The Stenhouse Blog

Quick Tip Tuesday Original: Writing tips from Mark Overmeyer

If it’s Tuesday, it must be Quick Tip Tuesday on the Stenhouse Blog, right? But this Tuesday is a bit different, because instead of sharing a Quick Tip from a Stenhouse book, we bring you a Quick Tip Original from Mark Overmeyer, author of What Student Writing Teaches Us and When Writing Workshop Isn’t Working. What does it mean that it’s an original Quick Tip? It means that it’s never been published anywhere, and that it comes straight to you from a master teacher of writing. Enjoy and share!

Writing Tips from Mark Overmeyer

Have fun when you teach writing. Be joyful.

Whether you have just started back to school or you are weeks into your writing workshop, I cannot stress enough the importance of joy. I am lucky enough to visit many classrooms in schools across the Denver metro area, and the ones that function best seem to include one key element: joy. Here are some tips for creating more joy in your workshop:

Encourage the use of humor. Consider using humorous mentor texts with your students. Mo Willems has become a standard feature of most primary classrooms I enter these days, and I have yet to meet a student who wouldn’t jump at the chance to write a new Pigeon book (along the lines of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! or a book similar to Knufflebunny: A Cautionary Tale. Also for primary students, consider Melinda Long’s books How I Became a Pirate and Pirates Don’t Change Diapers if you sense kids might like to write a pirate story. For intermediate grades, the books I continue to see in so many backpacks and on so many desks have a wimpy kid on the cover – Jeff Kinney has done us a huge favor as we try to convince students that they do have moments in their lives that are worth writing about. Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are full of short anecdotes in the form of diary entries that have helped many of my students in the past few years generate ideas and develop enthusiasm for writing personal narratives. And the film can be used in excerpted form to help students understand the concept of writing a scene, or a short part of a day, rather than the entire day.

Have fun while you read their writing. I work in a district just like many of yours: teachers have a lot of testing to do in the beginning of the year. Even if this testing includes some kind of required writing sample, raise the energy in your room by talking about how happy it made you to read their writing. Don’t read writing just to come up with a rubric score – have fun while reading it. Go in each day and talk about how much you are learning about your students as people because of their writing. One of the most resistant writers I have encountered in awhile is a third grader who managed to write a few words about fishing the first day of school. I use him as a model every day when I work in his classroom now. I say things like: “Writers, you are doing the work all writers do when they first come up with ideas – you are writing what you know. And Tyler knows about fishing. He knows about carp fishing on a lake, and he knows about fly-fishing in a river. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with today!” Though I cannot tell you that Tyler has produced pages of text, he does not produce at least half a page, and a picture, every day. And most importantly, he does not groan when it is time to write like he did the first day I met him.

Allow plenty of time to share. Don’t save sharing time for just the end of the workshop. Expect students to share ideas before they write, interrupt the workshop briefly to celebrate a student’s writing during writing time, and make sure to include as many students as possible at the end of the workshop sharing time. If your students are writing longer pieces, you can edit this process by asking them to share a favorite part of their story, or you can ask them to orally tell part of the story and just read their most recent page. If you have some shy students who do not like to share, ask for permission early in the school year to share their work with the class. All students, hopefully, will become confident enough to share their writing frequently as the year progresses.

Be positive about your own writing experiences. Be honest about your own struggles as a writer, but share your joy as well. Talk about how rewarding it is to create your own pieces and to share these pieces with the class. Let them into the world of your own writing process by sharing some real world examples of how writing made a positive impact on your life. You can think of cards you have sent, poems you have written for special occasions, or opportunities you have had because you worked hard on your writing. Help students to see that writing is alive and well in the “real” world: writing matters. Writing makes a difference.

1 comment September 7th, 2010

Quick Tip Tuesday: The paper shuffle

Homework assignments, handouts, field trip requests — even in this age of technology, teachers still deal with a lot of paperwork. In this week’s Quick Tip, Rick Wormeli shares how he deals with the “paper shuffle” in his classroom from his book Day One and Beyond. Leave your ideas in the comment section – how do you deal with all of paperwork that comes with teaching?

Have a clearly marked place in the room for students to turn in their work. There are a number of options for creating places where students can turn in papers:
• a set of tubs or trays, one for each period, desk cluster, row, or subject
• a set of magnetized or wall-mounted file folder trays, one for each period, desk cluster, row, or subject
• one main basket, tub, or tray into which everything goes
• folders, one for every assignment or one for every period, desk cluster, row, or subject

The way you prefer to grade will affect how you ask students to submit their work. You may want to grade all 150 projects so your mind is focused on the same things as you grade; or you may want to grade all the papers for each period you teach or all the work for one student, grading many different assignments. Grading by period seems to be the most efficient method. Breaking the larger task into five or six smaller groupings such as class periods gives a sense of accomplishment, and your mind is not dulled by huge quantities of repeated information. Don’t forget to consider asking students to alphabetize a set of assignments for you. It will make record keeping easier.

Students will occasionally (and chronically, depending on the person) submit papers on which they’ve forgotten to record their names. Please don’t throw these in the trash can as a way to teach students a lesson in responsibility. It won’t work, and you’ll be creating larger problems—resentment and an irretrievable assignment. Young adolescents are not capable of remembering to write their names on their assignments 100 percent of the time. Even my most conscientious students over the years have made this mistake. It’s not reasonable to provide a harsh response to students when they forget. We can be developmentally appropriate and hold them accountable in other ways. First, if we recognize the writing, write the student’s name on it and return it to him. Let him record his name and resubmit the assignment. It was a simple mistake; we can afford to be forgiving.

If we don’t recognize the writing, place the unnamed assignment in a tub or tray labeled “No Name, No Credit.” Invite students to inspect the contents of the tub or tray once a week or when others have their papers returned but they don’t. If students find their work, have them put their names on the assignment and resubmit it for credit. If you wish, take some points off, but not so much that it would significantly change the indicator of mastery you put on it.

A great way to maintain sanity with the paper shuffle in middle schools is to ask students to maintain a student assignment notebook or something similar. It’ll help them complete, find, and submit papers on time, preventing frantic paper chases down the road. Though there are plenty of inexpensive versions for mass purchase, students can make their own assignment notebooks. Just make sure there is a page for each day of the school year, and on each page there is space for writing down assignments for each subject, as well as places to record additional reminders, a place for parents to sign, and a place for teachers to initial that the information is correct. It is particularly helpful, too, if there is a section somewhere in the notebook for recording phone numbers and e-mail addresses of classmates
who can be contacted for homework assignments when students are sick, as well as a grade sheet on which students can record grades as papers are returned and thereby keep a running tab on how they’re doing.

Make sure to have a final tub, basket, tray, or folder to store extra copies of handouts. Inevitably, students will lose original copies of what we’ve given them, or they’ll be absent and not receive the handout. An “extras” tray provides a place where they can go to get back up to speed without bothering you or their classmates.

A caution about technology: Many teachers are exploring electronically submitted assignments and portfolios. I’m one of them. It’s the way to go in the years ahead, but we aren’t there yet in terms of security, technology, and equal access to technology. Experiment with your students, if possible, but be wise and back up every electronic submission with a hard copy, just in case. Until we can guarantee that diskettes and CDs won’t be broken or lost, servers won’t be down, and everyone has equal access and expertise with the technology, we can’t require across-the-board use. Another benefit of hard copies: successful editing. It’s been proven repeatedly in editors’ offices and English classrooms across the nation that our minds catch mistakes on hard copy more often than on a computer screen where we’re dealing with the oscillating pixels of the electronic image. Have students proofread by reading the hard-copy version of their work aloud.

Have a designated student of the week return papers or, if privacy is a concern, return papers yourself while students are working on something else. Be efficient with time. Just a reminder: There is a direct correlation between how long papers take to be graded and returned to students and the extent of complexity and depth students apply to the assignment. If students know they’re going to get feedback quickly, they’ll put more of themselves into it. If they don’t get feedback for a couple of weeks, their motivation fades.

When it comes to your own administrative paperwork, deal with everything within twenty-four hours. If you get a request to complete a teacher narrative form for an upcoming IEP meeting, sit down and do it right away. Need to complete a form requesting buses for your field trip in four months? Get the forms and complete them right now while you’re caught up in the trip’s planning. You can put off your own paperwork only if you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. This means completing administrative paperwork even when you don’t want to do it, tired or not. Believe this repentant paperwork procrastinator: it’s worth doing it now. Don’t wait until the pile of uncompleted paperwork has hit critical mass; do it as it comes across your desk or into your teacher box. You’ll have a life if you do.

Add comment August 31st, 2010

Quick Tip Tuesday: Nudging kids to make a choice

“Nonfiction reading, research, and reporting is hard work. For students to maximize their inquiry experience, they should choose a topic they care about, know something about, and wonder about,” writes Stephanie Harvey in her book Nonfiction Matters: Reading, Writing, and Reseach in Grades 3-8. But some students find it difficult to pick a topic or they think that their hobbies and interests are not suitable for school. In this Quick Tip, we get a quick glimpse into a conversation between a student, Thomas, and his teacher, Mary, as they talk about Thomas’ interest in football and how that will make a great topic for his research paper.

Some students struggle with topic selection. On the eve of the topic deadline, Thomas had not come up with a single idea for research. His mother rang Mary first thing in the morning and described a family in turmoil. Thomas had been up all night fraught with anxiety over his eleventh-hour missing topic. His mom’s voice cracked as she wondered how he would ever organize sources, take notes, or write a report if he couldn’t even think of a topic. School was not easy for Thomas. Thomas’s mother believed that independent inquiry demanded too much of him. She suggested that Mary simply assign Thomas a topic so he could get started. Mary felt bad for Thomas and promised to talk with him that morning. The last thing Thomas needed was to be losing sleep.

Before kids entered the room, Mary pulled out Thomas’s wonder book. The twisted spiral wire extended at least six inches beyond the half-torn cover. Writing was conspicuously absent. But precise drawings of NFL team logos covered the lined pages. Mary approached Thomas during writing time and asked how things were going.

“Lousy,” Thomas answered.

“Why?”

“I can’t think of a topic for this research project.”

“What interests you, Thomas?” Mary asked.

“Nothin’,” Thomas answered.

“Tell me about these drawings,” Mary nudged.

“Oh those, those are nothin’,” Thomas said, as he slid his notebook back into his desk.

“It looks like football stuff to me,” Mary commented.

“Yeah, I guess,” Thomas acknowledged.

“Can I see them?”

Thomas reached into his desk and handed the tattered wonder book to Mary.

“Wow, these are great. How many team helmets did you draw in here?” Mary asked.

“All of ’em,” Thomas answered.

“No kidding. Did you copy them from somewhere?”

“No, I know the logo of every team in the NFL,” Thomas said.

“Really! Which is your favorite?”

“The Broncos, of course.”

“Thomas, these are really terrific drawings,” Mary told him. She continued to draw Thomas out on the subject of football. Thomas not only knew the logos, but also the standings, schedules, and player statistics of most teams in the league. Thomas was an expert on the NFL and football in general, even though he had begun this conference by saying he had no interests.

When Mary suggested that Thomas write about football in his wonder book and list a few questions he had, he was pleasantly surprised. He didn’t associate football with school. Mary pulled out several beautifully illustrated picture books and wondered whether Thomas might want to write and illustrate a picture book on some aspect of football as his research project. Thomas pulled a Sports Illustrated from his desk. John Elway graced the cover. Mary left Thomas reading about his idol. She hadn’t actually assigned a topic. But she had explored Thomas’s background knowledge and nudged him in a direction that matched his interests.

Thomas’s struggle was far from over, of course. Reading, note taking, and writing challenged him throughout his inquiry. But finding an engaging topic represents a major step forward for kids like Thomas. Independent inquiry allows for the widest range of exploration. Choosing freely from an unlimited spectrum of topics gives kids the best shot at finding a subject that appeals to them.

Young writers need to know that selecting a topic is challenging. When I meet professional writers, I often ask them what they find most difficult about writing. The answer is almost always the same: thinking of something to write about. My students are relieved when I share this with them, because they too struggle to come up with ideas to write about.

Add comment August 24th, 2010

Quick Tip Tuesday: Publishing ideas

Wondering what your students should do with their best writing? Jennifer Jacobson, author of No More “I’m Done!” has a couple of great ideas for classroom publishing that don’t take up a lot of time, but make students proud and motivated to write!

Believe it or not, there was a time when primary schools established central “publishing houses.” Students who had done an exceptionally fine job on a piece would be greeted by parent volunteers who typed up the stories and then carefully bound them into books. The books often had sturdy cardboard covers decorated with wallpaper samples, and pages carefully sewn with durable dental floss. The proud students would return to the classroom where they illustrated their books, which were later celebrated. Many books would find their way into the school library for the remainder of the year.

Very few schools still offer this model of publishing. Somewhere along the line, “publishing” came to mean “copying over your work without any mistakes.” All students publish at the same time, removing the motivation to publish one’s finest writing. Instead, students publish nearly identical teacher-directed products.

Here, I am going to suggest a publishing program that falls somewhere in the middle of these two models. Consider setting up an area in your room where you (or better yet, a parent or high school volunteer) can work with individual students. The volunteer sits at the computer, and the child sits next to the volunteer and reads his or her work. Volunteers (who you have trained) type the work using all of the proper conventions: punctuation, spelling, capitalization, proper grammar—keeping the child’s original language whenever possible. If while reading, the student says, “Oh, I should have said . . .” The volunteer types what the child wished he or she had written, thus reinforcing revision right up to the end.

What do you do with the typed work? Here is a list of ideas:
1. Place in a class anthology (The “Big Book”; see page 23)
2. Mount on a bulletin board
3. Read over the intercom
4. Include in school or class newsletters
5. Post on a Web site
6. Have child read in a podcast
7. Record (audio or video) a class radio show
8. Perform as a skit
9. Read at an authors’ tea
10. Compile a class book around a single theme (poems, funny
stories, holiday stories, etc.)
11. Include in a class yearbook
12. Include in the school literary magazine
13. Submit to a student market or contest
14. Give as a gift

I do not recommend that primary students copy over their work. If we regularly ask student to rewrite, we are teaching them two things: write short and don’t take risks. We also take away one of our best motivating tools. Being able to say something reinforcing such as, “Kara! You added so many quality details to this writing. Would you like to publish it?” goes a long way in motivating our students to be thoughtful, independent writers.

Add comment August 10th, 2010

Quick Tip Tuesday: Effective Socratic Circles

“Effective Socratic circles do not happen overnight,” writes Matt Copeland in his book Socratic Circles: Fostering Critical and Creative Thinking in Middle and High School. To prepare for Socratic Circle instruction, teachers need to consider three key areas: classroom climate, the teacher’s role, and teaching students to prepare for high quality dialogue. In this week’s Quick Tip, Matt shares how he sets the climate in his classroom for effective dialogue.

If one had the ability to look down upon a Socratic circle in my classroom from above, he or she would see two concentric circles. The inner circle of students would be facing inward and seated upon the floor, each with a writing utensil and a copy of the selected piece of text being used as a springboard for discussion. The outer circle of students, also facing inward, would be seated in desks directly outside the inner circle, almost literally hanging on every word of the inner circle. One would quickly realize that the only conversation taking place is among the members of the inner circle and that outer-circle members are busy observing and jotting down notes about the inner circle’s performance, all without saying
a word. One would also notice the teacher sitting outside the inner circle, contributing questions or basic information only to keep the inner circle’s discussion moving smoothly along.

After several minutes had gone by, the observer would notice the teacher stopping the inner circle’s conversation and asking them to remain quiet while the teacher led the outer circle in a conversation to provide feedback on the inner circle’s performance. One would see students in the outer circle looking at their notes and commenting on the strengths of the inner circle and offering suggestions for improvement. What might surprise the observer is that the comments of the outer circle would be
focused not on the content of the inner circle but rather on the behavior the members of the inner circle exhibited during their conversation. After several minutes the two circles would switch places and the process would be repeated.

The classroom environment is perhaps the element most crucial to Socratic circle success, both in terms of the physical environment and in terms of the emotional climate. Socratic circles approach reading, discussion, and learning in a way that is unfamiliar to many students. The physical layout of the room and the emotional climate established by the teacher greatly affect a student’s willingness to try something new.

The process of mutual inquiry asks that participants take risks by sharing ideas and opinions regardless of their known “truth.” Students, like all human beings, are sometimes uncomfortable and unsure of themselves when sharing information about which they are uncertain. The fears of being proved wrong, being judged, and/or being scoffed at are very real. The effective Socratic circle leader accommodates and lessens these fears in the classroom. One of the clear necessities is seating students in a circle so that they all can see each other when they are in discussion. Neat, straight rows of desks will not be conducive to an open, free-flowing dialogue. Because students are asking questions of each other and sharing personal ideas and opinions based on a selection of text, eye contact and nonverbal engagement in the conversation are essential. This engagement makes students more confident and comfortable, which makes them more likely to take risks in sharing their ideas.

Ultimately, having students be able to see and interact with one another builds cohesion, a necessary component in the collaborative construction of new learning. I also have my inner and outer circles sitting on different planes of the classroom. I always have my inner circle sitting on the floor and my outer circle sitting in chairs directly behind them. This allows the outer circle to almost literally look over the shoulders of the students sitting in the inner circle. Because the outer circle is responsible for watching the behavior of the conversation taking place, they need to be able to clearly watch and
observe not only the discussion but also the physical and nonverbal interactions among students. The tiered circles in my classroom help the inner and outer circles see more clearly not only the members of their own circle, but the members of the other circle as well. This helps students see how beneficial one circle can be for the other. Because they can see and interact with one another, there is an enhanced amount of teamwork and cooperation between the circles; both know they are engaged in a cooperative
endeavor.

I have also found that altering the lighting in my classroom helps to improve students’ comfort level. Because large banks of overhead fluorescent lights seem to transform a classroom discussion into something that feels more like a police station interrogation, I fill my classroom with alternative lighting (such as floor lamps or strings of holiday lights hung from the ceilings) on days we hold Socratic circles. The change in lighting relaxes and calms students and makes them more open to the exchange of ideas and dialogue. One of the side benefits to this practice is that they respond very quickly to the lighting change. They know instantly what the order of business is for the day, and they move into Socratic circle mode more quickly, more fully, and with more enthusiasm.

Like the effects of classroom lighting, the importance of the emotional climate of the classroom cannot be underestimated. Sharing personal reactions, connections, and interpretations of ideas and concepts
can be difficult for people of any age. For this to occur, students must feel safe, comfortable, and confident with themselves and with one another.

Before Socratic circles are even introduced, teachers should take the time to engage students in multiple classroom climate activities. The value and benefit of knowing one another’s names, interests, and personalities is immense. We simply cannot work cooperatively with people we feel no connection with, especially in a Socratic circle setting, where each individual is expected to contribute to group understanding.

Add comment August 3rd, 2010

Quick Tip Tuesday: How to select nonfiction mentor texts

We have a great great tip today from Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli, authors of the recent Nonfiction Mentor Texts: Teaching Informational Writing Through Children’s Literature, K-8. Lynne and Rose not only share how they select nonfiction mentor texts for their classrooms, but this Quick Tip is also full of excellent mentor texts recommendations.

As you look through the books that occupy your classroom library shelves or the favorites you stash on a special shelf behind your desk as your indispensable read-aloud selections, how many of them would count as nonfiction texts? In the nonfiction count, how many are narrative nonfiction texts, such as biographies and autobiographies, or selections that read more like narratives, such as Bat Loves the Night or One Tiny Turtle by Nicola Davies? How often are your students writing nonfiction during your writing workshop time? How do you choose a nonfiction mentor text for the young writers in your class?

Kristo and Bamford (2004) define nonfiction as the literature of facts. They describe the main purposes of nonfiction writing: to deliver information, explain, argue, and/or demonstrate. In this book, we are defining nonfiction texts in a much larger sense than as informational trade books and picture books. We are also including other kinds of expository texts, such as cookbooks, newspapers, magazines, brochures, and travel guides, as well as Internet selections.

Portalupi and Fletcher (2001) discuss the importance of familiarizing our students with high-quality nonfiction literature and the subgenres that have developed within the informational picture book selections. Kristo and Bamford (2004) discuss several types of nonfiction books that writers consider depending on purposes, intended audiences, and possible use by those audiences. Authors can present a topic narrowly but in great depth or they can broadly cover a topic. It is important to learn about the different kinds of nonfiction books that are available to our students in order to make sensible  selections for mentor texts.

Many of the nonfiction books we are recommending are life-cycle books, such as One Tiny Turtle by Nicola Davies and Monarch and Milkweed by Helen Frost, or survey books, such as All About Frogs by Jim Arnosky. We also have used many how-to books, such as A Kid’s Guide to Washington, D.C. by Diane Clark. Identification books (field guides), such as Jane Kirkland’s Take a Walk Books, and photographic essays, such as Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman, are other types of promising nonfiction books to use as mentor texts. We are also impressed with the wonderful selection of picture book biographies, such as Thomas Jefferson: A Picture Book Biography by James Cross Giblin, Into the Woods: John James Audubon Lives His Dream by Robert Burleigh, and Rachel: The Story of Rachel Carson by Amy Ehrlich.

In order to create an energizing sense of freedom within writing workshop and opportunities to write nonfiction across the content areas, we can make use of a variety of types of nonfiction books depending on our purposes for writing. When we allow our students to make decisions about how they will deliver and present information, we provide them with a sense of ownership, so vitally important to the notion of commitment to the process and product of writing nonfiction.

We have found that fiction books can also serve as mentors when writing informational and persuasive texts. Hey, Little Ant by Phillip and Hannah Hoose and The Seashore Book by Charlotte Zolotow are two examples. Informational picture storybooks, such as All in Just One Cookie by Susan E. Goodman, Everglades by Jean Craighead George, and Penny: The Forgotten Coin by Denise Brennan-Nelson show students yet another way to present information in a friendly and interesting format.

Sometimes we need a fiction book to serve as a catalyst to write about a topic or to imitate the form, voice, or syntax of an author. Consider the fiction books Dear Mr. Blueberry by Simon James, Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt, Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin, or Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White to find ideas, formats, and even strategies for writing persuasively. Around the World: Who’s Been Here? by Lindsay Barrett George is written in the form of letters from a teacher to her class. Sometimes a fiction story presents facts through a unique voice, as in Pamela Duncan Edward’s Barefoot: Escape on the Underground Railroad, told in the voices of the woodland
and marsh animals.

Sometimes we select mentor texts to provide a clearer picture of our multicultural society and the distinctive voices that can be heard in these books. Consider Voices of the Alamo by Sherry Garland, Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges, Teammates by Peter Golenbock, Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki, Virgie Goes to School with Us Boys by Elizabeth Howard, and Hiroshima No Pika by Toshi Maruki. It is important to find mentor texts that help us recognize and imitate qualities of good writing while at the same time fairly repre-senting the diversity that exists in our country. These texts can build bridges to new understandings about ourselves and others. They provide us with models of high-quality literature to help us learn how to write about diversity issues with dignity, style, and grace.

Duke and Bennett-Armistead (2003) advise teachers to expose their students to a variety of texts, because research suggests a reciprocal relationship between the kinds of texts children become familiar with and the kinds of texts they choose to write and are able to write well. They write, “Children who are not exposed to much informational text are not likely to develop informational writing skills as quickly as children who are” (129). Shelley Harwayne (2008) states that kids need mentor texts that are distinctive. At Celebrate Literacy 2008, a conference sponsored by the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project in West Chester, Harwayne suggested that we should help our students borrow techniques that are distinctive—that our young writers need mentor texts that are distinctive. She talked about the importance of reading-writing connections and reminded us that Peterson (2007) described reading and writing as good neighbors with a big hole in the hedge that separated their properties to allow them to pass freely back and forth. Kristo and Bamford (2004) would concur; they elaborate on this same idea: “Teachers work hard from the beginning of the school year to “marinate” their students in good nonfiction. They read aloud highquality nonfiction so that students develop an ear for how good expository writing sounds. Their lessons about reading and writing nonfiction scaffold their learners so they feel accomplished with what they can do all along the way.” (166)

We agree completely! Writers begin to understand that from the moment they begin to think about writing a text (finding a specific topic and engaging in prewriting) until long after the writing of the first draft (talking about it with others, revising it, and reflecting on how the writing has changed and grown in sophistication), they are beginning a journey. This journey will take them to and connect them with subsequent mentor texts and new writings—and, consequently, will lead them to new journeys. We know that students become better writers of nonfiction because they try out new things and take responsible risks (try out or imitate the writing techniques in mentor texts that they are capable of doing with a little practice and guidance). It is only through risk taking and experimentation that our writers will continue to grow and become better writers tomorrow than they are today.

Add comment July 27th, 2010

Quick Tip Tuesday: How to design a rubric

“Rubrics are a popular approach for focusing learning and for assessing and reporting student achievement,” writes Rick Wormeli is his recent book Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Assessing and Grading in the Differentiated Classroom. “Designing rubrics may be more complex than teachers realize,” Rick continues, “however, but we get better at it with each one we do.” And to help with that practice, he outlines seven steps to designing an effective, useful rubric.

How to Design a Rubric
1. Identify the essential and enduring content and skills you will expect students to demonstrate. Be specific.

2. Identify what qualifies as acceptable evidence that students have mastered content and skills. This will usually be your summative assessments and from these, you can create your pre-assessments.

3. Write a descriptor for the highest performance possible. This usually begins with the standard you’re trying to address. Be very specific, and be willing to adjust this descriptor as you generate the other levels of performance and as you teach the same unit over multiple years. Remember, there is no such thing as the perfect rubric. We will more than likely adjust rubrics every year they’re used.

4. At this point, you’ll have to make a decision: holistic or analytic? If you want to assess content and skills within the larger topic being addressed, go with analytic rubrics. They break tasks and concepts down for students so that they are assessed in each area. Analytical rubrics also require you to consider the relative weights (influences) of different elements. For example, in an essay, if “Quality of the Ideas” is more important than “Correct Spelling,” then it gets more influence in the final score. If you want to keep everything as a whole, go with holistic rubrics. Holistic rubrics take less time to use while grading, but they don’t provide as much specific feedback to students. In some cases, though, the difference in feedback is minor, and the work inherent with an analytical rubric doesn’t warrant the extra time it takes to design and use, especially at the secondary level where teachers can serve more than 200 students.
Another way of looking at the difference is this: The more analytic and detailed the rubric, the more subjective the scores can be.

The more gradations and shades of gray in a rubric, the more the score is up to the discretion of the teacher and is likely to differ from teacher to teacher, and even from day to day. The more holistic the rubric, the fewer the gradations and shades of gray and thereby, the more objective and reliable the scores can be. Of course, the more detailed the rubric, the more specific feedback we get for both teacher and student. It’s very rare to generate a rubric that is highly detailed and analytical while remaining objective and reliable teacher to teacher and over time.

Here are two examples: In a holistic rubric, we might ask students to write an expository paragraph, and the descriptor for the highest score lists all the required elements and attributes. With the same task in an analytical rubric, however, we create separate rubrics (levels of accomplishment with descriptors) within the larger one for each subset of skills, all outlined in one chart. In this case, the rubric might address: Content, Punctuation and Usage, Supportive Details, Organization, Accuracy, and Use of Relevant Information.

In a chemistry class’s holistic rubric, we might ask students to create a drawing and explanation of atoms, and the descriptor for the highest score lists all the features we want them to identify accurately. With the same task using an analytical rubric, however, we create separate rubrics for each subset of features—Anatomical Features: protons, neutrons, electrons and their ceaseless motion, ions, valence; Periodic Chart Identifiers: atomic number, mass number, period; Relationships and Bonds with Other Atoms: isotopes, molecules, shielding, metal/non-metal/metalloid families, bonds (covalent, ionic, and metallic).

Remember how powerful this becomes when students help design the rubric themselves. After working with a few rubrics that you design, make sure to give students the opportunity to design one. Determining what’s important in the lesson moves that knowledge to the front of students’ minds, where they can access it while they’re working. This happens when they have a chance to create the criteria with which their performances will be assessed.

5. Determine your label for each level of the rubric. Consider using three, four, or six levels instead of five for two reasons: 1) They are flexible and easily allow for gradations within each one, and 2) a five-level tiering quickly equates in most students’ and parents’ minds to letter grades (A, B, C, D, F) and such assumptions come with associative interpretations—the third level down is average or poor, depending on the community, for instance. The following list shows collections of successful rubric descriptor labels. Though most are written in groups of five, which I advise teachers not to use, they are provided in such groupings because that is what educators most commonly find on their district assessments. Look at the list’s entries as a sample reservoir of word choices.

• Proficient, capable, adequate, limited, poor
• Sophisticated, mature, good, adequate, naïve
• Exceptional, strong, capable, developing, beginning, emergent
• Exceeds standard, meets standard, making progress, getting started, no attempt
• Exemplary, competent, satisfactory, inadequate, unable to begin effectively, no attempt

Descriptor terms need to be parallel; it’s important to keep the part of speech consistent. Use all adjectives or all adverbs, for example, not a mixture of parts of speech. Notice how this sequence on a rubric could be awkward for assessment and confusing to students:

• Top, adequately, average, poorly, zero

6. Write your descriptors for each level, keeping in mind what you’ll accept as evidence of mastery. Once again, be specific, but understand that there is no perfect rubric. Alternative: Focus on the highest performance descriptor, writing it out in detail, and then indicate relative degrees of accomplishment for each of the other levels. For example, scoring 3.5 on a 5.0 rubric would indicate adequate understanding but with significant errors in some places. The places of confusion would be circled for the student in the main descriptor for the 5.0 level.

In my own teaching experience, this alternative has great merit. When students are given full descriptions for each level of a rubric, many of them steer themselves toward the second or third level’s requirements. They reason that there’s no need to be “exemplary”— the top level—when they’d be happy with the label “good” or “satisfactory.” These students either don’t believe themselves capable of achieving the top score’s criteria, or they see the requirements as too much work when compared with the lower level’s requirements. To lessen the workload, they are willing to settle for the lower-level score.

Don’t let them do this; don’t let them lose sight of full mastery. When all that is provided to students is the detailed description of full mastery, they focus on those requirements—it’s the only vision they have. All of their efforts rally around those criteria and, as a result, they achieve more of it.

7. “Test drive” the rubric with real student products. See whether it accounts for the variable responses students make, ensuring those who demonstrate mastery get high scores and those who don’t demonstrate mastery earn lower scores. Ask yourself: “Does this rubric provide enough feedback to students to help them grow? Does it assess what I want it to assess? Does it help me make instructional decisions regarding students’ learning?” If it doesn’t do one or more of these things, the rubric may need to be reworked.

Add comment July 20th, 2010

Quick Tip Tuesday: Head over to Ning

Our tip on this Quick Tip Tuesday is pretty simple: head over to our Ning group and join an already lively discussion of Ralph Fletcher’s new book, Pyrotechnics on the Page.

The discussion started yesterday with this question from moderator Amanda Villagomez: “What are ways that you write with your ear or consciously use observations to benefit your writing? How do you encourage students to do so?”

Ralph already stopped by the discussion group to read and respond to comments. Several teachers have written about how they use their writer’s notebooks to record the fun, playful things they hear every day in their classrooms or at home.

Tell us about your writer’s notebook – what do you record and then share with your students? Leave your comments on the Ning group!

Add comment July 13th, 2010

Quick Tip Tuesday: Modeling strategies that promote better first-draft writing

Writing is hard work. And the best way for teachers to show students just how hard – and how rewarding – it is to write, is to be writers themselves. In this week’s Quick Tip, Kelly Gallagher shares some of his own modeling strategies from his book Teaching Adolescent Writers.

For many of my students, getting started is the hardest part of composing. Why? Because writing is hard, and beginning a writing task creates a formidable cognitive hurdle for inexperienced or reluctant writers. Unfortunately, many students continue year in and year out with the mistaken notion that writing is easy for some and difficult for others (generally speaking, they think writing is easy for the teacher and difficult for the students). My guess is that they have reached this erroneous conclusion primarily due to one of two reasons:
1. They have teachers who do not actively write. As a result, these teachers may have forgotten how hard they themselves struggled as developing writers. When teachers do not write, students lose the opportunity to see adults successfully struggle through the writing process.
or
2. They have teachers who do actively write but who have become expert at hiding the work it takes from their students. Often when teachers share their own writing, it is only after extensive revising and polishing that has been done out of the sight of the students.

Students’ anxiety is reduced when they come to understand that everyone—students, teachers, professional writers—has to work hard when they sit down to write. Even Stephen King, one of the most prolific writers working today, has to fight self-doubt when he sits down to write, as he recounts in On Writing: “With the door shut, downloading what’s in my head directly to the page, I write as fast as I can and still remain comfortable. Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt. If I write rapidly, putting down my story exactly as it comes into my mind, only looking back to check the names of my characters and the relevant parts of their back stories,I find that I can keep up with my original enthusiasm and at the same time outrun the self-doubt that’s always waiting to settle in.” (2000, p. 209) Rather than hide the fact that writing is a constant struggle against the “self-doubt” King refers to, teachers serve their students better when they reveal their own writing doubts. What better way to model how to handle these doubts and the various challenges of writing than to compose in front of the students? Though students already know that writing is hard, they do not realize that more experienced writers often struggle as much as they do. Our students stand a greater chance of internalizing and embracing the complexity of writing when they see their teachers struggle to internalize and embrace the complexity of writing.

Beyond the notion that writing is hard, a second reason surfaces to explain why my students have a difficult time diving into a first draft: they are often afraid their writing will be lousy. Writing is personal and risky, and many of my students are paralyzed by the notion that the writing they produce will be sub-par (especially when it comes to sharing their writing with their teacher and peers). They often feel they have nothing interesting to say, or if they do have an idea, they are unsure how to get it down on paper. My response to students faced with writing apprehension is simple and straightforward: Join the crowd.

Students do not understand that most first-draft writing, for everyone, is lousy. But a good writer recognizes that a lot of lousy first-draft writing must be done before better writing can occur. To help get students over the fear of failure, I begin our writing year by sharing the following poem:
Don’t Be Afraid to Fail
Author unknown
You’ve failed many times,
although you may not
remember.
You fell down
the first time
you tried to walk.
You almost drowned
the first time
you tried to
swim, didn’t you?
Did you hit the
ball the first time
you swung a bat?
Heavy hitters,
the ones who hit the most home runs,
also strike
out a lot.
English novelist
John Creasey got
752 rejection slips
before he published
564 books.
Babe Ruth struck out
1,330 times,
but he also hit 714 home runs.
Don’t worry about failure.
Worry about the
chances you miss
when you don’t
even try.

After sharing the poem I remind my students that Peter Elbow (1998) once said a person’s best writing is often mixed up with his worst. I tell them it is a requirement in my class to produce a lot of bad writing. From bad writing, I tell them, the seeds of good writing will eventually grow. Bad writing is necessary before good writing emerges. To better encourage them to take risks in first-draft writing and to understand that first- and second-draft writing are
not the same thing, I share with them the chart depicted in Figure 3.1.

This chart, developed by my friend and mentor Mary K. Healy, who was an early leader in the Bay Area Writing Project, reinforces the idea that before writers can get it right they first have to get it down. Ralph Fletcher, in What a Writer Needs (1993), calls getting the first draft down “the sneeze.” He encourages students to blast out their thoughts without fear of how the writing will turn out. Once students recognize that first-draft writing is tentative and exploratory in nature, their trepidations begin to dissipate. This is the first step in breaking down their reticence.

Beyond getting students to embrace the difficulty of writing and helping them accept the notion that it’s okay for first-draft writing to be lousy, here are five additional ideas to consider. When implemented, these ideas help lower student anxiety about first-draft writing.

Add comment July 6th, 2010

Quick Tip Tuesday: Helping ELLs work independently

In “The Words Came Down!” English Language Learners Read, Write, and Talk Across the Curriculum, Emelie Parker and Tess Pardini detail workshop formats for reading, writing, and content-area studies. In this Quick Tip, they talk about ways to help ELLs read independently during reading workshop. This is especially a challenge for teachers when some of their students speak little or no English. But strategies like Buddy Reading ensure that all students can work independently.

Independent Reading Time

A favorite lesson for some primary teachers at Bailey’s to introduce children to the expectations of independent reading is a reading response to a Big Book called Bubble Gum by Gail Jorgensen. The children in the book learn to blow a bubble bigger and bigger and bigger. The last page has a great illustration of a popped bubble all over the children. The class enjoys acting out an innovation on the text of Bubble Gum. Without speaking, they pretend to unwrap gum, stick it in their mouth, and blow and blow. As they blow, they spread their arms out wider and wider. They carefully walk with their arms spread out to a place in the room where no one can pop their bubble.

If a child steps into or sits too close to someone’s “bubble space” then the balloon pops. Loud words can also pop a bubble. After the children can do this without fuss, the teacher explains that they will now take books inside their bubble to read alone. Later, after children learn to read independently in a bubble space, we show them how to let a friend come in and sit shoulder to shoulder in their bubble for buddy reading.

Buddy Reading
At the beginning of the year, teachers might find that there is a natural flow into this time of joyful book sharing and choose to establish the routines of buddy reading before those of independent reading. Buddy reading is an important option for reading work when students are not able to sustain independent reading for more than a short time. Buddy reading is important for many reasons.

• It is fun!
• Book discussions between students provide another opportunity for language development.
• It allows students alternative ways to engage with a variety of levels of text in a peer-coaching situation. For instance, ELLs can look at pictures and join in conversations about content even if they cannot read it
  themselves. (See Figure 5.2.)
• ELLs can talk in their home language to reach a deeper understanding of the book from the pictures.
• ELLs can practice reading books in pairs.
• Advanced readers can support each other in challenging text or content.

In order to establish a calm working atmosphere for buddy reading time, Tess clearly models her expectations in a “fishbowl.” She demonstrates the procedure with one child as the others watch from the circle. She asks the students to comment on what they notice. They watch as Tess and her buddy discuss their choice of books at the bookshelf and then sit side by side with the books they have chosen, deciding which one to look at first. As Tess and her buddy talk quietly about the pictures or as one of them reads to the other, the students listen and hear them decide that they are ready to change books and then discuss what their next choices should be. Because the students have noticed all this, Tess knows that they are ready to practice this procedure themselves.

Then Tess joins the circle and asks two other students to model the procedure, again inviting brief comments from the class. She wants to move on quickly so that the whole class can practice the procedure. Tess names the ELLs, one by one, and tells them to pick a partner. She wants this first experience to be with a child with whom they feel comfortable interacting. Then Tess moves around the room, gently refocusing students on the expectations if necessary. After about ten minutes, the class meets back in the circle to reflect on how the experience went and discuss any modifications that might be necessary.

When it is time to practice this routine again the next day, the class helps to create a list of expectations first. For example:
1. Choose two books.
2. Sit side by side.
3. Sit at the same level.
4. Listen to the speaker.
It is simple to add pictures to this list so that the expectations are just as clear to the second language learners. The list is a reminder that can be revisited at any time.

The fishbowl technique can provide invaluable guided practice in many situations. It clarifies expectations for all students, but it is also a helpful way of making sure our ELLs see and experience the expectations with the group. There is then less chance of them misunderstanding directions, doing something the wrong way, or embarrassing themselves in front of their peers.

Our buddy reading expectations usually begin with pairs of children going to the library corner and choosing two books each. We talk about suitable spots for reading and places to avoid (like behind the door), and then the children are free to take their books anywhere in the room within the teacher’s sight to read, to look at illustrations, and to talk. Therefore, you will find children under the tables, squeezed into nooks and crannies, or sitting on our feet under the reading table as we work with other students (a great spot for ELLs to be absorbing reading behaviors!).

There are many ways to structure this time that depend on teaching style, schedules, class size, and makeup. But for us, the nonnegotiables are the elements of book choice and the opportunity for talk. Thus, we might modify our framework to involve more or less structure, depending on the needs of each year’s class. We might ask them to read the books in their book boxes to each other, or let them choose to do this if they wish. If necessary, we will pair up our ELLs with students who will be good language or behavior role models.

Sometimes we want to designate the partners for a particular learning or social purpose, but more often than not, we want the ELLs to have an opportunity to enjoy books with a friend, perhaps being able to talk in their home language about the text. Having an opportunity to discuss concepts or content in their home language is going to give the ELLs a chance to expand their understandings. These understandings provide the knowledge around which they can begin to build their English vocabulary and control of sentence structure.

Add comment June 22nd, 2010