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Archives For November 30, 1999

Dear ELA Common Core: English Teachers Should Have More than a Footnote

April 13, 2012 — 7 Comments

The English Language Arts Common Core State Standards (CCSS) wants students to read in every discipline from elementary school through grade 12. The standards demand an increase in the reading of informational texts, the genre formally known as non-fiction. So where is the passage that concludes that English/Language Arts teachers will continue to teach fiction and literary non-fiction while other disciplines increase reading in informational texts? Where is the passage that dispels the notion that English/Language Arts teachers are not required to meet the 70%  required reading of informational texts in their classrooms?  Where is the passage that clarifies where students will read more informational texts across the curriculum by senior year?

Well, the passage is a footnote on page 5:

Footnote: 1 The percentages on the table reflect the sum of student reading, not just reading in ELA settings. Teachers of senior English classes, for example, are not required to devote 70 percent of reading to informational texts. Rather, 70 percent of student reading across the grade should be informational.

Why is an explanation of this magnitude only a footnote? By definition, a footnote is:
1. A note placed at the bottom of a page of a book or manuscript that comments on or cites a reference for a designated part of the text;
2. Something related to but of lesser importance than a larger work or occurrence.

This  footnote on page 5 of the CCSS functions to clarify that English/Language Arts teachers are not responsible for the increase in reading informational texts. Is this footnote, according to the definition,  “Something related to but of lesser importance than a larger work or occurrence”?  Why is this statement not given more importance in an English/Language Arts document? Why is this statement not written in bold? Why is this statement not a separate bullet point in Key Designs Considerations? Why is this statement relegated to be a footnote?

The specific ratio of how much reading students should do in in fiction and informational texts can be found in a chart in the ELA CCSS  taken from the 2009 reading framework of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This chart sets up the progression from an even split between fiction and informational texts in grade 4 to the 30% fiction and 70% informational text ratio expected by grade 12.

Chart with 30% fiction, 70% informational Text ratio

The chart is on the Key Designs Considerations page and addresses the demands to include informational texts because “a great deal of informational reading in grades 6–12 must take place in other classes if the NAEP assessment framework is to be matched instructionally.”

Really?  If the NAEP assessment framework is to be matched? Why “if”? The only way the ratio for 70% informational texts will meet the NAEP assessment framework is “WHEN” there is an increase of informational texts in classes other than English. Additonally, it is highly unlikely that English teachers will teach a reduced percentage of  fiction or literary non-fiction as students move from elementary (Grade 4) to middle (Grade 8) to high school (Grade 12), and there is nothing in the standards that specifies the ratio of fiction to other texts in an English classroom.

So, heads up History/Social Studies, Science and the Technical Areas teachers, the CCSS English/Language Arts Framework is looking at you!

While English/Language Arts teachers are developing curriculum to align with the CCSS, how many of the History/Social Studies, Science and the Technical Areas teachers are informed and cooperating in the incorporation of informational texts?  Are teachers in History/Social Studies, Science and the Technical Areas developing additional reading to their specific curriculum? Hopefully they are, but my sense is that these resources will take time to develop and integrate.

Already, I have heard the argument from teachers in disciplines other than English/Language Arts moaning, “what do I drop out of my course to include reading?” -which could be read as the reason why the authors of the ELA CCSS felt the need to develop reading and writing standards for History, Social Studies, Science and the Technical Areas teachers. A sidebar column in the document explains the need for other disciplines to increase reading:

“Reading is critical to building knowledge in history/social studies as well as in science and technical subjects. College and career ready reading in these fields requires an appreciation of the norms and conventions of each discipline, such as the kinds of evidence used in history and science; an understanding of domain-specific words and phrases; an attention to precise details; and the capacity to evaluate intricate arguments, synthesize complex information, and follow detailed descriptions of events and concepts…Students must be able to read complex informational texts in these fields with independence and confidence because the vast majority of reading in college and workforce training programs will be sophisticated nonfiction (60).”

The last sentence of this section should be in bold: “It is important to note that these Reading standards are meant to complement the specific content demands of the disciplines, not replace them.” 

While the teachers of History, Social Studies, Science and the Technical Areas are on notice to include more informational texts, these standards still fall under the English Language Arts Framework which begs the question, who will be responsible for enforcing these standards? Will the testing of a student’s comprehension of informational texts be assigned to a discipline other than English/Language Arts? Will overall reading scores reflect on an entire school, as it should, or will reading scores reflect on the English/Language Arts departments since the CCSS frameworks are designed under the heading English Language Arts frameworks?

Of course, many English teachers, fearing the removal of fiction and literary non-fiction (essays, memoir, etc), raised their concerns about the demand for informational texts. Responding to these concerns (among others), the  CCSS developed a page on their website titled Myths vs. Facts.
Here, the CCSS attempts to clear the confusion as to what reading will be done in English/Language Arts:

Myth: English teachers will be asked to teach science and social studies reading materials.

Fact: With the Common Core ELA Standards, English teachers will still teach their students literature as well as literary non‐fiction. However, because college and career readiness overwhelmingly focuses on complex texts outside of literature, these standards also ensure students are being prepared to read, write, and research across the curriculum, including in history and science. These goals can be achieved by ensuring that teachers in other disciplines are also focusing on reading and writing to build knowledge within their subject areas.

Unfortunately, the CCSS’s use of footnotes and charts to define the percentages in the increases in informational text reading leaves questions as to which exactly how each discipline will be held responsible.  The CCSS makes the assumption that other disciplines will  incorporate more reading under a English/Language Arts framework. The CCSS states that the English/Language Arts classrooms will not be required to replace their fiction and literary non-fiction with informational texts, but infers that there will be a mechanism “to ensure that teachers in other disciplines are also focusing on reading and writing to build knowledge within their subject areas.” The method of measuring the increase and the results of this increase is yet to be determined.  The process of how reading will be incorporated across the curriculum needs more than an assumption and an inference. For English/Language Arts teachers there is a footnote is where the “devil is in the details”, but only if all other stakeholders in this shift to a Common Core curriculum read that footnote.

In Common Core, Curriculum, Education , , , , , , , , ,
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Justice Scalia, Set a Good Example and Do Your Homework

April 9, 2012 — 8 Comments

Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler was before the Supreme Court arguing on behalf of the Health Care Bill when he stated that the  Supreme Court Justices would need to look at “the structure and the text” of the 2,700-page law. Justice Antonin Scalia cut into his argument asking, “Mr. Kneedler, what happened to the Eighth Amendment?” Scalia asked. “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?” (audio-video link).

Artist rendering of Supreme Court listening to arguments about the Health Care Bill- from the Politico Website

Well, yes. Speaking as a citizen of the United States of America, yes, I do. Speaking as a high school English teacher, I want you, Justice Antonin Scalia, to do your homework. I expect no less from my 17-19 year old students enrolled in my Advanced Placement English Literature class. I want them to read at least 2,700 pages of the world’s great literature because I am trying to prepare them for the rigors of college. I know that reading  great literature is also critical to help prepare my student’s brains for real-life social interaction. Similarly, I want you, Justice Scalia, to read 2,700 pages to make a determination about the real-life Health Care Bill that will effect every citizen.

As I listened to the radio broadcast report of the court session, it was the number of pages, 2,700, that caught my attention.  2,700 pages sounded intimidating at first, but I began to mentally check off the number of books I require my Advanced Placement English Literature high school students to read. I decided to check, and determined that this school year, my students have read:

Hamlet, King Lear, Othello (roughly 80 pages each)=320 pages; The Handmaid’s Tale-312 pages; Beloved-275 pages; Paradise Lost (roughly) 200 pages; The Story of Edgar Sawtell-576 pages; The Grapes of Wrath-464 pages; Frankenstein-256 pages; Medea-50 pages; Antigone-46 pages; A Thousand Acres-384. Total? 2803 pages. A full 103 more pages than the legislation for the Health Care Act! My students will have read more pages than the bill that Justice Scalia or the other Supreme Court Justices would have to read, and that does not count the numerous poems, essays, and short stories they have also read in class. They have read more than 2803 pages for only one of their high school classes.

According to the transcripts, Scalia’s interrogation of Kneedler was interrupted several times by laughter from the gallery. “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?” Scalia interjected, “And do you really expect the court to do that? (*laughter*)  Or do you expect us to — to give this function to our law clerks? (*laughter*) Is this not totally unrealistic? That we are going to go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one?”(*laughter*)

His rhetorical questions were met by comments by Supreme Court Jutice Elana Kagan, who chimed in, “For some people, we look only at the text,” she said. “It should be easy for Justice Scalia’s clerks.”

“I don’t care whether it’s easy for my clerks,” Scalia retorted,  channeling the spirit of the demanding Justice William O. Douglas, “I care whether it’s easy for me.”

The use of the law clerks-the youngest, best and the brightest lawyers-to do the bulk of the reading and preparation for each case is widely understood. In many ways, law clerks are to the Supreme Court Justices what Sparknotes are to students.

Sparknotes are written by top students or recent graduates who specialize in the subjects they cover. According to the SparkNotes website, their “writers approach literature with a passion and an enthusiasm that inspires students and has won over parents and teachers worldwide”,  which means they read the novels, poems, and plays they analyze- every single word. What is interesting about the Scalia-Keegan exchange is that many of the writers for Sparknotes have graduated from Harvard, as has Justice Scalia who received his LL.B. from Harvard Law School where he was a Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University from 1960–1961. Justice Elena Kagan is also a Harvard graduate; she earned  a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1986, and was appointed the 11th dean of Harvard Law School in 2003.

How proud Harvard University must be to have six out of the nine current Justices as graduates. What must Harvard University think, however, when a graduate complains that he does not want to read the very legislation that he will rule on because it is too long.  To heap humiliation onto the the graduates of this prestigious university, Chief Justice Roberts, who also received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1976 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1979,  acknowledged during the proceedings that he had not read the legislation either, “Where is this line?” he asked Kneedler, “I looked through the whole Act, I didn’t read …”Perhaps the graduates of Harvard who have successfully written for Sparknotes, and helped thousands of high school students in their hours of need,  could be called on to help these jurists in their hour of need.

Frankly, the idea that members of the Supreme Court have come to decide the fate of the Health Care bill  without doing the reading is as frustrating to me as when students arrive unprepared for a reading comprehension quiz. School is their job, their grades are how they are paid, so  students are paid for their lack of preparation with a bad grade. What will be the result of Justice Scalia and Justice Roberts’s lack of preparation, and moreover, what examples are they setting?

Students often complain about the reading they have been assigned. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is “hard to read”; John Milton’s Paradise Lost  has “too many footnotes in the poem”; Toni Morrison’s Beloved  is “confusing”. I push on despite the numerous complaints I hear everytime I bring out a text  forcing students to engage in difficult texts because I know each text will eventually hook the reader-Shakespeare has 400 plus years of success for a reason.  Unfortunately, this is the age of education where a literary work is too often judged by a student by its length, not by its content. How sad to have that thinking reinforced by some of the top minds in our judiciary.

The Health Care Act is certainly drier than Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, but there will be sections that require an expert eye in order to make a fair judicial ruling. The Health Care Act will probably drive a reader into King Lear’s madness, but the fact that the document is too long should not be used as an excuse for completing the assignment.

So, Justice Scalia, and all other justices of the Supreme Court, show students everywhere that doing the assigned work is important before you write the paper. Do not whine or make jokes in public about the length of the assignment in the hopes of gaining sympathy. My students have already read 103 more pages than the 2,700 pages of the Health Care Bill for only one of their classes. Show them that you can read all 2,700 pages because that is your job.

In Advanced Placement Literature, Education , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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“They Bow…Just Like Us”-The High School Musical as Project Based Learning

April 3, 2012 — Leave a comment

It is high school musical season-the best of

It’s the final act; the final musical number. It is 9:30 PM Eastern Standard Time and Reno Sweeney leads the chorus in the rousing reprise “Anything Goes”. It is  9:30 PM Central Standard Time, and Mother Superior exhorts the Von Trapps to “Climb Every Mountain”. It is  9:30 PM Mountain Standard Time, and the Pink Ladies and the Greasers be-bopp their rendition of “We Go Together”. It is at 9:30 Pacific Standard Time, and the fiddler plays the final wistful strains of “Anatevka” as the villagers sadly leave their homes as part of a great migration.

Across America, it is spring; it is high school musical season.

Just as the snowpack melts in some communities, or the holiday decorations are finally removed from front doors or trees, the lawn signs advertising the upcoming show at the local high school pop up like spring flowers.  The Pajama Game, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolored Dreamcoat, West Side Story, and Hello, Dolly! all have their turns gracing the stage in some auditorium, or maybe a cafe-a-torium. Students who have read The Wizard of Oz, Cinderella, Peter Pan or Beauty and the Beast take on the roles they once imagined. So popular is the idea of a high school musical that Disney created its own successful franchise based on the common high school experience of the High School Musical. 

Each winter, students go through the painful process of auditions. A select few will be thrilled, others will accept those thankless roles in the chorus or the nominal speaking parts. By the time ticket sales start, students will have had eight to twelve weeks in rehearsal, usually in the evenings, often after sports or other school activities. The lead roles will have rehearsed several days a week more than those with those cast in thankless chorus roles. Those with thankless chorus roles will have been working almost exclusively with the choreographer and rehearsal pianist. The set designers and construction crew will have drilled, nailed, and painted the sets; the technical crew will have laid out the miles of cables for sound systems and C-clamped the par-cans in place to highlight sections of the stage. The costume crew will have organized a wardrobe for easy backstage changes, while the stage manager(s) will have clearly labeled set pieces with “do NOT touch” signs. The musicians will have learned their individual parts with the ability to play softly under the spoken lines of dialogue.

Two weeks after those lawn signs advertising the show appear, the technical (lighting and sound) and dress rehearsals begin, and everyone associated with the production will be spending many more hours than anticipated rehearsing scene changes, re-blocked exits and entrances, and correcting dropped lighting or musical cues. The work is collaborative, the responsibility is shared-adult and student alike- and those thankless chorus roles are now critically important.

If authentic experiences are what educators want for students, then the high school musical, an extra-curricular activity for most school districts, is the ultimate project based learning experience. Everything a student does in a high school musical, from the start to the finish, is as authentic as a professional production-from audition through rehearsal to performance, from design to construction to set strike. Long after the set is struck, the pictures from the local paper fade on the bulletin boards, or the advertising lawn signs are removed, students remember their turn upon the stage in ways that defy the best classroom instruction. Everything about the high school musical- a wonderful blend of drama, music and dance- is “hands-on”.

A March 2012 study by the National Endowment of the Arts titled  The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal Studies finds disadvantaged students do better academically if they are intensely involved in the arts; music, dance, and drama are specifically targeted in the charts and data.  The report states that for low socio-economic status students,”Both 8th-grade and high school students who had  high levels of arts engagement were more likely to aspire to college than were students with less arts engagement.” But even students from high socio-economic status groups benefit:

“Arts-engaged high school students enrolled in competitive colleges —and in four-year colleges in general—at higher rates than did low arts-engaged students. Even among high-socio-economic status individuals, college-going rates were higher if students had engaged in arts-rich experiences in high school, according to a separate database. Ninety-four percent of the high-arts group went on to a four-year college, versus 76 percent of the low-arts, high-socio-economic status group.”

Years ago, I took a group of my 8th grade students who had recently completed three sold-out performances of The Apple Tree at their junior high school to Broadway to see How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. At the conclusion, as Matthew Brodrick and the cast  lined up for curtain call, a student grabbed my arm in excitement, “They bow!” she stage-whispered to me, “just like us!” To her, there was no difference between their musical and the one they had seen, and in truth, outside of the quality of their performance and the quality of the Broadway set, costumes, lighting, and ticket price; there was no difference. The high school musical memorably combines learning with performance; the high school musical is an American tradition.

Imagine the synchnonicity -a sort of live streaming-  of one musical as performed by high schools across the United States…imagine South Pacific. While one East Coast high school male chorus is stomping and singing, “There is Nothing Like a Dame”, a West Coast high school cast is just opening their production with two of the smallest cast members singing “Dites Moi”.  While the Mid-west actress Nellie Forbush is “Gonna Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair”, the East Coast Cast actor  Lt. Cable is singing, “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught.” Each production will have some variation of  dance numbers featuring Sailors, Seabees, and Marines. There will be a backdrop for Bali Ha’i . And, in the final scene of each performance, sometime around 9:30 PM, the student playing Emile will reach for the student playing Nellie Forbush’s hand, under the table, while the band swells with the strains of “Some Enchanted Evening”…. the enchanted evening of the ultimate “project based learning” …the high school musical.

In Education , , , , , , ,
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Informational Texts: Speeches Delivered with Love from Bruce and Steve

March 31, 2012 — 2 Comments

For teachers who are looking for guidance on how to teach informational texts at the high school level, there is a model lesson on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address at the EngageNY website. The text of the speech delivered by Lincoln on November 19, 1863, is short enough to fit on two pages or two bronze plaques on a memorial on the battles grounds in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. With 272 artfully crafted words Lincoln reframed the objectives of the Civil War while restating the principles of the equality of man. The opening six words are iconic, the closing asyndeton, “and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” is inspiring. The choice of the Gettysburg Address is laudable and non-controversial as a selection as an informational text. However, this speech is nearing its 150th birthday, and while an understanding of this speech helps students understand who we were as a nation, there are more contemporary speeches that address who we are as a nation today. What other speeches can we offer our students to review for content and style?

I can think of two speeches that have impressed me this school year. One such speech is a commencement address to college students, the other an address of how the power of rock and roll “commenced” and what that meant to an artist. The first speech is formal, running a little under 15 minutes in length, and delivered by Steve Jobs on June 12, 2005, at Stanford University. The second speech is a full 50 minutes delivered on March 15, 2012, by Bruce Springsteen as the keynote address at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas.

While Jobs engineered his speech into three separate and distinct parts (“Connecting the dots”, “Love and loss”, “Death”), the “Bruce’s” rollicking retelling of his life as a musician is part-explanatory, part-stream of consciousness, and wholly poetic. While Jobs formally and frankly narrated his stories of failure and ultimate redemption in the computer industry, Springsteen peppered his observations with epithets and musical interludes. Both speeches should get a “look-see” by teachers looking to engage students with meaningful informational texts.

Steve Jobs’s commencement address received a great deal of attention after his passing in October 2011. Stanford University has a page on its website that has both the text of the speech and a video of Jobs reading the speech , standing at the podium with his black graduation robe swirling in the breeze. He opened with the story of his adoption and his bold admission that he had dropped out of college because he “didn’t see the point” –this before a crowd of parents and new graduates who had just completed four or more years at one of the country’s more expensive universities!

Shortly after this startling confession, Jobs deftly described how he followed the “dots”, crediting a calligraphy class at Reed College with being the inspiration in developing his sense of sleek design. These “dots” led him to the computer industry when “Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20” and that “in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.” He professed his failure, the subsequent firing from the company he had founded, as entirely necessary. “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
In contrast to Jobs’s formal delivery, the video of Springsteen’s speech (video with text link on the NPR website) shows him blinking at the cameras wondering why he is up so early (it was noon) gripping the podium and addressing other musicians saying, “Every decent musician in town is asleep, or they will be before I’m done with this thing, I guarantee you. I’ve got a bit of a mess up here.” Several minutes (and epithets and expletives) later, Springsteen states his thesis:

“So I’m gonna talk a little bit today about how I’ve put what I’ve done together, in the hopes that someone slugging away in one of the clubs tonight may find some small piece of it valuable. And this being Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday, and the centerpiece of this year’s South by Southwest Conference, I’m also gonna talk a little about my musical development, and where it intersected with Woody’s, and why.”

Springsteen’ s “dots” began with Elvis and television:

“Television and Elvis gave us full access to a new language; a new form of communication; a new way of being; a new way of looking; a new way of thinking about sex, about race, about identity, about life; a new way of being an American, a human being and a new way of hearing music. Once Elvis came across the airwaves, once he was heard and seen in action, you could not put the genie back in the bottle. After that moment, there was yesterday, and there was today, and there was a red hot, rockabilly forging of a new tomorrow before your very eyes.”

Inspired by Elvis, the six-year-old Springsteen wrapped his fingers around a guitar neck for the first time, and when they wouldn’t fit, “I just beat on it, and beat on it, and beat on it — in front of the mirror, of course. I still do that. Don’t you? Come on, you gotta check your moves!”

Both of these speeches center on the importance of love and the love of one’s profession. Springsteen’s love of music, and his embrace of all musical genres, is lyrical as evidenced by his professed love for Doo-wop, a passage in the speech which aches for an accompanying melody:

“Doo-wop, the most sensual music ever made, the sound of raw sex, of silk stockings rustling on backseat upholstery, the sound of the snaps of bras popping across the USA, of wonderful lies being whispered into Tabu-perfumed ears, the sound of smeared lipstick, untucked shirts, running mascara, tears on your pillow, secrets whispered in the still of the night, the high school bleachers and the dark at the YMCA canteen. The soundtrack for your incredibly wonderful, limp-your-ass, blue-balled walk back home after the dance. Oh! It hurt so good.”

Jobs’s love of his work at NeXT, at Pixar, at Apple, is less descriptive but equally impassioned, and he challenged the graduates to recognize the importance of loving one’s work:

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

Both speeches also focus on change. In the last portion of his speech, Jobs introduced death; in a moment of cheer and celebration, he bluntly talked about death. He was honest with his beliefs, stating how he did not want to die, and he described how the prognosis of pancreatic cancer drove him to seek surgery. His statement, “and I am fine now” is delivered with such confidence, a poignant moment now that he has passed away. However, Jobs was not trying to be maudlin in discussing his, and our own, imminent fate; he deliberately summed up his feelings about death as “the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.” Jobs is right about death as a change agent, but as he stood before that crowd gathered for Stanford’s graduation in 2005, he was a live example of a change agent in our lives and the lives of our students.

Springsteen introduced the legacy of Woody Guthrie as his change agent. He explained how in his 20s he read Joe Klein’s Woody Guthrie, A Life, noting that, “Woody’s gaze was set on today’s hard times” and that “Woody’s world was a world where fatalism was tempered by a practical idealism. It was a world where speaking truth to power wasn’t futile, whatever its outcome.” Springsteen explained that although he would cover Woody’s infamous This Land is Your Land, he was never “going to be like Woody” because he was too fond of Elvis and the pop simplicity of his Pink Cadillac, that is until he and Pete Seegar stood up in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 2009 to sing (with the crowd) From California/ To the New York island/ From the Redwood Forest /To the Gulf Stream waters /This land was made for you and me:

“On that day Pete and myself, and generations of young and old Americans — all colors, religious beliefs — I realized that sometimes things that come from the outside, they make their way in, to become a part of the beating heart of the nation. On that day, when we sung that song, Americans — young and old, black and white, of all religious and political beliefs — were united, for a brief moment, by Woody’s poetry.”

Both Jobs and Springsteen ended their speeches with a clarion call. From the industrialist,” Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.” From the musician: “Don’t take yourself too seriously, and take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don’t worry. Worry your ass off. Have ironclad confidence, but doubt — it keeps you awake and alert.”

Could these speeches be “informational texts”-the new CCSS term used to cover all manner of writing other than fiction? While these speeches are most certainly not equal to the eloquence of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, do they have a place in the study of contemporary history? Is the speech that details the development of the Mac with its sleek design and easily used graphic interface, as told by its founder, an informational text? Does the speech that chronicles a musician’s experience with the birth of American rock’n roll and the influence of pop culture qualify as an informational text? Could either speech be a springboard into student research? Could either speech be analyzed for rhetorical structures, word choice, and imagery? Do these speeches inspire the reader?

For students in the upper grades of high school, grades 11 and 12, for whom the CCSS suggests 70% of reading should be in the form of informational texts, the answer is a yes, yes, most assuredly yes!

In Common Core, Education , , , , , , , , ,
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Common Core Literacy: Lucy Calkins-1, David Coleman-0

March 25, 2012 — 17 Comments

Lucy Calkins

The difference between reading an article or a book by Lucy Calkins and hearing her speak in person is a difference that cannot be measured in nuances; the difference is measured in hearing the decibles of her passion.

On Saturday (3/24/12), at the 82nd Saturday Reunion held at the Teachers College at Columbia University in NYC, Calkins stood before a packed house of elementary and middle school teachers in the Nave at the Riverside Church to deliver her closing session, “Walking Courageously Forward in Today’s Common Core World: Literacy Instruction, School Reform and Visions of Tomorrow”.  Hours before the keynote address by children’s author Pamela Munoz Ryan, Calkins had been energetically wandering with a microphone to periodically announce the location of a second keynote address for K-1 teachers or explain a new voucher system for lunches to speed up the notoriously overcrowded lunch lines. She waved for  people to make room in the pews for others and directed her aides to circulate with pads of paper to gather e-mails of participants. (NOTE: Please, Ms. Calkins; get a Twitter account or just have us send our e-mails to a web address!)

According to the jam packed schedule of workshops, she then presented at 10 AM: “An Introduction to the Project’s Thinking About Common Core-Aligned Upper Grade Reading”. At 11AM she presented the workshop, “In the Complicated World of Today, What’s Changed and What’s Stayed the Same About the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project’s Ideas on Teaching Writing?”, and she was spotted checking in on other presentations during her “spare time”.  All this before delivering her final address back in the church at 1PM.  Calkins is already a one person educational seismic wave, which made her opening, a lifting of the lyric from a Carole King’s song, “I feel the earth move under my feet”, much more than metaphoric.

Lucy Calkins is the Founding Director of the Reading and Writing Project LLC and the  Teachers College Reading and Writing Project as well as the Robinson Professor in Children’s Literature at Teachers College where she co-directs the Literacy Specialist Program. She has authored several books about teaching writing, and she has recently co-authored a book, Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement.

Much of the speech was directly lifted from her article, “Explore the Common Core” where she advocates for teachers to embrace the Common Core to be a “a co-constructor of the future of instruction and curriculum, and indeed, of public education across America.” She writes,

“As challenging as it must have been to write and finesse the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, that accomplishment is nothing compared to the work of teaching in ways that bring all  students to these ambitious expectations.The goal is clear.The pathway is not.”

In confronting one of the possible pathways, Calkins leveled her most serious criticism. She called attention to two of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) authors who have emerged very publicly as spokespersons, David Coleman (Student Achievement Partners) and Susan Pimentel (Education First), and reminded the attendees that neither has been a classroom teacher. “What is alarming is that they feel empowered to continue to write the Common Core,” she declared. There are a growing number of CCSS support websites that illustrate her frustration, for example, Coleman’s well-documented lesson plans on the study of informational texts such as The Gettysburg Address with his explanations on videos are found at engageny.org.  Ironically, while most historians praise Lincoln for the brevity of this address and the precision of its language,  Coleman’s lesson design would have students spend six to eight sessions in a close reading of the speech. Calkins complained that  extended close readings like Coleman’s are “text dependent activities” and that there are “no questions that transfer to another piece” as well as the unreasonable commitment of time to one common text.

Her frustration also stems from the New York State’s Department of Education’s adoption of many of Coleman’s additions to the original CCSS in providing models for curriculum development. She sounded a loud chord of caution against Coleman and others who write “around the standards” in presenting their curriculum models. She rhetorically challenged Coleman, “Where is the evidence do you have,  David Coleman, that your method works? Where is the evidence that the close reading you describe is improving literacy?”

She then modeled a quick lesson on the poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pasten, where she effectively refuted Coleman’s tedious approach of laboriously parsing every word in a text. She dismissed the notion that the discussion of any piece “ends at the four corners of the text,” adding that “one cannot infer or understand a metaphor without drawing from [one’s self].” Instead she recommended “sticking as CLOSELY to the text as possible, and in a response, have the student respond to the question ‘how do you know?'”.

Calkins also expressed concerns that in order to meet  CCSS “they [administrators] will add more…informational texts, more close reading. That will not work” she concluded emphatically.  Instead, “The problem facing schools is fragmentation and overload;” adding more to the teacher’s curriculum requirements will not be effective. Chiefly, she explained, the CCSS is, “not about a curriculum of compliance. This is about accelerating students, ramping up student achievement;” the CCSS is a “call for school reform.”

Because of CCSS, however, there will be enormous amounts of money spent on developing curriculum, resource materials, and testing. Authors of the CCSS, educational consultants, publishers, testing services are all looking to develop materials in order to help school systems meet the CCSS.  CCSS has spawned a new industry. Calkins detailed the anticipated expense of implementing the CCSS as $15.8 billion with $7 billion of the expense committed to technology so that students can complete testing online. When the “number one reason preventing student achievement is poverty”, in a time of shrinking budgets, Calkins described her discomfort with implementing  such costly programs and the inevitable auxiliary expenses that will be spent school district by school district in trying to meet the CCSS.

How can educators meet the CCSS in specific ways? “Students should have clear goals so they have a sense what is expected by gathering performance data,” Calkins advised, “Note what has changed with the student and [note] what changes are we expecting. A school should be able to identify [exemplars] what is expected at each grade level.” She also urged teachers to “embrace the call to nonfiction literacy” in order to build knowledge. “Change is hard,” she noted, “but research shows that fear will not make people change; the only effective way to change is through is support groups” suggesting that teachers need to collaborate in support groups to meet the CCSS.

Listening to Calkins was a more than a pep talk. Her reasoned approach to the CCSS was not born solely in the ivory towers of academia nor at a table of educational policy wonks. Her advice to read the CCSS as “gold” comes from her ongoing commitment to improving education coupled with her experience with  students and the teachers she supervises.

Had the audience the opportunity to respond to Lucy Calkin’s line of verse from the song “I Feel the Earth Move”, they could have easily chose another title from  from Carole King’s Tapestry album…”Where You Lead, I Will Follow.”

In Common Core, Curriculum, Education , , , , , , ,
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Dear Common Core: Science Supports Reading Fiction

March 21, 2012 — 9 Comments

English teachers are seduced by literature. We fell in love with an author’s language, a fascinating plot turn, or a well-developed character, and we are bold in our love. While students may roll their eyes when we proclaim The Great Gatsby  or Great Expectations as  a favorite book, or snicker when we dramatically recite lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, we hardly pause in our attempts to introduce 1984 into 2012 brains. They may groan while we happily distribute Lord of the Flies and assure them they will “love” the book; they may find us positively deranged when we weep at the death of Lenny (Of Mice and Men), or the Man (The Road) or Willie Loman (Death of a Salesman). However, nothing makes an English teacher happier than the conversion of our reluctant readers into admirers of an author’s work. The teaching of literature as a record of man’s humanity sums up our purpose, our raison d’etre. For writing and grammar, we will roll up our sleeves and revise, and conference, and edit, edit, edit. For the newer standards in listening and speaking, we support presentations in class and incorporate technology when necessary, but the joy of teaching English is in the literature, in the wealth of stories told by others.

Now, the adoption of Common Core Standards has many English Language Arts teachers concerned. Why? According to one of a number of  Common Core websites, (NOT the Common Core State Standards website) the standards are designed around the “basic idea” of a “utilitarian education.” David Coleman, one of the architects of the Common Core, supports the expansion of informational texts, a genre formally known as non-fiction, into all disciplines, “For example, students are asked to read a variety of texts. In 4th grade, they must read 50% literary text and 50% informational texts; by high school, they read only 30% literary texts and 70% informational texts.” Of course, English teachers have always included exceptionally well written pieces of non-fiction into their teaching. For example, Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal illustrates power of satire, Elie Wiesel’s Night is a haunting memoir, and Roger Rosenblatt’s The Man in the Water is a memorable personal essay, and all have found homes in English curriculums. But the disproportionate ratio of 30% fiction to 70% informational text? That ratio for lovers of literature is alarming.

In order to achieve the inclusion of informational texts, The Common Core of Standards for English/Language Arts includes a separate set of standards that address reading and writing in history, science, math and the technical areas. While these standards were developed to expand reading and writing in these disciplines in order to advance core knowledge, these standards still fall under the umbrella of the English/Language Arts Standards. Note that these standards have not been developed by the respective disciplines of history, science, math and the technical areas. Moreover, there is no mechanism for enforcing these standards through history, science, math and the technical areas except through the English/Language Arts Standards. English teachers are understandably concerned that they will ultimately be responsible for the increase in the reading of informational texts at the expense of the literature they so dearly love.

So, it is with great delight that I read in an informational text (aka news article) that science supports the reading of fiction.

According to an article in the New York Times, Your Brain on Fiction (3/17/12) by Annie Murphy Paul, neuroscience is riding to the English teacher’s rescue! The article is centered on research that demonstrates “Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.” Apparently, our brains cannot differentiate between the fictional experience and the real life experience, “in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.” Furthermore, the simulation of social experience in fiction through a character’s point of view  helps prepare our brains for real-life social interactions.

Researchers Dr. Oatley (University of Toronto)  and Dr. Mar (York University-Canada), in collaboration with several other scientists, reported in two studies, published in 2006 and 2009, that because of these fictional experiences, readers were more empathetic.

Fiction, Dr. Oatley notes, ‘is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life.’

Dear Common Core, take note. Science has the research to prove that the reading of fiction is equally critical to the development of our social life skills; fiction is not limited to a ratio of 30% importance. The usefulness of fiction in social development is not an arbitrary argument from the heart, but a means by which our brains experience our world.  Yes, informational texts can deliver content and support core knowledge, but fiction is what develops our humanity. Which is why we English teachers fell in love with stories in the first place.

In Common Core, Education , , , , , ,
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State Testing-Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying ______?

March 16, 2012 — Leave a comment

 The marathon of testing  is over! In the State of Connecticut, the two week window for the Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMT -elementary) and the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT grade 10) has ended, and some teachers are looking at the two week “hole” in grade books and unit plans that the intensive state testing created.

While education experts strongly advocate against “teaching to the test” and advocate the development of skills, most classroom teachers feel some obligation to prepare students for the tests by simulating at least one timed practice session for a specific test. Our state releases past testing materials for each discipline, and to be honest, our students do a fair amount of practice with these released materials before the test.

For the past two weeks, the daily school schedules have been modified to accomodate early morning testing sessions. During the school day, the lessons for students who have spent a grueling 45-90 minutes calculating or writing have been modified as well. For example, when they finally have  attended English classes, our tenth grade students have been provided silent sustained reading time for books they have independently chosen or have been watching videos to supplement a world literature unit on people in conflict.

The reading or Response to Literature test, associated with English classes,  requires students to read a short story and then write four lengthy  responses. Sadly, year after year, the quality of the story on this test pales in comparison to the classic short stories a student will encounter in even the most limited literature anthology. So we prepare students how to respond to  a question that asks “Is this good literature?” with even the most mediocre story.  Now that that the test is over,  students will begin the epic poem Beowulf, and the teachers are looking forward to having the students engage with this 8th Century grandfather of literature. We are ready for some “epic-hero-wrenching-monster’s-arm” action.

The writing or Writing Across the Disciplines test, associated with social studies, requires students to read newspaper articles about a controversial  topic, take a position on the controversial topic, and then develop a persuasive argument. There is absolutely no content from the social studies curriculum, in this case Modern World History, associated with the test. Now that this test is over, teachers can return to history content outlined in their curriculums; back to the arrival of the American forces on the shores on Iwo Jima and in the forests of the Ardennes.

Pencil and scantron testing is not an authentic practice in the world outside the classroom, but I am not against testing as a means to determine student progress; I accept that some form of testing is inevitable in education. However, the past two weeks of reading instructions (“Does everyone have two #2 pencils?”), writing in booklets (“Stop. Do not turn page”),  and racing against the clock (“You have 10 minutes left”) has taken a toll on students and faculty alike. Everyone is looking forward to the routine of a regular schedule.

Wearily, our students climbed the stairs for the last time this morning after taking the final  “supplemental” test, an extra assessment given to test materials for future test-takers. The students’ time in the testing crucible had passed; their scores will be posted during the the lazy days of summer when this experience will be nothing but a memory. Hopefully, they will have done well, and we will be pleased with the results.

Post-CAPT, there are several weeks left in the third quarter, and one full quarter after that.  Teachers can return to content without incorporating CAPT preparation with clear consciences. Our tenth graders will have the chance to read Macbeth where they will have the opportunity to create and respond to more significant questions than “Is this good literature?”  The importance of this great play placed against the activities of the past two weeks puts me in the mind  to parody Shakespeare’s famous speech-

Out, out, two weeks of testing
The CAPT is but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a test,
mandated by others, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

In 10th Grade, CAPT, Education , , ,
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"To audiotext or not to audiotext?"

Written Text or Audiotext in the Classroom? We Should Have Both

March 12, 2012 — 2 Comments

I am passing out Brave New World to the 10th graders.
“Is there an audiobook for this?” a student asks.
“Why not just read the book?” I respond.
“I can’t read this without help,” explains the student.
“I’ll see,” I sigh.

I admit that in the past I had been a little frustrated at these requests. I felt as though the students were sometimes “cheating” at reading. I felt they were not technically “reading”, the complex cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning. They were “listening”, where they  make an effort to hear  or to heed something. However, I have become slowly converted in the use of audiotexts for difficult texts because I have seen how effective they are as a resources in my classrooms.

"To audiotext or not to audiotext?"

The reason for considering the use of an audiotext  is what I call the problem of “voice”. What students may be telling me when they say they need help is that they do not hear the voice of an author (narrator) or the voice of a character while reading a text. A good reader can hear voice as he or she reads, but the struggling reader may need an audiotext to provide that voice.

The use of audiotexts in our English/language arts classrooms has been gradual as we build up our resources. There are a limited number hard copies of required texts in the school  library, so we look for resources available on the web. The use of the audiotext in whole class reads has been particularly effective with short passages, poems or plays.  For example, there is an excellent audio version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn available for free on the site Loud Lit.org. The narrator is particularly good with the voices of Jim and Huck, (hear Ch. 2)  and the site provides the page by page text as a “read-along”. The problems of Twain’s use of dialect are minimized once the students can hear the language. Equally good on this site is the audio-text for Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” which we have used in a 9th grade short story unit.

Additionally, YouTube provides a multitude of poetry readings from T.S. Eliot reading his The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock to animated versions of Billy Collin’s poems “The Dead” and “Forgetfulness”.

However,  I still wondered, was I educationally sound in incorporating these audiotexts in the classroom? (pun intended)

The question of audio text vs. written text has been studied for the past 40 years as audiotexts have grown in accessibility and popularity. In 1977, Walter Kintsch and Ely Kozminsky conducted an experiment where “48 college students either listened to or read 3 tape-recorded stories, each about 2,000 words in length. Immediately after processing each story, students wrote a summary in 60–80 words. A comparison of the summaries written after reading with those written after listening revealed only minor differences” (Journal of Educational Psychology).

More recently, a study conducted in 2003 in six high schools in the Northeast posed the question, “Does the use of audio texts with and without a comprehension strategy enhance the content acquisition for high school students with mild cognitive disabilities enrolled in US government classes in self contained settings?” They used audio textbooks and a reading comprehension strategy (SLiCK) and concluded that “that audio text books can be an effective tool to for increasing content acquisition for secondary students with mild disabilities.”  The original hypothesis that the experimental group with the added intervention of SLiCK would out perform the audio book and control group, was not proved since there was no significant difference between the two experimental groups. Instead, the findings suggest “that the use of audio books for students with mild disabilities can improve content acquisition and increase understanding of content on students’ grade level and student independence with reading assignments.” The study was featured in an article (9/12/11) in Forbes by Olga Khazan titled, Is Listening to Audio Books Really the Same as Reading? Khazan suggested that the findings demonstrating the improvement in comprehension need not be limited to students with mild disabilities.

Apparently, how students receive information is not as different as one might think. University of Virginia psychology professor Dan Willingham, was also featured in the Forbes article saying, “There isn’t much individual variance in the way people absorb information.The way this is interpreted is that once you are good at decoding letters into sound, which most of us are by the time we’re in 5th or 6th grade, the comprehension is the same whether it’s spoken or written.”

While the physical text can be helpful for a student to re-read or annotate,  the audiotext can help with the prosody or musicality of words. With a good audiotext, “Someone who knows the meaning can convey a lot through prosody,” Willingham states, “if you’re listening to a poem, the prosody might help you.”  The same is true for reading a play. When we read the play Macbeth in class, I reach for the dramatized audio version (on cassette tape) by Caedmon featuring Anthony Quayle as Macbeth. The students do read the text aloud themselves, but then have an opportunity to hear the play’s lines spoken with the dramatic nuances and intonations that make Shakespeare’s language meaningful.

I am not the only one who weighs whether the written text or audiotext are the same experience. An informal survey (1950 total votes) that was recently organized on Goodreads.com asked:

If you’ve listened to an audiobook, can you say that you have “read” the book? Are they the same?

1.Both equally valid, but different.

915 votes (47%)
2.Yes, they’re essentially interchangeable.

749 votes (38%)
3.No, it’s not the same at all.

286 votes (15%)
While this informal survey indicates that I have the majority of Goodreads readers support the use of the audiotext as a valid way to “read” a text, I am very aware that not all materials are available in audio format. My students still need the ability to read many different types of writing-textbooks, informational texts, forms, etc. as well as the fiction, drama, and poetry taught in the English/language arts classroom. Therefore, in my classrooms, the audiotext is used as a support for a written text, not as a replacement.
My students enjoy hearing a story told to them, not unlike the stories told to them when they were younger, which is not unlike the way stories first began. The audio tradition is not such a technological marvel. The audiotext goes far back, way before written language, when the ancient storyteller was the audiotext. Today, our students are listeners around digital campfires.
In Education, Education & Technology , , , , , , , ,
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Ken and Barbie Do Not Write Unhappy Literature: Case in Point-Toni Morrison

March 8, 2012 — Leave a comment

Student: “Is this another unhappy book?”
Me:*sigh* “Yes.”

Toni Morrison is on my mind. The Advanced Placement English Literature Class (12th grade) has just finished reading her novel Beloved; the Advanced Placement English Language Class (11th grade) is currently offering The Bluest Eye. These are most certainly not written from a happy Ken and Barbie point of view. These novels are complex and difficult reads because the Nobel Prize winning Morrison makes the reader uncomfortable…yes, even unhappy.

In an interview on Oprah,  Morrison explained how she began her first novel, The Bluest Eye:

“Things were going very fast in 1965, so I decided I wanted to write a novel that was not a warning but was just literature, and I wanted to put at the center of that story the most helpless creature in the world—a little black girl who doesn’t know anything, who has never been center stage. I wanted it to be about a real girl, and how that girl hurts, and how we are all complicitous in that hurt. I didn’t care what white people thought, because they didn’t know anything about this. This was the age of ‘black is beautiful,’ and, well, yeah, that is certainly the case; however, let us not forget why that became a necessary statement.”

The Bluest Eye is set in Post-Depression America, 1941, in the author’s hometown of Lorain, Ohio.  Eleven year-old Pecola Breedlove, a black girl, longs to be a white child with blonde hair and blue eyes. In a particularly graphic scene, the reason the book is so controversial, she is raped and impregnated by her own father.  Much of the book centers on the ideal of beauty and Pecola’s inability to accept herself. She is exposed to the perfect life portrayed in the Dick and Jane series of reading primers at school which increases her conflict about her self-image as seen in an excerpt from The Bluest Eye:

 “I destroyed white baby dolls. But the dismembering of dolls was not the true horror. The truly horrifying thing was the transference of the same impulses to little white girls. The indifference with which I could have axed them was shaken only by my desire to do so. To discover what eluded me, the secret of the magic they weaved on others. What made people look at them and say, ‘Awwwww,’ but not for me.”

The other book, Beloved, is based on the true story of Margaret Garner, a runaway slave who crossed the frozen Ohio River to Cincinnati in January 1856 with her four children. Confronted by a slave catcher, Garner killed her daughter rather than have her returned to be a slave. In the novel, Sethe escapes with her newborn daughter, Denver, to meet up with her other three children, one of them the already-crawling? toddler who is known as Beloved. Sethe has 28 days of freedom where she is able to love her children for the first time:

“I was big, Paul D, and deep and wide and when I stretched out my arms all my children could get in between. I was that wide. Look like I loved em more after I got here. Or maybe I couldn’t love em proper in Kentucky because they wasn’t mine to love. But when I got here, when I jumped down off that wagon-there wasn’t nobody in the world I couldn’t love if I wanted to. You know what I mean?”

Soon after, the plantation owner School Teacher and a slave catcher arrive to claim their property, Sethe and her children. In an act of savage desperation taken in order to keep her children from a life of slavery, Sethe uses a saw to slice open the toddler’s neck , but she is prevented from killing her other children. In addition to this gruesome scene, the novel is also rife with rape, mutilations, and the supernatural. These elements  make its choice for a school curriculum as controversial as The Bluest Eye. However, both texts are often listed on the Advanced Placement Open Essay list, an indication that these books are exactly the kind of complex texts students should be reading. The demanding Advanced Placement prompts from past years are not answerable with less weighty books.

Teachers themselves struggle with complex and demanding texts, and the English Companion Ning often features posts from teachers who are looking for information on a topic or lesson plans on a text. There are always several posts about the use of Toni Morrison books in the high school curriculum. Many of these posts discuss the controversy these books cause for teachers who want to teach Morrison’s complex and compelling literature while addressing the concerns of  parents about the appropriateness of each novel’s content.

One teacher posted:

“I think it’s funny how we sometimes find things more shocking as adults than as kids.  I read The Bluest Eye in 11th grade and never thought about it being objectionable or age-inappropriate.  I actually read quite a bit of Toni Morrisson in HS.  As an adult, I think The Bluest Eye should be taught.  That said, any book with sensitive subject matter does need to be introduced in a thoughtful, open, and contextualized manner.”

While another offered a very balanced approach:

“Just want to mention that it is the parents’ responsibility to train up their children. It is not the responsibility of the school or the state. I worry that we teachers tend to forget that, making our relations with parents far more adversarial than they ought to be. Why not let the parents choose the appropriate novel for their child? Focus the classwork on skills that can be used with any novel, on practicing the thinking that will help students get through tough texts more independently, rather than on specific-novel content.

That said, strong instruction and discussion on what distinguishes great literature from not-so-great literature — literary fiction from commercial fiction, will help students see the difference between the great novels we English teachers want them to read and the … um, lightweight? novels they want to read.”

Morrison novels are demanding. They do not depict happiness. Their settings depict a world in stark contrast to the world of Ken and Barbie. While Ken and Barbie as fictional characters are perfectly formed, coiffed representatives of all that is perfect in the world, they have have not been marginalized as the fictional characters who people Morrison’s work; they have not experienced rejection, brutality, pain or suffering.

In the Oprah interview, Morrison attempts to explain a human’s want for acceptance by others but more importantly, by the self:

“I think a lot has changed since the ’60s in terms of self-image. But there’s still a lot of pain young girls feel because the bar is always being raised. The stakes are always higher….We don’t have the vocabulary to tell children what to value. We do say, “Oh, you’re so beautiful. Oh, you’re so pretty. Oh—that’s not really what we really ought to be saying. What do you tell a child when you want to say, “You are good, and I like that. You are honest and I like that. [Y]ou are courageous. I really like that. I really like the way you behave. I like the way you do yourself. Now. The way you are.’ That’s the vocabulary we need.”

Morrison’s admits that when she first started writing, she was writing for a different audience:
 “I guess I was just that arrogant. Nobody was going to judge me, because they didn’t know what I knew. No African-American writer had ever done what I did—none of the writers I knew, even the ones I admired—which was to write without the White Gaze. My writing wasn’t about them.”
 Morrison’s  The Bluest Eye and Beloved unapologetically stand in stark contrast to the world of Dick and Jane or Ken and Barbie. Her writing has received national and international praise for exactly that reason.
In 11th grade, Advanced Placement Literature, Education , , , , ,
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Blend and Flip-English Classroom Gymnastics for Delivering Materials to Students

March 5, 2012 — 2 Comments

The wiki allows us to link students to resources on the web (texts, audio texts, websites) available 24/7 for Grade 9.

The English Department teachers operate in  “Wiki Wonderland” at Wamogo High School; all class materials for English classes, and other disciplines as well, for grades 7-12 are available 24/7 on our class wikis using the PBWorks platform.

Syllabus link for AP English Literature with University of Connecticut Early College Experience course-Grade 12

Our school does have the paid subscription based on the number of students assigned to each wiki so that there is an additional level of security for students, however, the use of a wiki does not require a subscription. There are numerous wiki platforms, (Google, Wetpaint, Wikispaces, etc) and most have free classroom editions with limitations on design and security features.

English Department teachers  use either the assignment page template or insert a table (see below) to post a schedule of activities by week, quarter, or semester.  We are able to link materials on any page in the wiki itself, to a link on the Internet or to a document that has been uploaded. The wiki also allows us to embed videos, audio clips, animations, pictures, and other widgits on a page; we often have students comment on these embedded masterial by responding directly on  the page.

A lesson or unit can be completely organized on a wiki page (directions, resources, responses) so that students may work independently, in or outside class. Organizing materials, pages and files, on the wiki for ease of use by student/parent  is probably the most challenging task for each teacher.

Using the wiki meant that we are moving towards a “blended classroom” of in class and online learning. For the past two years, we have been very happy with the wiki in class. Plus, we thought by using the wikis that we were “cutting edge”.
Then came the flipped classroom.
The flipped classroom is organized so content usually delivered in a classroom is posted as homework , and the homework given to provide students some practice with content is completed in class. This approach allows a teacher the opportunity to devote more time working with students rather than lecturing or demonstrating a particular skill.

So, English Department teachers are now trying to incorporate the flip. There are some challenges, however; English is not a “content driven” class. In fact, the skills a student is taught at the elementary level are the same  that are taught at the high school level: reading, writing, speaking, listening. The process of aquiring these skills in English is not so much a sequence, like a staircase, as it is a weave, like cloth. Students improve these skills of reading, writing, speaking, listening by exposure to increasingly complex  content. There are more challenging texts, more sophisticated vocabulary, and more rigor with grammar as the student moves through an eductional system.

A simile in the picture book Quick Like a Cricket is the same literary device as a simile in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, a theme in E.B. White’s Charlottes’ Web can be as universal as a theme from Dostoevsky’s  Crime and Punishment, and a rhyme scheme by Shel Silverstein can be as clever as a rhyme scheme by Shakespeare.  English is a discipline of warp (writing structure) and woof (writing style) that is centered on the application and practice of skills rather than the aquisition of a body of facts. The collection of information (content) belongs more to history, mathematics, science and social sciences.
That said, how does a flipped English classroom work? What can easily be flipped?

Currently, we are trying to develop grammar lessons into a flipped model. New grammar content can be created and/or uploaded for overnight viewing (adverbial clauses) as well as remediation (capitalization of the letter “I” when used as a pronoun). Materials placed online for the flipped classroom have the  added benefit of having materials available for review if a student forgets one of the rules in our complex language.

Since many of our students do less and less assigned reading for homework, our English Department teachers are dedicating more time in class to active reading, read alouds, and silent sustained reading in class. In a sense, we have flipped the reading activity to the classroom. However, providing instructional class time for reading means that a focus must be on having students responding to the texts effectively. At present, many responses to literature are begun in class, completed for homework and then peer- reviewed in class to prepare for the final polish before turning the response in the following day.

We have also organized our independent reading materials by unit (coming of age, people in conflict), and each book’s summary, book reviews, and a selection of passages from books have been placed online on the wiki so that a student may “shop” for a text outside the classroom rather than waste time perusing the classroom library looking for a book.

So far, those are the successes our teachers have had with the flipped classroom model; we will be experimenting this year with using the flip model for vocabulary, providing context materials for literature (not front-loading, however!), and promoting texts.

At present, I do not anticipate that the English classrooms in my department will be completely flipped, just as our English classrooms are not completely blended. Yet, the degree to which blended learning with resources on the wiki for instruction in and outside class is being influenced by the principles of the flipped classroom I cannot say. I do know that more and more of our instruction is taking place online, and because we are adopting the methods of blending or flipping instruction, teaching English in the 21st century means the teachers must be more flexible, almost gymnastic, than ever before.

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