"...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...

I have been working with the concept of our daily work log for a while now, but I was not implementing it in a way that was truly beneficial. My first iteration asked students to list what they planned to accomplish in a given class period (based on my mini-lesson and assignments). Too often, there wasn’t enough to warrant a list, or teaching how to break down a task into smaller parts was more time-consuming than I had planned (such as breaking down the parts of planning and drafting an analysis paragraph). Also, I was more concerned with working one-on-one during workshop rather than critiquing the work log. Now, I have fine-tuned that process a bit more. I create a Google Doc that I share with all students, and on it, I include the chart above (with as many dates as I estimate a unit of study will take. Then, I create a column for daily reading reflection, another for our daily learning targets, another for a quick check on if students are “on-target,” and a final ...

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...