Week 9: Building Confidence

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

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

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

Reading Stories to 3rd-Graders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Week 8: Exploring Problems and Creating Solutions

I have to be honest. When I got to the end of the day yesterday, I thought to myself, "Crap. What did I do that was new this week??? What am I going to write about in my blog?" All week, my students have just been working on projects, so I didn't actually do much in terms of teaching and trying out new strategies.

My ELD 2 students are writing children's stories (which I mentioned last week), and next Tuesday, we will go visit a friend's 3rd grade class to share those stories. However, even though this is something "new" for me in ELD 2, I actually did this same project - including the part where we go to read to elementary school children - with another class a few years ago. So that doesn't count.

My English 11 students are working on their final projects for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The idea for the project is the same that I used last year, but I tweaked the project a bit for this year... so I guess that counts as "something new" for this week.

We began our unit on Huck Finn by reading "The Lowest Animal" by Mark Twain and discussing the problems that Twain saw in American society. We also talked about satire - how it uses humor in order to bring about some kind of change. This lead to the connection that Twain used his writing in order to raise awareness to the problems he saw and bring about change in American society.

Throughout the unit, I showed the students some videos and we read some articles about different problems in society, such as the female standard of beauty, the inequality of wealth, sexual abuse, suicide, and the way people view mental illness. (Here is a document containing all of the different articles and videos I used.)

Although they didn't know it, all of this was done to prepare students for their final project in which they had to choose a problem and create a solution. (Last year, I just asked students to outline their problem and propose a solution. This year, I raised the stakes by asking them to actually create a solution.) As many educators know, students will do a better job with something if they know that it is going to be presented in some sort of public forum. Often, a class presentation is not enough to really push my students because they are already so comfortable with each other that they don't feel pressured by this. Also, I decided that proposing a solution to their peers wasn't really good enough because it didn't wind up bringing about any real change. Sure, the 36 kids in my classroom were more educated on the topic, but that's not enough if we want to change the world! Therefore, I decided to ask them to create a solution that would be presented in some way that it could potentially reach a much larger audience. I gave them a few ideas - they could create a blog, they could mail a letter to a newspaper, they could make a YouTube video, etc. - but I also told them that they knew a lot more about technology than I do and that they had the freedom to do whatever they wanted to do (aside from making a poster and just presenting it to the class). I told them I wanted them to be as creative as possible, and I showed them the video of The Mimi Foundation's "If Only For A Second" project as well as the commercial for the GoldieBlox toys to help give them some examples of "creative" solutions. I emphasized that I didn't expect them to completely solve a problem in society, because that would be almost impossible; what I wanted was for them to raise awareness about their issue in order to help bring about change.

I started by having them brainstorm at least 4 problems per group, and then they shared out using "Novel Ideas Only" while I recorded their ideas on the board; they came up with ideas ranging from ISIS to cyberbullying, from today's hook-up culture to immigration. Then, they chose the issue they wanted to focus on. Next, they had to decide on the venue they wanted to use to create their solution. I have a group making a blogger, another couple are making blogs through Tumblr, and quite a few groups are creating videos to post to YouTube. I gave them this entire week in class to work (because, as I told them, I really want the projects to be good), and the best part? They all worked on their projects for the entire week! They will present them this week during the first half of their final period, and I am very excited to see what they have to offer. (I will follow up later this week with links to their various blogs and videos.)
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Ease of use: The idea for this project took a lot of building with my students. As I mentioned, we read quite a few articles and discussed quite a few problems before I even introduced the project. However, the idea behind the project is that I am having students create some kind of change in the world, and I am giving them free technological range in order to do so. Since kids these days are so creative when it comes to technology, I really didn't have to teach them anything; I just offered some ideas here and there, such as using programs like Screenr or Screencast-O-Matic to help them make their videos. 
Would I use this again: Yes. I really like the idea of giving students choice, and they really like being given choice. I may still change this particular project a little bit in the future (because I tend to do that every year), but I will stick with this idea for this project and others.
Downsides: You need to have access to technology if you want to give students time in class to work. You also need to make sure you have some form of accountability in place on a daily basis to keep students on task. 
Applications: I think this idea of freedom in presentation could be used for any project that you typically assign as a PowerPoint presentation or poster. Open it up. Let students be creative. Encourage them to step outside their comfort zone of just always making PowerPoints for every project they ever do. 
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UPDATE: Here are links to some of my students' projects:
http://weareequalsposts.tumblr.com/
http://policeabuse.freeiz.com/
http://helpstop-animalabuse.tumblr.com/
http://lewisfinalperiod1.blogspot.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSwvTXhsmPQ
http://big-brother-etta.tumblr.com/
http://hellosavetheanimals.tumblr.com/
http://obesityislame.tumblr.com/
http://helpstopdomesticviolence.blogspot.com/

Week 7: Teacherspayteachers.com

Last week, we were off for the entire week due to the holiday, so I had some time to plan and think about what I'd be doing with my students between now and the end of the semester on December 19th. Of course, I intended to get a lot more done than I actually did, so when the weekend approached, I was feeling a bit stressed out. Fortunately, a friend of mine posted a link on Facebook to a lesson plan on using Pixar shorts to teach plot structure. Since I knew I was going to have my ELD 2 students write children's stories over this week and next, I thought this lesson plan might be a good way to review plot structure before launching into actually writing, and I decided to check it out.

The lesson plan was available for free download through the website teacherspayteachers.com, which I had never heard of. Honestly, I don't do a lot of (or any) searching the Internet for resources, because I am inevitably disappointed when I don't find exactly what I'm looking for and have to make it myself anyway. (An example of this was when I searched earlier this year for a chart with the English alphabet with the pronunciation of each letter spelled out in Spanish. I was sure something of this nature must exist, but I couldn't find anything. I just wound up making this.) That being said, I am also not one to ignore resources that pop up in my face (from other teachers, blogs, Facebook, etc.). I think I am just extremely picky, as I think many teachers are, so I feel as though a lot of pre-made lessons and graphic organizers don't fit naturally into my classroom and/or teaching. Nonetheless, as I said, I decided to check out this lesson, and boy, am I glad I did!

I had to create an account in order to actually download and view all of the materials, but doing so was free. When I opened the zip folder, I saw that it included worksheets and a PowerPoint presentation to accompany the worksheets. Since I have a 2-year-old who isn't allowed to watch very much TV yet, we haven't amassed the entire Pixar collection of movies; however, we do have Wall-E and Up. I checked which Pixar shorts were included with those DVD's and discovered I owned 4 of the 10 shorts listed in the lesson plan - "Burn-E", "Presto", "Partly Cloudy", and "Dug's Special Mission". I thought to myself, "Well, 4 shorts is definitely enough for my students to get the idea." So, I decided to go with the ones I had and not worry about quickly buying more movies just so I could have more of the shorts to choose from. (I am a big believer in not paying for things that you don't really need, so I wanted to avoid having to buy the extra movies if at all possible.) Unfortunately, the worksheets provided did not have the movies grouped together by movie they came out with, so the portions of the worksheets I needed were spread across 4 different worksheets. "No problem," I thought. "I will just cut and paste together the parts that I need." For a moment, I thought I would need to print out the worksheets and actually, physically, cut and paste them together. Then I realized that was ridiculous! If you still do that kind of thing, stop! You are just wasting paper and glue. Instead, I took screenshots of the parts that I needed and pasted them into a blank Google Doc. I printed out the 2 pages, instead of the original 4, ran them down to the copy room, and I was good to go.

I introduced the lesson to my students on Tuesday. It was funny because some of them had come in that day and asked if we could watch a movie, something I pretty much never let them do but which they still ask for all the time. I told them not right away but maybe later. "Aw, Miss. Maybe? No maybe. I don't like when you say maybe. It means no. Say yes." I smiled and repeated, "Maybe."

When the time came to begin the activity, they were thrilled when I told them what we were going to do. I started by drawing a picture of the plot diagram on the board and labeling the different parts - exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Next, since this was a review for them, I had them tell me what each term meant. I left that up on the board while we watched the shorts, so the students would be able to reference it if needed.

The first short I showed them was "Dug's Special Mission". We watched through it once. Then, I played it again, pausing it at different times for us to discuss each element of the plot as it came up in the movie. We followed the first short with "Partly Cloudy" and "Presto". (Due to technical difficulties, we weren't able to watch "Burn-E".) Each time we worked through the elements of plot, I made the students tell me the answers and help me construct sentences to fill in on the graphic organizer I was filling out on the projector while they filled in their own worksheets at their desks.

It just so happened that I was doing this lesson on a day when other teachers were doing classroom observations as part of the EEI professional development. That period, I had 3 teachers come into my classroom - a history teacher, a math teacher, and an English teacher. As they left, I heard the math teacher say to the history teacher, "What a great lesson!" I smiled to myself, and I also made sure to email the teachers later in order to give credit where credit was due and point them to teacherspayteachers.com.

After we finished this activity, the next step was to have my students create their own plot diagrams for the children's stories they are now writing. Overall, I think it was extremely beneficial for them to fill out the diagrams using the Pixar films first because they got to see how each story was broken down into one event that lead to another that lead to another.
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Ease of use: Creating an account with teacherspayteachers is extremely easy, and it's great that you don't have to put in credit card information or anything like that just to sign up. What you are looking for will probably determine the ease of use of the search engine of the site. However, if you just want to sign up to browse through some great resources, then it is extremely easy. If you are looking for something extremely specific, you might have a bit more trouble. I also like that you can just look through the stuff that is available for free, because, after all, who really wants to pay for something that you can just make yourself?
Would I use this again: Yes. I would do this lesson again, and I will use this resource again. (I might as well, since I've already signed up.)
Downsides: You do actually have to make an account, which I know some people are wary of. Also, as I mentioned above, if you are searching for something specific, you may have trouble finding it, but if you are just looking for some good ideas, then you shouldn't have any problems. 
Applications: This specific lesson - teaching plot to just about any grade and any English proficiency. This resource - every subject area, even PE and vocational education! 

Week 6: SparkNotes Reading Quiz (aka, How I Finally Beat SparkNotes!)

I have finally outsmarted SparkNotes! Throughout my career as an English teacher, SparkNotes has been the bane of my existence. Don't get me wrong... I appreciate SparkNotes as a study tool, and I even used to use it myself when I was trying to find a specific event in a book. (At this point, however, I've read books like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby so many times that I don't have to reference SparkNotes anymore to find anything because I pretty much have the books memorized.) I tell my students at the beginning of the year that SparkNotes is fine if they are using it to help them understand what they read in the book. In the cheating activity that I do at the very beginning of the year (which I mentioned in an earlier post), I even go over the appropriate use of SparkNotes:

Scenario: For homework, Ms. Toone asked her students to read and take notes on Chapter 1 in Of Mice and Men.

1. Joey did not have time to do any of the reading. Instead, he just copied down some notes from SparkNotes.
1. Is this an example of cheating? Why or why not?
2. What should Joey have done instead?
2. Maria completed the reading and the notes. However, she wanted to make sure she completely understood what happened in the chapter. Therefore, she went to SparkNotes to make sure she didn’t miss anything. She added a few items to her notes, in her own words.
1. Is this an example of cheating? Why or why not?

I do all this because I want my students to see that they need to actually read the assigned books, as opposed to just reading SparkNotes. I also warn them that I will catch them if they are just reading and taking notes off of SparkNotes (which they never believe even though I always have a TA who I previously had as a student in English 11 the year before, sitting in the front of the class, nodding his head in agreement as I am telling the kids I will catch them because he has first-hand experience with this). No matter how much I emphasize this point or dock students points when I see that they are just copying notes out of SparkNotes, I have never completely succeeded in getting them to read.

Last year, when I started implementing the single-question reading quiz, I told my students that they would not be able to answer the quiz question if they didn't actually read and only looked at SparkNotes. In a previous post, I mentioned how I have been using that method this year with Huck Finn; however, I occasionally slip up. 

Last week, my quiz question on Ch. 16 from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was something along the lines of, "What was the bad luck in Ch. 16?" I knew that SparkNotes gave the students one answer, but the real answer was that Huck and Jim missed Cairo and the Ohio River. Even though I had resolved to not accept the SparkNotes answer, I didn't stick to my guns in 1st period. Why? I don't know. But I definitely kicked myself for it when 2nd period rolled around, especially when I heard students talking about how they had just read SparkNotes. When I overheard this, I mentioned to the class that that answer was only worth partial credit. I saw the kids look at each other because they knew they'd been caught, but I also knew that this wouldn't deter them from doing the same thing in the future. I needed to think of something.

Then it hit me. I could use SparkNotes as the quiz itself in order to force my students to read. In other words, I decided to copy the summary from SparkNotes and then asked my students to tell me something that happened in the chapter that was not included in the SparkNotes summary. Why had I not thought of this sooner?!?

The next day was Thursday. I had to be out on Friday for professional development, so I told my students that there would not be a reading quiz until Monday. I warned them that they would not be able to answer the question if they only read SparkNotes. Some of them looked at me in disbelief, but I reiterated my point; in fact, I told them I could guarantee that they wouldn't be able to answer the question if they only read SparkNotes. 

When Monday of this week rolled around, I was ready. As soon as my students walked in the door, I passed out their quiz. They looked at it, and some of them laughed nervously because they hadn't taken my warning seriously. That day, I had 5 kids in 1st period and 6 kids in 2nd period who failed. I continued to give the same type of quiz every day this week. By the end of the week, I only had 1 or 2 students in each class who failed. (The kids who fail still have to read and write the 1-page summary, due by the end of the period, just like I mentioned in a previous post.) I knew I'd won when one of my worst SparkNotes offenders asked, "Are you going to do this all the time now?" "Yep." "Oh..."

Have I succeeded in getting my students to read? For the most part, yes. I am sure that some of them are still finding ways around actually reading and are perhaps just memorizing random facts from the chapters assigned. However, the thing that I love about this method is that it forces everyone to read a summary of what they read the night before at the beginning of class. This means that everyone - even the kids who didn't  really do the reading - are now at least somewhat prepared to participate in a discussion on the book. It helps the students review the important points of the chapter(s) and serves as a jumping-off point for the following activity.
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Ease of use: This is the easiest quiz you can imagine! If you can copy + paste, then you can do this. 
Would I use this again: Yes. I am going to do this forever. I love this. Okay. Maybe not forever, but I will do this for as long as it seems to be working... or perhaps until I don't need to do it anymore because my students are finally actually reading...
Downsides: As I mentioned above, I'm sure some students are still figuring out ways around reading, but as of right now, this is the best weapon I have. Also, and this is kind of silly, but I was used to just telling students to take out a half-sheet of paper and writing the daily quiz question on the board; now, I have to remember to make copies in advance, which is not always easy for me to do...
Applications: Reading quizzes on any novel that has summaries written on SparkNotes (or shmoop or any other online forum, for that matter). 

Week 5: Writing a Rhetorical Précis in ELD 2

Over the past couple of weeks, my ELD 2 class (comprised of 9 students from Mexico and Guatemala who have been in the country less than 2 years) was reading and working with the last text in Unit 1 of their textbook. We use the Edge curriculum, and the units are arranged to build certain skills throughout the unit, preparing students to close-read a grade-level appropriate text at the end of the unit. To give you an idea on how long it takes my students to read the stories in the text... we have been in school for 3 months; I meet with my students for 112 minutes every day; they have only read 7 stories (none longer than 5 pages) since the beginning of the year, and I am completely okay with that. I have been working a lot with my students on getting them to read the texts on their own and understand what the texts are saying. We've worked on skills like making predictions, clarifying meaning, summarizing, and analyzing the text. I often read a story to them and then have them go back and read the story again in small groups of 3. Since this is my first year teaching ELD 2, I was surprised at first by how long everything takes, and I was constantly postponing activities to the next day. Now, however, I am much better at estimating how long it will take my students to do something. 

We began working with the story "Ambush", this unit's close-reading selection, during the 1st week of November. First, I had students make predictions about what the text would be about. Then I read it to them, stopping every so often for them to summarize what had just happened. We worked through this together, because I wanted to give them a strong foundation for what was coming next. 

After we finished the story, I gave them another copy of the story, complete with reading questions, which I printed from the Edge website. This time, I had students read the story in their groups, underlining and circling important ideas in the text and answering the reading questions as they went. I will be honest and admit that I did not love all of the questions included on the printed copy, but what I did like was that many of the questions forced the students to go back into the text a third, fourth, or even fifth time in order to figure out the answer. 

When I first looked over the worksheet version of the story, I thought, "Well, I can have the students write a summary of the entire story after we read it," because I have been working A LOT on summarizing and getting the students to put their writing in their own words, instead of just copying lines straight out of the text. Since I also teach English 11 with both fluent English speakers and English Language Learners, I see most of the students who have come up through ELD 1, 2, 3, and 4, in my English 11 classes. I am always extremely frustrated when I have an ELL in English 11 who still is trying to get by with just copying lines straight from the text. I vowed to myself that, even if I accomplished nothing else, I would be happy at the end of this year as long as my ELD 2 students can write a summary in their own words.

In any case, as I thought about what I was having my students do, another idea struck me: they are getting pretty good at writing summaries; why not take it to another level and have them write a rhetorical précis? This year, the English department at my school has been focusing on précis writing with all of the English 9-12 classes, so I figured it would be a good idea to introduce my ELD 2 students to it now in order to prepare them for it next year in ELD 3/English 9. 

If you have ever taught a rhetorical précis to high schoolers, you know that it forces them to think more critically about the subject matter than a typical summary. You probably also know that it takes kids a little while to actually become proficient with writing a rhetorical précis. For these reasons, I decided I had to be very careful with how I presented the information and structure to my students. 

The first thing I did, after my students finished reading through the text and answering all of the questions in their reading packet, was break down the information one more time. I had students answer the following questions:

• Who is the author?
• What is the genre?
• What is the title?
• What is the date the text was published?
• What is the main idea?
• How did the author show us the main idea?
• Why did the author write the text?
• What is the tone of the text?
• Who did the author want to read the text?

You'll notice that my questions hit on all the components of the rhetorical précis: author, genre, title, main idea, purpose, tone, and audience. I did this before I even presented the rhetorical précis to my students. I wanted them to have it, so they would be able to use it when it came time to write the rhetorical précis. I also didn't want to confuse them too much by introducing the rhetorical précis first and then going back to find this information in the text. 

Next, I gave them the first of a series of worksheets, which I adapted from the worksheets provided by Lauren Jones, our Department Chair, that we used with the kids in English 9-12. The worksheet is a CLOZE note-taking guide, which walks students through what a rhetorical précis is. (Here is a version with the words filled in.) At the bottom of the worksheet, I included 2 samples that I wrote based on 2 stories we recently read in class. I chose to do this instead of including the samples Lauren provided us with or finding some random samples online because I thought that by writing about familiar stories, I would help my students see the structure and understand what a précis is. (Basically, I lowered the affective filter by using material they were comfortable with.)

After we worked through the first worksheet, I gave them a second worksheet that broke down the structure of each sentence; I also gave them each a box of colored pencils. (At this point, the kids were pretty tired, so they perked right up when I handed them those colored pencils.) I walked them through underlining the different requirements in different colors and locating those requirements in the sample sentence. For example, the first sentence looked something like this:

1. Sentence One:  Name of author, genre, and title of work, date in parentheses; a rhetorically active verb; and a THAT clause containing the major argument or thesis in the text.
1. Saki, in the short story, “The Open Window” (1914), suggests that we should not believe everything we hear.

Once we finished the 4 sentences, I had them work in their groups to underline the sentences in the précis at the bottom of the page, and I wandered around from group to group, helping them.

Now that they (somewhat) understood what a précis is and its structure, I gave them a third worksheet, which provided them with sentence frames to help them write their own précis. When I gave them the worksheet, I asked them to turn back in their notebooks to the page where they wrote down the information on the story, "Ambush". I then pointed out to them that the information they had already written was what they needed to use to fill in the different parts of the sentence frames. At this point, one of my students rolled his eyes and said, "Ay, Miss ... that's all? It's too easy!" I laughed to myself and wished I could have gotten his reaction on video to show to some of my students in English 11 who are still struggling. I told him, "Yep, that's all! It is easy!" And I was reminded of how my mother used to tell me, when I was only a few months old, "Daddy's at work right now. He's teaching Calculus. Calculus is easy," with the hope that I would grow up to believe that Calculus was easy. I am happy to share (and gloat) that when I did take Calculus, I got an A. There was something to my mother's madness that worked with me; a teacher herself, she worked on lowering my affective filter in regards to Calculus from very early on; she told me Calculus was easy, so when I took Calculus, it was easy. Now, for my ELD 2 students, writing a rhetorical précis would be easy, not only because I had told them it would be, but because I'd thoroughly prepared them for it.

What happened next? My students wrote! They filled in the sentence frames, with a little help and encouragement, and then transferred their writing onto a separate sheet of paper, where they wrote their 4 sentences as 1 cohesive paragraph. After they finished their final draft, I had them trade papers and work through underlining the different parts, because I wanted them to read each other's writing and see that they had, in fact, included everything they needed. 

Since I was out on Friday for professional development, I decided to let my ELD 2 students watch a movie (the first movie they've watched all year). I left Up with the substitute, along with copies of this worksheet. I figured I could get away with letting them watch a movie, as long as I had them write a précis on it afterwards. I'll see how it went when I meet with them on Monday.
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Ease of use: Was it easy to get my students to write a rhetorical précis? Yes, actually it was. However, that is only because they were completely prepared for it. If I had just given them the sentence frames and asked them to fill them in, they probably could have done it, but they wouldn't have understood what they were writing or why they were writing it. By breaking it down this way, I am convinced I could get just about anyone to write a rhetorical précis.
Would I use this again: Yes. I will actually re-use some of these worksheets when I have them write a précis later on. Also, next year, when I introduce the rhetorical précis to my English 11 classes, I will probably break it down more like I did for my ELD 2 students.
Downsides: As my students were working, I noticed that some of the sentence frames (particularly the one for sentence #3) were not the best. However, as a starting point, they worked. Also, I realized I am going to need to work with my ELD 2 students on determining the lesson or theme of a text, as opposed to the main idea of what happened in the text. 
Applications: Teaching students to write a rhetorical précis, or breaking down any new piece of material, for that matter.
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Did the process work? Yes! Are my ELD 2 students completely proficient at writing a rhetorical précis? No, definitely not. However, they have a very strong foundation on which to build their skills in the future.
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In other news, I learned last week that I will be presenting at the 2015 CATE conference! If you are an English teacher in California, I strongly encourage you to attend. Registration is open until December 1st. 

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.