Atwell Brings Me Home Again

This weekend I re-read Atwell's The Reading Zone and was surprised to see how my previous post shows how my methods have begun to slide in the opposite direction from Atwell's best-practice reading workshop. If you would have asked me which education author most inspired my teaching I would have said Atwell, and yet you wouldn't have known it by my post.

I wrote about how I had this great idea to have my students write down vocabulary words as they read their choice reading books - an unnecessary and even harmful disruption to what Atwell calls "the reading zone" - the uninterrupted flow of reading during which students experience a "hightened form of pleasure" and become life-long, habitual readers.

But what about rigor? Methods? Accountability? Data? All these nagging concerns that pull at me have also pulled at Atwell, and she goes into great detail about the teacher's role in the reading workshop, assessment, comprehension, and how less truly is more when it comes to reading strategies.

While for years I have subscribed to the belief that the best way to teach kids to read is to get them practicing, I still think there needs to be a balance between teaching schema and comprehension strategies, and allowing kids to enter the zone uninterrupted. Atwell's chapter on comprehension cites literacy theorist Louise Rosenblat and distinguishes between two modes of reading: the "efferent" and the "aesthetic." Efferent, from the Latin "effere" (to carry away), refers to gathering facts, information, procedures, ideas and so on. (Read: informational, persuasive, procedural reading.) Aesthetic obviously refers to reading we do for pleasure, beauty, self exploration, expression and all those higher artistic pursuits. (Read: poetry, fiction, memoir.)

I am at ease with this thought: get my students reading in the aesthetic mode frequently - get them lost in as many books as possible, facilitate rich, deep and higher-order discussions among them about these texts, and get them to love literature; then, teach them strategies for comprehending drier, less accessible texts with all the research-based methodology I can muster, using everything from double entry journals to vocabulary study to KWL charts to read-alouds.

If I teach these two modes simultaneously my class (starting tomorrow) will look like this: first 20 minutes of uninterrupted, untested choice reading, during which time I will circulate and confer with students about their reading (fabulous questions for readers on p. 92.) Then the remaining 30 minutes will be for read-alouds, group work, paired-reading or explicit literacy skill instruction in whatever genre we're currently studying.

Vocabulary Building through Choice Reading

Every morning, from 7:40 to 8:00, we begin our day with individual choice book reading. The students are allowed to read any book that strikes their fancy - or any magazine or newspaper for that matter. I bring in the Friday-Sunday Times from home each Monday, and at least one student spends the week studying the sports page.

To me, the most important thing is that the kids are reading continuously. So, if I see a student look up and get that far-away gaze (the pre-cursor to an early morning nod-off), I simply say, "So-and-So, if you don't like that book, please go find another one." The students are allowed at any time to check out a book from my classroom library, and they can also use this time to take a trip down to the school library to check out a book.

Here's what some of them are reading:







During this individual reading time, I want my students to enjoy themselves, but I also want to practice reading skills and build vocabulary. My students are required to find one new word a day, or four new words a week, look them up in the dictionary and record the word and definition in their reading notebooks. On Friday, I walk around the room, checking their nightly reading logs and vocabulary words. I confer with them to make sure they understand the words, and if there are any words that I think could improve their writing, I have them write the word and definition on index cards. (This is considered a kind of honor, btw.)

The students then take the vocabulary words up to the "Word Wall," which is organized in four categories: "Sizzling Verbs," "Spicy Adjectives," "Precise Nouns," and "Well-placed Adverbs." The students have to determine from the definition and context what part of speech their word comes from. If they cannot figure it out, we work through it as a class. After all the words have been placed, the whole class records the new words, and any student who uses the words gets praise.

The overall effect is kids who love to read and talk about their books, which only leads to more reading, and more word-conscious reading.

Those Pesky Homophones Serve a Purpose

All year, to my chagrin, we have struggled with homophone spellings. I realize it's not THAT big of a deal, in the grand scheme of writing instruction, and yet, I can't help but think of the penalty for such misspellings on college and job applications - and cringe.

But today I actually had cause to thank those pesky homophone misspellings. Enter Dakota's poem: "The Big Dream." I guess this tale requires a bit of background on Dakota. Short, wild-haired, green-eyed, full of energy. Brimming with energy. In constant motion. High comprehension, but a struggling writer. Much of that is due to low motor skills, so I let him type his work. What I've gotten from him so far has been sparse: of sentences, punctuation, details and development. Lot's of letter u's for "you" and lower case i's for "I." His work has also been chock-full of homophone misspellings such as "were" for "where" and "its" for "it's."

This week he's been working on a poem on the back computers while others hand-write their first few drafts and revisions. I spent the week conferring with students at their seats and teaching mini-lessons on precise verbs, imagery, line breaks, etc.

Today we had "Circle Share" - as I call it. It's a workshopping activity in which the students push all the desks to the margins of the room, sit on the (filthy, green) carpet in a circle, and volunteer to share their work for 10 extra credit points. The other students then offer feedback: specific things they liked about the poems, questions, or suggestions that the author can choose to heed or not. (Front-loading is important here: the kids have to know the expectations for how to speak to each other, how to mind feelings, and how to be specific and constructive in their feedback.)

So in this setting Dakota is wiggling all around, arm stick straight in the air and waiving furiously, dying to read his poem aloud. Here's the poem, as I heard it:

"The Big Dream"

My big dream was not to be forgotten;

But now that I've aged

I've forgotten my big dream.

It was big as a tangerine tree,

Like the good tangerines

That have just ripened.

But I'm sure it's lost

Somewhere in the big city.

It would be big as a banana

Or bamboo tree.

But that one big dream,

That one is lost.

I don't know where it could be;

Out there in the wild maybe,

Where all the wild things cam from.

Out in the wild.

That is my big dream

That is forgotten.

-Dakota

Uhh, either this kid's skills have skyrocketed, or he's been trying his hand at cut-and-paste on those back computers, I thought.

"Thank you, Dakota. We'll talk after class," I said.

"You don't like it?" He looked sincere; disappointed; earnest. And yet...

"Let's talk after class."

So after class I got a chance to see the poem and my first action was to google it. I typed in the title and nothing came up. I typed a few lines: nothing. I looked closer. Here's the actual poem, as it stands on paper:

"The Big Dream"

My big dream was to be not forgotten but now that

I've aged I have forgotten my big dream.

It was big as a tangerine tree, like the good tangerines that

has just been ripened.

But I'm sure its lost some were in the big city.

It would be big as a banana or bamboo tree.

But that one big dream, "that one is lost."

I don't know were it could be, out there in the wild maybe.

Where all the wild things came from out in the wild.

That is my big dream that is forgotten.

-Dakota

Notice the homophones? The jagged line breaks? The awkward syntax and colloquial grammar? I did. And I believe Dakota wrote a strange and wonderful poem all by himself.

Pre-writing to Inspire Poetry

Two weeks into the poetry unit and the creative juices are (mostly) flowing. This is my favorite unit to teach and I think that has a big effect on the quality of the kids' work.

For the first two weeks I've taught figurative language, imagery and poetic devices. We've read at least one poem a day from my former students. This is always a great hook: they read the work of kids they know and think, "Hey, if she could do this, I could do it!"

We do some pre-writing and return to our pre-writing from the beginning of the year. We return to the Heart Map (an Atwell activity) where students mine their hearts and memories for things, people, places, events, hobbies, animals, etc. that are important to them or have influenced them in their lives. We created our Heart Maps at the beginning of the year and kept them in our journals.

We did another mapping activity at the beginning of the year to brainstorm ideas for personal or literary writing. We drew maps of a house or place in our memories - this activity came from George Ella Lyon, former poet laureate of Kentucky. After they draw their Memory Maps, the students focus on one room of the house and list all the memories they have of that room. From there they free-write and wait for an idea for a poem to surface.

For another pre-writing activity, we also read George Ella Lyon's "Where I'm From," and organized the precise nouns on a web graphic organizer. To help the students understand precise nouns (as opposed to general), I use the example of "a tree" as compared to "an old, knotted oak" or "an sticky pine tree." Once we identify the nouns Lyon used to show (rather than tell) where she's from, the students complete their own web to show where they are from. I circulate and push them to make their details more specific, their descriptions richer and more concrete. We focused a bit more on "show-don't-tell" and when I confer with the students, that's one thing I often look for.

With just this front-loading and pre-writing, here's a student's rough draft that he sent home with me tonight:

Great-Grandpaw's Attic

Climbing into the attic
Of my great-grandpaw's old house
Investigating everything
Like a thief find the jewels.

Towers of old torn up boxes
Stacked up so high
Filled with the memories
Of a man we call pepaw.

Old silver war medals
Kept in lock boxes
All dirty and smudged
From my fingerprints

The train set you made me
For the 10th Birthday
You never saw,
Complete with figures
Of both me
And of you, too.

- William

Clearly, William was inspired and he "got" the idea of the precise noun. Here's another student for whom some other inspiration is needed:

I am from the food
in the kitchen the
cool-aid in the refrigerator
the fresh smell of mac'n'
cheese the taste of green
beans makes me go back
for more. And rib's
going on the grill

- Joseph

For students like Joseph who haven't been inspired by the above activities or the poems I've shared with them, I plan to use some spoken word poetry tomorrow. Synthia Shelby, our school's literacy liaison with the district, popped in my class the other day and did a quick spoken word poetry session with them. I saw many of my reluctant writers perk up and pick up their pencils. And it was within fifteen minutes of the end of the day to boot!

I found this fabulous website to share with them tomorrow: SpokenWordz.info. I'm excited to play Nikki Giovanni's "Hands: For Mother's Day" and "All Eyes on U - For 2Pac Shakur," Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman," and Sage Francis' "Spoken Word From Poetry." We'll listen to these, discuss and return to our own poetry, while I circle the room and confer with students.

Beyond Google; Beyond Wikkipedia

Nettrekker is a safe way for students to do their research on the web. It pulls up legitimate articles in all content areas, and all resources are reputable and educational. It's not a free service, unfortunately, but contact your technology rep or key administrators to see about getting a school subscription.

New Websites to Aid Instruction

Yesterday I sacrificed a Saturday to attend a mini-conference put on by the Louisville Writing Project, our local chapter of the Kentucky Writing Project and National Writing Project. It was really no sacrifice at all, because the presentations and conversations with like-minded teachers of writing were so inspiring and motivating, I feel completely refreshed and ready to plan and further innovate my instruction. (Getting up at 6:45 on a Saturday, no matter the reason, was still a bit of a struggle.) Because one of my areas of growth in the classroom is my use of technology, I found one presentation on "Tech-Savvy Gimmicks" to hold kids' attention of particular interest. The presenter was Elizabeth Gleeson, fellow seventh grade language arts teacher in Jefferson County and a recent participant in LWP's summer writers' workshop. Here're the goodies from her presentation and beyond:

Survey Monkey

This (free) website offers teachers the ability to create anonymous classroom surveys, which can be effective for gathering honest feed-back on instruction. Gleeson recommended creating a "teacher report card" to help teacher's gage students' opinions on a lesson or unit's effectiveness. Other uses she listed:

• peer-revision to identify patterns
• pre-assessments to gather baseline data
• student reflections (as well as "teacher report cards")
• student use for gathering data to support in persuasive writing
• cross-curricular application for use in math class to graph data
• parent surveys
• department surveys
• faculty surveys

Flocabulary

This is a powerful teaching tool (also free) for the urban classroom in which lessons on grammar, current events, and vocabulary are made accessible and engaging when put to a hip-hop beat. Gleeson recommended embedding music in PowerPoint or SMART Notebook software if accessible.

Go to "Free Teacher Downloads" to access the goods.

Half.com

Here's the answer to starting a classroom library from scratch: on Half.com, books are cheaper than they can be found on Amazon.com or walk-in used bookstores.

Write for Amazon.com

As a writing teacher who religiously adheres to the principles of the writers' workshop method, I am constantly looking for ways to get my students' work published. In the Times Magazine today, there was a short article on writing reviews for Amazon.com - of course! During the persuasive unit next year (which is sadly past for this school year, but I may be able to circle back to it toward the end of the year...), I plan to have my students choose products and write reviews for the real-world audience of Amazon.com patrons. The authenticity of the assignment, the use of technology and the choice of which CD, book, game system, or whatever they decide to review are sure to motivate my students to write and revise at their full potential.

CARE for Kids in the News

Some have asked for more info on the CARE for Kids program in JCPS. Here's an article from Edutopia.org about the district's program. Enjoy!

Elevating the Teaching Profession

Read this great article by Arne Duncan, Obama's Secratary of Education, in NEA magazine just before the holidays. It's super exciting to have strong leadership in national policy - hopefully deeds will follow words.

Seating Chart Requests

Every six weeks my kiddos get a new seating chart. I love seating charts. Secretly, so do my students: they hardly ever complain. I think my kids need the comfort of knowing where to sit each day, besides the fact that a seating chart gives me the power to reduce bullying, harassment, cliques, flirtatious folly, giggling, games of "pencil break" and "bloody knuckles," and, of course, talking.

Still, a seating chart doesn't have to be top-down tyranny. This is where choice, that ever important ingredient for a democratic classroom, comes into the recipe. In my classroom, students get to make written requests for where they would like to sit in the room. By giving them voice at the fore-front, I'm preventing arguments or huffing-and-puffing after the seat assignments are delivered.

Here are some requests:

(Note the printed name and signature above - and its adorable-ness.)

Some are more practiced in the art of persuasion than others, but still each student makes his or her point loud and clear.

I also allow my students to request classroom jobs, as these change every six weeks with the seating chart.

This one is my favorite. It's a fairly accurate map of my classroom, showing the student's desired seating arrangements.

Despite all my best efforts to include their voices in the process, there is inevitably someone who is unhappy the day new seats are assigned. So, I always begin like this: "I tried to honor as many as requests as I could. When one request contradicted another, I used my best judgement as to who would sit best near whom. If you come to your new seat and find you cannot sit by the person next to whom you assigned, please write me a note and leave it in the 'Question & Comment' box. Do not make a face or react in any way to your new seat, or your request (and future requests) will not be taken into consideration."

Then I walk around the room and say all the new seats while the kids stay seated. When I finish they all move at once, quickly and quietly, to their new seats. I find this reduces the chaos that so often plagues the middle school classroom. Which, after all, is what a seating chart is meant to do.

Changes in 2010

Among my many New Year's resolutions, I'm including a return to blog posting. During the weeks surrounding my wedding, I got out of the habit of posting and never quite got it back. Two months later, it's a new year, and I have many ideas to share with teacher readers and anecdotes to share with non-teacher readers. Giddy-up.