The Process of Teaching the Feature Article

After getting married earlier this month, it's been a struggle getting back into my routine. The honeymoon? Swimming in a sea of student work and administrative documentation rather than on some Caribbean beach. Almost four weeks later, I'm finally starting to feel back on top of things. And just in time, too - this weekend I'm grading feature article rough drafts.

I don't grade the students' first drafts, but rather provide guiding questions and comments to help them revise for their second drafts. Then the students will peer revise for their third drafts while we're typing in the computer lab this week. Toward the end of the week they will collaborate to help each other edit and print these final drafts for a grade. We're planning to publish the pieces in a class blog, which I have yet to set up with our technology lead - blogs are blocked in our school district.

Just as writing is a process, so is teaching writing. The students have spent about 4 weeks working toward these rough drafts, and most, I must say, are decent. Many are in serious need of reconstructive surgery, but probably the same number are what I deem "good." Every student will revise and improve their pieces.

We began the unit by reading a feature article about feature articles that I wrote, discussing its formal elements and its content: what exactly makes a feature article unique. We read articles in the newspaper, discussed and presented them in groups. We displayed those around the room. We spent a lot of time differentiating between fact and opinion.

Then I had the students propose topics. I frequently had to help my students narrow these topics: they weren't allowed to write about "baseball" for example (too broad), but they could write about "Steroids Use in the MLB" or "The New York Yankees." They had to identify a purpose, an audience and three questions that audience would ask about their topic. I modeled this process for them.

At this point we learned how to cite our sources. This took a lot more time and effort than I thought it would. I had to have the students who "got it" lead groups of students who didn't, until at last every student understood how to cite a book and web resource.

I returned their proposals with my comments, and once I approved their topics, etc. the students were then allowed to begin their guided research. They researched facts and statistics to answer their audiences questions and anything else that developed during their research.

Once a student got a healthy amount of research, he or she was then allowed to begin drafting an outline. I modeled this for them and let them try it on their own. The students who struggled were given blank "outlines" to fill out with their information. This helped special education kids and many others who struggled with organization and the concept of outlining.

Finally, after I approved their outlines, the students were given the "go ahead" to start drafting by hand. I collected the rough drafts on Friday, and while I won't "grade" these, I do give the students an 10/10 points for turning them in on time. On Monday I'll take up late drafts for 10% off, 20% on Tuesday, and so on, until the students reach 5/10. I won't go lower than 5/10 and I'll accept them up until the end of the grading period.

The majority of problems I'm seeing in their feature articles are:

• Generic leads; overused rhetorical question
• Students writing in first person when it's not appropriate
• Giving opinions
• Lack of factual support
• Plagiarism - copying sentences from sources, not internally citing sources, not citing sources at the end of the document
• Lack of transitions
• Lack of organization within paragraphs
• Imprecise language
• Homophones: *sigh*

Aside from the homophones, I'm not marking editing mistakes. I circle the misspelled homophones, because we've studied these so much. Otherwise, I let the editing mistakes slide for now, and will focus on those during the editing phase as students type, revise and edit themselves or in collaboration.

Opening the Lines

The "Questions/Comments Box" is a great way to give students the opportunity to communicate with me privately, anonymously or through the safe distance of note writing. With each of my classes at 32 students, it can be quite difficult to carve out the time to talk to individual students about their problems or answer their individual questions.

Usually the requests are pragmatic: "Can you move me away from Sandie? She talks too much" or "Can I be the pencil keeper next grading period?"

Sometimes, though, students write down more serious problems they're having with other students or questions they had about the lesson. The Questions/Comments Box frees me from dealing with difficult situations in the heat of the moment, and frees the students by giving them the feeling they're taking action without throwing a punch. When a student starts to complain in front of the whole class about another student, I simply say, "Write it down and put it in the Questions/Comments Box." This also helps with documentation if the situation is serious.

Circle Share

"Circle Share" is a great way for my students to build community within my classroom, take pride in the work they've done and honor the work of other students. The way it works is the students move their desks out of the way (we have to discuss this before hand, of course) and gather in a circle on the floor. If they're taking too long to circle up, I count backwards from five or ten and if anyone is still standing or talking after I get to one, they lose a participation point.

Once we're in the circle, the students share a single line of their writing. I tell them it doesn't have to be their "best" line to make them feel safe. We also discuss my expectations, which are that no one will comment, either positively or negatively, after each person reads. I'll just say "Thank you, -----" and we'll go on to the next person.

As we get more comfortable - and this never happens in some classes - we'll be able to comment both positively and with kind suggestions. That can't happen, though, until everyone feels safe and secure in the classroom.

Here are some of the lines that were read on Friday:

"My place in the family is second youngest child."

"I heard my mom screaming for me, and then I ran."

"I have a lot of dogs."

"I got baptised on September 13, 2009 in the chapel at Landmark Independent Baptist."

"It always smelled like fresh baked cookies, too."

"About six or seven years ago we had a dog named J.R., but we just called him Jay."

"It smelled really good in there until the dog came in from outside."

"And then he was being really bad about it all."

"One day his face will fade away into nothing."

"I moved and milk got all over me."

"My favorite thing to do after school is play football."

"I couldn't wait to move into our first, real house."

"I was so scared, my hands were shaking."


After everyone shared around the circle we did an "acknowledgement" - a special, funny clap for the whole group. I told the students how excited I was to read these pieces as they turned from freewrites or brainstorming to actual drafts. They seemed excited, too, and that's the idea, after all.

Obama Addresses School Children

Critical Conventions

Why Do We Have to Use Punctuation?

Tomorrow I plan to teach my introductory lesson to English mechanics' conventions (punctuation, capitalization, spelling, etc.) from a critical, historical perspective - the why of conventions, rather than just the "the rule is _______; accept it" approach. I hit the "why" from two angles: one, why do conventions improve communication, and two, where (historically) did these conventions come from. My source of information is the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss - a fabulous resource I use throughout the year.

I created the PowerPoint presentation above last year. Tomorrow I'm planning to open the lesson by handing out a completely punctuation-free document to the students. I'll pretend all's well and ask them to read out loud. My prediction is that they'll try, find they can't decipher its meaning well, and buy in to the lesson. I'll couple the PowerPoint presentation with references to the Context Timeline to help students grasp the historic significance of punctuation. Understanding from where the somewhat arbitrary rules come will (hopefully) help the students become more conscious of their use of punctuation, and thereby more conscious writers and editors as we learn these rules throughout the year.

Help Yourself

As the year goes on, I get tired. The more systems I have to ensure the kids' self-sufficiency, the better.

This bulletin board, for example, allows the kids to pick up any of the regular hand-outs we use throughout the year. I stapled file folders to the wall and put copies inside for the kids to take as needed. There's a list of sensory words, synonyms for color words, transitions, reading logs to chart their reading, and sponge/exit slips. (The sponge/exit slips are papers with five blocks for each day of the week on either side of the paper. The students do entering and exiting activities each day on these sheets and turn them in on Friday.)

The "Help Yourself" bulletin board minimizes the housekeeping I'm responsible for and puts the responsibility on the students for keeping up with what's expected of them. It also keeps me organized and minimizes the files (or piles) I need to keep on hand.

Because I think it's important to put as much responsibility on the kids as possible, in order to allow them to be self-sufficient, I also have a reference bookshelf in the back of the room. Several dictionaries, thesauri and writing resource books are shelved there for the students to borrow as needed. Of course we have to rehearse how to take the books off the shelf and how to return them; this is middle school, after all.

Middle Sex

So today I brought in those 33 copies of LEO for the class. And of course the children promptly all turned to the classified ads for "GayMates" in the back. Of course. Why would I have thought of that? And this just after a lesson on homophones where I made them break down the word to its roots to understand that "homo-phone" means "same-sound." Let your imagination carry you to the giggles and little comments I had to calmly redirect period after period that day.

Aside from the rife homophobia I find within this demographic (though, I should note, the occasional student does stand up for gay rights when other students make hateful comments, and for a twelve/thirteen year old, especially with such a minority and controversial opinion, that's impressive to say the least), there's a very normal discomfort/curiosity about sex in general. Naturally, I don't feel comfortable discussing the subject, but I really feel someone should be talking to these kids. I wouldn't mind teaching sex education, to my girls anyway, within a structured protocol, divorced of all religious affiliation, open and honest.

I'm not trying to undermine a parent's role, but what about the kids whose parents don't talk to them about sex? Since I've been teaching I've known of at least four girls at my school who have gotten pregnant before high school. I also heard one eighth grade girl say to a teacher, who said she was planning to have a baby in a few years: "Plan to have a baby? What you mean plan to have a baby? You can't plan it!"

I don't know if the lack of sex ed in my school is the result of a state, district or school policy. I do know that religion still influences the law in Kentucky to such an extent that you can't buy alcohol before two on Sunday. And I know that far too many of my girls have wound up with children before they themselves are adults.

I may be biased, but I think education is the obvious answer.