Week 4: Follow-Up From Last Week & Holding Students Accountable

Last week, I wrote about how I was trying to hook my students into reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I was only assigning reading in class, and I was letting the kids choose their reading strategy. At the time, it seemed as if things were going well. Unfortunately, when I returned after the weekend, and after having a sub at the end of the previous week, I discovered that, to my dismay, quite a few students had not read what they were supposed to read in class with the sub. I don't know if I chalk this up to the fact that it was Friday, that it was Halloween, that there was a sub, or a combination of all of these. I don't, however, blame the reading strategies. Why? On Thursday of this week, I had my students write their journal as a reflection of their chosen reading strategy. The topic was: "Reflect on your chosen active reading strategy. How's it going?" When we debriefed the journal after the students wrote for 10 minutes, the majority of them said that their strategy was working well for them. Interestingly, the majority of them have chosen to take notes in their notebook, which is what I would have forced them to do, if I had forced them to do something. The funny thing is that since they got to choose to take notes, instead of being told they had to take notes, they are all, for the most part, actually taking notes! Win. Win.

I realized that that part of what I was doing was working for the kids, but I still didn't have them 100% hooked into the book. On Monday, one of my few avid readers came in and told me the book was killing her. She said she'd tried to read the chapter and put what Jim was saying into modern language, but she couldn't; it was too hard. I thought to myself, "Oh man, if I've lost this student, I am definitely going to lose the rest of them." I needed to figure out what to do. I also needed to speed up our reading and start assigning homework. I came up with two solutions.

Solution #1: Holding Students Accountable

My first solution was that, if I needed to assign homework, I needed to hold students accountable for doing the homework. In the past when I've assigned reading homework, I'd follow-up the next day with a 1-question quiz right at the start of class. I tell the students that the quiz will be really easy if they read. (I make sure that the question can't be answered if the students simply looked at SparkNotes.) I also tell them that the point of the quiz is for me to see if they read, so if for some reason they can't remember the answer to the quiz question, they can write me something else that proves that they read. I make each quiz 20 points, and it goes into the "Tests & Quizzes" category in my grade book, which is worth 25% of their grade. This is enough to get the kids who care about their grades to do the reading. In order to get the rest of them, I would tie the quiz scores to some incentive at the end of the unit - something like, "If you don't pass X number of quizzes, you will have to do X at the end of the unit." This still never worked as well as I ever hoped, and I realized it was because it wasn't immediate. The kids didn't care right then about having to do whatever I told them they'd have to do later on. 

I realized that the punishment needed to be immediate, and it needed to be worse than doing the reading for homework. (For those of you who are familiar with EEI, I realized I needed to "raise the level of concern.") Therefore, I decided to make all students who failed the reading quiz do the reading in class that day and write a 1-page summary, which would serve as their ticket out the door stole. (This is a method I stole from Emily Toone, another English teacher at Fallbrook High School who is currently working as our ELL TOSA.) When I introduced this to my students, I asked them why they thought I was doing this. One student said it was because I was mean, but the rest of them understood it was because I wanted them to actually do the reading. 

Did it work? For the most part, yes. In my 1st period class, I had about 5 students out of 38 who didn't do the reading and had to write the summary; in my 2nd period class, I had about 6 students out of 36 who had to write the summary. With my previous method, I usually had about 1/3 of the class who wouldn't do the reading, so those numbers are much better. I am hoping that the number of students who don't do the reading will decrease over the next week, because the kids who had to write the summaries were pretty miserable when they realized I was serious. ("Yes, you really have to do this." "Yes, it really has to be a page." "Yes, you will not leave until you give it to me.")

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Ease of use: You have to have some time built-in in order to be able to check the quizzes right away and determine which students need to write the summaries. I just have my TA's check them quickly while I am explaining the next activity. Then, I wrote the names of the students who failed the quizzes on the white board and told them they needed to write the summary instead of doing the next activity. Aside from making sure the timing worked out, it was really easy.
Would I use this again: Yes; I am going to continue to do this throughout our unit. If it goes well, it may become my go-to method for what I do every time I assign reading for homework.
Downsides: As I mentioned above, it means the students who write the summary miss whatever you are doing in class, but honestly, they wouldn't have gotten much out of what we were doing in class since they hadn't done the reading.
Applications: Holding students accountable for homework assignments.

Solution #2: Creating a "Glossary" for Jim's Slang

With the strategy above, I got my students to read for homework. Now I needed to make sure they could understand what they were reading when we weren't reading together in class. While I was putting my son to sleep on Wednesday night, it hit me. If I gave them a glossary for Jim's slang, then they would be able to reference it while reading in order to help the understand what Jim was saying. Then I thought, "Wait a second... if I just give them a glossary, half of them won't even look at them, and it won't really help them to be able to figure out what they're reading when they come across words that aren't on the glossary... I need to make them make the glossary! I need to make them do the work!" Then I fell asleep, since it was Wednesday night and putting my son to sleep involves me holding his hand and falling asleep on the floor next to his crib. 

The next morning before school, I created this worksheet, which I copied and gave to my students on Friday. (The reading they had to do on Thursday was a chapter in which Huck and Jim weren't together, so I didn't have to worry about them not having the glossary before Friday.) Here is an example from the worksheet:

1. “No, sah - nuffn else”

1. sah = sir
2. nuffn = nothing

Translation of line: No, sir - nothing else.

I included the line in addition to the words I wanted them to translate, so the students would be able to use the context clues in order to help them translate what Jim was saying. I figured this would be a good idea because it would help them be able to dissect the language on their own later on in the text.

I gave the students the worksheet after their vocabulary quiz on Friday, and they worked on it in their table groups, with a partner, or individually. Overall, they seemed to get it. Even my ELLs were successful with it. Now, the test is to see if they actually use it. (But, I suppose, even if they don't use it, they've done the worksheet, which has helped to build their skills at using context clues to understand the words that aren't written in standard English.)

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Ease of use: Really easy. In the future, I think I will give my students this worksheet before we even start reading the book.
Would I use this again: Yes. See above.
Downsides: None.
Applications: Helping students become independent readers. :)
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Stay tuned for next week... I am going to attempt to get my ELD 2 students to write a precis!

Week 3: Giving Students Choice in Reading and Hooking Kids into Huck Finn

This past week, I started Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in my English 11 classes. Now, I know that there are two camps when it comes to Huck Finn, and I must admit that I am in the camp that LOVES Huck Finn. 

I first read the book when I was in third grade and was going through a phase in which I had to read all the "old" books on my bookshelves that my parents had read when they were little. Even though I didn't entirely understand it at the time, I enjoyed the adventure of a young boy being able to travel down the Mississippi River without a care in the world. (Like I said, I didn't really understand it at the time.)

When I was in 10th grade, I had to read the book again in my English class. It was actually the first book we read that year, and I was excited because I'd already read it and knew I liked it. I will be completely honest: if I hadn't already read and liked the book, I probably would have hated it as a result of reading it in 10th grade. Why? My teacher (we will call her "Mrs. F") didn't really do anything to make it interesting, and she never called on me when she asked for volunteers to read. I quickly became disengaged in class and read to myself, instead of following along with her monotone voice or the other students she picked to read. What's more is that when Mrs. F handed back our essays on the book, she told us that she'd graded them really "hard" and that we should be happy if we got a "B". We were Honor's students, so this worried us, and we all prepared ourselves for the worst. She wandered up and down the aisles of the classroom, handing back our papers; when she got to me, she looked at my grade and, before giving me my paper, said, "Writing's not your best thing, is it?" I was shocked. I managed some retort along the lines of, "Well, I just don't like to write about what people tell me to write about," as I grabbed the paper from her. When I looked at my grade, I was left dumbfounded. I had gotten an 80% - a B- ... As I watched her shuffle on toward her next victim, I shot laser beams through her back. She had just told us to be happy with a B, implying that not many students earned B's, and then she insulted my writing even though she'd given me a B-. What??? As I said, if I hadn't already liked Huck Finn, I'm sure I would've hated it after this experience.

This event (coupled with another similar experience I had in 8th grade) paved the road ahead of me, leading me to become an English teacher. I loved reading, but I hated my 10th grade English class. In deciding to become an English teacher, I thought to myself, "I don't want my students to have to go through what I went through. I want them to love English." Now that I have been an English teacher for 7 years, this is still what drives me. I have succeeded with some students, but I always feel the need to do more. (I know it is impossible for me to make every student love English, but I can try, can't I?)

The first unit of the year was The Crucible, a book I'd read in the same 10th grade class and hated. I had shied away from it in the past for this very reason. However, I wanted to challenge myself this year. I re-read the book over the summer, and I actually liked it! I found myself getting wrapped up in Abigail's lies and rooting for John Proctor to expose her for what she really was. If you did an informal poll of my students to see how many of them liked The Crucible, most of them would tell you that they hated it. Even though most of them understood what was going on, I still feel that, as an English teacher, I failed.

Now, I've had quite a bit of success with Huck Finn in the past, but I still usually wind up with about a 50-50 split of lovers and haters. My goal this year was to try to get more of the students to love it, because, as we all know, they are more willing to learn and to take risks if it is with subject matter that they are actually interested in.

In the two weeks leading up to our unit on Huck Finn, I stumbled across two blogs that helped me solidify my plans for the unit. The first blog was "How do you keep students engaged with a class novel?" by Jen Roberts. In this blog, Roberts explains how she tricks her students into reading The Great Gatsby on their own. She explains that she starts out by reading in class and making sure the students really understand what's going on. Once she has them hooked into the story, she starts assigning reading for homework. I have done this in the past with Huck Finn, but I definitely did not do this with The Crucible. I tend to fluctuate between: "But they won't read if I assign it for homework!" and "But they need to read outside of class!" Roberts' argument was: "They won't read if I assign it for homework IF they don't like it. If they are already invested, then they will read." When I was teaching The Crucible, I was in the "But they need to read outside of class!" phase, so I pushed them through the book instead of drawing them into the book. I decided to go back to how I used to do things with Huck Finn and begin by reading together in class.

The other blog I came across was "Start a Reading Revolution: Flip Your Class With Blogs" by Brian Sztabnik. While I am not quite ready to employ all of his methods in his "flipped" classroom (though I may be later in the year), what I decided to try was the idea of choice and allowing students to pick an active reading strategy which works best for them. Sztabnik explains that his students "must read actively, but get to choose their method: index cards, post-it flags, bullet points in their notebooks, etc." Usually, I force my students to take Cornell Notes while they read. Do I really believe that taking Cornell Notes is the best method of active reading? No. Actually, I, myself, prefer to highlight and write in my book. So why do I use Cornell Notes? Honestly... because my AVID students need Cornell Notes. Horrible. I know. Furthermore, I've had a lot of frustration with asking my students to take notes while they read because it doesn't actually force them to read the book - they can very easily go to SparkNotes, read the summary of the assigned chapter, and take their notes from there (despite the fact that I warn them not to do this and catch them when they do (see last week's post)). Therefore, I decided, "What the heck? My AVID kids can still take Cornell Notes, and everybody else can do what works best for them."

When I introduced this to my class, I told them they could take notes, they could use sticky notes, they could use note cards, they could buy their books (gasp!) and highlight and write in them, or they could download an e-copy of the book for free to highlight and take notes on. I also told them that if they had some other method, that was fine, too; they just needed to be doing something. One of my students said, "But I read best by doing nothing." To which I replied, "That's the problem. You need to do something." I am still making the students who aren't taking notes in their notebooks write a one-sentence-summary of each chapter in their notebook, just so I can give everybody points for whatever they're doing. A girl asked if she could just write the summary at the end of each chapter; I told her the point was to have her reading actively, and if she just writes something at the end, then there is no guarantee that she is stopping to think and reflect while she's actually reading.

The results? Well, we are only a week in, but so far, my students seem to be enjoying the book. When we read the first couple of chapters together, they laughed when Huck offered the gang Miss Watson to kill, and I thought, "I've got them!" I think I am going to give it a few more days before I actually start assigning chapters for homework. Like Jen Roberts, I want it to seem accidental; I want to be in the middle of the chapter, so they want to go home and finish it on their own. Will I be able to pull it off? Only time will tell...
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Ease of use: This is extremely easy to implement. You just have to be willing to go slow at the beginning. You need to be okay with the fact that you will spend an entire week (or more) reading about two chapters in class every day.
Would I use this again: I'm stuck with it right now. When I am done with the unit, we will see, but so far, I like it.
Downsides: Grading is going to be tricky. I told the kids I am going to have to be able to see what they're doing, but that means I am going to actually have to look through their books if they are using sticky notes. I don't have all of that figured out yet, but that's okay. Also, we definitely won't have time to read the entire book in class. I am going to need to figure out the sweet spot in terms of how much reading to assign for homework once I get to that point. I am a little worried about Veterans Day and Thanksgiving, but hopefully, I will have the kids completely wrapped up in the story by then... We'll see...
Applications: Any novel unit. Or, if you go with the bigger idea of "choice", any lesson, ever.

So It Begins...

As a teacher, I make a lot of mistakes. I make little mistakes that nobody notices. I make big mistakes that I have to flounder through and play off. When I make these mistakes in front of my students, I try to admit to them, in order to model that it is ok to mess up, that is is impossible to do everything right all the time, and that the important thing is to learn from those mistakes and move on. 

Yesterday, I made a big mistake. I insulted a student. And it wasn’t just a sly, underhanded remark that nobody heard; it was a witty interjection that half (if not more) of the class caught and chuckled at. 

My students in English 11 have been working on writing editorials and letters to the editor, with partners. The idea is for them to work on incorporating the opposing viewpoint and addressing the opposing viewpoint with a counterargument in order to strengthen their overall argument. They are all working on Google Docs, and in class on Monday, I had them share their essays with me, so I would be able to monitor their progress.

When I went through the essays on Monday night, I was not surprised by the fact that many of the students had little to nothing done, despite the fact that they had had the entire class period to work that day (not to mention time on Friday and over the weekend). One of the students with very little done was Burt*, who I also have in my zero period online English class because he is making up English 9. Burt is an extremely bright student with a passion for drama, but, when it comes to actually getting his work done in class, Burt has a lot of room for improvement. I’ve spoken to him in the past about this, and I always get the same story - “You don’t need to worry about me, Ms. Lewis. I’ll get it done.” And then I wait. And wait. And wait.

In class on Wednesday, the students were sharing their essays with their partners via Google Docs. They were each on ChromeBooks, and they were supposed to be reading their partner’s essay and commenting on it. As I was looking over another student’s work, I heard a girl say, “Burt, where are you going?” in reference to where he was navigating on his screen. Before I even had time to think and stop myself, “Nowhere” slipped out of my mouth. I had just said Burt was going nowhere, and I had said it out loud, and a lot of students heard me and laughed. 

I registered what I said, but, as Burt is usually game for such banter, I didn’t feel too guilty about it. I also didn’t apologize right away, which was an even bigger mistake than saying it in the first place. I had just modeled to my students that it was okay to bully Burt in my classroom. Big mistake. 

At the end of the period, when I was back at my desk, I saw that Burt had replied to a comment I’d left on his essay the night before. The comment read, “The comment you made actually really hurt.” BIG MISTAKE.

I looked up in time to see Burt slipping out the door, with a dejected look on his face. The usually confident young man had turned into a sullen teenager because of something I had said! Me! The teacher who vowed to never say anything mean to her students! What had I done? 

When I got home after school, I stumbled across a phenomenal blog written by Grant Wiggins about a veteran teacher who shadowed 2 students for 2 days. One of the takeaways from the experience was that, if the teacher could go back in time, she would have made her classroom a sarcasm-free zone. I read this and immediately knew what I had to do. I emailed Burt an apology explaining my comment and why I was worried about him; I also told him that I would attempt to no longer say anything mean to or about my students, and I wanted him to hold me accountable to that. 

So, this is one of my new things for this week. 

I’ve started this blog as an experiment. Every week, I am going to try to do at least one new thing in the classroom. Not something that nobody has ever done before - that would be ridiculous - but something new for me and my students. Sometimes, I will focus on strategies; other times, I will focus on technology; other times, I will focus on more personal goals.

At the end of each week, I will blog about how my new thing went for that week - what went well, what went horribly, what I can improve upon, what I will do differently next time, etc. I am hoping that I will be able to keep my teaching dynamic and engaging, but I am also hoping that you will be able to learn something from this as well. Since I will be trying out all kinds of different things and telling you what works and doesn’t work, I hope that you will be able to use my experiences to help guide the decisions you make in your own classrooms. 

I would also like this blog to serve as a dialogue between educators around the country (and possibly the world). If you have questions for me, please ask! If there is something you aren’t sure about, but you’d like me to try, let me know. I will do my best to incorporate your suggestions into my teaching (within reason, of course - I am an English and English Language Development teacher, so I won’t take off-the-wall suggestions that aren’t applicable to my subject area).

*student's name changed for privacy