Processing My Process: Grades & Goals?

Like most teachers, I am a collector and recycler of ideas. Many of these remain locked up in a memory vault or notebook, while others coalesce around a singular purpose awaiting their moment to enter my practice. Over the past three weeks I have been returning to two ideas that, while not outside my realm of awareness, have by virtue of recently appearing on my Twitter feed prompted me to risk: grading student work without awarding a traditional grade and student goal setting. In the way our work has come together, I am going to use one (ungraded student work) to prompt another (student goal setting). While neither is revolutionary, I am hoping to have my feedback of their work have implications that reach beyond a returned paper set aside in a "portfolio" (translation: manila folder in a hanging folder in a cabinet to be "reflected upon" using a standardized template) or dispensed with disgust at an unfriendly number.

At this juncture (halfway through the school year), I really need for students to take to heart the feedback I have (repeatedly) shared with them, both individually and holistically as a grade level. Just as I am extremely confident I am not sharing anything new with them ("reduce clutter by revising out unnecessary clauses"), I am equally sure that many have ignored the advice from quality educators for the past 11 years of their schooling. I also know that our district (like many) has been sending professionals to training on subjects such as  SMART Goals and growth mindset, other than a passing nod to each in a department meeting, not much practical turn key training has been given. It may be that it has, but I, like the student who needs to be retaught what a metaphor is each year, the ideas have not been presented in a way that has clicked with me. This would likely be a fairer assessment of the situation as others (as you'll read) in my district, if not building, have.

I have toyed with these ideas in class over the past 15 years with varying degrees of depth and success. Like many of the strategies I have refined with my classes, I continue to try and find ways to make their use meaningful enough that they become valued by the students and thereby gain a sort of power and credibility. Articles by Carol Dweck and graphic organizers about SMART goals, to this point, have promoted interesting discussion (and have returned to them in college at which point they express gratitude for having been given them in high school) but have served primarily as "one-offs" that have little real resonance for either teacher or student.

A few weeks ago I came across a tweet (pictured above, left) by another teacher in the same school district as I, regarding her efforts with goals setting with students. Following an exchange of e-mails, she shared some resources with me including a short explanatory video she sued with her classes. At that time, my students had just taken a multiple choice mid-term and I had been looking for a way to have them process the results. It occurred to me that they might benefit from developing some SMART goals around heir own skill deficits as a means of drawing some conclusion as to1) what they are and 2) how to address them. Like "the best laid plans of mice and men," dates and ideas did not line up well enough to follow thru, but I had made some preliminary copies and began to consider a discussion of growth mindset as a precursor activity. Not quite ready to go, I set aside the materials for another day.

In two of my classes, prior to our five-day Present's Week Recess, students submitted analysis essays based upon individual chapters of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel, Persepolis: Book 1. My intention when assigning the task (as students were informed of on the assignment) was to follow my normal grading process: read twice, comment and use a generic Advanced Placement writing rubric to provide feedback. I might even invite them to develop some personal writing goals after first providing them the vocabulary with which to do so (see, I still had those copies on my desk which I really wanted to use). The latter part had yet to have actually taken place, but the thought was there.

After a quick review of some of the papers, I came to a familiar conclusion: some of the same mistakes were being made, and not just by those students who had (based on prior experience) written the hit "print" on the library computer five minutes before class. If I followed my past practice, in all likelihood, other than prompting some haggling for points, my x/y grade (x = 9-1 on 9-point rubric, y = 100-65%) would have the same amount of minimal impact. It was then I came across Mike's tweet (above right) and I began thinking of trying something different. What if I read twice, commented with some suggestions for improvement and did NOT give a grade?

As of this writing, after 6+ hours on a train ride to New York City and a third of the way back, I am about 2/3 of the way through the papers. While many of the comments are similar, I am also attempting to personalize them further, a process that takes a considerable amount of time. Too much time to do this in such great detail, very frequently. But... what if we use this as an opportunity to establish some baselines about our writing and with this baseline, and some guided reflection, each developed a SMART Goals for improvement?

With the kernel of an idea of a plan of action, as well a sense of purpose, I find it's time to review some of my notes, finish the papers, and remember where those copies were for class tomorrow... and risk again.

Amer-OAR-can Gothic

Last week, I posted an example of a graphic "allusion" to my passion du jour, George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, in an Angie's List mailer. Upon further review, I believe I chose the incorrect term to suggest what was happening. While I claimed "allusion," the cover art can better be described as an example of "appropriation." This subtle distinction is... uh... appropriate as the source which was being referenced (an iconic image associated with the television show) was graphic, rather than textual, in nature.

According to Wikipedia: "Appropriation in art is the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them... Appropriation can be understood as 'the use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new work.'" Armed with this new information, when I came across another example, one generated from a quip to my students and to be shared more formally on the next A Day, I am glad to have the correct language with which to explain.

Another Term of the Day I shared with my high school English classes recently was "Gothic." While a term they had been introduced earlier in the year while reading representative selections from both English and American literary movements, in an effort to find relevant grammar/literary terms for sharing on "G Days" (it's a somewhat complicated A through J school day rotation schedule), it seemed a more interesting class starter than "Gerund."

American Gothic (1930) by Grant Wood and cover to the 2013 Princeton 3-Mile Chase Regatta program.

In passing, the title to Grant Wood's familiar painting, American Gothic, came to me and I inquired if students were familiar with the painting. Though none could recall it by name, once I described the image of the rural American farmer in overalls with pitchfork and his dour-looking wife, more than a few hands went into the air. American Gothic by Grant Wood is one of the most familiar images in 20th-century American art. It has also been widely parodied and appropriated within American popular culture, earning I high level of visual recognition.

This past October, my stepson rowed in the Princeton 3-Mile Chase Regatta on Lake Carnegie in New Jersey. Unfortunately, work commitment precluded my going, but my wife did take the trip and returned with the event flyer. As fate would have it, the flyer featured an appropriation of American Gothic for it's cover. in  addition to a more minimalist depiction (and slightly more positive expressions on the two primaries' faces), the most signification (and appropriate) alteration was the replacement of the pitchfork with A Princeton Tigers "blade."

The layers of influence on our culture, whether "allusion" in novels, "appropriation" in art or even "sampling" in music, is dense and multi-layered. As always, however, the mantra I repeat to my students suggests how we can limit or open our analysis to observing these strategies at play: The more deeply and broadly you are read, the more these nods and influences will reveal themselves to you!

Why Flash Rhetoric Cards?

As a teacher, I realize each June that there is always something I can do to improve upon the quality of my instruction. Often these epiphanies do not result from personal reflection, but from the responses students give me on the blind surveys I periodically ask them to complete. The purpose of these surveys is to help me do a better job helping them, and this often has to do with tweaking existing processes or procedures so that they are more effective.

For many years now, I have required my Advanced Placement Language and Composition students to maintain a deck of flashcards which I call "Rhetoric Cards." This is by no means an original idea of mine, except that (at least initially) some students resist the task as they deem it elementary--at least in the context of a high school English class (his practice is very familiar to them in their foreign language studies). Once they poo-poo this strategy, I remind them that the purpose of the cards is not to promote the rote memorization of every vocabulary word but to have a tactile resource for relevant Tier 3 terminology at their disposal when reading or analysing text that they can go through. Given the thousand possible rhetoric terms that may turn up on the exam, I have chosen to focus on 100-120 that are most likely to occur or that (minimally) provide them the best opportunity to eliminate possible answer on multiple choice questions.

In my classes, we use the Rhetoric Deck as a tool for learning important Tier 3 terms. Tier 3 vocabulary consists of low-frequency words that occur in specific domains. Domains include subjects in school, hobbies, occupations, geographic regions, technology, weather, etc. Generally these terms and concepts are introduced when a specific need arises, such as learning "amino acid" during a chemistry lesson, or "litotes" in the study of rhetoric. Some common examples of the terms I required students to define and "card" during summer (in concert with reading Thank You for Arguing by Jay Heinrichs) include antithesis, tautology and decorum.

My epiphany around Rhetoric Card usage came when, last June, a few students suggested that the cards had a diminished value as the year progressed. While this can be seen as a positive (as students internalize the definition and application of the term/concept, they need the cards as a resource less), I was reminded that there are some students who never caught on to the task meaningfully in the first place. That is to say, some students failed in September to begin a deck and consequently never kept adding concepts and ideas as the class (and better students) progressed. In effort to maximize the potential value of this activity, I am committing this coming school year to insuring that I check them more frequently early on, and that as we move through the curriculum students and I physically interact with the cards more regularly through some term chunking and kinesthetic organizing.

Some interesting related articles:

• Are Flashcards an Effective Learning Tool? [Infographic]
• Highlighting Is a Waste of Time: The Best and Worst Learning Techniques by Annie Murphy Paul, TIME, January 9, 2013.

Proofreading Q & A: moon or Moon?

 From Grade Six Daily Paragraph Editing (2004).

Each day my eleventh grade class and I begin class by proofreading one of four paragraphs, which together make a short narrative. While using an older workbook designed for use with sixth graders a decade ago, I've found the level of difficulty appropriate for most traditional eleventh graders, especially given the lack of grammar and punctuation acumen many seem to come into class with. The task is simple: using appropriate proofreader's marks, bring each paragraph into grammatical correctness in the cleanest way possible. In some cases, a more "sophisticated" revision (such as combining independent clauses using a well placed semi-colon) is possible (and "correct"), but we tend to go with the more accessible comma and conjunction correction.


For my own reference, as well as though students who occasionally assist at the front of the room, I also have an answer key for each, and last week came across a question from a student (you, know, the whole "teachable moment" thing). On rare occasions in the past, we have found that corrections which are suggested seem incorrect. I suspect that some of those "mistakes" which would have previously required correcting no longer do, given evolving nature of acceptable grammar. More commonly, though, there is a correction or non-correction that the key does accurately address, but I as a teacher am unable to properly articulate at the moment--so the teachable moment is deferred until the next class when I can find a satisfactory (and clear) answer.

Question: In the paragraph above, a question came up regarding proper capitalization of the word "moon" in line two: "his/crew was on his way to the moon." One student suggested that the word moon should be capitalized because it is referring to our (Earth's) moon, as evidenced by the article "the" preceding the noun. Should "moon" be capitalized, as a specific celestial body, or is the noun suitably common and should therefore remain lowercase?

Answer: One online source reads that "Names of celestial bodies: Mars, Saturn, the Milky Way (are capitalized). Do not, however, capitalize earth, moon, sun, except when those names appear in a context in which other (capitalized) celestial bodies are mentioned. 'I like it here on earth,' but 'It is further from Earth to Mars than it is from Mercury to the Sun.'" The key here is the necessary presence of a secondary specific celestial body (Mars, Earth, Haley's Comet) if one is to correctly  proofread line two by capitalizing "moon". In this case, the answer key was correct, and reflected the grammatical rule that the names of certain celestial bodies (moon, earth, sun) are not capitalized except when those names appear in a context in which other (capitalized) celestial bodies.

Source:
Capitalization

Poem in Your Pocket Day(s) Activity

Official National Poetry
Month 2013 poster.

April is nearly half over and I am just now finding time to fully support National Poetry Month (NPM) in the way I had hoped. Despite being busy with piloting lessons designed to address the new Common Core Learning Standards, which seemingly suggests a heavier reliance on non-fiction in school English classes, I have been looking for the chance to devote some instructional time to poetry experiences. Fortunately for my students and I, our school's Library/Media Specialist has done a nice job following through on a few building wide activities from years past such as the reading of poems by different students each morning during announcements and scheduling our semi-annual Poetry Reading next week.

Beyond analyzing poems such as "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns, "A Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes, and "Sonnet X" by John Donne, all which have thematic ties to traditionally taught novels (Of Mice and Men, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry,  and Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther, respectively), my colleagues and I do our best to infuse the curriculum with poetry. It is why many of us got into the business: a love a literature we wish to share. Given this, to me, it only makes sense that the poetry activity I use for NPM  promotes the sharing of student selected poetry with other members of our learning community.

The CCLS does include language which continues to supports the inclusion of poetry in hgihs chool curriculum. For example, one could fairly see this Pocket Poem activity of researching, selecting and sharing as meeting the Reading Standard 11.1 (Grades 11–12):

Interpret, analyze, and evaluate narratives, poetry, and drama, aesthetically and philosophically by making connections to: other texts, ideas, cultural perspectives, eras, personal events, and situations.

The subordinate Key Ideas get at the specifics even more, especially 11.1a.: "Self-select text to respond and develop innovative perspectives."

The task introduced.

Now that I have a level of alignment with the CCLS, over the next week, I will be assigning all of my English students to complete a slightly adjusted Poem in Your Pocket Day activity. I initially had planned the project for use in my Advanced Placement classes (primarily because I hope it will be something of a reprieve from preparation for May's assessments), my Regents level courses will also be participating. Though Thursday, April 18 is "officially" Poem in Your Pocket Day, our celebration will be stretched over the weekend following so that due dates will be between April 22-23.

I introduced the activity to the first class participating Friday morning, and will continue doing so today. The activity is a familiar take on the common "pick a favorite poem" task. The most significant change in the spirit of Poem in Your Pocket Day, is that the extensions of the task emphasis beyond the selection of a single poem. The sharing of a self-selected poem with a number of people from our shared learning community is where the real "work" is. As I explained to my students, it has been my experiencing that the act of sharing a poem is generally seen by the recipient as an invitation to conversation, even by those who  either "dislike" poetry or with who may never had experienced an authentic conversation around it.



Melancholy? Yes. A theme high
schoolers can relate to? YES!

The activity's introduction was prefaced by my own sharing of a poem with the class, "Dolor" by Theodore Roethke. As I explained to them after sharing it, "Dolor" was first given to me as a college assignment by a professor who was aware of my intention to teach. Of course, it was only years later that I saw the implications of the poem's theme on what would become my career.

Students will document their interactions with those who they are sharing with through one of two ways: having the recipients sign a copy of the poem or having a digital photo taken with all three "members" of the exchange (student, recipient and poem) in the frame. My hope is that despite a common task, the variation in poems selected, as well as methods of documentation will reduce "the dropping of fine film" which can result in dispassionate "duplicate grey standard faces" some activities can unwittingly produce.

But, therein lies the real challenge of teaching and the value of poetry in schools!