Category Archives: English

Winton and Treat Podcast Episode 1

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I’m really proud of the first semester of my Podcasting and Storytelling class. Overall, it was a great experience, and I learned quite a bit. One of the great things about semester classes is that you don’t have to wait a year to make revisions and improvements. I’m still in the process of putting together an iTunes channel, and more ambitiously, a website to share the work that my students produce. The tentative name of this podcast is Winton and Treat since both Carondelet and De la Salle students take the class.

I’ll be dropping a new episode to the blog every week or two for now, and I would appreciate any feedback you can give. I am by no means an expert in podcasting and am trying to learn as much as possible. Here’s the link to “Behind the Screen” produced by Hayley Hoover, Ella Collier, Angie Anderson and Cielo Gamboa:

https://soundcloud.com/michael-schooler-904465153/behind-the-screen-121618-1057-am/s-xo5mn

Sophomores Publish 100-Word Memoirs

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Earlier this year, all of my students were challenged to
write a memoir in exactly 100 words. No more, no less. I was so proud of their
efforts and practice in the economy of language, so I wanted to “publish” them
in some way. I used Google Sites and I’m happy with the uniformity of layout.
Please visit our site here: https://goo.gl/oXxCYK
You’ll notice two posts of my own. This year, inspired by 180 Days (Kittle and Gallagher), I’ve
tried to write in front of my students. For this assignment, I projected my
drafts in class and asked for student feedback on how to cut my memoirs down to
100 words without losing the central essence of my message. They loved advising
me.
Hope you enjoy their creative writing.

Make Thanksgiving casseroles, or blog? (aka Newbie to blended learning tries it out)

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The last few days have been bizarre and tragic for so many Californians, but other than having to stay inside more than usual, I didn’t suffer. They have been interesting ones for me, though, primarily because I got a chance to experience blended teaching for the first time. I was just at iNACOL (International Association for K-12 Online Learning–yes, I realize the acronym doesn’t really match up) and spent a lot of time thinking about how blended learning could improve my classes. Luckily, when the fire started last week, Jenny and Kate and I were able to come up with some pretty darn -tootin’ solid lessons on the fly. The bad news? Only about half of my students did those excellent lessons. So now, those who didn’t get to experience the amazing photos of Depression-era Americans, or who didn’t analyze character quotes from Of Mice and Men, are not understanding what Dust Bowl migrants might have looked like or thought much about Steinbeck’s descriptions in his portrayal of character. And since I won’t see my people for days now, I can’t encourage them to do it. I spent a lot more time on the computer answering emails about questions and grading schoology assignments than I ever do, but without the personal interaction in class, I’m not having nearly as much fun and it is harder to prod certain students to get important material. Some students don’t have the material I want them to.


Now, the flip side to all of this is that if students were accustomed to this scenario, they might be expecting to have to do this work online. Usually, they hear me remind them verbally, see it on the board, and have schoology. This situation eliminated most of those reminders and explanations.


I will be curious to hear what the students thought of the experience of working online. Without talking to them and finding out in real time what is and isn’t working, I’m still on the fence. 


Now, green bean casserole is waiting…

More Writing, Less Grading—it’s true!

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            I want
students to write more, but I want to grade less. It just so happens I found an
avenue to make this happen.
            For five
weeks in a row, I’ve had my sophomores spend the first half of block writing
about a selected passage from Jane Eyre.
During the second half of block, they use a single-point rubric to peer edit in
a round-robin fashion.
            After that,
each student decides which essay she would want to turn in for a grade. I
collect the “keepers” but I don’t grade them. The next week, after another
timed write and round of peer editing, I pass the keepers back out. Once again,
students choose between the essay they wrote today and the keeper from last
week. I collect the keepers again, and so on. It reminds me of being at the eye
doctor: “Which one is better? 1 or 2? Better here … or here?”
            Today is
the last week, and at the end of the day, I will have a stack of keepers to
grade. They will have written five in-class essays and I only have to grade
one.
            Here are some
of the benefits:
  • Students do not receive a letter
    grade until the final one, so they have to look beyond “the bottom line” and
    actually think about how they are doing
  • Students engage regularly with
    the rubric to better understand how to write well
  • Students learn to rely on their
    peers for feedback instead of seeing the teacher as the only expert in the room
  • Students rely on their instincts
    and self-evaluative skills—they take ownership of their writing
  • Each week is another opportunity
    to out-do the last keeper, so students are motivated to do their best each time
    (you should see them scribbling away!)
  • If a student misses class or has
    a bad day, she knows she will have four other opportunities, so it takes the
    stress level down
  • In-class, handwritten writing reduces
    cheating
  • It’s great for formative assessment:
    I can quickly read through the stack of keepers and intervene individually for
    comprehension gaps or writing skill gaps
  • Students are compelled to
    consider key passages from Jane Eyre
    that they may have glossed over in their reading
  • Students have choice in which of
    their essays receives a grade
  • Students practice a type of
    passage study they will see on the SAT and AP tests
  • Increased writing volume and frequency
  • Students receive instant feedback
    on the same day from their peers
  • Students get to see how 2-3 other
    students approached the same passage and prompt
  • Peer editing happens while the
    writing itself is fresh in their minds
  • Students talk to each other about
    their approaches while they do their round-robin peer editing

            I’m so
excited about how well this works and hope to adapt it going forward.  

One-On-One Conferences Breed “Relational Accountability”

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Chat, Discussion, Meeting, Talk, Conversation, SpeakingThe authors of 180 Days (see prior posts) emphasize the
importance of one-on-one conferences, and they present a structure for making
them happen. The emphasis appealed to me from the start because I try to
approach teaching as a ministry, an avenue for meeting others where they are in
a spirit of love and acceptance. What better way to minister than in a one-to-one
encounter? The structure appealed to me because I had noticed that I feel more effective
as a teacher when I help students on an individual basis, but only a select few
would take advantage of my office hours.
            The structure looks like this: give
students regular time in class for reading and writing. While they work, meet
with individuals. If it’s a reading conference, we talk about progress in a
book, strategies for comprehension, or book recommendations. If it’s a writing
conference, I might ask, “How can I support you? Is there a part of your essay
you’d like me to look at?”  I keep track
of the students I’ve met with so that I make sure to meet with all of them on a
rotating basis. I also take some quick notes about the meeting.
            I’ve found that even if I never go
back to the notes, the students feel more accountable to me in the context of a
relationship. I’ve started calling this “relational accountability.” For
example, I expect students to “have a book going” at all times, not to meet a
one-book-per-quarter quota. Asking them what they are reading and what page
they are on marvelously keeps them reading, without any grade attached! It
contributes to the tone I want to set that “we are readers.” Likewise, students
don’t put off their writing assignments because they know they will meet with
me to discuss their draft before the due date. (I admit, this hasn’t worked out
as ideally as it sounds, but I’m new at it and have a growth mindset.)
            Most students want to please the
teacher or at least avoid feeling embarrassed, but I’d like to think that relational
accountability transcends those motives. I am trying to take down the affective
filter (Krashen) and build up a relationship based on mutual respect. I want
students to view me as on their team. If nothing else, their few minutes with
me are a moment for them to feel noticed in their busy day.
            For that mindful moment, the student
is not one in a sea of 30; she is, simply, one. I tell myself to be present. I
study her face while she talks to me; I mean, I really look at her and take all of her in. I look into her eyes for
the small child inside. This works especially well with students whose
classroom behavior annoys me. I feel a transformative flood of empathy that refreshes
my relationship with them and renews my sense of purpose as a teacher. My hope
is that the students feel loved unconditionally. Even one such an encounter per
day is a win.

How Forcing my Students to Write Has Made me Happier

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My last blog
outlined some of my past struggles with finding enough time to inspire a joy of
reading and to provide relevant, timely feedback on writing—as well to get
students to do more of both. Now I would like to share some of the processes I
adopted from the book 180 Days: Two
Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents by Kelly Gallagher
and Penny Kittle (Heinemann).
            The authors suggest setting the tone
on day one that we are a community of readers and writers.  A daily routine is thus put into place right
from the start. The routine consists of regular reading time and writing time,
in addition to time for a passage study from a model text. Today’s blog will be
about setting the tone that “we are writers in this class.”
            On the first day, every student
received a composition book. This is their judgment-free place to craft their
writing. Ideally, every day (but in reality, about twice a week), we do a
quickwrite in this notebook. We write about a short excerpt from a book, or a
poem, or a prompt that gets us thinking. First day of school, we wrote about
what empathy means because I wanted to establish empathy as an overachieving theme
for the year. Monday, we wrote “two-sentence horror stories” to get in the Halloween
spirit. A key feature of this method is that the teacher writes in front of her
students. New for me this year: I consistently put my own notebook under the
document camera and project my process. We share our first drafts in small
groups and whole class. Frequently, I model how I might revise my first draft
and then we go back to our notebook to try a revision move in a different color.
We share our revisions.
File:Composition book.jpg            Over one quarter into the school
year, and I feel good about the reading and writing tone that was set on the
first week of school. My students are familiar with the routine and it gives me
pleasure to see them using their notebooks. I’ve made it clear that writing is
not perfect the first time, and that it is normal and desirable to revise. I
think modeling my own vulnerability helps. I regularly reiterate that writing
in a community benefits us because of the feedback we receive from our peers. (And
yes, I welcome student feedback on my own writing—more on that in a future blog
post.)
            As a bonus, I have felt more
connected to myself as a writer from being forced to participate. I love the
crinkly pages of my notebook with poems and passages glued in and annotated. I
love the sketches and scribbles and colorful revision marks. I love getting in
touch with my creative side on a regular basis. I’m happy when I write.
            I love that my students this year
are writing so much more than they did last year, and they write without
expecting a grade. They accept the exercise because my expectation was set on
the very first day.
            On Back to School Night, a
repeat-mom approached me to comment, “You’ve changed, haven’t you? It seems
completely different … and she is responding.” These were encouraging words, and
despite many challenges in living up to the standards in 180 Days, I keep trying. On
my next post, I will share about another new practice for me: regular
one-on-one reading and writing conferences.

The Value of Student Agency

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At this point in the school year, I am starting to see some of my students emerge from the pack. These are the ones who write five engaging paragraphs when I ask for a 300-word response, the ones who listen to every episode of Serial when I ask them to listen to the first one, the ones who find it fun to write an original “form follows content” sentence. These are the ones destined for the parking lot banners, our showroom students. They seem to shrug off the notion of points and grades, and are just bursting with intrinsic motivation to learn for the sake of learning.
In high school, I was never this type of student. I was a diligent homework doer, and was lucky enough that school always came pretty easily to me. But my primary motivation to achieve was instrumental – I wanted to go to college so that I could get out of Yucca Valley, the small desert town where I had lived my whole life.
When I started college at UCSD, I tried to employ the same academic approach that had always been successful to me. I was a structural engineer major, mainly because I had been good at math in high school. But I only had a vague sense of what exactly a structural engineer did – I figured it had something to do with structures or buildings, maybe something like architecture. I persisted through, doing my homework and taking tests, and by the end of my freshman year, I was struggling to earn C’s in some of my engineering classes. I trusted my professors and expected the learning to just come to me, and with each subsequent semester my frustration bloomed. 
One of my favorite places at UCSD was the bookstore – I spent hours browsing the walls of books that had nothing to do with structural engineering. I took it upon myself to read all that I could, starting with the Beats then Gabriel Garcia Marquez then Dostoyevsky. I aspired to fill in some of my knowledge gaps of the human story, and even if I could not understand what Faulkner was saying exactly, I knew that if I persisted, I could see his vision of the world.
At the end of an especially dismal semester as an engineer major, I decided to try something different. I registered for introductory writing classes and decided to take a break from engineering. I figured at worst, I would take a sort of vacation and earn a minor in English. But the whole course of my life changed that semester. Even though writing was challenging to me and I did not find immediate success, I discovered that I had deep internal motivation for the written word. I remember feeling stunned that I could earn a college degree for something that I had genuine passion for – it sort of felt like I was pulling one over on everyone – I was finally learning for the sake of learning and getting credit for it.
Now as a teacher, I identify this concept that I found in college as student agency. A quick Google search of student agency will lead to several definitions that have to do with autonomy, engagement, self-efficacy and being self-directed. In short, it seems to be the concept of students taking the control of their own learning. Students who have agency are those who are internally motivated to learn in their classes. They are the ones who stay after class to continue the conversation, the ones who read on their own, the ones who make us feel like we must be doing something right.
Lately I have been wondering whether the concept of student agency is largely undervalued in high school classes. We all have our curriculum and content that we want to impart into our students, and our students have numerous motivations for why they do what we ask of them. Many of these motivations are extrinsic though – from parents to grades to the fear of not getting into their top college. I wonder what happens to these students when they leave us, if they can keep it up, or if they run smack into their own versions of my structural engineering wall.
This semester, I’ve been considering what a class would look like if student agency was the most valued skill. What if the coursework and the daily lessons were crafted to promote student autonomy first? What if course content was not the main priority? What if the development of content-specific skills was not even the highest priority? What if I put all of my attention and energy into creating conditions that would promote student agency above all else? What if the goals of becoming a strong writer, reader or lover of literature became secondary in my class to becoming someone who learns for the sake of learning?
After sitting with these questions for a while, I came up these four characteristics that I would prioritize in an agency-first class:
·     Choice
Students would be able to choose their own academic pursuits within the scope of my class. They would choose what they read, what they write and determine the pace that works best for them. I would create a curriculum structure that articulated the goals of the course, and give students the freedom to demonstrate their mastery of those goals. I would be a collaborator, constantly checking in with their progress, and they would be responsible for documenting their progress. 
·     Authentic Engagement
While it is easy to leverage points and grades to get students to do work, it is much more of a challenge to make course material engaging. When planning my classes, I generally operate under the assumption that none of my students would choose to come to my class if given an option for how to spend this block of time. They mostly just want to do the work to get the points to keep their parents happy. To create a class that is authentically engaging requires me to be attentive to my audience, to relate to my audience and to earn buy-in from my audience. It is constant work to cultivate intrinsic engagement, but it needs to be a starting point.
·     Accessible Entry Points
To nurture intrinsic motivation for a subject requires me to make the connection between the individual student and the course content. If I ask them to read a book that they don’t care about then give a writing prompt that they don’t care about, the results will be expectedly uninspired. All of our students can and should be challenged to learn new things, but these new things need to be put in the context of the world as they know it first.
·     Ban “Should”

Being a teacher can be frustrating, and sometimes I find myself saying that my students “should” know this or “should” be able to do something. As soon as I start “shoulding”, I defer my responsibility to meet that student where they are at. When I ban the word “should” from my thinking, I stop looking at the class as a whole, and am forced to see my students individually and differentiate my instruction according to their individual needs.
If these were my primary objectives for an English class, I wonder if it would be enough. Where does academic rigor fit in? Would this class be negligent in teaching course content and course-specific skills? Is my head so far in the clouds that my students would be unprepared for college reading and writing? 
Or maybe students in a class like this would actually get more out of my academic content than they would otherwise. Maybe they would become stronger writers and readers because I had created a space where they could engage with my instruction better. Maybe they would find internal motivation for reading challenging works of literature, crafting arguments, or even using semi-colons.  

Is this too idealistic? Maybe. Is it possible given the current system of college admissions? Maybe not. But as a teacher, I never have the delusion that I will find the magic lesson plan or book that solves all of my issues. This work is messy and beautiful, and the only thing I can ever hope is that I get better at it from year to year. The world is fundamentally different from when I was in high school and will be fundamentally different 25 years from now. One of the most invigorating aspects of this profession is that we get to be visionaries and look beyond how everything has gone up until now. 

My Furniture Paradigm Shift

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On my last day with desks, I felt a bit apprehensive. Maybe even a bit nostalgic. It has been my ritual for years to walk into my classroom in the morning, put my bag down, and straighten the rows of desks. It gives me a sense of order, a good starting point for the day. But when I saw the maintenance guys that Friday afternoon sizing up the job of desk removal from my classroom, I wondered if maybe I had signed on for something I wasn’t really ready for.

 
In my 19 years of teaching, I have always had desks in rows, and I have gotten pretty good at standing in front of my students and getting them to direct their attention to me. I have cultivated the skill of reading a crowd of teenagers, getting a little louder and more serious if they get a bit squirrely, playing the fool if I need their attention, snapping students back into the lesson if they are turned around or sneaking Instagram. When I’m on, I’m an orchestra conductor, and I can get all the eyes in desk rows to stay on me and whatever I have projected on the board. I’ve even had moments, after finishing an especially riveting performance, where I have wondered whether I shouldn’t try to find a stand-up comedy troupe, or try out for a small role in a play at the Lesher. 
The class discussion has been my jam for years, and there have been plenty of days when I left school in the afternoon with my head held high, congratulating myself for the lively discussions I facilitated. Those upright arms are like a forest of engagement, and it’s thrilling to know this thing I created is rocking, like learning is happening. And for those 12 to 15 students, some learning has probably happened. But if I’m looking at the entire picture, that means there were 15 to 20 for whom I have no idea what was happening. At Carondelet, many of our students have cultivated a quiet learning posture that makes them look brightly engaged on the outside, but who knows what is going through their minds. I know I have sat through plenty of PD presentations (and let’s be honest, some faculty meetings too) maintaining an outward appearance of engagement while my mind is surfing from the things I need to get done that afternoon to my son’s little league game to the trails I plan to run on my weekend long run to the type of beer I like best at Calicraft. And I know I can dive even deeper if there is absolutely no threat that I will be called on.

So on the first day with new furniture, I wondered how much it would impact my teaching habits. Kevin came into my classroom in the morning, bursting with excitement. One of the first students who walked into the room said she felt like she worked at Google, and I told her there was not a more perfect comment she could have made in front of Mr. Cushing. As the rest of the students came in throughout the day, I told them that there would be no seating chart, and I watched to see which spaces each one gravitated towards. They tried out the wheels on the chairs by rolling around the room, they slouched on the couch (Kevin did this too) and they spun. They went on dizzy spinning sprees, the dancers and ice skaters knowing how to spot the front of the room to keep from getting nauseous. They were genuinely excited, but I left school that day wondering what exactly it was that I was missing.
In the next few days I studied my students’ interactions with the furniture surreptitiously, and I also noticed my own habits. The way I configured the tables and chairs has really taken away the front of the classroom. The only reason I stand where I do is because that is the direction the projector is aimed. I also noticed that I have a clingy attachment to my podium. I found myself drifting towards the podium – which is now shoved in a nook next to some cupboards – reaching out for it when I talked, propping my arm on top of it awkwardly. When I told Kevin about this, he pointed out that my podium is my stage, and I realized he is right.
Overall I really didn’t expect new furniture to affect my thinking about teaching in such impactful ways, and some of the realizations I’ve come to in the past few weeks have been unexpected. In an effort to be brief (which is a challenge for me), I’ve narrowed my experiences with the new furniture to these four takeaways:
1.    That boy who used to drive me crazy with his constant fidgeting and tapping actually needs to fidget and tap to focus. If fact it seems pretty counterintuitive that engagement (with a text, with writing, with a lecture) would happen best while sitting still and silently. Yesterday I asked a student why she always trades out the stationary high top chair for one with wheels, and she said that she pays more attention when she has the freedom to move around a bit. 
2.    This is actually a continuation of my first point, but learning is often noisy and chaotic. It has been a little bit jarring for me to realize this, but when students are interacting with one another, I can hear their ideas, which allows for more teachable moments where I can confirm, challenge, redirect, or expand. This reminds me that just because students are sitting silently with their phones put away staring at a text or assignment does not mean they are fully engaged. This has also transformed my thinking about the noise in the inner court during classes – there is a melody to it now.
3.    There is a big difference between group work and teaming. Students often perceive group work as the break – the fun or creative assignment that mixes up the minutia. I used to think of it in the same way. But now, with all the spinning and rolling and fidgeting, I have been very intentional to create a learning environment in which the majority of my class activities are conducted within team interactions. When teaming is leveraged effectively, students can learn much better from their classmates than I could ever hope to accomplish in big class discussions. It is a bit of a cultural shift for them to differentiate between groups and teams, and I need to be explicit about my expected outcomes for each project and about teaming dynamics. This is the puzzle this year that is constantly buzzing around my head, and I’m grateful to have Sarah and Rachel from Teaming by Design to advise.
4.    My presence is kind of diminished in the class. This chops away at the ego a bit because I have definitely cultivated my teaching persona over the years. But I can also acknowledge that this persona has been a bit of a crutch for me at times, and has covered up some of my weaknesses as a teacher. Even if I do feel like a bit of a ghost now, I am still able to develop rapport with my students, and enough of them still come bug me throughout the day that I think they still like me well enough.

If anyone wants to continue the conversation on furniture or the intersection between teaming and furniture, let me know. Also if you want to schedule a classroom swap one day to try out the furniture, I’m open to it. I’m realizing that timed writes do not work as well on tables so Tiz and I are trading spaces today so that my A.P. students can use desks. I think that having a variety of learning spaces for different types of activities would be ideal, but I’ll put that idea in the cue for a different blog.

Teaching angst subsides with a new approach

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            Part One: The Problem.
            Toward the end of last year, I was
missing some of the thoughtfulness that my credentialing program had infused
into my teaching. I craved a more intentional approach and some backwards
planning. Not only that, I didn’t get a sense that my students were engaged in
reading and writing as much as I’d hoped. I think English teachers in general try
to solve the problem of students who “fake read.” (It hurts when students don’t
LOVE books the way we do!) English teachers also regularly reevaluate how to
teach writing effectively.
            Time is a factor. Most teachers
would agree that students simply need to read more and write more, but that we don’t have unlimited time to
read in class or to collect and grade a constant flow of material if we want to
give meaningful feedback.  We also find
that once there is a letter grade on an essay, written feedback is not as relevant
to the student; therefore, it is not as effective. Ideally, students should
receive feedback on multiple drafts before they receive a final grade. (Some educators
argue that the process ought to count for part of the grade because isn’t
process more important than product?)
            I used to be an editor, and I came
to grading essays with an editor’s mindset. I thought it was my duty to circle
every single mistake. Of course, now I know how demoralizing it can be for a
student to work hard on articulating her ideas, only to have them thrown back
at her, all torn apart. But with each year of teaching experience, I’ve noticed
that I feel far more energized and effective when I meet with students on an
individual level. I’ve also noticed that the most effective time to meet with
them is not when they are “finished” (can you ever be finished with an essay
you’ve had less than two weeks to write?).
            Rather, if I conference when their
ideas are in development, I can help them find their passion on the topic. And,
when they feel strongly about their thesis, they will take more care with their
craft. A little further along into the drafting phase, if I have time to meet
with students again, I can convey customized grammar lessons, pass on
compliments, encourage engagement, and have a conversation about writing. I think it’s a more positive experience all around.
            Last year I felt stuck in a loop of
collecting essays, spending inordinate amounts of time marking them up, and
dreading the next stack of hollow arguments, especially when errors were
repeated. I tried grading on Turnitin.com to see if I could go faster and offer
more pointed feedback. I tried various rubrics and checklists. I tried asking
students to process my feedback and reflect on it. I tried giving them revision
opportunities. Still, I found myself crunched and wishing that the whole thing
seemed less chore-like (for both me and my students). Even more critically, I
found students wanted me to do the thinking for them: All they had to do was
implement my edits and receive a better grade.
            Then, I saw an advertisement for a
new book. It’s called 180 Days: Two
Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents by Kelly Gallagher
and Penny Kittle (Heinemann). The
book is part creed (the authors make a case for ten “we believe” statements
about teaching and learning), part detailed description of how they structure
their year around those core beliefs. The authors’ philosophy resonated with me,
and its practical, organized approach to planning curriculum with the purpose
of creating engaged readers and writers, spoke to my angst and need for
direction.
            I read it—and annotated it!—over the
summer, and what resulted was a major overhaul to several of my approaches. I plan
to blog about my changed approach as the school year progresses, both my successes
and challenges. Stay tuned.

             

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