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 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 9: Building Confidence

This week, I only had two days of instruction followed by three days of final exams. Ah... the end of the semester! Students were giddy as the final bell rang; they headed out to the bus loop discussing how they would spend their two free weeks of Winter Break. I assume there must be some teachers out there somewhere (or at least one out there somewhere) who were also able to walk gleefully away from campus without having to take a single paper home with them. I, unfortunately, am not in that camp. With approximately 3 million essays to grade this break, I will spend every day for the next two weeks grading as much as I can during my two-year-old's nap time (oh my goodness... please let him be good about taking his naps...).

Sometimes, I wonder why I do this to myself. I would love to spend the break unpacking boxes that are still sitting in the garage from when we moved three months ago. I would love to take naps along with my son or maybe even catch up on some of the shows that I never have a chance to watch during the week. However, as an English teacher, that "free time" just doesn't exist in my world. Sure. I still take naps and watch TV occasionally, but it is always at the price of grading some assignment. I know that most people who are English teachers know exactly what I'm talking about. I also know that while other teachers understand the constant planning and grading, they don't quite understand what it is like for an English teacher. (Once, one of my students told me that one of the P.E. teachers on campus told him that P.E. teachers are the smartest teachers on campus because they get paid the same as all the other teachers, but they don't have to do any of the extra work. I paused when I heard this and, for a moment, seriously considered going to take the CSET for Physical Education.)

However, I know why I do this to myself. I know why we all do this to ourselves. It's the very reason we got into this profession in the first place. It's for those "a-ha!" moments. It's for those times when our students surprise us and, perhaps, even themselves. And, let's be honest... We chose to be English teachers instead of P.E. teachers or math teachers because we recognize that our subject (despite what David Coleman and other proponents of the Common Core are decreeing) allows for deeper conversations, stronger connections, and bigger "a-ha!" moments in which the students realize not only something about the subject matter but about themselves and/or the world around them. We understand that being an "English" teacher isn't really about teaching reading, writing, listening, and speaking ... it's about teaching love, compassion, respect, and self-reflection; it's about creating a strong foundation from which students can jump off and go out into the world and read and think for themselves; it's about building confidence. And this last week, I saw that confidence on more than one occasion.

Reading Stories to 3rd-Graders

On Tuesday, I took my 9 ELD 2 students to a local elementary school to read children's stories they had written to a friend's 3rd grade dual-immersion class. ("Dual-immersion" means the students in the class are being taught in both English and Spanish.) Since some of my students worked with a partner, we had 6 stories to share with the 3rd-graders. They were ready for us as soon as we got there - already sitting in 6 different groups. We decided it would make the most sense for the readers to rotate from group to group, so after introducing all of my students, I had them go sit down with their first group. I could feel my students' nerves, but I knew they were ready for this moment. We had spent time in class the day before practicing; each student had read his/her story out loud as many times as they needed until they were able to pronounce each word perfectly. I held my breath as they began. I was standing closest to a boy who wrote a story titled, "A Fight for the Love of a Beautiful Princess". He introduced his story to his group and then waited awkwardly while they all copied down the title on their graphic organizers. I could tell he was unsure of how to proceed, but after the last boy finished writing, my student began reading, and almost immediately, I saw him relax. He knew he could do this.

I looked around the room and watched as my other students read their stories to their groups. As each student finished reading his or her story, the 3rd-graders immediately jumped in with questions and comments. "How did you get all the pictures for your story?" "Why did you chose to use those names?" "I really liked how you put a lot of emotion into your story and all of your drawings." (If you didn't already do so, re-read those quotes in the voice of the most adorable 8-year-old you know or can imagine. As you might guess, as soon as the kids started talking to my students, every last bit of nervous energy left the room. Just as the 3rd-graders were enamored with my students' stories, my students were enamored with how freaking cute these kids were.)

At the end of our time together, my friend asked some of her students to share some last thoughts with my students before we left. Some of the students chose to share in English, but most chose to share in Spanish. The last boy to share was embarrassed to speak at first (despite the fact that he had had his hand raised, waving it about to be called on, from the beginning), then, in English, he said, "I really appreciate them coming here because I know how hard it is to learn another language." I smiled to myself because this little boy had nailed the exact reason why I'd chosen to bring my students to this class; I knew they would not judge my students' limited English because they, too, were working on learning a second (or third or fourth) language.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I actually did this same exact activity a few years ago with a class of 9th and 10th grade Long-Term English Learners. Despite the differences in the two groups of students who completed this project, the result was the same... At the end of the field trip, the kids asked me when we would do something like this again. The next day, I had my students write an autobiographical narrative/reflection on their experience the day before. When we debriefed, all of my students told me that the field trip helped them to feel more confident in speaking English. I told them I was extremely proud of them. Even my 2 lowest-skilled students who primarily speak to me in Spanish did a phenomenal job reading their stories in English. They still have a lot of work to do to become "fluent", but this experience helped them to see that it is possible and that they can communicate in English if they try. In order to keep this momentum going, we decided that we will continue to build our relationship with this class through writing, Skype, and perhaps another field trip.
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Ease of use: This was, actually, extremely easy to set up. I started by contacting my friend to see if she would be interested in participating. Then, I filled out a field-trip request to get Board approval. I made it clear on the request that it would cost the school very little; since 3 out of the 4 adult chaperons would drive the students, we would only need to be reimbursed for about 2 miles worth of gas each. (And, to be perfectly honest, I'm not going to bother filling out the paperwork to get that reimbursement.)
Would I use this again: Yes.
Downsides: Depending on your scheduling, your students may have to miss another class. Since I have these students for a block period, I was able to make sure we left and came back during that time, so they didn't have to miss any other periods.
Applications: Even if you don't teach English, you can do something like this with your students. Take your high school students to an elementary school to teach them science experiments or history lessons. The main idea is that you are getting your students involved in a way that they aren't usually involved - you are making them into role models. Some kids aren't used to this, and it is extremely powerful for them to realize that someone else actually looks up to them. If you can't take an actual field trip, set up some kind of big-buddy system in which you write back and forth to a younger class. Any of these things will help to build your students' self-esteem.
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Getting Students to Talk and Care

My other experiences from this week were much less concrete. I can't pin them on any specific lesson or activity I did. I can't even really say that I played any role in bringing about these changes. Nonetheless, they were positive experiences that stuck with me for the rest of the week.

The first might seem extremely minor. At the end of class on Monday, a student came up to me to tell me that she was unable to plug her Chromebook in because she couldn't find the correct plug. I thanked her for letting me know and told her I would take care of it. Then she left. End scene.

Why would something so small stand out so much in my mind? Because I have had these students since the beginning of August, and this was the first time that this particular student actually spoke to me! On her own! Without any prompting from me or anyone else to do so! For whatever reason, she is finally starting to feel more confident and comfortable in my classroom. 

The next day, another student in the same class stayed after class to speak to me about his grade. He has a 48%, but he asked me if there was any way he could pass. Old me would have looked at him and told him no. It was too late. New me, however, looked at him and said, "Maybe. It's not likely, but if you do X, Y, and Z, it's possible." The difference? I didn't extinguish his hope. Who am I to kill the small amount of hope and drive he was finally showing? I couldn't do it. He came into Tutorial that day (the second time he attended Tutorial this year) and immediately began working on one of the things I'd told him he needed to do. Will it be enough for him to pass? No. However, the key is that he came in, and he was working. If I had told him there was no hope, he probably would not have even bothered to show up for Tutorial. 

Why do students randomly show us that they care? Why do they one day, all of a sudden, start to open up to us? I can't say, exactly; however, I believe it is because, day in and day out, we are constantly showing them that we care. I recently watched a TED talk called, "Growing Roses in Concrete". In the talk, the speaker mentioned Maslow's hierarchy of needs. He reminded the audience that students need their basic needs met - to have enough food to eat, to feel safe, to feel loved - before they can reach self-actualization and achieve at their full potential. It doesn't matter what subject we teach; that is what we do for our students on a daily basis; we show them that we love them. 

A friend of mine who shared some particularly bad students with me once asked, "Why aren't they as bad for you as they are for me? How do you get them to work?" I told her, "It's because I'm like their mom." Plain and simple. I go out of my way to show them that I care for them, to show them that I love them, to show them that I respect them, and, most importantly, to show them that I believe in them, even when they don't believe in themselves. Do all of my students succeed? No. Absolutely not. However, they all know that I will help them in any way, shape, or form if they ask me to.