Tim Fredrick's ELA Teaching Blog

Can we make them read?

I received an e-mail from Julie, a reader of this blog, and she agreed to let me post her letter and my response:

Tim,

I agree with your "we've beaten reading" down philosophy and have taken the fun out of it. I'm just starting out in the world of teaching English and have a special ed background as well. One of the things I'm having my students do is pick out a book to read and then, they have to do a book report on it. The reason I'm asking them to do the report is because I don't have enough time to read 1,000 books to see which ones kids in 9th and 10th grade actually like. I'm doing live research by having them read these books and rate them so that I will know what books I should recommend based on student picks.

 

How can we assess reading if we don't use a "book report" form? I had to do them when I was young and although I hated them, too, they at least forced me to read those books. Sure, a lot of them I didn't even finish, but I always attempted to read the books. I discovered a lot of good books that way and equally bad ones. I've iterated and reiterated to my students and will do so again Tuesday, when we go to the library, that if they don't pick out books that they're genuinely interested in reading, their success rate will also be diminished.

 

I'd like to hear your opinion on this topic and how to assess reading without a "book report."

Thanks!
Julie

I wanted to post her e-mail because I think it very clearly articulated a valid and major concern of ELA teachers.  My response:

Julie,

Thanks for your e-mail.

You can assess if the students have been reading by occasionally having them read in class silently for 15 minutes.  Keep a log of what they are reading and what page they are one every time they read in class.  It takes a minute or so to go around the room and write down page numbers on a chart.  You will be able to tell who has the same book over and over again and makes progress on the page numbers.  In addition, talk to the kids about their books on a regular basis.  If the kid can't be specific about the book or his/her opinion, he's not reading.  This should not be punitive and if the kid isn't reading just subtly let him know you notice and move on.  Having "the talk" with him about it will only make it worse.  It becomes a way to rebel against you and then you are dealing with strong, strong forces.

As I tell teachers, there's no way to MAKE a kid read a book. There are only ways to make the act of reading something that they want to do.  Have patience, it doesn't happen right away.

Let me give an example ... I had a student who approached me at the beginning of the year, put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Tim, I need to tell you this: I don't read." I said, "But ..." He said, "No, Tim, you don't understand.  I ... don't ... read."  Knowing that I could not make him read no matter how many reports I assigned, I let it go.  Every once in a while I might put a book on his desk and say, "I know you don't read and won't be interested in this, but I wanted to try."  I did it with books that I saw his friends reading or books that had really great covers.  Eventually, after a LOT of doing this, he picked up the book. A week later, he left the book in the classroom when he left to go to lunch and someone in the next class picked it up.  He had lost the book.  He came to me the next day very upset that the book was missing (and, of course, blamed me!).

It happens slowly - but it can't be forced.  Sometimes the trick is finding the right book.  Don't look at it as trying to MAKE them read.  Try to MAKE reading something desirable.  You can't go home with them and force their little hands to pick up the book and their little eyes to read the words.  You simply can't.  You can only create conditions in which they will want to pick up the book and read.

Hope that helps.  Keep me informed!

Tim

She replied, asking how to handle being asked by an administrator for proof of assessment.  My response:

Your chart on reading progress would provide accountability.  If you have those conversations individually and take notes in a notebook, this provides accountability.  If you don't feel that this will be satisfactory to the administration, have the kids write for 10 minutes every time they read in class and hand it in.  Ten minutes is not a lot of time and won't feel like a book report.  The assignment could be to have them write you a letter saying whether or not they would recommend the book at this point and why.  This would probably wind up being more writing than a book report, anyway, but it is very low stakes and because you are the audience will seem more informal and personal.  The words 'book report' have certain meanings and feelings.  If you do keep it an end of book assignment, call it something else!!  :)

I know this will be an unpopular idea, but book reports need to go!  For students who struggle with reading, it is just another reason not to read when we should be giving them more reasons to read.  I can tell you from experience, that the methods of assessment I suggest (the progress chart and individual conferences) provide you will much more information to assess a student than any book report (which many students just copy from the back of the book, each other, or the Internet!)

A method for peer review and revision

I've always struggled with having peer review in my class and then having students meaningfully revise their work.  With peer review, they would tell each other "good job" and correct (or sometimes make worse) spelling.  I would do minilesson after minilesson on giving constructive feedback.  That resulted in "Good job on your writing, but be careful of your spelling".  Not really what I was looking for.

Revision simply means to them that they copy the work over neatly (and correct some spelling).  Even when I suggest changes, they don't show up in the next draft.

In our weekly planning meeting, the other ELA teacher in my school and I were talking about this problem.  We came up with a system that we are going to try out to hopefully help students with this peer review - revision conundrum.

The cycle of lessons is going to start off with a minilesson on a writing topic we feel they need to work on.  This week, I'm doing adding details to your writing.  We are going to look at why authors use details in writing and what they do for us as readers - they add interesting language, clarify/specify statements, give information, and/or give examples.  The next lesson is going to have students exchange drafts of their papers - they will underline where the writer has used good details and star those places they want to have more details and explain why they (the readers) want more details.  The writer will get his paper back and use the reader's comments to come up with details to add to the paper.

As I write this, I guess it is not that revolutionary.  It kind of is to me, though.  I think I've been trying to model the peer reviews - revision process in my classroom after fiction writing workshops I've taken.  In those situations, the students have a lot more leeway in what they comment on.  Giving that kind of leeway to my students is a nightmare.  Even when I asked more pointed questions, it didn't always translate.

Revision is one of the hardest things to teach.  Students often approach writing as if they have written something in stone.  It was so much work for them that they can't fathom having to go back and change it.  Or, you have those students who, for whatever reason, say "My paper is perfect.  I don't want to change anything."

Perhaps this method of very specific reviews and revisions will help students get over the hump with these very important skills.

"What is a city?" Collages

Here are some of the collages my students created during the "What is a city?" Inquiry Project.

"What is a City?" Inquiry Project

The first week at my new school was tiring, but great.  I really enjoyed how the week played out and meeting my new students.  I only met one class - I'll meet the rest this week.

The class I met is kind of a mashup between a homeroom, advisory, and interdisplinary project class.  This week, our project centered around the question "What is a city?"  We choose this because our larger essential question for the whole year's worth of inquiry projects is "How and why do cities form, change, and persist?"

The first step was for students to brainstorm all their associations with the word and concept of a city.  When they started to get dried up with ideas, we pushed them to use their senses.  We came up with a list of 50 plus associations the students had.

The next day we did 'fieldwork' exploring parts of Brooklyn.  We stopped in three different locations on our walk in Brooklyn - the first was very residential with lots of brownstones, the second was a little more commercial with a bunch of small stores, and the last was in downtown Brooklyn.  At each stop, students had a handout with their brainstorm from the previous day.  They checked off everything they saw at each stop.  When we got back to class that day, students used their list to come up with their own personal 'Top 5' features of a city.  We then tallied all their personal 'Top 5' lists to make a class 'Top 5' (which consisted of apartment buildings, people, public transportation, traffic, and businesses).  For homework that night, students found images and artifacts that represented their personal list.

Students used those images and artifacts to create collages that answered the question "What is a city?"  I talked with them about making a collage and using non-traditional images and scenes.  I told them to play with size and shape, so that they just didn't slap their images on with glue, but arranged them with thoughtfulness.  For homework that night, they wrote about their process creating the collage.

Some of the collages were amazing.  I didn't get photos of those, but will do so this week and post the really excellent ones.  Students made great observations about their walk (The more people there were in an area, the bigger everything was - buildings, streets, sidewalks - in order to account for the space required for all those people).

This upcoming week, in addition to meeting my ELA classes, my inquiry class will be examining our larger essential question and coming up with ideas on how to approach the questions.

A couple of links

RedKudu has a great link to some resources to TEACH about plagarism and not just FORBID it (I'm still upset about the post below!).  I think this is a great idea; I'm often of the opinion that students plagarize, not because they are lazy (see a couple of posts down!), but because they don't know exactly what the heck we are talking about.  This would be a good unit at the beginning of the year for all content areas.

RedKudu also pointed to this funny post at a school yard blog.  Does this mean ASYB is back?  I do hope so -- I miss her a lot.  (Hint, hint, hint.)

Writing lessons worth learning

Nancy at Se Hace Camino Al Andar is writing about her experiences at the Teacher College's Reading and Writing Project's Summer Writing Institute.  As usual, she has some great thoughts and has taken useful pictures of her experience.

What I commented on her blog was that the most important point I see in what she's written is the idea that we are teaching the writer, not the piece of writing.  See the post for my complete comments.

Something else that I thought about her post, but did not comment on was the relationship between what TC is probably training people on and how the NYC Department of Education mandates it be put into practice.  The keyword there is 'mandate' - which goes completely against the main philosophy behind the TC approach.  Since I'm not in the training, I can't say if there is a big discrepancy, but I'd put big money on there being one.

Teachers Teaching Teachers Webcast: Last Day of School

The gang at Teachers Teaching Teachers is having another webcast tonight, Wednesday, June 29, 2006.  I'm going to try to take a listen and see what it's all about - maybe I'll even blog about it in real time!.

Fair Share Curriculum

The Teachers Network Leadership Institute MetLife Fellows worked together this year to write a K-12 curriculum for teachers to use to help students learn about the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit .  This lawsuit (and all the court decisions associated with it) is poised to give New York City public schools an equal share of the New York State education budget.  Read more about the lawsuit on Wikipedia.

For years - decades, really - the archaic budget formula has short changed NYC schools.  The most funded schools are those schools from wealthier districts.  The least funded - the poorest, including New York City.  The CFE lawsuit aimed at ending that inequality.

This curriculum is meant to help students understand the lawsuit and the inequalities their schools face.  It was made by teachers, for teachers.  You can see it all right here.

To learn more about the issues, you can also visit the Alliance for Quality Education.

NYC Writing Project Teacher to Teacher Conferece: Using Graphic Organizers in the Classroom

On Saturday, May 6, I attended the New York City Writing Project's 8th Annual Teacher to Teacher Conference.  It was a great experience, so this week I will be sharing some of the highlights.

I presented a workshop called "Using graphic organizers to improve reading comprehension and retention in the secondary classroom".  What I had hoped to get across was that graphic organizers are an easy tool to use with students, but we aren't always using them in the right way.

There are a lot of graphic organizers on the web and they are easy to just print out and assign.  Teachers like them because they are easy and students like them because they can be "filled out" (what a sense of accomplishment!).  But, they are boxes and teachers should be wary of boxes.  Here are some reasons we should be wary:

1. They don't push the students' critical thinking.  Giving students a ready-made graphic organizer does a large part of the work for them.  Take this "Step-by-Step" chart I found pretty quickly on the Internet.  There are five steps on this chart.  Let's say you gave this to students in a science class asking them to determine the steps in a certain biological process.  You've given a lot of information already - the number of steps.  Wouldn't it push them a little more to not give them that information.
2. They limit thoughts and responses.  Take this "Problem-Solution" chart I found on the same site.  For every problem there is only one solution?  That doesn't seem to really give students the opportunities to think and brainstorm.  My students would come up with the most obvious solution to a problem and since when was the most obvious solution the best?
3. They represent ideas in one graphical manner, which may not make sense to everyone. In my workshop, I did a lesson on making a timeline from scratch.  Several people in the workshop did a horizontal time line and others did a vertical.  It may not mean a lot to us as literacy-competent adults, but forcing an underachieving student to do a vertical timeline when a horizontal timeline makes more sense could make a big difference.  Different people interpret graphics differently.  What makes sense to me visually, doesn't necessarily make visual sense to you.

This leads me to the solution to this problem.  I am not saying that we should not use graphic organizers in the classroom.  In fact, I think we should - but we should do it with flexibility and intelligence.  Printing out ready-made graphic organizers and giving them to students to fill out may produce a nice result, but it doesn't make sense in terms of the process.

What I advocate for is teaching students how graphic organizers are made and teaching them to make them on their own.  I started on this experiment because students were having a lot of trouble reading their textbooks (which are written above grade level and my students read below grade level).  I felt that using a graphic organizer would help them process the information better, but their teachers would not give out organizers.  I wanted to teach them how to read something and figure out how to best graphically represent the information.

Just giving them blank graphic organizers to fill out isn't going to teach them how to figure out what type of graphic organizer to use for a particular text.  We have to teach students about different graphic organizers, what kinds of texts to use them for, and how to draw them to suit the text.  This is a lot more than just filling out a chart.  It is recognizing text structures and forms.  It is evaluating the best way to represent information - which helps students process the information.

In trying to do this, I realized that it was a lot harder than it seems.  Students were good at "filling out" but they didn't understand the relationships in the text.  I learned that the "fill-it-out" graphic organizers were masking the fact that students did not understand what they were reading.

That's me presenting in the photo, which was taken by NaniRolls.

NYC Writing Project Teacher to Teacher Conference: Using Flickr in the Classroom

On Saturday May 6, I attended the NYC Writing Project Teacher to Teacher Conference at Lehman College.  As with anything I've experienced done by the NYCWP, it was one of the most valuable teacher experiences.  I came away inspired and with a lot of ideas.  For the next few days, I'll be posting about the conference and what I learned.

In the morning, I attended a workshop done by Nancy (from Se Hace Camino Al Andar) and Ken on using Flickr in the writing classroom.  You can see the NYCWP group on Flickr here.  Students can take and use their own photos, but they can also use other people's photos to write about.  You can add notes directly onto photo, as well as write comments.  Another possibility is the photographer adding writing to their own photographs almost like a caption. 

We looked at a lot of photographs.  I particularly liked this photo from one of the NYCWP Walkabouts.  The sense of motion - leaving something behind- is very strong with me.  I would love to use this in a classroom and have students write about what happened to lead up to this photo.  What are they walking away from?  What are each of them thinking about?  Students could put their writing as comments and then have a class discussion comparing their accounts.

There is also a group on Flickr that I discovered yesterday for telling a story in five frames or less.  Some of the "stories" are very interesting.  It would be a great exercise for teaching plot.

Personally, I prefer 23 for photosharing.  I think the interface is much more visually appealing and user-friendly - and you can do all the same things as on Flickr.

Photo by NaniRolls