"...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, ...

Although I only briefly touched on students e-mailing home in my previous post (after my initial post on it back in January), I wanted to expand on how I currently employ student-authored e-mails home. As I noted initially, I was inspired by Catlin Tucker’s (@catlin_tucker) post, “ Students E-mail Their Parents About Missing Work .” Situated in a workshop approach with a move toward standards-based grading, my process has changed a bit since its inception. PURPOSE While I liked the purpose to let students know that parents would be made aware of their work, I quickly realized the exercise was mostly for my students: we would be embarking on some self-reflection. This would be new for some of my students, summarizing and reflecting on their work and learning. Contacting parents became a side-effect of actual class time to pause and reflect. The goal is to reconsider their daily work logs, completed readings and writings, and their plan of action moving forward. I...

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...