bother having my English 11 classes use it after the initial assignment. 

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Next year, I will be at Fallbrook High School again. I plan to continue this blog, but I may introduce some changes. For now, I will be on a summer hiatus. I will see you back here in a couple of months. -Annie :)

Week 18: Fiction Jigsaw

At CATE 2015, I attended a session presented by Daniel Reynolds on postmodernism. Reynolds gave us a number of strategies and resources for not only reading postmodern texts but also for teaching in a postmodern way. One of the strategies he mentioned was the jigsaw. (For information on how to "jigsaw" your classroom, go here.) He asked the crowd what types of texts we traditionally use with jigsaws; we mentioned nonfiction texts, texts that we just need to "get through," texts that help provide background knowledge for our students, etc. Reynolds explained that we typically jigsaw pieces of nonfiction because there isn't usually a story line those texts follow, and since there's no story line, we don't have to worry about our students missing something or not understanding something by only reading the piece that they are assigned. If we jigsaw a fictional piece, we are playing with the order of the narrative, much in the same way that many postmodernist authors play with the order of their narratives. (In fact, Reynolds told us about a book called The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson, which was published in 1969. It is a "book in a box" - all of the pages come, unbound, in a box, and you can essentially read them in any order you want.) On the handout he gave us, Reynolds noted, "This approach pushes into stark awareness for students how meaning is constructed, and how we understand plot, characterization, and other literary elements as steps in a process of meaning making." While I was sitting in the session, I immediately decided to use the jigsaw with The Awakening.

I'll be honest ... I have actually used the jigsaw with fiction during my student teaching with The Crucible; it didn't go very well, and I felt guilty when other teachers espoused strong opinions about how students need to read texts in their entirety and not in bits and pieces. Now, however, I have a new rationale behind the method - it is a postmodernist approach! It's perfect, especially since I am having them read "A Rose for Emily" soon after finishing the novel, and my students always have difficulty with the fact that the story isn't told in chronological order. Also... and, again, I will be honest... I am getting really bored with The Awakening because we have been reading it for so long! It is just over 100 pages, and we have been reading it since the beginning of February! If I am bored, there is no doubt in my mind that my students are bored. We need to finish this book, and we need to do so as quickly as possible.

I introduced the strategy Monday right after the conference. In groups of four, each student read a different chapter and then was responsible for teaching that chapter to the rest of the group. At the end, the groups were to write a one-sentence summary on what happened in all four chapters. By coincidence, my student teacher used the strategy again this past Tuesday and Wednesday in much the same way for a lesson she needed to videotape for her school. Her jigsaw got the students through chapter 28 out of 39. Toward the end of 2nd period on Wednesday, one of my students told me that he really liked doing the jigsaw because meeting in the "expert" group to hash out the details of his chapter helped him to really understand what happened in that chapter.

Wednesday afternoon, I had a decision to make: we could keep plowing ahead and take another week and a half to finish the novel, or I could use the jigsaw on a larger scale to finish the novel by the beginning of this coming week. I opted for the latter.

At the start of class on Thursday, before I even explained what we were doing, one of my students asked, "Ms. Lewis, why do we keep doing that jigsaw thing? Is it because we need to finish the book?" I smiled and, as always, answered honestly, "Yes, we are doing it to help us finish the book. However, it is also a postmodernist approach to reading because it forces you to read the plot out of order. Do you remember how in your project on postmodernism you learned that postmodern authors often play with the sequence of events?" He did. "Well, the jigsaw does that same thing. Also, it will help prepare you for a story we are going to read called 'A Rose for Emily,' in which the events are not told in order." He nodded. The rest of the class nodded. I introduced how we were going to jigsaw the rest of the book.

In my classroom, my students are sitting in groups of three or four because I often have them work in groups. In 1st period, I have ten groups, so I assigned each table group a chapter between 29 and 38; these table groups would become the expert groups on their assigned chapter and would report on their chapter to the rest of the class. I told the groups to read silently. Then, when they finished reading, they were to begin working on a poster, in the form of a Frayer Model, that should include the following information:


On Thursday, students read and began working on the posters. Yesterday, after their vocabulary quiz, they told me they wanted to keep working on their posters. (!) I will give them about five minutes to finish on Monday, and then they will "teach" their chapters to the class. During the presentations, I am going to force my students to practice their listening skills by telling them that they are not allowed to write anything down while the expert group is presenting. However, after each presentation, the students will be responsible for writing down notes on the chapter. (I don't want them writing during the presentations, because then they will just copy what's on the poster, which doesn't help them internalize the information.) At the end of all the presentations, they will write a 3-5 sentence summary of what happened in chapters 29-38. Then, on Tuesday, we will finish the book together.
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Ease of use: Honestly, the jigsaw is very easy to implement once you have a text you want to use, especially if that text is already "chunked" for you. The most important thing is to make sure students understand what they are responsible for.
Would I use this again: Yes. This isn't a strategy to use all the time, but in certain scenarios, it can be very valuable, especially in getting the students to work together.
Downsides: The students don't actually read the entire text. (Not all of them got to read the part in which Edna finally kisses Robert!!! I still feel a little bad about this...)
Applications: As Daniel Reynolds explained and as I've illustrated, you can do a jigsaw with fiction as well as nonfiction. The website I linked at the top of this post - The Jigsaw Classroom - gives detailed instructions on how to use the jigsaw in your classroom.

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.