Moving Students to Think with Writing

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

Day Three: 30Poems30Days

Poet’s note: Today’s poem is inspired by construction going on at our house.

If you were to construct me,
would material would you use
that would allow me to bend and shift
with the turbulence?
Would you sign off on me
as the inspector
looking for cracks in the facade
or would you just turn the other way
and hope for the best?

Listen to the podcast

Peace (in the walls),
Kevin

Day Two: 30poems30days

Poet’s note: This is the second day of my 30Poems in 30Days challenge. I wrote this poem, trying to think of the infrastructure of the digital world and using that idea as a sort of metaphor for a relationship.

If you were One and I was Zero,
we could inhabit the architecture
that holds up everything digital …

If you were One,
you could stand tall
enough to let the information
balance in your head;

If I was Zero,
I would be more than nothing;
I would stand in defiance
so that, in the emptiness,
there would be meaning;

If you were One and I was Zero,
inside this on-again/off-again mirror,
we’d prop up everything digital …

Listen to the podcast of the poem.

Peace (in ones and zeroes),

Kevin

Holding off the Invasion Force

This is the final installment for my Home Alone story arc, and I am taking a breather from Boolean Squared for a few weeks as I concentrate on my 30Poems30Days adventure.

Peace (on TV),
Kevin

Day One: 30Poems30Days

30poems iconIt is November 1 and I am off and running with my first poem for the 30Poems in 30Days charity challenge. The idea is to gather sponsors who will pay a token amount of money per poem that you write, and all the proceeds will go to support a local organization that helps immigrant families with a wide range of services.

The poem project was launched by our city’s poet laureate, Leslea Newman, and I have 15 sponsors already. You can still add your name to the mix by using my Google Form. The benefit? You get your name on my Google Poetry Map.

And, so, without further adieu, here is my first poem of the month:

I’m plunging into poetry:
here, you hold my gear
while I extend my fingers
into the deep recess of my mind
where I’ll try to ferret out some treasure
amidst the chaos
and turn it into words.

Listen to the podcast of the poem, too.

See you tomorrow!

Peace (in the poems),
Kevin

My Map of Sponsors for the 30Poems30Days project

Greetings

Tomorrow, on November 1, I am taking part in a regional fund-raising activity in which I pledge to try to compose 30 poems in 30 days. I have 13 people from my various online networks who have graciously agreed to “sponsor” me, which means they are going to donate a token amount of money for each poem that I compose and publish in November. I am very grateful and if all goes according to the plan, I should be able to raise close to $300 for an organization in our area that provides support, education and services for immigrant families.

Now I just need to write some poems …

I created this Google Map to show where all of my sponsors are located because I find it so interesting.

View 30Poems30Days in a larger map

By the way, I still have plenty of room left on my list for more sponsors and I would love to have you. If you are interested, please head to this Google Form I created to collect information from folks. And if you do so, I will add you to the Map, of course! And I will be most appreciative of the support that you show me as a writer and for the families who are in need of services in Western Massachusetts.

30Poems30Days starts tomorrow …

Peace (in the poetry),
Kevin

Monsters on the Wall

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

Resolving my rants about our Literacy Conference

This is a follow-up to my post the other day about the regional Literacy Conference we are hosting at our school in November that had not one iota of a technology or media or New Literacies component to it. I finally bumped into my principal in the hallway, expressed my feelings about our school — which is innovative in its use of technology — hosting a conference without a single nod to the ways kids use literacy in their lives outside of our classrooms. I told him it felt like an “old school Literacy Conference.”

He was very receptive, and did what I knew he would do. He asked me to submit an idea for a break-out session. I told him that I wanted to be a participant, and not a presenter, but that felt false even to me. If I truly believe in this, then I need to be active, not passive.

It just so happened that this conversation took place on the day when I was filling out a bunch of paperwork for a conference that I have been invited to present at in February in Ohio. As I was describing my workshops for the Dublin Literacy Conference (Digital Picture Books, Using Webcomics in the Classroom and Stopmotion Movie Magic for families), I realized that if I am going to help folks in Ohio think about New Literacies, I owe it to my school and fellow teachers to do the same right here at home.

So, I am going to propose a session on using Webcomics as a Writing Tool Across the Curriculum. My hope is to set up a temporary ToonDooSpace (note to self: email ToonDoo folks) so that teachers can use a ToonDoo closed network site to experience the possibilities themselves.

I’ll let ya know if the school district approves my workshop offer.

Peace (in the discussions),
Kevin

PS — Here a webcomic book sample from one of my students. I love how she envisioned the story across multiple frames. This was not an assignment, but merely something she did on her own time outside of school. In just three weeks, some students have made more than 50 comics on their own time and some have created multiple ebooks. Pretty neat to watch our ToonDoo site unfolding: