A Nation of Writers

I love to be with people who have a passion for education. Yesterday, I was able to meet with some leaders of my organization to plan for an upcoming series we will host on "Changing Perspectives: 21st Century Learning." We've been reinvigorated in our region with some initiatives and it was great to collaborate and harness our collective wisdom.

One of the pieces that we will be hosting will be on educators as writers. It has long been interesting to me that many educators don't consider themselves writers. And it makes me wonder about what the definition of a "writer" is. The Free Online Dictionary defines a writer as (1)writes (books or stories or articles or the like) professionally (for pay) and (2) a person who is able to write and has written something. It seems to me that most of us fall under the category of (2) - although we might not practice it much!

In a recent blog post by Roy Peter Clark (one of my favorite feeds), Clark lays out ways for us to create a "nation of writers" as inspired by the late Donald Murray. In the words of Clark;

"Murray left us -– students, teachers, writers all –- a path to follow. He dedicated his life to a simple proposition: that the act of writing was not a magical power possessed by a precious few. Writing was a process, a craft, a set of tools within reach of us all."

I know that lots of folks are worried about the state of writing. And many blame technology for some of that - "look at the kids IM'ing - it's not even a real language", "no one cares about spelling anymore - they just use spellcheck" and on and on. But I liked the take of a recent news article that argues that "rapid fire lingo" actually shows that our language is evolving!

As my team and I have learned more about the new technologies available to us, we have begun to adopt them as a matter of doing business. We all have tried our hand at blogs and wikis, we use Google Docs and more recently Google Groups. We are trying to find out how they "fit" into our work - as opposed to just adding them on. Some have adopted these easily - for others it is a bit of a struggle. But it has helped us grow as a team and interestingly, as writers.

Embracing the new technology is not easy. But we are educating our students for a world that we are not experiencing today, and in fact are not even sure what it will look like. Integrating the technology is not throwing out the old, looking at screen still requires reading and typing an email still requires writing. We just need to find a balance and teach our students which language is appropriate when.

Relaxing Friday

I'm taking a personal day today as I am just burnt crispy by my schedule and to help out my mom - who, caring for four children under the age of six and my grandmother with Alzheimer's each day this summer, is similarly crispy. But before I head over to corral the children, I thought I would blog.

I've had writer's notebooks on my mind since last week and in reviewing my own entries it's interesting to see how some of my entries have changed. I've been jotting things down but rather half-hearted it appears, as more recent entries are richer in details and bigger nuggets to mine. I'm debating getting a new notebook to serve as my own "action research" piece about what I write and trying some of the ideas that teachers are using before I put the workshop together. Borders is on the agenda today so I am sure that one will leap off the shelf at me.

Lots of folks in the blog world participate in something called Poetry Friday, where they share their favorite poems and how they use them. It is hosted by a different blog each week and is here this week. Poetry has not been one of my favorite things but when I am touched by one it is amazing. I don't think I have enough to really share and participate but I do read all the posts and am increasing my collection.

This poem, posted at Two Writing Teachers, really struck me given the topic:

My Writer’s Notebook by Brod Bagert

It’s a black and white composition notebook,
A hundred pages
with blue line
that await my words:

Diamond Search

My life lies before me
Like the bed of a shallow river.
My fingers sift sand and gravel
For the rough diamonds that lie hidden.
And as I find them
I put them in this notebook.
I write… I cut… I polish…
And they shine.

My words on an empty page
In an ordinary notebook,
The silver setting for the jewels of my life.

Happy Friday!

Just Read It!

I can't do it better than they do and I certainly can't write like they do....so hook up your RSS feed and read Two Writing Teachers!! And read it often!

Word Counting

During law school, in a particularly long and over-crowded class, a group of friends and I used to play bingo. We'd create a chart of the words that certain folks in class liked to use a lot : jurisprudence, estoppel, caveat, in toto, controlling decision. You get the picture. The words that lawyers use as code and are generally what my students would call "dollar words." It was a tradition that I carried on after I left the legal profession to opening day speeches from superintendents, BOE members, and outside consultants - only this time we counted educational jargon. Probably not the most mature way to spend my time in either scenario, but I like to spin it now that I have always had a fascination with words. (See what law school will get ya??)

The words we choose when speaking or writing are what helps to define our voice. Do YOU have a signature word or phrase? If you aren't sure - ask your family or colleagues and I guarantee that they will let you know. For example, I have a good friend who expresses her surprise or shock at something by saying "Holy (fill in the word) Batman!" It makes me laugh every time I hear it - and I tend to repeat it often when I am with her. Holy secret code, Batman!

And so I found this link from Cool Cat Teacher's del.icio.us tags very interesting. Using tag clouds (a visual depiction showing the frequency of word use), someone charted the words used by the Democratic presidential candidates in an April 2007 debate. The type size of each word varies according to how often it is used - with the largest words being used most often. Even more interesting are the comments that follow about how the readers were surprised about which words were used and which were not - showing that those who closely follow this type of thing already have an expectation of the words certain candidates will use. (NOTE: This is not a political stance - I couldn't find a tag cloud of Republican candidates or I would link to that as well in all fairness.)

It got me thinking about word choice as a writing trait and how we could use tag clouds with kids. Perhaps the students could focus on parts of writing - like leads or conclusions - to see how often they use certain words. Or perhaps students could use one or two different pieces of writing to find the words they tend to use often. I also wondered about taping the conversations we have with students about their writing to see which words we use most often.

It's not that using words repetitively is bad - it would just be interesting to know and be able to point out. By the way, using the free service at TagCrowd, I made a tag cloud of this post:

batman candidates certain clouds code democratic em friend interesting law school strong students surprise tag tend type used words writing

created at TagCrowd.com

All Written Out and Powering Up

I had four straight days of writing workshops last week so you would think that I have plenty to blog about. I am sure that I do - but I am still trying to process some of the questions/issues that the participants raised as well as what I learned. The reason that I love teaching about writing and teaching writing is that I learn something every single time. So, in the spirit of a new blog that I am reading, I will consider this a Writer's Notebook blog entry. I like their style so much that I'll tag all Writer's Notebook entries as they do- WN - so that I can be sure to come back to them later.

Power of Picture Books: I pulled a number of them off the shelves and brought to share with the teachers. I haven't taken time to really organize them with the lessons but will be fast-tracking that soon. The picture book with the greatest impact was Not a Box and my colleague Chris helped me with an extension activity using pom-poms. Great fun!!

Power of Conferencing: Early in the week, the teachers wanted help with what a writing conference would look like, particularly as young writers bridge pictures to text. Lucky for me - I have a ready and somewhat willing niece who loves to help her aunt and we created a video for the teachers that night. I was far from perfect and Amelia had no problems letting me know when I crossed the aunt line! But I learned a great deal from that conference and the teacher reflection that followed!!

Power of Voice: I am always asked how to "teach" voice - and I answer that it isn't something that can be taught, it needs to be uncovered. But that is not a good answer. The last two days spent with upper elementary teachers has be pondering what comes first - voice in the abstract or the more concrete traits that help to make up voice (sentence fluency, word choice, conventions). I am chewing hard on this one.

Power of Collaboration: The best part of the four days was each time the teachers worked together in grade level teams to make plans for the upcoming year and using their new K-5 writing rubric. They did amazing work and asked incredible questions. Made me miss my classroom more than ever. But I did get to spend all four days with a colleague and get valuable feedback and ideas. We don't take the time to do that often enough and I am putting it on my work plan to do more often.

Power of Writer's Notebooks: I actually chose to call them Treasure Books (as I learned from Primarily Writing). I like that turn of phrase better - makes them be more than just a class assignment and an exercise in compliance and more personal, more authentic. Chris and I brainstormed a workshop on just using treasure books and I think we purposefully integrated them much better in the last two days. While I keep a writer's notebook myself, I haven't spent much time thinking about what I keep or how I keep it. I need to do more of that to model for teachers.

Power of Re-Charging: Seriously - I was exhausted by the end of the week and it felt good to re-charge my batteries. I didn't do anything monumental - cleaned two of the seven downstairs rooms, loads and loads of forgotten laundry, watched movies with the family. I took a break from writing, from the gym, from work - all the things that while they make me happy, also tend to stress me out. I dread Mondays - but maybe this one won't be quite so bad.

Happy Writing!

Trippin' Over Myself

It's August already! Hard to believe that it won't be long before school is in session and I feel like the "to do" list has not gotten any smaller. I'm on a mad mission to conquer Google Earth as a means to link Social Studies and ELA with a frequent visitor to this site. (Hey - you visit and comment once - you're frequent!)

It started with a simple conversation about a visiting author for this spring and the fact that this Super Teacher has already signed her kids up for an essay writing contest around the book Hana's Suitcase. Since the conversation happened in a DBQ development workshop, we starting talking about Google Earth, which let to Google Lit Trips - which led to us creating one (right now - hoping to create one!)on the book.

The plan is to map the locations in the book - with the pushpins pieces to be DBQ like questions. I haven't mastered how it all fits together and it is complicated a bit by the fact that I am blocked from Google Earth at work and too hot and tired when I get home to play too much.

I know I will conquer this because as a teacher in my district shared her plan to read Judy Moody Declares Independence, I was already imagining not just the Lit Trip but how my planned trip to Boston in September could provide a wealth of Flickr activities for her.

I see this as a pretty powerful model to use with kids. Once they have taken a few lit trips - I can imagine them creating their own for the book they are reading. It gives them a global perspective and can help them make powerful connections.

So now I am wondering - what other books might make a good basis for a Lit Trip. What types of questions would teachers want to see at each stop? How can we get around the blocks that many districts have put in place around Google Earth?

Kids 1, Lunch Lady 0

I loved reading about the power of the pen in this article!

"The menu at William V. Wright Elementary School is getting a makeover after Constantine Christopulos' class went on a poignantly polite letter-writing campaign aiming to see less of that particular vegetable in the cafeteria.

"A little boy said, `Anything, anything, I'll even eat broccoli,"' said Connie Duits, the lunch lady. "So that one touched my heart."

The children were careful to offer praise as they expressed their concerns."

The article goes on to explain that the letter writing campaign began after reading Frindle, in which the boycott of the cafeteria there was deemed a bit less respectful. Students weighed in on which foods they wanted to replace the green beans (and it was not peas!)and while they may not be getting "'stake' and lobster" it does appear that the new choices will be a step up!!

In case you missed it, these kids are in second grade!!

My Mandala

My computer is back - well, at least the most important part!! Nothing was lost, the old computer was under warranty, and I made it through the first day of our DBQ Writing Institute without causing too much harm. So, without further delay, my mandala is below...let the interpretations begin!! What do you see that might reflect me?

Wandering Lost!

I guess I never realized how attached I was to my computer until the hard drive crashed (I think) this morning. Yesterday was something of a whirlwind - between sharing my musings about Web 2.0 groups with interested Fellows, to clarifying what I can do to make my Keep On Learning site a via "publishable" piece, to canoeing down (and eventually swimming in) the mighty Housatonic River I was exhausted. We have spotty Internet connection here at best, so I captured by blogs thoughts in Word late last night and go up early to post.

Alas - the computer does nothing.

Thanks to JoAnn, I am working on a computer but it isn't mine, with my scattered desktop and the comforting pictures of my family in the background. I am trying to remain calm -but the flood of work that I have created may be lost and it is causing rising panic. (I know - I should back up more often and I have learned a powerful lesson!!) Fortunately - a great deal of my work is available to me on-line through blogs and wikis so I am not totally despondent.

I have come to realize that my computer has become an extension of my hands. Pens and pencils work at times, but how I organize my thoughts and my writing is all done electronically. It is comforting to me - the warmth of the battery, the click of they keys, the glow of the screen. I am not sure how to write and organize without it.

Much of our conversation the past two days has been around the use of electronic tools - and I can see the look of confusion and trepidation on the faces of many of my Fellows. It can be a powerful way to join our two communities (Upstate and Downstate) into the one community we become in the summer - but it could also cause others to disengage. I am mindful of this as I ponder ways to integrate these tools into the Collegial Circle that I am planning for the Fall around literacy. I will need to take it slow, temper my enthusiasm to allow others to discover these tools the way that I have, ,and build the community of learners one at a time.

Cross-posted on Grand Rounds.

Letting the Pencil Lead You

We created mandalas this evening. From the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit, it represents wholeness and can be seen as a model of an organizational structure. Mandalas can be found in nature, in cultures from Native Americans to India, and can take many different forms.

As we were learning about mandalas and sketching some ideas, our leader in this activity mentioned that we would find that our "pencil would lead us" and what resulted would express our inner self. Strangely, I did find this to be true - at least my pencil leading me part!! (I'll post my mandala after it dries - perhaps you can help me decipher what it says about me!!)

It made me think about writing (of course) and the flow of ideas. In keeping a writer's notebook, I gather a collection of things that strike me: comments, phrases I hear and like, observations. Sometimes, I draw but mostly it is text. Each of these are seed ideas when I am stuck for the right words to say or the right topic to write about. Writer's notebooks are individual things and highly personal.

In taking these seed ideas, sometimes I just write. What ever comes into my head comes out on paper. It isn't always pretty or frankly, any good. But I can then go back to the pieces that sound "right" and refine them. The pencil leads me.

This is particularly true with my blog writing - I find that the words flow very easily in this medium and that other than some spelling and syntax fixes, I change very little. Because I use my blogs to tap my inner voice - it seems to be easier to write.

As I ponder my own writing, I think about what I need to do to help teachers become more comfortable with their own writing - whether on blogs or in model lessons. How do I encourage teachers to take the same risks we ask our kids to take? To write and submit writing for comment. To publish writing and await the reviews. To revise, edit, and revise again.

In researching mandalas after our session this evening, I learned that Tibetan Buddhists believe a mandal consists of five "excellencies:"

The teacher * The message * The audience * The site * The time

If you were to draw a mandala of your writing in light of these five excellencies - what would it look like?


Image from Creative Art Studio.

Reflections on Writing: Blogs

I am away this week with my CSETL Fellows reflecting upon my practice and finding a focus for the upcoming year. As always with this group, my thinking is pushed, I am asked wonderful questions, and my head is pounding. I am a bit better off than my colleague Julie who continues to refer to the bile rising in her throat - but not much better. Ahhh....cognitive dissonance! There is nothing like it!!

A large part of my focus this week is on using Web 2.0 tools to build a community of learners. I am posting on Grand-Rounds on how that work is going. A bigger part of the challenge for the week is that I must develop a plan for "publishing" my work in this arena. Clearly - I love to write and care deeply and passionately about writing. It is the formality and structure of writing for publication that is daunting.

And so - this week, I will be reflecting upon my own writing as I experience the ups and downs of a CSETL retreat.

One thing I focused on today was the use of blogs and wikis in education. I have identified three reasons why I don't seem to be having the success I envisioned when I began this process. One biggie is a lack of technical knowledge on the part of the users. The two others are somewhat combined - time and writing.

I've thought a great deal about my blogging process. When I first began blogging, I wrote everything in Word first, then transferred it over to Blogger. It was time consuming but I had a horrendous fear of mis-spellings!! Since then, I have become more comfortable with the tools available on Blogger (including spell-check) but also with leaving things in draft form.

As for ideas - they come to me often and I do keep a writer's notebook after reading about their power from Ralph Fletcher (if I could make one electronically I would be very, very happy!!). More often though, my posts come from something niggling in the back of my head that I just feel the need to get out. I rarely leave something in draft form and visit it later anymore - I am bit more comfortable in my skin now. In fact, after being challenged by Richard Strong last summer to write with my real voice (versus the one I thought people wanted to hear) - I have found my voice in blogging.

A Year of Blogging

One year ago today - July 17, 2006 - I began this blog. It was my first blog, although I have created several since. It came to life at a large regional conference called High School's New Face. I didn't actually attend the technology workshop with Will Richardson - but he did our keynote and we all received a copy of his book. Harnassing the excitement of my colleagues - I sat down and experimented, making lots of mistakes, but also learning along the way.

My first blog post featured wisdom from the Wizard of Oz:

"But it is a long way to the Emerald City,
and it will take you many days.
The country here is rich and pleasant,
but you must pass through rough and
dangerous places before you reach
the end of your journey."

Looking back - I know I have not reached the end of my journey (does any educator?)but I have passed through some rough and dangerous places!! Unfortunately - some of those have been of my own creation. Not on purpose of course - but nonetheless, I hold responsibility for choices I have made.

Blogging hasn't quite gotten me what I had hoped. There have been times that I neglected it because it feels a bit like talking to myself. I believe that it can be a powerful tool - but instead of persevering, I let go and walked away. But I always come back.

I hope to use Web 2.0 tools to build community among teachers - to serve as a means to meet and share ideas, to break down the walls of our classrooms. I have moments of sucess, but they are fleeting. It seems that we are all fighting the drumming of time and trying to fit it all in - to many, blogging and using wikis seems like an "extra."

As I enter my second year of blogging, here are some things that I hope to accomplish:

1. Teach my colleagues and staff about blogs and wikis so that we can model their use. Currently- only two of five of us use either blogs or wikis. If we can train each other and slowly ease one another into using these tools, I think that we will be "practicing what we preach" and it can only benefit everyone.

2. Integrate my blogs and wikis into my workshops. I am comtemplating the blogs/wikis being added to my email tags and potentially to business cards. I know I would like them to be added to the BOCES website but might have to deal with some internal politics with that one - and understandably so!!

3. Track the time I spent on my blog/wiki development. This might be important in teaching about these tools to teachers - a way to decide whether they can fit it into their schedules. And a little action research never hurt anyone!

4. Connect more purposefully with other blog/wiki educators. I need to use Skype better and figure out what everyone is Twittering about. I want to partake in the on-line conferences and see how we can use those tools in our region. I get the basics - now I need to expand.

5. More of my writing. Not just on the blog - but for professional journals and colleagues. It will push my writing abilities (the point of this blog) but also help me to clarify the things that I value and believe.

I'm hoping that these goals will help me to utilize this blog (and Grand Rounds)as a tool for collaboration and reflection, to serve as a model for other educators, and to push thinking (and hopefully get pushed back). So - Happy New Year!

I am a writer!!

I am spending the week at an advanced Cognitive Coaching training. We are at a beautiful central New York resort town, which is very conducive to reflective learning. Today was day one and already my head is brimming with new ideas.

One piece has been incredibly relevant to writing : the idea of nested levels of learning from Robert Dilts discussed in the beginning of the session. Below is one page of my notes on this. As we discussed the hierarchy in this model - we thought about where most of our classrooms lie.



We know that when we begin a new initiative or attempt to create change in our classroom, we begin at the most basic level - environment. At this level - change is easy to implement and it is fast. I think about folks moving to a writing workshop. Teachers change the structure of their classrooms or perhaps parcel out their time with kids a bit differently. Voila! Writing workshop.

The next level has to do with behaviors and skills - the what of teaching. With a writing workshop - we conference with students, we provide mini-lessons, we hone our coaching skills. And sometimes - this is where it ends. Some of our students stand up and say "I am a writer!!" - others, most others, don't.

If we are lucky - our classrooms reflect the capabilities phase. We provide structure and frameworks for our students, big ideas about writing for students to hold on to. We begin to develop their capabilities as writer - to make choices about the words they use, the way they organize their thoughts and ideas. They make choices in writing and monitor the impact those choices have on a reader.

But these things can only happen if we approach the values/beliefs stage. If we truly believe that we want our students to be writers, rather than just write (which is the identity phase). And here is where I struggled a bit.

I am wondering if we can ask our students to be writers if we are not writers ourselves. I try to structure my workshops on writing to involve a great deal of writing - and this is where my workshop evaluations fall into the danger zone. Many don't like to be asked to write - just give me the strategies and I'll implement them - thank you! But it is never as easy as that - we need to experience what we are learning so that we can figure out how to make it our own - so that we can adapt it to our learners. And this is very, very important in writing!!

So what is it that makes people reluctant to write? Why don't we write more? We can blame new technologies but I think about this blog. It is a new technology that allows me to write - to hone my writing skills - to be a writer. Does it take time? Yes - but because it is fundamental to who I am, I make that time.

Perhaps if we tapped into what makes us reluctant to write - we might be able to tap into what will encourage students to write. And together - we can all become writers.

Collaborative Stories

Stumbled upon this collaborative writing wiki from teachers in Alabama. The stories are pretty great - some a bit rougher than others but they show what a powerful collaborative tool wikis can be!!

I am thinking about their use for curriculum mapping, planning for larger workshops and teacher collaborative writing. I use lots of different wiki spaces at the moment, but haven't yet settled on a favorite.

Will Richardson also has an interesting post on wikis - Wikipedia specifically. I think the biggest hurdle I have encountered in using wikis with educators has been the idea that it is intended to be a collaborative, not static, web page. He outlines a "classic teachable moment" - be sure to read it!!

It seems to keep coming back to a control factor of sorts - yes, we want to control what our kids post on-line so that it is not harmful to anyone and so that it is in a "final" format - correct puncutation, grammar, spelling, etc. But the power of wikis are that in addition to writing - we can help students work on their editing and revision skills.

I need to think about this more before my next Wiki workshop so that I can model it for teachers better.

Educating Half a Child?

I recently read "Two Takes on Whole" from the Summer on-line Educational Leadership. Hugh B. Price and Stephanie Pace Marshall are interviewed on what it means to educate the "whole child." It continues to surface for me this week as I work with teachers from a local district investigating assessment and grading.

As a middle school teacher - I fully embrace the concept of educating the "whole child;" being able to see beyond just the academics to teacher character, problem-solving and citizenship. These were kids experimenting with being adults, often reverting to early childhood, all within the same day (or class period!) It made sense to me then and it continues to make sense now that we need to equip them for what lies beyond our formal public education system.

I don't think any teacher is out there purposefully teaching to half or three-quarters of any child. It is hard to be in a room full of learners - of any age - and not recognize the other pieces that will come into play. Personal life - how well they slept - what motivated them to be there. All will play a role in how much they learn that day.

So I started thinking about authentic assessment - mostly because at the end of the interview, both Marshall and Price are asked about a childhood moment they'll never forget:

Price:When I was growing up, I couldn't hit a curve ball. But in the course of pursuing my love of baseball, I devoured baseball magazines—for children as well as for adults. I discovered that if I could understand how to calculate a batting average, I'd have long division down cold. In other words, the pursuit of this first love reinforced everything that school was about. It reinforced teamwork, it reinforced my academic skills, and it reinforced my curiosity.

I've often said that a school could take Jackie Robinson's life and turn it into a yearlong course that covers many subjects, from the migration of blacks to the North and West, to equal opportunity, to the military justice system. All these things were incorporated in his life. Moreover, kids could learn how to calculate the square footage of a baseball diamond. In the infield, the bases are laid out in a perfect square. But once you get to the outfield, you've got all these weird shapes, and you've got to learn how to analyze that. You can learn some physics too: When you throw a ball and it's fired back at you, it's coming through a certain plane at a certain speed. The education experience should really zero in on and nurture kids' passions and curiosity.

Marshall: I was always so affirmed as a learner when I was growing up that it stayed with me and built a grounding of unshakable courage. We had a 1956 Ford when I was a child. My father chose to buy it without a radio. Why would you buy a radio, he said, when we could sing? Whenever we went on long family car trips, we made up songs, we spelled words backwards, we identified which states all the license plates were from, and we took the map with us so we knew exactly where we were in the world and in the country. We learned how to pay attention. Everything was a question. We always made up stories, puzzles, and rhymes. It was always about learning. But it wasn't about schooling. It was about learning and trying to figure things out and what would happen if. I was just so blessed.

Those childhood moments capture authentic learning - learning that meant something to the learner, that was relevant and useful to them. We could teach that way - we could create authentic experiences for our students, but somehow we feel bound to "The Test." I am not convinced that was the intention of the test designers - but it certainly is the unintended consequence. I have long stated that I like the NYS Social Studies assessment with respect to Document Based Questions as it asks kids to think like historians- something I was never asked to do from elementary school to college (where I received a degree in history!!)

Now - my childhood memories do not involve unearthing hidden historical treasures. However, many summers were spent at the family cabin in Onoville, NY. Near the Alleghany State Park, there was plenty of outdoor adventure for us: hiking, swimming in creek beds, boating. One of our favorite things to do was to examine the rocks in the creek behind the cabin for fossils. These rocks would have the image of leaves or small bugs embedded in them over time. The highest value was placed on the fossils that looked almost like rock sea-shells. We would save them, trade them, try to sneak them home in the car. Somehow - I believe they all ended up back in the creek!!

Yet they provided hours of imaginative play for us - using them as money like we had read Native Americans did, imagining what the world was like when the fossil impressions actually lived, creating stories about ancient peoples. It was rich fun and probably fueled my love of history. But it wasn't a story I ever shared with my students.

I wonder what our classrooms would look like if we tapped these childhood experiences and brought them to our students. If we designed our lessons to provide opportunities to learn in a more authentic way - to follow a path of curiosity. I'm willing to bet our students would do just as well on several state assessments - maybe even better. So help me - what are some childhood memories of learning you have that we can use to develop lessons in our classrooms?

The Real World

I was asked some very thoughtful and thought-provoking questions by a student today. I don't often get to interact with students one on one anymore - something I miss greatly. For several reasons, I was able to meet today with a student who was asking for help in preparing to retake her Global Studies Regents exam in August.

She failed the exam by one point.

Why is this important? First - she came to school last week, asked for a copy of her exam and feedback on what she could do better. Second - when I met with her today to review the test and prep for what she could do in August, she had reviewed that test. And reviewed it very carefully. She knew what she didn't know. And she knew, in terms of her writing, what she didn't do. What she didn't know was how to "fix it" for August.

And she did all this - because of one point.

As we talked, it became obvious that she knew where she had failed, but also how her teachers had failed her. As we talked about how she took the exam and why she chose not to use a graphic organizer or why she changed correct answers on her multiple choice sheet, she was frustrated that no one had taught her "how" - they just expected her to "do." I shared some vocabulary strategies that she could use and we started by having her highlight all the words in the test that she could not talk to me about with confidence. There weren't a great number of them - remember, she missed passing by one point - but there were enough.

We then looked at her writing. She knew she wandered, she knew it wasn't well organized, and she knew she probably didn't answer the question. But she knew she had better include the appropriate number of document references. I showed her how to organize her writing by taking apart the prompt and then use two column notes a la Step Up to Writing to help guide her. Like me, she's not a big fan of the mind map so this plan seemed to make more sense to her. We talked about her writing the longer DBQ essay first, then moving to the Thematic essay - even though they are not in that order in the test booklet.

And we mapped out a plan for her to tackle all of this before the next exam. No more than 20 minutes per night, learn what you don't know, practice organzing writing. Remember that she knows a lot - she only needed one point.

She wants to be a nurse - and starts some CTE courses next year. She asked why I don't teach anymore - I told her I do, I just work with teachers. She asked why...I told her I thought that I could impact more kids this way. She asked me when I was going to start in her district. She made one powerful point!!

You see - I do work in her district. I have for the past four years. Yet somehow - it hadn't filtered down to her yet. All the time looking at data, meeting with teachers, talking about practice, scoring assessments, leading inservice dates on reading and writing - none of it made a difference on the day in June that she took that assessment. One point.

I wonder how she would have done if she had been taught the vocab strategies or writing organizer before the test. I wonder what difference it will make when she takes the test again in August. I wonder what I need to do diferently next year so that there are fewer kids like her - missing things by one point. Missing things by five points. Just plain missing things.

She left this afternoon - off to a holiday camping trip with a folder full of papers and a 20 pound Global Studies book in hand. Hopefully - she'll follow the plan and contact me if it isn't working. But in the meantime - she made me think, and think hard, about the role I play. And she made one big point.

Teaching the Academic Essentials - The Finale

I took a day off from blogging on the conference to let it all sink in. Honestly - the last day of the conference was the best for - with rapid fire connections happening all over the place.

Highlights:

1. When discussing the reading process, we often speak about before-during-after reading activities. But more importantly - as teachers we need to think about what we should be doing before we give the reading, while the reading is happening, and after the reading is completed. Seems like common-sense but the planning page provided here, along with the matrix discussed in a previous post, really tied things together for me. We discussed our purpose for having students read certain text, thinking about how we wanted them to interact with the text and how to monitor those strategies, and WHY we had them do particular things after the reading.

2. We need multiple entry points to reading. Again - common sense but the visual that was presented was pretty powerful!! (I'll see if I can scan my notes!) Kids have lots of barriers to reading: lack of background knowledge, social/emotional/cultural issues, vocabulary, poverty to name a few. We need to be purposeful in structuring our before-reading activities to help all students access the text.

3. Thinking in three complicates things. Never really thought about this before - but as we progressed through examples, it really started to make sense. For example, we could take the current war in Iraq. If we made a simple T-chart of the perspectives of those in the U.S. for and against the war, our students might do this easily. It also forces them into an "either or" position - where they have to decide which camp they fall into. That could be dangerous - and narrow. So - let's add the perspective of the Iraqi people. That could complicate matters. Now let's add the perspectives of the various Iraqi people - Sunni and Shia. Now - let's add the perspectives of Great Britain. See how things become much more complicated and will involve a higher level of thinking? The more layers we add - the more complex the thoughts.

Jim Burke also had an afternoon keynote - which will be podcast soon. Some highlights:

4. Learning should be an "invitation to struggle." In his work on academic essentials, Burke keeps coming up with words like "grapple" and "struggle" and "wrestle" - and those need not be bad things. Back to the weight-lifting analogy, education is something we are all trying to get better at - so wrestling with these things means we are growing.

5. First and foremost, Jim Burke is a teacher and one who obviously cares deeply about his students and their success. Over time, he and the class have developed a set of principles that are practiced in the classroom, and eventually in life. Telling a series of personal stories, Jim shared the following with us.

Put yourself out there!
Do what you think you can't.
Success is never an accident.
Everyone must find their "thing;" all education is SELF education.
You are worth the effort.
Invest in yourself.
If you cannot SEE it, you cannot BE it.

Cross-posted on Grand Rounds.

Teaching the Academic Essentials - Part 2

Top 5 take-aways from today:

1. "Discussion improves comprehension, increases engagement and enhances memory when it is structured, purposeful, meaningful, and constrained by time. Even one minute of effective classroom discussion shows measureable benefits to student learning." This was a nice reinforcement of what a CSETL Fellow has been sharing in her work with academic discourse, as well as a reinforcement of my belief that learning is social. While much of my learning during this workshop has come from the presenter, I have learned a great deal from those folks sitting around me, in part because the presenter has worked discussion into our day on a regular basis. It is a refreshing change from rushing through material. If I feel that way - I can only imagine what it will do for kids.

2. "You have the men you have - and it's up to you to make them into the soldiers you want them to be." This quote (or something like it!) was attributed to George Washington but it makes a great deal of sense about education as well. Whenever I hear teachers complaining that students don't work hard enough or won't do this and can't do that, I get a little angry. We should be teaching with the belief that the students in our classroom can succeed - or we have failed. I have always said that parents send us everything they've got - they aren't hiding the good ones/the smart ones at home! It is our job to teach each and every child that we are gifted with.

3. Most teachers, particularly those at the secondary level, don't know what we do when we "read" - it just happens to us. We, as teachers, need to be more explicit and transparent with our students and bring our process into the class. We did a great activity in the session today after reading a "complex" piece to chart visually our reading process - what we did when we didn't understand things, how we made connections to comprehend. This reflection was very helpful to me in thinking about how I have taught reading in the past - but also how I might be able to do it with teaching writing as well. I need to ponder this a bit - but you can bet there will be more to come!!

4. There are many different kinds of text and we use different strategies when we read them. I have known this - as I believe that each content area has it's own literacy. We read different things in social studies class then in science, math, and ELA. I needed to teach my kids how to "read" political cartoons, maps, newspaper articles written in the 1800s. Charting out what I do for each of these different texts will help me when I work with teacher and primary sources.

5. I don't like Yeats. I'm kidding - sort of! We did a great activity at the end of the session using "The Second Coming." The discussion around the poem and the strategies that we used were invigorating and inspiring. If I could open a school with the people sitting in that room today - the kids would be engaged and all see success. I am still tortured by the poem and what it means and the fact that I didn't get it the first three times we read it (not sure I still get it but I've read enough Internet reviews to fake it!!) Jim Burke made a great analogy today when we compared learning/reading to weight lifting. When you lift weights - you want to lift a weight heavy enough to cause fatigue. That allows your muscles to grow. If we don't challenge kids with difficult text - and teach them to navigate problems - they won't grow as readers. I might not like Yeats but I loved the discussion today!!



Cross posted on Grand Rounds.

Teaching the Academic Essentials - Part 1

I'm lucky enough to be spending the next three days re-charging by attending the 3rd Annual Reading Institute in Jamestown, N.Y. First - I need to say kudos to the folks who have organized this - it is impressive!! And an even louder round of applause for the over 200 teachers who are attending this session in the "shadow" of their school year (we just ended last Friday!)

The speaker that I was originally going to be spending time with had a family emergency and so I was cast adrift. Fortunately - my dear friend David charted a course for me. So I will spend the rest of the week with Jim Burke.

I hope this doesn't offend him but to this point, he has presented in much the same way that I do. If we are going to be spending time writing - we best be writing!! Too often - we want to sit and absorb information. If our brains click with it - we use it. If they don't - we discard it. But if we really engage in the activities, then we can determine how to make it our own, to make it work inside our own classrooms. I can understand how my participants feel when I make them do this - so I took some notes about what I can tweak in my own work - but I loved that I got to write, write, write today!!

Top Five from the session today:

1. "Graphic organizer" can be too limiting a term. Instead - we should be providing students with "tools for thought." I liked this idea - it was really about setting up a simple tool for students to organize thoughts and some guiding questions/prompts to start them on their way. We folded a piece of paper into thirds and simply labeled them to guide our reflections. Jim then led us in narrowing down what we had written about to reflect further - and then share with colleagues. For this exercise, we reflected upon what worked this year (or what didn't!)

2. Weekly poems. This was something that worked for Jim last year (yes, Virgina - even presenters share!!) He selected short poems (less than 30 lines) that students read each day for a week. Each time they read the poem - they reflected or reacted to something different (initial reactions, imagery, tone, etc.) so that at the end of the week, they had notes to use to write an analytical piece. These poetry pieces could be done in just 10 minutes of class time but certainly packed a punch.

3. "Well Words" These words come from Jim's Teacher's DayBook. We selected five words from the list of 52 that would have made an impact on our personal/professional lives if we paid a bit more attention to them. We then narrowed it down to one word and then developed 2-3 questions we might ask to prompt writing around that word. Finally - we wrote. GREAT STRATEGY that followed his "Academic Essentials Matrix" and had us "Bloomin' upward!" Careful! This strategy will be coming to a workshop near you soon!!

4. The emphasis on connecting to students!! And that without connecting to students - we'll never get them to learn (or see themselves as learners.) This was especially powerful to me - as I have spent a great deal of time thinking about this since last year's High School's New Face Conference. Jim read to us from my favorite coffee table book and had us reflect upon the connections we have made (or not made!) in the past year. Very powerful community building exercise for us!!

5. The idea of teaching and expecting students to be generative thinkers. The premise comes from the work of Judith Langer and seems to fit what I have felt all along. Students need to create their own knowledge - to seek out different viewpoints, to search to make their own meanings and connections. Much of what we did today modeled how to scaffold instruction so that students could practice this important life-long skill.

I left re-energized and with a million thoughts floating through my head. I can't wait for tomorrow!!

Cross-posted on Grand Rounds.

Flying High!

I've been spending some time recently in a district where year one of curriculum mapping did not go as well as planned. Probably lots of reasons behind it - and ones we are all familiar with - but one thing that stood out when the teachers talked was the need to have reading and writing integrated across all curriculum areas. What would that look like in a curriculum map?

I am not sure I have the right answer - if there even is one. Having worked on ELA maps in my own district, they are not easy nor are they ever done. And integrating reading and writing skills can be a complex task. Perhaps it is my bias - perhaps my background - but I still find social studies the easiest path to take.

For example - Orville and Wilbur Wright. Airlines have been in the news lately - with the high cost of fuel, cancelled flights, technology delays, etc. And many more kids are flying these days than when I was younger (Case in point- my nieces are soon to fly to Aruba for their third time and they are six and four years old!!) So it seems a natural connection to read about the famous flying brothers.

In New York State - this could happen at several points in the elementary social studies curriculum as we talk about transportation, our communities and other communities, world communities, etc. etc. In searching, I found this interesting book about the history of flight written from the perspective of animal characters.

I haven't read it - but it is a RAFT model. The story of the first flight is told through the eyes of the animal characters (ROLE), the AUDIENCE is young children of today, the FORMAT is a children's story, and the TOPIC of course, is that historic day in 1903 that "made the world a forever smaller place."

In addition to working on writing skills, this particular writing piece measures student comprehension of material as they are asked not to regurgitate it, but to synthesize it. RAFTs were my favorite thing to do with students - it helped them to pull apart NYS writing prompts as well as sneaking a little of that middle school creativity into the content. Win-win!!

Now imagine RAFTs from another perspective - rather than telling the story of the first flight from the point of view of someone there - what if Orville and Wilbur were to view this video:




Students could then write from the perspective of Orville and Wilbur demonstrating how their invention has changed the world. Or about how the world and technology has changed since 1903. The possibilities - seemingly like flights! - are endless!!

Thanks to think:lab for the video link!!