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

With Standards and Learning Targets determined and an overarching reflection and organization document for the semester , I needed to turn my attention to organization on a weekly scale. HYBRID SCHOOL PLAN My students are scheduled to return to school on September 8 th . I will see half of each class on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the other half on Wednesdays and Fridays (with Monday being a virtual day for everyone). I do not want to rely on in-person instruction once school begins—especially when students become absent (for any reason). Rather than needing to see a student in-person to “catch them up,” I want everything available online. Then, we can use class time for conferring and community. To this end, I will also be settling on weekly-long explorations/lessons. Each week will include brief instructional videos, readings, an assessment (usually writing), and a reflection. We’ll begin journaling (either in response to literature or as open-writes) early on. Our school util...

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, ...

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 (“...

Where I am with Workshops Kelly Gallagher (@KellyGToGo) and Penny Kittle (@pennykittle) have plenty to say on engaging students with writing, and many others have much more to say on secondary workshops than I can (see @AmyRass and threeteacherstalk.wordpress.com). However, my focus here is the journey: a transition from a more traditional English classroom to one that engages with a reading-writing workshop. As my new semester (on an intensified block schedule) approaches this Thursday, I have hurriedly been working to rework my procedures and syllabus. This past December, I jumped into workshopping my sophomore English class. To do this, I took two or three larger writing tasks, assigned them up front, and settled into what would become a new schedule: ·          15 minutes of independent reading, ·          20 minutes of direct instruction, and ·       ...

I titled my blog “And Not to Yield” from Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses”: …and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days  Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;  One equal temper of heroic hearts,  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Suspecting that my delve into a workshop model may lead to challenges (see my previous blog ), I felt the reminder “not to yield” would be appropriate. I was right. My building is on an intensified block schedule, where I see students daily for eighty minutes for twenty weeks. Our semester ends on January 17 th and then schedules change and I receive new classes (one of the classes is my third section of looped sophomore English students, who my co-teacher and I taught in ninth grade English last year). This means that our end-of-course exam is approaching on January 10 th and 11 th . The State of Pennsylvania has three end-of-cou...

It is definitely a good idea that I did not jump in right away with workshops, portfolios, and standards-based grading all at once. I need to make sure I get this workshop stuff down first! While my first two posts reflected on my workshop set-up (30 minutes of reading workshop, 20 minutes of instruction, and 30 minutes of writing workshop) and managing time (student goal-setting and my own flexibility with direct instruction), this post will wrestle with some challenges I faced this week, namely (1) teaching goal-setting, (2) needing to better refocus my mini-lessons, (3) keeping up with outside-of-class reading “homework,” and (4) separating reading and writing workshop. Current Class Structure We are currently looking at drama using Julius Caesar . My eighty-minute block sophomore English class currently runs as follows: 1.       First fifteen minutes of Reading Workshop : Students settle in to read their self-selected leisure reading novel. ...

After much reading, research, and collaboration, I have decided to shift to a workshop model for reading and writing in my high school English classes. While I still am aiming to implement standards-based grading and portfolios (as well as improving conferencing), transforming the instructional model within my classroom feels like the best first step (rather than changing everything at once). In late November 2017, I attended my second National Council of Teachers of English conference and my second Conferenceon English Leadership . I went with the aims of discovering more about these practices (after having read about them the previous year since the 2016 NCTE and CEL conventions), and many other educators shared what they were doing in their classroom. I got some ideas on where to go, but the process is always a bit fuzzy. How do I get to where I want to be from where I am? My goal in this blog is to document my shifts. Previously, while I believe I have found engaging ...