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!)

Assessment, A Primer

Assessment is a vital step it the education process.  Without it, we do not know where our students "are" in terms of their skills and knowledge.  If we don't know where they are, we cannot adequately help them to take the next step up in skills and knowledge.  We must assess in order to teach.

I'm not talking about standardized tests.  Those are not assessments in my mind.  Those are evaluation tools meant to look back at student performance.  Assessment goes beyond that.  Assessment tells us what to do next.  District level administrators and politicians can tell us that standardized tests can do the same thing, but those of us who are student-contact educators know that is not their primary purpose.

When I write about assessment, I'm referring to all those things that teachers do when we look at students and their work.  Assessment is the million little things we notice in student behavior.  It is the piles of paperwork we go through.  It is the assignments we give and the questions we ask.

Many of the student teachers I work with in my student teaching seminar think that assessment needs to be "objective".  I tell them that this is not the case.  Assessment will never be objective and it shouldn't be.  We are making informed, professional judgments about student work.  It is in its very nature subjective. 

While assessment is not objective, it does need to be made by experts in the subject matter.  Assessment of a student needs to be made my a trained professional who knows the students.  A consultant coming in for 30 minutes cannot properly assess a student.  Assessment is a combination of all those millions things I discussed above.  It is cumulative and ongoing.

Assessment also needs to be fair and transparent to the student.  We MUST tell students how they are being judged and what they are expected to do.  We often leave this step out, but it is the only fair thing to do for students.  One way we can do this is to show students models of work - these models can be teacher-created or, ideally, past examples of real students' work.

Most importantly, a teacher must have a clear idea in his mind what success on a certain task means.  Too often, ELA teachers look at student work without any kind of focus.  All we notice is what a student is doing wrong.  Many times, we don't even connect our assessment with our instruction.  For example, taking points off for grammar mistakes that we have not taught is unfair and counterproductive.  Focus is what is vital in assessment.  We must focus on assessing those things we have given instruction on.  When we teach a set of skills and give a writing assignment, it behooves us to assess that writing assignment for only those skills.  This allows us to recognize student achievement and to identify areas where students need further instruction.  What is not taught, cannot be assessed.

Giving students a chance to reflect on their writing process

Nancy from Se Hace Camino Al Andar/Up the Down Staircase has a nice lesson on her wiki for getting students to reflect on their writing process.  Reflection is something I'm very interested in lately.  Thanks, Nancy.

Portfolo Assessment: Reflective Utterances

In my last post, I detailed the types of non-reflective utterances my students made while presenting their portfolios to me last month. This post is all about the types of reflective utterances they made.

1. Process – Reflective Type - The student reflects on his own personal process in completing the assignment. "This is my character sketch and this was a really difficult assignment for me. I had a lot of trouble starting and thinking about what I wanted my character to be like." This differs from its non-reflective counterpart in that it discusses the student’s own process and the student reflects on the positive and negative experiences he had with the piece of writing.
2. Criterion-Based Assessment – The student compares his work to criteria discussed in      class. "I did well on my character sketch because I was able to show how my character was mean instead of telling the reader he was mean." He may or may not point to evidence in the text; being able to point to specific examples in the text that correspond to the criteria is preferred and considered more reflective.
3. Growth Over Time – The student compares two different pieces of work and shows how one is better by comparing it to a previous piece of work that was not as good. "You can see here that I did better with my freewriting because this first piece of freewriting in September I couldn't write nonstop, but in December you can see that I wrote non-stop for the entire 15 minutes."

Like I said in the last post, all students made non-reflective utterances to some degree. But, the more reflective a student was during the presentation, the more likely he made utterances that corresponded to the above.  

My next step is to develop lesson plans that I can give my students in June in preparation for their second portfolio presentation. Here lies a conundrum – I can teach them to speak more reflectively, but can I make them more reflective learners? In other words, if a student isn’t thinking about his work and what he’s learning to begin with, will he ever be able to speak reflectively? One would assume not.

If that is the case, I can help the emerging reflective learners (I’ll post later about types of reflective learners) talk more reflectively and give words to what they see in their work. But, how do I help the non-reflective learners do the thinking and reflecting in the first place. Is that something you can teach?  

The issue seems related to making students more “student-y” (a word of my own creation). When they are teenagers, can a teacher reverse the pattern of resisting learning and school? What does it take to do so? Surely there is anecdotal evidence to say that we can. I can think of a couple of students who’ve turned it round and became more student-y. But, I have more stories of students who never did that. What conditions have to occur for it to happen and what obstacles are in place against those who never make that transition?

Will a student ever learn to be more reflective when he doesn’t care about school or learning? It seems like a prerequisite. Or, perhaps helping students to do more reflective thinking about their work will help them care more about school and learning.  Perhaps the problem is that they are so detached from any kind of learning that occurs in the class that it’s no surprise they don’t care.  Maybe teaching students to be more reflective and look at their learning can help the resistant students be more engaged in what’s going on.

Portfolio Assessment: Non-Reflective Utterances

This year my action research for Teachers Network Leadership Institute revolves around helping my students become more reflective about their work. My goal is for them to learn how to look at their work and see their own learning and progress.

One way that I’m trying to help my students do this kind of work is through portfolio assessment. Since NYC high schools are run on a semester basis, my students completed portfolios in January and presented them to me in one-on-one conferences. I digitally recorded all of their conferences and analyzed the recordings in order to see what I could learn.

I learned that there is a definite divide between students who can do this reflective thinking and those students who cannot. The divide doesn’t always exist oe the same continuum as grades, though. I found many “high achieving” students unable to speak reflectively about their work; I found many “underachieving” students very much aware of what they were learning and not learning.

After listening to their conferences (over 20 hours worth), I was able to classify their comments about their work into types of non-reflective and reflective utterances. In this post, I will discuss the non-reflective; in the next post, I will share the reflective utterances.

Types of Non-Reflective Utterances Made During Portfolio Presentations

1. Naming – The student gives the "title" of a piece of work. "This is my character sketch. (Turns the page.) This is my freewriting." Naming could appear alone or could be part of another utterance. Students often named work and then had other comments to make about it. If that is the case, then the other comment determines the reflectiveness of the utterance. Much of the time, though, students just named the work and this is non-reflective.
2. Summarizing – The student explains what the assignment is about, but does not mention about what he learned. "This is my character sketch. We made up a character and wrote a story about him."
3. Process – Non-Reflective Type – The student explains the steps of assignment. "This is my character sketch. First, we brainstormed on what kind of character we wanted to      write. Then, we made up a whole bunch of facts about him like his birthday and his favorite color. Then we decided on the important traits about our character..." This is closely related to summarizing, but differs in that the student explains the steps of the assignment as if he were giving directions on how to complete it.
4. Teacher-Centered Assessment - Student cites that he learned something from the work because the teacher marked it as such. "I learned a lot from this piece of work and you can tell because you gave me a good grade."

These non-reflective utterances appeared in all the students’ presentations to some degree. Often, they appear when the student lacks the language to talk about the work. In an attempt to say something about a piece of work when they don’t know what they learned from it, students will use one of these types of utterances.

Students who were very adept at talking reflectively about their work, though, used these utterances sparingly and were able to talk reflectively at length about most of their work. But, many students made solely non-reflective utterances about their work. There were several like this and it was difficult to ascertain whether or not they never thought about what they could learn from doing the work or whether they just couldn’t talk about it. There were a couple from whom I really got the impression that they completed the assignments and never once considered what it was they were supposed to gain from it. They did the work simply to get it done and moved on. Even when questioned further about their work – questions meant to lead them to be more reflective – they looked blankly at me and repeated the same non-reflective utterance or perhaps made another non-reflective utterance. 

This makes me wonder if I can really teach students to be more reflective of their work or just speakmore reflectively.

UPDATE:  See the follow up post about Reflective Utterances ...

 

Portfolio Assessment in the ELA Classroom

This year, I've worked to improve my use of portfolio assessment.  I've always used it, but I was never excited about it or thought that I was doing it well.

I put a lot of thought into it over the summer and set up systems to assist in the portfolios.  I've discussed this earlier this year.

As this is the end of the semester, my students have been working on their portfolios.  The lessons and descriptions of activites are up on the Wiki - the first category of lessons.

So far, the process is going along well.  They seem to enjoy doing the work, but they also consider it a lot of work.  Many of the students are having trouble deciding what work they should include and they keep trying to get me to tell them what to include.  I respond with "You have to decide for yourself and then explain why you chose that piece of work."  They are so used to being assessed that they don't really think that way.  See my previous post on self-assessment for more thoughts.

The first presentations begin tomorrow.  I'm excited to hear what they have to say about their work.  Some seem better than others at this and it is not necessarily those students who do better in class who are better at talking about their work.