I'm the Expert

This was posted on my other blog - www.mardiesnotebook.blogspost.ca - a couple of weeks ago.  In the next few days my students will be presenting their speeches and I hope to have some updates and reflections on the project.

A couple of weeks ago, Deb Day posted a slice about her Demonstration Speech Day and I was immediately intrigued!  I adored the idea behind it all: Get students to write and deliver short demonstration speeches on something at which they are already experts. The idea appealed to me for the following reasons:

• Oral presentations are often difficult for middle schoolers who are uber concerned with how their peers see them.  Giving students an opportunity to share something they know well and are proud of would give them more confidence when they stood in front of their peers.

• We could explore ‘how-to’ writing, which would help my students understand the importance of clarity in their communications (something that is a struggle for some of my students).  

• Examples of authentic ‘how-to’ pieces are readily available, making for a wide range of possible anchor texts (cookbooks, user manuals, assembly instructions) including video clips from TV shows (cooking, fashion, decorating, How It’s Made type-shows, etc.).

• The speeches would be entertaining and informative to the audience of peers.

• I could modify Deb’s assignment to suit my middle school students and our curriculum. One of the first modifications I made was to omit the requirement for research and external sources.  This would allow my students to focus more on the presentation skills that they’d be demonstrating.

• Given that students wouldn’t have to do any research, the turnaround time could be short - a couple of weeks to write, rehearse and present.  

 I knew that my students would love the idea, and, sure enough, this was confirmed when I introduced it to them briefly one day and had about a million questions about it the next day.  Before I even hinted at the speeches, I asked students to find a blank page in their writing notebooks and to jot down a list of things they are experts at, things they know so well that they could teach me how to do them.  

On Thursday, students had to inform me of the topics of their speeches.  We're calling them 'I'm the Expert' demonstration speeches.  I'm delighted at the range of topics my students chose for their presentations.  And I'm so glad that some of the topic choices reflect my students’ rural roots.  Many of my students are truly experts in areas that I know very little about, given my city roots.  

Here are some of the things I will be lucky to learn about in a few weeks time:

1. How to pick a perfect spot for fishing
2. How to take care of a bulldog
3. How to build a tree fort
4. How to milk a cow 
5. How to make a scrapbooked greeting card
6. How to prepare for and go up on point shoes 
7. How to make the best scrambled eggs (other cooking how-to’s include: grilled cheese, homemade Reeses Pieces, cupcakes, nachos, chocolate mousse)
8. How to do corking
9. How to make balloon figures
10. How to care for your snake
11. How to ride a horse
12. How to draw eyes
13. How to keep your room organized
14. How to do a high jump
15. How to ice fish
16. How to defend your goal in soccer
17. How to do some Jujitsu moves
18. How to do barn chores
19. How to french braid hair
20. How to drive a golf ball
21. How to kick a soccer ball
22. How to make a bracelet
23. How to care for your cat
24. How to write a good game review
25. How to draw an abstract design (his own specialty)
26. How to make a goal in hockey
27. How to take care of a 3-year old diva

I’m going to learn so much!  I can’t wait!  Thanks Deb for such a great idea!

Hefty Questions Answered

I was going to call this blogpost ‘The Good, The OK, and The Ugly’ but I decided against sharing the ugly responses that I got to my literature circle questions on this previous post.  The ugly were not so much ugly as they were incomplete, like the one in which question #1 is answered with three words, three character traits with no explanation, no support.  Ughh!  

Instead, I’ve decided to celebrate the Gems and the Diamonds in the Rough.  Even the Gems could use improvements.  Students’ communications could have been more refined, and they could have provided more support for their ideas, but to me their answers surely show that my students were really doing the work of the good reader.  They were thinking, delving deep to find meaning in the stories.  We will continue to study the elements of fiction (see notes to self below) and to work to become more articulate in our responses.  

The Diamonds in the Rough made me chuckle because I know these kids and love them.  Because I know what they were ‘trying’ to say.  Because they were close, but not there yet.  Still, there is much to be celebrated.  

Each paragraph below was written by a different student.  I tried to gather a variety of student responses rather than show just one student’s responses to all of the questions.

Gems

Speak:

I think Melinda is tough because she went through an entire year without any friends.  It would be difficult going to school every day knowing that you have no one special to talk to. 

I think the main theme of this story is when something bad happens you should always tell someone.  I think ‘Speak’ is the title because during a big portion of the story, Melinda doesn’t speak about the ______. I think that this is the theme because Melinda doesn’t know to speak or how to tell anyone because she was scared and I think she would feel embarrassed if anyone knew.

The event that I think was the climax of the story was at the end of the story.  I believe it was when Melinda stood up to Andy in her little janitor’s closet.  Melinda had been a quiet girl, not sticking up for herself when everyone was mean to her.  This is the turning point in the story because she went from being self-conscious, non-defensive, and depressed to what a person should be - happy about theirselves.

Fallen Angels: 

A life lesson that this novel has left me, as a reader, with is to be proud and grateful for the people that have fought and served in the war.

Perry {the protagonist} learned that he must follow his instincts and that going to war comes with a price.  His experiences have changed him, because he has seen horrors that he could not have imagined, so he became scared and sad after seeing these horrors.  

We All Fall Down:

I think Will learned not to take his father’s absence for granted because he could have lost him at any time during the story.  The experiences changed his relationship with his dad.  Will trusts and respects his dad more.  An example is when he had to trust his dad’s decision to go down instead of up.  

Among the Hidden:

A character trait for Luke could be ‘patient’ because all 12 years of his life he has been waiting for the third child rule to be lifted, but it never has.  Another way he is patient is one day he sees another third child in the house across the street.  He thinks of  good plan to go over and see who it is, but it starts to rain for the next two weeks and he knows his parents will see his footprints in the yard if he goes out so he is patient and waits till the ground dries up again.

One of the themes for this book is standing up for what you think is right.  In the story, Jen planned out a rally to protest against the government to set Shadow Children free.  She thought it was necessary to do that, so when it was time, she went to the rally with 40 other Third Children and even though the rally failed and they all died, they did what they thought they had to do.

The Girls: 

Maya is a sensitive person and that is what stops her from solving the main problems.  She doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.  That’s why her and the girls aren’t friends.  She is too afraid and sensitive to express her feelings that she wants to be friends and she doesn’t know what she did wrong to lose their friendship.  She is also making this harder because she is sensitive and doesn’t want to get hurt herself, so she avoids them and doesn’t talk to them. 

The life lesson that I have learned is that it is more important to have a few close friends than to have a bunch of friends that don’t care about you.  When you pick the ‘in’ crowd, it’s not always the best decision because they might not accept you for who you really are.  You should be able to stay to your true colours and not be who your friends want you to be.

Schooled:

Cap is extremely confident in himself.  He doesn’t care what people think.  He wears home-made sandals and tie-died clothes to school.  He believe in more spiritual stuff, like burying a bird in the front of the school.  Cap just doesn’t care, and that’s why I like this character.  He knows how to be himself, doing tai chi in the front yard where everyone can see him.  He drove a school bus and he kept going even though the cops were chasing him, because he knew he could do it and it was to save a life.

Diamonds in the Rough

We All Fall Down:

The first possible climax is when the plane hit the South Tower.  The second possibility happens closer to the end of the book, when South Tower collapses.  The reason that these are both possibilities is that these are the highest points of action in the book, as a climax should be. I personally feel that the first possibility makes a better climax, because it sets the mood for the rest of the story, while the second possibility acts more of a dramatic finish. 

(Note to self: Reteach the meanings of rising action and climax. Emphasize the differences between the two.) 

Among the Hidden:

I think the theme of Among the Hidden is this society makes real people, non-people. I know this because Luke and Jen are people but because of the law and the society makes Luke and Jen  non-people. I don’t agree with this rule because people should be allowed to have more than 2 children.  
This is kinda like China but in China your only allowed 1 child.  I really don’t like that rule.  But I know I’m not gonna be livin in China.

(Note to Self: You gotta love this kid.)

Schooled:

I think the climax is when people thought Cap was dead.  I think this because it really brought out the good in everyone.  They made a funeral for Cap and everyone was holding candles and crying and reading poems about him, and Zach and Hugh were crying the most of them, and they were all so stoked to see that Cap was not dead.

(Note to Self: Yeah, him too.)

Modelling

A few years ago, during a discussion about her book Write Beside Them on the English Companion Ning, Penny Kittle described her students’ reaction to hearing that she would be modelling for them.

The arched eyebrows and wide-eyed stares made it clear to Penny that her students had some notion of her sauntering down the aisle between desks, hips jutting forward, sporting the latest in heels and blazer, an almost angry and definitely bored expression on her face.  Yes, they were thinking fashion.  Fashion modeling, that is.

Of course, Penny meant that she’d be modelling the writing process by writing with them, beside them.  Write Beside Them was one of those professional reads that changed my teaching practice for the better, forever.  I write alongside my students now and I share in their work, their struggles, and I share the products that I create.

For the past several weeks we’ve been reading in Literature Circles. We started off with an intense, but satisfying, Book Pass to identify student preferences, and then I put students into what I hoped would be productive groupings.  I considered reading rate, book preferences, reading fluency and comprehension, and communication skills.  

Since we’d been talking about ‘Choices’ a fair bit in class in other contexts, I decided to ‘frame’ the first readings in terms of the theme of ‘choices.’  Students were asked to read and discuss the choices that the characters in their books were making, what influenced their choices, whether the choices made were helpful or hurtful.  

The books we were reading in my two English classes were all perfect fodder for this ‘big idea.’

Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Schooled by Gordon Korman

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Meyers

The Girls by Amy Koss Goldman

Splat by Eric Walters

We All Fall Down by Eric Walters

Tangerine by Edward Bloor

Zach’s Lie by Roland Smith

Gone by Michael Grant

Although the theme of choices could certainly carry us through the books in their entirety, I wanted the culminating tasks to have a wider scope, to be unencumbered by a single theme.  Early on - after students had read the first few chapters of their books - I presented them with the four heavy-weight questions that they’d have to respond to when they’d completed the reading.

Literature Circle Questions

The following broad questions should be considered as you are reading your novels together.  When you have finished reading your novels, each student will respond to these questions in writing. 

Remember to support your ideas with ideas and quotes from the novel when answering each of the following questions:

1.  Describe your protagonist.  What 3 traits could describe his/her personality or character?  What is his/her main problem in the book?  What character flaw or life situation is stopping him/her from solving the problem? 

2.  Which event do you think was the climax of the story?  Remember that a climax is an event or moment that signifies the turning point of the story, the moment in which everything comes to a head, the moment when you know that the main conflict is being resolved or will be resolved and how.

3.  What did the protagonist learn over the course of the story?  How has his/her experiences in the story changed him/her?  How has the protagonist changed others in the story?  What influence did he/she have on other characters?

4.  What do you think the main theme(s) of the story are?  Remember that a theme is an ISSUE + WHAT THE AUTHOR IS SAYING ABOUT THE ISSUE.  What life lesson does this novel leave you with as a reader?  

For my 7th graders, this would be the culmination of a unit on the elements of fiction.  We’d studied character development, conflict, plot, point of view, setting, theme, in depth throughout the year.  Finally, they’d have to put it all their learning together and synthesize, apply.  And, in order to facilitate this application, I modelled for them using short stories like Rona Maynard’s The Fan Club.

I made my 'thinking through' the story visible by providing students with an annotated version of the story, which we read in class twice: once through without my thinking and then again, stopping to read my notes.  They would use sticky notes to jot down their thoughts, reactions, observations, as well as the Literature Circle forms - Four Squares, I call them - that they were expected to use to prepare for their Literature Circle meetings.

I responded to each of the questions they’d have to answer in relation to The Fan Club so that they could see how I could use my annotations as a foundation for my responses.  My answers were written with their abilities in mind.  They are a model for the 7th graders in my class, and so they are not what I’d submit for a thesis paper in graduate school.  Moreover, they are not perfect.  When we read them in class, students brought to my attention that perhaps I should have included more about Laura’s speech and how it contrasts with her own actions at the end of the story.  So, although not perfect, my students had a sense of what was expected of them.

Their own answers to the questions are in my school bags.  This week I’ll read them, assess them, and perhaps share some of what they wrote.  

Literate or Not Literate?

I love technology. Really, I do. My students blog and glog and make animated films with DomoGoAnimate. We love voki and online educational games. I have a personal facebook account and a goodreads account, 3 blogs and a wiki. I dropbox and google-doc my files. And yet, I cringe when I read tweets like this one:

(Please excuse the red arrow.  I am not yet proficient with skitch. Literate?  or not literate?)


Oh please!

Was Shakespeare literate? Hemingway? Dickens? Defoe? Can this measure be applied posthumously?

Is it possible for those of us who spend much of our time in the digital realm to even conceive of a well-read contemporary, perhaps even a prolific present day writer who is not well versed in digital media? And, if we should discover such a person, would we be so inclined as to call him illiterate if he had no facility with all things digital, if he chose to limit his reading and writing life to print texts?


Goodness, I should hope not.

Anonymously Yours - A New-to-Me Twist on Topic Journals

After many months of not blogging, I've decided to get back in that saddle before I forget how to ride.  Here we go again . . . 

I’ve been using Topic Journals to get my students excited about writing for a few years now, ever since I heard about the idea on the English Companion Ning.  Although I’d like to attribute the idea to its rightful architect, I’m not entirely confident that I have the complete history on its origins.  I can tell you that I believe it was Gary Anderson who first introduced me to Topic Journals, and I believe that he attributed the idea to Penny Kittle.  For some reason, I also think that the idea for topic journals is linked to Tom Newkirk, but alas, I’m not certain.  This is the way it goes in education.  Good ideas spread like wildfire and their ancestry is sometimes difficult to pin down.  Good ideas are begged, borrowed, stolen, and, thankfully, shared.  Since this brilliant idea was shared with me, I want to re-share it with you and, in particular, tell you about the twist that I’ve used this year that has inspired better-than-ever topic journal writing.  

Topic journals are shared by a class or several classes and characterized by the topic rather than the writers themselves.  Given that topics can be selected to suit the age, maturity, needs, and interests of your students, these journals can be used at any grade level.

Some of the topics I chose this year for my 7th graders include:

Friends
Mom 
Dad

Family
Lost
Found
Wishes
Dreams
Fear
Death
Passions
Talent
Regrets
Uncomfortable
Obsessed
Boys
Girls
Online
At School 
After School
Weekends
Now, That’s Funny

The key is to have a good range of topics and to have more topics than students so that everyone can choose a topic journal to write in on any given day.  Ask your students for suggestions!  This year, my students asked me to add:

Love
Places
Sport
Wilderness

The process is simple.  You write a topic name on each journal, spread the journals out on a table or the ledge of the blackboard, as I do, and let the students choose one to write in.  I ask that students fill a page (7x9” notebook) and that once they’ve made their choice, they stick with it for the full 20 minutes.  They date their entries, provide a title - if they wish - and write.  

Students usually spend about 20 minutes writing in the journals.  Of course, students are anxious to read what others have written in the journals before they begin.  In fact, I often hear students telling their friends to choose the topic that they chose last time we wrote in the journals, so that their friends can read their writing.  Ah, middle school.  It’s all about the friends.

Genres are at students’ discretion, and my students have tried them all - poetry, stories, monologues, nonfiction pieces, personal narrative, letters, persuasive pieces . . .  When a student wants to write a longer piece, he/she just writes ‘to be continued’ at the bottom of the page and continues with it the next time or the time after that.  In fact, that’s one way to know that the topic journals are really working; they’re inspiring students to work on pieces for extended periods of time, pieces they want to come back to again and again to finish.  When students find something they want to put that much effort into, we talk about using the ideas for a more polished piece of writing.  More and more this year, I have student writers who want to hang on to those journals for longer periods, who want to come back to them, who wait and watch to see who is reading their last piece.

So what is it about this year's process that has made this year’s journals so much better?  This year students are writing semi-anonymously.  In previous years I’ve had my students sign their name at the end of their journal entry.  I felt it important that students be accountable for their writing, for their words in black and white.  My concerns hovered around the potential for the writing to embody complete and utter silliness, to be riddled with gratuitous vulgarity, or perhaps worse, to be sparse and uninspired.  In addition, I was eager to use their topic journal writing in student/teacher conferences and, if the writing was worthy, for formative assessments.  This year, if they wish to sign their name, they’re more than welcome to, and some do (those are the students who beg their friends to read what they wrote last time).  Others identify themselves by their student number instead of their name, which has given us a perfect mix of accountability (I can identify them by their student numbers) and anonymity (to their peers, who don’t know their student numbers).  

And it’s been so interesting to watch these anonymous 12 and 13 year olds read one another’s writing with such verve, and write with such abandon.  The writing has become meaningful to them in ways that other writing assignments for our class and their blogs are not.  Of course these other forms of writing serve students well - very well, in fact - in other ways, but in the topic journals, students are obviously feeling free to try new voices, to play with new ideas, and to say what’s really on their minds.  This, for me, seems the true purpose of the topic journal - to experiment.  

Why did it take this strange mix of accountability and anonymity to get students writing this way?  Why wouldn’t students want to sign their name to what is likely some of the most promising writing they do in my classes?  Why aren’t they proud of their ability to dive in, to take risks and try new things?

After some head-scratching, I keep coming back to something I said earlier in this piece - middle school is all about the friends.  Students at this age are unsure of themselves, unsure of what they want to show their peers about who they really are and what they can really do, especially if it’s close to their hearts.  Risk taking is well . . . too risky.  You might stand out.  You might show a side of yourself that your friends can’t yet handle.  My students are obviously not rattled at the thought that I, their teacher, will see that side of themselves, that I will witness their excellence. They know that I am using their student numbers to identify their writing, and they do not seem worried about baring their thoughts, feelings, and creative minds to me.  

 I can’t decide if it’s always been this way with adolescents.  Was I like that?  Oh yeah.  I was just like that, but I never had the opportunity to write anonymously.  Not in school, in any case.  
One more wonderful thing that’s happening with these topic journals is that students are reading one another’s work and wanting to respond, which in and of itself is not incredibly unusual, as they do respond to one another on their blogs.  What’s different?  They don’t always know the author of the piece to which they are responding.  Connections between students who might not otherwise read, write or speak to one another are happening, and even though those connections may not grow into a more open dialogue and a more ‘real life’ connection, I think that it’s pretty wonderful.

Book Review: Real Revision by Kate Messner

“Books aren’t written - they’re rewritten.  Including your own.  It’s one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.” 

Michael Crichton

“The great thing about revision is that it’s your opportunity to fake being brilliant.” 

Will Shetterly

“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.  You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.” 

Robert Cormier

“I have rewritten - often several times - every word I have ever written.  My pencils outlast their erasers.” 

Vladimir Nabokov

I’m always amazed to hear the sense of conviction - and oftentimes the sense of joy - in an author’s voice when he or she is talking about the process of revision.  

Revision?  Really?  

You’re not going to get that same sense of conviction - or joy, for that matter - from most of my 7th grade writers.  To the reluctant writer, ‘revise’ can be a four letter word.  Let’s face it: writing is hard work, and rewriting?  Well, that’s just hard work . . .  all over again.  And yet most accomplished authors will tell you that revising well is the secret of writing well.  

That’s why I was so glad to have found Kate Messner’s book on teaching revision to students in grades 3 to 9 called Real Revision.  Messner is a real author and a real teacher (of 7th graders, no less), so she knows about writing and she knows about teaching.  It’s no wonder then, that Real Revision reads like the genuine article, real strategies to use with real children in real writing contexts.  

Even the tone of the book - conversational and relaxed - was real and something I truly appreciated.  I felt as if I were sitting in the teachers' lounge with a trusted and very knowledgeable colleague who had taken some time to share her secrets with me.  

In fact, Kate Messner invited many of her YA and middle grade author friends to join us in the ‘lounge,’ and after a brief profile highlighting book titles and major achievements, each author shares his or her expertise, trusted strategies, personal struggles with and triumphs through the revision process.   I certainly plan to share many of these informative and entertaining pieces with my students, who will, no doubt, benefit from seeing how central a role the revision process plays in the writing lives of all of these accomplished authors.  Accompanying each of these author snippets, is a ‘TRY IT’ page, instructions for a revision strategy that can be used as-is in the classroom.  

Here’s my copy of the book.  See all the sticky notes?  Those are just some of the good ideas that I’ll be trying out in my classroom this coming year.  

In fact, by the time I finished the book, I felt it necessary to create a table of the sticky notes I made so that I’d be able to see all of my notes in one place. 

Some of the BIG ideas that will stick with me:

• writers need time away from their drafts before they revise
• encourage the quick and crummy first draft
• revision is a big process: break it down
• start with the big stuff (themes, purpose, organization) and end with editing
• make outlining and research part of the revision process
• make the process of revising more visual (Who knew you could colour-code, map, draw diagrams, use sticky notes, coloured pencils and highlighters, index cards, etc.?)

I’m not going to even try to give you any of the juicy details here, the actual revision strategies themselves.  You need to read the book for those, and you’ll just have to take my word for it - there are many.  What I will say is that revision IS hard work, but Messner shows teachers ways to make it easier for students, to make it fun, and to help students see revision as a necessary, important and real part of the writing process.  

Quiet

I shared this with my colleagues at school.  I shared it with my followers on twitter.  Glenda Funk shared this Ted Talk on her blog, along with a superb review.  Gary Anderson wrote another superb review of Susan Cain's book on his blog.

If there's anyone left that hasn't seen this Ted Talk, it's a must see for all educators - Susan Cain talks about Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Won't Stop Talking.