Tim Fredrick's ELA Teaching Blog

Lies ELA Teachers Tell Themselves - #1: "Correcting student errors teaches them better usage."

This really is one of my biggest pet peeves about ELA teaching - over-correcting student writing mistakes.  What do I mean by "over-correcting"?  Let me back up a bit and describe how I avoid over-correcting.

When dealing with usage problems (and this includes punctuation, grammar, mechanics, etc), it is important to deal with one problem at a time and spend a lot of time on it.  I'll spend a month or more helping students with one problem (not every lesson or for a whole period, mind you).  A big one for my students - one that usually takes more than a month - is subject verb agreement (SVA).  At the beginning of the year, I'll cover basic SVA.  Students will practice in groups, those who have the down helping those who don't.  After spending a few lessons doing group work, I'll move students into individual work.  Now, on writing assignments, I only correct SVA errors as that is the only problem we have dealt with as a class.  I don't correct run-ons and fragments even though my students have problems with those.  When I conference with students about their formal writing assignments and they have SVA errors, I will spend some time in the conference focusing on those errors.  If in a final draft of a paper the student has those errors, I will mark the error with a reiteration of why I'm marking it.  This process may take a month or more in order to really focus on SVA.

The next step, after I feel that we've spent enough class time on SVA (again, usually a month or more - not all lessons during that month - just here and there as needed, once or twice a week mini-lessons), I'll move on to run-ons and fragments.  The process is repeated with group work then individual work and then in conferences.  The difference is that now I'm helping students in conferences and in my written comments with two skills: SVA and run-ons/fragments.  Even if I see loads of comma errors, I don't mention them or mark them.  I put them in the back of my mind for later areas of study.

This represents teaching and learning about mechanics that is focused and effective.  Why?  When students reach the secondary level, we can assume two things.  First, they've probably received grammar instruction before (no, you aren't the first teacher to notice they have grammar problems).  Second, many of their errors are so ingrained in how they use language that one mini-lesson or mark on a paper is not going to do the trick in reprogramming their brain and how it understands the use of language.  At this point, they've been making the mistake so much that it looks and sounds correct to them.  This will take time and focus to switch. 

In addition, I don't correct errors that we haven't discussed in class.  Yes, I can assume that students have had grammar instruction before, but I don't always know the topics that were covered or whether this grammar instruction was good.  In the best of scenarios, I would be able to ask the teachers who had the students before me what they covered and how, but we in education are used to not having the best of scenarios.

Actually, let me highlight something ... I don't even correct errors on papers.  I mark them.  There's a difference.  Correcting is when you put the 'correct' answer on the student's paper; marking is when you mark that they made a mistake but do not give them the 'correct' answer. 

There is this distinction (and this gets me back to my original point) because correcting student mistakes is not instruction.  Correcting their mistakes is editing, and if that is what you enjoy you should have gotten into book publishing.  We are teachers and our job is to teach students how to use the English language.  Correcting mistakes on their paper - and worse, over-correcting every single mistake we can find whether or not we have covered it in depth in class or not - is not teaching.  If you correct errors on their papers on a first draft, they will go back and fix them on their computer mindlessly.  They then turn in a paper that is 'perfect,' and you feel good about yourself.  But, did they learn?  Some would argue, yes they did.  So, how?  Osmosis?  They learned just because they fixed the mistake?  If that is learning, then they would never make that mistake again.  How many times have you corrected an error on a student paper and that student makes the same exact mistake over and over?  (Now, there are situations in which the student made a silly error and you 'caught' it.  The student really knows what to do but was just a bit careless.  There, your problem is not grammar knowledge it is proofreading skills.  That's different.)

I heard a teacher at the end of last year say, "I'm sick of fixing all their mistakes.  After twenty, I'm going to stop."  I laughed to myself because everyone is so impressed with how well her students write, when in fact her students write so well because they have an incredible editor - her!  We are not editors; we are teachers.  We need to be focused with our instruction on mechanics.  One topic at a time for a significant period (when I say significant period, I mean that we take 20 minutes once or twice a week for a month or more if needed - not every day all day for weeks on end) and work with students on conferences to explore their errors.  Marks on a paper are not instruction.  Teacher-student interaction - either whole group, small group, or individually - is instruction. 

Focus on grammar instruction, not correcting mistakes on paper.

Lies ELA Teachers Tell Themselves - #2: "In order to get students to a certain reading level they have to read books at that level"

Let me clarify this lie a little bit (it was a hard one to put into words, but hopefully one you'll recognize ... but not because you believe it).  There are many who believe that if you want a high schooler's reading level to be high enough to read, oh let's say, The Scarlett Letter that you should just have him read The Scarlett Letter even if his reading level isn't quite there yet.  The argument goes, how else can you get him to that level?

Uh ...

I never know what to say to these people because I can't quite fathom how one believes this.  Let's put reading levels on a scale of 1 to 10.  Hawthorne's classic is at 10.  Now, let's put students on that scale.  Certainly, those students who are at 10 can handle this book and probably those students at 9.  With a lot of support and a lot of intrinsic motivation, a student at 8 could probably handle the book.  Really, though, that's about as far as I would go.  Yet, there are those people who believe that a student at a 6 should read a book at a 10 so that they eventually get to 10.

There's nothing wrong with wanting students to get to a 10.  It is important to have high, long-term expectations of students.  But, it is also important not to have immediate expectations of students to be so high that it is frustrating.  This is where many teachers get tripped up.  We all want to have high expectations of students - therefore having them read a book at a 10 is a high expectation of a student at a 6 or 7.  That expectation would be too high for the student in their immediate context.  Down the road, we want them to be at a 10, but there's effective ways to get there and ineffective ways to get there.

Eventually, we want those students at the lower end of the spectrum to get to the higher level of the spectrum, but we don't get them there by shoving books at them that they can't comprehend.  This is what you will see if this is your approach: students get frustrated and feel stupid.  So, they give up.  They don't do the reading, they fail "quizzes" (I hate even writing that word), and they turn in papers that are basically reiterations of what they've heard (but not understood) in class.

It is not low expectations to give a student who is at a 6 a book that is at a 6 or a 7.  It recognizes good principles of teaching and learning.  Once the student who is at a 6 has read enough books at the 7 level to be a 7, you then start giving the student books at a 8 level and so on and so forth until the student gets to a 10.  This process may take years, but that's what real learning is and you got the kid there.  Giving students books at frustration level only gets the student frustrated and angry - this is where we see behavior problems and dropping out.

The tricky part comes in when you realize that you have students in your classroom who are all over the scale.  I've written before about why we should avoid teaching whole class novels and move towards independent reading and literature circles [read the comments on that post for a commenter's rationale for giving students books at frustration level]. These techniques allow you to differentiate instruction and give books to students that are at an appropriate level - one that moves them forward and improves their reading skills - rather than give them one-size-fits-all books that further frustrates and alienates students.

I'm not saying it is bad to want to get students to a 10.  It should be our goal.  But, there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to do so.  Giving them books at a 10 and hoping their reading level will magically improve is detrimental to the original goal.  Helping students move along the scale at appropriate intervals is sound teaching practice.

Lies ELA Teachers Tell Themselves - #3: "Teaching to the standards is good teaching"

You've seen that teacher (perhaps you are one) or that school (perhaps you are in one - I was in one for my student teaching placement) ... the one where the standards are posted in the classroom for everyone to see and they are ticked off during the year like a shopping list to Costco.

There's nothing wrong with standards, per se, but I think we also need to recognize what they are and how they were developed.  Standards are political documents created by committees that may or may not have included a sufficient number of educators.  Whenever I've worked with a large group of people and had to get multiple people to approve the document (and those people had little experience and/or screwed up priorities), the document we're working on is never quite right.  There are a lot of compromises to be made and so a lot of stuff gets left out.

Herein lies the problem I have with standards ... they leave a lot of stuff out.  Do we really want our students' educations to be controlled by people who had to negotiate their education without ever having met them.  I say that teaching to the standards is not good teaching, because it ignores the most important people in education - the students and the teachers!  It is the teacher's job to decide what is the most appropriate goals for individual students.  The standards offer an end point, but those of us in education have had students who are nowhere near that end point.  What about them?  What does success look like for them?  Holding them up to the giant check list on the wall will only set them up for failure.

I have no problem with trying to decide what our students should be able to do, but these decisions should be made my teachers, students, parents, and the community the school exists in ... not by bureaucrats, state level administrators, and politicians - people who don't deal with the day-to-day life of education in the classroom.  I'm sure all of these standards documents were run past teachers and teachers were consulted, but they were not the sole creators.

Why?  Because teachers are not trusted to do their jobs.  That's the whole premise behind standards.  We are not professional enough and intelligent enough to be able to set appropriate goals for our students.

Like I said, there's nothing wrong with the standards per se.  Okay ... wait ... in the NYC standards there are two issues I'd like to deal with.  First, is the standard where students need to read 25 books (or book-length material) per year.  This is ubsurd.  Partly, because many schools and teacher take this to mean that it is 25 books per year regardless of all the other reading a student may do.  That amounts to 1 book every 2 weeks during the calendar year.  That's CALENDAR year, not school year.  If it was school year, it would be 25 books in about 40 weeks.  Ridiculous.  But, some schools (including the one where I student taught) has a checklist for the students and by June, they better have read 25 books ... that doesn't mean they've read them well, enjoyed them, or read books that were anywhere near the appropriate level.  If we take the standard to include text book reading and other types of reading during the year, how exactly do you guage how much of a text book is a book? Vagueness.  This is at the heart of standards.

The other problem I have with the NYC Standards is that it focuses on forms of writing, instead of writing skills.  Sure, deep down in those standards about which forms of writing students would be able to do, the standards address the deeper writing skills.  But, still many schools implement the standards by just checking off that students have completed the required writing assignments, instead of learning the appropriate skills.

Well, some might say, this is not the problem with standards, it is the problem of the schools implementing the standards.  Okay, I might say, you have a point.  But, when standards are vague and inappropriately written, the writer needs to take some responsibility.  If standards were created locally - by district, or even better school, or even more better by classrooms with teachers and students and parents collaborating - there would be no confusion.  Everyone would know what they mean.

Standards set out on the right path, but what they wind up creating is mindless teaching ... teaching by checking off the standards as one goes.  It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy ... teachers can't teach and don't know what they are doing, so we create standards to guide them, so teacher mindlessly follow the simple path created for them.

My point here is that I want teachers to start trusting themselves again.  For little Johnny in the back row who is never going to read 25 books in a year, let's consider success three books.  Let's write less essays per year and really work on revision, instead of racing through every essay on the list just so we get them done.  Don't look to a list of standards created by someone who has never set foot into your classroom before you look at the students sitting in front of you.  Don't ignore the standards completely; use them as a guide, but trust your professional sense.  Do what's right for your students before you do what's write for the politicians.

Lies ELA Teachers Tell Themselves - #4: "Sometimes you just have to teach to the test."

I'm so guilty of this lie!  I'm convinced that the last two tasks on the New York State ELA Exam students take in the 11th grade are so peculiar to the exam, you have no other choice but to teach to the test.

But, deep down, I know this is not true.  I know if I teach my students to be good readers and writers, they should do well on either of those tasks.  Just because the format is peculiar doesn't mean the skills are.  They still need to be able to determine the audience and purpose for what they write.  They still need to be able to organize their thoughts in a coherent fashion and communicate those thoughts in a manner appropriate to their audience.  If they can do this (among other things, of course), they should have no problem. 

We focus so much on the types of writing that we want students to do (especially taking into consideration the forms of writing tested on state exams) that we ignore the basic writing skills that should apply to any form - whether it is on the test or not.  Good teaching is good teaching and teaching to the test - no matter how much we think it is necessary - is not good teaching.  We need to push ourselves and do our jobs - we need to find ways to teach these skills and not bore our students to death with endless test prep.

A colleague of mine last year who will be teaching 11th grade (and supposedly preparing kids for the exam) said she was going to start on the first day and just drill that test into them until they took it in January.  Oh boy, I thought to myself.  I can't imagine anything worse.  But, I admit that I wasn't stepping up to volunteer to teach the class, so I kept that little thought to myself.  The reason I don't volunteer for that assignment (and I had been asked by many people on the staff to do so) is that I couldn't bring myself to teach to the test, but I was unsure in my own teaching skills that I could teach the skills for the test in an interesting fashion and get the kids to pass.  It's a challenge I'm just not ready for and a gamble I'm not willing to make.

It is difficult.  It really is.  And with such pressure put on us and the students about these tests - our jobs and their graduation are on the line - I don't blame anyone for saying that sometimes you have to teach to the test.  The underlying problem is not the teachers or students, it is the people who design and require these tests in the first place.  By making the tests the end all and be all of education, we are lowering standards of teaching and learning.  The end result will be adults who can do really well on tests, but are not prepared for the real world of solving problems, comprehending real texts that don't have multiple choice questions at the end, or writing to suit the audience and purpose, not some silly form of writing invented by a test maker.

While I sympathize with the people who speak this lie and admit to uttering it myself, we must all recognize that it is a lie.  We cannot let our children become victims of the current political trends and lower our standards of teaching and learning.  And, because doing real teaching and learning and preparing students for tests are sometimes at odds, we need to stick together and work together to create curriculum that is interesting and will truly help our student - not just pass a test, but to succeed in life.   Students learn what we teach them and if we only teach to the test, we are setting our students up for failure in the world after tests.

Five Lies ELA Teachers Tell Themselves - #5: "Students are just lazy!"

This is something I hear quite often and it really gets under my skin.  What's worse is that many students have heard this so much about themselves, that they start to believe it.  So, what's so bad about this? 

First, it is not true.  There are rarely ever truly lazy students.  There are students who can't find ways to motivate themselves in your class or in school in general, but that doesn't mean they are lazy.  Many of those students who we have labeled "lazy" are not lazy at all when they see the point of an activity.  I have many boys who spend hours and hours after school playing basketball.  Certainly, they are not lazy.  But, they have had success with basketball, so they will continue to do it.

Second, the "lazy" label masks a much more difficult problem underneathe.  Let's start off with the success issue described above.  If you spend years doing something over and over again and failing at it, eventually you give up.  In secondary education, we typically get the student right after or as they are giving up.  So, what appears to be "lazy" is really just a cry for help.  Why should they do anything in the classroom when all they do is fail all the time?  One of the secrets of the best teachers out there is in order to help underachieving students, you must make them feel successful.  Make a big deal about little steps.  For many of these students, coming to school is a big step.  No, just showing up isn't the last step, but it can be a great first step.  And, we must recognize it as an important first step towards the larger goal.  Too many times, teachers focus on the larger goal, which for many students is too far away. 

If the student has had success in school but still appears lazy, then the problem might be emotional.  I've found that many of my students are severely depressed and this is what holds them back from achieving in school.  Do you remember what it was like to be a teenager?  It sucked!  What appears minor to us adults is a catastrophe to teenagers.  We must never forget that we are dealing with human beings who are struggling to identify themselves in the midst of uncontrollable bodies and hormones.  Add onto that, the fact that many of our underachieving students struggle with poverty or unsupportive family lives and you have a very depressing mix.

Third, the label of "lazy" very easily becomes an identity.  Remember that teenagers are trying to form an identity and if all the adults in their lives are telling them they are lazy, then they start to see themselves as that.  And, when you've discovered an identity, it is very difficult to change. 

What can we do instead?  We can find out the underlying problem.  If the student has given up on school, we need to make her feel successful in our classroom.  Small steps to a larger goal are extremely important.  Once a student begins to feel success in your classroom, there is a genuine snowball effect.  If the student is depressed, we need to get her help.  There should be medical and pyschological personnel in every single school in this country (if students aren't healthy physically or mentally, how can they learn?).  If it is neither of those things, we need to look at our curriculum.  We need to find ways to help students motivate themselves.  Notice I didn't say that we need to motivate them.  It is possible, but what has the student learned if we motivate them?  Dealing with difficult or boring tasks is a part of life and we all must learn to deal with them productively.  Now ... don't go using this as an excuse to continue churning out boring curriculum.  But, I've found that even when I push myself to my creative limit and come up with the most interesting curriculum I can muster, there is still one kid who's bored.  We cannot put blame on this one kid and call him lazy, we must help him!

"Lazy" is a dangerous label and has long term effects.  It is one thing to call a kid "lazy" behind their backs; it's ethically and morally outrageous to call a kid "lazy" to his face.

The return of the Lies Teachers Tell

Looking through my archive, I realized that I never completed the Lies ELA Teachers Tell series I started a while ago.  I wrote about the five lies we tell our students, but I had a whole list of lies we tell ourselves and each other.  Since the first series had gotten so much attention, I've decided to finish what I started.

All next week, come back here to read the 5 Lies ELA Teachers Tell Themselves (and Each Other).

In the meantime, catch up of the 5 Lies ELA Teachers Tell Their Students and some of the responses those posts got (if you know of other responses written on other blogs, please let me know.  These are the only ones I could find.)

"The Five Paragraph Essay is a good form of writing."

(I still regret writing that the five paragraph form could make good scaffolding.  People really latch onto the rationalization for teaching this dinosaur.  I never should have said that.  Why?  Because, teachers rarely ever take the scaffolding away.  They think that a more sophisticated form of writing will just magically appear.  If you are using something as a form of scaffolding, then you need to teach the more complex skills.  Period.  So, just skip the ugly behometh and teach the more complex skills.  I've never, ever taught the five paragraph form of writing, and my students write wonderfully.  Teach them what paragraphs really are - see below.  Teach them organization and beginnings, middles, and ends.  Then you don't need the 5 paragraph form. I retract my previous statement.  Death to the 5 Paragraph Essay!)

The 5 Paragraph Blog

"You have to learn the rules before you can break them."

"There are 5-7 sentences in a paragraph."

Are We Telling Lies?

Lies, Lies, and More Lies

"This book is VERY important to read."

(This post remains one of my favorite to this very day.  Some people's reactions were priceless.  You would have thought I killed Shakespeare and Dickens myself!)

Of Teachers and Authority

Children Need Tour Guides

People are the Curriculum

The Silver Chair in the Classroom

Lies Teachers Tell?

"Sound it out"

Finally, the Carnival

Five Lies We Tell Our Students - #1: "The Five Paragraph Essay is a good form of writing"

In the first series under Lies ELA Teachers Tell, I will discuss the top five lies we tell our students.  As with everything we do as teachers, we are well-meaning with these lies.  But, in the long-term, these lies hurt our students.  I will discuss the lie, what we really mean when we tell the lie, and how we can achieve the same objective. 

Okay, so we never actually say this lie, but we do imply it by teaching this format over and over and over again.  As with all the other lies, we are well-intended.  We want our students to learn how to structure essays.  There's nothing wrong with that.  But there are lots of things wrong with this particular form of writing.

First, the five paragraph essay occurs in no other place other than school.  I've never had to write the five paragraph essay business letter.  Have you?  I can't think of one type of writing I've done outside of being required to write in this form where I had to write in this form.  And this is the danger.

Second, the five paragraph essay is an easy form of writing.  So easy, in fact, that teachers and students never break free from it.  I'd be okay if we taught this type of essay once so that students got the basic idea (everything you write needs a beginning, middle, and end, plus you need to expand upon each of your points) and then moved on.  As a scaffolding tool, it's okay (I'm compromising by even going that far).  But, teachers use it as an real-world form of writing when it is not.

I've even seen teachers tell students to use the form of writing on a standardized test when it makes no sense to write five paragraphs.  For example, I saw a teacher advise her students to use if for a compare/contrast essay.  The first paragraph was the introduction, the second was comparing the two things, the third was contrasting, the fourth was some weird thing that had NOTHING to do with comparing and contrasting, and the fifth was the conclusion.  It would make more sense in that case to do four paragraphs, would it not?

Third, by emphasizing this form over and over and over again, it is the only form that students learn how to write.  And it is a form that has its limitations.  It may be appropriate for middle school and the level of development we expect from middle schoolers, but it borders on basic for high schoolers.  What's worse is that when students get to college, they are still writing in five paragraph format.  I've taught college freshman - and it is not good for a college freshman to be writing in five paragraphs.  They do it because we never taught them how to do it right.

In addition to teaching students that every piece of writing has a beginning, middle, and end, we should be teaching students to look at the purpose and audience of the piece of writing, consider the content they wish to include, and then choose a format.  I tell my 9th graders that before they write, they should look at their brainstorming, think about what they want to include, decide how many paragraphs that will require, and then write a quick outline.  Some write in 4 paragraphs, others in 5, but more and more I see my students in writing in 6, 7, 8, 9, and more paragraphs - getting deeper and deeper into their ideas. 

The five paragraph essay is a box - an easy box.  It's an easy box to write and it's an easy box to grade.  But, it is a box nonetheless from which we must break free.   

Five Lies We Tell Our Students - #2: "You have to learn the rules before you can break them."

In the first series under Lies ELA Teachers Tell, I will discuss the top five lies we tell our students.  As with everything we do as teachers, we are well-meaning with these lies.  But, in the long-term, these lies hurt our students.  I will discuss the lie, what we really mean when we tell the lie, and how we can achieve the same objective. 

Rules are meant to be broken.  Some of the best literature out there (I would say most of it) breaks some sort of rule.

This lie makes me most upset when teacher use it, but NEVER teach their students to break the rules.  When are the students ever going to know the rules enough that we deem it appropriate to show them how to break the rules?  Never, usually.

Why should we be teaching students "the rules" and how to break them at the same time?  Because we want our students to use language, not be used by language.  I'm not saying that we shouldn't teach the rules (I can just read the comments to come!).  We should teach the rules, but at the same time we need to teach students that these rules can be broken for different effects.

Students need to know when it is okay to be innovative with language and when it is not okay to break the rules.  In some situations it is of vital importance for students to play by the rules.  But, not always.

Is it okay to have something a student writes to be one huge run-on sentence?  It depends on the purpose and audience of the piece of writing.  For an argumentative essay on a standardized test, no.  In a story where the author is trying to convey a rushed tone, yes.  We need to teach students how to use language like this - appropriately.

I've already reviewed a great book on this topic - The Power of Grammar.  It gives practical ways to teach both the rules and breaking them.

Next time: Lie #1 We Tell Our Students ... "The five paragraph essay is a good form of writing."

Five Lies We Tell Our Students - #3: "There are 5-7 sentences in a paragraph"

In the first series under Lies ELA Teachers Tell, I will discuss the top five lies we tell our students.  As with everything we do as teachers, we are well-meaning with these lies.  But, in the long-term, these lies hurt our students.  I will discuss the lie, what we really mean when we tell the lie, and how we can achieve the same objective. 

I've written on this topic before, but it definitely warrants being covered again.  This is one of the most egregious lies ELA teachers tell.

We tell this lie because we want students to write in-depth - we want them to write more.  In my observations, students simply repeat themselves over and over again until they get to five sentences.  This has been confirmed for me in my students' current portfolio presentations when they say as much.

Of course, we want our students to be going more in depth with their paragraphs, but all they hear is the number of sentences they should have.  So, what to do?  Teach students to use brainstorming to make their thoughts more in depth.  I've noticed this semester with my own teaching, that I only urge students to use brainstorming at the beginning of the writing process.  It is a useful activity throughout the writing process (which is not as linear as we teach it).  I plan on having my students write a first draft and then select parts of it which they feel are weak and brainstorming further.

In my previous post, I also describe how I teach paragraphs and the activity I use.

Next time: Lie #2 We Tell Our Students ... "You have to learn the rules before you can break them."

Five lies we tell our students - #4: "This book is VERY important to read!"

In the first series under Lies ELA Teachers Tell, I will discuss the top five lies we tell our students.  As with everything we do as teachers, we are well-meaning with these lies.  But, in the long-term, these lies hurt our students.  I will discuss the lie, what we really mean when we tell the lie, and how we can achieve the same objective.

Why do we tell this lie?  How did we become so arrogant as to think we had the right to say which books were important to read and which aren't? 

I'm not sure how this became such a common lie, and no doubt there will be some who disagree with me.  You can see the comments to the post about why whole-class, teacher-selected books don't work for other's thoughts as well as mine.  Let's for a minute forget the cultural capital argument of reading some books over others, however valid of an argument it might be.

What disturbs me most is that when we say this, we take a little power away from students AND hurt their critical thinking.  Shouldn't they decide what's important and why?  That can be empowering, as well as exercise the critical thinking muscle of evaluating.  They would have to be able to justify their reasons for thinking a book is important and we can share how other people define "important".  Students can further evaluate others' criteria for "importance".  How many perfectly good lessons surrounding this are thrown away when we decide what's important?

Too often, though, we take that power away.

Next time: Lie #3 We Tell Our Students ... "A paragraph contains 3-5 sentences."