Snow, Fire, and Flowers

It’s the middle of January and we finally had our first little snowstorm of the season in Michigan. Even though I’ve lived through long, cold winters my whole life, I still do not embrace winter. But since my situation isn’t likely to change in the near future, I find ways to endure and at least tolerate the season.

Two things that get me through are fires and books. I don’t usually slow down long enough to relax for long periods of time, but when there is a roaring fire in the fireplace and snow falling gently outside my window, I feel compelled to grab a book. But it can’t be just any book–it needs to be one that puts me in "the reading zone" as Nancie Atwell would call it. I’ve read some good books this past year, but it’s been a little while since I’ve read a book that I just can’t put down. I was craving just such a book. Then recently a friend recommended one that I could tell fit the bill after I was only one page into it. I started recommending it to people before I had even finished it! It’s called The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. This is Diffenaugh’s first novel and it truly is a work of art.

It is the story of a young woman who spent the first 18 years of her life in group homes and foster care. Diffenbaugh masterfully weaves the story of the girl’s past and present as she searches for love, family, and forgiveness. It is filled with genuine characters that the reader cannot help falling in love with. Even though it is a novel, the reader cannot help but be affected by the lives of these characters. It is one of those books that you finish reading and want to immediately start reading again so that you can spend more time with the characters. I’m adding this to my list of favorite novels I’ve ever read! I borrowed this book from the library and did not want to return it, so I will be buying myself a copy to keep and lend to friends.

If you are like me and get through winter with the help of some good books, you will definitely want to add this to your list of must-reads!

Do Music Teachers Teach Writing?

January is a huge professional development month for me this year. I am either leading or attending some type of training almost every day this month. All of December was spent preparing for this month. Hence, the reason I have not blogged…once again. Someday I will get this into my routine!

Because I am on the giving or receiving end of lots of PD this month, that means I have many opprtunities to learn new teaching strategies and gain fresh perspectives. You would think this learning and new insight would come from the meetings I attend; however, I must say that I learn just as much when I am presenting/facilitating–from the teachers I am with.

Today I led some writing PD in a school district west of St. Louis. We spent some time examining a student writing sample and looking for evidence of the qualities of good writing. We had a discussion about the role these qualities/traits and the writing process and writing workshop play in a writing program. We also asked ourselves what implication this has for our work with our students.

During this part of the discussion, one teacher shared a new perspective for me. I wanted to make a bigger deal of this, but since I had never met this teacher, I didn’t want to put her on the spot or embarrass her. But I still want to celebrate her attitude and perspective–even though she has no idea I am blogging about her.

This teacher teaches music to 4th- and 5th-graders. Yes, she is a music teacher, and she was talking about writing. She said (and I am paraphrasing here) that examining the qualities of good writing can be transferred to the qualities of music. Just like good writing has characteristics such as voice and sentence fluency, music also has voice and phrasing. We realized, through her observation, that we can all help reinforce the qualities of good writing–even if we are not directly responsible for the teaching of writing in our schools.

I loved her analogy, but even more, I loved her attitude. She could have chosen not to actively participate in today’s PD because “it didn’t really apply to her”, but instead she chose to find a way that it does apply to her situation and to find ways to support the teaching of writing–even as a music teacher! So today I celebrate her and all teachers who seek ways to help students make connections across curricular areas.

Doctors and Conferring

I’ve been struggling with some neck pain for a little over a year.  Several weeks ago I finally went to see my doctor about it.  As I was waiting for him to enter my exam room, I was thinking about conferring with our students.  Weird, I know, but follow my line of thinking here.  I heard my doctor in the room next door and knew he would be coming to my room next.  I heard the door close, but it was several minutes before he came into my room.  Why?  You know the answer—he was taking notes about his previous patient.  Conferring notes!

Think about what doctors do when they meet with their patients:

• Research: They ask questions and run diagnostic tests.
• Decide:  Based on their research, they make decisions.
• Treat: They prescribe a course of action—medication, surgery, physical therapy, etc.

Then what do they do?  They follow up by seeing their patients in X number of days/weeks to see how things are progressing.  They do some more researching, deciding, and possibly more treating.

Does this sound familiar to what teachers do during a reading/writing conference?  We:

• Research: Ask our students questions, administer formal and informal diagnostic assessments.
• Decide:  Based on our research, we make decisions about what to compliment and what/how to teach.
• Teach: We teach the reader/writer a strategy through demonstration, explanation, examples, or guided practice.

Now, let’s go back to those conferring notes.  My last post dealt with whether or not conferring notes are necessary.  If you read that post, you know my opinion on the matter.

Let me ask you a few questions. 

• Is it important for your doctor to keep conferring (exam) records?
• Do you appreciate the doctors that remember what you talked about at your last visit? 
• Do you think doctors really remember trivia about your job or family, or did they just take some good notes to jog their memories and develop a relationship with you? 
• Does it annoy you when a doctor doesn’t keep good records or fails to read what s/he wrote last time and keeps asking you the same questions over and over again? 
• Do you feel valued as a patient/person when each visit seems like you are explaining your situation again as if for the first time?

What implication does this have for our classrooms?  What if we thought of our students as our little patients and if each time we met with them we were researching, deciding, and teaching them to be the healthiest readers and writers they can be?

Do Conferring Notes Really Matter?

I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked this question.  Teachers who ask this are not questioning the value of conferring itself, just the notetaking that comes during/after the conference.

Typical reasons I hear against notetaking:

• “If I spend time writing notes, I end up conferring with fewer students.”
• “I don’t know which is the right form to use or the right way to do it.”

Even before I was immersed in workshop teaching, I always believed that it was important to keep anecdotal notes on my students.  That doesn’t mean I was good at it, but I did do it.  I am here to tell you that there is not one right form or method, but I do believe that notetaking is a non-negotiable.  Here are a few of my reasons:

• We are in an age of accountability.  If I don’t take notes on the valuable instruction I am providing during one-on-one and small group conferences, I have no record or evidence of that instruction.  When a parent or administrator asks what I am doing for a particular child, I want to be able to whip out my notes with specifics.
• My memory just isn’t that good. I often can’t remember what I had for dinner the day before.  How can I remember the teaching points for 25-30 students as I conduct ongoing conferences with them?  I use my notes not only to keep track of what I did with a child, but also to note ideas for further instruction.  I simply can’t keep all of that in my head.
• At parent-teacher conference time, I love to be able to show parents what their child has been working on.  A grade on a report card means nothing.  It is the evidence that supports that grade that counts.  I will never forget the time that a parent looked me in the eye during a conference and said, “Thank you for taking specific notes on my child.  That means a lot to me.”

So now that you know my stance that conferring notes are non-negotiable, how can we remove some roadblocks?

First, what is the right form to use? There isn’t one.  I have changed mine often.  I have used something as simple as a piece of notebook paper for each student placed behind a tab labeled for that student in my conferring notebook.  When I did this, I either wrote notes directly on the page or wrote them on computer labels that I carried on a clipboard and later placed on the child’s notebook page.

I have also created and adapted from other teachers a variety of forms.  Here are just a few that you are welcome to use or (more likely) adapt to meet your needs:

Reading Conference Sheet (one student/page)
Writing Conference Notes (15 students/page)
Writing Assessment Sheet (includes 2 pages/student–make additional copies of page 2 as needed)
Reading Assessment Sheet (includes 2 pages/student–make additional copies of page 2 as needed)

If you are techno-savvy and have access to an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, you may want to keep your notes with the Confer app (see my blogpost This Seals The Deal for more information.

Next, what about the concern that if we take time to keep records, we meet with fewer students?  I say, “So what.”  So what if I confer with five students instead of six today.  I’ve never given myself a conferring quota for the day.  I prefer to shoot for quality, not quantity, and for me, jotting a few notes during/after each conference contributes to the quality of the conference.

Seminar Schedule Update

I just updated my website with information about upcoming events.  If you are interested in attending a seminar or conference, click here for availability in your geographic area.

Don’t see something near you?  You can bring me to your school or district to present on one of these topics or you can contact me to request a customized workshop.

What Do Students Say About Choice in Writing?

I recently posted a blog entry about three reasons I think we should allow students to choose many of their own writing topics: 1) engagement  2) agency 3) independence.  In a subsequent post I wrote about how we can balance student choice with required writing.

Today I would like to share the viewpoints of a couple of student writers.  The first is an excerpt from a letter I received several years ago from a former student.  I had the pleasure of teaching Chelsea as a second-grader and then looping with her to third grade.  A few years later she sent me an e-mail about how things were going for her in middle school.  Here is what she had to say…

Chelsea was a gifted writer.  She was capable of selecting writing topics that mattered to her and motivated her as a second- and third-grader.  Yet, when she was in middle school, she was not trusted to find her own meaningful topics.  And she noticed the difference.  She noticed enough to send me this unsolicited e-mail.

The next writer’s story I would like to share is my daughter’s.  She has loved to make up and “write” stories since she was three years old.  She is now 17.  Over the years she has had writing teachers with a variety of teaching styles and philosophies.  She and I have talked often about the impact that choice has on her writing.  One criteria that she uses to determine how well she likes a teacher is how much choice they give her when choosing topics for projects.

While she is an excellent student and cares about getting good grades, she is more intrinsically motivated to do a good job with her work because she cares about it or is personally invested in it.  And like the little hunter in last week’s post, Lauryn is passionate.  Her greatest passion is for dance.  One of her goals is to try out for the show “So You Think You Can Dance”  when she is 18.  She eats, sleeps, breathes dance.  And when given the choice, she writes and draws dance, too.

During her years of schooling, she has examined dance from every angle.  She has written personal narratives and poems.  She has drawn and painted dance.  When assigned to make a Movie Maker video on the topic of “Power”, she chose “The Power of Dance.”  In her science class last year, she chose to research how a dancer’s body changes food into energy to perform.    In her technology class she created a posted about dance (see below). Each time she worked on one of these projects she was so engaged because the topic was meaningful to her.  She wasn’t writing or creating for a grade.  She was writing for herself and her audience.

When students care about their topics,
they write more and they write better.

Below are just a few samples of Lauryn’s writing and artwork—all on one topic.  I hope they will inspire you to help your students find topics they are passionate about.

Dance-Related Artwork

It Seems to Work for Patricia Polacco

In a recent post I wrote about the importance of allowing students to choose their writing topics.  Whenever I make that statement, I am always prepared to hear the “Yes, but…” responses.  “Yes, choice seems important, but don’t I have to teach my students how to write for a prompt?”  “Yes, but my students have to be able to pass the state writing assessments, and the state test doesn’t give them a choice.”  “Yes, but what if my students say they don’t have anything to write about?  They just don’t have background experiences, so they can’t think of good topics.” 

I want to make sure there are no misunderstandings here.  Is there ever a time when students need to write to a prompt?  Yes!  Should we teach them how to write for a prompt?  Yes!  I believe it would be educational malpractice if we didn’t.  HOWEVER, this is NOT the only type of writing that should be happening in our classrooms.  I have had many teachers tell me that this is the only type of writing their districts require them to teach all year.

Let me give you one way to think about this.  Writing to a prompt or test-taking writing is one genre of writing.  It is worth spending time on a test-taking unit of study to help prepare students for these tests.  However, this is only one genre for writing.  We need to expose our students to many genres through varied units of study throughout the year.  These units may include personal narrative, personal essay, literary essay, book reviews, memoir, poetry, fictional narrative, editorials, and the list goes on.

The units of study at each grade level may not be negotiable at your school, but the students’ topic choices within those units should be.  Teachers sometimes ask, “What about the child who wants to write about the same topic over and over?”  

What about that child? 

A couple of years ago I heard Patricia Polacco speak at the Michigan Reading Association Annual Conference.  She said we should be encouraging students to linger over topics longer and write multiple pieces on the same topic.  She said that she, herself, really only writes about one thing—family stories.  Think about her picture books.  They all stem from stories of her own life or those of her relatives.

I’ve always had my students keep a list of their writing “territories.”  This was a technique I learned in my early writing workshop days from Nancie Atwell in her book In the Middle.  Hearing Patricia Polacco’s advice made me think more about these territories.  These are the areas in our lives where we are experts.  Territories are not single topics—they contain multiple topics.  We should be encouraging our students to write deep, not wide.

A couple of weeks ago a teacher told me that she has a student who is obsessed with hunting and would want to write about hunting all the time if given the choice.  Perfect!  I love when students are passionate about something.  Along with that passion comes loads of writing topics.  I told this teacher that I wouldn’t care if he only wrote about hunting all year.  Here are some pieces I imagine him writing:

• a personal narrative or memoir about a time he went hunting with his dad (he may have several).  I’m thinking of Owl Moon by Jane Yolen or Crow Call by Lois Lowry as possible mentor texts for this type of writing.
• a safety manual for hunters
• a persuasive essay on gun control
• a personal essay on how hunting is a great father-son bonding experience
• a how-to piece like “how to become a successful bow hunter”

Do you get the picture?  You could help a child who is passionate about hunting find topics in every genre unit of study and keep him engaged all year.  He becomes the class expert on hunting.  Pretty soon, other students decide they want to become the class expert on something, and they begin to find their areas of passion and interest.  It’s contagious!

It sure seems to work for Patricia Polacco.  Want to know what some other professional authors have to say about choosing writing topics?  Here are a few:

“Write what’s in front of your nose.”

—William Carlos Williams

“You’re welcome to write about anything, but the places and spaces where you spend time, that’s where you’ll know the details. That’s how you can take readers anywhere, make them see and feel.”

—Jeff Anderson

        “Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.  I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way — although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something.  A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.”

—Kurt Vonnegut

This Seals the Deal!

I will continue to add to the series of blog posts on the importance of student choice in writing, but today I feel compelled to share on the topic of technology in the classroom.

Recently I have been thinking seriously about purchasing an iPad.  It started about a year ago when a friend showed me her new toy.  With her new iPad she had constant access to her Kindle, her e-mail and Facebook, her to-do lists, and more.  I thought that was pretty neat but just couldn’t justify purchasing a new device when I already had a Smartphone that could do most of what she showed me.  But I still thought it was pretty cool!

This school year, as I have attended many meetings, I have often found myself in the minority (sometimes the ONLY person in the room) of people still taking notes with a good old-fashioned notebook and ballpoint pen.  I must say, that as much as I love technology, I do still love the feel of pen on paper and the overall experience of reading books with pages I can turn.  But, as I looked around, I do admit that I had iPad envy as I watched my colleagues navigate from file to file to add notes, look up resources, etc.  Last week as I participated in a kindergarten teacher lab, I watched the facilitator use her iPad to videotape a one-on-one conference so that she could show it to the whole group during our debrief session.  Again, pretty neat!

Still, I wasn’t sure if I could justify getting a new toy just to keep up with the Joneses.

I have now found my justification!  Last Friday a colleague shared with me an app that is available for the iPad (and iPhone and iPod Touch).  It is called  "Confer – A Notetaking App for Teachers".  It is amazing!  Everything I have always tried to do with my conferring notebook can be done with this app.  Here are just a few:

• keep track of students I have conferred with
• keep records of compliments, teaching points, and future instruction
• group students with similar needs for strategy groups
• use flexible grouping to meet students’ needs
• track reading levels
• sort students for instruction in a variety of ways

I found this video that explains how this app works way better than I can: Confer – A Notetaking App for Teachers Video Demonstration

So that seals the deal!  I am now going to buy myself a new Christmas present just so that I can use this app! (They haven’t come out with a version for my Android phone yet).  I can’t wait to discover all the other ways this tool can help me in the classroom.  I invite any of you who have been using iPadsin your classrooms to share your suggestions!

Does Student Choice in Writing Really Matter?

I recently had a conversation with a group of teachers about whether allowing students to select their own writing topics really matters.  In the words of Lucy Calkins, “Choice matters.  Not a little, but a lot.”  In this case, she was talking about self-selected reading, but I think it applies to writing as well.  Since this question seems to surface often in my professional development work, I thought it was worth exploring a bit in a few blogposts.

For today, I would like to address just three key reasons why I believe choice in student writing does matter.

Engagement

When students find their work meaningful, they are more engaged, motivated learners.  “Intrinsic motivation arises from a desire to learn a topic due to its inherent interests, for self-fulfillment, enjoyment and to achieve a mastery of the subject.”(Karin Kirk)  Try doing a Google search with the phrase “student choice and motivation” and you will find a wealth of research that points to choice as a key motivational factor.  You will also find that motivation is linked to achievement.  When students write about topics they care about, they are more engaged and they simply write more and write better.

Agency

In order to empower our students, we must help them develop a sense of personal agency—the knowledge that they are competent and in control of their own learning. In his book Choice Words Peter Johnston writes that “this desire for agency persists throughout life and is so powerful that when people feel there is no relationship between what they do and what happens, they become depressed and helpless.  Having a sense of agency, then, is fundamental.”  He goes on to say that “children who doubt their competence set low goals and choose easy tasks, and they plan poorly.  In the long run they disengage, decrease effort, generate fewer ideas, and become passive and discouraged.”  I don’t know about you, but that is NOT how I want children leaving my classroom!  “Encouraging students to use their words to change the world is the aspiration of the writing workshop.  When students are given choices in their learning, they will feel in control and motivated.  They will question, reason, and analyze important ideas.  Most important, they will rise up and change the world for the better.” from Day by Day: Refining Writing Workshop Through 180 Days of Reflective Practice  by Ayres and Shubitz

Independence

I’m wondering how students will become independent thinkers and writers in our classrooms if we always choose their writing topics for them.  “Many teachers fear that giving students more choice will lead to their losing control over classroom management. Research tells us that in fact the opposite happens. When students understand their role as agent (the one in charge) over their feeling, thinking, and learning behaviors, they are more likely to take responsibility for their learning. To be autonomous learners, however, students need to have some choice and control. And teachers need to learn how to help students develop the ability to make appropriate choices and take control over their own learning.” American Psychological Association

I could go on with even more reasons for providing choice of writing topics for our students, but I will stop there.  I know that these reasons still leave some unanswered questions like, “What about students who don’t choose to write about anything?” and “What about teaching students to write to a prompt for a writing assessment?”  In the next few days I am going to address these and some other concerns regarding student choice in writing, so stay tuned…

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