"...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 (“...

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...

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 ·       ...

On January 18 th , we begin a new semester at school, and since we are on an intensified block schedule, I gain three new groups of students. That means I need to implement reading-writing workshop from Day 1. I have two different courses: a co-taught Academic (college-prep) English 10 inclusion class (with students I had last year in English 9), and two sections of Honors English 9 (where a Gifted Support teacher will join me about two days each week for the first time in my career). Below are the steps I will take to plan my classroom to best support a workshop model where students are given time to read books of their choice and write in class so I can serve as a learning coach. The following weeks of my blog will detail one of these aspects: 1.       Prioritize standards/objective/targets for each Unit on what skills must be demonstrated to proficiency (as opposed to just explored/introduced). We just revised our curriculum, so these are already ni...

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...