My students have just finished up an expository writing project in which they invent an Imaginary Land around a theme and then design a travel brochure to advertise the place. We talk about using writing for information, about design and about using your imagination. It’s a lot of fun and they do get carried away with it sometimes.
Here is an Animoto tour of some of the brochures:
Peace (in the lands of the mind),
Kevin
This is an example of an ongoing story project called The Exquisite Corpse Adventure, in which a new author (John Scieszka started the whole thing and it has been picked by such writers as Susan Cooper, Kate DiCamillo, and Gregory Maguire) is writing a new chapter to a strange story every two weeks for an entire year.
We’ve been using the evolving story for writing inspiration — my students continue each chapter forward as informal writing prompts — and this week, following a chapter that features a baby on roller skates, Albert Einstein and a talking pig (among other things), we used a Voicethread to podcast some of the stories that follow the end of Episode Five. This was a voluntary endeavor, so they got to choose whether or not to share what they had written.
Peace (in the thread),
Kevin
As one of my classes finished up The Lightning Thief, their task was to invent a new God or Goddess for our sixth grade and create an election poster. Next week, we are going to have all of the sixth graders vote on the God or Goddess of our grade. There are some neat ones in the mix.
Here is a little video that I made for our class website:
Peace (in the powerful),
Kevin
Yesterday, as part of our school district’s Pioneer Valley Literacy Conference, I did a workshop session on using webcomics/comics/graphic novels across the curriculum areas. I focused on my students’ use of ToonDooSpaces –a closed networking site centered around webcomics — and invited two of my students to present the first part of the workshop with me. (You are welcome to use the resource website that I set up: http://comicworkshop.yolasite.com/)
They did a fantastic job. They were both nervous (having never been asked to present to teachers before) but they talked about what they liked about the site, how they are using it to write on their own time, and then gave the teachers a virtual tour of the site. They even then created a comic right there on the spot, answering questions and talking through their thinking.
Here is what they created:
And then, after the students left, I brought them into a temporary ToonDooSpaces site, where we spent the next 90 minutes or so exploring the elements of creating, commenting, remixing comics, creating ebooks, and more.
Here are a few of the teacher-created comics from the session:
Peace (in the webcomic world),
Kevin
Today, I am a presenter at our school’s Literacy Conference and the only nod to technology. I am doing a session around using webcomics across the curricular areas. I’ll be bringing folks into a ToonDooSpaces site to play around and see the possibilities themselves. My task for them is to create a comic that explains an idea in math, or science, or social studies.
I am also excited because two of my students have agreed to co-present the first part of the workshop with me. They are going to give a little tour of our webcomic site and talk about how they use it and what they like about it. I like bringing the student voice in the mix.
Here is my presentation:
Peace (in the frame),
Kevin
I am out of the classroom all next week — first to Providence for Literacy for All and then to Philly for NWP and NCTE. Yesterday, I had to stay home with my son, who was sick, and then they have the entire Thanksgiving week off (we have professional development), which means I won’t see my students for more than two weeks!
Ack! That’s a long time.
So, I went on our comic site and made this for them. A few have already started to leave me comments. I like how comics can connect us.
Peace (in the frame),
Kevin
Yesterday, I joined about 20 of my colleagues in a bus trip to a Professional Development Conference in New Hampshire put on by Heinemann and featuring Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, who have developed many resources for teaching and addressing literacy in the classroom.
First off, let me say that I hate conference halls where a hundred or two of us sit at long tables and listen to a single speaker. There is such little engagement between presenter and audience (I speak; You listen. It’s like the old school way of teaching, right?) and my mind drifted quite a bit at times. I noticed a lot of people in the room with their iPhones out, playing games and checking messages. (I didn’t bring my iTouch so I was safe from temptation). One of the things I love about the National Writing Project is that most sessions are hands-on engagement and I forget that not all professional development is the same way. (But: why not? I guess you can get more money from a huge hall of folks than a small room of folks.)
That said, both Fountas and Pinnell were excellent speakers and they tried their best to keep us interested as we moved through elements of their Continuum of Literacy program that centers on literacy development from kindergarten through eighth grade. They have a real research-based approach to literacy, although the focus is on reading more than writing (with a slight nod to New Literacies tossed into the mix but only slight).
Their concept of Guided Reading for students and of finding various levels of literacy so that you can best help the individual student is fascinating and something our school has moved to this year (well, we are moving towards that direction) and I am trying to absorb as much as I can. I still worry about how I am going to assess 75 students three times a year, and then develop plans for each of those readers. That’s a bit stressful.
Another thing I admire of Fountas and Pinnell: their assessment of student comprehension is based on three tiers:
This really makes a lot of sense to me when thinking of ways to teach and assess student comprehension skill
“Teach the behavior, not the text.” — Fountas.
I love this quote — based on their own lengthy descriptions of reading behaviors that one will see at different reading levels — because it will require me to make a shift from class novels to something smaller and more individualized and I am just trying to get my mind around that shift. She notes that class novels are not bad, as long as they are not the only literacy experience the students are having (they’re not, but still … class novels are a big part of my reading program).
She said class novels allow all students to “experience the text” but not necessarily “read the text” and that makes sense to me. So, I will be rethinking things in the months to come, that’s for sure.
One more thing she said, in regards to paying attention to fluency. Reading a word is not the same as understanding the thoughts.:
“It’s not about reading the words. It’s about teaching them (students) how to read the language.”
They played a number of video clips of teachers working with students and that was helpful, particularly when I saw a clip of students using the beautiful novel, Seedfolks (which I used once with a pen pal project), and got that aha moment again (meaning: check my Scholastic book points and see if I can get a set for my class).
So, there you go: my own view of the conference.
Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin
Our school has been knee-deep in data from our state’s standardized testing results (a mixed bag) since the start of the year as we work to orientate our Professional Learning Communities towards using weaknesses we are noticing to drive changes in our curriculum and approach.
For me, as the sixth grade writing teacher, two things jump out. First, our students do a poor job on being able to read and use non-fiction text. We noticed this trend a few years ago and it continues. We are working to address that by teaching more reading skills across the curriculum (how to read a map in Social Studies, how to analyze a data sheet in math, how to pull out information from a chart in Science, etc.) and I am doing more current events with the students, using Time for Kids magazine for non-fiction reading as well as supplementary text. (We intend to read Three Cups of Tea for young readers later this year but more on that some other time).
Another major area of weakness is in reading a text and then answering an open response question that uses evidence and examples from the text to support the answer. Gosh. This is going to take a lot of work, I can tell, and it’s clear that they have not been asked to do this enough in prior grades. They can do literal thinking but moving them into critical thinking is a challenge.
So, a big shift for me this year is really using rubrics (that tie in to our new standards-based reporting) and paragraph writing prompts that will give them plenty of exposure to analyzing a text and give me more chances to walk them through exemplars of student writing.
On that note, I created this list of generalized writing prompts that will be more specific to the book or text that they are reading. Much of this is tied directly to standards in our Sixth Grade ELA curriculum. But I would appreciate an outsider’s opinion.
Am I missing any major points here when it comes to critical thinking in reading text? If you notice anything, please let me know.
Sixth Grade: Common Open Response Writing Questions for Literature Class
Main Questions
Character development is important and good books will often have characters “change” over the course of the story. Choose a character and explain how that character is different by the end of the novel. Be sure to use at least two pieces of evidence from the book to back up your ideas on what the character was like when we first met them and what they are like by the end of the story. Also, explain why it was important for the character to change through the course of the book.Setting plays a large role in any story. Where a story takes place — the time, the environment, the location, etc. — will often shape how the story is being told and what happens. Identify the main setting of the novel and explain its importance to the story. Why did the writer choose this setting for this book? Be sure to include evidence from the novel to support your answer.
The theme of a book is the overall message of the story. It is often explained to the reader through a lesson that is learned by the main character. Identify the theme of the novel and explain how the characters in the book come to learn this lesson. Make sure you use evidence from the novel to support your answer. Also, in your answer, be sure to reflect on why the writer choose this particular theme to develop a story around. Why is this theme important to a reader?
Plot development is how the story unfolds over the course of the novel (remember: Exposition/Rising Action/Climax/Falling Action/Resolution). The main element is the climax of the story, which is the “main event” of a book when everything comes together for a dramatic moment or decision by the main character. Identify the climax of the novel and explain why you chose it as the climax. Include evidence from the book to support the idea that this is the main event of the story.
Others
Symbolism is the use of a concrete image to represent something abstract (not seen). One example might be the American flag, which is a physical object that represents the United States of America. Identify the use of symbolism in the novel and explain how the writer used that symbol to tell the story. Make sure you provide evidence from the novel to support your answer. And, explain why you think the writer chose this particular symbol for this story.
Foreshadowing is when the author leaves clues for the reader early in the story. It is often only later in the story that these clues make sense to the character and the reader. Identify at least two elements of foreshadowing in the book and explain how these clues became important as the story progressed. Be sure to back up your ideas with evidence from the book. Also, explain in your answer why you think the author used foreshadowing in this novel.
It often helps a reader to connect with the experiences of a character. Choose a character from the novel and write about experiences that you have had in your life that seem similar to the experiences of the character in the book. The experiences may not be exact, but you should be able to understand the emotions, reactions or actions of the character based on your own life experiences. Be sure to support your answer with evidence from the novel and from your own life.
Peace (in the teaching),
Kevin
As part of our unit around descriptive writing, we do something called the Monster Exchange. There are variations of this project all around (including some cool online sites) but we keep it non-techie because I have four classes with about 80 students. We have plenty of ways to exchange our creatures and writing.
Basically, students create a monster on paper and then write a one paragraph story with descriptive language. On the day of the Monster Exchange, I hang all of the monsters — and some decoys — around my room, and students get a story from another student from another class. Their job is to use the descriptive writing to find the monster on the wall. (I assign numbers to each piece of writing and a master list of monster names and numbers).
Then, they go back and write their own reflections on the experience (Questions: what words did the writer use that made it easy to find the monster, what made it difficult and what advice would they give to this writer …)
Here is a handout that I give to my students.
It turned out that we had our exchange yesterday, just before Halloween, and that was a nice way to end the week. After students found their first Monster and reflected on it, they rushed up to me to get another story, and another, and another. They were really jazzed up about it. I’ve done this project for a number of years, and it is a great way to talk about descriptive writing in a fun way, and it gets them up and moving around.
Plus, I re-use all of their monsters later on for a project around The Lightning Thief novel, where they create their own Heroic Journey using Google Maps. The creatures they encounter are … the Monsters from the Monster Exchange (now, I have a bank of two years’ worth of monster, which is even better.)
Check out this Animoto video of this year’s crop of strange creatures:
Peace (in the howl),
Kevin
My school is the host site for an upcoming regional Literacy Conference, which makes sense as we are at the start of the two-year Literacy Initiative in our school district.
The conference events seem fine and somewhat interesting, with one huge exception (for me): there does not seem to be a single thread of New Literacies anywhere on the agenda. No technology anywhere.
When we had our initial brainstorming session for the start of the Literacy Initiative last school year, I tried to be the voice that advocated for Media and Technology literacies being represented in our work around literacy because students are using these tools and they need to be part of what we are teaching.
Sigh.
My friend and colleague, Gail P., pointed out to me that teachers are being asked to do so much more and are feeling the stress (including our new shift to a standardized report card system), and that adding more to their plate is not fair to them, and I know what she means.
Then, I wondered about something. Our single Mac Cart of laptops is always out and about in our school. It’s hard to sign up because it is in such high use. That’s great.
But what are teachers using it for?
If they are using it for student composition, then don’t they need some guidance on how they can integrate that technology into the classroom? Or, my fear is: they are using the Macs for students playing games or acting as gatherers of information (instead of composing it themselves). Gail, I know, does a lot with her kindergarten students and has them exploring in different ways on the Macs. Our art teacher and media specialist also use the laptops in constructive ways.
But I wonder how many other of my colleagues are doing the same? How many have been given the tools for moving technology into their Language Arts curriculum? How many have been given time to explore and play? Too few.
Time to get off my high horse, I guess. Sorry for the rant. Maybe what I need to do is go into my principal’s office and say, here is a session that we should offer during the Conference (such as — using Photostory or Voicethread to create a digital story representation of a writing assignment) and I will offer to run the session. I can’t just complain, right? The problem is that when I present, then I can’t attend.
Peace (on the day after the rains),
Kevin
