Archive for April, 2009
On the first day of school Sarah Cooper, author of Making History Mine, reads this poem by Bertold Brecht to her students. The poem “urges us to recognize ordinary people whose contributions made great events possible,” writes Sarah. After she discusses unfamiliar words, she asks her student to stand as the entire class reads the poem out loud. “This kind of activity — combining reading comprehension, literary awareness, historical context, and critical thinking — enable us to view the nuts-and-bolts details of history through a longer lens,” Sarah argues. You can browse Making History Mine in its entirety now!
A Worker Reads History
By Bertold Brecht
Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Greek triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?
Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?
So many particulars.
So many questions.
April 10th, 2009
For the past several weeks we have been collecting some great samples of classic boy writing from teachers across the country. We have received poems, comic strips and comic books, short stories, plays, and an eight-chapter novella. In the end Ralph Fletcher, author of Boy Writers: Reclaiming Their Voices, selected 12 submissions and wrote comments about the pieces. You can read his comments — and read the student’s work — by clicking on the images below.
You can view all of the submission on our Ning group. (You will have to sign up for an account if you don’t have one yet.)
April 9th, 2009
In this week’s Quick Tip, Matt Copeland lays out the basics of Socratic circles. “True classroom discussion, true dialogue, should be an opportunity for students to share their own ideas, build knowledge based on prior information being applied to new situations, test out their own hypotheses and perspectives against those of their peers,” Matt writes in the second chapter of his book, Socratic Circles: Fostering Critical and Creative Thinking in Middle and High School. Socratic circles allow students to arrive at answers that have been constructed through personal experience, critical thought, rhetoric, and discourse.
In the simplest terms, Socratic circles are an in-class discussion that is focused upon a particular piece of text that students have spent time reading and analyzing. However, the nature and process of that discussion differs radically from the typical teacher-led, question-and-answer discussion.
In a Socratic circle, students work cooperatively to construct meaning from what they have read and avoid focusing on a “correct” interpretation of the text. Student understanding emerges as the discussion progresses and is always open to revision. Students base their construction of meaning upon the connections they can make to what they already know and the ideas and opinions that are shared within their group. This cooperative creation then stands as meaning over which students have almost complete ownership. The input and suggestions of the teacher are simply promptings to continue the process of discourse and the search for meaning.
It is important to note that Socratic circles are not a form of classroom debate. “Debate” suggests that students are competing with one another to convince an outsider of the validity of their line of thinking. A Socratic circle has students working collaboratively to construct a common vision of truth and understanding that serves all members of the group equally.
There is no concept of “winning an argument” in a Socratic circle; there is only the search for deeper and more thorough understanding. Similarly, there are strong differences between discussion as a general principle and Socratic dialogue. Discussion seeks to resolve an issue or solve a problem; it begins with a clear goal or outcome in mind such as, “Today we are going to discover the meaning of this poem.” If we think of the typical kinds of questions we ask in a classroom discussion, most have a single, correct answer, or at the very least a preferable answer the teacher is waiting to hear. In my own experience, classroom discussion usually meant one of two things: either wading through several answers until I heard the one I was looking for, or completely exhausting the potential answers students were willing to offer and then spoon-feeding the answer I had been hoping to hear.
Neither of these situations is consistent with Socratic dialogue, which often has no specific goal or outcome in mind. Socratic dialogue is an exploration, a quest for understanding, that has no definite beginning or end. It is an expedition into human experience and understanding that, as background, can then serve students as they approach life and the world they live in. Socratic dialogue is not about answers and solutions; it is about accepting multiple perspectives on a certain topic and reexamining our own experiences and opinions in light of those perspectives. Socratic circles offer a controlled, pedagogical strategy that can bring dialogue into our classrooms, a type of real-world, student-centered learning where the teacher acts only to keep the discussion moving forward, regardless of its direction. As students construct their dialogue and their meaning of the piece of text, they are activating prior knowledge, making connections, and synthesizing new schemata in their quest for understanding. It is the students—not the teacher—who guide and direct the focus of the conversation in a search for meaning, understanding, and knowledge.
The ritualistic structure of a Socratic circle is one that appears complex to participants at first, but ultimately that structure is what provides for the students’ growth and ownership of the conversation. By the end of the very first implementation, students have mastered the basic format of a Socratic circle. This allows them to focus on the content that is being discussed and the validity and power of the questions and thoughts being shared among participants. Such a structure also greatly reduces issues of classroom management, as each and every student is engaged in the conversation and filling a role for the group.
The basic procedure for a Socratic circle is as follows:
1. On the day before a Socratic circle, the teacher hands out a short passage of text.
2. That night at home, students spend time reading, analyzing, and taking notes on the text.
3. During class the next day, students are randomly divided into two concentric circles: an inner circle and an outer circle.
4. The students in the inner circle read the passage aloud and then engage in a discussion of the text for approximately ten minutes, while students in the outer circle silently observe the behavior and performance of the inner circle.
5. After this discussion of the text, the outer circle assesses the inner circle’s performance and gives ten minutes of feedback for the inner circle.
6. Students in the inner and outer circles now exchange roles and positions.
7. The new inner circle holds a ten-minute discussion and then receives ten minutes of feedback from the new outer circle.
There are many variations to the time limits of each aspect of Socratic circles, but maintaining the discussion-feedback-discussion-feedback pattern is essential. Once students have mastered the structure of the Socratic circle itself, modifications can be made according to content, focus, purpose, and so on.
April 7th, 2009
Lynsey, a third-grade teacher at Riverside Elementary School in Dublin, Ohio, is part of the book study group that is discussing Ann Marie Corgill’s new title, Of Primary Importance. This month, Lynsey shares how Ann Marie’s chapter on teaching poetry showed her new strategies for moving her students from discussing poetry to writing their own poems.
You can read about previous group discussions here and here.
I’ve always had a love hate relationship with teaching poetry. Right before teaching it I get this feeling inside; it kind of feels like the feeling you get just before you work out. So when our group talked about the chapters we were reading next my ears perked up when I saw there was a chapter on teaching poetry.
In the past, I’ve tried many different teaching methods with poetry. I always get stuck when it comes to having the children write their own poetry. I love the part when we read poetry and discuss authors’ crafts and poems that inspire us, but making that leap to having children begin writing their own poetry kills me every time.
I’ve reflected numerous times on where the breakdown happens. The children are all excited and love reading the poems and talking about them, even recording poems in their reading notebook that they can’t live without, but as soon as I say, “Okay boys and girls lets write!” it happens, faces drop and the momentum has left the room.
So, understandably I’ve been searching for a way that children in my classroom can love to read and write poetry. I will be honest and admit that writing poetry for me is not a day in the park. I have never been quite comfortable with my own poetry writing so when I teach it I stick to formulas and that is not working for my students.
Reading Corgill’s chapter on poetry helped me see that formulas are not the way to go and I don’t have to be a poet myself to help engage children in writing poetry. There are many highlights of her chapter that helped me to rethink and restructure how I will teach poetry this year.
I loved how students took time to name and group poems. This is a great way to get children thinking about what they possibly write. She also writes about children making poetry observations and sharing them each day. This is where teachers introduce craft and hopefully students will take elements of these crafts to produce their own poems.
Most importantly, I feel her poetry writing process makes a lot of sense. Her process begins with reading and talking about poetry and moves to organizing and designing. I noticed how she never said, “Boys and girls today we are going to write a haiku.” She writes about organizing your thoughts and designing your poem kind of like when you are building something tangible. The she moves to word choice and voice, hard to teach but a very critical step. Once the children have engaged in this process they have had multiple times to feel good and successful about their writing. There is no pressure to get the formula right and make sure your words rhyme and everything is nice and pretty.
In our group discussion there was a lot of talk about the importance of using good mentor texts. We all liked her booklist and realized that without mentor texts that appeal to children, the excitement of poetry somewhat diminishes. We also spent time sharing great ways to showcase students poetry and collections. It was very helpful to hear how other teachers do this in their classrooms.
For me, I’m hoping that my love hate relationship turns this year to a love, love relationship. I’m excited to try some new things this year and watch my students fall in love with reading and writing poetry.
April 6th, 2009
This week’s selection was made by Stenhouse web coordinator Zsofi McMullin.
I’ve been thinking about my garden a lot lately. This is our first spring in our new house and our graden scares me a bit. A brook runs through the lower level of the garden, flanked by wild bushes and huge trees. I am not quite sure what I should or could do with it, but I am anxious to start digging in the dirt. This poem is not just about gardening of course, but these few lines really spoke to me: “And yet excitement swells me, vein by vein:/ I long to crowd the little garden, gain /Its sweetness in my hand and crush it small /And taste it in a moment, time and all!”
Time and the Garden
Yvor Winters
The spring has darkened with activity.
The future gathers in vine, bush, and tree:
Persimmon, walnut, loquat, fig, and grape,
Degrees and kinds of color, taste, and shape.
Read the rest of the poem here.
April 3rd, 2009
Engaging the Eye Generation author Johanna Riddle just wrapped up a blog tour that stopped at four education and technology-related blogs. At Archipelago, Johanna gave advice to library media specialists who are just getting started: “First, get to know your collection. After all, you are your school’s expert on these resources!”
Johanna shared some tips for teachers who are “digital immigrants”—just now beginning to incorporate 21st century skills into their classrooms—when she visited Teching Around the Web 2.0. She also said that fear seems to be the biggest obstacle when it comes to teachers exploring new technologies.
At Technology in the Middle, Johanna shared an inventive, low-cost idea for helping schools establish a cohesive, spiral approach to literacy that follows a natural progression from kindergarten through fifth grade.
On the final stop of the tour at Once Upon a Teacher, you can watch a 22-minute recorded video conversation with Johanna.
You can still preview the entire text of Engaging the Eye Generation on the Stenhouse website and then visit these blogs to read more of the author’s comments and ask questions from Johanna and the bloggers.
April 2nd, 2009
In Part I of our three-part Questions & Authors series with the authors of TeamWork: Setting the Standard for Collaborative Teaching, Grades 5-9, Monique Wild talks about how she used student-led conferences to get parents involved in their children’s lives at school and to get students motivated and excited about their own learning.
When we first began to host student-led conferences, we had meager hopes that the conferences would serve as a tool to assist our students in articulating their academic progress to their parents. Often parents had complained to us that their middle school children no longer told them about school activities. In fact, when questioned about what had occurred at school, most of our students responded with a standard, “Nothing!”
Student-led conferences were our attempt to bridge the widening communication gap that was forming between our middle-schoolers and their parents. We did not realize the power that student-led conferences would also have in improving the academic success of our students. Suddenly, our students became active, empowered participants in the learning process. In short, they not only communicated with their parents, but also began to accept responsibility for their successes as well as for improvements that were needed in their academic endeavors. It seemed that once they realized they would have to discuss their academic progress one on one with their parents and provide evidence to support their findings, academic activities became more important to them. What we witnessed was nothing short of a magical transformation. Here are the key components that made student-led conferences successful in our classrooms.
Preparation:
1. Gather artifacts to share with parents.
Our students maintain portfolios that contain graded assignments, photographs of learning activities, articles about our students from the local newspaper, work students are proud of, and student self-evaluations. It is important that students be provided time throughout the course of the grading period to organize and peruse portfolios to note trends in their performance. When portfolios are part of a reflective learning component in regular classroom activities, students are much more likely to articulate information about their learning to their parents.
2. Allow students to set goals.
Our students use their portfolios to reflect upon their learning and to set goals for improvement in subsequent learning activities. The goals they set are shared with their parents during student-led conferences and are monitored closely throughout each grading period. By setting their own learning goals, our students become responsible for their own learning.
3. Allow students to plan for the discussions prior to the student-led conference.
When we first invited parents for student-led conferences, we thought that the conversation would flow easily between our students and their parents if they were simply provided student portfolios to peruse. However, in the beginning many of our students sat silently looking at their parents for the duration of the conference. Now we have our students complete a discussion plan prior to conference day. We provide our students with the following sentence starters to which students write their thoughts.
- Three things I’d like to discuss with my parents are…
- What I need to explain to my parents about my goals includes…
- The thing I’m most proud of is…
- I need to work on…
- I want to tell my parents that I need help with…
In addition to having students write their plans prior to conferences, we also have them take their plans with them as reference notes during the conference. This provides our students and their parents with a guide for the proceedings.
Logistics:
1. Schedule dates and times for student-led conferences well in advance.
In today’s hectic world, we have found that it is essential to have dates for student-led conferences planned well in advance so that parents have time to adjust their schedules in order to attend. We have found that we experience the largest parental turnout when we schedule conferences throughout the school day and into the early evening. This gives all of our students’ families a chance to attend without jeopardizing job-related responsibilities.
2. Send personalized invitations two weeks before the event.
We tend to experience greater turnout for our student-led conferences when we send personalized invitations to our students’ parents prior to the event. We ask parents to RSVP with the time they plan to attend so that we can accommodate all of our visitors.
Feedback:
It is also helpful to ask for feedback from parents to assist in planning for future events. The feedback will help you to fine-tune the process to better facilitate discussions between your students and their parents. Questions that have helped us to improve the student-led conferences experienced by our students and their parents include the following.
- How was the student-led conference beneficial to you and your child?
- What was the most pertinent information you gained during the conference?
- What do you still want to know?
- What were your expectations of the event prior to the conference with your child?
- What do you feel your child’s teachers need to know?
Because we have incorporated student-led conferences into our practice, our students have become more engaged in the learning process and their parents have reported feeling more involved in their children’s education. The notion of adolescent students taking responsibility for their own learning is a compelling argument in support of student-led conferences. This alone is reason enough for us to encourage all educators to consider student-led conferences as a way to engage your students and their parents in meaningful dialogue about academic progress. We anticipate that you will witness magical ransformations just as we have. Enjoy the magic!
April 1st, 2009
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