SLA had an influx of IKEA tables a few weeks ago. Our architect neighbors are moving away and donated furniture rather than moving it.
Yesterday, I had an idea.
I sat Will at one of the tables in the hall and we started to plan his essay.
At the end of the day, he’d done this:
Today, my seniors were planning their benchmark projects.
Here’s what they came up with:
By the end of the day, I’m hoping to transition completely the dry-erase tables.
Think of the possibilities.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
– Albert Einstein
We were playing with outlining today.
Rather than peddle the same kind of linear thinking Mrs. Rupple taught me in 7th grade, I tried a different approach.
“What are some ways you’ve planned your writing that have been successful?”
And then they shared.
“Write these down,” said I, “You might need them when you get stuck.”
The old favorites such as Roman numerals and webs and bullet points were offered up.
They weren’t alone.
One student talked about coming up with a topic, journaling about it and then moving the pieces around until they made sense. Where she sensed weakness, she knew she needed to do research.
Another student picks a topic, starts researching and tags the useful articles in delicious. When tagging, he lists the important points he wants to reference in his paper as bullet points in the notes section of the tag. When it’s time to write, he calls up the tag and has all his notes listed.
Then there was Andre.
He didn’t know it, but Andre was the inspiration for today’s lesson.
Yesterday, as the students were preparing the information they’d uncovered from their research, Andre spoke up.
“Mr. Chase, yo, I don’t do outlining. That’s not how I think.”
“How do you plan your writing?”
“I see it in pictures.”
He explained it to the class today:
And that is his process.
It works for him. More to the point, it’s how his brain works for him.
I could never have taught Andre this method.
More frightening, if I’d attempted to teach Andre outlining, my method would have worked against everything his brain was telling him.
“What about when you need to find outside sources to back up your arguments?” asked I.
Easy. He does an image search using the keywords from his topic. When he finds a picture that appears to fit the bill, he goes to the source page and reads the related information.
It’s not how my brain works.
It’s how Andre’s brain works.
It works well.
I’m so glad I asked.
Having kids write is important.
Shocking, right?
According to a April 2008 report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, “Eighty-six percent of teens believe good writing is important to success in life — some 56% describe it as essential and another 30% describe it as important.”
It’s nice when the kids are on our side.
Parents are on our side as well – “Eighty-six percent of teens believe good writing is important to success in life — some 56% describe it as essential and another 30% describe it as important.”
Unfortunately, the kids say our writing instruction is not alright.
“Overall, 82% of teens feel that additional in-class writing time would improve their writing abilities and 78% feel the same way about their teachers using computer-based writing tools.”
I’m trying to work on this.
Aside from the various “bigger” writing projects I ask of students, I’m a huge proponent of journaling.
My journaling practice has evolved over time. It started as I was taught to journal by Mrs. Haake; a prompt was on the board and they responded to it.
Turns out, the tools at my disposal give me more options.
Here are the frequent options:
Variations, of course, exist.
The last option is universally on the table. My students come to me from somewhere. It’s easy to forget.
Allowing freewriting allows them to unpack whatever they carry with them into the room.
Journaling can be drawing, journaling can be poetry, journaling can be lists.
The rules:
I don’t read the journals. Scratch that, I don’t make sharing journal entries compulsory. If a student wants to, he or she leaves his journal in a designated location and I read only the last entry. I promise them that’s all I’ll read. If they trust me, they’ll share. If they don’t, they won’t. If they don’t, I work harder.
Here is today’s prompt:
One final finding:
Teens who enjoy their school writing more are more likely to engage in creative writing at school compared with teens who report very little enjoyment of school writing (81% vs. 69%). In our focus groups, teens report being motivated to write by relevant, interesting, self-selected topics, and attention and feedback from engaged adults who challenged them.
So, choice, relevance and discussion. Shocking, right?
Scio me nihil scire.
– Socrates
Saw that coming, did you? Fair enough.
Here’s where that logic gets away from me.
If I know nothing, then everything is empty and I wander around hoping to find something I can know. And, while I do a fair bit of wandering and learning, my life is admittedly built around what I think I know. So, I know nothing, but think I know something.
A few weeks ago, I was walking with a student and listening to him talk about his writing. The struggle was around trying to argue a point. He could tell me where his brain was on whatever he was writing about in the moment he was writing.
The struggle came when he started to remember that he didn’t know what he didn’t know. He might learn something down the road or unlearn something he’s already picked up that would change his perspective on the issue. Worse yet, he could walk down the path that led him to realizing his point was wrong. Then, there would be this archive, this indelible record of not just his thinking, but his wrongness.
Knowing he did not know kept him from knowing where he was right then.
All of this is to say I know I know nothing with absolute certainty. This year, these 365, are more mile markers along the road of understanding.
They are to serve as reminders of where my thinking used to live and hopefully push that thinking deeper.
Aside from Socrates, another philosopher to whom I turn on a regular basis is Robert Fulghum. If the name rings a bell, it’s because you remember Fulghum’s book that inspired a decorative poster found in many classrooms in the early 90s – All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. My grandmother gave me Kindergarten after she’d received it for a gift. It blew the mind of 9-year-old me. It still does. I’ve read everything Fulghum’s ever published – more than once. I’ve given his books as gift to more people than I care to admit.
And, when I was 14, I sat down to write Fulghum a letter.
Though my handwriting was atrocious, I decided against using the family’s computer in order to show him what I said was true.
I wrote several drafts.
My offer was simple. I would come to him, wherever he was, and spend my summer cleaning out his garage, painting his house, whatever needed to be done, if he would teach me. I wanted to know how he wrote things that were so clearly true. I wanted to know how he saw the world with such understanding. I wanted to know.
I never heard back from Fulghum.
In some secret part of my brain, I keep hoping he will happen upon my letter some day when he’s reaching for a pen that’s fallen behind his desk.
Until then, here are the things I know for now…in this moment…but not really.
I’m not a member of the National Writing Project. And, if you don’t call your senators tomorrow, it’s entirely likely I never will be.
May I explain?
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has attached an amendment to the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act that would ban all congressional earmarks for the next three years. Yea! right?
Not so much.
Because NWP is noncompetitive, its federal funding (which it’s depended on since 1991) is technically considered an earmark.
I definitely get the idea of eliminating earmarks and wasteful government spending. I’m a big fan of it.
Here’s the thing, the NWP bears no resemblance to wasteful spending. Nearly every dollar of federal funding awarded to the 200+ NWP sites is matched by site-procured funding.
What’s more, the NWP consistently meets or exceeds the metrics on which its program effectiveness is measured. For more than three decades, the NWP has been helping teachers teach children better.
Again, I’m a proponent of eliminating wasteful government spending. Before slashing budgets, though, let’s be clear on which programs are wasteful.
If you’re reading this, I’m asking you to help.
Call your senators tomorrow – both of them.
Ask them to vote no on Coburn amendment #4697 to S. 510 that would ban all congressionally directed spending in FY2011, FY2012 and FY2013.
According to NWP Works!, the Senate is expected to vote on the measure Monday, November 29, so call.
Then, call, IM or e-mail anyone you know who’s ever learned how to write and ask them to call their senators.
I’m not kidding. Seriously.
The NWP should serve as the model of efficiency in organically building national systems for teacher development. Instead, it’s fighting for survival.
Call.
As much as I believe the tools should be in the background, this is as much about tools as it is about learning.
Two years ago, I started asking my G11 students to write bi-weekly analytical essays on topics of their choosing. Every other week, they are responsible for drafting an original thesis, doing research to back it up and then composing a brief analytical essay proving their points.
The essays were dubbed “2fers,” as they were due every two weeks and assigned as being 2 pages in length.
Larissa Pahomov, my G11 English teaching counterpart also decided to have her students complete these papers. This quickly became a lesson in the effects of a grade-wide assignment. Every SLA senior knows 2fers, and every SLA sophomore knows they’re on the horizon.
This year, we tried something new.
Revision and editing are always difficult components of the writing process in a 1:1 program (and any other program, for that matter). Whereas my English teachers asked me to turn in copies of each of my drafts with my final copy, writing on the computer calls for something else.
I edit and revise as I compose on the computer. I’m editing and revising as I type this. My first sentence of this piece went through three drafts the world will never see.
Still, when I’m done writing something that’s a little shaky, I’ll send it to someone else to check out.
Most of my students don’t have that switch in their brain.
Physiologically, the adolescent brain isn’t built for reflection. Sharing an electronic doc via e-mail can end up with many copies. Printing can waste paper and creates one more thing to keep track of. If I think I’ve edited it whilst writing, wasting time to have someone else do the same thing, well, wastes time.
This year, the students are utilizing our new installation of google apps for education in their 2fer writing.
Here’s how it went down:
At first, students were told to pick the most ruthless editor they could think of and ask them to look at their first papers.
The first go wasn’t great. Not everyone looked at their chosen partner’s essay. Some people chose editors with skill levels insufficient for pushing their writing forward as far as possible.
For the second go round, I assigned each student to a group of three. They kept their original editors, but were also responsible for looking at the two others in their group.
Results improved.
Now, this is not to say I was completely removed from the process. On the contrary, I was in there as well.
When I was assessing, my comments were added to their peers’. The rubric was pasted at the end of each essay with targeted comments for improvement.
Here’s the beauty. On the second round of 2fers, I saw the students using the same language as I had used in my feedback. I didn’t need to correct formatting, they were doing it for one another.
At its best, the revision became wonderful asynchronous conversations about the ideas and arguments being made. At its worst, it was surface level revision. Either way, it brought improvement, and students were learning the habits and language of revision.
I know this looks like a writing workshop, but it’s not quite. I know it looks like an electronic portfolio, but it’s not quite.
It’s asynchronous nature challenges that. The fact that no conversation or draft is never really done challenges that.
What’s more, in a writing workshop, what gets turned in at the end is usually the final copy. The conversation that led to that copy is hidden or lost unless, like my high school English teachers, students are asked to turn in all drafts. Even then, I’m fairly certain that was a check for completion, not a check for conversation.
At the start of the second quarter, I asked students to review their Q1 docs and look for trends in the comments their editors and I left. From their, they wrote goals for improvement in the second quarter. Those goals were posted at the top of their Q2 2fer doc.
They brought the most important pieces of the old conversation with them to the new conversation.
I realize the pieces of this aren’t anything new. The process, on the other hand, and the tools utilize to build the process, strike me as something new. I’m throwing this in the “Doing old things better in new ways” category.
A few months ago, my friend Max and another friend of his launched a site called longform.org.
A week ago, Ben tweeted out a link to reframeit.com.
I noted each site in the cache of my mind as something that could be useful in class.
I like the cache because it’s a place where ideas can marinate. (Pardon the mixed metaphor.)
My G11 students are completing a benchmark project right now. It’s one of those pieces where they have a bunch to work on, and we hand over class time to that collaboration. Doing only that can be monotonous.
To break the monotony this week, we’re playing with longform.org and reframeit.com.
Last week, I ask each team of kids (they sit in tables of four) to head to longform an find a piece of journalism they thought would hold the class’ attention and produce thoughtful conversation.
The directions were simple:
That’s it.
The discussions and debates about which articles to select were as interesting as the comments that started showing up in the digital margins. One team of all girls made it halfway through an article they agreed was highly interesting, but too mature for some of their classmates. I’d made the same judgment when they told me what they’d selected, but they needed to come to that conclusion on their own. Choice means realizing when you’ve made a bad one. They shifted and all is well.
Over the next two weeks, we’ll have a shared reading experience of some amazingly diverse and high-quality long-form journalism. The students will collaborate on how they interpret and question what they’re reading. The class will build their abilities to converse about a given text and build comprehension, analysis and intertextual reading.
My role will be that of a reader and thinker.
When I showed the class reframeit.com the first time, all I did was give them time to play and told them we’d be sharing our first impressions at the end of play time. Several times, their evaluation danced around the idea that they could see it as possibly useful if they had a clear purpose for using it. Its existence wasn’t inherently useful.
That’s what cache marinading is for.
As the Grade 11 students are reading books of choice for the most part this year, I’ve been working to incorporate types of texts outside of novels into our reading. This has taken the form of long form journalism pieces, op-eds, short stories or anything else. Part of what we’re working toward is endurance in reading. Part of what we’re working toward is reading as a social experience.
I’ve known about the Think Aloud as a reading strategy for a few years. I’ve tried to stay away from it for the sheer boredom of it. It doesn’t ask much of my strongest readers and can feel as though I’m patronizing those students reading at lower levels.
I decided to take my voice out of it. Here’s how it worked:
What happened was a great reminder of the kind of conversation our students are capable of. It’s what they were hoping for when we went to the Town Hall Meeting. At one point, it occurred to me we could benefit from adding our school librarian’s voice to the mix. I called and invited him.
Matt, a grad student completing some observations in our class, commented afterward on how the students had kept the conversation moving even when I was on the phone. I’m hoping it’s because they owned the conversation and I didn’t. In fact, the rules within discussion are that I too must raise my hand and wait to be called on when I want to contribute.
That was classy. What do you think?
I’m actually supposed to be grading right now, but I’m angry, so I’m stopping.
I’m not even angry for the usual reasons.
My seniors completed what was their ultimate project of their English Studies at SLA.
The assignment was easy to explain:
The full project description can be seen here.
The work required them to utilize skills as readers, writers, and thinkers.
The problem, youtube – the algorithm, not the people – sees the work as a violation of copyright.
You would too, if you weren’t actually watching the videos to see what they actually are.
I wanted to make certain my thinking on this lines up with the legal requirements, so I went to Kristin Hokanson.
She said it all came down to two questions:
She followed up with:
Fair use considers FOUR factors:
In answer to the first question, yes. Rather than being a video for entertainment, the video is now a non-profit scholarly educational work. As for value, it’s the work of high school students. Some of the value is more, some of the value is less. Will any of these analyses break 1 million views? No.
In answer to the second question, yes. The students used all of the videos because they needed to show how the entirety of the text worked toward supporting their theses. In some cases, they augmented the work with outside slides in order to more fully make a point. Again, the idea here is for the viewer to experience the text concurrently with the analysis, pausing as needed to think more deeply. In the case of something like Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.,” I’m thinking this is a definite repurpose.
Realizing youtube would likely not discern between actual re-purposed non-profit educational work and a simple copy of the original work, I asked the students to submit their work as private videos and then share them with my account.
It was an attempt to keep their work authentic as well as alive.
For the most part, it worked. Then, students started coming in to class telling me their work had been taken down.
Let this be what I say:
For those who complain youtube is destroying culture or thought or any of the rest, this project re-purposed not only the videos, but the medium into a place for scholarly consideration of some of the most globally popular contemporary texts.
For those who argue the blocking of youtube in schools, look at this as a rudimentary example of what can happen when we empower students to think critically about and within online social spaces.
Many of the students worked diligently and thoughtfully on this assignment. If nothing else, they’re more thoughtful and aware of what they view and what it means for a text to be popular.
I’d show you this student work, but then youtube’d have to kill it.
They sit in windows with journals and pens and pencils in hand. Many of them plug out the sounds of the building with iPods.
They appear to be daydreaming. Really, they’re completing an assignment.
At this moment, my class is scattered around the building – writing.
At the top of the period, we walked en masse to the end of the third floor hallway.
I pointed across the street to one of the lofts whose windows give their inhabitants a kind of zoo-like aire.
“Who used to live over there?”
“Elliptical Guy.”
“Yes, Elliptical Guy. For two years, I watched Elliptical Guy work out whenever he was home. No matter the time of day. I don’t think I ever saw him eat or sit on his couch.”
Small giggles.
“Eventually, I started wondering who he was. Why was he so adamantly exercising? Why did it seem like he was never losing any weight?”
The odd, “Me too.”
“Then I started wondering whether he was working out for himself or someone else. Was there a guy or a girl he was trying to win over? Finally, I had to make Elliptical Guy a story. I had to make him into someone real in my life. It made the constant checking up less creepy; it made him a part of a story I was writing and reading all the time.”
Now, take your journals. Find a window. Look out. Find someone or something that tells you a story. Write that story.
As I’ve written this, they’ve started to file back in.
It’s time to find out what they’ve read in the world.