"...and Not to Yield": Explorations in English Education

Two years ago, I began combining and rearranging the English Language Arts content standards that I would utilize in my courses. Since then, I’ve made developments in my assessment practices, and as I prepare to begin on a hybrid schedule this fall and utilizing grade conferences (where students will present evidence of their work and pitch the grade they deserve), I wanted to further refine my work. My plan to is post much more frequently in the coming days and weeks as I articulate my own journey in preparation for the school year (our students begin on September 8 th , 2020). Since my first post on this in August 2018 , I reduced my eight standards to six to make it more manageable. Last school year, I utilized to the following six standards (reduced from the Pennsylvania Core Standards): 1.      Standard 1 : Applying Literary Elements & Devices I can define and apply various elements of fiction (characterization, setting, point of view, conflict, plot, ...

This year, I began seating students in pods so we could better implement turn-and-talk opportunities during our mini-lessons (rather than asking questions and having students raise hands and answer individually). A couple years ago, I tried having students choose the classroom arrangement . We have had a few exercises where we had students work in their “pods”: reading and responding to short articles, locating examples of literary elements in a text, and working through a sample standardized test. My classroom set-up with pods at the start of the 2019-2020 school year. However, while the turn-and-talk is generally working (as I find best how to facilitate and teach that procedure), the short group work activities have been met with less success. THE CHALLENGES I have found a handful of challenges with pod seating: 1.      Off-Topic Chatter During Mini-Lessons . There tends to be more chatter among groups during our 15 to 20 minutes of mini-less...

Since implanting a readers-writers workshop, I realized I needed to better help students reflect on their work habits. I enjoyed following discussions online regarding work habits, especially in gradeless or standards-based classrooms where work habits were separate of content mastery reporting. Here is my process and plan to implement the teaching of work habits this year to my sophomore students. GENERATING A LIST I turned to Twitter to seek ideas: What work habits do you try to foster in your Ss? Share ideas with T @NAEmmanuele ! #ProfDev #TeacherEd #SELchat pic.twitter.com/q2MFwKHhpd — Teacher2Teacher (@teacher2teacher) June 10, 2019 With plenty of helpful leads and some ideas percolating, I then came across Mount Desert Island Regional School System’s Middle School Habits of Work Google site. This helped me focus on three habits: respect, responsibility, and perseverance. I edited the last to “work ethic,” and thought I was ready. However, in talking...

This obligatory year-in-review blog serves a couple purposes. It serves as a table of contents from the past year, but it also provides some updates on where I currently am with my practice. My blog is meant to record my journey of transforming my teaching practices, so compiling and crafting this current post was helpful to me as I was able to contextualize my journey: it was a lot in one year! A note of clarification as you read on: I teach on an 80-minute, intensified block schedule, so I see my high school students 80 minutes every day for half a school year (and then we switch semesters). Enjoy, and please reach out ( @NAEmmanuele )! 1-7-18 : Writing a Workshop Curriculum . 1-14-18 : (Re)Writing Assessments for Secondary Writing Workshop . I have maintained the workshop and mini-lesson structure elaborated upon here. I no longer utilize GrammarFlip (budgetary constraints) and we have shifted from Wordly Wise (for Vocabulary) to Membean.com. I am still ...

As I work to assess my students more appropriate in my workshop environment, I have continually shifted how my rubrics are formatted . After hearing Dr. Connie Moss from Duquesne University ( @DUSchoolofEd ) speak on Learning Targets again at a recent in-service, I began to see how her concept of “student Look-Fors” could better articulate our learning goals in class. “Look-Fors” are the aspects in a learning experience that students can look for in their own work to see if they are on-target to demonstrate their learning. In earlier iterations, I had written Learning Targets with accompanying Performances of Understanding (POU) for each lesson. For example, here is one of my Learning Target and Performance of Understanding from two years ago: I know I can discuss text structure when I categorize examples from the myth of Theseus into the aspects of the Hero’s Journey . The first portion (“ I know I can discuss text structure ”) is the learning target, while the proof (“...

From Workshop to Standards-Based Scoring After establishing a workshop model last year in my 9 th and 10 th grade English classes, I want to move closer to standards-based grading this year. For me, establishing an instructional model that more closely works with standards-based learning was an important first step. Please refer to this post for a summary. Now, I can continue my exploration. In this blog post, I will walk through the steps I took to establish the eight standards I will assess my students on in Academic English 9: Standard 1 : Analyzing Literary Elements & Devices Standard 2 : Analyzing Nonfiction Elements & Concepts Standard 3 : Evaluating Text Genre, Form, and Structure Standard 4 : Utilizing Evidence & Research Standard 5 : Crafting Focus, Organization, and Style Standard 6 : Composing Narratives Standard 7 : Expanding Vocabulary Standard 8 : Developing Speaking Skills Step 1: Prioritizing Standards Last year, I revi...

Being in the thick of transitioning to a workshop model can be overwhelming and tiring. My students have been working hard (often quietly and independently) and I have been working to conference with at least two students a day (who was I kidding to think I could reach upwards of five in one block?). We were settling into a routine and that terrible Specter of Perceived Rigor started looming again. So I decided to change things up. Twitter has been a great forum to gain ideas from other educators, and so many have been championing and sharing their stories of student voice and choice (such as @CRCarter313 at the elementary level). I acknowledge that I have been hanging onto control for a while (including desks in rows and silent workshop time), which is why I began the move to workshop to begin with: it’s about my students, not me. THE SHAKE-UP Last Friday, I tasked each of my classes to rearrange the room in a way that worked best for them. I have two section...

Inspired by a blog by Catlin Tucker (@catlin_tucker), I decided to have my students e-mail home every week. Catlin explained how she has students e-mail parents when they fall behind. Since I was shifting to a workshop model, I thought this activity would help include families more as well as keep students engaged with our learning activities. Also, the use of daily work logs ensures we have a record of what we have been doing in class so we have something specific to report on each week. I have done one of these e-mails home so far, but I thought I’d share my early process here. Daily Work Logs As part of our workshop model, I began including a Daily Work Log via Google, where each student lists the assignments and work he or she must complete each day. These work logs become a great resource for the weekly e-mails. This is a process to teach students goal-setting and subdividing larger tasks into smaller pieces (even if they can accomplish multiple pieces in one day dur...