The Book that Changed My Life as a Teacher

At some point in your teaching career, you will find yourself asking, "What in the world did I get myself into?" and thinking, "I wonder if there are any openings at Home Depot." These thoughts swam in my brain every day during my first year of teaching, at least once a week during my second and third years, and even by my fourth year, I was checking the jobs ads every now and again.

Then, in 2012, something magical happened: I attended an Edcamp professional development workshop. Click here to learn more about Edcamp. At Edcamp, which was without a doubt the best professional development I had attended in four years of teaching, I learned about a phenomenal new book called Teach Like a Pirate, by Dave Burgess.

In a nutshell (even though you can't really put the greatness of this book in a nutshell), this book teaches you to rethink your teaching -- every aspect of it: lesson design, relationships with students, self-reflection. It's about teaching with passion and giving students memorable experiences in and outside the four walls of your classroom. Here are a few ways I used ideas from this book to pirate up my teaching:

The pirate in me

I'm sure I already knew this, as we all do, but was reminded by the author that students' days at school can be monotonous, boring, even dreadfully miserable. This book gave me a plethora of ideas to change that -- at least for my class. One of the simple ways to do so (and I seriously kicked myself for not having thought of this myself) is by creating some suspense.

The teaser

On the second day of my fifth year of teaching, I had planned to do a lesson on learning styles -- so that I could learn more about my students and their learning preferences and so they could learn more about each other, and themselves. Based on Burgess's book, I was going to focus on brain research, and I found a fantastic video to show about how amazing the brain is -- and how it can be fooled by sleight of hand. I also purchased some dollar-store stress balls in the shape of brains, and I had my own brain-designed hat to wear. I planned to throw (er-- gently toss) the brain balls out to students who asked questions and participated in discussion. Now, of course I was extremely excited about this lesson, but I needed to get my kids looking forward to it. So at the end of class on the first day of school, I gave them a simple teaser: "You don't want to miss tomorrow; we're going to be throwing brains around!" And that's it. No more said, even through the onslaught of "What?!" "What do you mean?" "Throwing brains?!" "What are we gonna be doing?" I needed to leave them wondering, leave them in suspense, leave them curious. Sure enough, the next day, students bounded into class asking about the brains.

The mystery

In my 7th-grade ELA class, we would soon be reading Pandora's Box, as well as a few other Greek myths. When planning this lesson, I focused on Burgess's ideas for using props to engage students. I found three small boxes at home (a ring box, a small gift box, etc.). Inside the boxes, I placed a little note that read something like, "I told you not to open it!" Then, the day we were going to be reading Pandora's Box, I handed a box to three random students, telling them, "This is a very special box just for you. But you must place it on your desk and you may NOT open it until the end of class."

As class went on, I watched those students, and so did the curious others. One student sat on his hands so he wouldn't be tempted to open the box. Another student tried to peek without really opening the box. Another had no problem setting the box at the corner of her desk and ignoring it henceforth. As we read the myth, students began to make connections between the story and my act of giving students a box and telling them not to open it. Of course there were other parts to the lesson, other activities we did with the myth, but this simple sidebar with the boxes made it interactive for the students, as if they were part of the story. It created suspense and mystery and engagement.

Selling tickets

Last year, I had a lesson planned that I thought was awesome -- so awesome that I could sell tickets to it. So I did. I had a roll of those red raffle tickets that you can buy at Staples or Office Depot, and I stood at my classroom door. As students approached, I told them I was selling tickets to today's lesson. The cost varied; sometimes it was three smiles and a laugh, for some students the cost was a positive attitude, and for other students the cost was two compliments. As I tore off tickets for students and accepted their payment, I could see in their eyes and their smiles that this was not something they were used to. Yes! I created curiosity. Then, during the lesson, I stopped at three natural breaks to call a ticket number for door prizes.

Using social media

I often used my teacher Facebook page, Twitter, and Edmodo to send out teasers to the next day's lesson. It was such an easy way to get kids excited about coming to school. One day I had a new seating chart, but instead of just telling my students where to sit, I wanted to make it fun. So I made up a little riddle for each student to find the right seat. The Friday night before, I sent this out on Facebook:
"Where, oh, where will my students sit on Monday?
Solve your riddle to have a fun day.
Can you find your seat with just one clue?
If you can read rhymes, you'll know what to do."

Another time, I used Tellagami.com to create this teaser video for my 6th-grade students: https://tellagami.com/gami/KAN1EL/ and posted it on my Facebook teacher page. And this one was for my 8th-graders: https://tellagami.com/gami/Q3LKP5/

Here's a teaser I posted to create suspense for a newscast activity: "Are you ready to be on camera? If so, you will love our next assignment!"


Doing simple teasers like these created excitement for my kids, and the more excited they got, the more excited I got. It was like a crazy, excited cycle of excitement! I've posted before in this blog that I believe if you're not having fun, you're not doing it right. These little nuggets of golden ideas from Teach Like a Pirate helped me find the fun in teaching again when I thought I had lost it.

Giving them something unexpected

For four years in a row, after reading Teach Like a Pirate, I opened the school year with Dave Burgess's first three days activities, which included using Play-Doh on Day 1, and doing the collaborative groups "Who Will Survive" task on Day 3, complete with a costumed skit by Yours Truly. If this sounds like Greek to you, you must read the book. One of the main concepts the book emphasizes is giving students memorable experiences. When you make your lessons stand out from the rest, when you allow yourself to take risks and do something different, you will find your students so much more engaged and willing to participate. Until reading this book, I never imagined that I would dress as a witch and come to school as Mrs. McGonnawrite for a weeklong Hogwrites School of Word Craft and Editing. I never imagined that I would hold a dance-off with a difficult student. I never imagined that I would be able to turn workbook-style lessons into games and kinesthetic activities.

Pirate on, teachers. Pirate on.

This book truly saved my teaching. It lifted me up from the depths of "What have I gotten myself into?" and brought me to "What will I do for my students next?"! Now that I am no longer in the classroom, I miss having the chance to change students' lives with inspiring lessons. So I am spreading Burgess's message in my new position as an ELA strategist, sharing my passion for this author's theories with the teachers I am coaching. There are so many PD books out there -- some fantastic ones, yes -- but this one is the only one I would say is a must-read. Really. And I am not alone. I quickly learned after the aforementioned magical Edcamp that Teach Like a Pirate had developed quite the cult following. It has become so popular over the years that I feel a bit like I'm arriving late to dinner by posting this now. But if you haven't read it yet, go get it! You will not regret it. It made such an impression on me that I have asked my boss to purchase copies of the book so I can present a Teach Like a Pirate PD and distribute books to secondary teachers in my district.

8 Tips for Implementing RTI in the Middle School ELA Classroom

I've been MIA since school started. All educators know what that's like. The school year is simply too busy for us to keep up with extras like blogs. Thank goodness for the weeklong Thanksgiving break -- we get a breather, a minute to relax, and a minute to write a blog post.

Time is all we need

Lack of time is one of the biggest issues secondary teachers face when it comes to conducting small-group interventions. I was lucky to teach at campuses with double-blocked ELA classes (90 minutes!), but not all campuses in my district follow that schedule. Several have class periods that are roughly 50 minutes long, and once you subtract minutes for settling in, administrivia, housekeeping, and the like, those classes are more like 40 minutes, on the generous end.

I've been working with a new teacher to help her get small groups for RTI started, and last week when I co-taught with her, I was hit with an eye-opening reality check. Those 50 (or really 40) minutes absolutely fly by, and it can seem virtually impossible to carve out time for interventions.

That reality check got me to thinking long and hard about how middle school campuses can effectively implement RTI, and I've come up with some tips -- all of which I would be following if I were still a classroom teacher.

1. Shorten the length of your whole-class direct instruction.

This may require a paradigm shift for many teachers, as it calls for a whole new way of thinking about lesson planning. But think about it this way: If your whole-class instruction (the "I do" part) is cut to 15 minutes or less, and guided practice (the "we do" part) is about 15 minutes, that leaves 15-20 minutes for independent practice (the "you do" part). And it is during this independent practice time that you can maximize student learning by pulling a small group for a targeted intervention.

2. Consider flipping the classroom.

The flipped classroom design has its disadvantages (not all students have Internet access at home, many middle school students simply will not do the at-home assignments, etc.), but if you can give students even just a portion of the "I do" part of the next day's lesson to do at home, you save yourself a few valuable minutes that can be spent on guided and independent practice during class -- which means you'll also open up more time to pull small groups.

3. Invest in stations.

Some secondary teachers may view learning stations as an "elementary thing," but I can tell you from first-hand experience that middle schoolers love them and they were about the best thing I ever did in my classroom. I often set up literacy stations with reading and writing activities that were fun for my kids (and for me!). They included board games, card games, fun writing prompts, and reading response activities. This always took more time to set up on the front end, but the results were unarguably positive: Students were engaged in the activities (didn't even realize they were actually learning while playing); the class time had built-in brain breaks, because students were rotating every 12-15 minutes to a new activity; and it freed me up to pull small groups. With station rotations, you have a couple of options for RTI. You can oversee the whole class as they work in their groups, and when the time is right, you can go work with specific groups of students who need intervention. Or you can make one of the stations a guided-reading-with-the-teacher station, which is what I did quite often. That way, all groups eventually rotate through to me, and I can intervene for the struggling kids and extend for the stronger readers. (This required pregrouping based on data.)

4. Take advantage of SSR time.

Through recent classroom observations, I have seen many teachers using SSR in the classroom (yay!!). But in all cases, the teacher sat and read independently as well. While this is a good practice because it shows students that the teacher values reading for pleasure as well, in that 20-minute SSR period, the teacher could have easily worked with a struggling reader or two while everyone else read silently. During my grad-school program, I did extensive research on SSR, and one of my findings was that a more structured SSR period -- in which the teacher holds reading conferences with individual students or pulls small groups for interventions -- was more effective and beneficial for students. Perhaps the teacher can read silently with her students for 5-10 minutes to show her passion for reading, but then she can swing by the desk of a few students and have a quick reading conference, work with a student on fluency, give a quick mini-lesson on using context clues, or pull a small group for a targeted intervention.

5. Put students with partners.

One way to shave time off of guided practice and independent practice is to have students work with a partner. Many secondary teachers scoff at this idea because they feel that middle school children need to learn to work efficiently on their own. Indeed, when I first started teaching, I was under the tutelage of a quite brilliant veteran teacher who believed in rows and silent independent work. I tried to follow in her footsteps, but over the years I observed that kids really do learn better, learn more, and learn faster when they are given opportunities to be collaborative. And so one year I finally did away with rows permanently, and from then on out, I had my desks arranged in groups of 3 or 4, and sometimes pairs -- but never rows (except during testing, of course). After your direct instruction, when students practice the skill with your help and then apply the skill without your help, if they work with a partner (or in a small group, even), they can complete the assignment in less time than if they had to navigate it alone.

6. Use timers religiously.

This may sound like such a simple thing, but sometimes this happens: You teach and teach and teach, and before you know it, it's time for the bell and you're only halfway through the day's lesson plan, and you wonder where the time went and why nobody finished their work. When you plan your lesson, you should pace it out and set a time limit for each portion of the lesson. Then stick to those times as best as you can. Use your phone -- or better yet, one of those handy online timers that you can display for your students. Yes, interruptions will happen, things will need to be retaught or explained more than you originally thought, but at least by using a timer for every activity, you have a guide to go by. And later you can analyze where the time went. Setting time limits will allow you to plan time for interventions.

7. Hand over some power.

Elementary teachers seem to have this down -- all routine classroom chores are delegated, every child has a job, and the teacher is free to teach. By turning over the mundane tasks (sharpening pencils, handing out journals, moving desks, gathering textbooks, or even turning on the projector), your classroom can run like clockwork without you at the helm every second of the class period. So while you are working with a small group of intervention students, someone else is in charge and students can handle little issues that arise. You won't have to stress and try to rush through an intervention lesson thinking that you still have to do X, Y, and Z, because you will have students whose job is to do X, Y, and Z for you.

8. Be realistic.

Understand that you will not be able to meet with all RTI groups every day. Get yourself a planner and set up a realistic schedule. Decide which students need the most help, and plan to meet with them for 10-12 minutes two or three times a week. Once you get started and ease into a routine, you can add on groups of your middle-tier students. Contrary to the pressure that society tends to place on teachers today, we are not all-powerful. So you do what you can with what you have.

Some ideas for intervention lessons

* Use your district's most recent benchmark exam and do a guided reading on a passage students had the most trouble with.
* Use a lower-lexile version of a text the whole class is reading and target a specific skill your intervention kids need help with.
* Try word work. Many struggling readers are struggling because of gaps in their learning -- they're missing basic phonics skills or elementary vocabulary and grammar skills. In my TPT store, I have a bundle of word work and word puzzle activities designed to help fill those gaps. You can access it by clicking on the picture:

I would love to hear how other secondary teachers are making time for RTI! Leave a comment below.

How to Teach Theme in Middle School

Let the unteaching begin

There are a number of concepts that students learn one way in elementary school and a different way in middle school. We essentially have to unteach what they learned in elementary to address misconceptions. Linear plot is one that comes to mind, as in elementary, students are taught plot using a triangle, where the climax of the story occurs perfectly in the middle. Google "plot chart," and you will find a gazillion of these plot triangles. Say it ain't so. As an ELA teacher, this is highly frustrating, because in no story ever does the climax occur in the middle. So we unteach that -- over and over, in 6th grade, 7th grade, and still in 8th.

Theme is another concept we have to reteach in a more accurate way, because students come to middle school thinking that theme is one word -- like courage, or hope, or love. It appears that this is the way theme is taught in elementary. This creates a huge misconception for students, especially as they read more challenging texts.

What is theme?

Theme is not one word. That one word -- courage, hope, or love -- is a topic. If a student says a story or poem is about courage, she must ask herself, "What is the author trying to say about courage?" Then you have the theme. Hence the misconception: Students in 6th grade and beyond have trouble distinguishing between theme and topic. So we must extend students' thinking beyond that one word.

Theme is a message embedded in the text. A lesson. A moral. A universal idea. All parts of the story (or poem) contribute to or influence the theme. How the characters feel and act, how they respond to the conflict, how the conflict is resolved -- these things develop the theme. The setting plays a role in development of the theme as well. So how do we get kids to comprehend this complex idea?

Concentric circles

Last year I learned about a method to teach the theme of a poem, and I found that it works well with all literary genres. It uses a concentric circle graphic organizer:

How it works: 
1.) After reading the text, students write the topic of the text in the inner-most circle. That should be just one word, such as "Friendship."
2.) In the next circle, students write the text evidence that proves the text is about that topic. For example, how do you know it's about friendship? Text evidence may include the title, or perhaps the two main characters are best friends and in the story these friends go through the trials and tribulations of friendship, or perhaps there is a sentence within the text that says something specific about friendship.
3.) In the third circle, students answer the question, "What do you as a reader learn about the topic?" So for our example -- the topic of friendship -- students would explain what that text teaches them about friendship. Answers will vary, but the key is providing text evidence. Perhaps the friends in the story struggle through a conflict but in the end they stick together. So the reader learns that true friendship is lasting.
4.) In the final circle, students answer the question, "What do you think the author believes about the topic?" This will be based on text evidence and what happens in the text. This answer may be very close to what students wrote in the previous circle. Students would write, "The author believes that..." and for our example, perhaps it is something like, "The author believes that friends should stick together no matter what."
5.) The last step is to cross out "The author believes that," and what remains is your theme statement -- a complete sentence that expresses  a universal theme and is based on text evidence!

Get it for free

You can download my Finding Theme with Concentric Circles activity for free at my TPT store:

Tips for Writing Conference Success

I will admit upfront that I never felt fully comfortable conducting writing conferences. I didn't feel that it was an area in which I excelled. However, when I did succeed at conferring with my students, I felt wholeheartedly that the process was extremely valuable for both me and the student. Because that one-on-one collaborative conversation is such an important part of writing instruction, I have worked on ways to improve my skills as a teacher, and I wanted to share my ideas with you.

The power of writing conferences

Writing conferences have so many benefits. Following is only a partial list of the incredible good that comes from them. One-on-one writing conferences allow the teacher to:
* praise and encourage self-doubting writers
* build relationships
* guide students through brainstorming and planning
* answer specific questions
* re-teach writing concepts
* stretch students' imaginations and writing skills
* build students' confidence
* check for understanding and clarify misconceptions
* improve students' discussion skills
* improve students' revising and editing skills
You can probably think of several more benefits of writing conferences. With all of these possibilities, why would anyone not do writing conferences? I mean, how many single lessons do all of these things in one shot?

Types of writing conferences

Whenever I struggled to do writing conferences over the years, the reason always came back to time. Time is a huge factor in any lesson plan, but when you have 25+ students, it can take an entire week to conduct a formal, thorough writing conference with every student. So I improvised. I found that there are three types of writing conferences that I would conduct, depending on each student's needs:

Formal conference: This is a formal one-on-one conference lasting 10 minutes (or even more at times) that I would hold with my highest-needs students. It is heavily planned and prepared for. I would do this type of conference after my students had written an essay for our district writing benchmark, I had scored it and written comments on it, and now it was time to confer and have students revise and rewrite to submit as a final draft. The hope was that they would improve their score by going through this process. For this conference, I would want my students to prepare as well. One year, we had a pre-conference form for students to fill out, and I found that it was too complicated and time-consuming, and most of my students didn't even understand what to write. So I have created a simplified one that has the components I think are the most important. You can download it by clicking on the picture:

In the formal conference, you can either sit next to the student at his or her desk, or sit at a designated spot in the room. Either way, it is important to sit next to rather than across from the student, as this is a conversation, not an interview. The student will feel less intimidated this way. I always start with positives by showing the student what she did well on the essay. Then, despite the fact that there may be a million things that need work, I focus on one or two main things I want the student to work on to improve her essay. The goal is an improved essay, not necessarily a perfect essay. I also want the conference to be largely student-led rather than me doing all the talking, so I will start by having the student tell me what she liked and didn't like about her writing. I want to make sure that all of her questions are answered as well. It is important to be very clear about the weaknesses I see (remember, just one or two) and about the improvements I want her to make. Then I'll end by having her clarify and confirm for me what her next steps are, to make sure I see that she understands what she needs to do. There's a spot for that on the form.

At this point, I can either make a copy of her form for my records, or I can keep track of conferences and student progress on my own progress monitoring form (a pretty common one that I adapted to match the 7th-grade STAAR expository rubric):

This form allows me to mark which skills I'm targeting with a student each time we confer. At the next conference, we can look back the marks and comments from the previous one to check the student's progress.

Drive-by conference: Sometimes I don't need to do a full-length formal conference. Maybe students are in the pre-writing or drafting stage, or maybe I have some students who are strong writers and don't need me to sit down with them for 10 minutes. For those cases, there's what I call the "drive-by conference," and this is one that you are probably doing in your classroom every time students are writing. It is still one-on-one, but it can be really quick, and I can do several of them in one class period, maybe even with every student in the class. This type of conference does not tend to be pre-planned, or at least not overly so. I will scoot up next to a student and ask her some specific questions about her writing and where she is in the process. I will read a portion of her writing, point out some "glows" and then talk to her about one "grow." Even with the much shorter drive-by conference, I still want to always close with next steps, either by asking the student to tell me what her next steps are or by telling her what I think her next steps should be.

Small-group conference: Sometimes I need to do a formal conference with some -- or all -- of my students, but there is just not the time to do so (it always comes down to time). So I will pre-plan some small-group conferences. I will go through all of my students' writing and sort them into "target skill" piles. For example, maybe there are three students who did not answer the prompt, so I need to meet with them and break down the prompt with them to help them understand it. Maybe there are four students who wrote in the wrong genre, so I will conference with those four to re-teach a mini-lesson on the elements of expository writing. And maybe there are a few students whose main problem was conventions, so I will meet with them to work on editing strategies. While the small-group conference may last just as long as a formal one-on-one conference, it is saving time because I'm working with three or four students at a time.

So worth it

No matter which type of conference you conduct, I believe you will find the outcome well worth the time spent.

Now, when it comes to editing and revising, there are so many different things you can do. I have a product in my TPT store for editing and revising that has gotten tremendous results for me when I used it with my students. It uses an old but apparently little-known method called CDO and works great for small-group instruction. I have created some supplemental aids to go with it, and it's only $2!:

Lessons from Primary

There was a time when I thought I wanted to teach kindergarten, but when the time came to choose which certification I would pursue, I chose middle school. I did so because I remember middle school being hellish for me: I was awkward, I was ugly, and I didn't fit in with any group but desperately wanted to, causing me to do some really stupid things (like the time I cut my own hair, but we don't need to go into that). So I felt that I could relate to middle-school kids and make a difference for them.

Superheroes

Plus, there's somewhat of a status symbol attached to being a middle school teacher. See, when a person says she teaches elementary, the response generally goes, "Awwww, so sweeeet! What fun! They're so cute!" and much cheeky smiling follows. When a person says she teaches high school, the response is, "Nice! Very cool," and respectful handshaking follows. Now, tell people you teach middle school, and they lurch backward, their eyes go wonky, and they say, "Whoa! Middle school. God bless you," and sympathetic pats on the back occur until the awestruck parties slink away, thanking their lucky stars that their job is not as hard as yours. I relish the fact that all my years in education have been spent nurturing the one age group that everyone thinks is insane. It's like a badge of courage. Or a superhero cape.

Happy little people

Now, in my new position as a secondary ELA strategist, I am navigating many challenges and tests. Today's test came in the form of pint-sized people. I was assigned a campus (apparently at random) to help out with first-day-of-school madness. This particular campus is a pre-school campus. Despite what you may be thinking, I must first say that there was no madness. First-day-of-school arrival worked like a well-oiled machine, and dismissal was just as orderly, despite a drenching downpour that thundered in just as parents arrived to pick up their babies. So I feel obligated to share some ideas that are used in pre-school that could totally work in middle school as well.

Singing

It's no secret that music makes everyone feel better. Primary grades use singing for many purposes: to welcome students in the morning, for transitions between activities or lessons, to celebrate achievements, to say goodbye at the end of the day. They sing about the weather, they sing about their friends, they sing about numbers, they sing about colors, they sing about tying shoes and going to the bathroom and eating their food and washing their hands. They sing about everything, all the time, every day. And then in middle school, the singing stops. Why? Incorporating songs and music into lessons during the school day would brighten moods and quash the monotony. One school in our district has music playing in the hallways at all times. What a cheerful place to be!

Color-coding

At the pre-school where I was stationed today, colors meant everything. There was a blue hall and a red hall and a yellow hall; there were yellow tags that helped match child to parent; there were teachers in colored shirts that I surmised must correspond with some secret color code. And all of these colors helped children and parents know where to go and what to do. Color coding could be beneficial in middle school, too, what with all of the different classes, projects, and homework kids need to keep straight. You'd have to be careful, though, because in the pre-teen years, some kids become concerned with gang colors. I once had a student who refused to use a pencil that was generously offered to him because it was red, and his gang of choice was the blue one. To combat that issue, you could use pastels or fluorescents. I'm pretty sure that there is no gang affiliation with Pepto pink or mint green.

Recess

I did not have the privilege today of joining the pre-school children at recess, but I saw the playground. What a fun, colorful, inviting place it was. All children need some time each day to run off some energy, unwind, and socialize -- even older kids. I hate that recess is taken away in middle school. I think having a little recess would cut down on a good chunk of the behavior issues that teachers encounter in middle school. I mean, even prisons have outdoor recreation time.

Perkiness

If there's one difference between teachers of primary-grade children and teachers of secondary children, it is perkiness. Teachers of older kids (myself included) tend to look a bit haggard, perhaps grumpy, a little put out. Not all the time, of course, but, well, most of the time. It's not their fault -- remember the superhero thing. Teachers of little ones are smiley, happy, cheerful -- literally bouncing with joy. And that makes all the difference. At the pre-school where I was stationed, a great crowd of us gathered at the front entrance and welcomed the new students and their parents, and those faculty who were used to this sort of thing were positively dripping with cheer. (My cheeks hurt after an hour of welcome duty.) With such a positive opening to the school day, it was impossible for anyone to be anything less than thrilled to be there. We should bring some joy back to the secondary school setting. Take a note from the Ron Clark Academy and roll out the red carpet for our scholars. Make them feel like they are entering the best place in the world.

Spending some time at a pre-school building was a real eye-opener for me. It made me reflect on the primary-grade experiences that are thrown out as kids get older but don't really need to be. With a little adjustments for maturity, so many "little-kid" procedures and methods can and should be continued all the way into high school.

I have a few products in my TeachersPayTeachers store that bring a little elementary style into the mix. One of them is this one:

A Fun Way to Practice and Review Roots and Affixes

So I have a confession to make: I never enjoyed teaching roots and affixes. The workbooks and worksheets available for such lessons were torture for me and the students. Foldables were not as engaging as they were with other concepts. Even the educational board game I tried to use in class was too difficult for my students. And I was just plain bad at teaching this aspect of word work.

That being said, I know how crucial it is for children's vocabulary development and reading comprehension skills to practice roots and affixes. It is a vital part of vocabulary instruction. So this summer, while playing around with some vocabulary card game ideas, I came up with one for roots and affixes. The game is played similarly to UNO, sans colors and numbers. Players are dealt seven cards each, and the rest of the deck is placed face-down in the center, with one card turned face-up in a discard pile to begin the game. The first player begins by playing off of the word part shown on the starting card. If the starting card says trans, and the first player has a card that says port, he can play that card to make transport. Now the next person must play off of port. Or he can play off of transport. The first person to get rid of all of his or her cards wins the game.

Here are just some of the cards included in the 96-card set.

Now, in my new position as an ELA strategist, I am not in the classroom to test this game out on kids. But today, I presented the card game to a group of middle- and high-school ELA teachers, and I was blown away by how well it was received. Here are some pictures of my district's teachers playing the game:

As I watched teachers play this game, I saw such engagement, heard much laughter, and saw spirited competition. The group in the last photo improvised a new way to play, making it more like dominoes than UNO. I could see that everyone in the room was having a blast with this game, but I wanted to know two important things: Would students enjoy the game, and would they learn from it? The answer to both questions was a resounding yes from the 30 or so teachers who participated in this workshop, and they all wanted to take this resource to use in their classrooms.

So, have I found a fun way to practice and review roots and affixes? I think so. You can purchase this game from my TPT store by clicking on the product cover below.

The game is called Word War I, and I intend to make a second version called -- you guessed it -- Word War II.

Word Work in Secondary School

Having taught in middle school my entire teaching career, I had heard vaguely of "word work" as something only elementary schools do -- you know, with phonics or something like that. It wasn't until a professional development session offered by my district a couple of years ago that I discovered that word work can be done in middle school as well -- and it is very much needed, especially as our populations of English language learners increase and reading scores decrease.

Reading deficits

It always surprised me how many basic phonics and spelling generalizations my students didn't know, such as the silent e for a long vowel sound, removing the silent e to add ing, and doubling the consonant to add ed or ing for a short vowel sound. Many ELLs that came through my classroom over the years struggled with spelling words in past tense ("wisht" for wished, or "wantit" for wanted) and with that pesky silent h ("whith" for with, or "wat" for what).

Oddly, it wasn't just the ELLs who were making such mistakes. There seemed to be an epidemic of pre-teens and teens who could not spell age-appropriate words. The connection between spelling ability and reading achievement is well-documented. If a child does not know common English spelling patterns, as evidenced through their writing, it stands to reason that they are not successfully decoding words with those patterns as they read either, which is affecting their reading fluency and comprehension. And this is compounded by the fact that their vocabulary bank account is virtually empty to begin with. With poor phonics knowledge, they have nowhere to draw from to increase their vocabulary funds or simply to break even when dealing with increasingly more difficult grade-level texts. So these students end up falling further and further into reading deficit.

To frustrate matters, in middle school, there is no room in the curriculum for remedial phonics lessons, no time to teach and reteach students reading and spelling concepts they should have mastered by second grade. The situation seems quite hopeless, but there are ways to make hefty vocabulary, spelling, and reading deposits for our kids.

Word work deposits

When a professional development session introduced me to a few file-folder word work activities, which can be used as 10-minute bell-ringers, in literacy stations, or as small-group interventions, I spent a summer creating my own. Many of them are phonics exercises that tackle the generalizations mentioned earlier, as well as distinguishing between the different sounds that ough, ow, and ch can make, or when to use ie vs. ei. 

Other folder activities tackle reading and spelling at the syllable and word level -- roots and affixes, making compound words, parts of speech. Still others take it to the sentence level, using a cloze reading activity. My favorite activities are the ones that delve into the nuances of English word meanings. For example, look at the words walk and run. There are, of course, many different ways to walk and run, and if you grab a handful of synonyms for each of those words, they all mean something slightly different. Using a "degrees of meaning" activity, students can sort the words on a plot line from slowest (amble, perhaps) to fastest (sprint), with such words as stride, canter, and lope filling out the line in between. Vocabulary activities such as word ladders, completing analogies, and categorical word sorts are also beneficial word work exercises for struggling middle school readers.

How I did this

I spent last summer, as I said, creating word work folders (I think I created about 25) using sticky notes. I used the word work activities as beginning-of-class group work. Each group would take a different folder and spend about 10 minutes working on it together. We made a section of students' interactive notebooks into a Word Work section, and students were responsible for copying down any chart or list of words appearing in their word work activity for that day. My intention was for each group to do one word work exercise each day.

The good news: I could tell that these activities were highly constructive for my low readers. The students were engaged and learning. I was initially concerned that the activities would be too easy for 7th-graders, but, again, I found that there were so many phonics, spelling, and vocabulary skills my students were lacking, so the activities were perfect practice for them.

The bad news: The activities did turn out to be a bit too easy for my pre-AP kids, for the most part, so I continued using the folders only in my on-level class, and even then, I unfortunately did not use them as often as I had intended. I do strongly believe that if I had used the activities more often, I would have been able to see marked improvement in spelling and overall reading. The other negative was that the sticky notes began to lose their stick after so many uses.

How you can do this

My experience with these word work folder activities, and my belief that word work is absolutely necessary in the middle school ELA classroom, inspired me to create a word work product for my TeachersPayTeachers store, and I intend to make more. For this first set, I have compiled 20 word work activities (including all of the activities mentioned above, and more), with clear instructions for students and teachers. Click the photo below to go to my store and see a preview.

And Part 2:

The small details

Here is how I suggest using the product once you print it out:

I cut a small mailing envelope and taped it to the folder to keep all of the cut-out words in. I would laminate the words, and the folders too, if you have the time -- that would certainly help the activities last a long time. I think the most challenging part of managing this would be preventing the little pieces of paper from getting lost. I have used Velcro dots with folder games before, but that takes quite a bit of prep work. In lieu of that, I would assign one person at each group to be in charge of the pieces. Middle school students really love being given such jobs, and they will take it seriously.

One thing I love about these folder activities is that the kids feel like they're playing a game, but they are working on such important skills that benefit them in every aspect of reading. I would love to hear from other secondary teachers who use word work regularly.

Similar products

I have some other products that are great for literacy centers, stations, and interventions:

My Journey Into Adulthood

What do you do again?

In less than a week, I will begin an adventure that takes me out of the classroom and into the district building. In an amazing turn of events, I have been given an opportunity to serve my district as an ELA strategist. Not having done it before, I'm not sure how to explain it when someone asks me, "What do you do?" It used to be easy. Everyone understands, "I'm a teacher." There are no further questions (except when I would say, "I teach middle school"; then the follow-up question would often be, "Why?"). But now, if I am asked what I do and I reply, "I'm an ELA strategist," I expect to get blank looks, followed by the polite, "Ohhhh."

The best I can predict at this point is that an ELA strategist is somewhat of a literacy coach. I will work with teachers at middle schools throughout the district, offering them strategies, assistance, advice, and support. I will help write district assessments, and I will facilitate professional development.

Hits

I am over-the-moon excited about this new chapter in my education career. Here are just some of the things I am looking forward to:
* Walking into a building -- an actual office building -- full of adults. There will be no screaming, no running, no jumping, no gum on the floor or furniture, and no Sharpie messages written on bathroom walls.
* Adult conversations. I probably will not hear "OMG," "YOLO," or "Dead!" worked into daily conversations. I will be able to use normal adult vocabulary without hearing, "You use big words, Miss," or, "What does _____ mean?"
* Adult behavior. We'll all be dressed professionally and will behave in a calm, professional manner, with professional politeness and courtesy. Total professionalism.
* No bells. No need to explain.
* Bladder freedom. I expect that I will be able to use the restroom at times other than strictly 10:53 and 12:22.

Misses

And here are some of the things I will miss:
* Walking into my very own classroom -- a classroom I built into a community of eager, smiling kids.

* Conversations with my kids. Once you get to know your students, they truly become your kids, and talking with them is fulfilling, often awe-inspiring.
* Acting silly. I have taught class dressed as a witch, worn a propeller hat, danced around the classroom, taught in bare feet, taught in silly accents -- and it was so much fun. Basically, I got to be a kid again and relive my middle-school years (without being bullied). It was magnificent.
* Bells. Interestingly enough, the bells meant a schedule, and I operate well on a planned-out schedule. The bells were an audible reminder of what's next and that the day was progressing.
* I will not miss bladder constriction.

A whole new world

As you can see, it's a little bittersweet. All of the things I'm looking forward to have the corresponding flip-side of things I'll miss (except the restroom thing -- seriously, you can tell I'm old by how excited I am to be able to use the restroom as often as I need to). I look forward to blogging about my transition to this adult world -- an adult world from which I have been on hiatus since I worked in a corporate profession eight years ago. It will be especially interesting for me to observe how I handle leaving the classroom and working closely with teachers instead of students.

Am I ready for this?

...TO BE CONTINUED...

The Summer 15

WARNING:
The following presentation contains images that may be disturbing to some readers.

Empty promises

Every school year, around April or May, I start making promises to myself. You know the ones: I promise not to sit around and be lazy this summer. I promise not to eat junk food all summer. I promise to get off the couch and be active -- maybe even exercise!

I make these promises with every intention of keeping them. After all, it's to my advantage to keep them, if only so that I can fit back into my school clothes when August rolls around. But every school year, around June 4, I rediscover two things: 1. I'm exhausted. 2. I like junk food. And the promises are long forgotten.

Reality

It's fun to think about the differences between how I imagine my summer will be and how it actually is; I should create one of those humorous memes for that. In April or May, I imagine skipping merrily through a field of flowers, running around at the park with my kids, going on a fabulous beach vacation, and eating fresh farmer's market fruits and vegetables, all so that I can wear short shorts in public without scaring people. But in June -- and especially by July -- there are no fields of flowers (all dead from the heat), I don't run and it's too hot to go to the park anyway, I have no money for a fabulous beach vacation, and the fruits and vegetables don't make up for all the ice cream, cheeseburgers, and cupcakes I indulge on during the summer.

So what really happens is that I come home, throw all my personal school stuff I had to bring home into storage (behind the couch), and sleep for a few days. Then I set up my nest on the couch:

And I only get up for emergencies.

Hence, the title of this blog post. It has become my routine to gain about 15 pounds every summer, and I blame The System. You see, they keep us teachers so overworked and stressed from August to June that when we have our few weeks off, we need some serious recovery and rehabilitation. My rehab consists of:
* the aforementioned ice cream, cheeseburgers, and cupcakes
* donuts (I've had 4.25 donuts today alone)
* restaurant food at least three times a week
* pizza
* chocolate ... lots and lots of chocolate

Good, bad, and ugly

Now, I have decided to embrace The Summer 15, and here is why: I get a new wardrobe every summer since my old clothes no longer fit. So why fight it? The good news is that I usually lose those 15 pounds within the first six weeks of the school year. The bad news is that the longer I teach, the more comfortable I become, making it difficult to lose the weight since there is much less stress and starvation than there was when I was a rookie. Sure, it would probably be a good idea to stop eating so much junk and to get off this couch for a minute, and I'm sure I'll try to do that ... tomorrow.

Get the Most Out of Revising and Editing in the Classroom

The writing process

For years, I taught the writing process the way I was taught to teach it -- as a linear process in which revising and editing is a final step before publishing. I helped students learn how to revise and edit using mnemonics: ARMS and CUPS. I sent students through revising and editing stations, in which they used various colors of highlighters, sticky notes, and red pens. And I relied heavily on checklists.

It all sounds great and thorough, but regardless of how well I thought I was teaching revising and editing, nothing great ever came from it. Students would proclaim that they were finished, waving their paper in the air with pride. Upon first glance, I would see very few editing marks on their paper. Upon closer inspection, I would see at least 437 unfixed errors staring back at me. "Did you complete each item on the checklist?" I would ask. "Yes," they would reply, showing me their checklist, with every item checked off, as proof.

This exchange happened all too often. They weren't really editing or revising very much. Why not, and what was I doing wrong? I set out to find a better way to teach this process.

The real writing process

First of all, I decided I needed to dispose of that ridiculous idea that writing is a linear, step-by-step process, because it absolutely is not. It is more of a spiraling, repetitive, circular process in which revising and editing happen continually. I made this point to my students in a dramatic show of having a student take down the poster of the Steps of the Writing Process and tear it up in front of the class. Then I displayed for them a revised one that I created myself. I cannot find the original document I created, but it showed the writing process as circular, not linear, and it showed that editing and revising occur during each and every step, not just at the end. I stressed to students that as they are brainstorming, as they are organizing their ideas, and as they are drafting, there is revision happening, even before they put words on paper.

Better than a checklist

Then I showed them a method of revising and editing that I discovered after searching and sifting through the innumerable checklists and cutesy mnemonic devices available online. It is called C-D-O (Compare, Diagnose, Operate) (De La Paz, Swanson, & Graham, 1998). Using this strategy, students read their piece of writing one sentence at a time. After reading a sentence, students will Compare it to what they meant to say. Then, they will choose a Diagnose card that best matches what is wrong with the sentence. Finally, they will choose an Operate card that expresses the best way to fix what is wrong with the sentence.

When I introduced this strategy, I started with a small group during writing intervention. Each student in the group had a set of C-D-O cards and an essay they had been working on. They were at different stages in the writing process, and all were struggling readers and writers who were also English language learners. Each of them had the "Miss, I'm Done" disease (the ailment that causes students to skim a piece of writing, make a mark or two, then wave it around proclaiming it perfect, when in actuality there were still 437 errors present in the writing).

The results

When this small group of students used the C-D-O method of revising and editing, I watched them slowly and purposefully read each sentence of their essay aloud, one at a time. I watched them think carefully about the sentence, sometimes reading it multiple times. I watched them handle the task cards as though they were engaged in a card game, mindfully choosing the correct ones each time. Then I watched them mark up their papers in intensive revision, smiling with pride at how well they were doing with their essays. During this one day, I saw the most meaningful revision and editing I had seen in seven years of teaching. When we ran out of class time, all four of my intervention students wanted to take the C-D-O cards home with them so they could finish working on their essays.

And I was sold. What I love about the C-D-O strategy:
* The tactile element keeps students engaged.
* It forces students to slow down and read one sentence at a time, which means they are evaluating and thinking deeply about each and every sentence in their writing.
* It results in more meaningful revision and editing.
* It is easy for students to do.
* It is especially beneficial for ELLs.

How you can do this

While the C-D-O strategy has been around for at least 18 years, I just discovered it a little over a year ago, and all the teachers I have asked have never heard of it. Furthermore, it is difficult to find much about it online. I think that is a crying shame, so I created a product for TeachersPayTeachers to help other ELA teachers use C-D-O. I am not taking credit for the strategy itself, but I have created documents to show teachers how to use the method with their students. My product includes instructions for teachers, explaining how to model the process for their students; instructions for students to use after the initial introduction to the method; Diagnose and Operate cards teachers can print out and laminate for their students; and a progress monitoring sheet to help teachers track their students' writing progress.

Check out my product here:

Make Restroom Breaks Work for You

When I first started teaching, I never would have thought that one of my biggest challenges would be restroom use -- I mean students wanting to use the restroom, not my own restroom use (although admittedly that is a challenge, since we have to set our bladders on strict timers -- teachers know what I'm talking about).

In middle school, we have a limited amount of time with each class, and every moment is critical. We want students to use their passing periods to take care of personal business rather than leave class to do so. But year after year, this has been a ridiculously huge battle for me. I know I'm not alone, because I just read something I found on Pinterest about teachers' biggest pet peeves, and students asking to go to the bathroom during class was a popular one.

If ya gotta go...

Now, I know many teachers who take a hard-line stance: Absolutely no restroom during class! They have it posted on their classroom doors, and they puff out their chests and snap their fingers as they proclaim themselves bathroom goddesses. Maybe that works for them, but it doesn't work for me. One year I had two students wet themselves during class -- and I wasn't even being strict. In one case, I didn't even know the student needed to go; she shyly raised her hand, and by the time I took the four steps over to her desk, she had peed her pants. In the other case, when the student asked to go right in the middle of direct instruction, I said, "Now is not a good time; can you wait a few minutes?" She nodded; then the next time she raised her hand it was to tell me she had had an accident.

There is no way I want accidents like those happening in my classroom, so I am not about to take a militaristic stance on restroom breaks. But it is quite the conundrum. In middle school, we want to teach students responsibility, time management, respect of rules, maturity, and so forth, but we do not want to seem cruel and uncaring, we want our students' basic needs met so that they can learn, and we do not want to upset parents.

Never-ending battle

My worst experience in the bathroom battle was not the year of the accidents; it was just this past school year in my last class of the day. Let me just explain that I had two pre-AP classes and one on-level class. In the pre-AP classes, students rarely asked to use the restroom during class; but in that on-level class, it was ridiculous -- kids asking to go every few minutes, from the beginning of class to the end. To make matters worse, there were three students in that class with medical conditions and nurse's orders to let them go any time they ask (plus another girl who loudly protested that her mom told her she could just walk out if a teacher didn't let her go). In middle school (as I'm sure it is in elementary), this is a recipe for restroom disaster because when you let one student go, half the class immediately "needs" to go. It got so bad sometimes that I often found myself fed up, saying, "No! That's it! Fifteen people have asked to go to the bathroom in the last five minutes, and I'm not having it. No more restroom!" And that, of course, is unfair to the quiet little girl who never asks but now has to go.

Before you ask, I'll tell you that, yes, there were rules and parameters for classtime restroom use. If someone asked me right in the middle of direct instruction, while I was giving explanations for an activity, or during a quiz, I would say, "Now is not a good time; you need to wait ___ minutes" (except for those three girls with medical conditions, who I had to let go no matter what; meanwhile the other students were like, "Why are you letting her go, and not me?"). They also had restroom passes that were good for a certain amount of uses per nine week term. But even if they lost theirs or ran out of spaces on theirs, I wasn't about to have kids wetting their pants in class, so I would let them go if I deemed it a genuine emergency. It's all a judgment call that is so difficult to make when you want to make the most of class time but don't want angry calls from parents who think you're inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on their babies.

A solution

By March (and I kicked myself for not thinking of this earlier in the year), I had had enough and came up with a plan. I thought, if so many students are going to want to go to the restroom during class, I am going to make it worthwhile. I created STAAR-style test questions using excerpts and brief reading passages. If you want to use class time to go to the bathroom, sure, I'll let you go -- but first, you are going to read this passage and answer the question!

Boom! This did two things for me:
* It allowed me to stop fighting the bathroom battle.
* It gave me a couple of minutes of one-on-one intervention time with students. Let's be honest -- the kids who ask to go the most are usually your low kids. So now these kids were getting some extra reading comprehension practice each time they asked to go.

The way it worked was: A student would ask to use the restroom. If the timing was acceptable, I would say yes, and I would drop a test-question slip on her desk. She would read the passage and answer the question, underlining her text evidence. When she was done, I would go over it with her. If she got it right, she got immediate passage to the restroom. If she got it wrong, I would work on it with her, guiding her toward the correct answer and discussing why her answer was incorrect. Then she could go to the restroom. Some of my lowest students were getting this "intervention" a few times a week.

Positive results

You may be wondering how students reacted to this. It became routine. They knew to expect it. Many of them actually liked it, and for a brief period I had to deal with a few students asking to go to the restroom just so they could do one of the practice passages. Crazy, I know. But what better way to make use of the overabundance of "Can I go to the bathroom" askers?

Now, I cannot be sure if this practice had anything to do with the final STAAR results, but here are some of my observations:
* One of my dyslexic students who routinely scored low on district assessments passed the reading STAAR this time.
* Another one of my dyslexic students did not pass, but she nearly doubled her raw score compared to the previous year.
* One of the most frequent restroom users passed the reading STAAR for the very first time.
* Another frequent restroom user passed the reading STAAR and exceeded growth over last year.
* Others, whether they met standard or not, met or exceeded growth, some of them doubling last year's raw score.

How you can do this

Creating the passage slips took time, but it was easy, considering all of the resources available for finding reading passages. I used newsela.com for nonfiction passages and our literature textbook for fiction passages. Plus, I've had a lot of practice creating STAAR-style questions. I created 25 or so questions and made multiple copies of each, so my stack of slips lasted the rest of the school year. Now, if you would like an easy alternative, I created a set for TeachersPayTeachers. For this, I had to write all of my own passages to avoid copyright infringement, and I created 45 slips. If you would like to check out the product, click on the picture below:

Why Paired Assessments are Positively Awesome!

Gotcha!

Usually, when we administer a test in class, perhaps at the end of the week or after a unit of study, it is solely for the teacher's benefit. It gives us a snapshot of our students' level of mastery; it allows us to see what concepts we need to spiral back into our future lessons; it shows us whom to target for interventions; and sometimes, admittedly, it simply gives us a major grade for our grade book.

Those all are valid and meaningful reasons for giving an assessment, to be sure. However, truthfully, the students don't benefit directly from these tests, at least not immediately. For them, a test is added pressure, it's a "gotcha," it's a confidence-zapper, it's something to tarnish their report card, and, of course, it is a boring obligation with no real incentive attached.

I always hated testing days just as much as my students did -- I have to play Police Officer: The Quiet Police, The Eyes on Your Paper Police, The Nothing On Your Desk Police, The Why Didn't You Study Police. And then I spend my conference period lamenting over failing grade after failing grade.

A better way to test?

I began to wonder if these tests were worth the trouble, and couldn't there be a better way to achieve what I wanted? Sure, there are many ways to assess students, and I use other assessment methods often. But the traditional paper test is a necessity, at least every once in a while. Still, I wanted something more, something better. And I found it.

During my graduate school program, I came across an idea in a book (and I'm sorry to say that I cannot for the life of me remember which of the 200 books I found this idea in): paired assessments -- or allowing students to take a test with a partner. When I read about it, I thought fleetingly, Hmm, maybe I'll try that. And then I thought of all the things that could go wrong: One partner will do all the work while the other just nods and smiles; it will become loud and very un-testlike with students talking to each other; it will turn into everyone talking with everyone rather than just pairs talking to each other -- and because of all of those things, the test scores will be invalid and worthless.

The first time I tried this method of testing was a couple of years ago with a 7th-grade ELA class, and all of those things did happen, so I felt like it was a bit of a disaster. In hindsight, I identified some things I did wrong: I had had the desks arranged in groups of four all year long, and for the paired assessment, I didn't change the arrangement; I simply placed folder dividers in front of each pair. That wasn't good enough, because, as predicted, the pairs at each foursome did not keep their conversations strictly between themselves. Another thing I did wrong was I did not spend time to purposely and intentionally pair students who I felt would work well together; I just kept them in the groups they had been in, whether they worked well or not. Finally, I also did not prepare the students for this new and unusual method of testing; I just sprang it on them without giving them any rationale or parameters. Big mistakes -- you'd think I was a rookie.

Take 2

So last year I decided to try again. This time I was teaching at an all-girls leadership academy (a big plus for reduced behavior issues) and two of my classes were pre-AP classes (another huge positive). I made some changes to how I administered the paired assessment:
* First, I spent an evening poring over my rosters and deciding who should be paired with whom. I also gave students some say in this, because I wanted them to be in these pairs for a few weeks; therefore, they needed to be sitting with someone that they felt they could work well with. I gave everyone an index card and asked them to write down up to three names of students they wanted to work with and (only if needed) names of any students they felt they simply could not work with. I used their selections to help me make my decisions on pairings, but I also used my own judgment as well as past testing data.
* I put students in their pairs at the beginning of the unit, so that they would work with their partner for all of the unit activities and develop a strong partnership before the test.
* I kept the desks arranged in pairs (NOT groups).
* I told them from the beginning of the unit that they would be taking the test with their partner, and I explained why I wanted to do it this way, and I explained in very specific terms what I expected from them. I also explained that the grade they earned on the test would apply to both members of the pair.
* During the few weeks of the instructional unit, I reminded them verbally about the upcoming paired test as well as keeping it on the board as a visual reminder.
* The day of the test, I allowed each pair to study and reminded them about my expectations.

Success!

And now we get to the good part, the reinforcement, the proof that this method is fabulous. Here is what I saw during the test (For privacy concerns, I somewhat crudely covered up their faces, but I wish you could see their expressions!):

Here is what I heard during the paired test:
* Amazing collaboration between partners
* Justification of answer choices
* Respectful debate when partners disagreed on an answer
* Going back to the texts or using the dictionary together and fully discussing the questions and answers together

And these things didn't just happen in my pre-AP classes; they also happened in my on-level class. I walked around, watching them and listening to their conversations, and I must have had a goofy smile plastered on my face the entire time. I was so pleased with what I was seeing and hearing.

Proof is in the pudding

The real proof, though, is in the results, right? The most obvious evidence that this method is fabulous was in the results of one pair in my on-level class. (I've changed the names for anonymity.) Maria was an underachiever who had been removed from pre-AP and placed in regular ELA. Her grades were generally failing grades because she rarely turned work in on time, if at all, and her performance on tests was always mediocre at best. I paired her with Allison, a target intervention student who had never passed a reading STAAR (our state's standardized test) or a district reading assessment; she was reading at least two grades below level. I put them together because I felt that being able to help Allison would increase Maria's confidence and motivation, and Allison would of course learn from Maria but would not close down because she was so outgoing that she could match Maria's spunk with no problem. The two of them did work well together, and they earned an 83 on the test -- a higher grade than either of them had earned on any assignment so far that year.

Overall, most students did very well on that test. There were only a few pairs who didn't pass, and they were given opportunities to correct their answers after small-group interventions in class. One pairing, I discovered, was a mistake -- an all-A's student who was shy paired with an academically low student who was quite the opposite in personality -- and their grade was dismally low. I gave each one the opportunity to redo their test individually.

Increasing student achievement

What I loved about this paired assessment, and why I want to do this more regularly in the future, is simple: It benefits the students. It is not just a "gotcha," or a grade for the grade book. My students were collaborating and actually learning from each other during this test. They were using listening and speaking skills as well, as they had to really listen to each other and consider their partner's opinions, and they had to justify their responses to each other. This is a huge benefit to English language learners and those with learning disabilities. This method of testing also gave students a noticeable confidence boost. They were not as stressed out about it as they usually were with traditional tests; they recognized just as I did how well they worked with their partners, and they were proud of that -- not to mention they enjoyed it (How many times do you see a student actually enjoy taking a test?); and they were thrilled to see their good grades. I saw partners high-fiving each other and celebrating together. I saw them apologizing to each other for the questions they missed, afterward launching into a renewed debate about why they answered the way they did.

All in all, I see so many benefits to this type of testing. I know that it cannot be the only method used, but it certainly can be an oft-used tool in your teacher toolbox. If you've tried paired assessments, I'd love to hear what your experiences were, and if you haven't, I challenge you to try it -- then let me know how it goes!

Please, Take the "Silent" Out of SSR

"Fake Reading" -- What?

While perusing Pinterest, as I tend to do all summer long, I came across an anchor chart that an elementary teacher made for her students, titled "Real Reading vs. Fake Reading." On the "Real Reading" side were such things as quiet and sitting still, and on the "Fake Reading" side was written talking, moving around, and exchanging books before finished.

I wanted to scream out loud at the little screen on my phone, "Nooo!" No wonder children begin to despise independent reading time toward the upper elementary grades. Teachers are sapping all of the excitement and fun out of it. Reading is a social activity and should be treated as such. It's very much like watching a movie. When you go see a movie, you want to share your reactions to the characters, the dialogue, the action; you want to ask questions and interject your opinions -- before, during, and after; you want to point out things that are interesting, things that are new, things that don't make sense. And what's the first thing you do as the credits roll and you and your companions stand and stretch? You unload all of the details about why you did or did not like it, you ask each other what they thought, you recall favorite parts, you connect the film to other things.

Kids should be doing all of these things before, during, and after reading as well -- yes, even during Sustained Silent Reading. Case in point: In my middle school classroom, when students are reading independently and the room is completely silent (by force), I look out and I see boredom, disengagement, fatigue (with the few exceptions being those avid readers who will read anything anywhere no matter what). But the first time I allowed some talking and movement during SSR (and when I say "allowed," I mean that I was too tired to fight it), what I saw was amazing. Students were excitedly sharing what they were reading with the people sitting next to them. They were laughing out loud and commenting on things they were reading. They were trading books when they realized that what they picked from the shelf was not to their liking. They were actually interacting with reading.

Free Reading

Janice Pilgreen (2000) determined that there are eight factors that make SSR implementation successful, and one of those is an environment in which reading is treated as a social and interactive activity (Fisher, D., 2004). Any teacher will tell you that the more children read, the better their vocabulary, comprehension, writing, and of course the almighty test scores. But don't forget that the most important reason to incorporate time for independent reading in class is to increase students' enjoyment of reading. We don't want kids to see reading in class as a chore, or even an assignment. We want them to enjoy it. In order for that to happen, it needs to be free reading. Truly free reading should include the following things:
* Students are free to choose what they want to read (and don't want to read -- yes, let them go exchange their book if they discover they don't like the one they picked).
* Students are free to get comfy. Let them stretch out, sit on the floor, lean against the wall -- whatever makes them comfortable.
* Students are free to interact with their reading and others. If what they are reading inspires them to draw or doodle, let them do so. If what they are reading spurs reactions that they want to share with others, let them talk and share.
* Students are free to choose how to respond to the text for accountability. Instead of requiring a one-size-fits-all reading log or book report or multiple-choice questions, provide a menu of after-reading activities that accommodate multiple interests and talents (art, music, technology, writing, presenting, acting, etc.).

Reading Is Not a Silent Activity

My own sons were practically born with their noses in a book. They love to read with me and without me. When my older son was turning 7, he actually asked if he could have his birthday party at the library. He is 12 now, and I hate the thought that his school's or teachers' practices may soon drain him of his enthusiasm for reading. I try to keep the love alive at home by reading the same books he is reading, and then we can swap opinions about them or watch the movie if there was one made based on the book. He encourages me to read books that he has read, and I encourage him to read books that I think he would like. I truly hope his teachers are doing the same thing -- for him and for all of their students.

After my experiences in the classroom, research I have done on the subject of SSR, and my experiences with my own children, I will never again put my foot down and demand no talking during independent reading time. Reading is not a silent activity; perhaps from now on we should consider calling it Sustained Social Reading.

If You're Not Having Fun, You're Not Doing It Right!

I learned very quickly that a little humor goes a long way in the middle school classroom. And that you simply can't avoid it. Pre-teens are hilarious, so you may as well go with it.

La Cucaracha

Anyone who has ever known me knows that I am scared to death of giant cockroaches. They are creepy, crawly, disgusting creatures, and if there is one anywhere near me, I am so out of there. Students have seen me stand on a desk, fly to the other side of the room, run down a hallway screaming, and even bribe kids with candy to come kill a giant roach. Now, please don't think I'm weak. I can handle snakes, spiders (well, maybe not giant ones, but whatever), all kinds of creatures -- but cockroaches are clearly the work of the devil.

A few years ago, I had some 7th-grade students who took advantage of my roach hatred to have a little fun. I can look back on this incident with adoration now because enough time has passed. It must have been near the beginning of the school year, because my desk was still somewhat clean, but I already had a great relationship with my kids because I looped from 6th to 7th grade and already knew these kids. Anyway, one morning, as I was welcoming students into the room, an organized clan of three deftly slipped a live cockroach onto my desk. You gotta hand it to them -- they were quite clever. One of the perpetrators had obtained the cockroach at her (yes, her) home and placed it -- live -- into a Ziploc bag. She then transported it with her on the school bus and into the building. The group then schemed to distract me while the leader delivered the Devil in the Ziploc bag to my desk.

After the morning greeting and smiling and hand-shaking was done, I glided merrily and worry-free to my desk to begin taking attendance. When what did my peripheral vision behold but a giant cockroach in a Ziploc bag (thank heaven they did not release it from the bag!), perched precariously at the edge of my desk, obviously ready to attack.

Needless to say, I screamed, jumped five feet back, and darted to the other side of the room, heart pounding madly. All the while, the entire class was doubled over in laughter. To her credit, the female perpetrator did zip to my side to check that I was not having a heart attack before commencing her own laughter. And I guess that my reddened and frowning face spoke volumes, because she quickly seized the bagged cockroach and disposed of it in some faraway trash can.

The point of this story is twofold: While it sounds like a nightmare scenario, sure, I am touched that my students felt close enough to me to dare such an outlandish prank. I also admit to enjoying planning my revenge. (I knew that one of the perpetrators was deathly afraid of clowns; sadly, with the busy chaos that is the seventh-grade school year, my evil plans never came to fruition.) Secondly, I feel strongly that such distractions are necessary from time to time. Although I don't recommend involving cockroaches, a little laughter and silliness is a must.

La Cucaracha Part 2

Fast-forward a few years, and we come to a different kind of La Cucaracha, with not roaches, but dancing. I cannot take credit for the idea -- I read about it somewhere and decided to try it. I read about a teacher who, when things got tense in the classroom, settled stand-offs with a dance-off. Sounds crazy, right? Perfect reason to try it.

I was feeling a bit desperate due to a certain student in a certain class. This was a student who ran hot and cold. She was either in such a nasty mood that she would blow up at the slightest thing, or she was in such a good mood that she would disrupt class and not allow any work to be done. As she was most often the former, I began to walk on tiptoe around her because I didn't want to set her off. She would often put her head down and refuse to work, then snap at me if I even looked in her direction. Of course, over the course of the first quarter, there had been phone calls home, private chats with the student, referrals to the counselor, detentions, etc. But nothing -- I repeat, nothing -- worked better than the dance-off.

On one particular day, this student was in one of her hot-mess moods, and I did not have the patience for it. I felt my blood pressure rising as the student displayed her disrespect one time too many. There was that split second when I knew that I was about to lose it, shout, say something I would regret. But somehow in that split second, I remembered the dance-off guy I had read about, and I resolved to do this as a last-ditch effort. I took in a deep breath, I placed my hands on the corners of her desk, and I said, " All right. I didn't want to have to do this ..." The class became silent and the student's eyes widened in fearful anticipation. "Clearly we are at an impasse. And we are going to have to settle this with ... (pause for dramatic effect) ... a DANCE-OFF!"

The student was thrown for a loop. The scene played out in slow-motion: A confused student who didn't know whether to continue being a miscreant, to talk back in defiance, or to rejoice in the turn of events. And every emotion played over her face until finally, her face widened in an excited smile.

At this time, I became nervous for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which was that I really hadn't thought about what the results of the dance-off would be. How would we know who the winner was, and what would happen if she won, and how would this actually solve the problem? And above all, what if an administrator walked in during the dance-off? I actually started scheming ways to get out of it. But only for a minute, because what I found was that the entire class was now angelically behaved, eager to get to the last five minutes of class, when the dance-off was to take place. Even Hot Mess student was changed -- it was like I had just opened a window into her soul, releasing the negative Hot Mess feelings and replacing them with joyous Hot Mess feelings. And I decided that really was the point of the whole thing anyway, to alleviate the tension between me and Hot Mess, to keep me from exploding at her and ruining any chance I had of gaining her trust and respect.

Finally it was time for the dance-off. I cleared some space in the center of the room. Hot Mess stood at one end of the center, I at the other. We stared each other down. And then I twirled like a ballerina and leaped across the dance floor. Applause or roaring laughter -- I don't remember which -- filled the room, and I nodded soberly for Hot Mess to take her turn. She did something spastic with the shaking of things that I did not comprehend, and then it was my turn again. I summoned M.C. Hammer, recalled the glory days of Moonwalking and Robocopping. Again, raucous applause (or laughter), and I knew in my heart I had won.

And the thing is, I really did win -- maybe not with my stellar 40-something-year-old dancing abilities, but with capturing kids' hearts. Because I can guarantee that none of those kids had ever had such a thing happen in an ELA class (or any class), and all of my students (even the shy ones) were smiling, laughing, enjoying themselves -- especially the ones who were taking video, but whatever. I made a complete and utter fool of myself, but in doing so, I let Hot Mess know that I cared about her, I understood her, and that I wanted happiness in my classroom. And while this one silly event did not magically fix all problems, it allowed me to turn a corner with Hot Mess. She opened up more to me and we began to communicate better. I also learned that I really need to work on my rhythm.

The Joke's on Me

Humor and fun isn't always orchestrated. Most of the time, it just happens. Like the time I overheard a conversation (between a group of Mexican students):
Student 1 -- When is Cinco de Mayo?
Student 2 -- Cinco de Mayo? Oh, that's sometime in September, maybe.
Student 3 -- What! You don't even know when Cinco de Mayo is? (Student 3 admonished the others but never clarified exactly when Cinco de Mayo is. I decided to just laugh inside and let them continue their conversation.)

My favorite funny times are those things that only I know about. One year early in my career (but late enough that I was feeling confident that I was an awesome teacher), my students were working quietly, and I was walking around the room helping individuals, and one sweet little girl flagged me down. I walked over to her desk, and she handed me a note, all folded up into a tiny square. "Don't open it right now," she ordered, a serious look on her face. So I tucked it in my pocket and continued on down the aisle of desks, wondering what on earth the note was about. That particular student was one of my favorites (I know, we're not supposed to have favorites, but come on, we all do), so I suspected the note was one of adoration: Dear Mrs. King, you are my favorite teacher in the whole world. You are the most awesome teacher, and it is because of you that I live.

Before I knew it, class was over, students were scrambling out of the room, and I was grabbing my purse and heading to the lounge for lunch. It wasn't until I sat down with my too-hot Hot Pocket that I remembered the secret note in my pants pocket. My heart warmed as I began to unfold the paper, layer after layer, planning in my head how I would thank her for her lovely letter.

Here is what the note actually said: Cynthia has gum

Love it or leave it

You gotta love each moment in teaching -- the scary ones, the silly ones, the out-of-control ones, the disappointing ones, and of course the hilarious ones. If you don't allow yourself to laugh and enjoy each moment for what it is, you will not make it. Laugh and have fun, each and every day, because if you're not having fun, you're not doing it right.