Content Area Writing: Chapter 10

(Page 253) “Some tests encourage teachers to race through content never slowing down to help students think deeply about the material, thus encouraging endless data bytes promptly forgotten once the test is over.”

Was anyone else given 20 vocabulary words every week in high school with the multiple choice test on Fridays to make sure you “learned” them? In the hundreds of words I was supposed to learn, I remember one: deluge. Or how many of us loved having the multiple choice and/or matching tests in classes so we could have a shot at getting the right answer so the teacher would at least think we knew something? The fact of the matter is we didn’t get to show any of our learning with those tests. (Hence the problem with Accelerated Reader tests…I would probably fail the tests on some of my favorite books, though I could write intelligently about them if given the opportunity.) Of course, having students write more on tests means they take longer to grade. And we have to grade them ourselves—there isn’t one right answer to where we could get an aide to grade them for us. But if they trade off is that we discover that student actually know something (or don’t know!), don’t you think it’s worth it? Of course, there is the whole issue that students have to take standardized multiple choice tests—EOC, HSAP, SAT, etc.—so they need have some practice with those as well. Maybe a combination approach is best? But if we think about it, in the “real world,” when do we ever take a multiple choice test? The only one I can think we ever take is for a driver’s permit. In the long run, is it better for student to bubble a correct answer or write intelligently on a particular topic?

Content Area Writing: Chapters 7 and 9

So many projects, so little time. Seriously, it’s obviously not a good idea for a teacher to attempt every one of these projects in a single course. Can you imagine the backlash from students if someone tried that??? I did think there were several great ideas for culmination assignments in these two chapters—ones that do a great job of getting students to write and show their knowledge in the process. Some are more time consuming and difficult (hence they came under the chapter entitled “More Ambitious Public Writing Projects”) but I think those could possibly be modified to a smaller scale.

I asked y’all to read over the different projects and either actually try out one with your students or choose one you think could work well with a class if you’re not a point to where such an assignment would work well right now. Last year in class we talked about the multi-genre paper. I know Christy has used that one with her students. Has anyone else tried it? How did it go? The problem I had when I did it with my students was that I was out on maternity leave, so they didn’t have a ton of guidance on exactly how to do it. They seemed to enjoy the project, but several of them put it all in a Power Point, which wasn’t exactly what needed to be done. It would have been helped to have some examples for the students to see. I’m thinking about getting that Melinda Putz book mentioned since it comes with a DVD showing examples, and maybe I could get some more ideas for the project as well. So…which of these projects do you think would lend itself well to instruction in your class? If you’ve tried using it, how did it go? If it’s something you’re planning on using, what’s your plan for that?

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 7

(Page 142) “…the goal for each student is the same: everyone improves…it is unrealistic to think I am going to make every one of my 165 students a strong writer.”

First of all…165 students? Yikes!!! Can you imagine reading that many papers? It makes the Freshman Academy load sound not so bad! Gallagher has so much common sense. Making every student an exceptional writer would be an impossible task, but making every student improve is definitely attainable. This idea supports why we need to do initial assessments with our students. Writing is one of those tricky things to test, so if we don’t have a sample from the beginning, it is difficult to see what sort of gains are made throughout the year (or semester). I like the idea of taking students up a notch (from weak to average, average to strong, or strong to special). Gallagher’s method of conducting the mini-lesson for what students are struggling with—and doing it in three minutes or less—seems very doable to me. I think it definitely makes learning much more meaningful to the students because what is being taught obviously applies to them. Also, the teacher is more likely to have the students’ attention in a small group setting instead of having them getting lost in whole class instruction. I don’t know about your experience, but I’ve also found that students are more likely to ask questions with just a few others around as opposed to an entire room of students. I’m actually the same way myself. I hate asking questions in front of a large group of people unless I absolutely know it will apply to many.

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter Six

(Page 122) “When students understand the real-world purposes for writing (instead of simply writing to meet the next school assignment) they begin to internalize the relevance of writing, and more important, they develop an understanding that writing is an important skill to carry into adulthood.”

So often kids don’t realize how much they will need to write once they get out into the “real world.” I suppose, perhaps, a person could get by without doing a whole lot of writing, but they could end up with many more advantages with being able to write well. I can’t begin to tell you how many free dinners my sister has received because of complaint letters she’s written to restaurants. One time a bag of mints were 25 cents more at one Wal-Mart than another but the cashier said they didn’t price match Wal-Mart stores. My sister then took to her pen and ended up with at $25 gift card to Wal-Mart…over a quarter! Maybe a lesson in how to write a letter of complaint would seem worthwhile to students because they could possibly “get something” out of it. There are just so many instances of when being able to write well can be beneficial. My goodness, just in the last month I’ve had to write a letter of appeal to the insurance company and a letter to the state benefits office to convince them that a health power of attorney was good enough to sign some disability retirement documents for Mike. If I had no writing skills, I don’t know that things would have swung in my favor. I know we have to get through the HSAP writing with kids (and the SAT writing goes against good writing habits as well) so that kids can graduate, but what service are we doing students if we don’t do more than teach them how to write for a test?

I’ll tell ya, the more I read of Kelly Gallagher, the more I want to just to go out and have dinner with him to talk shop. I think I’ll add him to the list of people I want teaching at my dream charter school.

Winter Literacy Conference

I hate I couldn’t be there with you all, but I hope you had a good time at the Winter Literacy Conference. Generally speaking, if you can take away just one thing from a conference to use in your classroom, it was worth your while. Obviously, everyone couldn’t attend all sessions, so with this post, share something you learned in one of the sessions you attended. This post will serve as your exit slip for the conference since you didn’t have to put your name on the one you completed there.

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter Five

(Page 116) Gallagher quotes Laura Robb, “We have a nation of students who can’t write very well. We will not have a nation of students who can write well until they are allowed to write about the things they care about.”

I love this quote because so often as teachers we’re telling kids what to write instead of allowing them to have any input. When I was still in the classroom, I had my students keep a daily journal where they could write about whatever was on their minds, and I would write them back every day. I rarely had difficulty getting students to complete this assignment because they were allowed to choose the topic. (I did always have an “If” question on the board in case they needed something to jumpstart their thinking.) I know some of you do this as well and have had success with it. I was working with a student last spring who didn’t consider himself a reader or writer…he completely discounted the auto magazines he read and the journal he kept in his resource class. He equated writing with the “five paragraph essay.” He actually used those words…ugh. He thought that “real” reading and writing involved things he didn’t enjoy doing. As teachers, we’ve got to make sure that students see the value in reading and writing that they’re currently doing and are good at…not just the scholarly type of stuff. It’s not that we don’t want them to be able to read and write at a higher level, but we’ve got to build some confidence in them first so we can take them to there.

This chapter is chock-full of ideas for creating choice in writing. In retrospect, I probably should have asked y’all to try out one of Gallagher’s ideas and share how it went. Instead, write about which of Gallagher’s writing assignments you like best and how you think you could adapt it for your classroom. Or…share another idea you have for creating choice in writing, so we’ll have something else to add to our toolbox.