Post PARCC Poetry

This week, my third graders are taking the PARCC test for the first time.  So far, we've taken three of the four 1-hour mathematics tests, and they seem to be handling it very well.  In prepping them to take this test, I talked with them about how their parents and I want them to do their best, but at the same time, their lives to not hinge on the results.  I don't believe in getting kids all worked up and anxious about their performance on standardized tests, especially in third grade.

As I was doing my lesson planning for this week, I thought about how I wanted the kids to feel at the end of the day.  Because the math tests were taking an hour of my literacy block, I decided to steal that time back during my scheduled math time so the kids could have more than 30 minutes to read or write.  We're in the tail end of our study of myths and legends, so I knew they would be planning and writing their legends.  April is also National Poetry Month, so I wanted to work in some poems as well.

I made the decision to take that hour after lunch to read and discuss a poem or a poetry picture book and then invite the kids to try out whatever poetic device or poetic form featured.  So far, we've read Dogku by Andrew Clements, some recipe poems I found online, Forest Has a Song by Amy Ludwig VanDerWater, and Falling Down the Page by Georgia Heard.  Each day, the energy and buzz in the classroom during our literacy studio have been amazing.  The kids are trying out their poetry writing without hesitation.  I see them taking risks and playing with words and rhyme and meter, reading their writing out loud to each other to see how the poems sound.  They are playing with poetry.

Students experiment with color poems inspired by Amy Ludwig VanDerWater's Writing the Rainbow Challenge

I made a conscious decision NOT to do formal lessons on meter, rhyme, figurative language, and poetic forms.  I wanted this exploration of the possibilities of poetry to be playful and low-stakes.  I wanted this hour to be the complete opposite of the hour of PARCC testing the kids experienced in the morning, where they had to be silent and still.

There has been no silence in my literacy studio this week.  There has been no stillness.

And I am TOTALLY fine with that!

Lightbulb Moments

Some days, after I've walked my third graders out the front door of the school, I go back to my classroom and just sit at my desk.  It often looks as if a tornado has hit it, since I don't have time to put things away over the course of the day.  I turn my chair so that I'm facing the groups of student desks and I think about the day just past.

I'm not always happy about that reflection.  Some days, it seems like I'll model, and think aloud, and provide practice, and confer, and provide feedback and the kids just don't seem to GET IT.  It's as if we're in a third-grade version of Groundhog Day and I'm Bill Murray, making small adjustments to my instruction, thinking that I've finally made a difference, then WHAM!  That clock flips and Sonny & Cher come on and I'm right back where I was the day before.

Some days, I just want to throw in the towel and give up and move on.

That is a rather hyperbolic description of the weeks since winter break. My literacy coach and I had been working with the students on using text evidence to answer questions in the reading part of our literacy studio and the beginnings of writing opinion papers in the writing part.  We were doing all of the things we were supposed to be doing (see list above).  To be truthful, we did see small movement in the students' ability to answer "right there" questions and to write very basic paragraphs, but it was slow going.

And then it wasn't!  Last Thursday, it was like a switch flipped and things started to click.  I had given students a short piece of text entitled "Should Students Learn Cursive" that we read together and discussed.  As third graders, this is a topic they are interested in, as many of them learned to write their names in cursive in second grade, and they want to learn more.  For their opinion writing practice, I asked them to take a side... should they have to learn cursive in schools?  Why?  Why not?
They started writing like they were on fire!  I saw T-charts and webs and bullet lists being created in the planning space.  I saw them going back into the text to reference the pro and con arguments.  I had students asking me for writing advice.  I had students asking EACH OTHER for writing advice (even better).  I saw students writing multi-paragraph papers outlining all the reasons they SHOULD learn to write (and read) cursive.  I nearly fell off of my conferring stool!

It was a lightbulb moment day.  Teachers live for those.

But it was also a day that reminded me that learning takes time.  I have to avoid getting caught up on where I think I'm "supposed" to be on a timeline or a curriculum map, and I have to honor the students who make up our learning community.  I have to think about where they are at on that day, and what they need NEXT to grow as writers.  Most important, I need to remember to teach the WRITER not the writing.

These are not new lessons for me.  But the reminder is no less important.  If I were not reflective about my practice; if the literacy coach had not reminded me to step back and be an observer in my own classroom, I might have just moved on to the next stop on the curriculum train.  I know in my heart that when I take the time my students need, I am doing the right thing - no matter what the calendar says.

So tomorrow, I'll head back into Room 301, and I'll model and think aloud and confer and listen and give feedback.  But I'll also observe and think.

And I'll watch for the lightbulbs.

Reading 'Till My Eyes Cross

Twice a year, my school district administers a writing assessment for all students in grades 2-8.  The students have a piece of text to read and a writing prompt based on that text.  They then have approximately 45 minutes to write an essay.  In grades 5-8, the essay is expected to be argumentative in nature and to incorporate evidence from the text as support for the arguments.

It's not a perfect assessment.  Sometimes students do not have enough schema, even with the text provided, to really formulate arguments about the text.  Sometimes they don't care much about the topic and therefore do not write much.  But honestly, it's as close to the timed writing of other assessments as we can get.  I do know the writing on the assessment is much better since we started giving students a text to read.

In my building, all of the students' essays are turned in to one of our administrative assistants who pulls off the cover page with the identification information and sorts them into piles to be scored.  Then, on a half-day PD day, the entire staff gathers and scores.  Every unidentified essay is read and scored by two people using a rubric based on the old ISAT writing test.  In order to prepare for this scoring and to make sure we are on the same page, we have some inter-rater reliability training where the consultant who works with our district shares some trends and we score some papers together in our grade level teams.  This helps us to all be on the same page in terms of what kinds of papers get what kind of score.

And how does the consultant identify the trends?

She and I score close to 150 of the 600 papers.  Together.  And amazingly, we are very much in sync on the scores, even after several months of not scoring. Eventually we can score separately and cross-check on random papers or on those that are giving us fits.

So that's what I did yesterday and today.  I read and read and read and read and thought and thought and thought and thought.  Then we sorted and talked and sorted some more until we found the anchor papers for tomorrow's trainings.

This is part of my job as literacy coach that I don't really enjoy.  When I was in the classroom, I never read 150 papers over the course of about 9 hours.  I couldn't have maintained the pace.  The only reason I can do it now is that there is someone else there with me to double check the papers I'm unsure about and to keep referring me back to the rubric.  I also don't know who wrote the papers, so I don't have any baggage to attach to them.  I can be completely impartial.

What I do enjoy is seeing the trends that show instruction in writing is paying off.  I can see that the teachers in my building are working with students on incorporating text evidence into writing.  I can see that a great deal of time has been spent on writing effective introductions and conclusions that move beyond cookie cutter "snappy starts."  I can see we still have a way to go in weaving direct quotes into the body paragraphs and appropriately citing those quotes.  I can see we have to discuss the downfalls of the being hyperbolic and how that exaggeration weakens an argument.

Do I love this assessment?  Nope.  Does it measure all aspects of good writing?  Nope.  We're looking at a piece of rough draft writing produced under stressful conditions.  Should this be the only data point we use to evaluate our students' writing and determine who might need remediation or extension?  Absolutely not.  But it is a snapshot that gives us information we can use to plan instruction in our grade-level teams and to start conversations among the staff about how to help our students become stronger better writers.

Whew!

So I had every intention of posting here during the first week of school, but as is often the case the first two weeks of school completely wiped me out.  It was all I could do to drag myself home every afternoon and make dinner for my family.

I've had my afternoon nap, so I feel ready to reflect on what's happened so far.

Lessons these first few days have focused mostly on "here's how you do this" and getting to know my students as readers.  The first day each of my classes talked about what has to happen in order to have a "good class."  We made lists on chart paper and then compiled our class norms from those lists.  Here's what my classes had to say:

 

As seventh graders, they've had many experiences in different types of classes, and the things that stood out to me as a result of our conversations are that kids really want teachers who listen to them and treat them with respect.  The kids in my classes also wanted to be challenged but at the same time have fun.  I have a feeling that these three classes are going to quickly grow into supportive learning community, something that is important for my classroom to run the way I envision.

Every year, part of me feels like I should jump in from day one with the business of my content.  The part of me that respects the workshop process knows that spending the time building these relationships and routines will pay off later.  I am honoring the time it will take to build these groups.

The most exciting thing so far is the sheer number of library books students have checked out of my classroom library.  The books are flying off of my book displays, and I actually have empty baskets, something that has rarely happened in the past.  I have waiting lists for the three Hunger Games titles, Divergent, and Darth Paper Strikes Back.  The kids are talking to each other about the books they love and selling these books even better than I could.  During my "getting to know you" reading conferences, they are eager to talk about genres and authors they love and have definite ideas about first quarter reading goals.  I'm hoping the same thing happens next week as we begin to talk more about students as writers.

September is a rosy time in my reading-writing workshop.  The kids and I are in a sort of a honeymoon period, and I know that soon I will get push-back from some of my more reluctant or tangled readers, but I'm hoping by that time I will know them well enough to support them and start where they're at and help them grow.

Like I told the parents at open house last night, I feel I have the best job in the world.  I get to go to work every day and talk to great kids about reading and writing.  What could be better?

Welcome to the Inaugural Post of Making It Work in the Middle!

School starts just one week from today, and I finally feel like I'm ready to start tackling planning.  Last year was a difficult one for me, both professionally and personally, and I'm looking forward to a better year this year!

One of the ways I am setting myself up for success is through this blog.  I'm hoping to post here on a regular basis as a way to process my thinking and learning this year.  One would think that after 17 years of teaching seventh grade language arts I would have it all figured out.  Not quite!  What I discover, year after year, is that the more I know the more I realize I have left to learn.  I am lucky to work in a school district that values professional learning, and as such I have access to amazing mentors such as Ellin Keene and Diane Sweeney.  Just as important are the mentors I have sought out for myself, people such as Donalyn Miller, Teri Lesesne, Jim Burke, Kelly Gallagher, Patrick Allen, and the many other teachers who are part of my online professional learning network.  Each of them challenges my thinking every day.

One of the books I'm reading right now is Day by Day by Ruth Ayres and Stacey Shubitz (Stenhouse, 2011).  Ayres and Shubitz have formatted this book in such a way that it compels the reader to reflect on her practice and strive to become better.  Right now, I'm still on chapter 1, "Routines."  As I've begun my planning for the first few weeks of school, I've thought about the routines that help to make my reading and writing workshops run smoothly.  I know that establishing and practicing these routines is essential to the success of my workshops, but sometimes I get bogged down in the day-to-day minutia of my class that I forget to practice them with my students!  If anyone else out there is working through Day by Day, I'd love to have someone to share my thinking with!