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.

Week 12: Some Technological Mishaps with Google Forms and Peardeck

So far with this blog, I've mostly written about things that have gone well, but now I think it is time to share some of the things that have caused me and my students problems, especially since I ran into a couple of them this past week.

Mistakes with Google Forms

As you know, I am pretty much in love with Google Forms because you can just do so much with it! However, as I am only human, our relationship has not been without some road bumps. At the end of last week, I had my students complete a form telling me who they wanted to work with for our new independent reading program. I had linked the form to the end of another form, and I made sure that I copied the correct link for each period since I had made the mistake of copying the wrong link in the past. When my students completed both forms in class on Friday, they were able to do so without any problems. After class, I patted myself on the back for not making any stupid mistakes with the forms.

And then, that afternoon, I opened up the students' responses to try to put them in groups...

That's when I realized my rather glaring mistake - in the original version of the form, I had the students tell me who they wanted to work with, but I forgot to include a box for them to write their names and check the box to have the form automatically collect their username. If I had done at least one of these two things, then I would've been okay, but as it was, I could see the students' answers for who they wanted to work with, but I had no idea who wrote down whose name. So much for being able to put them in groups over the weekend. 

"Not a problem," I thought. "I will just fix the form and have them fill it out again." So that's just what I did. I put the link back up on Google Classroom, and since I had to be out on Tuesday and Wednesday because I had to have a minor surgery on Tuesday morning, I emailed my substitute instructions on what I needed the kids to do. I made it clear that I wanted them to get this done in class, because I wanted to look at the form on Wednesday afternoon, so I would have the groups ready to go when I came back to school on Thursday. 

And then, that afternoon, I opened up the students' responses to try to put them in groups...

And this time it was even worse than before! The spreadsheet with the responses was blank! The kids hadn't completed the form. I was confused. I went back to Google Classroom to double-check I had in fact posted the link, and I discovered, of course, that I had posted the link to the first "Independent Reading" form instead of the second "Partners" form. Sigh... But then I realized that that shouldn't have mattered, because if the students had filled out the first form, they would have been given the link to the second form. I couldn't figure it out. I decided I would just try it a third time when I was back on Thursday.

On Thursday, I made double-triple-checked that I posted the correct link. I had the students in first period complete the form. Then second period rolled around, and I had those kids fill out the form as well. Since there were some issues with Google Drive and logging into the Chromebooks during second period, I decided to check the responses to make sure that everything was working.

I opened up the spreadsheet with the responses, and it was still blank! Or so I thought... At first, I was extremely confused. Google Forms had never failed me like this before. What was going on? How could this be happening when I needed it most? (Okay... in all honesty, I could have given the kids pieces of paper to write names down on, but I had to figure this out and make it work! I'd already invested too much time into this relationship to just throw in the towel when things got tough...) 

And then I happened to scroll down... and there they were! All of my students' responses - not just from Thursday, but from Wednesday as well! I realized that I had deleted the contents of the earlier rows when I forgot to have the students include their names; however, I didn't delete the rows themselves. Therefore, when my students filled in the form again on Wednesday, Google (correctly) recognized that this was the 30-something-ith person to fill out the form, and therefore, put their response in the corresponding row. Did I admit this to my students! No. I just told them it was working now. What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. 

Moral of the story: make sure you always copy and paste the correct link for the form you want to send, and make sure that, if you need to delete information from the responses, that you delete the actual rows themselves instead of just the contents of the cells. 

Waste of Time with Peardeck

When I first tried Peardeck way back in Week 1 of this blog, I loved everything about it - the fact that it could take over students' screens, so they could follow along with a presentation; the fact that it was like an interactive Google Slides; the fact that I could use it to ask questions on the spot. And when I first used it with my students, they thought it was just as cool as I did. Honestly, though, I hadn't used it since, so I decided it was time to try it out again. 

As I mentioned, I was out this week until Thursday, so, once again, I was unable to make any copies. (I know... I don't know what it is with me and my inability to plan enough ahead to get my copies made...) We are just starting a new unit on The Awakening. In the past, I have just made the kids take notes on some background information on Kate Chopin and the novel before launching into the text itself. As you can imagine, this method is not the best for "hooking" the students into the text before we start reading. I knew I needed to do something differently this time, but, since I hadn't been able to plan it out in advance and make any copies, my options were somewhat limited. 

I decided to make an anticipation guide. (If you are unfamiliar with what an anticipation guide is, you can find some pretty good explanations here and here.) Usually, when I do an anticipation guide, I like to pair it with the activity "Take Sides," in which I actually have the students get up and move to one side of the classroom or the other depending on their stance on the statements on the guide. This time, I decided to use Peardeck to present the statements and have the students do a virtual "Take Sides" through the use of Peardeck's "Ask a Quick Question" capability. 

In creating the Peardeck, I looked up quotes on gender roles and chose ten that I liked. I put one quote on each slide. That was it, since the rest would be done "in the moment" with my classes. 

In first period, I began as I had planned. I had each student get a Chromebook and join the Peardeck presentation. I pulled up the first quote by Oscar Wilde: “Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.” I read the quote out loud to the students, clicked on "Ask a Quick Question," and selected "Agree / Disagree." 

On the students screens, they were asked to drag a dot to one side of the screen if they agreed and to the other side of the screen if they disagreed. Then, I pulled up the students' responses. They quickly realized that we could see their dots move on the projector, so they had some fun moving their dots around before I locked their responses. The problem was that everybody's dot was just that - a dot; they were completely anonymous, and it was difficult to tell exactly how many were on each side. I called on a few people to share how they felt about the quote, but the majority of the class stayed quiet and hid in the anonymity of the dots up on the screen. In the remaining 10 minutes of class, we only got through half of the quotes. 

When second period rolled around, I knew I didn't want to do the activity the same way I had done it with first period. For the sake of time, I just had the students log in (since they were already on the Chromebooks anyway), and I clicked through the quotes and had them write down whether they agreed or disagreed. We did not discuss any of them, because I told the students we would do that the next day. We got through all ten quotes, and the kids had time to put their Chromebooks away before the bell rang. 

On Friday, I decided to finish up the quotes with first period the same way I had started with second period. Instead of having the students get their Chromebooks to follow along with the presentation, I just clicked through and had them write down whether they agreed or disagreed. Then, I went back to my old method of "Take Sides." I went to quote #5 where we had left off, and I asked the students to get up and move to the left side of the classroom if they agreed and the right side of the classroom if they disagreed. Then, we talked. This worked a million times better than using Peardeck for the same activity because we could actually see which students agreed and disagreed, which facilitated more of a discussion, because we didn't just have the same kids sharing their opinions on each quote. Plus, it got the students up and moving around, which is always a good thing. I did the activity the same way with second period, and it went extremely well. After the kids sat down, I asked them why they thought I had them do the activity, and they eventually came up with, "Because that's what the book's going to be about." Yep. They got it, and they were already engaged with the content. 

Courtesy of goodreads, the quotes I chose to use for the anticipation guide were:

1. “Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.” ― Oscar Wilde
2. “We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” ― Gloria Steinem
3. “A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man.” ― Charles Dickens
4. “The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.” ― Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume
5. “My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
6. “When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood.” ― M.E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight
7. “I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.” ― Madonna
8. “A wife should always be few feet behind her husband. If he is an MA you should be a BA.If he is 5'4'tall you shouldn't be more than 5'3'tall. If he is earning five hundred rupees you should never earn more than four hundred and ninety nine rupees.That's the only rule to follow if you want a happy marriage...No partnership can ever be equal.It will always be unequal, but take care it is unequal in favor of the husband. If the scales tilt in your favor, God help you, both of you.” ― Shashi Deshpande
9. “A part of a healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are NOT strengthening her posocial sense, you are damaging it-and the first person she will stop protecting is herself.” ― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us
10. “Playing roles in any relationship is false and will inevitably lead to the relationship's collapse. Noone can be any one thing all the time.” ― Portia de Rossi, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

Moral of the story: Sometimes, the old way is the best way. The activity took way longer than I wanted it to when I tried to do it through Peardeck, and, to top it off, it didn't engage the students. I could see using Peardeck for an activity like this if you teach an online class; in that scenario, it would work really well. However, in a face-to-face class, I much prefer the traditional "Take Sides" activity because it gets the kids up, out of their seats, and situates them in the classroom in a way which facilitates discussion and debate. 

Week 11: A Paperless Week with Google Classroom and Google Drive

This week, I was extremely thankful for technology, because, due to unforeseen circumstances which lead me to being in and out of doctor's offices every day either before or after school (a story worthy of its own blog entirely), I had very little time outside of class to do very much planning and absolutely no time to submit papers for copies. Luckily, my 11th graders were wrapping up the project on the different American literary movements that they started last week. I had already planned on having them share their presentations digitally with each other, as opposed to giving a live presentation to the class, but I knew that I needed to create something in order to hold them accountable. The projects were due on Tuesday, so on Monday, I began making a note-taking guide that the students would fill out as they went through each presentation. I created a chart with rows for each of the movements and columns with the questions I wanted the students to answer. With the requirements for the project open in another window, I began creating the questions. Those requirements were:

• The name of your literary movement (5 pts)

• The dates of your literary movement (5 pts)
• Any important historical events that influenced your literary movement and an explanation of how they influenced your literary movement (10 pts)
• The defining characteristics of your literary movement (10 pts)
• The names and brief biographies of the most important and well-known American authors of your literary movement (10 pts)
• An example of at least one text (a poem, short story, or excerpt from a longer text) from your movement, with annotations pointing out the characteristics of the literary movement (20 pts)
• Pictures and/or any other relevant information (10 pts)
• Ex. Artists and musicians who were also part of the movement; pictures and paintings that represent the movement; texts we’ve read in this class (or you’ve read in other classes) that are part of the movement; etc.
• In-text citations for anything you quote or summarize (15 pts)
• A works cited at the end including every website you referenced while conducting your research (15 pts)

My questions started out quite basic:

• When did this movement take place?
• What is one historical event that influenced this movement?
• Who is one famous author from the time period?

I stopped there. I wasn't happy. Essentially, I was just asking my students to copy down information, but I wanted them to think. So I did a little thinking of my own, and then went back to work. I wound up with this note-taking guide, including these questions:

• When did this movement take place?
• What is one historical event that influenced this movement? How/why did it influence this movement?
• Which of the famous authors from this time period stands out the most to you? Why?
• How is the literature from this movement either similar or different from the literature in your movement?

In creating these new questions, I ensured that my students would be forced to actually think about the information they were reading because the questions cover all steps of Bloom's taxonomy. Here's how:

• When did this movement take place? 
• This is level 1 on Bloom's taxonomy, "Knowledge," because the students simply have to find the information the the presentation and copy it down. They aren't doing anything with it.
• Why include a question like this at all? Some teachers like to just jump into the higher-level thinking, but I like to guide my students there. I usually find that by starting with an "easy" question and gradually building the difficulty, the students are more likely to complete an assignment. If I just immediately started with a "hard" question, some of the students would just give up and not bother doing the assignment at all.
• What is one historical event that influenced this movement? How/why did it influence this movement? 
• This is level 2 on Bloom's taxonomy, "Comprehension," because the students should be able to find all of this information in the presentations, but they need to understand it in order to complete the box in the note-taking guide.
• Which of the famous authors from this time period stands out the most to you? Why? 
• The first part of this question is level 3, "Analysis," because the students are reading through the information and analyzing the information and determining which author stands out the most. The second part of the question - the "Why?" - is level 5, "Evaluation," because students are being asked to explain and support their opinion.
• How is the literature from this movement either similar or different from the literature in your movement? 
• This question is level 4, "Synthesis," because students are asked to either compare or contrast two of the movements.

The point is that I created a basic graphic organizer which asks the students to do more than just copy down information. A lot of time handouts and worksheets get a bad rap because some teachers argue that they are all just "kill and drill" and don't require students to think at all. However, it really depends on what the worksheet is asking the students to do. Could I have made this worksheet completely pointless and mind-numbing for my students? Yes, and I almost did. But instead, I created a worksheet that forced the students to think on multiple levels multiple times. (Was it still mind-numbing for some of my students? Probably, but not in the same way.)

Now, I know what you're thinking. "You said this was a paperless week! Why are you making worksheets???" I made this worksheet because I wanted to take advantage of a particular feature in Google Classroom which automatically creates a new copy for each student who opens the document and links it back to classroom. This allows the students to start typing immediately in the document, without having to "Make a copy," AND it puts a "Turn in" button in the top right-hand corner of their document, right next to where it says "Comments" and "Share." All the students have to do is type in the information and then click "Turn in" - they don't have to worry about changing the sharing options, getting the shareable link, or anything like that. For students who don't always remember to do all the steps involved with sharing a document with their teacher, this is wonderful! Also, once the students turn in the assignment, it becomes "view only" on their end, meaning they can't make changes after submitting the assignment. In the past with Google Docs, I always wondered when the students would figure out that they didn't really have to be done with an assignment before they turned it in since they were always able to go in and edit it after sending me the link or turning it in through Edmodo; now, they don't have that option.

The students finished reviewing the other groups' projects on Wednesday. On Thursday, I introduced www.turnitin.com to my English 11 classes, since I hadn't done so yet, and I had my students write a one-paragraph comparison of their literary movement to one of the other movements of their choice. I had already planned on doing this, which was the reason for the last question on my note-taking guide; I am a big believer in backward-mapping. The reason I had already planned on having them write this one paragraph was because I know that we are going to start a unit on The Awakening in the next week or two, and at the end of The Awakening, I like to have my students write a comparative analysis on the novel and either the short story "The Feather Pillow" by Horacio Quiroga or "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson. (On a total side-note: another reason why I love Google - because I just accidentally closed this tab, and when I opened it back up, Blogger had automatically saved my work. Love.) Why do I have my students write a comparative analysis? Common Core doesn't say our students should be writing comparative analyses! Well... as I pointed out earlier, asking students to compare and contrast is asking them to think critically about more than one subject. It helps students make connections... (Hmmm... I'm getting an idea for something new... you can expect to read about it in probably about a month or two...) Plus, the essays my students turn out on these topics are usually really good! I don't know... there's something about a person who has everything and yet has nothing at the same time that they can connect to and are drawn to. Or they just wind up really hating Edna and like to tell me why.

Anyway, after the writing on Thursday, that left me with Friday. We had just wrapped up what we were doing, and I didn't want to start the new unit the Friday right before a holiday weekend; therefore, I decided to take the opportunity to introduce our new reading program. Now, I will be perfectly honest - I had every intention of not going digital on Friday, but, as I mentioned earlier, I found myself planning on Thursday night without any copies ready to go for Friday morning. "No problem..." I thought, "I'll just walk them through the information with a Google Slides presentation..." No. I quickly realized that that was a terrible idea because what student wants to be talked at on the Friday before a holiday weekend (or ever, for that matter)? No. No Google Slides. I knew I could use Peardeck to do whatever I wanted with Google Slides, but I didn't really like that idea for this. Instead, I decided to make a couple of linked forms to present the information.

The first form included a letter I wrote to my students explaining the new program and asked them to check a box stating: "I have read and understand the independent reading assignment." After students completed this form, they were automatically given the link to the next form. However, in between both forms, I asked them to stop while I explained the program in more detail and answered some of their questions.

I developed the program based on the article I shared last week - "Seven ways schools kill the love of reading in kids - and 4 principles to help restore it." Basically, I wanted to encourage my students to read by imposing as few restrictions on them as possible and creating a culture in which independent reading is a thing everyone does and talks about in the classroom.

First, I decided that I could not tell my students they had to read for a certain amount of time or read a certain number of pages every day. As Alfie Kohn explains, when teachers do this, students will often set a timer, read for that much time, and then stop. Furthermore, when I started thinking about it, if I am able to help my students find books that they really want to read, I don't think there is any way that they can only read for 5 minutes a night; anyone who has ever found a really good book knows that this is true.

Instead of telling my students how much to read, I simply told them that I want them to read every night. Am I going to hold them strictly accountable to this? No, because that, again, would make the reading seem like a chore. Therefore, I developed a reading log that I am going to let my students use as they best see fit - they can fill it out daily or weekly - and I will check for a parent signature at the end of each week. Will my students be able to "fake it?" Yes. I'm sure they will, which is why I am not the only one who is going to be holding them accountable.

As I mentioned, I will involve their parents. I am going to send a letter home next week informing parents of the new program. Also, I am going to have students meet with a partner every Friday to discuss what they've been reading. (The purpose of the second form was for students to tell me who they want to work with and what types of books they enjoy reading.) On Fridays, a few students will also share out with the entire class. I told students that they will be able to share with the class on a voluntary basis, but I expect each person in the class to volunteer at least once throughout the semester. Furthermore, I told them that I will be participating in the program with them, because, as a teacher, I often get so involved in my work that I don't make time for my own reading (unless you count reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to a 2-year-old a million times a day); just as they will, I will share with them what I'm reading and why I'm excited about it. I am hoping that by including these opportunities to talk about what we're reading, that the students who aren't as enthusiastic about the program will start to get hooked and drawn in by the other students. We will see. As I wrote at the end of the letter to the kids, "This could be the most awesome thing we do all year, but it could also be a horrible, terrible, failure. It is really all up to you. Please make it awesome."

Week 10: Google Classroom, Turnitin, and Creating a Democracy by Relinquishing Control (Well... Kind of...)

When I headed into our two-week winter vacation, I had all kinds of noble ideas about quickly finishing all of my grading for the previous semester and solidifying my plans for the new semester. However, since "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry," I spent quite a few days napping on my couch when I should have been grading, which meant I did not finish grading until grades were due this past Tuesday, and I barely had time to plan for this week, much less the entire semester.

As the start of the semester approached, and I realized it was inevitable that I would have to go back to work, I decided I should probably figure out what my students would be doing once we got back. I already had some ideas floating around in my head - I wanted to switch us over from Edmodo to Google Classroom; I wanted to figure out how to implement an independent reading program; I wanted to start with a project because I knew I couldn't count on my kids bringing their literature books with them on the first day back, but I also didn't want to do something that would take too long because I want to get into our unit on The Awakening...

Google Classroom

To be perfectly honest, I was ambivalent about Google Classroom when it was first launched. I've been using Edmodo for the past few years, and I've been pretty happy with it. However, our school has jumped on the GAFE bandwagon, and many of the other teachers who used Edmodo switched to Google Classroom as soon as it came out; I felt as thought I was keeping myself behind by not making the switch with my classes. Since I hate to make big changes in the middle of a semester, I decided to make the change at the start of second semester. I'm sure my students would have actually been perfectly fine if we switched sooner, but it just made more sense in my mind to switch now instead of earlier in the year. 

Back in October or November, I attended a strategy session at my school where I learned the ins and outs of Classroom. Usually, I prefer to figure things out on my own, but since the session was being offered, I figured, "Why not?" 

During the session, I had the opportunity to set up Classroom for one of my classes and practice assigning an assignment through Classroom. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that the entire process only took a few minutes. I also really like that Classroom is completely integrated with the rest of Google Drive - it creates a folder for you right in your drive, and it gives you the option of creating a new copy of an assignment for each student who opens it. Both of those components are a step up from Edmodo - no longer would I have to juggle two websites to keep track of student work nor would my students have to remember to make a copy of an assignment if they wanted to type straight into it. 

When I launched Classroom with my students, it only took a matter of 5 or 10 minutes to get all students signed up. I also realized that my one student who always had trouble logging into Edmodo (despite the fact that I would reset his password and watch him log in with the new password) would not have to remember a second username or password because, since we are working on Chromebooks, he log into his GAFE account when he logs into the Chromebook. 

I have only used Classroom to a limited extent this week, so I'm sure as time goes on, I will find more that I like and don't like about the system. But, for now, I'm happy.

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Ease of use: If you and your students already have Google accounts, then setting up and using Google Classroom is extremely easy. If you don't have Google accounts, you will need to create them in order to be able to use Classroom, but you should do that anyway because then you will be able to use all of Google Drive.
Would I use this again: Yes.
Downsides: One of the aspects I liked about Edmodo was that I could put students in small groups within my class, and then I could assign different assignments to the different groups. As far as I know, this isn't possible right now with Google Classroom; however, knowing Google, it is quite possible that this will be something we see in Classroom in the not-too-distant future.
Applications: Classroom is a great tool to manage your class website. It is easy to assign and organize work, and you don't have to worry about doing any of the formatting in order to make it look "nice." I could see it used in every subject area in just about every grade.
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Turnitin

Recently (after years of trying to make it happen), our school purchased www.turnitin.com, a plagiarism checking website. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I am big on trying to prevent plagiarism in my classes, so I was thrilled when I found out we (finally) got Turnitin. I really like the fact that students get to see the report right after they turn in an assignment, because, if they plagiarized, they know immediately that they will get caught, which means I have less of a confrontation on my hands later on down the road. Also, I think the fact that they get the reports will help to deter them from plagiarizing in the first place because they know that I am going to see those reports as well, and they want to make sure they don't come back indicating that the assignment was plagiarized. 

I am planning on using Turnitin with all of my classes, but I started by setting it up for my online classes since I want them to submit all of their written assignments through Turnitin. Creating a class was relatively easy, as was loading in an assignment. However, since I was setting up my online classes, I had to load in all of the written assignments for the entire semester, which wound up taking close to an hour for each of the four classes. But... now that's done, and I won't have to create a single assignment for any of those classes for the rest of the semester. 

Adding students to the class proved a little more difficult because I couldn't remember what I had set the class passwords as. (I didn't write the passwords down because I thought that Turnitin would let me see that information later, but it didn't; it only shows you the class code.) However, it allows you to manually enter students, and since I only had to put a few students in each class at a time, this wasn't a big deal. (I later remembered the passwords.) Most of my students had no problem logging in whatsoever, so I think that the few students who did have problems just didn't read through the directions in the confirmation email they received and missed a step in trying to create an account. 

I had my students submit a practice assignment first, in which I just had them introduce themselves and explain why they are taking the class. I had them do this in class, because I wanted to make sure that they knew how to submit through Turnitin. They were all able to do so without any problems. 

I assumed that when they turned in an assignment, I would receive an email notification. Unfortunately, after some digging and submitting a help request to Turnitin, it turns out that this isn't a capability of the site. While this wouldn't be an issue for a normal class because all of your students would turn in an assignment at the same time, this is a huge issue for an online class in which the students are allowed to work at their own pace. For these classes, the assignments have recommended due dates, but the students do not have to turn them in at this time; they just have to finish all the coursework by the end of the semester. Therefore, I wind up getting assignments at random times. Also, I have the course set up so that the students cannot progress to the next activity until they have turned in their writing assignment because, in the past, students would try to skip the writing assignments. Due to this, I need to know when a student has submitted something, so I can go into Apex and unlock the next assignment. What this all means is that my students now have to turn in an assignment with Turnitin and email me to let me know that they've turned in the assignment. Is this a huge inconvenience? No, but it seems like a basic function that Turnitin should have.

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Ease of use: As I mentioned, setting up a class and loading an assignment was extremely easy. I haven't yet tried to load a rubric into Turnitin, but I will try that sometime in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully that will be easy as well, because I look forward to the fact that I won't have to make copies of my rubrics for all of my students.
Would I use this again: Yes. We are just getting going.
Downsides: The biggest downside (and the reason we didn't have it until now) is that you have to pay for it. I don't really know what our wonderful department chair said this year that finally tipped the scales and convinced our principal to spend the money and purchase the program. If you don't have Turnitin at your school, Google is just as effective at catching plagiarism; it is just more time consuming on the teacher's part because you have to copy and paste and look through the matches yourself.
Applications: I really think that all of the departments on our campus should use Turnitin for any written assignment they assign. This would help reinforce the idea that plagiarism, in any form, is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. It also looks like you can use Turnitin for collaborative activities, which seems cool, but I haven't looked into that very much yet (especially since you can collaborate so easily in Google Drive).
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Creating a Democracy by Relinquishing Control

About a month ago, I came across an article from the Washington Post titled, "Seven ways schools kill the love of reading in kids - and 4 principles to help restore it," by Valerie Strauss, which is actually a re-printing of an article by Alfie Kohn from the Fall 2010 issue of the English Journal. I must have read the article when it was originally published in the English Journal, but, for some reason, when I re-read it now - now that we are entrenched in the Common Core, now that I am a participant in professional development with the CSUSM Writing Project, now that I have been teaching for 4 more years than I had been when I first read it - it struck a deeper chord. 

Oddly enough, the part the stuck with me the most wasn't about reading; it was about creating a democracy in the classroom. Unfortunately, I didn't bookmark the article after I first read it, but this idea resonated in my mind: If you want to create a true democracy, you can't simply have students vote and go with "majority rules"; you need the students to discuss and compromise and come to a consensus together.

As luck would have it, this weekend I happened across the same article (which is why I was able to give you the title and the link above). Here is the way Kohn originally put this idea: "Remember that group decision making doesn't require voting, which is basically just adversarial majoritarianism. Help them to acquire the skills and disposition to reach for a deeper kind of democracy, one in which compromises are generated and consensus is reached."

Well... I decided to start small and to try it out with the first project I was assigning my English 11 classes. Instead of setting a due date for the project, when I introduced the project to my students, I told them that the due date was flexible and that we would determine an appropriate due date together. I told them I wanted to see them working in class and making use of their time wisely. What I didn't want to have happen was for me to set a due date, for them to think they had plenty of time, and for them to then waste a lot of time in class, only to have to cram at the end to get everything done. I told them that if I saw them not working, I would assume they were almost done, in which case the project could be due the next day.

I let them work for two days before bringing up the discussion about the due date again. At this point, the groups were working really well, but I could see they still had quite a bit of information to gather. It was a Wednesday, and I didn't think they could have the project done before the following week. One of the students first suggested having it due on Tuesday, an idea which I liked because it gave them one more day in class the following week to finalize everything. However, then another student suggested Wednesday, which everyone in the class seemed to like and go along with.

What I should have done, now that I'm thinking about it, was made the students engage in a short discussion about which day was better - Tuesday or Wednesday. As it was, Wednesday was mentioned, nobody said they were opposed to Wednesday, and so we went with Wednesday.

However, by Friday of last week, it was clear that my students didn't need all the time they had, and they were starting to slack off in class. After looking through their projects Friday, I told them that I thought we could move the date up to Tuesday since most groups were almost done. Again, nobody disagreed, so that is what wound up happening.

Have I created a true democracy in my classroom? Absolutely not. Far from it. I still wound up using my executive authority to state that I thought we needed to move the due date up a day. But what we did do was lay a foundation upon which to build throughout the rest of the semester. I would like to continue to give my students choice in due dates, in assignments, and, perhaps, even in curriculum (although, I don't know if we'll get there this year... it's hard to give up on somethings...).
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Ease of use: Starting out on such a small scale was actually really easy, and it was actually in my benefit that I hadn't already planned out the rest of the semester. If I had, I might have had a heart attack thinking, "But we can't make it due then because we need to do X, Y, and Z!" As the semester progresses, I hope it will continue to be this easy. As Elsa says, I just need to "let it go!" (Yes. I did just quote Frozen. Sorry. I just couldn't help it.)
Would I use this again: Yes. I really like the possibilities that this could bring. As Kohn explains in the article, the teacher that he observed doing this felt his students were more engaged in what they did in the class because they took the time to make decisions together.
Downsides: You have to be open to the possibility that things might not go the way you want them to. If you are a control-freak, then this is not the path for you. However, if you really want to encourage your students to become active members of society, this is a step in the right direction.
Applications: You could use this for small things, like due dates, to large things, like what curriculum to study; it really depends upon your comfort level in your classroom. I started small, which is what Kohn recommends if you are just starting out.
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