AVReading Newsletter December: Trauma Informed Instruction

 

I’ve really struggled this fall.  There have been so many behaviors and experiences that I simply have not seen to this magnitude in the past.  Practices and approaches that have been my tried-and-true choices, simply didn’t seem to work, and I found myself becoming easily frustrated with students and situations that would not have normally phased me.  

            I have come to realize a few things in the last month or so of the trimester.  First, I let the outliers dictate my general perception of things.  For example, the two or three extreme resistors in each of my classes left me with the general sense that everyone was doing poorly, when in fact, that was not the case.  In fact, I discovered that based on the data my students did extremely well this trimester.  So while I felt like things were going terribly, the data suggests that generally speaking, people were doing better than average. 

            Still, that was little comfort.  I found myself confronted numerous times by unfamiliar situations.  I saw an increase in young people who physically could not prevent themselves from putting down their devices.  For the first time ever, I had five students across the day who were incapable of any verbal communication for days or even weeks at a time.  And I had at least three students who simply could not stay in class.  On any given day, they just stand up and walk out.  

            My first response was to treat these as bad behaviors and to take direct action to call out or confront these choices, in the hopes that with time and discipline, students would come around.  But then, as I began communicating more with the families, counselors, and liaisons, I began to realize that these behaviors were merely the tip of a huge iceberg.  I felt a bit corrected in the sense that my first response was to believe that the students were just being naughty, and that they needed to make better decisions.  (And to be clear, for a few of them, that was truly the case.)  But for nearly everyone of my students who demonstrated one of the extreme behaviors, I discovered that they were coming through some pretty awful trauma.  

            Now I say this with some measured trepidation because it isn’t productive to assume that every bad behavior is the result of traumatic experience.  However, it is probably safe to say that we are coming through an unprecedented time when young people have been confined to spaces where things have not always been safe, where they have not had access to mental health or social services or where their families have suffered under the strain of so many intersecting crises all at once.  

            As I came through this, I struggled with separating out a few conflicting emotions.  I wanted to show compassion and understanding without becoming permissive and ineffectual.  I wanted to uphold high expectations in addition to acknowledging the realities of what this young person might be facing.  And I wanted to show grace and patience without feeling as though everyone was walking all over me. 

            So I have embarked on a two part solution. The first was to take care of myself.  I realize that the emotional and mental demands of teaching today require more than they have in the past.  Each day, I have to show up with my best self.  I have had to recommit to the basics: getting enough sleep, eating well, exercising, reflecting / praying / meditating, and setting boundaries to my work day. 

            The second part of the solution is developing my trauma informed instruction toolbox.  I had to admit that some of these behaviors are simply new to me and that I needed to learn more about approaches that can address the needs of students who have been traumatized.  There are a number of good resources, but perhaps the best entry point is ASCD’s Trauma Informed Teaching Strategies article from October 2019.  It provides both a structural framework to help you think about trauma, as well as some meaningful practices to bring back to your classroom.  Here are a few practices I have started to use. 

            Scaffolding:  Students who have experienced trauma find it really difficult to stay focused.  Tasks that we might not normally think of as overly complicated, suddenly feel quite daunting to those who are struggling.  Scaffolds are structures we put in place to help students complete tasks.  Graphic organizers, sentence starters, even listing things in a series of steps are all helpful scaffolds to getting students to complete challenging tasks even when their attention might be divided.  

            Redundancy:  Another approach is to build in certain redundancies to account for people who -- again-- are easily distracted by things going on in their heads.  Building redundancies means that for every task, it will be good to say it orally, to have it written out, and in some cases, to speak with the individual one-on-one.  (I have one person in particular who simply doesn’t process information when it is delivered to an entire group.  He needs me to stop by his desk to talk it through.)  

            Consistency:  Providing an environment where the student has some sense of routine and regularity is important.  Students who have been traumatized also need teachers who can be a steady and consistent presence.  More often than not, this translates to staying calm-- even when it feels like the student is spiralling out of control.  At the root of all this is establishing a relationship with the student where the student has a sense of trust and feels safe. 

 

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AVReading November: Motivation II

 

About a few years into my teaching career, I was given the opportunity to move into the honors and accelerated English classes.  It was an awesome experience, and I learned quite a bit about good and bad teaching through my experience with those very motivated and ambitious students.  After a number of years however, I knew it was time for a change, and I transitioned into the role of a reading specialist and began to work with students who really struggled both with reading and with school.  It was a dramatic shift.  In my honors classes, students would want to argue over a point they missed on their essays, papers, and tests.  In my reading intervention classes, students weren’t interested about how or why they lost a point here or there, they were more interested in why they had to do the assignment or activity in the first place.  I learned real quickly that before I could do anything to help them develop their academic literacies, I had to get them to invest in the class, to take risks, be vulnerable, and to have faith that the effort they were expending would be worth the payoff down the road. 

                  In honors classes, I had students who were driven by intrinsic motivation because they were naturally interested or eager to learn, and I had students who were driven by extrinsic motivation because they would work really hard for that good grade.  These were my point pinchers, the ones who typically lived in mortal fear of dropping lower than an A.  I still had intrinsically and extrinsically driven students in my intervention classes, but within the context of our classroom those drivers would look different from the ones of the honors students.  For example, while a student from my honors class might be extrinsically motivated by the points given to an activity, my intervention students might be less interested in those.  However, they would be extrinsically interested in extra credit or a piece of candy, a party etc.  Intrinsic motivations were also present, but in different forms-- the feelings associated with positive feedback, the proud acknowledgements of families / parents / guardians / important role models and many others.  One of my struggles is that I get trapped into thinking that the drivers of those intrinsic and extrinsic motivations are the same everyone, when they might not be.

                  Our understanding of motivation is evolving as educational researchers and reading researchers continue to examine how it operates and the factors that can both inhibit and promote its growth.  As indicated above, there is no grand theory of motivation and how it operates for students.  We know, for example, that intrinsic motivation promotes more long term growth and helps individuals overcome larger setbacks and obstacles.  We also know that extrinsic motivation has its place, especially for tasks and activities that the individual does not perceive as important.  However, these extrinsic motivations work better for short term goals and superficial choices but not as well for transformative change.  

                  For me, motivation has become the cornerstone of my philosophy of teaching.  At heart, I sincerely believe that if I cannot get the student to make the investment in learning, then no amount of expertise I might have on the technique of reading will be of use.  Teaching attack strategies or word patterns or diphthongs will be really difficult if the student does not see the relevance of drilling those skills. Building motivation. 

                  Begin with the why.  Chances are that you probably do this anyway. It seems like there will always be students who raise their hands and ask, “Why are we doing this?”  The answer should be concise and clear, an ultimate elevator pitch where the stakes are tied to whether a student will be joining you for the next three to five weeks or not.  In some cases, I will answer this question but the student simply doesn’t accept it-- I frequently run into this with Romeo and Juliet because it really is quite an investment for them.  For some students, they are going to reject everything at face value.  The trick is to ignore them in the short term with the hopes that they will join you on the journey for other reasons (ie. more points, a better grade, social engagement with fellow students etc). The point is to always start with your why and build from there.  

                  Teaching students to learn. An emphasis on motivation means that you will have to do more work on the front end then on the back end.  Your work on the front end will involve getting the students to make the investment in the book / paper / activity.  And it’s a little less work on the back end where teachers can sometimes get a little too obsessed with the details of the project or test.  This is not to say that our lessons should skip over those details. Instead, it means that I make those details available to students and encourage them to discover and apply them, to seek me out when they need help versus baby stepping them through every phase of the process.  It is one of the ways we hope to hand over the responsibility of learning to the student. 

                  The power of a question. An easy method of motivating students is with a well thought out question that can peak interest.  The key to a good question is one that does not have an easy answer (or even a correct answer).  One that perhaps challenges a notion or belief they might have.  Sometimes I use philosophical questions, “How do you know you are alive?”  Sometimes they are in reference to a given unit or topic, “What role has rap played in advancing social justice?” “Is it okay for some people to use words that others should not?”  “What makes for a good ending to a book or movie?” 

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AVReading October: Circling Up

 

We have done a lot of work the last two years with “healing circles”.  And I can’t recall whether our facilitators have pointed this out, but our school is actually  built around the concept of the circle.  It began as a quirky, architectural choice in the building’s original design with these massive circular windows that span the height of both floors and look out from  the building’s front facade.  In the last wave of remodelling, the circular theme has become infused throughout the building.  Our marquee at the front incorporates the circle, our expansive commons area uses the design in the carpet, massive circles hang from the ceiling, and the newly painted walls are decorated with them.  Even the exterior walls of our theatre follow the curve of a circle, defying the usual square corners of large rooms and buildings.

            It is a different feel from the traditional spaces of schools, where we have become accustomed to hard angles, straight lines, and clean, tidy box-like classrooms.  The choice was intentional.  A circle has a different power and connotation than a line or a set of rows.  Energy flows differently, and there is a stronger sense of connection and community when we enter into circles.  

            It was not until I entered my PhD program-- where class sizes were much smaller-- that I experienced the power of the circle on a regular basis within the classroom.  Many of my courses were set up so that we sat in a circle, shoulder to shoulder.  We came together, joined in the common pursuit of knowledge, sharing and debating our thoughts and beliefs around an invisible axis.  It is much harder to hide in a circle, to duck down and rest your eyes for a little, to check your phone or participate in side conversations without notice.  In that sense, circles are much more transparent.  Throughout so much of my schooling, students would prefer rows and move to the seats at the back of the room, some place where you might have a little more freedom to do what you please, to tune out and move more independently. Circles bring different energy and a different sense of community.

At the secondary level, this is not always feasible.  Packing 30-35 students in a room does not allow many options for rearranging the furniture, or forming circles.  And while it might not be practical to come together in circles everyday, I do make an effort to circle everyone up at least three or four times a trimester.  

Here are a few classroom, circular ideas.

Snap Around.  The Snap Around is a great, low risk class activity, even when you have large numbers.  I use them sometimes for class openings and sometimes for closings.  As an opener, they simply serve as a team builder or ice breaker.  I will bring them to the circle, give them a prompt and have them “snap around” the circle with their responses as quickly as they can.  It might be as light hearted as, “Name your favorite part of fall” or something a little more topical like, “What is the hardest part of reading?”  I also like to do Snap Arounds as a type of formative assessments at the end of the hour.  “Give the title of your book and state the general setting of the story” This is data!  I learn a lot.  Is the student willing to come to the circle?  Has the student been reading?  Does the student know what “setting” is?  

Name Olympics.  I got this activity from an online resource.  It is perfect for Day One.  And again, it is a low risk but high value ice breaker.  For this, students just need to know their own name!  Form a circle with you in it.  Tell them that the goal is to say their names one by one moving, clockwise around the circle, as quickly as they can. Time them.  Challenge them to do better on the second, or if you think they can do better, third time.  Then do it again moving counter clockwise.  Then challenge them to do it as fast as they can skipping every third person.  Then have a contest where you start two lines at once-- one moving counter clockwise, one moving clockwise-- and see which line comes back around to you first.  Again, it is fun.  Folks can not  help but hear the names of their peers multiple times, and hopefully there is some laughter. 

Class Presentations.  Whenever we have a project due in my reading classes, we circle up.  I have students re-arrange their desks into a big circle, and students one-by-one share their project with the class.  (For students who are not done, I have them speak about the work they have been doing and how far along in the process they are.)  Students speak from their desks, so it feels a little less intimidating than a formal speech, but it still has the feel of something important or special as we gather together.  As mentioned above, I also find that students are much better at listening to one another when they sit in this formation.  There is just something about the energy of the group that makes it easier for people to stay invested and engaged.  As a sidenote, I will frequently bring my advisory into a circle as well.  It eliminates a sense of hierarchy and brings everyone together on the same plane.

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AVReading Newsletter September: Reading Motivation

 

In their book Inspiring Reading Success (2008), Fink and Samuels state that within the field of reading and literacy, a tremendous amount of energy has been dedicated to the how of reading.  In other words, we focus on the mechanics of reading-- word strategies, fluency, expression – but we often  do this at the expense of the why.

            In fact, motivation has proven to be a tremendously important indicator of how well a student does in school (Hulme 2015) .  For one reason, motivation and self regulation seem to be closely related.  Students who are willing to make an investment in their academic activities exert more energy to monitor and correct their own learning plans.  Additionally, they are able to sustain setbacks and difficulties without becoming defeated and disengaged.  According to Alderman (2008) the positive effects of motivation have been documented in primary school students, secondary school students, students with special needs, and at the post secondary level (166).  

On a rational level, I understand all of this.  However, I also find myself frequently saying,  “If I could only get students to do the work.”  Too often however, this is an indication that students are disengaged from the learning process.   Research in motivation indicates that in general teachers are not well-versed in multiple approaches for students, they often misread or misunderstand a student’s level of engagement or motivation, they tend to choose less powerful approaches to maximizing or developing motivation, and sometimes teacher choices actually undermine motivation (Alderman 21).  

Here are some ways to improve motivation.

Limit or avoid competition.  Too often, teachers try to make a lesson more interesting or fun by introducing the element of competition.  Things have only become more driven by competition as new technologies make this increasingly easier to do (e.g. Kahoot or SmartBoard Jeopardy).  On occasion,  these activities can be fun and they might even energize a class.  However, they tend to lose their impact when they become a regular feature within the classroom, especially as students (who might typically struggle), meet with disappointment and defeat on a regular basis.  Schools are already hyper-competitive spaces.  Changing the emphasis to community building over competition is a good first step. 

            Check your assumptions.  I make this mistake all of the time.  I assume that a student is just simply lazy and is refusing to do the work because they just do not want to.  However, I have learned that what I generally interpret as lazy might be something entirely different.  While their non-verbals (and even verbal responses) seem to tell me that they do not care, a deeper examination will sometimes show me that there are probably other reasons for their disengagement.  They might be processing things a little more slowly. They might struggle with executive functioning and be confused about where to begin or how to organize themselves.  They might be overwhelmed.  They might be distracted.  Or the activity might simply be tedious.  Sometimes, I apply a solution to a motivation problem that does not exist.  In other words, I place the emphasis on getting them to care, when the real problem is elsewhere.  

            What is missing?  Sometimes when I assign a reading, or we watch a video, I ask students to focus on big picture versus little picture items.  The typical route for teachers is to assign them a packet or study guide to go along with the reading or video.  However, one way to build motivation is to ask the simple question, “What is missing?”  It is an intriguing question that can work for virtually anything that you assign, and it forces students to be invested in the activity in a different way.  Answering the question of what is missing actually involves a much more deeper reading of those texts. And typically, the discussions afterward are much richer than normal.

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AVReading Newsletter June: Closing Up Open Space Technology

 

As we come to an end of our anti-racism sessions for this year, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge a little both the process and the lessons we have learned along the way. In case you are confused, open space technology is the name for the process we employed this year for our anti-racism groupings. It basically consists of a creating a structure where a community designs its own learning groups and its own learning plan, but then periodically comes back together as a large group to share knowledge and understandings.  (The name “open space technology” is actually really misleading since it really has nothing to do with technology in its conventional sense.)  

            We will be collecting more formal data a little later, but in general we have found that people have appreciated the process.  Some have liked the flexibility of the system, allowing people to choose the topics or groups they find most meaningful and appropriate.  Some have liked the set-up but felt rushed by the schedule.  Others have stated that they are generally overwhelmed and that the sessions seem to happen at busy or inconvenient times.  And a few have not been big fans of the “share out” sessions because they weren’t always comfortable sharing with larger, more mixed groups.  

            Of course, all of these feelings are valid.  We appreciate your feedback and we look forward to more as we try to decide what our next steps should be.  No system or program for professional development will meet everyone’s needs, but with that said. . .  this one certainly avoided common weaknesses.  In part, that was because it put the onus of the learning on the shoulders of the participants.  So if you felt like your group or session was not fruitful, you had every right to leave it and either find one that was more meaningful, or to even create your own.  The share outs may have felt a little intimidating, but they served a couple of important functions. 

            For starters, they put you into contact with new people.  Getting out of our bubbles helps us to experience more diversity in thought.  It is also critical to creating a greater sense of community.  Sharing a little of your experiences and knowledge with new people enables us to forge connections that we might not normally have.  This is especially true if we establish a community where people feel comfortable opening up, where there are expectations that allow people to speak their truth, to be honest, to be respected, to be heard.  

            The second benefit of the share out is the ability to pass along the lessons that people have learned.  For a difficult conversation-- especially ones related to race-- we know that people are entering at different places in the journey.  Hearing thoughts of others, in open dialogue, offers everyone the chance to get a sense of where we are as a community in this process, to hear things we might not normally hear, to challenge us in ways that we might not otherwise be challenged.  

            Thank you for your willingness to come together for this.  It has inspired a lot conversation and a lot of thinking.  I like the idea that this was an ongoing commitment on the part of the staff and that it was not a one-and-done event, or a sit and get, rather it was something we had to do, something we had to create.  And when it comes to becoming more active as anti-racists, I think it is important.  We must do more than just read books and attend workshops.  We now have to engage others in dialogue, to bring back what we have learned to our classrooms, and to do more to address racism in our lives.  

            Our recent “Your Melanin is Gold” event with Jordan and Tierra was also important.  Hearing their perspectives, and those of other people within our building, offers us insight and understanding.  For many of us, we aren’t sure what to do with their stories.  A first impulse might be to ask them, “What do you suggest we do in this situation?” But we must also consider the impact of questions like that.  These questions can be exhausting for people of color, who sometimes feel as though they are being continually called upon to explain and defend their feelings and experiences or even to solve the conditions that created them.   Perhaps the better approach is to read more books, view more shows, listen to more podcasts, attend more events where you have the opportunities to hear and consider these perspectives, and where you can forge relationships with more people who are also dedicated to the cause of anti-racism.

            All of this is extremely hard.  But we simply cannot return to business as usual and hope for the best. Keep moving forward in your work with anti-racism and challenge yourself to stay engaged and active. 

 

 

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AVReading Newsletter May: Plan B

 

Robert Burns captured the essence of lesson planning in his line, “Best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men” often go awry.  It is perhaps a little discouraging to think that we spend all of our time planning out these carefully detailed lessons, only to have an unscheduled fire drill at the start of the period, or to lose the computer lab or library space we were hoping to use, or to simply misjudge a 45 minute activity as something we could have done in 10. 

Technology, for all its power and glory, usually is the culprit.  Some of my most grandiose plans have been built on some wonderful device or program or website, and in my moment of greatest vulnerability they have let me down.  I remember planning one fun activity with a website where students were asked to video record a short thirty second response to a poem I had posted.  The video recordings would surround the poem on the screen, and students could then view the responses of their peers by simply clicking on one of those recordings.  I had checked to make sure that the computers in that lab HAD cameras ahead of time. But what I had not anticipated was that the school had disabled the cameras on the computers for reasons of security!  Oops!  

But, I’ve also had non-technology related struggles.  One time, the power went out for two hours, and we had to sit in the hall under the emergency lights!  Or the time that I had planned to start a novel. . . but had completely forgotten to retrieve them from storage ahead of time.  And then there is of course the many times I had hoped to have a class discussion for 20-30 minutes but could not get anyone to talk and was left with an extra 15 minutes.

One helpful modification has been the use of managed independent work time.  Setting aside that 20-25 minutes for each class to read, write, and think each day means that students do not see it as abnormal.  So if something goes awry with my original activity, I can simply redirect them into work time on our  current inquiry project, choice novel, or book.   It is also good to have an article on hand to simply use as Plan C.  With three different preps, I usually have a “hot topic” article that applies to some relevant local or national issue.  And it certainly does not take much to link the reading of that article back to one of our standards for the class.  

Here are some other tips for “Plan B” options. 

Step Back and Consider the Bigger Picture. In the moment, it is easy to get caught in the details of a lesson, to become flustered because a particular web feature or element of the activity is not working out.  Take a step back and consider the bigger lesson here.  Was that website or feature the essence of the lesson?  Most likely not.  And if it was, go off script.  As Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) explains, if option A is no longer an option, then you just have to kick the shit out of option b.  And that is okay.  Some of my best, most inspired lessons plans were actually born of desperation!

Own the Mistake. Taking big chances with a class and trying something new is exciting.  Sometimes, I am transparent with my vulnerability.  I’ll tell them that I’ve never done this particular activity before and that I’m not really sure how (or if) it’s going to work.  I have found that students actually enjoy that as a challenge.  I have also found that when I have grossly misjudged an activity or lesson and it goes poorly, I simply own it.  I tell students that it really was not what I had planned and that I am sorry for the mistake.  Most of the time, students are amused by the situation.  I think it humanizes me a little in their eyes. 

Show Mercy.  Usually the worst critic in the room is myself.  My time in class is valuable.  I know that it is important, and that I need to make the most of it.  So when I lose part of a day, I can get upset.  In these moments, show yourself some mercy.  Messing up early in the day is not the worst thing.  You adjust for the next period and move ahead without looking back.  Brooding over the mistake or the mess only compounds the mistake or the mess.  And sometimes the best pedagogical choice you can make is to forgive yourself and move ahead.

 

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AVReading April: Using Online Texts

 

When I set out to do a study in 2009, I was convinced that the affordances of digital texts was going to level the playing field in our schools.  My theory was that much of our inequity in education had to do with access.  Students who could readily access the textbooks and information of schools would succeed, while those who did not would struggle.  Therefore, we just needed to make these texts more accessible to more students and all students would have the means to do well. 

            I now realize that my thinking was, at best, a little incomplete.  The beauty of completing the study was that I began to realize the complexity of the situation.  Not only did I come to the conclusion that our educational problems reached much farther than access to text, but that even the wonderful affordances of digital texts were not really all that wonderful for a striving reader.  

Making use of websites and other online readings can create some barriers for students.  An affordance of online reading is that they are much more visual and much more interesting.  In some cases, they might even be  dynamic (think of all those dancing ads we now see on newspaper sites or social media pages).  Images might bounce, move or change.  Additionally, any given page will have multiple hot links throughout it.  Even a news story, or a wikipedia entry, will have multiple hot links within the paragraphs so that readers can more easily access the definitions and supplemental material.  But affordances like these can cause serious breakdowns in comprehension for the reader who is not tracking the main idea of the text.  We could call it drift, as in the reader starts the article on one topic, but then within one or two clicks has drifted onto other pages, other topics, leaving behind the original text. 

Studies on eye movements show that readers definitely approach digital texts differently from traditional texts, which is good.  They are definitely different.  However, the struggle is that the tendency of online reading is to bounce or skip versus to read deeply.  Online readers are much more likely to zoom up and down long passages of text, looking for subtitles and skimming a little from here and there. They grow much more impatient, much sooner, since they are accustomed to moving much more quickly in their online texts than they would otherwise. 

With all of this said, it is a good idea to help our students become more familiar with the features of online reading, so that they can develop their skills in this capacity. 

Page and Feature Tours.  The format and organization of websites have become much more standardized over time.  Teaching students how to read a website in the early 2000s was much more difficult because as a community we were still experimenting with the medium.  But over time, certain features and layouts have become much more standard.  Helping students to find and notice the following features is a good start:  home page, publisher / creator / author of website, date of publication, “About” button / about the author, and “search” button.

Guided Reading Prompts. Give students something to be thinking of as they read the texts.  Sometimes, I will have them look for something specific like “According to the website, what are some of the primary reasons for increased vaping among teenagers in the last two years?”  However, I might also use the 5 Ws.  “In your notebooks, write out the five Ws: who, what, why, where, when.  Develop and answer a question for each based on the information provided in the website.”  

Discussing Style and Structure. Common Core really pushed English Language Arts teachers to think beyond the text.  We were forced to move past the “what does the text mean” and “what was the author trying to say” to “how is the author trying to say it.”  We should be asking our students to make observations about these online texts.  How are they organized?  Are there noticeable differences between them and the versions we might find in books and newspapers?  What are advantages and disadvantages the author has when they publish it online versus in a book or a newspaper?  Has the author or publisher made full use of the digital tools given the topic they are discussing? 

 

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AVReading Newsletter March-- Fuel for the Engine

 

        In the closing weeks of winter trimester, my intervention class turns its attention to the future.  Students are in the process of generating a list of inquiry topics or questions and ultimately they will vote on the one they want to pursue at the start of the spring term.  In the fall, they voted on the topic of civil disobedience, and in winter, it was paranormal activity.  This system is not a guarantee of their engagement and investment, but it certainly improves the likelihood of getting them involved.  For this month’s newsletter, I’d like to devote a little time to this concept of engagement, and the ways that we might foster environments of curiosity and wonder to fuel the engine of learning. 

            Now I will admit that stirring up some level of energy and enthusiasm in today’s atmosphere is especially difficult.  And while I know that taking steps like offering choice and differentiating instruction are important first steps, they are not silver bullet solutions.  I will also acknowledge that we have both institutional and structural barriers to some of these practices.  We are often confined by institutional barriers like a required curriculum that doesn’t always allow for flexibility, or structural barriers like limited amounts of time and large caseloads where it is difficult to manage lots of individual choices. 

            With that said, building a sense of engagement through cultivating curiosity and wonder can happen.  There are so many choices we can make that offer students an opportunity to become involved and engaged.  It is also evident that many of you are already doing this.  It is exciting to see evidence of the world entering our classrooms, making them more relevant and alive. 

            In talking with recent AV grads Halima and Uzo who are both attending an elite university, I am fascinated by their class offerings.  They are taking undergraduate courses in psychology, politics, engineering, and sociology, but almost all of them are tailored to relevant or timely topics: an introduction to psychology class built around sleep studies, a sociology class built around a study of Covid responses in different communities, and an engineering course related to “market engineering.” Looking at some of these course titles, it is hard not to get excited about the subjects they study, and it leads me to wonder what could be done in our own classes.  (And in fact, as mentioned above, might already be happening.) Can you imagine a math unit built around the current exploration of Mars, a social studies unit built round protest, insurrection and civil disobedience, or an English unit built around inaugural poems!  

            Of course, we cannot just drop everything and redesign our classes around the latest Tik Tok trend, meme or viral news story.  Though it would be fun, we cannot throw out required learning targets in order to chart our own course into the wilds.  The model isn’t that we should re-shape entire classes, but rather to look for ways we can introduce timely or relevant topics and events into our pre-existing curriculum and lessons. 

            Here are some ways that we can do so:

            Foster a Sense of Wonder.  It has been really difficult to get people to respond or talk in our distance and hybrid models, so I realize that this will not be easy to do.  However, building a sense of trust and a sense of community is important to determining the types of topics and units that might be of interest to them.  And this takes time.  It also takes a little bit of discipline.  Sometimes our first response to a student’s interests or hobbies is a little judgmental.  We are not as eager to hear that someone loves to play Call of Duty or is unusually obsessed with BTS.  My first impulse is to sometimes cringe-- forgetting that I once cared deeply about matters that my elders often considered trivial or even a little problematic.  Use those interests as a starting point into a conversation, one where perhaps they move on to other subjects or where you begin to identify elements of that interest or hobby that might intersect with your own, or better yet, speak to something relevant or important to the larger world.

            What Do You Wonder.  On occasion, I will actually use the “what is something that you wonder about” as a class opener.  We will either do it as a whip around, or I give them a moment to think about it and then call on a few select students to share with the class.  In some cases, I might create a “Wonder List” on the wall that serves as a constant reminder for me to pull these ideas into class or to explore on my own!  

            Avoid Answering Every Question.  One of the hardest things to do is prevent yourself from answering deep questions for students.  Sometimes, students can’t answer them because they simply don’t care.  But other times, they don’t answer them because they simply don’t know.  Leaving that question unanswered can actually build that sense of wonder and curiosity.  It also promotes a sense of agency because it puts more of the responsibility for answering that question on the shoulders of students.  Some teachers use “parking lots” as a tool for housing these questions.  Like a “Wonder List,” a parking lot is just space (usually on a giant post it note or a corner of the white board) where teachers or students can record questions that they cannot answer at the moment.  Teachers can regularly refresh or even clear their parking lots, or even spend a few moments revisiting the questions to see if anyone has come to a conclusion.

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AVReading Newsletter February-- The Value of Assigning Books

 

Teaching remotely has really made me think long and hard about whether assigning books is still valuable.  Considering the many logistical obstacles required to get the book (digitally purchased or hard copy), I have to be really committed to it.  So, for this month’s newsletter, I would like to highlight some of the most important reasons for assigning books to our students. 

            For starters, it is perhaps good to explain that “assigning books” means something a little different today.  On occasion, we still choose one common text that the entire class will read, analyze, and discuss (e.g. Romeo and Juliet, Flight, Raisin in the Sun).  However, most of the books assigned to students today allow for students to choose a title from a short list-- usually 5-7 books.  Each of these books will come at a given topic or theme from different angles, allowing students to have similar – though not identical -- experiences.  Choice book units have the advantage of reaching more students.  They offer more flexibility in the types of texts we offer and in the readability levels.  Of course, the price we pay is that we cannot offer the same universal experience that a whole class book will afford.  Additionally, it is often harder to gauge whether students are reading their books when working with multiple titles, and it is much harder to work through a close reading of passages when not everyone is holding the same text.  Finally, teachers can more specifically take on an issue or concept when students are not allowed a choice.

            Conventional wisdom today suggests that (especially in our Language Arts classes) we do a little of both, with at least one whole class book a term and one or two choice books per term.  Regardless of the type (whole class or choice), assigning books in our classes today is still an immensely valuable practice.  In recent years, district money has been shifted slightly from purchasing the traditional textbooks into more of these book choice units, so there are more opportunities for us to revisit the use of books (both fiction and non-fiction) within our classes.  

To begin with, books offer students deeper and more engaging avenues into relevant topics, issues and concepts of our day.  They demand a different set of reading tools than those that are required of reading textoids, articles, or shorter pieces, thus preparing students for the more rigorous reading of standardized tests and upper level and post secondary classes.  Beyond that , reading full books allows students to explore topics and concepts more deeply.  Whereas a textbook might have a generic section or chapter on depression or trauma, a recently published book on anxiety or trauma allows the student access to a more meaningful discussion of that concept or idea, to more fully see its relationship to other related topics and concepts, and to get a better understanding of how this topic or concept works.  On the whole, books are less intimidating, less institutional, and less sterile than their textbook counterparts.  With any given title, we also have a little more flexibility to pick up or drop a book, as opposed to textbooks which typically require a long term commitment.  They are less responsive to timely matters and issues and are written specifically to have long shelf lives.  

Across all of our disciplines, there are so many amazing options.  If you are considering a book (or a choice book unit), here are some tips. 

Create the Infrastructure.  In the back of my head, I always fear that I will go through all of this trouble of designing a unit, purchasing books and materials, and then discover that no one has read the texts.  But I have come to realize that if I create an infrastructure that allows for students to succeed, I can get higher levels of involvement and participation.  When it comes to infrastructure, I mean giving students enough time to read the books, setting aside some time in class for students to actually read, a reading schedule with some type of reading checks, mini-lessons or tips for how to read their books, offering a variety of interesting and timely titles, and having texts for various reading levels. 

Jump Ahead.  If you are doing a whole class book, you will need strategies for your slower reading or lower ability reading students.  One of which is the “jump ahead.”  For this, I might say to the class, “Ok, let’s say that you are still on chapter 1, and you feel a little overwhelmed with the text.  Here’s what I am going to do.  I’m going to give you enough information to ‘jump ahead’ to chapter 7 because I want you to specifically read that section today.  I want you to be a part of our conversation on chapter 7, but I need to get you a little further along so that you can read that section.  Here is what you need to know. . .”   

Audio Versions.  For the whole class books, I typically purchase the audio version of the text.  In fact, I will likely play the audio version for the first twenty minutes of the book on the first day of the unit.  It helps to get students jump started on the book and gives them a feel for the “voice” of the text.  I will also allow a student to use my iPad during silent reading time to listen to the text if they are interested.  Additionally, for those who are interested or able, I encourage them to either purchase the audio version or download it from the library.  A handful of students will actually have access to the audio version through their IEP resources.

 

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AVReading Newsletter January-- Marking Up a Text

 

Perhaps one of my most frequent reading lessons is teaching students to annotate -- or mark-up-- a text.  No matter the format (book, article, digital text, pdf), I will spend time before the assignment reviewing how they will need to mark-up the text.  It’s a lesson that is quite useful for a number of reasons. 

First, it is important to get students into the habit of marking up all of their texts.  The expectations are that the reading is just the first step in a larger lesson.  In other words, the assignment is not the reading itself, it’s the activity or project or assessment that usually follows that reading.  And to complete that activity or project or assessment, they will need to be able to refer back to important details, passages, and ideas from the text.  Marking up that text then is a means to that larger end. 

Second, the mark-ups themselves offer a considerable amount of insight into what the student understands-- or doesn’t understand-- of the text.  I will frequently use the mark-ups as a formative assessment.  In other words, I ask students to submit their annotations to me so that I can determine how -- or even if-- they are interacting with the text. I look to see that the student has variation in their types of annotations (e.g. summary, questions, connections, evaluations, predictions, identification) and that the annotations are evenly spread throughout the text.  I learn a lot from these notations.  If they just highlight passages, I know that they haven’t really engaged in the reading-- or haven’t demonstrated that engagement.  If I find that they comment on insignificant details, they need help finding main ideas and using more of the clues within the text to find what those main ideas may be.  I also look to see if they are able to draw inferences from the text and if they can comment on the structure of the text (organization, format, layout) or the writing style.  

Third, regular lessons in annotating and marking up a text are great opportunities to teach reading skills.  With each successive reading assignment, I will introduce, review or spotlight a type of annotation.  So, I might start out with more generic instructions-- “Mark-up the text at least six times.  Here are some ways to mark it up. . .”  Then in future lessons, I will circle back and look more carefully at some of those types of markings.  “Today’s reading has a unique organization to it.  I want you to mark up this text at least six times, and I want at least one of those to comment on how the author has structured or organized the text.”  Or “Authors usually pack a lot of information about characters in the opening pages of their novels.  Today, I want you to annotate three characters and their descriptions.” 

I do admit that students are not always huge fans of annotating a text.  It takes extra time and mental effort.  In fact, they might often feel that reading the text is difficult enough without having to do all of this extra work.  I get that.  I remember being annoyed with all of the extra tools (highlighters, post its, pens) I would need just to read an assignment.  However, using those annotated texts as formatives is much more meaningful than creating study guides for students or asking them to answer a series of questions from the end of the chapter.  Too often those activities get reduced to ping pong reading, where the student reads the questions, then bounces around in the text until they find the answer, and then bounces back to the next question and so forth.  Of course, students could just as easily mark-up a text with lots of low level nonsense and not really understand its meaning, but I have found that students are more likely to work their way chronologically through a text when I ask them to annotate it versus when I ask them to answer a series of questions. 

Annotating texts today is different from the way we have done it in the past.  We have many more tools now, which is both good and bad.  It’s good because it offers students options.  It’s bad because some students are actually easily overwhelmed by options.  Here are some tips for how to help students annotate texts. 

Notability.  By far, Notability has become the easiest way for students to annotate articles / pdfs.  The program is very user friendly and it offers a lot of unique features.  Students have also become quite familiar with the program, so there are not a lot of times when I feel as though I have to help students with it.  I use Notability most frequently with either short chapters I have scanned or articles I have downloaded.  I will also use it with a document that I have converted to a pdf.  If possible, work on the layout of the pdf to maximize its white space or margins, since that is where students will be trying to fit their comments.  Students can use Notability to annotate books as well.  For this, they basically take pictures of passages and insert them into their Notability documents.  It’s a little cumbersome, but if they do not like to use post it notes, it is a decent alternative.  

Post It Notes.  When it comes to annotating books, novels, and textbooks, post it notes are still the most preferred method.  I usually set goals for students so that they can have an idea about how much they should be annotating.  “Today, I want you to annotate at least three things in your reading.  And by this point in the book, you should have somewhere between 10-15 annotations.”  I also like to do an activity midway through the book, where students remove their post its from the book and then attach them to an 8.5X11 sheet of blank paper.  I ask students to categorize the post its by type, so that they can evaluate the diversity of their annotations (e.g. vocabulary, character, plot, writing style, setting, theme). 

Cornell Notes.  I have discovered that some students simply prefer writing out their notes separately.  I offer them the chance to demonstrate their ability to annotate a text using Cornell notes if that is their preferred system.  More so than using post it notes, students using Cornell notes tend to copy down passages without comment.  In other words, they will re-write phrases and sentences from the text without meaningful interaction.  This can limit the effectiveness of annotation, since an important feature of annotation is that the reader is engaging with the text and processing its meaning.  When readers are simply copying down passages and definitions, they do not always filter that information through those more developed cognitive processes.  Cornell notetakers will need some extra guidance in this area.

 

 

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