Bowerbirds

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Thu, 24 Dec 2009 09:43:54 -0800

"TMQ thinks, is the real reason the Indianapolis attack is so hard to stop, generating 23 victories..."

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:20:01 -0800

“

TMQ thinks, is the real reason the Indianapolis attack is so hard to stop, generating 23 victories in its last 24 games: Manning is the sole NFL quarterback who calls his own plays. Tom Moore says he radios in “suggestions” to Manning, and he’s not being cute. Many plays drawn up by Moore and Manning have multiple options — any one of several things can happen, depending on the defense. When Manning comes to the line, he chooses which variation to use. Most of the time, Manning simply calls whatever he wants to call. Often several of the receivers are running “sight adjustments.” They don’t have a specific pattern called at the line — rather, they run what seems likely to be open given the defensive set.

Having Manning call his own plays is extremely effective. Obviously, many quarterbacks lack his level of ability. But TMQ thinks the real reason more NFL quarterbacks don’t call their own plays is coaching bureaucracy. The coaches want to be in control, and maintain their illusion of possessing super-ultra-secret insider knowledge. No mere player could call a down-and-out — only coaches have that kind of skill! By not letting quarterbacks call their own plays, NFL teams concede an advantage to the Colts. Which, needless to say, is fine with the Colts.

”

- NFL fans, enjoy a special version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” - ESPN

An astute observation…

The View From Your Recession: Checking Back In - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:43:41 -0800

The View From Your Recession: Checking Back In - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan :

Now that I am teaching- this blog takes a total back seat. I know you’d rather I save my best attention for my students. However, I’m on a “break” for two weeks (reading three books, planning the next month, grading papers) so I’ll blog for as long as I can.

This piece says so much to me. I know MANY people in this exact position. I will be in this exact position very soon. What do I want for christmas/hanukkah?

A job offer in April.

Wish me LUCK.

HP computers are racist.

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:08:42 -0800

HP computers are racist.

I found the on Sullivan’s site. HE- larious.

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:55:00 -0700

I found the on Sullivan’s site. HE- larious.

My friend Mimi just sent this video to me with this...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:43:51 -0700

My friend Mimi just sent this video to me with this message:

Band at Bennington, I think you’ll really like them. I saw a concert of them and it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever listened to. Amelia is Rosilinde in our production of “As You Like It” and I don’t think I’ve ever met a sweeter girl.

Thanks Mimi.

Beyond Black and White in Seattle | By Andrew Sullivan

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:24:52 -0700

Beyond Black and White in Seattle | By Andrew Sullivan:

Maybe we here in the NW have more diversity than we are given credit for.

Whose Country? | By Andrew Sullivan

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:50:14 -0700

Whose Country? | By Andrew Sullivan:

great article. read on.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: YouTube Comment or e. e. cummings?

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:41:47 -0700

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: YouTube Comment or e. e. cummings? :

I saw this on Sullivan’s site and had to repost so that I could share this with my students (#2 excluded, of course.)

from my new favorite site: Lolerature (lol = literary figures =...

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:43:14 -0700

from my new favorite site:

Lolerature (lol = literary figures = EPIC laughs)

this is Solzhenitsyn.

Student Tag-along

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:19:28 -0700

For our Literacy class, we had to follow a student for a whole day and live through their experiences as best we could.

My observations are in ‘regular typeface’ and my thoughts and inferences are in CAPS. (The formatting is a little funky, sorry)

I followed an ELL girl from across the pacific- lets call her Julie. Here is my day with Julie:

Kyle Lange
Tag-along Assignment

Julie is a seventeen year old girl from Jejudo, South Korea. She uses an Americanized name that she picked herself. She has been in Oregon for two years, but has been in the United States for six years with her mother. Julie and her mother came to Oregon and Rex Putnam High School from Las Vegas because, as Julie told me, her mother felt the schools were better. She is an ELL student at Rex Putnam, but her file says she has never had a formal ELL specialist to help her learn English. Her spoken English is very good, but she still speaks with a noticeable accent. She is very proud to be recent American citizen as she received her citizenship a few months ago.

Her hair is cut short, lightened, and styled in a manner that is common among many American girls, and she wears clothes very similar to her friends. ON THE SURFACE SHE SEEMS LIKE A TYPICAL AMERICAN-BORN ASIAN GIRL, BUT SHE HAS ELEMENTS ABOUT HER THAT BELIE THAT ASSESSMENT. SHE HAS A HELLO KITTY BACKBACK FORM SOUTH KOREA, A HANDMADE SILK PENCIL CASE, AND PICTURES OF ‘FT ISLAND’, HER FAVORITE KOREAN POP GROUP ON EVERY BINDER SHE CARRIES WITH HER. SHE IS NOT ASHAMED OF HER HERITAGE AND MAKES NO EFFORT TO HIDE IT.

She loves to go shopping with her friends at Clackamas Town Center when she has time, but as she is an International Baccalaureate Diploma Candidate, Julie says those moments are few and far between. FOR JULIE, SCHOOL COMES FIRST. SHE IS A HARD WORKER, AND IS A VERY CAPABLE AND CONFIDENT STUDENT IN MOST OF HER CLASSES. NOT FULLY AMERICAN, BUT NO LONGER FEELING LIKE A COMPLETE OUTSIDER, JULIE IS A COMPLETE HYBRID. SHE SEEMS AS COMFORTABLE WITH HER CAUCASIAN FRIEND AS THE GROUP OF ASIAN STUDENTS SHE ALSO SPENDS A LOT OF TIME WITH AND WHOM SHE SPENT A LOT OF TIME WITH WHEN SHE WAS NEW AT SCHOOL.

Here is my day with Julie:

1st period- IB English 11

When I walk into class, Julie is already at her seat. She is working on her microbiology homework. I ask her if she has a test today and she says yes. Once class starts, she stops and pays attention to my mentor and her teacher, Michael Jarmer. There is a poem-of-the-day by Ron Koertge and Julie and the other students write a response in their reading/writing logs. Julie writes with a Kuromi pencil (Kuromi being from the Hello Kitty fame.) After this entry, students are asked to turn in their logs and Julie looks at every page to make sure she has all her entries completed. SHE IS VERY CONSCIENTIOUS ABOUT MAKING SURE SHE HAS ALL HER WORK DONE.

The rest of the class is spent in small group then whole group discussions about a book of collected stories of the Native American tribes of Oregon called, Coyote was Going There. Julie speaks very little in the group discussion and not at all in the whole group discussion. SHE SEEMS TO DO MORE LISTENING THAN TALKING- I THINK THIS IS BECAUSE SHE LEARNS MORE ABOUT THE STORIES THIS WAY.

After class, I ask her about this and she admits to having a hard time reading the stories. I ask her what she does when she doesn’t understand. She says, “Ask a friend, ask a teacher.” SHE SEEMS TO SEE IN MY FACE THAT THIS WASN’T A SATISFYING ANSWER. Julie says after a pause, “I don’t like to talk about myself.”

Final Thoughts:
She tells me this is her hardest class of the day. This is also the only class where she doesn’t have a friend in class. THIS COULD ALSO BE A FACTOR IN HOW QUIET SHE IS. This makes sense to me as literature often deals in inference, symbolism, and craft that, according to the (look up) is the last thing ELL students master.

***
In between classes, Julie introduces me to three of her friends saying “This is Kyle. He is my teacher I was telling you about. He is going to be following me today. It’s not weird. He’s doing it for a class.” I bust out laughing. THIS WAS VERY SWEET OF HER TO DO THIS. Julie and all three of her friends have the next class together.
***

2nd Period- IB Biology

There is a test in this class and the teacher primes everyone’s brain with a few questions. Julie raises her hand and answers the second question. IN THIS CLASS, JULIE IS ALMOST A DIFFERENT PERSON. SHE IS MORE EXCITED AND COMES ALIVE IN THIS CLASS. They start to take the exam. Julie writes quickly. SHE SEEMS TO KNOW THE ANSWERS. She skips questions and goes back to them later. Most students raise their hands for clarification, but Julie does not.

While she takes the test, I look around and take stock of the room. The school was just renovated and this science room looks pristine. I open a drawer and all the glassware and equipment looks well used. The students have been working on proteins and artwork of triglycerides, amino acids, and other things hand all over the room. THIS SEEMS LIKE A CLASSROOM WHERE THE TEACHER HAS TRIED HER LEVEL BEST TO MAKE SCIENCE FUN AND VISUAL. The teacher of this class (whose name I didn’t get) is a graduate of Lewis and Clark.

Julie finishes her test right in the middle of the pack of the other students. Not early; not late. As she sits, she gives a small thumbs up to the girl next to her. All three friends Julie introduced me to before second period are in this class. THIS HAS MADE A NOTICEABLE DIFERENCE IN HER DEMEANOR. SHE IS STILL A QUIET PERSON, BUT SHE SEEMS TO HAVE MORE VIBRANCE, MORE ENERGY. After she finishes the exam she puts on her earbuds and hits the play button on her iPod while she waits for the rest of the class to finish.

Final Thoughts:

After the test I asked Julie how she did and she said, “I did okay.” On the way to her next class, I asked Julie what she plans on doing when she finishes school. “I want to be a Doctor Without Borders because I want to give care to people that can’t pay for it.” SHE IS VERY HUMBLE AND HAS A BIG HEART.

Lunch:
LUNCH IS GREAT. Julie has invited me to eat with her three friends at a small table by the window of the commons. Although Julie is very quiet, she laughs and smiles often as she talks with her friends. We have had many conversations already about being a quiet student in class. For whatever reason, she brings this up at lunch. PERHAPS SHE HAS BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS? She admits to me that her friends ask more questions of her than she does of them. SHE DOES NOT SEE HER QUIETNESS AS ANY KIND OF DISADVANTAGE, BUT AS AN ASPECT OF HER PERSONALITY.

3rd Period- Algebra 2:
As we enter the class, this is the first room I have seen that has rows of desks in straight lines. One wall of the classroom is a huge bank of windows and this is the first class where I notice sparse hangings on the walls. I ANTICIPATE A STRICT CLASS. Before the bell rings, Juile talks with the girl (another friend) in the desk behind her. SHE HAS SEEN HER FRIENDS AT LUNCH AND THIS IS THE MOST ENERGY AND EASE I HAVE SEEN HER SHOW ALL DAY.

As the class starts the teacher tells them they will have a pre-test today for thirty minutes to help the teacher anticipate which sections of the unit to focus on. ANOTHER TEST!? I WOULD HATE THIS. A TEST AT THE BEGINNING, A TEST AT THE END, BARF! I FIND MYSELF STARING OUT THE WINDOWS AS THE STUDENTS WORK AND REMIND MYSELF TO LOOK AT JULIE.

This is the first time I have seen her struggle, but she never gives up. I BELIEVE THIS IS THE KEY TO HOW PROFICIENT SHE IS AT ENGLISH AND SCIENCE. Like in Biology class, she uses the same test taking method and starts with the ones that she knows. With problems she doesn’t know, she makes attempts anyway. JULIE SEEMS COMMITED TO ATTEMPTING ANSWERS EVEN THOUGH SHE KNOWS SHE DOES NOT HAVE THE TOOLS TO PROPERLY SOLVE THEM. I CALL THIS THE ‘WORKING GENE’. She works on the pre-test longer than most and finally gives up with about 5 min. to spare and puts in her earbuds for some relief via FT Island.

As the teacher reviews the answers, showing her work on the overhead, Julie erases her incorrect answers and writes in the correct answers and showing the work to get there. She smiles when she gets an answer right and claps to herself. SHE PRAISES AND SELF-MOTIVATES HERSELF. THE STRICTNESS OF THE CLASS WAS NOT AS BAD AS I HAD ANTICIPATED.

Final Thoughts:

I ask Julie what teaching strategy the teacher uses in this class that helps her the most. “The visuals on the overhead. Visuals in any class help me understand.” THIS IS VERY TYPICAL OF ELL STUDENTS; VISUALS ADD CONTEXT. While we walk to the next class, Julie tells me this class is her favorite. I ask her if she has friends in this class as well and she says that her friends from IB Biology are in this class as well. I WONDER IF THEY ALL PLANNED THIS. When I ask her why, she says the teacher makes the class fun and makes a lot of funny sound effects. MENTAL NOTE: USE SOUND EFFECTS IN MY INSTRUCTION.

4th Period- IB Chemistry:

In this class the students are reviewing a test they took yesterday. THREE TESTS TODAY! IN DEFENSE OF THESE TEACHERS, I DID MY OBSERVATIONS THE WEEK BEFORE PROGRESS REPORTS WERE DUE. Again, Julie corrects any incorrect answers. I take a moment to look at her binder for this class. Here are the divider labels: Warm-up/Homework/Graded Work/Notes with extra paper in the back.

As the class starts the next unit, the teacher uses video simulations from a website to demonstrate Rutherford’s Alpha Particle experiment that led to the discovery of the atomic nucleus. VISUALS- I CAN SEE WHY JULIE LIKES THIS CLASS. Julie keeps her eyes on the teacher frequently when learning new material, only taking her eyes off to follow along in her chem. book to support the teacher’s words with the images/text.

As the class continues, the students seem to be having fun. There is a lot of laughing. COULD THIS ALSO BE ENHANCED BY THE FACT THAT IT IS THE LAST PERIOD OF THE DAY.

Conclusions:

She is a reserved girl with spurts of abandon. She never once raised her hand or spoke in class, but she talked freely with classmates that she was previously friendly with. I never saw her speak to a person who was only an acquaintance. When Julie knew the answer to a question, I would hear her say the answer quietly under her breath.
Throughout the day during lectures, she played with her nails- I wanted to ask her if she could understand the lecture or was she bored, but I never had a chance.
I’m overwhelmed by the different literacies Julie has to use to keep up with her classes. There were points in every class where I had no idea what the teacher was talking about, and English is my primary language! I know many of my colleagues said the day wore them out, but I was engaged in all the classes and actually had a lot of fun. I think this is a compliment to the teachers whose classes I observed.

True statements about my student Julie:

She does not give up. Whether in math or biology, Julie always took the time to try to get her answers right, even attempting problems more advanced than her training in Algebra 2

She is organized. All of her binders (including the IB Chemistry binder I talked about in this paper) are highly organized. My guess is that this organization has helped support her work in school AND her continuing mastery of English. When testing, she also has an organized method of skipping the hard questions and coming back to them

She is kind. I was flattered that she not only introduced me to her all her friends, but she had previously told them that she was going to do so earlier in the week. Her goal to not only be a doctor, but be a part of Doctors Without Borders is very commendable.

Julie’s friends help her stay happy. Without friends, anyone would be lonely. But for Julie, who is an ELL student and might still be a bit embarrassed when speaking with strangers and acquaintances, friends are crucial to her well-being. She was more comfortable in her classes where her friends were also present. In English, where she had no close friends, she did not speak at all.

The Takeover - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:23:32 -0700

The Takeover - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Three Tweets for the Web

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:05:23 -0700

Three Tweets for the Web:

Reading blogs makes you smarter.

I think this is deplorable. There is marketing out there that...

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:20:00 -0700

I think this is deplorable. There is marketing out there that demeans women so successfully.

“Come on Kyle, this is just a joke thing- loosen up.”

Um… no. Let me give you an example of this from right on our teaching doorstep.

From Bill Simmons, ‘The Sports Guy’ on ESPN:

Q: I’m a senior in high school and was assigned a project in lit class to create my own university, which other students would then “apply” to. Both me and my partner for the project are fans of yours, and, remembering a podcast in which you discussed your dream of having a college named after you, decided on Bill Simmons University. We went back to the podcast and created it exactly to your specifications. We even put in your admissions requirement: female applicants just send pictures. We got a D on the assignment and a lecture from the teacher about sexism and taking the class seriously. Thanks, Bill Simmons.
— Brett, Portland, Ore.

SG: I don’t even need to write it. And by the way, rarely if ever, has a reader e-mail made me this proud. The only way it would have been better is if you snapped at the teacher, “Shouldn’t we have gotten a double-D?” Come to my Portland signing (Nov. 20), bring the paper and I will autograph the paper and give you a free book. Take that, uptight teacher who doesn’t have a sense of humor.

Are these the kind of men we want to be raising? Are these the men we want to live in our world?

I thought this was wonderfully thought provoking to watch. What...

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:13:00 -0700

I thought this was wonderfully thought provoking to watch.

What dexterity- there is real emotive theatre in this performance.

enjoy.

The latest grad essay: Cris Tovani

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:49:42 -0700

She is a bit of a reading guru. The book we read is called, I Read it, but I Don’t Get it.

Here is the essay:

Smith- Lit/Cult/Learning Kyle Lange

The Tovani Experience

When a hitter is in a slump, he is say - 0 for 35; he feels lost and has no idea what could be wrong. Luckily, at least if he plays for the Mets or the Yankees, he has a hitting coach that can help him with his swing. And what does the hitting coach do? Voodoo? A little rah-rah you-can-do-it pep talk? No! The coach brings the struggling hitter back to the fundamentals. Are you turning over your wrists when you swing? Are you opening your hips too soon? Are you picking up the spin of the breaking balls? Now our struggling player has some tools to keep in mind the next time he is up to bat. He’s got a specific, practical checklist to follow. This just makes sense.

So why not do the same for struggling readers? Such is the world of Cris Tovani. I Read it, But I Don’t Get It is such a book. Instead of just saying “Read harder. Read closer,” Cris offers a slew of specific, practical, and fundamental practices for word callers (students who can decode, but not comprehend), resistive readers (can read, but aren’t motivated) and English language learners. Where did she get these ideas? She got them from her own experience in building herself up to become a good reader at thirty years of age.

Some student readers are like Cris was when she was in high school; they don’t construct meaning from what they read naturally. These students need specific scaffolding. They need to learn to read with a purpose in mind of what to look for. They need to be lead through their zone of proximal development with some simple methods. Lucky for the teachers of America, Cris Tovani is Vygotskyan to the core.

Although she does not mention it in this book, I want to give a shout out to how these methods are a boon to English language learners. In Chapters three and four of the Negotiating Identities book, Jean Cummins talks of the need for ELL students to have cognitively demanding reading that can help them transition from context embedded work (persuading a person to a point of view, verbally) to the context reduced world required of reading (reading a persuasive essay by another writer) and become more proficient readers and writers. I believe Cris’ practices to be sensitive to this work by Cummings and I am very excited to try Tovani’s methods with the ELL students in my classroom.

Which practices are those, you say? Here are the five BIG points:

1. Draw inferences.

When good readers see a phrase like “she was white as a ghost,” They infer that the character is scared. They don’t know for sure, but they can use the text to support their ideas. The difference between inferences and opinions is that inferences have textual support, while opinions do not. Good readers take their ideas from the facts of the text.

2. Use your background knowledge.

Another way good readers connect to text is by drawing inferences from their own personal experience (things that have happened to them) and personal knowledge (things they have learned prior to the reading). Whether a reader can sympathize with a character in a story, or they know how to use charts, graphs, or print conventions in their textbooks to extract meaning, background knowledge helps good readers connect to text.

3. Ask questions.

For a lot of struggling readers, they feel they are showing a lack of knowledge by asking questions. If asking questions of the text make a person feel insecure, who is going to do that? Good readers ask questions. They ask questions as they dissent to what is written, they ask their classmates if they made similar conclusions, and they ask other readers for predictions. Good readers know they don’t have to have all the answers, but can ask others to help them comprehend more of what they read.

4. Teachers MUST model their good reading skills for their students.

This is so important. Cris agrees. The teacher is the standard bearer for the students of her class. If she can show students how she draws inferences, uses her background knowledge, and asks questions, she is well on her way to having her students start to do the same. I have never met someone who doesn’t want to know how to read; I know many people who find reading painfully difficult and are embarrassed to attempt an activity that has discouraged them repeatedly in the past.

Cris believes that the modeling for the class should be as differentiated as possible. Everyone comes at comprehension differently, and all supports are welcome. Cris models how she has conversations with text by using sticky notes, overheads, mapping text, telling stories, whole class discussions, and working with students one-on-one; she gets her students to attempt the same by showing them how these methods helped her draw meaning from text.

5. Showing your thinking on paper (in moderation) can help.

Both for the teacher and for the student, being able to show your thinking on paper can help. For students, this can slow down or compartmentalize the process of reading comprehension to help them establish what they will do in flow. Like a baseball swing, reading is one motion of many different moving parts.

Cris’ double entry journals, comprehension constructors, and coding sheets may help students break down their reading swing into more manageable points that give them a point of entry into their own reading. These sheets can help a teacher show a student some fundamental elements of reading until the student can do this on their own. For teachers, these sheets are like game film of their struggling slugger, and can offer not only a starting point and a concrete building block, but can allow a teacher to get into the mind of the student and see where s/he might be going awry.

However, Cris Tovani herself would say a word of caution about these sheets. With the absence of a good teacher and a differentiated lesson plan, these sheets would be very tedious. Even in the best hands, they should be used sparingly surrounded by other things, or exclusively in short bursts.

Here are a few concrete strategies that I will try in my class that I came up with from reading Cris’ book:

1. “Having a conversation with the text”- modeling notes in the margins of printouts (best done on an overhead). I will show students how I star sections that I find important, write questions and dissentions in the margins right by the text where I had my thoughts.

2. Create a Question Drop Box for quiet/bashful students so they may ask their questions in a way that is more comfortable for them.

3. Concentrate on getting students to brainstorm asking questions to model that you, the teacher, are not the only person in the room responsible/able to do this in class.

4. Have the class generate questions they have before reading a full text by examining the front and back covers (novel), main point headings (an article), or opening and closing paragraphs (an essay).

5. Ask questions like, “Who would like to make a comment that has not spoken yet?” to draw students out into the conversation. (I’ve tried this already, it totally works!)

Reading is not a natural process for many students. Although books are written in an English that may be a primary discourse for some, I would argue that reading is its own discourse in and of itself. Because the context and intent is no longer visible in the writer’s face or told with the writer’s voice, rather, only seen in the writer’s book, reading remains its own skill to be honed. It is not strictly human. It is the job of every teacher to never give up on her struggling readers. And, since teachers are in the market of reaching the souls of young human hearts and minds, I’ll leave her words behind with one final koan:

Not every student’s eye will give a reading the same look

Teach the student, not the book.

Here is a tiny photo of my and my buddy Adam in our...

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:42:00 -0700

Here is a tiny photo of my and my buddy Adam in our ‘teacher gear’ after a day of internship. We both think it’s great that we get to be with our students all year.

Can’t you tell?

(Lisa, our partner in crime, took this photo of us as we printed out our papers today.)

This is what baseball players used to sound like. I love Ernie...

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:03:00 -0700

This is what baseball players used to sound like. I love Ernie Banks and you will too after listening to this.

Thoughts from Nancie #2

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:36:24 -0700

The next ‘one-pager’ thoughts from my lang. arts class:

Kyle Lange

One Pager #2

So, Nancie Atwell is wonderful. She represents best practices in the Language Arts classroom. However, as we heard from our ‘in-the-trenches’ correspondent Sarah Brooks, Nancie’s ideal is not always easily achievable. I think writing folders with self-editing convention sheets sound fantastic. I love how Nancie records page numbers of the choice books students are reading to track their progress and to push them when they might be flagging (although I worry the thirty-four kids in each of the six classes I might have are too many to make this work feasible while still saving time to bookend that paperwork with modeling my reading as well). Add to this my concern about how the heck I’m going to have consistency in reading and writing workshop within a block schedule- and my head feels like a chaos scramble.

I love the Kim Campbell plan. Writing on Monday and Tuesday, reading every other Wednesday, and literature on Thursday and Friday. My mentor, however, brought up some problems that I didn’t think about fully in my excitement to share with him how I was going to blow his mind with the greatest weekly choice breakdown ever (I didn’t admit that I got it from Kim). Here is his response: “Sure Kyle, but if we read Night on Thursday, we don’t read it again until next Friday? I can see a lot of kids forgetting what is going on, and what happens when a student forgets to read? They are way behind.” Uhhh….That sounds like a very probable and genuine concern to me. I had no answer. He continued, “I tried splitting the periods between choice reading and writing, but I lost time in the transitions. I found that doing chunks of JUST choice reading or JUST choice writing or JUST the novel Night, work best for me.”

So my question: is my mentor’s chunk model okay? What are the pros and cons of this method? Off the top of my head they are: Pros- you get consistent work from students and have lots of time for deep thinking. Cons- I don’t think this would create lifelong readers and writers as easily as a consistent, year long/do everything approach would. That is a pretty serious con. Am I wrong? I have no idea.

And here is the other question baffling my noggin: at what age group do we STOP doing choice reading and writing? I don’t know any college students who do choice reading and very limited choice writing. I would say our graduate program follows this ‘college’ model. However, I don’t mind this for a second. I don’t know what teaching books I should read; I need my professors’ expertise. Should I treat my older students (juniors, seniors, or college prep courses) the same way? No one picks their books in IB classes. Is this okay with students and teachers and ‘best practitioners’? I’m relieved I get to share this with three other people. Perhaps you listening here, right now, will have good advice.

I’m a new teacher. I have NO experience to fall back on. I’m like that kid in Cris Tovani’s class that can decode the words but draw no meaning from the text. I don’t know whom to trust. Everyone seems wonderful. Kim, Michael, and Nancie all have the best of intentions, and they all know what they are talking about. Do I just need to settle down here, wait until the classroom is mine, and then try all ways out for myself?

Thoughts from Nancie #1

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:35:18 -0700

This might not make much sense our of context, but here are some brief thoughts about the stuff we are reading, seeing, thinking about regarding Nancie Atwell and choice writing and reading for students:

Kyle Lange

‘One Pager’

Students need to learn how to write. This requires emotion, creativity, deep thinking, inferences, acquisition of ‘Standard English’ (but not at the expense and appreciation of their ‘first discourse’ or home literacy), finding a ‘voice’, taking risks, and acquiring some knowledge of the literary structures that make a piece of writing a poem, a memoir, a story, or an essay.

Students need to learn how to read. They need to let the piece effect them, construct meaning, decode new words, hear a writers voice and tone, draw more inferences, connect the text to their lives, take risks, ask questions, and learn a way to take notes that helps this all stick in their brain.

Teachers need to support all students. They need to show empathy, to differentiate their lesson plans to include visual thinkers, aural thinkers, group thinkers and thinkers who might be having to translate their thinking into a language that is not one they readily use at home, create explicit content and evaluation guidelines for the students to follow, create a safe classroom for students to take risks, and help their students’ writing catch fire! They must prove, yes PROVE to their students that writing and reading are not merely important, but necessary. Oh yeah, they need to model, model, model.

So why not do what we do in real life and connect learning to what we are already passionate about? Writing/Reading workshop as spelled out by Nancie Atwell and her intellectual kin revolves around student choice and teacher discovery as a vehicle to best ignite that passion in the hope that its newfound relevance will create life-long readers, writers, and critical thinkers. Critical thinkers that are not merely ready for the job-force, but to make the world more equitable and empathetic for all living within it.

Workshop is to teaching as Jazz is to composition. Nobody knows where she is going until she is already there. It seems somewhat counterintuitive to learn from your students what they need to have a meaningful connection to the content of reading and writing. As a teacher, I’m playing the notes, but are they the right ones for my students? It’s scary stuff, but if Dizzy could blow with such fire without knowing where he was going, then I gotta believe I can poof my cheeks out too.

Donald Murray wrote, “…the voice often tells me how I really feel about a subject…” (185). Sounds jazzy, no? To me, this statement in context means that he discovers what he is writing about as he does it. This is a great idea to share with students. But slightly out of context this could also translate loosely to, ‘The student will show me how I am to teach them to love my subject.’ I can hear Dizzy wrapping up his solo. Nancie tells me it’s my turn to try. Here comes the intro; will I be ready to blow?