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.

First Trimester Reflections

It seems that the first trimester has flown by, except for a few days that never seemed to end. At any rate, we will have finished one third of the year by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, and I want to do a little reflecting on some of the things I’ve tried this year.

As part of our Q Comp performance evaluation, we have to set a goal, and I decided to connect it to both the standards and one of our report card indicators. I chose nonfiction summary writing to work on, and so I did something I don’t think I’ve done before: I gave a diagnostic assessment with the intention of giving this assessment again once we had practiced the skill for a while. I don’t know why I haven’t done this before; I certainly assess prior knowledge before teaching, but I haven’t done it this way. I gave the students a nonfiction article, asked them to list all the nonfiction text features that they saw, and then to read the article and write a summary. This didn’t actually take very long, because nearly all students had no recollection of what either of those things were. I had one student out of my first group who wrote a passable summary, but otherwise most kids just stared at me.  I collected these from both classes, but I only used my first group for my goal setting.  We then set out to read a lot of nonfiction and practice writing summaries that included a gist statement, 3-4 sentences supporting the gist statement, and then a concluding statement. I gave the exact same assessment again, and once the students were done, I showed them what they had done with the diagnostic. It was great to see the kids be aware of how much they had learned in the five weeks we’d been working on this, and my favorite statement was one kid saying, “I didn’t even have a gist statement!” Gotta love that. Only two kids still have no idea what either the nonfiction text features are, or how to write a summary, but only six kids wrote a summary that I feel would pass the standards. On the other hand, with a little tweaking, almost everyone else would be able to do a decent summary, and we have the rest of the year to practice.

Another thing I’ve really liked is the Socratic circle discussions. Kids seem to really like doing them, and it is very clear who can participate in a discussion, who only wants to listen to their own questions, and who is afraid to speak. My goal is to figure out how to draw out the quiet kids so we get more participation.

My five-minute daily writing has fostered writing fluency, and I’m now starting to see more consciousness about capitals and periods. I’m going to stretch this into some Slice of Life writing next trimester, and hopefully it will be easier because they’ve been writing about things they’ve been doing for twelve weeks now.

I had kids choose a chapter book out of seven books that I put out, and required kids to read a third of the book each week in November. This actually worked well, as it has in the past, and many kids finished their books in much less time, and then asked to read another of the books I had set out. I will do this again in January, and leave December for books completely of the students’ choosing.

I started the year doing a read aloud every day, and that, sadly, has gone by the wayside. That’s my biggest disappointment of the year, in some ways. I think reading aloud for pleasure is so important, and I just can’t squeeze in the time. Maybe I need to reexamine my schedule and see if there is something I can flex, but with only two hours to a block, and forty minutes of that in guided reading, there isn’t a lot of time left for reading, writing, and social studies. I certainly read books aloud as part of the instruction time, but it isn’t quite what I want. 

How has your year gone so far?

Slice of Life Writing

I like stories. That’s probably the biggest reason I read so much. But I also like watching stories, through movies and TV shows, and I think that’s true for most people. Stories are the way we share what’s going in our lives, from the important to the mundane, and it’s one of the reasons I think families are so important: they are the people who know your stories. The same is true for friends, especially long-time friends; they are the ones who can reminisce with you about the summer jobs you shared or the adventures of the tennis team.

One of the tricks of the classroom is getting to know the stories of all of your students. It would be great if we could all sit around and just share out all day, but that is not going to happen. And you know what the beginning of the year feels like: all of the kids look exactly the same, and there is a big hole where you used to feel comfortable with last year’s class, because you had gelled as a group AND you knew some of each other’s stories. So the beginning of the year is always a time where you look for opportunities to get to know the students as people with background stories. 

For me, this happens in two ways: one is guided reading groups, because they’re small enough even the quiet kids usually feel comfortable saying something; and the other way is writing.

All of this is to say that I’m thinking of trying out the Slice of Life writing beginning in December, with the start of the new trimester. I’ve been reading about it, and toying with the idea, but the latest post on the Two Writing Teachers blog (see the post by clicking on the Two Writing Teachers link to the right, and also the TWT post from August 29, 2013, where a sixth grade teacher talks about slicing in her classroom) was the tipping point for me. The writer tells about the school she works in all doing a weekly Slice of Life piece, and then posting them out in the hallway, where others can leave comments on post it notes. It was the comments that struck me the most – they are compassionate, thoughtful, and I imagine the writers love seeing the comments on their writing. And sharing your writing builds the community we need to create in order to move forward as learners.

The writing doesn’t have to be long; for most kids, it will be about two paragraphs. They need to write about something that happened to them, but it doesn’t have to be “the day the tornado almost missed our house.” It can be about what they did when they found out the cereal box was empty that morning, or something their siblings did that irritated them – you know, the everyday stuff that makes up our lives. I am going to start by hanging their writing out in the hallway, but it would be nice if eventually we had the time to post slices on our Kidblogs.

I’m going to try and get up two different writings in December. I know many classes write a slice each week, and some participate in the Slice of Life Challenge in March, where they write a slice each day.  That sounds like more that I can handle right now, but it’s something to think about for the future. I’m hoping that by giving students another forum for sharing their stories that we can learn more about each other and strengthen our classroom community.

Building Vocabulary - Take 2

My teaching partner and I have signed up to teach an extra class after school, beginning in January. She’s going to be using close reading strategies, and I’m going to be doing a vocabulary piece, so one of the books I just bought is Word Nerds, by Brenda Overturf, Leslie Montgomery, and Margot Smith.  These teachers work in a high poverty school in Kentucky, and the strategies they use to teach vocabulary extend into lessons on life. It’s an impressive book, and I’m both inspired and discouraged. Inspired because they do a lot of interactive lessons, some of which I’m going to try in my regular classes, and some I can try in my afterschool class. But I’m discouraged, because, like all things, vocabulary instruction done well takes time, and this year, more than ever, I’m feeling crushed for time.

So what can I do right now? In the book, they do a lot with synonyms and antonyms, and I’m going to see if there is a way I can incorporate those words more often. I do a “word of the day”, and starting Monday, I’ll also talk briefly about synonyms and antonyms for that word. I think it will help me if I make a chart to hang up that looks like this:

Word	Synonyms	Antonyms

I think having a weekly chart hanging up will remind students of the word of the day, and other words like it.  I may even give students their own chart to fill out each week, so they will have a collection of words to go back and use.  Doing that will allow students to do one of the activities in the book: color the word.

In coloring the word, students are asked to find one color to represent the word. They have to tell why they chose that color, and in the book, that provided some interesting deep thinking. For example, one student chose red for the word “segregation”, because bricks are red and they can be used to build walls that separate people. I like the extra thinking that goes into planning out the colors.

Another activity I would like to try is called Chain Link. The students in the book have vocabulary lanyards, like plastic nametag holders on necklaces. You can put in words and then do a lot of different activities that involve students moving around the room, sorting and resorting themselves by their vocabulary “nametag”. For Chain Link, the first person starts, tells their word and gives the definition. The rest of the students need to find a way to link their word with the first person’s word. If a student can explain how their word relates, that student stands next to the first student. Now there is a new word to link to, and ultimately the goal is not to be the last person standing, because that person is going to have to link both sides of the chain. Of course, the thinking involved at that point is going to be higher level, since there are two words to connect to instead of just one.

I will see how this goes for me as I try to squeeze in more vocabulary practice in my limited teaching time. I think I can do more with the after school class in January, and that may give me the incentive I need to incorporate more vocabulary practice into my regular room.

More Close Reading

October was a busy book-buying month for me; I purchased three teaching books, which is way more than I usually buy, considering that I’ve vowed to quit buying books. But all of them have information that I felt I needed, so my collection grew. The one I am currently loving is brand new: Falling in Love with Close Reading, by Chris Lehman and Kate Roberts. Close reading is the current big thing in reading, and there are a huge variety of resources to clarify how to do it. I really like this book because it boils down close reading to three steps: read through a lens, such as word choice or text structure. Then use that lens to find patterns in the text. Finally, think about those patterns to help you develop a new understanding of the text. I think using close reading this way fits in with other close reading techniques, like using the signposts in fiction I talked about in a previous blog. I think it also might be easier to teach these strategies to readers of all levels in the hopes that they will transfer them to their own independent reading.

Here is one thing I’ve tried from the book (since I just got it this week). I used the lens of structure when reading an article about the changes in school food with my students. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what exactly do we mean by text structure, and this has helped me clarify it even more in my mind. I asked the students to think about how the text was organized, and then I made a chart that looked like this:

Did the author

describe something,

tell a cause and effect,

compare things,

or make a claim?  

I used a different color for each idea so that when I asked them to think about the purpose, they could match up the purpose with the structure.

What is the purpose for that organization:
To give more information.

to tell why something happened,

to show how things are the same and different,

or to tell the author’s opinion about a topic?

In the article we read, you could make the case for several different text structures, which is a bit messy, but also realistic when reading articles. Authors often use several structures when writing. We didn’t do much with talking about patterns, since it was our first time with this, but here is what I found: when asking students to summarize this article, using structure is a great way to write their gist (or main idea) sentence.  For example, students could have written, “This article is about the reasons why school lunch menus have changed”, and then gone on to give examples of that (using the structure of cause and effect).  Or they could have said, “This article tells why it is better that school lunch menus have changed from the old menus”, using the structure of the author’s opinion.  (As an aside, this also gave us the opportunity to discuss why summarizing an article is different than what you think about an article, since most kids would love to go back to the salty, fatty foods they used to get in the cafeteria.)

I highly recommend this book to all teachers – the examples the authors give include many texts that are for high school students, so this isn’t just for elementary kids. I have already found myself thinking more in my own reading about patterns I’m seeing.  As the year goes on and I try more of the strategies they suggest, I hope to see changes in my students and their reading.