Nancy Rollison, thank you for showing us what you did with your students. It is hard to open up to students. I am glad modeling your own writing worked for you and your students. Please keep us updated with what happens with your advocacy.
Had you heard Pink and Say before? What did you think? Would you be able to us all or parts of it with your classes? I gave you the two poems to pair with it, but I am sure you could think of other connections that would work as well. When you are planning for students, always try to give them more than one connection to what is to be learned. The more connections the better!
You all clamored for time to work on your book trailers, so I hope the time allowed was enough to help you work productively with your group members. Let me know how things went.
Don't forget to do your reading in Teaching Adolecent Writers.
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9 comments:
I just wanted to say that Pink and Say was a very, very effective read-aloud for Presidents’ Day. It is truly one of the most powerful and thought provoking pieces I have ever heard. Also, thanks for the time to work on our book trailers. It is “coming along” for our group!
The Chapter 7 information just confirmed some of the things I’ve thought for a long time. Students do not respond well to a red pen hemorrhage, and they certainly do not learn from that. A couple of things stated by the author of Teaching Adolescent Writers really took courage. First, for Gallagher to state that it is unrealistic to think that he could make all of his students “strong writers” is both true and bold in a time when teachers are supposed to be responsible for “saving the world.” We get blamed for virtually all the world’s ills, so I (as an English teacher, especially) was heartened by his honesty. I liked his stance as a reader, not a grader. I also loved the statement that whole-class peer editing is actually harmful and that student editors chosen from the class’s top grammarians is more effective. Those of us who have been teaching “forever” have learned these lessons, but they are rarely supported, especially in a text on writing. We all have limited hours in the day, and we all deal with the assemblies, fire drills, student absences, and conferences that cut into both our time and effectiveness. As Gallagher says, we are not Superman, but we are darn close in what we achieve. I laud him for his insights and his credibility.
Gallagher made the statement "take the stance of reader instead of grader" which I like. For students in French class, writing for them is composed mostly of dialogue writing and short answer responses (Level 3). There isn't hardly any essay writing that you would find in an English class. However, I look for many of the same things that an English teacher would such as verb use, spelling, and punctuation. So, in that respect I read as a grader. In following Gallagher's suggestion to read student's work as a reader, I would look for different writing styles. Through this implication, I could monitor their growth as a writer.
Another insight that the author makes that I like is the statement that the writer's greatest improvement happens in the middle of the writing process. In French class, students always get tangled in trying to translate directly instead of using the language that they know already. When listing the writing commandments, the author points out that the teacher should model his/her own writing. I will use this suggestion. I liked the way Mrs. Rollison showed her students her writing. I usually get students started with the writing, but I have never done a complete sample to show them all of my mistakes. Mrs. Rollison's work was a great idea.
I enjoyed the Pink and Say book. I have referenced it this week while teaching the Civil War in U.S. History. My class would not sit patiently through an entire reading, so I just shared sections that related, especially the reference to Andersonville. Anytime they can make connections between the class or their book and other sources, it seems to give validity. Often times, they seem so detached from the past, as if it is a poorly told story. They have a difficult time seeing how the past relates to them today. Their usual refrain is "I hate studying history." CNN student news offers many opportunities for referencing the past. They seem to think something is more credible if they see it in the news AND in their book. They are also fascinated by the role S.C. has played on the development of the nation. Today they learned that SC had the largest number of elected African-American legislators during Reconstruction--they were completely amazed by this. It is obvious they haven't been exposed to a great deal of American history in their home or in school. This is rather sad. Sometimes when I tell them things, they often ask "Are you telling the truth?" Many days, it is like introducing them to a foreign country
The RED Pen makes you not want to write. All that students see is the marking not the good left in the writing. I correct with a different color pen green and purple they are not as offended.
Meeting the Standards/ Exceeds the Standard as a rubric might make students under achieve. Writing just enough to get the grade. Students that are strong writers
have great prior knowledge for a basis and can visualized that all things are possible. Students in my class that love to write will
journal because it is private and I don't correct it. I just give the assessment for participation in writing not for performance. I am hoping that my approach will enabler students to start to enjoying writing instead of fighting the write.
Using Assessment to Drive Better Student Writing
Chapter 7
First and foremost this chapter on assessment focuses on how a teacher can respond to student writing in a nurturing way! This is so important when working with students. The best way to discourage a student in any subject is the pull out the red pen and start correcting the mistakes. Gallagher’s first heading in this chapter is, “One Central Goal: Everyone Improves.” The teachers at our last state SCRI meeting needed to read this chapter in the worst way. They were so despondent because their principal said that their goal for this year should be to make every child proficient on the PACT. The goal is so unrealistic and the teachers appeared to have just given up. IF they had suggested to their principal that this year they would like to bring below basic students to the basic level and basic level students to the advanced level and the advanced to proficient even those lofty goals would have seemed more attainable, thus the morale and attitudes of the teachers would have been better. I wish those teachers and their principal could read Gallagher’s statement, “strong or weak, fluent or hesitant, the goal for each student is the same: everyone improves.”
Assessments should measure what was learned not what was memorized. I really pondered the thought that “midprocess is where the real growth potential lies.” If a student like my daughter can get all excited about earning five extra points on a geometry test for making test corrections, then imagine how much better she would do on a re-test or if she is given the test back in order to prepare for her final exam. But that is not the case, the teacher does not want her tests floating around the school. If it is a math test, can’t new questions be formed? If a teacher corrects a rough draft and counsel with the student before turning in the final paper, wouldn’t that final paper have a better chance of reaching the teacher’s expectations?
We must share that Monday Night Football announcer example with our teachers. I really think that students would understand the difference with this example.
This class has really made me look at picture books differently. I can see them being used more and more in the middle and high school classrooms to introduce really tough subjects like the Civil War. Pink and Say always makes me cry no matter how many times I read it. I just need to figure out how I want to shelve picture books in our new media center. This renovation will be worst of times and the best of times.
...dum-dum-dum..the Red Pen.
The thing I'm going to copy, print, and paste to my board or printer or something is the 7.3 chart on page 144. I think I always struggle with the craft vs fixing type of comments. One thing that has helped me with just commenting back and forth are the extended exit slips or written responses--I dont' grade the same--I more just talk back, but also make little notes about some of the proof-reading type stuff, but also make little notes about the diction and syntax. I'm not sure if it's really doing a service, but I think it has taken some of the pressure off the writers as if they are always judged by every time they put pen to paper. I preface it with, "you're just talking to me & I'll write back." sometimes it works, sometimes I get 'how i talk' sort of comments. This is how my blog project with my junior is hard to judge--they are writing, but...goodness, some of the writing is bah!
I am going to steal the sports commentators bit on p. 145. That summarize or analyze struggle never goes away.
I think so many of us struggle with writing assessments because once the battle is over for getting it done, it's so hard to go back in the trenches and re-do it. And when I say 'so many of us,' I basically mean me.
I think that Gallagher's process for teaching students the difference between summarizing and analyzing is absolutely brilliant. I could even understand summary and analysis better after reading her example about the play-by-play announcer versus the color commentator. I truly believe my students would latch onto this example better as well. As per Gallagher's tenets, I found number five to be one that I have certainly noticed in my classroom and in my teaching. When I first taught English I (last year), I came into the class assuming that my students understood the basic parts of speech. By the time I was working with them on their first piece of writing and began noticing some severe grammatical deficiencies, I had already lost precious time for grammar instruction. This year, I began my English I classes with a completely different approach. Our first unit was entitled building blocks. We spent time meticulously going over all of the information we would need in order to fully understand and analyze our literature and writing for the rest of the semester. It was much more effective than last year's last minute mini-lesson grab. However, I believe that I still missed one of the key tenets. Although I had finally recognized that my students needed help with grammar, I had not actually accepted that they needed to "learn" these concepts. As such I do not feel that I spent enough time adequately addressing each topic. In my concern not to bore them to death by spending a lot of time on what I considered to be basic skills, I feel that I may have left some of my students wanting. My struggle for next year will be to bite the bullet and extend the time spent on each individual skill, making sure that they have down each concept before moving on to the next. One thing that has worked for me, however, is focusing more on content and craft than on editing during rough draft conferencing. The first paper that my freshmen wrote this semester was a film review. Students created multiple drafts of their papers and met with me one-on-one to discuss their drafts. (They also used some of Gallagher's peer editing suggestions.) The first two to three times that I conferenced with a student I did not focus at all on their conventions. Instead I helped them to develop the overall idea of their papers. Surprisingly (or not) as the content of their papers improved so did their conventions. On the final conference, I spoke with students about the major concerns I saw with their papers (grammar-wise). This process worked well in one way as it allowed the students to focus more on getting good content into their papers. However, I think it may have overwhelmed then when I tried to cram all of their mistakes into one final conference prior to the due date. I think next time around, I will keep track of the various problems I am seeing in the students' papers as we conference. Then, I can incorporate whole class mini-lessons on common mistakes to help them as they work through their papers. Students can even have peer editing conferences where they look for specific conventions studied in our mini-lessons. I also love her idea for the use of an Independent Correction Sheet. That will definitely be entering my classroom. Overall I would say that this chapter really helped me to see some things that I am doing well in my classroom as well as some suggestions for wasy to improve areas with which I have been concerned.
Chapter 7 Using Assessment to Drive Better Student Writing
I thought this chapter was packed with good information about the role of assessment in creating better writers. The thought that everyone improves in this type of process did not go unnoticed by me. Focusing on what good writers should do, explaining and giving examples of the different techniques available – such as the summary vs. commentary process using differences between a play-by play announcer and a color commentator, the ‘I like’ conversation and the Golden line exchange.
The author broke down the teaching of editing skill into 10 tenants and even provided 5 steps to help teacher implement the tenets in the classroom. The chapter concluded with the seven commandments of building successful writers. I particularly liked the seventh commandment – ‘If you worry too much about the first sixth commandments, you’ll become nuttier than Barry Bonds at a Slim-Fast Convention.’ While I do not quite understand the complete analogy, I believe the point was that any progress is good progress and work toward accomplishing goals the best you can without sweating the small stuff.
In my last blog, I mentioned the problem of becoming mentally decentralized in a “teacherless” classroom; thankfully, Gallagher offers some interesting ways to tackle that problem in this chapter on assessment. My favorite characteristic of his overall approach is the interconnectedness of all its parts; if you know that your comments will be incorporated into personalized rubrics, which will in turn help you create small groups for student-teacher conferences—then avoiding the job of responding to student drafts becomes more difficult. Without your comments, class cannot continue in the way it must.
Hopefully this will prove helpful for me, especially since I feel a desire to write extensive terminal comments—but global (structural, etc.) rather than specific ones (grammar, etc.)—which, according to Gallagher, not only places too much work on the teacher, but also overloads the students. In any case, I feel compelled to write so much out of guilt; it takes me so long to return papers, I want students to feel like the wait was worth it, like they were waiting for something. But limiting myself to two comments, one for editing and another for style, will help me spend less time with each paper, thereby increasing my response time.
Also, as an old writing-center tutor and creative-writing student, I feel that most permanent learning stems from one-on-one conferencing. I can’t tell you how many lessons clicked in my brain because I heard a fiction, drama or poetry instructor phrase it just so during a conference. The personal dialogue can foster a helpful candor: pointing out a silly mistake privately works; pointing out the same silly mistake publicly does not. For all these reasons, I find Gallagher’s practical advice about conferencing helpful; though—especially in advanced and creative writing, which allow for extended periods of in-class work-time—I feel like conferences should be allowed to run long if necessary.
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