Writing for Education 705: Blog—Chapter IV

I hope that what I engendered, more than taught, is a love of poetry. Or at least that I helped, in some way, demystify poetry as an esoteric genre that can only be known and loved by the select. What I taught directly was how to annotate a poem, and taking my cue from Calkins, I discussed and modeled using examples (some from their own writing) the importance of being specific and precise in writing.

The Impetus

My plan for this experiment was to build engagement. My specific question: Does collaboration improve student engagement? Every year, my students read poetry, choose two similarly themed poems, and write an analysis paper in which they compare or contrast the tone or use of figurative language in their chosen poems. Specifically, the students are to discuss how a poetic element conveys or emphasizes the theme of their poems. But they never talk to each other during this process. I wanted to know if students collaborated with each other in the selection, discussion, and focus of their papers in the prewriting stage as well as in the drafting and publishing stages would their personal engagement improve? Thus, also improving the quality of their finished pieces. The specific elements that I added to this unit (all of which were collaborative in nature with the exception of mini-lesson on annotating a poem):

Library Day—classes went to library; librarian had set aside poetry anthologies for students to peruse.

Writing groups—established writing groups for students to discuss and share their poems and papers.

Poem annotation—mini-lesson on annotating a poem as a prewriting step.

Poem share day—students shared and discussed chosen poems with their writing group.

Peer conferencing—writing groups shared papers and gave each other feedback

Publishing—students read excerpts from finished papers with their writing group.

Strategies

Although the thrust of this project was to build student interest and engagement, my students were, after all, going to be writing about poetry. Many of the collaborative elements that I added to this unit, I think, also promoted better writing. For example, the writing groups, in addition to being collaborative, were also incorporated to promote writing improvement. I mixed the ability levels of these groups, placing weaker writers with more adept writers. I included the poem annotation requirement and annotating mini-lesson to promote a greater depth of understanding of chosen poems. Thinking that if students understand their poems, they will be able to write about them with more clarity. Obviously, the mini-lesson on writing with precision and specificity was aimed at improving writing.

Effectiveness

From my observations, I feel the added elements to this writing project were successful. Students were talking to each other and to me about their poems and their writing. During the poem share day as I walked about the room, my students were talking (and not about their plans for the weekend) to each other about what this line means, they were asking each other for help, and they were sharing their thoughts with me. Likewise, on the peer conferencing day, they were also engaged in reading, discussing, and helping each other with their drafts.

Evaluation & Conclusion

I love the idea of the writer’s workshop. The challenge, of course, is how to adapt it to the secondary classroom. At the secondary level, I think the collaboration that a writer’s workshop affords is vital. These students are all about each other, and I think that if I can tap that peer-to-peer energy and need, and use it to further instruction and understanding; then, it’s a goldmine! My plan for the future is to incorporate principles of the writing workshop into my writing instruction as well as to pilot writing groups for year-long work in my classes. This is just my seed. I have nothing else right now; it will have to take root in my mind over the next several months.

Writing for Education 705: Blog—Chapter III

Due to technical difficulties, I do not have video of me teaching; the video shows students in their collaboration groups discussing their annotated poems. Thus, I am critiquing my teaching from memory. Prior to the students gathering in groups to discuss their poems, they first annotated their poems. I conducted a mini-lesson, where I, with student help, annotated a poem that I projected on the whiteboard. In this mini-lesson (see poem annotation artifact), we used guiding questions about the poem’s structure and language to deepen our understanding of the poem. For this mini-lesson students were grouped as a whole-class. They were first given copies of the poem and the guiding questions; they read the poem on their own, and then we read it again as a class. I explained to the class purpose of poem annotation.

Good Points

Overall, this mini-lesson went well. Students seemed to understand its purpose and saw it as a useful step to understanding their poems and the paper writing process. Also, I think projecting the poem onto the whiteboard where it could be marked up worked well. Additionally, using the questions as a guide, I asked for student volunteers to come up to the whiteboard and circle and draw arrows or write comments about specific parts of the poem.

Points to Improve

One thing that I would like to improve is to set this lesson up with more clarity. Possibly, I could do this by alerting students the day before what the plan is and why—I think this kind of preview would give students some time to ponder questions before the actual lesson. If I do this lesson over again, I would change the timing; it felt rushed, I would preview the lesson, and I would have students pair-share their thoughts about the poem before I ask them to respond to the guide questions.

Analysis of Questions/Discussion:

I always feel blessed that I teach literature; it inherently offers a hook. I always try to make it a practice to scan the room with my questions so that I am not focusing on the extroverts. For this mini-lesson the guiding questions directed most of the discussion. The questions are familiar for students because we have asked them with regard to poetry throughout our unit. Who is the speaker? What is the subject of the poem? What words/images stand out? I remind students of what metaphor (figurative language) does by asking: “What two things is the poet comparing in this metaphor or simile? What layers of meaning does it suggest? What is the tone? And I remind students what is meant by tone and prompt them with possible suggestions. I always encourage to delve into their responses and connect the sense they express with the text. A common question, much to student dismay, is “What line, what phrase, what image” makes you think that?

The Video

Again, my guiding question for this project: Does collaboration improve student engagement and student writing? From viewing the video, it is clear that the students are engaged with understanding their poems.

As I walked around the room, students were asking questions of each other, pointing out lines or words they liked or didn’t get. Students told me they had chosen poems because they were sad, tragic, or deep. They were actively sharing—helping each other to make sense of their poems.

Annotation Artifact

Make all notes directly on your photocopy. For each poem:

1. Read over the poem carefully—at least 2-3 times. As you read the poem, write questions next to lines that may puzzle or intrigue you.

2. Focus on the poet’s language. Circle or underline words or phrases that you don’t understand. Look them up.

Also look for words/phrases the present strong imagery, metaphor, simile, personification, or evoke a particular tone. Make notes as to what you think the figurative language conveys.

3. Does the poet change his or her attitude? At first the speaker thinks/feels one way, then he/she changes. Look for signal words such as but or although, changes in diction (word choice), or expressions of irony.

4. In a sentence or two, write what you think the poem is about.

5. Also, in a sentence or two, write down why you chose this poem.

6. Consider the title. How does the title relate to the poem’s message?

Come to class with an idea about how you plan to proceed with your poetry project paper. You will turn in your annotated photocopies with the final draft of this paper.

Chapter II for Education 705

The question I asked for this project: Does collaboration improve student engagement? Every year, my students read poetry, choose two similarly themed poems, and write an analysis paper where they compare or contrast the tone or use of figurative language in their chosen poems. But they never talk to each other during this process. I wanted to know if students collaborated with each other in the selection, discussion, and focus of their papers in the prewriting stage as well as in the drafting and publishing would their personal engagement improve? Thus, also improving the quality of their finished pieces.

Pre-assessment

At the outset of our poetry study, students responded to a writing prompt reacting to the poem “Barbie Doll.” The prompt: Are you a real woman living in a Barbie Doll world? While the final papers that the students will turn in will be formal academic papers, the sample was an informal journal response. The pre-assessment response to the poem “Barbie Doll” was to see how students think about a poem, and what they know about poetry. Students’ final formal papers will be the culmination of our poetry study. It is my hope that it will be a reflection of their increased knowledge and understanding of the genre of poetry gained through our study as well as their collaboration efforts with their peers.

The Unit

Below in an outline of the writing component:

Day 1: Introduce assignment; show models

Day2: Library Day; find poems; students read and jot down notes

Day 3: Poem annotation mini-lesson

Day 4: Poem share day; students share poems and paper ideas

Day 5: Pre-writing

Day 6-7: Drafting

Day 8: Peer-conferencing; students share drafts.

Day 9: Revision/Edit drafts

Day 10: Publish. Students share drafts in groups.

Overall, my students are good writers; they write with sustained focus and have a good sense of mechanics. Where I would like to see improvement is with regard to specificity; my sophomores, many of them, are generalists; that is, as a group, they tend to reference examples, details, and words in more general rather than specific manner.

Preparation

To prepare for the writing of the poetry project paper, students spent two weeks reading and discussing poetry, they viewed models of previous student papers, spent a class in the library to select poems, and given guidelines on how to annotate a poem and discussion points to bring to their writing group discussions. Throughout our unit of study, students worked as a whole class, individually, and in small groups.

Some Final Thoughts

I used this opportunity to mini-pilot a new approach to writing in my classroom. Essentially, I feel my writing approach in the classroom needs a complete overhaul; I feel that I assign writing, rather than discuss and teach writing. While I do provide my students with models and scaffold instruction, I feel that I—not my students—talk about writing. I envision a writing approach where students are learning about writing from each other and their own process as well as writing.

A bit about me…

Welcome to Writing Speaks Volumes! I’m Kay, the creative and intellectual force of my blog. I like the sound of that! I’m a second career teacher and relatively new to the profession with a mere four years of service. After spending too many years working for an airline that must not be named, I traded my predictable, and often boring, nine to five at the electronic sweatshop for a teacher’s exhausting and seemingly interminable—but never dull or predictable—workday. My teaching odyssey began at a then brand new charter school. No English curriculum, no experience, three preps, and a class of tenth-grade “sirens” nearly killed me, but I survived to blog. From there, I moved to the convent. Literally. I currently teach Sophomore English at the Convent of --------------- School—a small, private, catholic, and blessedly serene all-girl school. I earned my undergraduate degree from the College of St. Catherine with a dual major in English and Communication Arts-Literature. I am currently working towards a Master of Science in Education at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls where I have created this blog for my Language Arts in the Elementary “Secondary” Classroom (aka Education 705) class.

My school…

-------------- is a rigorous college-preparatory high school; our writing instruction focus is to create writers that can organize and articulate ideas clearly, forcefully, and with some stylistic aplomb in the kind of academic writing that will be expected of them at the college level. The high school writing curriculum is sequenced to build skills from grade level to grade level and within each grade-level the writing curriculum is structured from simple to more complex. My students come into sophomore English having spent their freshman year focusing solely on creating strong, coherent paragraphs. We start sophomore English with a brief foray back to paragraphs; the students write four small one to two paragraph papers. But the main instructional focus in sophomore English is the five-paragraph essay. Yes, it is formulaic, but it is backbone of college-level writing. I would agree, as I have heard from detractors of this form, that it stifles voice and creativity; thus, part of my instructional focus is on stylistic concerns. Through our focus on the five-paragraph essay, students’ work on writing leads, creating thesis statements, connecting their topics to their audience, writing effective and smooth transitions within and between paragraphs, using precise words, varying sentences for effect, and writing in a variety of genres.

---------------is unique; I call it a sanctuary. And, I suppose, since it is home to the sisters of the convent it is. Articulated through the sisters’ Salesian spirituality, the school is infused with a spirit of kindness, gentleness, and quiet strength. Many of the girls at --------------- are “lifers,” meaning that they have attended ---------------- since pre-school. And those girls who are not “lifers” joined the --------------community in middle school or have fed in from other Catholic middle schools. As a result, the girls share a spiritual culture and a familiarity that is supportive, respectful, and freeing. Furthermore, the all-girl environment allows the girls the freedom to flex intellectually. Due to limited space and low seniority, I share two classrooms with two other teachers; thus, I am somewhat limited with regard to flexing group arrangements often and at a whim. In my morning sections, students are grouped in traditional rows, and in my afternoon sections students are grouped in a horseshoe fashion, which is great for discussions and partner work. I teach four sections of sophomore English, and my class sizes are relatively small, given the norm in our schools toward larger classes. My smallest section has seventeen students and my largest section has twenty-one students. Class grouping vary with the kind of writing task we are doing. Students generally free-write or respond to journal questions at their desks. If they are working on drafting and researching and we have the carts students grab a laptop and a partner and find a corner somewhere in the room. If students are peer reviewing, they generally form pods throughout the room to read and discuss.

Some literate thoughts…

Since I can remember, I have always been moved by words. I love to read, and teaching has only deepened my love affair with language. I have kept a journal—consistently, but inconsistently—since elementary school, and I have always harbored a secret desire to write. Reading and writing are the pillars of literacy. But does merely being able to read and write make one literate? No. They are the buds that make literacy flower. I think the essence of a literate person is the capacity for directed, purposeful, and reflective thought and action. Literate people use their reading and writing ability to flourish and change. Literate people possess the seeds of accessibility: accessibility to ideas, knowledge, independence, and relationships. Lucy Calkins in The Art of Teaching Writing maintains that we, human beings, need to write to understand our lives—this is literacy. Literacy permeates every aspect of my English classroom. Throughout any given class, my students are reading, writing, and discussing. I ask them to consider and connect to their lives and their world through our literary selections and their writing. While I must admit, there is a part of me that is skeptical of the constant parsing and analyzing of literature that we do at the high school level. I sometimes question if too much analysis verges on murdering the beauty of literature. If we destroy, as Macbeth does when he kills Duncan, the wholeness of our community with language.

Writing chapter one for Language Arts in the Elementary “Secondary” Classroom, I welcome your thoughts, comments, and insights. Until then…