This year has been an exciting change. I'm back to work full time after taking a year "off" at half-time teaching and going to school to pursue my Masters in Library and Information Science at the University of Kentucky. I'm now teaching two class of eighth grade ELA, taking my last two MLIS courses, and serving as the literacy resource lead for my school. So I've got a bit on my plate, but I wouldn't have it any other way!
Westport Middle School, where I teach, is an amazing place. The faculty is inspiring, talented and hard working. The culture is positive, inclusive and student-oriented. But we certainly have our challenges - 70% of our kids qualify for government-subsidized lunches. Many of our most disadvantaged kids are bussed thirty minutes each way, which makes it difficult for parents who may not have easy access to transportation to get to the school to get involved under either negative or positive circumstances. We deal with the many issues that plague kids in poverty every day. But our school is changing.
Thus far, the data have not given testament to our hard work and the softer gains we "feel" we've made. Here in Kentucky, we were the first to roll out the new Common Core State Standards last year. All students were tested on the CCSS last year with a test created by Pearson called the KPREP. When the scores came out last month, we were definitely disappointed. After a brief dip into dispair, we pulled ourselves up by the proverbial bootstraps and began to recallibrate.
- Positive school culture? Check.
- Committed and skilled faculty? Check.
- Supportive and encouraging leadership? Check
- School-wide behavior plan? Check.
- Time during the day to collaborate in Professional Learning Communities? Check.
Why, annotation, of course!
Earlier in the year, my colleague Jenny Napier suggest having the 8th graders read and annotate Kelly Gallagher's Article of the Week. While not every kid turned in their homework (shocker!), many were starting to get the hang of annotating to record their thinking. We encouraged kids to annotate everything we read in language arts: to circle unknown words, to underline and star important ideas, to mark confusing parts with a question mark, and to write notes in the margins.
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| Kelly Gallagher's Articles of the Week |
We realized many of our kids were sitting quietly at their desks, not causing any problems to get attention, and....not reading. Annoatation actually forced them to engage with a text in a meaningful way, record their thinking so that in two seconds I could see if they were actually reading or not.
I wondered if the problem of passive non-reading was endemic or school wide? Was the problem that our many kids who came to us below grade level in sixth grade were continuing to fall farther and farther behind because they simply were not reading??
In several classrooms I visited I saw the same things: teachers reading difficult texts aloud. And many kids listening...but not reading. By not having time to struggle with texts, kids weren't getting the experiences they needed to build reading stamina and confidence. The first difficult texts they were given to read individually all last year may have even been the KPREP texts! No wonder we didn't soar.
So, with the blessing of my esteemed principal, Dr. Staci Eddleman, we rolled out our first school-wide literacy initiative: ANNOTATION.
Teachers were encouraged to give kids time to struggle with difficult texts on their own first, and then to support them.
Kids were required to annotate EVERY text they read, in every single subject from math to the humanities. Different subjects taught annotation differently, but the main thing was everybody got on board.
And the kids....hated it. But they hate broccoli too, right?
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| How to annotate word problems in math class |
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| Annotating in science |
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| Student annotations decorate the halls at Westport |
