Grading

Of all the aspects involved in teaching, grading has to be my nemesis. I love planning and preparing units. I love instructing students. I even love discipline at times because I know that by holding students accountable, I can potentially make a difference in their character. Grading, however, is something that I could surely live without. I am horrible at it. I know I don't give enough feedback; I know I don't give feedback on time. Major papers, especially, stare at me from my dining room table, taunting me with how long they have been sitting there. Robert J. Marzano, author of Classroom Instruction that Works, would hate me (Strategy #7 is setting objectives and providing feedback).

I struggle because I don't want to short change my students. They spend a great deal of time and effort on assignments, and it doesn't feel fair to breeze through their work without giving it the attention it deserves. Yet, when faced with the task of grading 55 papers in a "deserving way," I become overwhelmed, and my dining room table becomes full. Although some teachers would simply decide not to assign major papers and projects, I don't feel like that is an appropriate alternative. I have tried setting goals for myself (if I grade 5 papers every day, I can have all of them done before next weekend), and I have tried sitting down at a local coffee shop to grade a huge stack all at once. Neither has worked ideally. My current technique is to save my huge stack until right before the grading period ends, and in a state of procrastinated panic, finish it at 1:00a.m. the morning grades are due. This is something I would not recommend and would like to avoid.

I need to find ways to work smarter, not harder, and I have gathered a few ideas that I plan to try this semester. First, I plan to do more during my student conferences. Our school district currently uses the First 20 Days of Balanced Literacy by Fountas and Pinnell. In this model, students and teachers write letters back and forth about what students are reading. While I had developed a rubric for my students' letters, sitting down to use it was a different matter. One teacher in my building suggested that I grade the letters with the students during conference time. This would allow me to grade their letters on the spot and also provide the opportunity to give students immediate feedback. Easier. Better. Smarter.

Another teacher suggested doing a combined research paper, which I also plan to try. Groups of 3-4 students write one paper on the same topic, each taking a subtopic and together writing the introduction and conclusion. She makes up templates in Microsoft Publisher and requires groups to have pictures with captions, maps, graphs, offset quotes, etc. just like a true nonfiction piece of writing. She also has groups choose 5-10 vocabulary words and make a glossary. Now the students are really learning the features of nonfiction, and I only have 15 papers to grade. See, smarter.

Do you have any ideas? Ways to give your students the feedback they deserve without overwhelming yourself? Please feel free to leave a comment, as we would all love to hear from you!

Boys and Literacy

According to research done by Michael W. Smith and Jeffrey D. Wilhelm (2002), boys read less, comprehend less, and value reading less than girls. Although some teachers write this off with the “boys will be boys” mentality, this is an important issue that I often see in my classroom, and it needs to be addressed, especially by teachers of adolescent boys. This is the time to help boys rediscover (or find for the first time) the enjoyment found in reading, and by tuning into what interests boys, teachers can more easily reach the boys in their classrooms.

Check out the following websites for more information:

Me, Read? No Way! provides information about the reading difficulties and deficits faced by the boys in our classrooms as well as multiple strategies to help them.

Author Jon Scieszka’s website, called Guys Read, has appealing book choices for boys and information on starting a Guys Read Club, basically a book club for boys, at school.

If you are interested in reading more about the research on this topic, check out the book Reading Don't Fix No Chevys: Literacy in the Lives of Young Men by Michael W. Smith and Jeffrey D. Wilhelm.

Writing With Mentor Text

Last year, our school adopted a writing program called Being a Writer (Developmental Studies Center). The program focuses on using mentor text to help students brainstorm ideas, and after choosing their favorite brainstorm, students take it through the writing process. I love the focus on mentor text. What better way to help students become good writers than by reading good writing!

Because some of the texts provided in the program weren’t very meaningful to students, I wanted to find better mentor texts that the students could relate to. I discovered a website developed by the Northern Nevada Writing Project called Writing Fix. Teachers have posted lessons with mentor texts, and the site divides them into types of mentor texts, writing genres, and the 6+1 Traits. With all the various choices, I can always find texts that students enjoy and can connect to, and I truly believe that their writing is better because of it.

Read Write Think

If you haven't already, please check out the website readwritethink.org. I love this site because it not only provides you with great ideas, it also gives you the resources (worksheets, PowerPoints, interactive student activities, etc.) needed to implement the ideas effectively. I have recently gathered a number of resources for my unit on persuasive writing, and my students love the various interactive elements such as Comic Creator, Story Maps, and Persuasion Maps that we've used throughout the year.

Comprehension Constructors

In years past, I have often given both fiction and nonfiction reading assignments with five to eight follow-up questions, assuming that students who could correctly answer the questions could also understand the material. I have learned, however, that at this point in the game, many of my students can read questions, search for the answers in the text, and copy them onto a piece of paper. Whether or not they understand what they have read is a different story.

I recently read about the use of Comprehension Constructors, graphic organizers developed by Cris Tovani (author of I Read It But I Don’t Get It and Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?). Although the organizers differ in appearance and can be tailored to each specific reading assignment, their purpose is to help students choose sections of the reading that are meaningful to them and process how those sections make them think. They promote various reading strategies such as determining importance, questioning, connecting, predicting, and using fix-up strategies.

Please access a few of the Comprehension Constructors I have used in my classroom and feel free to use these models to create your own to match the specific purpose of your reading assignments.

A New Year's Resolution

As we begin this new year, I am struck by how little I take time to reflect. The busyness of life dictates that when one item is finished, we must move on to the next without stopping for even the briefest of moments. As teachers, this is all the more true. At the conclusion of one week or one unit of study, we are already planning for the next, constantly moving forward. So much to accomplish; so little time to do it. I keep a list of things I want to revamp next to my desk, knowing that I probably won't get to it until the summer when I have more time. I also jot myself reminders on sticky notes that I place inside file folders - next year, do this and in the future, do that. To take significant time to ponder a lesson, however...the idea seems crazy!

Yet, I submit that unless we take the time to truly think about what we do, why we do it, and how we can make it better we will never truly improve at our craft. Thus, this blog. The goal is to reflect on something educational at least once a week, and hopefully in the process, my ramblings might help another teacher or two.