Category Archives: English department

No More “Fake Reading”: Self-Paced Reading and Assessment in English classes

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This year I have decided to take Michael Schooler’s approach with reading in my classes. After years of frustrations due to “Fake Reading” (not reading at all; Sparknotes and Shmoop; or just reading to meet the deadline and not reading closely), I was intrigued by what Michael did in his classes last year.

However, it didn’t just require me to let go of the reins and control, it also required some new approaches to assessment and classroom culture. So, I made the decision to make classes blended and to minimize whole-class direct instruction as a means to allow students to take control of their learning and to remove myself as the expert they look to for all the answers. I am now a facilitator and focus on encouraging individual growth as students and human beings on their own terms.

The first step was placing a premium on authentic reading in my classes and to encourage, encourage, encourage. I did this on the first day of class as I told all my classes my biggest goal was for all students to authentically engage the texts we read. Sometimes boys have been the hardest to motivate readers in my experience. However, the initial results are highly encouraging as I have seen boys reading in class and making progress in a self-paced approach.

Next, I have done away with the busy work of reading questions and reading quizzes. While this served as a barometer for grades, it did little to encourage authentic readers that engaged themselves in the texts. Rather, reading questions and quizzes actually promote “Fake Reading” in my teaching experience as students play the game of earning just points for a grade.

Finally, I have removed reading deadlines (other then when the entire text needs to be completed by) and allow students to self-pace through the book.

So, now that this is done how do I assess student engagement and progress through texts? The answer is three-fold.

First, students are required to engage a small-group reading community in Schoology discussions that live both in and out of classtime. Students are tasked with showing how they engage texts authentically and I am able to quickly assess that through the discussions. Each student is asked to post authentic responses to what they have read. They begin with an insight about the human condition and/or society, followed by connections in the text (characters, plot, etc.) and quotes from the text to support their assertions before posing questions based on their post to their group mates. Thus, students promote an active conversation outside of class and reply to one another as they work their way through the texts together. Additionally, I purposely didn’t give students a number of posts or responses they must have, instead telling them their task is to show me their authentic engagement in a learning community and throughout the entire text. I assess students reading responses at the midway point of a book (ex. so three weeks in on Glass Castle, which they have six weeks to read) and once again at the end of the book. These grades stand in place of reading quizzes and questions.

Next, I have created space and time in my classes for one-on-one conferences. I check in with students each week for progress and then ask them questions about what they have read (ala an oral quiz) and am able to assess authentic reading in those conversations. I have created google spreadsheets that allow for me to track individual reading progress and I also have a place to take notes about our one-on-one conferences that I can reference in our next check in.

Finally, placing a premium on reading in my classes means I need prove that I value reading. So, I have freed up Friday’s in my classes for reading time for students. I also have cut back on my direct instruction. I use Monday’s for a particular skill (ex. close reading of a section to model indirect characterization through setting). These mini-lessons are mainly from the texts they are reading, but I also use excerpts from other works to model.

I have also freed up Tuesday’s for groups to meet and prepare for small-group Spiderweb discussions and Socratic seminars. I host these small-group discussions on the block days and students are only required to be in class for their group conversation. Again, with an emphasis placed on creating time and space for students to self-pace while promoting time to read and show that authentic engagement to me in autonomous fashion.

With self-paced reading, online group discussions, one-on-one conferences, and small-group discussions in class, I believe I have found the answer to eliminating “Fake Reading”. No more busy work or reading quizzes that don’t assess true engagement. Instead, allowing student autonomy and assessing in these three ways forces students to truly engage if they want to succeed in my classes.

I will then survey students at the end of a unit to gage if this approach resulted in authentic reading for students and how it compares to traditional approaches I have used in the past and students have encountered in high school English classes.

If you are interested in learning more about reading conferences, Mitch Ward and Michael shared a great article with me that is posted below:

Reading Conferences

Millennials don’t know about Holocaust, according to survey

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April 12th was Holocaust Remembrance Day. Sadly, people are
forgetting about it. See the sobering NY Times article
linked here.
We are so blessed to host a survivor here at
Carondelet Friday, April 20th, during 5th and 6th periods, in the Garaventa. The
number of living Holocaust survivors dwindles as the years go on. As
the article states, “Holocaust remembrance
advocates and educators, who agree that no book, film or traditional exhibition
can compare to the voice of a survivor, dread the day when none are left to
tell their stories.”
Our guest, Hana Berger Moran, is
in her 70s and was born in a concentration camp. She will be here to tell her
and her mother’s story, as chronicled in the recent book, Born
Survivors by Wendy Holden.



Our freshmen learn about the Holocaust in their history
curriculum, and the English department teaches it with the classic graphic
novel Maus by Art Spiegelman. Church History classes also
address the Holocaust. Thank goodness our school continues to educate youth
about the horrific events of the Holocaust. The Catholic faith is immeasurably
linked to the Jewish people. Let us never forget.

Thank you for supporting this important event. I know that
losing instruction time gets tricky. I welcome all of you to attend along with
our freshmen, if you can make it. Please
join us even if you can’t stay the whole time. 
Particulars: Hana will start at 12:30 and continue through the
end of 6th period. Fifth period teachers of frosh: please take attendance
before escorting (or sending) girls to the Garaventa Center. Sixth period
teachers of frosh: The girls won’t be checking in that day. Students have been
given Teacher Notification forms for you to sign.

Architect Project – Close Reading and Analysis as Tool to Imitate Writer’s

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Recently I attended the DVC English Articulation Conference with Michael Schooler and Tiz Woo. The first session I attended was very beneficial and thought-provoking and is something I will build into the Writing Seminar and AP Lit curriculum I teach next year.

Essentially, students are asked to unpack difficult quotes they encounter. Students perform a close reading and attempt to determine author’s tone and purpose. Then, students are able to begin to delve deeper into themes and messages about the human condition and society.

Finally, students begin the Architect Project in which they are asked to imitate the author’s style and voice in writing. As in all text forms (written word, music, television, film, etc.) the written and spoken work is a reflection/response to a previous text and taking a previous text/idea and expanding upon it

.

In asking students to imitate writers, the thought is they will continue to develop their style and voice as writers. I look forward to having AP Lit students work with difficult texts (ex. Heart of Darkness) as well as Writing Seminar students (ex. Glass Castle) work on imitating the voice and style of works of literature.

Writing as a Learning Tool in Curriculum

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The entire English Department recently attending a workshop titled “Writing to Learn.” It was a great reminder for myself about how I learn and the importance of being allowed to collect my thoughts through the writing process. It has been quite sometime since I was a student. So, having the opportunity to do so at the workshop was invaluable. 

Essentially, the idea is to promote learning through self-reflection while writing. I was reminded how writing forces one to think instead of just blurting out initial thoughts without thinking. While there is value in spontaneous responses, I was reminded that writing forces students to collect thoughts in a cohesive manner as they have time to think individually and reflection is done with purpose before any small-group conversations, etc.
Overall, I am very excited about the possibility of applying these strategies in the Writing Seminar curriculum and into my other English courses. Creating daily writing practices well help cultivate an environment that uses writing as a tool for reflection and learning about oneself and the world we live in. 

Through using the writing process always before speaking, thus applying writing as part of the critical-thinking process, students are encouraged to develop an awareness of themselves. We all have personal experiences and cultural capital, however writing forces us to reflect on our biases, especially when we read what peers have written or hear their verbal responses to what we have written. 


Some strategies to use writing include:
  • Use in small pair/share – helps generate ideas both in writing to one another and verbally.
  • A Dialectical Notebook – eencourages understanding through reflecting on quotes for overall idea and confusing or frustrating quotes from within texts while asking for partners to respond in writing to one another.
  • Learning through observation – writing down observations about texts and images.
  • Short writing pieces – focused writing with a purpose.
Finally, the workshop reminded me of the importance of putting pen or pencil to paper, rather then sticking only to digital keyboards. I have fallen prey to Schoology and using digital writing mainly. This workshop reminded me that forcing myself to write is a kinesthetic experience that enhances the learning experience.
Below is the Script and a couple of handouts from the workshop:

Late work consequences have me in a Tizzy

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Late work consequences have me in a Tizzy
I knew boundaries were going to be a problem for me when I
entered teaching a few years ago. Teachers need boundaries in order to maintain
sanity. For example, I am slowly learning that it’s important to allow the
evening to be family time, even if parents email me. I am learning that if I
give myself the entire weekend to plan, I will use the entire weekend to plan.
I may explore this work-life balance in a future blog,
because it’s a struggle for me to put aside work and focus on self-care and
family. Perhaps it’s because I am a newish teacher, still excited, still
exploring, still learning, still idealistic. Still insecure.
But today I need to reach out to my colleagues about a
different sort of boundary. I am terrible at following the policies I put down
on my course outline at the beginning of the year. One of the toughest
categories for me centers around late work. Practically speaking, it is hard to
be consistent and to track who I gave an extension to, how many days late
something is, how many points I said I was going to take off for lateness … not
my forte. Not to mention I am confused about the interplay of toughness and
redemption.
In my credential program, I learned that tying points to
behavior is considered passé. My general sense is that at Carondelet, we don’t
believe in it either. Grades should reflect mastery of skills. Behavioral
issues should have non-grade consequences. I’m going to digress from my
struggle about late work for a moment to provide a dual example of a logical
consequence and my own ineffective enforcement of it. If a student comes to
class unprepared and asks to go to her locker to retrieve a book, I do not take
points off her grade. Instead, as I said
in my course outline, she will receive a tardy because coming unprepared is
almost the same as arriving late. But … I haven’t kept up with this rule. If
one of these sweet Carondelet girls asks me if she can run to her locker for
her book I smile and say, “Sure. Go ahead … hurry!” I may, depending on mood,
add “But next time you need to come prepared.”
I think I am a softy, and knowing that, I want to be more
careful about the policies I set up: Am I willing to enforce them? If so, I
need to do it, or I won’t feel very good about myself down the line. That’s the
thing about boundaries: we set them for ourselves. They represent a line we
draw about what is acceptable to us. Letting people cross my boundaries makes
me feel gross inside. And if I know that I can’t enforce my boundary, perhaps I
need to question why I set it in the first place. Is it because I thought I
should, based on some classroom management guru’s advice?
Sometimes, though, we know that the boundaries we set are
for our students’ benefit. We want our students to grow into women of heart,
faith, courage, and excellence. They need guidelines and parameters. My
question for you all is, what is a logical consequence for turning in work
late? And how can I be true to our culture of redemption and encouragement
without doing a disservice to these girls? I have some students who are one
month late on an important assignment. I want them to complete the work and to
learn. I want to assess the work fairly. But there has to be some consequence
for being this late. Otherwise, students are learning that deadlines do not
have to be respected. Meeting deadlines is a life skill; one students will need
in college and the workplace in order to succeed. Beyond that, we are talking
about an interpersonal skill. Students need to learn respect for other people’s
time and feelings—they cannot cross others’ personal boundaries without
consequence. I am troubled by the message I send when I accept one-month late
work without a consequence that stings. Even if I am well-intentioned in wanting
to be merciful and supportive. I often find myself expressing gratitude to a
student for following through so that I finally
can change the zero placeholder in the grade book. I think the zero has
bothered me more than it has bothered the student all this time!
I recently came up with one logical consequence, but it only
applies in certain situations. In the same spirit of learning, I try to offer
my students the opportunity to rewrite their essays after receiving my feedback
and a grade. When some students turned in their essays a week late, I decided they
had lost the privilege of a rewrite opportunity because now I was grading their
first attempt at the same time I was grading their peers’ rewrites. The
insanity has to stop somewhere.
I have thus far been comfortable with taking off a little for
lateness … but a month late? Is 10% enough of a consequence? Is it fair to the
other students? Should I say that the highest you can earn is a C- if you turn
something in that late? My son’s middle school core teacher won’t accept late
work and he feels quite clear and secure in knowing what the boundary is. He
gets two late passes per year, and they allow him to be one day late. He said
that after one month, he wouldn’t even expect his teacher to accept anything.
But, I tell him, I do want my students to finish the work because it’s
valuable.  We go back and forth. He wants
me to be tougher.
My final musing on the subject goes like this: Maybe turning
in work late isn’t a behavioral issue that must be treated outside the grade
book. Maybe meeting an assignment’s deadline is an integral and crucial part of
the nature of school work. Even if I can get my head around that, and I think I
can, I wonder what the magic numbers are. How late before we don’t accept it at
all? What is the ratio between late days/weeks and percentages off the grade?
I want to hear from my colleagues on this. Do you struggle
as I do? Do you have a good system you can share?

Student-Centered Good Times

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Students in my honors English 1 class are writing research papers and they will present a rendition of the TED Talk based on their papers. During the last two weeks, students were tasked with teaching their peers different skills needed in order to start these research projects. The different skills taught are 1)what makes a good TED Talk 2) public speaking skills 3) Nuts and Bolts (paraphrasing, synthesizing and MLA rules) 4) using reliable sources. These are all the skills needed in order to create a successful research paper and TED Talk. Different groups were assigned different skills that they taught/presented to the class. After each student-centered lesson, the students individually assessed the group that had just taught, and immediately “shared” the assessment with the group members. Here is a link to the peer assessment doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ka2eKoDo6QlpiThQQQzLd5e77VrBHcNmbfdp9G_gkcU/edit.

My biggest critique of skills teaching with a student-centered approach is that it takes forever. Students in each group needed to learn the information pertinent to their skills; they had to create a lesson for teaching the information; and, they had to teach their lesson to the entire class. What I could have taught in a fraction of the time, took two weeks for students to complete. Plus, two weeks ago, I had a ton of students out sick, which put off the student-centered lessons as well. The second critique that I have for this type of student learning is that students didn’t always explain the material that they were assigned to teach in a clear and coherent way, so for those situations, I have to take more time to reteach the material.

However, a couple of the groups’ lessons were awesome, and I couldn’t have done a better job myself. The public speaking groups, in both of my two honors classes, killed it! The lessons were fun, engaging and informative. They were what I assume student-centered learning is supposed to be. Students left class that day really happy, and you could tell that they fully enjoyed class.

I conducted a survey at the end of this lesson. Here is a link to the results:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1VxlhniHoV6VNF6cgprPqR3xlsgmF41YbmaeEDZ5uNFk/edit#responses. The results are across the board. Most of the students seem ambivalent to this style of teaching/learning.

Blogging to learn and assess

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Inspired by our own faculty blog and wanting to try something new with my unit on Jane Eyre this year, I decided to have me students blog about Charlotte Bronte’s novel as they read it.  With support and guidance from Christina Ditzel, my sophomore students launched their own “Jane Eyre” blogs last semester.

My hope was that their blogs – shared with a group of three other students – would be a way for them to engage with the challenging book and make personal connections to the story. I also saw the blog as a substitute to the traditional reading quiz, which can historically be experienced and perceived by students as a stress-inducing “game” to win.

The blogs were successful in many ways. They gave students a platform and audience for their writing, they encouraged students to be reflective and by nature forced students to process what they read, they allowed students to be creative, and they equipped students with some useful digital media skills.

Even though, unfortunately, these blogs were still viewed by some as a chore, most were grateful for the opportunity to show their understanding of the book in their own words and in a new way. They also ultimately found the blogs less stressful than traditional reading quizzes. I will definitely be having by students blog more in the future.

As we move toward a more innovative and progressive curriculum, I feel called to continue to closely look at all of my assessments. Yes, there will always be a place in the classroom for quick, formative, low-stakes assessments. But if they require any significant amount of time, it seems to me that they must be more than just “assessments;” they should be treated as rich learning experiences in and of themselves. Journeys of knowledge, not just products of knowledge. My assessments still need a lot of work.

I also feel called to deepen my engagement with students on their learning journeys. Too often I pay them the longest visit only once they’ve reached the final destination of submitting their work.

The other day, the English education leader Carol Jago tweeted: “The Latin root for assessment is assidere, to sit beside. It’s the best seat in the house for any teacher.” I know that my sophomore bloggers, especially my reluctant and struggling writers, might have had better learning experiences had I made more time to sit beside them.
….
If you want to learn more about my pedagogical rationale and the expectations I established for their writing, you can read about it here in a piece I wrote for the February issue of California English.

“Where I’m From” Reflection

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About a year ago my enthusiastic friend Ellen introduced me to the “Where I’m From” phenomenon that has spread across academia over the last several years. “Where I’m From” is a poem written by Ms. George Ella Lyon, a celebrated writer and educator. This is her poem, the original “Where I’m From” poem:

While Ellen and I had a robust and fulfilling conversation about using the “Where I’m From” poem as a community building activity in the classroom, I set this conversation and idea aside, because I didn’t have time to do it. 
I spent a lot of time last year thinking about what is the most important thing I do in the classroom. And, I came to the conclusion that, at least at the beginning of the year, my most important job is making sure the students feel connected to Carondelet. Remember that I teach all freshmen and that these girls come from 50 different feeder schools. I believe that their ability to feel a part of this community as quickly as possible directly affects their success at CHS, thus the success of Carondelet in general.
So, in late July when Tiz and I were collaborating and discussing community building activities, I remembered my conversation with Ellen and proposed having students create their own “Where I’m From” poems, while teaching the writing process (two for one). The result has been wonderful. The students who really worked the writing process and spent time on their poems love their work. They’ve been invited to read the poems out loud, and while only a few girls from each class take advantage of sharing their poems, when they do, I’m deeply moved.  
The following poem is an original “Where I’m From” poem written and shared with permission by freshman, Gabriella Pattillo: