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

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...

My Instruction and Assessment Philosophy Over the past couple years, I have been reading into standards-based grading and “healthy” grading practices. Along with a variety of blog posts, @TG2Chat/#tg2chat and the #sblchat community, the following resources have assisted me in developing my standards-based assessment (and, in turn, instruction) philosophy: ·          Grading from the Inside Out by Tom Schimmer ( @TomSchimmer ) ·          On Your Mark by Thomas R. Guskey ( @tguskey ) ·          Assessment 3.0 by Mark Barnes ( @markbarnes19 ) ·          Standards-Based Learning in Action by Tom Schimmer ( @TomSchimmer ), Garnet Hillman ( @garnet_hillman ), and Mandy Stalets ( @MandyStalets ) I believe that students must seek learning, not points, and that their grade in my course should be a reflection on tha...

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...