Sequenced Writing Assignment

Let's pretend I'm teaching a second grade class, and we go on a field trip to the zoo. The day after the field trip, I ask them to write what their favorite part of the trip was and why. I model this first by writing on the board "My favorite part of our field trip was eating lunch." (Or possibly the bus ride. Either way, students won't be allowed to write that their favorite part was whatever part I use for the example.) I will then call on two or three students to suggest reasons why lunch was my favorite part of the trip, which I will add to my example. I will then conclude my example opinion, and let the students write their own opinions.

The next day, we will break into small groups and read each other's opinions. Remembering to be respectful, we will then make suggestions to each other about how to make our writing better. Of course, I will model this first with my favorite fake student, Fritz. (Fritz is not a real member of the class. He's my go-to sample student.) I will put Fritz's opinion on the board about why the bus ride was his favorite part of the trip, and I will demonstrate how I might suggest to Fritz that he should mention another detail, like how the bus driver told silly jokes, or if he counted the cars in the train we saw. After students have heard some of their classmates' suggestions, they will be able to go back and neatly re-write their opinions for their parents to see at the Open House coming up.

Yes, but What Have I REALLY Learned?

I have been a student for a lot of years of my life. For someone who over-thinks things as much as I tend to do, you would think that with that much experience in learning, I would have more awareness of how I learn. You would also think I would have more awareness of what I learn.

I don't.

Sure, I've picked up some tricks and techniques along the way that work for my brain. If I'm having trouble getting my thoughts organized for a paper or some other assignment, I can tell whether I need to sort my ideas out orally or if I should write them out on Post-it notes to rearrange on a wall. I know that if I miss a day of class, I will always feel like I have missed something more than I can get from the make-up work. I know that if my brain is stuck, moving my body will probably help.

But I also know that if you ask me at the end of class what I learned in that class that day--or even sometimes what we did in that class--I will answer you with a blank stare. By the time I get home, I might be able to answer you, but probably not. Very rarely can I really track my own learning. The best way I can explain it--or my best guess at understanding it--is that when I learn something, really learn it, it becomes so basic and obvious to me that I no longer remember not knowing it. On the one hand, it's wonderful to think that I can learn things in a way that lets new knowledge and old knowledge blend together seamlessly. On the other hand, it's really annoying sometimes.

I don't know if that kind of difficulty tracking your own learning is "normal" or "typical." I don't know if it can be attributed to me being "smart" or having ADHD, or if it's just one of my odd quirks. I just know that that's my experience, and usually if I have experienced something, there are probably other people (most notably, students) who experience the same thing.

So the odds are that I will teach students who will be just as dumbstruck as I am if I ask "What did you learn today?" They will probably get as frustrated as I do with their inability to answer. So I will try to remember that not being able to answer that question doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of learning.

I can see the value of asking that question, of course--it forces students to at least try to monitor their own learning, and their answers can help the teacher assess how well their instruction is reaching the students. And there will probably be situations, like field trips or assemblies, when the best way to gauge what students have learned is with this kind of direct, open-ended question. Plus, having students think about their learning may help at least some students to better process the new information they've been presented.

I'm trying to think of how to wrap this post up into a neat little package, and I'm not coming up with much. I think what I'm really trying to say is that asking "What did you learn today?" can be a useful tool in the classroom, but because of how I tend to respond to it, it's a tool that I'm not likely to make frequent use of.

Genius Hour

"Provide students with experiences that are truly worthy of their attention." I wrote that down in my notes in class one night. I wrote it down because it sounded like good advice. It also sounds like a really ambitious goal. (Those two seem to overlap a lot in teaching.)

Fortunately, shortly after I wrote that down, I got to see a glimpse of it in action in a real live classroom. I did my clinical hours for Practicum I in a fifth-grade classroom with a teacher I'll call Ms. Awesome, and she invited me to continue coming in throughout the school year to see how the kids grew as students. I've been taking her up on that offer at every opportunity. When I'm done working as a lunch/recess supervisor, if I feel comfortably caught-up in my schoolwork, I walk down the hall to Ms. Awesome's class and sit in--or jump in--for math, science, and anything else that happens while I'm there. Then, after dismissal, I usually hang around some more and help Ms. Awesome get the room ready for the next day, or tag along with her for one meeting or another, or we'll sit and talk about the day's happenings. Our after-school conversation usually starts with her asking me what I've learned that day. (It is not without reason that I'm referring to her here as "Ms. Awesome.")

The other day, we were talking after school when she showed me some guiding worksheets for the research project her students are working on, called the "Genius Hour." Unfortunately, they work on this project when I can't be in the room, but Ms. Awesome was happy to fill me in. The students each start with a question they want to find the answer to--questions like, "How does a car engine work?" "How do airplanes stay in the air?" or "How can I get better at basketball?" Once a student has his or her question, he or she sets about doing research to find the answer. The point of the assignment is to learn how to do research, present research, and cite sources.

Ms. Awesome told me that because they're still scrambling to cover all the standards they need to before the last MAP test of the school year, she can only give the students ten minutes each day to work on the project; after the MAP test, they'll get a whole hour each day. But during the ten minutes they have right now, every single student is actively engaged in their work. The entire class is always disappointed when Ms. Awesome announces it's time to move on. "No! Can't you give us ten more minutes? I just found this REALLY COOL thing," they always say.

We talked about how wonderful it was that the students were so interested and engaged. I compared it to the research project I was given as a fifth-grade student: a randomly-assigned local bird species. I no longer remember what the bird I researched was called. Yes, I learned how to write a research paper with that assignment, but I also learned to hate research. As I drove home, I tried to think of how many research assignments I had enjoyed doing in my seventeen years as a student. I could only come up with about two and a half. To this day, the moment an assignment includes the words "research" or "cite sources," I cringe.

These students will have a completely different experience than I did. They are being introduced to research as a way to learn interesting things. I was introduced to research as "a horrible word that means you need to cite your sources." Which would you rather learn? Which would you rather teach?

I know my answer, and it doesn't involve any randomly assigned birds.

Teaching Students the Magic of Words

I love words. I love language, in general, but I especially love words. I think it comes with the territory for being a writer. So it breaks my heart to know that there are kids who hate reading--and, by proxy, despise writing too. I want to reach all of them. I want to get them as excited as I am about the idea that arranging arbitrary symbols on a page can somehow convey meaning, can paint a vivid picture in someone else's mind, can transport a reader to a different time and place and perspective; I want to fill them with wonder over the subtle differences between "mumble," "mutter," and "murmur."

Incorporating technology in reading and writing assignments, like we've been reading about doing, is one way to start. Most kids enjoy watching movies, and if I can help them bridge the gap between movies and books, I just might be able to turn a reluctant reader into an avid bookworm. Of course, I'll have to do it with just the right stories that can grab a student's interest and lure them into the world of literature, and just the right writing assignments that can spark a student's interest and ignite their creativity.

But none of it will work unless I'm just as passionate about the assignments as I am about the subject I'm trying to teach. And sure, making movies and slideshow presentations is nice, but it just doesn't thrill me quite like playing with words. I may have found the link that I need on page 57 of Teaching Literacy in the Digital Age. There are two short activities here: one where students explore the different possible meanings of the word "Oh," depending on the situation and how it's said, and the other looking at the sentence "I didn't say he ate your sandwich" and exploring how the situation changes depending which word of the sentence is being emphasized.

The point of these activities is to show students how they way they say words can create meaning, so that they won't need to use as many words in their stories--which, for the assignment given, are limited to five frames of photos, 50 words, and a three-minute time limit. What I like most about this assignment is its potential to teach young students the value of each word in their own writing; something that many students still struggle with in high school and beyond. Even the slightest understanding of the value of each written word early in life could give them such an advantage later on.

Of course, part of me immediately wants to bring it back to the plain, simple, written word. I can't help thinking how an assignment like this would make such a great segue to introducing students to "55 Fiction," a tiny little writing niche for stories that are each 55 words or fewer. Maybe sharing some 55-fiction stories with a class would help inspire them for this kind of assignment, or give them a clear idea of how an "expert" might craft a whole story by packing as much meaning as possible into each word, but I think for anything beyond that, I'll have to stop and really gauge how each specific class is responding. I might serve some students better by focusing on the technology and the movie-making aspect, rather than rushing them back to the written word. I have to guide and teach my students in a way that suits them, not just the way that's the most fun for me--because really, if they're not having fun learning, I won't be having fun teaching, either.

Show, Don't Tell

The first few chapters of Teaching Literacy in the Digital Age seem to all be variations on a theme about video presentations of stories or ideas. It's amazing how many chapters all crystallized in my mind with one sentence on page 31: "Instructing our students to write short stories and then retell them through sound and images gave them a chance to actualize the 'show, don't tell' writer's mantra in an alternative format, thereby reinforcing the concept in their minds."

Ding. A light bulb snaps on, and the writer in me and the teacher in me get into a long, intensive
dialogue that probably wouldn't make any sense at all to anyone who didn't live inside my head, but it's perfectly clear to me:

The teacher in me says, "Brilliant! What a perfect way to explain what 'show, don't tell' means to students. You want to understand the movie without needing a voice-over the whole time!"

And the writer in me says, "HEY! Remember that time I was talking to one of my writing buddies and we said how we always pictured our Muppet fanfictions as movies when we wrote them? This is totally the same thing!"

To which the teacher in me says, "Yeah! It's a way to get students to exactly where we were as writers then--or, well, close to it, because every person/journey is different and so on--and do so several years earlier in life! Imagine how much more they'll be able to grow!"

That's about how the abridged, distilled, sensible version of the dialogue would have gone, anyway. The extended version includes more details from that conversation with my writing buddy, cryptic comments from a former creative writing professor, and general excitement about how to share all of that with elementary students, culminating in the general sensation of a conversation between thunder and lightning happening inside my brain. I suppose that sounds uncomfortable, but for me, it's a familiar and exhilarating sensation of potentially endless puzzle pieces clicking neatly into place.

Throat-Clearing

I procrastinate. It's a bad habit I can't seem to kick. But I believe that it's better to set an honest example than to try to set a perfect example, so I will openly state here and now that, two days before our blogging assignment is due, I'm just sitting down to begin it. Since it's a fairly open-ended assignment, I will use this first post to just get into the swing of things and establish myself.

As a writer, this is what is sometimes called "throat-clearing" (hence the post title). It's that beginning info dump to set the scene that the writer feels they have to write before they can get into the story itself, and then usually delete in the first round of editing because it has absolutely no real bearing on the plot, or it can be shown in a better, more entertaining way, or it's just totally redundant.

So if it's so unnecessary and it's the first thing to get cut, why do writers write "throat-clearing" stuff to begin with? Isn't it a waste of time? Well, no. Just because it won't go in the final draft doesn't mean it isn't important. As a writer, I use throat-clearing to get my bearings in the story and/or the fictional world I've created. Throat-clearing is one-part road map, one-part warm up. Pretty much any athlete or performer in the world warms up before they take the stage or the field, and the fact that the fans and the audience don't see the warm up doesn't make it any less important.

We've talked some in class about the sort of classroom culture we want to create. This will be part of mine. It sort of bridges the gap between a culture of revision and the idea that it's okay to make mistakes. I've personally been focused mostly on how to build a classroom culture where mistakes are acceptable, and I seem to be collecting different ways of saying it, like "Mistakes are permitted here" or "Mistakes are a part of learning" or, to take a cue from Mythbusters, "Failure is always an option." (I'll obviously explain to students that "failure," in this case, is totally and completely unrelated to grades, but that saying is definitely going on a poster with a picture of a Mythbusters explosion.) But I personally have struggled to embrace revision, both as a student and as a writer, so it's not surprising that I've been slower to incorporate that into my intended classroom culture. Throat-clearing may be just the stepping stone I need, and if it helps me, odds are pretty good that it might help some of my students, too.

And that's something I probably wouldn't have realized if I hadn't written a whole post of throat-clearing.

So, thanks for letting me clear my throat.