Notes: Teach Rhymes with Beach: Gretchen Bernabei: What's Important (and What's Not)

 Literacy's Democratic Roots by Thomas Newkirk - drawing heavily from this because teaching is an act of patriotism. Fighting against ignorance to prepare a population that votes and perpetuates the experiment of democracy. 

Envelopes- 

tinyurl.com/BeachBernabei2023

Opening thought: from his first page, xiii: "If you enter...Cherish, hold dear." 

Think about what's important...Let's explore out own thoughts. What do we think is important in our classrooms? (Besides the humans.) 

Envelope: Two columns: Quicklist of important things: 

Life lessons you want to convey: (my thoughts)

1. Grace and acceptance

2. Doing your best is most important

3. Everything we do is preparation to do the next thing (my thoughts) 

Life skills you want them to walk away with

4. How to think and reason

5. How to consume and critique a text

6. How to write and create

Three practices you want them to learn (my thoughts) 

7. How to listen and respond

8. How to notice when something is wrong

9. How to find solutions when things aren't right

Add one more thing that's not already on the list (my thoughts) 

10. How to make friends and support others

Other Side: Not important

Things you did as a student that aren't important now (my thoughts) 

1. Diagramming sentences; outlining a chapter

2. balancing chemical equasions (can't spell math) 

3. write something and then type it

Things that you are required to do in classroom that are required by others (my thoughts)

4. write the objective on the board

5. read from a script

6. take attendance on time

Add to the list to outdated things that you have to do (my thoughts) 

7. grading

8. CBA's

9. meetings

One more thing: 

10. Follow rules from assessment regime

Put lists to the side. Asked volunteers to come to the front. This is how she teaches kids to answer questions fully. (She goes through the process she explains in QA12345: Through dialogue.) 

Question; Answer; How do you know? Huh? What does that mean? How else do you know? Huh? What does that mean? So...your answer is...what? If we put the questions on mute, you would have heard a complete response. 

First person: What's your name? 

Second person: What town are we in right now? 

Third person: Is it hot outside today? 

She knows that when a student wants to do her role, that they are on the way to success. She uses a lot of visual texts to begin the work. Told story of how her students used the structure with The Wizzard of Oz. Used sentence stems from the website to ask the questions. These structures become internal and automatic. 

Return to your list. Choose three. (She shared the ideas she added to her envelope.) Circle three of them. Or four. :) Pick one that you wouldn't mind talking about with folks in this room. 

Open the envelope to write on the flap side. 

Kernel Essay: Topic at the top. The other kernels will go under the flap. What you write will go on the envelope outside. 

Answer/Claim/Opinion; One way I know; This means; Another way I know; This means/shows; And so, answer repeated.

CBA's should be outdated and abandoned. I know this because everyone is required to do them, but nothing much changes in learning and teaching. Why would we waste time doing something that makes no difference. Another way I know is that the scores on CBA's don't match the results we end up getting on STAAR. Kids who pass a CBA don't necessarily pass the STAAR or get those kinds of questions right on the final exam. Kids who fail a CBA don't necessarily fail the STAAR or get those kinds of questions wrong. So, CBA's should be outdated practices and abandoned as ineffective pedagogical practices. 

Shared out our work. Rhetorical triangle - someone writes something for somewhere for someone else to hear. It's not real communication until it's shared. Its an exercise for a school laboratory if only the teacher reads. 

Don't do it this way: This isn't very good. It's just toff the top of my head. I didn't have time to revise.

Don't do it this way: Read from it and then ad lib to add. Just read it the way it is. 

Hear three people. 

Heard some from the crowd. 

Everything that has been written or read, has structure. There are hundreds that you can use once you learn the concept. Pick what you want to use empowers students to explain what they mean. 

Other thoughts from Thomas Newkirk

See tinyurl for thoughts and resources. 

Notes: Reading Lenses-Deep Analysis with Jenny Martin at Teach Rhymes with Beach

 C.  “Reading Lenses--Deep Analysis,” with Jenny Martin (3-12) Is authentic reading engagement truly possible? Absolutely! Using the “Reading Lenses” strategy with rich texts, teachers will learn how to boost their students’ reading interactions, and immediately facilitate rigorous analysis. Students are empowered with confidence and skills that support STAAR reading and constructed responses. This session also helps teachers better understand the “thinking” within their TEKS. (3-12) 

Vocabulary: Listened to Speech on the Death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by Robert F. Kennedy. As we listened, we coded the text for vocabulary: context clues (CC), Greek and Latin/Foreign (GL), and multiple meaning words (MM). Then we met in small groups to discuss and share ideas about how these words added to the message by discussing meaning. 

Author's Purpose and Craft: APC elements + Why are these choices made by the author? What's in the text that makes you believe and understand the purpose? We spent some time thinking about R. Kennedy's purpose. Discussed in table to find a common purpose. "Unification is needed." "Martin Luther is a legacy that tells us what we should focus on for unification. Honor MLK." "To inform about passing and to persuade the audience to act in a way to honor MLK's life purpose." Add what you liked to what you have already written. Then we highlighted things in the speech that supported that idea. 

Next: Explain or analyze how the use of text structure contributes to the author's purpose. We are working up to these kinds of questions. Use Gretchen Bernabei's rope and brand/kernelizing process to determine the structure. Use the text structure to explain how it's put together to deliver the message/purpose. Example Kernel: Big announcement: big loss; Who was this man? Where do we go from here? Here are our choices. Here's a poem that is a beautiful expression of the moment. Here's the plan. Nails the landing with: so we dedicate ourselves to... Name the speech structure: Honoring a Great Person. (Kids can write from this structure as well.) 

Next: How does the photograph, caption, and poem contribute to the author's purpose? Why are they there? What is the effect? How does it help you as a reader to connect to and understand the message. 

Next: Metaphor/personification: Highlight with a different color. Discuss impact and use. 

Next: Point of view - best example comes from him having a member of his family being assassinated

Next: Mood and voice: word choice in opposition; repetition: difficult; How does this impact mood and voice. Discuss. Share out. 

Next: What makes it argumentative? Rhetorical devices/appeals and logical fallacies. Discussed logos, pathos, ethos. Exaggerations.  ID those. (Note, there are additional features including argumentative structures.) 

Next: Use the lens of text structure to reread - look for pitchforking. Highlight three examples of pitchforking. Discuss what they are doing rhetorically. Enter our writing and use them. (Note: wouldn't it be a good idea to use these for pieces of text evidence that supports ideas? Then we could explain each? Hmmm.) Shared out end of 9 and all of paragraphs 7 and 10. 9 uses parallelism and anaphora. 

The point is to re-enter the work repeatedly to deeply analyze. We can make sentence frames and have the kids imitate. These are all highly tested. We can also use this as a mentor text to model explicitly about the skills we are teaching. Kids are familiar with the text and we can focus on the skill over time. 

Next: Use question stems handout and respond in writing. Try two vocab stems. Try two or three author's purpose stems. 

6th Grade Question Stems

 

Notes: Teach Rhymes with Beach: Melanie Mayer's Keynote - Six Strategies for Success

 1. The "Devil" Cards: Take a deck of cards. Write the kids' names on them. Ask a question. Have kids turn and talk. Then pull a card and have the person share 

2. Charting the reading: Several ways to do this...

Take a piece of paper and fold it into four columns. 

Option One: Questions: What do you wonder? 

Words: A new/powerful word for me is ____. I think it means/adds clarity by ________ because _________. 

Summary: Who's the speaker? What's the subject? What's the situation? Why does it matter? 

Inference: The writer doesn't say directly, but I can tell from the evidence that...

(Change the chart to fit your focus, such as figurative language: simile, metaphor, personification)

Option Two: Text to self, text, world. Write a structured paragraph response. 

Option Three: Answer, Prove it (text evidence) explain it (use transitions - furthermore) Summarize it 

3. Self- Assess and Peer Advice

Did you start sentence with capital letters? 

Did you write x number of sentences? 

Did you use transition words? (Or your focus for the day)

Did you capitalize I? 

Give yourself a check for each item. Revise and submit. 

Peer Advice: Two things you heard. Use word wall of writer/authorial choices to help name and give examples. Name two what if's of author choices that might improve the text. 

4. 5 Minute Grammar Lessons

Show examples from your writing. Let them notice the structure. Give them check points to evaluate. Have them write and share. Next day, use the structure to answer a question about the day's learning. Add it to a quiz.

5. Utilize Tiering

Gave the example of DOL bell ringer to find the mistakes with homonyms/multiple meaning words. Build several tasks...

Tier One: Find the mistakes. 

Tier Two: Find other homonyms and how they are used. 

Tier Three: Write your own examples or re-enter your writing. 

6. Establish a culture and climate of grace. 

GPS: You moron. You missed the exit again. I told you 4.6 miles ago to get in the right lane. What were you thinking. 

She doesn't even huff - she just says, "rerouting" or "recalculating." Our kids need this too. We do this by being accessible and approachable. We do this by being interruptable. We do this by using positive words and putting on our smiles with our outfit. 

Story - The average person lives to 76. That's a certain amount of days. At 56, I've lived 20, 440 of my days. I only have 7,300 left if I live to the American average. What I do matters...and I'm running out of time. I want to spend it doing the right things for those in front of me. Psalm 90:12 and Psalm 118:24. 

Phonics IS the V in MSV

Gonna be tacky for a while. (This is actually an old issue, but continues to have serious, unintended consequences. A bit scared to post it, as people will probably attack me because they think I'm stupid and misinformed or slamming phonics. Which I'm not. Well, not stupid or ignorant about this issue.) 

 To those who are demonizing the 3 cuing systems...I wonder if they realize that phonics IS the V in MSV (Meaning, Structural, Visual). To those writing legislation to outlaw curriculum with a V in it, do they really want us to NOT look at the phonics? I can just imagine us rowing through books with blindfolds like Sandra Bullock in Bird Box. Ridiculous. 

Friends, MSV isn't the devil some claim it to be. Here's some information to consider.

Semantics: 

Visual - What are the letters? What are the sounds they make to produce the word in print? Phonics IS the visual component of language that we use to translate ink and pixels into sounds. 

"Does it look right?" isn't a suggestion to guess what the word is. It's not really even a strategy. It's a piece of the way the language functions. 

And it's cultural. 

Marie Clay was Australian. They say, "Have a go" like Texans say "try it and see." "Does it look right" is a cue for kids to monitor and self-regulate. 

Let me translate this maligned question for those that don't understand the science: 

Here's what happens with the visual, phonics cue: 

• The kid says a word after looking at print. 
• Right or wrong, the teacher wants them to check their accuracy. 
• Texan:"Kid, match what you heard yourself say with the visuals/letters in the print. 
• Linguist: Use your phonemic awareness of sounds and connect it with your understanding of phonics." 

Is a kid going to understand the Texan or the linguist? Bless your heart.

A Solution: 

Isn't it easier to ask kids if what they said looks like what's on the page instead of asking them to explain the linguistic processes and names of phoneme types? I thought we were trying to look at words to say/hear them so we can understand what the words mean. House or horse. It's a big deal. 

If a kid can tell you what a digraph is but can't tell you what their mouth does to make the word, is the linguist helping?  Furthermore, neither the Texan or the Linguist will be successful in teaching reading if the kid says the word correctly and doesn't know the difference between a house and a horse. 

There's more to teaching reading than phonics. V is just one of many cues. (And for those that don't know the sciences, there's more than three.)

A process and resources for authentic STAAR remediation, response, instruction, and assessment: An English I Case Study and Suggestions

Premise: Before we collect more data, let's intervene on the data we have. 

Premise: Our work does not have to look like a STAAR test. 

Premise: There's a lot of thinking and work to be done BEFORE you can answer a question. Most of that isn't a TEK. 

Premise: Answering multiple choice questions is a completely different skill than any of our TEKS. Answering questions is about thinking and reasoning that you do while reading the source text and while analyzing the question and choices.

Premise: The English course is essentially the SAME course for all grades. Hate me if you want, but listening, speaking, reading, writing, viewing, and thinking are the same K-12. The only difference is text complexity. 

Premise: Thinkers must be able to examine a text and make decisions without the use of questions and in their own writing and that of others. 

Premise: Skills and content are best practiced and mastered when we mess with and apply those things in our own writing.

Explanation and Process: 

Prioritizing what we have for specific purposes

• Use the 2023 released exam for the previous grade level for analysis and instructional material. 
• Use the 2023 ECR and SCR samples. Use them for exemplars. Use them for sample texts to revisit/revise. Give them to students so they can grapple with their responses (or lack of response) and improve. 
• Use the 2022 full length practice exam for crafting common based assessments or formative assessments. (I know, it's not psychometrically aligned, but it's what we have. You could also use and revise some of the previous STAAR exams.) 
• Save the 2023 released exam for the current grade for the benchmark in December or January.

Resources for English I:

For Instruction:

Analysis and Tools for 8th Grade Released Exam

Powerpoint (in draft to show the process, more to come as time permits) 

For Assessment

The Benefits of Learning to Play an Instrument: Text and Sample Prompts for ECR, SCR

2023 STAAR Extended Constructed Response Analysis, Interpretations, and Recommendations

The extended constructed response seems like a hinge-point because success depends on what kids DO while they are reading and responding. Success on these items can be a gateway to success on the other items. 

So - here's some things to think about as you are interpreting results, designing interventions, and planning initial instruction. 

By the way - If you didn't know, you have access to ALL the writing students have done on the exam. It's important to print those out for the kids you have. Revision is the best way to improve writing. And it's a good place to start in helping students become aware of their thinking and reasoning. Eventually, we'll have pdfs of it all. Right now, we're having to clip, cut, and paste. Your testing coordinator will be able to give you access in the system to see student results and will have the pdfs eventually. 

Here's a hyperlinked pdf of the analysis that you can use in your plc's. 

 

So many ECR Zeros on STAAR? Why?

Check out these scorepoint graphs: 

Why so many zeros? Well...it was new. And 3rd graders are NINE. But perhaps we need to look at the obvious...or what is obviously hidden before we start diving into TEKS.

Here's an analogy - did you know that if you break open a cottonwood twig, that there is a STAR of Texas hidden inside? (Project Learning Tree has a cool lesson about it here.) The star was there all along, but you didn't know it was there. 

In the TECH world, they study the "user experience." Kids all over the state told us that they didn't have an ECR on the assessment. Why did they think that? Remember - most kiddos are taking this test on a chromebook tiny screen with no mouse. Here's what they saw: 

Semantics: 

Students are asked to write an argumentative essay. Not an ECR. Could the problem be semantics? Kids need to know they will be asked to write a composition or an essay. (And not an S A. Before my kids saw the word typed out, they thought I was just saying two letters.) ECR is an assessment item type vocabulary and is not used for kids on the test. Same goes for passages - that's what we call them. That's not the academic language used on the assessment - STAAR says "selections." Our academic synonyms might be causing some of the confusion. 

User Experience: 

And...did they SEE a place to type the essay? Sure, there's a little arrow that says to scroll down. The scrollbar that says there is more to see doesn't show up until you hover over the right hand side of the screen on some computers. On other computers it does. 

That's a wonky user experience for something kids aren't familiar with. With which kids aren't familiar. Whatever. You get the point. 

Our solution: Kids need to be beyond familiar with the TECH elements. They need to be fluent with them. And our words need to match their experience - "You'll be asked to write and essay or a composition. You'll need to scroll down or use your arrow keys to see where you need to type." 

Font and Text Features: 

Another problem is the way the paired passages appear. 

See how these scroll on the same "page"? It looks like "Laws for Less Trash" might be a subheading for "Rewards for Recycling." 

That's a problem. Kids need to make sure they are attending to the bold material at the beginning of the passage and know that "selections" means two different passages. Another semantics issue. 

    But this is also a text feature issue. I didn't see any subheadings in the third grade test, so I had to go to 4th grade. 

See how the titles of passage are center justified and of a certain size font? Now compare to the subheading: left justified and a smaller font. These are text features that serve as cues for readers about what the author is doing as well as when a new passage/selection appears. 

It will be important to teach kids how to understand and decode the text features and navigation elements (like that little almost invisible grey arrow on the right hand side of each screen that says there's more below and you need to scroll down.) 

Using Cambium Components for Self-Regulation: 

The very top row is designed to help students understand and see how much of the test they have completed with the blue bar and the percentage complete. They know how much energy they need to use and how much time to save. But they can also see where they have and have not answered questions. The little red triangle tells kids where they have NOT answered questions. This would have been a huge cue to students that they'd missed answering the essay question. But did they know it was there? Were they fluent in using the tools to monitor their progress and to check for completion? 

Before we start digging into TEKS (and especially accountability ratings and class rosters), let's do some talking with kids about their experience and their approach when taking the exam. Our solutions can start with modeling how the platform works and using similar tools during daily classroom instruction so that students are fluent with technology experiences beyond a familiarity with a tutorial or mention of the tools. Let's make sure students understand the user experience and how to use the tools to enhance their comprehension and demonstration of grade level curriculum. Until then, they're walking in a Texas creekbed under the cottonwoods, not knowing about the hidden treasures all around them.