Beginning the Slice of Life Writings

This month I started having students write “Slice of Life” paragraphs, short commentaries on something they’ve done or something they’ve observed, and then I posted them in the hallways and invited our school staff and students to make comments on post-it notes. I’ve been very pleased with the initial response from everyone so far, and I’m excited to continue the project. I wondered if students might complain about having to write something, but because they are doing something like this every day in our daily writing, I haven’t heard anything negative. In fact, it’s been the opposite. Once the students saw their writing posted, and got a few comments on post-its, they wanted to write more. Some have three or four writings in their folders, just waiting for the okay to put another one up. I didn’t want to overwhelm the readers, so I had the first writings up for three or four days, and then we just taped the second piece over the top of the first piece, so readers could keep reading.  Every day, students ask if they can go out and read and make comments on the writing. I’ve had to monitor that a bit more closely since I can’t have five kids in the hallway unsupervised, but I’ve encouraged kids to respond in the morning when they have a bit of time. Other teachers and staff have been kind about reading and leaving a comment or two as well. 

            Is the writing perfect? Not so much. It’s very clear which students need to be more rigorous in checking spelling and punctuation, and some of them have a very loose understanding of what a paragraph is, so I’ve tried to address that as we’ve gone along. But I think as students see what their peers are writing about, that will encourage them to polish things up a bit.

            The part I think has been the most powerful, though, is reading about how a student is worried about her dad, who was taken to the hospital that morning, or the student who is concerned about the neighbors who are fighting. I wouldn’t normally hear all of those stories, but writing them down allows students to be heard. Some kids wrote about how they got their dog, or injuries they’ve received, or a recipe they’ve tried – the topics are all over the board. I think most people just need someone to listen to them, and if they can’t do it by talking, then writing allows them to share. For some kids, I think it’s easier to write things down than to say them out loud. By putting their writing up on the wall, they have a new audience. And the comments are often very compassionate, reminding the writers that they aren’t alone with their concerns. I’m excited to see how these writings evolve over the rest of the year!

Spirit of Endurance

I’m going to be starting our next reading unit, which is on questioning. My district curriculum has provided me with a couple of books about snakes, which are probably interesting, but I’m ditching them in order to use one of my favorite books: Spirit of Endurance, by Jennifer Armstrong.  The subtitle is “The true story of the Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic”, and if you don’t know anything about this trip, you need to read this book. One of the reasons I feel confident in switching out snakes for Shackleton is that in addition to teaching and practicing questioning, I can also use it to talk about theme and even character traits, even though it isn’t fiction. Ernest Shackleton is such an amazing person that it’s worth talking about what character traits would describe him.

I’m going to start by showing students the cover, and asking them to write some “I wonder” questions, which I’ll record so we can see if they get answered. We can talk about how some questions get answered as we read, and some don’t, or may require more research on our part. These kinds of questions are the ones that hopefully propel the reader further into a book as they look for answers to their questions. Jan Richardson, author of The Next Step in Guided Reading, calls these “red” questions, because you have to stop and think about the answers.  These are in some ways the most difficult to answer, but we often start any book with things we wonder about, so I’ll be dipping into the more difficult questions first. (A link to her resource page is here: www.janrichardsonguidedreading.com/resources-1)

As we read and find out more about Ernest Shackleton and his crew, and his desire to cross Antarctica by dogsled, then we can try “green questions”, which Richardson describes as being found right in the text. These are the kinds of questions we often ask to check direct understanding, like “Where was Shackleton from?” or “How many dogs did he take on his trip?” I’m going to model several of these, but then I’m going to have students write their own green (literal) questions to share with another student or the whole class.

The last kind of question I’ll be trying is a “yellow” question – one that you may have to look in several places for in order to answer the question. A great question to ask with this book would be “What factors caused Shackleton to abandon his ship?” Asking students about similarities and differences would also be examples of yellow questions.

About midway through the book, I use an activity where the students are given a list of items found on the ship that will either be taken with the expedition or left behind. Students work with a partner to discuss what they would keep and take, and then we go over what actually happened. I found this on the PBS website for the show NOVA, which has some great teacher resources connected to a show they did about Shackleton: www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/education/activities/2906_shacklet.html

The discussion that ensues is often interesting and impassioned, especially with regard to the fate of the dogs.

Finishing up the rest of the book leaves plenty of opportunities for more “red” questions that could start with “what would have happened if….” or “why do you think….”. This is when we can talk about theme (like perseverance and stamina, or never give up) and character traits we could use to describe Shackleton (bold, courageous, dedicated – but while a great leader, probably not the best husband or father, as his love of exploring meant he was always gone).  Through the sinking of the ship, travelling in the rowboats to find land, sailing one of them through freezing hurricane-force winds to finally land on South Georgia Island where an enormous hike awaited them, and finally rescuing all the men, and never losing one of them – Shackleton’s story is one of the greatest rescue stories ever, and it will leave us with plenty of discussion possibilities, such as “Was the trip a success or failure?”

I can’t wait to share this amazing story with another group of students!

Report Cards

This marks the end of our first trimester, so I’ve been working on report cards over our break. Our district has gone to a standards-based report card, and we’ve all been involved in many discussions about what each of the report card indicators mean, and how best to use the new reporting system. I think it would be safe to say that most teachers do not love doing report cards. It’s hard to reduce a whole child down to a number, when that child is so much more.  It makes me nervous knowing that with the new reporting procedure, there will be many questions, and I hope I can answer them satisfactorily.  I also know that many parents are not going to be happy when they see a lot of marks that indicate that their child has only partially met the standard, even though they have the whole year to meet it, and I’m fairly confident that most kids will do this. This process will get easier as we do it more, and as the district better aligns curriculum with the standards, but there’s always the first time for everything, and that just happens to be now.

I hope that as parents look over these new report cards, they keep in mind some things. If the report card grades don’t align with the standardized test scores their child has taken, it might be because standardized tests are multiple choice, and almost nothing in my class is assessed that way.  My students are asked to do a lot of writing and sometimes even the brightest kids don’t take the time to write complete answers. Of course, that’s what we work on all year, and I can see quite a bit of improvement already, but the standards ask them to be consistent, and at this point in the year, not all kids are in that place.

The report cards also don’t show that a child may be the one who is always first to offer a marker to the kid who never has one, or is the student who stops to help others clean up, or is the kid who helps stack the extra chairs each night. No report card grade can show that this child is the one who will include any left out child, or is willing to work with anyone. I’m glad I don’t have to give a grade for kindness, but I feel that is a great quality to have, and some of my students, whose report cards may not have the most stellar grades, are some of the most kind, well-rounded students I have.  One of my son’s teachers said at his conferences, “You can check his grades online. Let me tell you how he is in class and how he treats other students and me.” (Luckily it was a good report, because as a parent, I’m hoping that he’s a good person in a public setting.)

So as we finish this first round of new report cards, let’s take a moment to remember that report cards are just one aspect of our children. An important one, to be sure – everyone wants to know that their child is moving forward in their learning. But take another moment to see your child in the bigger picture, one that includes more than just numbers on a test or a report card.