Naked Reading by Teri Lesesne

Looking for appropriate books for your child, check out Lesesne's book complete with annotated book lists.  Her lists are marked with reading levels as well as ratings like you see on tv shows and movies.  This way you can help your child determine if they are ready for a certain book.

Need help getting your adolescent to read--here are some suggestions:

Places to look for Favorite Literature:
Subliterature: comics, graphic novels, manga and series
Non-fiction: awards Orbis and Sibert Medals
Horror, Suspense and Supernatural
Humor
Mystery: http://www.mysterywriters.org/ and Edgar Award

To motivate kids as lifelong readers they need to have:
Trust
Access
Response-don't get in a rut, change up responses, character acrostics, reading A-Z, annotations, chalk outline(put info about character in appropriate body locations), exposed or undercover, genre exchange(reformulate text), blogs, sticky note poetry, PPT booktalks, shelf markers and talkers(kids record info about a book on greeting card recorders and place this on the book shelf), s-w-b-s-t
Guidance-never forget the power of your coaching or guidance for a stuck child, connect to their interest
Enthusiasm-make it interesting and let your passion show
Tween/Teen Appeal-make interesting book covers/allow students to remake covers

Higher Expectations Chapter 16

I didn't know there was a term for what I believe and how I teach.  Pedagogy of Confidence is exactly what I bring to my classroom everyday.  Each year, I set an expectation that all of my students will learn and demonstrate growth, and I fully believe in my goal.  If a student does not learn, I believe there was an external cause for that (personal situations, classroom environment, societal situations, relationship gaps), I never presume that the student did not learn because they can't.  That is just a ridiculous thought for anyone going into teaching.  If you believe that, don't teach.  However, I believe there is more to this pedagogy than belief--actions, systems and a shift in perspective is included.  I agree with the text that it requires a shift from what is taught to how it is taught.  This chapter does a beautiful job of breaking down the steps of what must be done to take what is learned and apply it to everyday literacies.  I think that I need to do more with the Thinking Maps and making learning real in a more consistent manner.  What are your beliefs about students and learning?

Welcome to Middle School

I have enjoyed meeting all of my Quest students.  I believe we are going to have a wonderfully amazing year in 2010-2011.  As you got to know the building and how middle school works, I wonder what was going through your head.  What has been the best thing about Quest?

George Lucas's Project Based Learning Site

10 Strategies Anyone Can Use in Their Class

We created a 10 Strategy Tool Kit for class, so I thought I would share it with you.  None of these ideas are mine, we just had to consolidate them into one quick reference.  If you have questions, please reference the books listed or post a comment.  What are your favorite/most effective strategies for promoting literacy?

I'm After the Heart as Well as the Head

This phrase from Tom Romano about intellect and compassion rings so true for writing.  You can teach students all of the mechanics and rules of writing, but if they can't write from their heart--from their pure creativity--then the writing will fall flat.  Offering different genres and authentic purposes gives young writers the opportunity to discover and write what is in their hearts. 

What Tom says about writers not truly knowing where they are going until the words take them there is another truth.  I don't know how many times I thought I was writing a paper about one thing and by the time I was done it was about another.  The words just took me there.  In fact, when I took the C-Base test, I ended up in tears during the writing section because halfway through I realized that the words were taking me to the opposite side of the argument than I had started on.  I feared I wouldn't have time to complete the essay and do it well enough to pass the test.  Words can betray us like that, expose us to what we really think and feel.  Imagine if students never experience this.  If they never have the words take them somewhere new, exploring and learning as they go.  What a tragedy that would be.

Making it Matter Through the Power of Inquiry

Creativity.  I think this is the key word for this chapter.  Students perform better and have greater self-efficacy when we foster their creativity.  I loved having the inquiry based broad questions and then allowing students to discover the learning associated with the question.  The question I have is how do you develop the inquiry questions?  We are so stuck in standards and GLE's that I am not sure how to step back from that and find the big question.  I want to know how to do this.  I want this kind of learning in my classroom.  Partnering inquiry with multi-genre writing, student blogs and goal setting would be the ideal classroom set up.  The problem is, I need the support.  I need a mentor. 

I need to use creative problem solving to figure this out--to find my flow.  Anyone have ideas on how to do this in your classroom?

Writing to/with Students

Harvey Daniels and I have a lot in common.  We both see great value in writing back and forth with our students, a concept made invaluable by Nancie Atwell.  I, too, tried the responding to everything.  I can vividly remember-- cause it was the last two years--stacking and restacking composition notebooks trying to psych myself into responding.  What I didn't love was how to manage this.  What I did was "reward" the class with the highest participation by giving them the next week off.  However, students who didn't do it were required to make it up.  This way my classes rotated and I only had two classes a week (40-50 students instead of 70-75).  This was still too many.  This year, I tried to change it up.  I made it a more formal critique of what they had read and they were to turn it in upon completing a book --which I expected at least once a month.  This did not work either.  I like the idea of doing five or so a day--I have considered this, but never done it.  Maybe this year, I will try this method.

One way I have considered changing this task is by involving technology.  What if I have students Blog about their reading?  Could that work--keeping an online reading/writing journal?  What do you think?

Chapter 17--Assessment

This was a meaty chapter with much to say about the practice of assessment.  Many of the arguments I had heard, but there were a few worth pointing out as critical. 

The concept that different assessments have different audiences or clients is huge.  I fully agree with this line of thought.  I can use the MAP scores as a guide at the beginning of the year (once they come in) to who I need to look at more closely.  This is about all I can do with these numbers (other than to give myself a pat on the back or a chastising as I look at the scores of my previous students).  Once I have an SRI, Tungsten and Writing score on my students, I can then narrow my focus more and determine who needs to be in my Academic Excellence for further specialization.  From there though, I have to use more personal, more specific assessments and conversations to determine how my kids are progressing.  The rest of the scores---they end up more valuable to the building, district or state once I know my kids.  They have little to know impact in my instruction at that point.

I live the idea of the process papers.  What a great gauge of metacognition.  I have had the students help design a scoring guide by comparing two pieces of work.  This made a remarkable difference in the quality of work and the level of engagement and apparent understanding.  The assignments or assessments I have used this technique with end up becoming so much more meaningful to us all.

The final thing that I absolutely loved was the articulation of the four intertwining roles of a reader:

1. code breaker (cracking the code or cipher that maps spellings to sounds and vice versa)
2. meaning maker (focusing on the message of the text, including the knowledge required to understand it)
3. text user (focusing on the pragmatics of use-- what function does a text serve in a social context?)
4. text critic (A critical competence that entails unpacking the social, economic, and political assumptions behind and consequences of using a text)  (Underwood, Yoo, and Pearson, in press)

I fully agree that we do a relatively good job at teaching to the first two roles.  But as a community we do not get to the other two roles.  In college, I know that the other two roles have been left for me to consider--high school as well.  With the types of literacy the students find themselves using today, the second two are of critical importance.  I can almost see the four of these roles being the reading GLE's I need to focus on--strongest emphasis on the last two.

Scratch | Project | Bad Music

I am learning how to use Scratch, a basic programming site from MIT. This is a free site where students can learn to program and animate. They can make their own stories and animations. It is very cool, but I am very much a novice. Check out my first project titled, Bad Music.

Scratch Project Bad Music

ELL and scaffolding

The format and dialogue in chapter 8 was effective and charging. For a long chapter, the flow of conversation took you through it quickly. One thing I have struggled with when it come to reading and studying ELL instruction is connecting. In my district, all ELL students are concentrated to the West side of the district, so I have little to know interaction with this type of student. The few students I do have who are bilingual have already "graduated" from the ELL program. The biggest issue I see is vocabulary acquisition, punctuation (I have at least one Arabic speaking student a year) and reluctance when it comes to speaking in class.

There were strategies in this chapter that I found affirming, like allowing students to write, then partner share and then whole group share. I do that for all of my kiddos anyway. So, while this was not the most useful chapter for me, the format was exciting and allowed me to engage in a conversation the likes of which I have not been privy to in the past.

Resources Abound

Teri Lesesne knows what she is talking about when it comes to YA literature. After reading her chapter (Chapter 6) I feel a combination of confidence that I have been doing some good things for kids and recharged with more tools to help me reach the kids I have struggled with in the past. Her multiple resources are amazing as well as her insight on how the evolution of YA is impacted by technology today. We are teaching in an exciting time, so many options for so many different students.

I was so impressed with her comparing multi-genre literature with synthesis and multi-narrator with collaboration. This was a very compelling discussion of how these books can challenge advanced readers while still remaining relevant to their lives. I also saw so much value in what she said about multiple narrators, truth and our democratic society. Her plethera of book examples are enough to inspire any English teacher to expand their own horizons. I will post links to the resources she suggested tomorrow for my followers to explore.

If you have not yet started to read, Adolescent Literacy Turning Promise Into Practice, you are missing out on a wave of currency that will change your classroom and practice.