Using TEKS Resource System to Teach Drama

In the Year at a Glance, it's easy to get lost in the title of the unit and the list of TEKS. As if they are some kind of checklist. The KEY standard that guides all of them in this unit is 4A. All of the work you do with the rest of the standards hinges on this one: 

Students must look at dramatic conventions to understand, make inferences, draw conclusions, and provide text evidence about how these structures and elements enhance the text. 

The key part here is that the dramatic elements have a purpose: to enhance style, tone, and mood (2A, 2D, and to some extent 1B). More specifically, the standard gives us instances that help us know what kind of dramatic conventions we might consider: monologues, soliloquies, and dramatic irony. 

So our work with this standard can't really be boiled down to putting a single TEK on the board as the objective. It's more complicated and interwoven than that because we are working with author's purpose and craft and literary analysis. 

The performance assessment also has the opportunity to confound planning. If you're not careful, the way this assignment is presented can turn into a low rigor assessment that better fits the 6th grade TEK that asks student to compare how the setting influences plot. We are doing more than that here in 9th grade English. 

Notice that this performance assessment asks students to recreate a scene into a different time period. We can't leave out the tone and mood part either. But what is not mentioned here is that the whole point of our drama unit is to examine how writers, directors, or actors can communicate the theme, tone, and mood through the dramatic elements. 

This lesson can easily devolve into a simple retelling instead of a purposeful use of dramatic conventions. And the assessment can devolve into an activity or assignment if the teacher has not addressed the lessons about dramatic conventions during the reading phase of this process. 

So if we have read The Importance of Being Ernest, we are going to have to address the dramatic elements that are present in the text. I did a little research and found several categories of dramatic conventions: 

Dramatic Conventions
Rehearsal	Theatrical	Technical
hot seating	split focus	lighting
role on the wall	flashback	dialogue
still images	flashforward	monologue
	narration	set
	soliloquy	costuming
	spoken thought	entrance/exits
	aside
	song
	passing of time
	use of music

Since the standards suggest monologues and the play has several, let's just pick that one. 

How does Wilde use the monologues to communicate his theme? That has to be the focus of the modeling and gradual release of the analysis as students read the scenes and selected monologues.

Applying it to writing: 

When it's time to write for the assessment, the writers must first explore what theme they wish to convey. THEN they can write a scene where a monologue is used purposefully to convey the theme. Students can make decisions about what character would best deliver those lines and describe why. They can make decisions about how and why a character would compose and deliver those lines. They can lift particular lines and phrases from the monologue that best support the theme. 

Students could then trade their compositions and see if the other groups or teams could discern the theme and debate why the character was or was not the best choice to deliver the message. Students can discuss the evidence that was or was not effective in delivering the author's message. 

Our work here is NOT about adapting a play to a new setting. What are kids actually learning? They are learning how authors use the dramatic elements and conventions of drama to make meaning. And they are learning how to do them same for their own messages. 

Note: Students in English II could read the same play, but focus on the motifs and archetypes used by Wilde to communicate the themes. 

STAAR Lexiles and Passing Standards for Meets and Masters

WARNING: Facts and opinions ahead...

Good morning Shona,

Can you help me?  My director asked this question this morning:

“Can you tell me anything about crazy Lexile for reading STAAR grade 3 for Meets and Masters?”

I don’t know what she means by Meets and Masters as the students would all see the same passage.  I guess maybe she wants to know how the Lexile measure is determined for STAAR???

Can you help me with any of this?

Just the kind of question I like to geek out about! 

Two different "things" are at play here. Lexiles actually have nothing to do with the cut points for passing. Those cut points come from separate calculation. And Lexiles don't really tell you how hard something is to read either. It's a bunch of hooey, but don't tell anyone I said that. More on that at the end. 

Two Uses of Lexiles

1. So the passages go through a review process. Lexiles are only  one of the measures used to see if passages are at the right reading level. I wrote a blog post about that recently.These Lexiles for the passages are not reported by TEA. But you can cut and paste the released test text, put it through a Lexile calculator, and find out. You probably won't like the results. That's how we traditionally see Lexiles used - to measure the complexity of  a text. But that's not what we see above on the Scale Score conversion chart. 

2. 3rd -8th grade students will get a confidential student report after taking STAAR that also reports their Lexile level. The Lexile assigned to the student comes from some wonky psychometric stuff. Basically, TEA and Lexile folks did a research study. They gave kids another test and compared the results to how kids score (scale scores) on STAAR. This is supposed to tell us what level of books these kids are reading with ease. 

Lexile to Scale Score Study

Here's how TEA explains it: "TEA partnered with MetaMetrics to conduct a series of studies to examine the relationship between the Lexile® scale and the STAAR reading scale. Student participants were representative of Texas student population in reading ability and were similar to Texas student population in demographics such as gender, ethnicity, economic status, and ELL status. Students were given a paper/pencil Lexile® Linking Test that contained multiple-choice reading comprehension questions. Students´ results on the Lexile® Linking Test were examined in relation to the students’ results on the STAAR reading test. Researchers were able to establish a link between the STAAR reading scale and the Lexile® scale. Although no high-stakes was associated with the Lexile® measure on STAAR report card, it can be used as a resource for parents and educators. With Lexile® measures, parents and educators now have information that can be used to promote and encourage growth in reading."

On the confidential student report and on the scale score conversion chart, Lexiles from that study are reported.  They add that Lexile "link" from the research study to the Raw Score conversion table for grades 3-8. Lexiles aren't used in English I and II on the student report or the Raw Score conversion table. Because it doesn't work - especially with authentic vs engineered texts and for the qualitative features of text complexity - but that's my opinion. 

 Do Lexiles tell us who will meet or exceed STAAR passing expectations? 

The cut points between who does not meet, approaches, meets,  or masters the assessment have NOTHING to do with Lexiles. Who passes and by how much is calculated from THREE separate processes. 

• First, there is a process by which the state compares the current test to previous tests. In this way, they can see which tests are harder or easier and ensure that a passing score is fair even when the tests themselves differ somewhat. That's why you see the raw score for passing change by one or two questions each year. 
• Second, there is a process to determine where the cut points are for passing are made. The cut points for do not meet, approaches, meets, and masters are established AFTER the test results are all in. It's a separate mathematical magic than even the scale score conversion. 
• Third, there are graduated percentages of passing that rise each year for accountability purposes. 

The Lexiles are associated with the scale score and research study alone. They aren't connected to the cut point calculations or passing percentages. The reported numbers for student Lexiles are just where the numbers fall from the Lexile linking study.  

The hope is that by adding Lexiles to the confidential student report, teachers and parents can find books that are at the right reading levels for kids - stuff that's not at the frustration level - so they can grow. A reading sweet spot.

Are Lexiles Valid in Determining Text Complexity?

Now, whether or not Lexiles are an appropriate method to select reading levels is another argument. TEA uses the measure, but relies primarily on teacher judgement. I've written about that here: Click on the names of the reading level instruments in this presentation to see how Animal Farm stacks up with multiple forms of readability assessments. Lexiles used without teacher discretion are hogwash. 

Bottom Line? I wouldn't pay a bit of attention to what Lexiles match which levels of passing on STAAR. 

More Resource: 

Here's some more resources to help you understand how Lexiles are reported and used for STAAR.

https://tea.texas.gov/Student_Testing_and_Accountability/Testing/CSR/Annotated_STAAR_Report_Card/

http://www.texasassessment.com/families/literacy-and-lexiles/

Saphire's Prove It

I've never seen a student compose a Prove It quite like this:

Her original text: Music feeds my soul. 

Her revision:

Music feeds my soul. When I hear "September 16" by Russ, I feel relieved. When I hear "Hypnotized" by NBA Youngboy, I feel empowered. When I hear, "Changes" by Xxxtentacion, I feel sad. 

Powerful.

If Prewriting Doesn't Lead to a Better Draft...

I was working with a group of students to apply the lessons I had learned from Victoria about how we need to avoid listing and clustering ideas that lead to shallow development. One of the things she said really struck me: "If our prewriting doesn't lead to a better draft, then we are wasting our time."

We started with a lesson I learned from Jennifer Wilkerson, where kids create anchor drafts and then shift them to match the prompts and genre charges. The link to the lesson is here. 

What I realized is that the prewriting should help establish links between the ideas and begin to help the writer shape the text structure/format. One of the things I'm thinking about a lot is that we ask kids to put ideas in these graphic organizers that have text structure formulas that just don't fit. You can't organize ideas in a graphic organizer if you don't have any ideas yet. You don't know what structures will fit your ideas until you understand and think about how your ideas are related or connected. You don't know what structure your ideas will need until you understand your purpose. Let me say it again: You can't organize nothing.

For this essay, I took some prewriting I had already done and shifted it to the STAAR prompt about a time you faced a challenge. I looked at the ideas on my chart and found the connection. The dumpster examples was the perfect fit for the purpose: a challenge.

After thinking about it, I realized that the ideas that connected for this purpose we a natural fit for a problem/solution type essay structure. That structure linked the ideas in a way that would solve the problem we see in a lot of student writing where they just list the ideas that they have brainstormed. 

Here's the essay that I modeled for kids: 

Dumpster diving is an embarrassing hobby, but it has become an important and entertaining hobby in my life. Somebody once asked me why in the world would I dig in the trash. 

It began during a difficult time in my life. I was starting over after a divorce. The house was empty except for my son's bedroom stuff and a rocking chair from his nursery. There wasn't much money to buy new stuff. But, there was still no place to sit and no place to eat. I needed a cheap and quick solution. 

I noticed that the neighbors were moving out of the rent house and left tons of junk by the dumpster. There was a broken coffee table from 1980 something. Ugly. But it had a nice shape. The legs were broken, but I could use the top. I dragged it into the back yard, jumped in my son's 1989 Dodge Ram truck and headed down other neighborhood alleys - hoping no one would see me. 

It wasn't too long until I found a rolling table with no top. A few blocks later, I found the side of an old dresser with the most beautiful blue finish. At home, I screwed the pieces together and added trim from the frame of a broken mirror. Now I had a kitchen table. I painted a checkerboard on the top, thinking of the games my son and I could play after dinner. The discarded trash turned into a useful, creative centerpiece in the kitchen. One room down...more dumpsters to visit! 

Beyond Heat Maps: Data Analysis is More than "They Failed"

Data analysis must show us the CAUSES of student misunderstandings and lead us to instructional decisions about HOW we can respond. Heat maps are only the first layer of analysis. The cut points on the heat map are correlated to passing standards. How does knowing they failed tell us what the kids don't understand and what part we can play in making that better?  The cut points have nothing to do with WHY the scores landed there or WHAT we should do to fix that. I don't wanna rant about all that in this post. If you want me to explain, come have coffee. I like coffee.

We have to go beyond the heat map.

Because what we really need to see is what the data analysis should show us about what we are going to DO when there are 30 faces looking at us in the classroom. 

Because what we really need from data is something practical that puts feet to our prayers and rubber to the road. 

First, statistical analysis over multiple items and years, trend data, can tell us what level of the gradual release model that needs to be addressed to correct the misconceptions. In the data I analyzed for a district about F19B, the data indicated that additional work was needed in Quadrant One (Modeling, Thinking Aloud, Direct Instruction/Delivery) and Quadrant Two (Shared and Interactive processing of the content AND the processes/steps used to complete the tasks). Here's the lesson we used to help teachers understand the nuances between each phase as applied to ELAR texts and instruction. 

Second, statistical analysis can also tell us what kind of instructional strategies we should employ because of where the kids are in the learning process. Fisher, Frey, and Hattie talk about how important it is to choose the right instructional strategy for when and where the students are in the learning process: Surface, Deep, and Transfer. Basically, if you are using the wrong strategy at the wrong time, the data will show it. You can read about that here: Visible Learning for Literacy. Someday, when I have more time, I'll explain how you can use the data to point to which strategy level should be used. 

Third, item analysis patterns and trends over multiple items help us name the cognitive gaps in reasoning, content, alignment to curriculum and assessment, mismatches in materials, and even test taking processes. When you give a NAME to the thinking error, you can design a response. When we looked more deeply at the item analysis (the spread of answer choices) for F19B items, we realized some important issues about our daily instruction that we could change and make a huge difference - and quickly.

We analyzed three items, y'all. Three. But what we learned changed everything about how we were going about our work. We found simple, clear and articulated understandings about what we needed to change about what we were reading and how we were reading it. The analysis showed us what content we needed to cover, what processes we needed to teach, and what reasoning and thinking lessons we had left untaught. 

And no one complained that no one understands ELAR. No one blamed the SPED kids. No one argued that the questions were mean or tricky. No one made excuses. Because they could see what the problems were AND they didn't feel helpless to find a solution. Data analysis that day was more than "they failed" because we knew why and what to do next. 

Answers About STAAR Readability and Vocabulary

I participated in a prompt study at TEA recently. While there, I learned about some important resources that are used for evaluating passages that are chosen for STAAR. Some - we already knew: There is an entire PROCESS that is used to make sure everything is in line with what students will need developmentally and in terms of fairness. The primary tool used in this process is the TEACHER'S decisions. We should be proud of that.

Several readability measures are used, including Flesh-Kincaid grade level, The ETS Text Evaluator, and Lexiles. Qualitative judgement are used as well. (The ETS Text Evaluator was new to me.)

Specific word lists are also used for passages, questions, and prompts. These help ensure that the vocabulary won't interfere with the content that is being assessed. You might check out these resources. I didn't know about any of them.

EDL Reading Core Vocabulary 

The Children's Writer's Word Book

The Living Word Vocabulary, the Words We Know: A National Vocabulary Inventory

The American Heritage Dictionary   This is the resource that is used to build the dictionary items for the assessment too. 

Dead Lesson Routines for ELAR

Does the reading class routine look like this?

1. Teacher gives background powerpoint/lecture about culture and history.
2. Teacher activates schema and vocabulary for the text. Kids copy definitions and forget.
3. Kids read one at a time, or teacher reads, or a recording is played. (Notice the purposeful use of passive voice there.)
4. The teacher stops periodically and interrogates with leading and funneling questions.
5. Kids annotate the text. Or sleep. Or google the answers.
6. Kids take a multiple choice reading quiz to judge comprehension.
7. Sometimes they write a literary analysis essay.
8. The teacher complains about how these kids can't read or write.


Uhhh... Ew.

It sounds exactly like what Jennifer Gonzalez of Cult of Pedagogy was ranting about on Sunday. To Learn, Students Need to DO Something. 

No wonder kids hate to read. And no wonder they have nothing to write about. GEEZ!

Problem One: I tour schools and ask to look in the classrooms and bookrooms.  This is what I see. There are no books. In the bookroom, there are tattered sets of TKM and book sets with unbroken spines from the last textbook adoption. There are no contemporary texts. There are no diverse texts.

There is nothing to read, y'all. Unless you count NewsELA passages.

Solution One: Buy books kids want to read.

Problem Two: Administrators and teachers don't really know what else to do. And some believe, "My English classes looked like this, so by God these kids ought to comply." And then they blame the kids for being awful human beings: passive, apathetic and unmotivated, and ignorant.

But good teaching is about getting KIDS to do the work. Good literacy teaching is not about what the teacher is doing. And really - heresy to some so hang on - the ELAR classroom is not even about what we are reading. Effective literacy instruction is about how the teacher helps the KIDS do the work and the thinking about any text. Look at the left side of the TTESS Rubric if you need language to describe what this looks like.

Solution Two: Teachers need models of what classroom instruction could look like. And we have to do more than tell them to give kids choice and to implement "workshop." Most teachers don't know what that means. (And it certainly doesn't fit well in the linear lesson plan mandates, but that's a problem for another day.) What could/should the classroom routine look like? Teachers need sample design features that help them know what the sequences should/could look like in a 45 minute period with kids like theirs.

I've been collecting some options on workflowy.  Click the link to see them.

So. Ditch the dead  ELAR reading routine from the 19th century and pick something that might actually work. Even better, send me your ideas. I'll add them to the list.

I have a running record. Now what?

When I was an assistant principal, we had our teachers turn in a running record for every kid every week. Teachers complied. But I'm not sure how much it helped the teachers show the kids how to grow. The teachers dutifully marked MSV. And then what? Check! Moving on!

Not really what we were hoping for as an administrative team.

Recently, I met with a group of teachers to examine what we were supposed to learn about teaching readers from the running record.  I'm a little hesitant to share this with some - I know that many of you are much more knowledgeable about guided reading and Reading Recovery. You'll probably be able to pick apart my analysis and conclusions.

Your scrutiny is worth the risk of delivering these messages:

1. Completing running records and marking MSV can be a colossal waste of time if it doesn't lead to instructional decisions that help students become better readers.
2. Analyzing miscues and selecting teaching points (and even praise points) is about noticing the trends in student behaviors that impact the performance the most. It's not about what the individual errors are; our work is about why students have done so and what they can do instead. 

Here's a link to the presentation and a short reflection about one of the records we examined that day. 

Writing is supposed to DO something to the reader...Feedback Protocols

When you write something, it's supposed to DO something to a reader/audience. Giving students authentic opportunities to test their ideas on real readers just makes sense. It blends reading and writing. It involves everyone in literary analysis and critical thinking. It gives writers a reason and focus for revision. 

Joyce Armstrong Carroll and Edward E. Wilson shared powerful grouping strategies to structure how we can create communities of writers in our classrooms (2007, p. 67-89). I started collecting these feedback strategies and groupings in my digital portfolio.

Over time, I've collected other strategies for the collection. This week, I am working in The AP Vertical Teams Guide for English (2002) to create a session on the penultimate chapter of this incredible resource.

I've adapted three of the strategies as feedback protocols and included them here for you:

PAMDISS
The Four Bases of Effective Writing
Peer Evaluation: Hitting the Target

Armstrong-Carroll, J. & Wilson, E. E. (2007). ACTS of teaching: How to teach writing. Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH.

The College Board. (2002). The AP Vertical Teams Guide for English, 2nd Ed. College Entrance Examination Board.

STAAR Writing: Clustering Ideas Leads to Basic (Bad) Writing Scores

Revised: The formatting didn't work well, so I'm rerouting you to a better layout in my digital portfolio. 

https://www.bulbapp.com/u/clustering-ideas-bad-writing 

Author's Purpose Isn't about Naming It: Implications for STAAR Assessment and Instruction

My friend Sarah and I plan a day to collaborate each month to plan the staff development she will conduct at her campus. As we looked at the TEKS Resource System YAG and IFD, we realized that we still had many questions about how we needed to approach the work. What could we do to help teachers understand the approach the needed to take with Expository (3rd grade), Informational (4-11th grades) and Literary Nonfiction (12th grade)? We started with 5th grade - not sure why. What we found and the process we discovered was powerful learning, y'all. (Note that we are also working to integrate the NEW Standards with our current work.) 

Well. Who cares...

Let me get to the point. STAAR addresses questions for Informational texts in FOUR different ways that have important implications for rigorous, aligned instruction and performance assessments. And I don't think we are teaching it that way.

1. Over the 6 year history of STAAR, 5.10A has been assessed 18 times - averaging 2-3 questions on each administration. (Note that in all 18 cases, the standard has been assessed ACROSS multiple texts.) 5.10A has been dual coded with Figure 19 2 times. 5.13B has been assessed 2 times. I used the lead4ward IQ tool to find the questions and identify the frequency. 
1. So what does that mean? When you are looking at your YAG for Informational text, it would behoove you to make sure that you are planning instruction correctly for such a highly tested standard. 
2. And because of the nature of this standard, it also has the potential to help students create a deeper comprehension of the entire text that should enhance performance on other standards.
2. Performance assessments do not necessarily include the type of thinking required for success on STAAR. If the work we are asking students to do does NOT include these nuances, then we are not really teaching the standard. 
1. We must revise our performance assessment to include the reasoning processes reflected in how this standard is interpreted and assessed by TEA.
2. We must create text SETS that allow students to experience this work across multiple texts. 
3. In planning for our new standards - we must connect this work beyond reading a text for comprehension and toward reading texts like writers to examine our own intentions/purposes and craft choices that deliver those to the reader. 

Here's an example of how a performance assessment does not include the right level of rigor and what changes might need to be made. 

There are FOUR CATEGORIES that define how this standard is assessed.

Simple and Straightforward: Author's Purpose + Main Idea. Y'all - this is NOT about PIE. TEA explained this in a presentation to CREST. Basically, kids are reading the verb and making their selection. They aren't reading the rest of the stem. In addition, these questions address purposes of sections of text and why they were included as well as the purpose of the entire purpose of the passages.

As a matter of fact, Sarah and I found very little PIE going on in the verbs used in the stems or answer choices. Here's a list of the words we DID find:

Author's Purpose Given + Main Idea + Text Structure Sometimes, the questions tell the students what the purpose is. Incorrect answer choices give viable/true details while correct answer choices reference the main idea of the whole text. In some questions, answers also imply text structure - linear/chronological, cause and effect, etc.

Author's Purpose + Main Idea + Text Evidence These questions give text evidence in the stem and/or answer choices. The answer choices will include a verb about the purpose and add content that references the main idea or viable details from the passage. Sometimes, the questions even name a move that the author makes (specific language used, directly addressing the reader, etc.) and asks why the author would have done such a thing.

Making Inferences about the Author's Purpose for Including Text Evidence Students are asked to evaluate why an author would have included a piece of text evidence. Answer choices list viable details, but only one of them is directly connected to the main idea/purpose of the entire passage and the particular piece of evidence cited in the question.

I've created a slide show with examples and question stems that you can use to create lesson plans and add this level of rigor to your existing performance assessments. 

WE MUST expose students to the type of thinking they must do when they read and write in real life. And that's never about PIE. And when we move beyond that - we'll see better results on STAAR too.

Teaching Ring around the Rosie: Rigorous Questions and Texts Aren't the Answer

Most of the time, when I look at the work people are doing with the new TEKS for ELAR, I see that thinking isn't really addressed. I watched a video recently that had some good ideas that I'd like to take further.

Dr. Gibson presented the classic sing-song poem, Ring around the Rosie to establish that the text is simple, but the understanding of the text is not. To really understand this piece, one must ask WHEN this was written and WHY it was written. She then explained the macabre meaning of the text.

The WHEN and WHY are directly connected to specific strands in our new TEKS:

• Inquiry and Research:listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student engages in both short-term and sustained recursive inquiry processes for a variety of purposes. 
• Author's Purpose and Craft: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student uses critical inquiry to analyze the author's choices and how they influence and communicate meaning within a variety of texts. The student analyzes and applies author's craft purposefully in order to develop his or her own products and performances. 

But here's where the problem begins: 

Most of the time...in the past maybe...teachers addressed this by telling kids the historical background of the text. (I've seen some great and engaging lectures and powerpoints on the background of King Lear and Fahrenheit 451.) Teachers explain the when and the why. But how is a reader supposed to know that there is something more to know about the text? How does the reader know how to think about a text? How is the reader supposed to know that there might be something more to consider? 

Without examination and explicit teaching of how one processes and analyzes texts, we are teaching Ring around the Rosie and NOT our standards. How can we teach students to know when Inquiry and Research are warranted to aid comprehension and analysis? How does one use Author's Purpose and Craft to reveal the meaning? 

If we don't figure this out, when kids encounter a more complex text, they will - again - be relying on the teacher to give the background and context of the work or continue in uniformed oblivion about the text's purpose and message as well as how a critical reader uses inquiry, multiple texts, and connections to craft meaning. 

While I agree with the premise of the video (that we can use simple texts to teach complex thinking skills for the first exposure), I do not think that asking complex questions about simple texts is going to be any more fruitful than holding hands and singing Ring around the Rosie as we fall on the ground and pretend to be dead. We might as well be.

John Hattie talks about the four levels of feedback in his 2007 work with Timperley. 

Task levels focus on the whether something is right or wrong, the content of the text or task. Process levels focus on how something is done, how we know, the thinking. Self-extending levels focus on the awareness a person needs to identify problems and what needs to be done next. Don't we need students to be able to understand HOW they comprehend and read? Don't we need students to be the ones who notice and respond when something isn't working. 

Here are some of the questions posed in the video about Dr. Seuss' Yertle the Turtle. All of these questions focus on the CONTENT of the text and nothing to do with how one would do something similar if given another text. 

1. What is the author's purpose for writing the story? Why would I care or want to know? How would I figure that out if I wanted to? 

2. What is the main idea not stated in the text? There's an idea not stated? How did I miss that? What would I look for so I'm not fooled next time? How did the author slip that in there without me noticing? 

3. How does the theme apply to leadership today? The question tells the students exactly which pieces of content to focus on to make the connection. What happens when no one is there to tell them to focus on leadership? What happens if there is another possibility? 

4. What environment represents the pond? Again, the question focuses on the content of the text.  As a reader, how would I know to ask that question if the teacher wasn't there interrogating me through the text? A better question might be phrased like this: Authors use the setting on purpose to help you make connections to their message or theme. When you look at the setting, what are you noticing that might give you a hint about what the author is trying to convey? 

5. Who could be Yertle in your world? Again...asking content questions. These questions and the discussion that follow will not help readers navigate the SKILL - the THINKING -  required to answer the question. Students will not understand what they are supposed to do and notice when they read the next text, especially a text that's harder to read than Yertle the Turtle. 

No wonder kids aren't transferring their learning to new and more complex texts. We aren't teaching them how to do so! 

I loved these two quotes from the video: 

• "Cognitive demand is about the complexity of the task and the mental processing required to complete it." 
• "Rigor is measured by depth of understanding." 

Agreed - but the examples shown in the video STILL don't get us to the ideals expressed in the truths of these quotes. 

Asking leading and funneling questions to students about texts that have answers directly related to that text alone will not lead to the ability to transfer that skill to another text. Simply said: asking questions about the text itself - the content - are not going to work. It doesn't  matter what level they are on Blooms. It doesn't  matter what DOK you assign them. It's not about Ring around the Rosie, or Yurtle the Turtle, or King Lear. Y'all, it's about teaching people what to do, what to ask themselves, and how to THINK with any text. 

Writing Suspense

Come model a lesson on how to write a suspenseful story. We've read The Cask of Amontillado and The Masque of the Red Death. In English I, students will have a focus on general figurative language and English II will expand on that by adding rich imagery. The day before you come, we'll read Lamb to the Slaughter. 

Uhhh.

"Hey Siri, set a timer for three Minutes." She responds, "The suspense is killing me!"

Suspense.

We're supposed to write a suspenseful story today, but I have no idea how to begin. I mean...I got nothing. I'm not even sure how writers do that suspense thing. I know it when I feel it...but I don't know how to craft it.

I can just imagine the stares. "I don't have a suspenseful story." and "I don't know what to write." Some would probably make up crazy convoluted stuff that really didn't have a basis in logic, craft, or sense. I mean, how do you come up with something in your brain, birthed like Athena from Zeus's head, fully formed and coherent?

It made me ask: How do authors create suspense? I sat down at Abuelo's with a group of friends and copious amounts of hot sauce and chips to explore the question. We talked about word choice, details given and withheld, foreshadowing, delay of revelation, and point of view. I pulled out stapled copies of Lamb to the Slaughter and markers for everyone. Doesn't everyone use short stories as place-mats before the entree arrives?  What we realized is that we had a way of reading that helped us figure this out. Using the Freitag pyramid, we plotted out the main points of the story.

The structure of the essay itself is one piece of the magic in Roald Dahl's approach to this text. Fortunately, Gretchen Bernabei taught us all about this in her kernel essay structure.  We could use her idea as a TOOL to help us figure out how to write a suspenseful story!

Here's what we figured out: Dahl has TWO plots - dual rising actions going on here. And he ends each one with a particular kind of sentence to end them. "All right, she told herself. So I've killed him." and "And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle." 

Students can't really write good stuff about things they don't know. And I didn't really want to encourage horror and murder, even though they'd probably seen lots of movies about that. I wanted them to connect to their own experiences. I remembered the blueprinting activity we had students complete earlier in the year. I asked them to look at that page in their journals and to remember a time they (or someone else in that house) did something naughty and tried to hide it. Here's the gist of the lesson: 

We created a quicklist about several experiences. Here's mine. 

I jotted down ideas and thought aloud from my experiences: the time I drew a giant smiley face on the wall, when I hid my black cat in the closet, the time I spilled red nail polish on the new carpet, when I stole the silk flower centers at the Hobby House...I know, naughty. 

Next, I read aloud from my sample essay. I wanted students to be clear about what they would be creating. "I'm going to show you something that I wrote using the skill I'm about to teach you. You'll be able to write something similar!" 

Crayon Smiles

We must have just moved in. I don’t remember much furniture. Nothing on the white, bare walls. I’m not sure where mom was. But there I was, in my room, coloring.

I found myself in the hallway across from the bathrooms and between mom’s bedroom and mine...with the stub of a peeled black Crayola pinched between the fingers of my left hand.

I reached up as tall as 2 year old arms could reach and began the slow arc of a circle on the flat paint of the sheetrock. As the crayon met the texture, the wax Morse-coded long and short dotted lines in a huge circle on the wall. I scribbled two large eyes at the top and finished with a four foot grin at the bottom.

All right, I told myself. I drew a giant smiley face on the wall. (Smiley faces were big in the 70’s. It might have been the first meme.)

Thinking nothing of it, I took the crayon back to my room and continued coloring.

But then, mom came into the back of the house. I had forgotten about the new masterpiece.

She called me to the drawing scrawled into the paint. I knew something was wrong, but wasn’t really sure what it was.

Mom was mad. “Who drew this smiley face on the wall? And with a black crayon?”

Gulp. “My brother,” I lied.

Mom’s frown spread to her eyebrows and forehead. “Come here. I’m going to give your brother a spanking.”

And between the swats, I realized: I am an only child.

They laughed a little. I had the students talk about their experiences and then do the same. Once that was complete, we selected an idea to work through the kernels. 

I modeled each one, using my topic as the guide, stopping briefly to let students discuss and jot their thoughts. 

Students then met in feedback groups to read over their kernels. The listeners were to describe the parts they felt the most suspense and the part where they wanted to ask more questions to the writer. In every case, the students identified the climax in their own stories! And in each instance, students found ideas they could explore more deeply in their writing. 

But my favorite part of the lesson came next. "Do you realize that you just wrote like a famous suspense author? Remember this?" And I placed a copy of Lamb to the Slaughter under the document camera. "How does he begin? And then what does he tell you?" Step by step, the students remembered the plot, naming each function and summarizing the story. I was no longer in control as the students turned to each other to continue the discussion at their own tables. We switched then to drafting: students began scribbling madly on the blank walls of their notebook paper. Because they had something to say, and a way to do so. Tomorrow, they'd be ready to layer in imagery and figurative language - again, using the master, Roald Dahl, as the mentor - using their own purpose and meaning to locate where such language and craft was needed. 

I believe _____ because of a teacher

I believe _____ because of a teacher.

Today we  (Texas Region Service Center ELAR Specialists) watched this video and had some time to write:

I believe in _____ because of a teacher. My methods teacher for lower strings, Edward Tillery, asked me to leave the room. But I had done nothing wrong.  I stood outside the closed door until he called out that I could re-enter the room. He'd be posed with his cello, doing something ridiculous with the bow pose, fingering, posture, the stand donut, and so on. I was supposed to identify and correct the flaw immediately. After several iterations, I opened the door and busted out laughing.

Everything he was doing was correct - the bow position, his posture, his bow hold and fingering. Except for one thing: it was all wrong. 

Tillery laughed with me, explaining that most students couldn't figure out what he was doing wrong. They looked so closely at the details that they missed the whole. 

As I think about teaching, this story makes even more sense to me about what my cello teacher helped me learn about the teaching act. We can be technically correct. We can look at data points and rubrics. And we can still be wrong. And kids can still fail. To reach the moral imperative in achieving educational excellence for learners, we must have a way of thinking that situates our work in the ultimate outcomes. Our theoretical  perspective, the framework that drives our efforts, must reveal and consider how the learner uses, and perceives, and engages with the teaching act, content, and processes. 

Because of Tillery, I believe that teaching is not about us. It's about how the students use what we empower them to do. An uncompromising pursuit to surpass our educational lineage and future contributions must begin with how our work changes students. Let's get this part right. Teaching is about them. 

Editing and Revising with Youtube Transcripts

     I’m working on transcripts for a discussion PD2Teach filmed with teachers discussing the new TEKS. At first, I played the video from the raw feed, stopping every few moments to type out all the words. Then, I accidentally turned on the closed caption function. The words were already there. I youtubed to find out how to download the transcript into Word and came up with a transcript. I realized that the transcription service had some flaws:

• 1.    It didn’t distinguish between speakers. The text reads more like a constant flow of oration rather than the discussion it really represented.
• 2.    There were no divisions between sentences, no punctuation, and all the wonky stuff we do when we talk…I wasn’t sure how to even punctuate that stuff.
• 3.    Sometimes, the text was correct, but didn’t represent the intonation and interruptions and restarts that we could follow with the audio/visual, but were impossible to interpret without punctuation or further exposition of what was left unsaid. The words couldn’t carry all the intended meaning. There were gaps.
• 4.    Even when I did have the sentences put into order and punctuated in some semblance of sense, the text still broke the rules. There were still areas that needed explanation or refinement to meet grammatical and genre and audience standards.

But here’s the kicker. It is THE most authentic experience I have had in editing a text for clarity. It is THE most authentic experience in revising a text to make sure the message is clear. It strikes me that THIS is the experience we need kids to have. See what you can make of the transcript, compare it with the audio feed (when I figure out how to load that), and compare it with my edits and revisions.

I’m wondering: what if we have kids have a conversation or speak what they are about to write? We video that and upload it to youtube and have the technology transcribe the conversation. Then the kids can go back and make the edits – because they’ll see immediately where meaning must be clarified with punctuation. Then we have the kids talk and evaluate whether or not the words need clarification, elaboration, or refinement.  

The transcript is long, so you'll probably just want to skip or skim that. But hang in there with me to the end. I think you'll see something powerful for helping your students. 

Context – Kelly Tumy of Harris County Department of Education is speaking about the Response Strand for the New ELAR TEKS. She’s pointing out a contrast to how we have been teaching to what the new standards promote. What she said made total sense based on what was before and the verbal and nonverbal cues as she spoke. The transcript...not so much sense going on there. Check it out: 

Transcript from youtube:

so I look at

30:12

this strand and my goal as a teacher was

30:16

always to raise good thinkers and I

30:20

wanted you to walk out of my classroom

30:22

yes being a good reader in a good writer

30:24

but overall I wanted you to be able to

30:26

make your own decisions and the response

30:30

skill strand I wrote down as everybody

30:33

was talking it's it's not English

30:35

language arts it's academic discourse

30:37

it's anything anybody puts in front of

30:40

you whether it's a dance move whether

30:44

it's a song whether it's a poem whether

30:47

it's an advertisement that I can talk

30:50

about that and I can look at claims and

30:52

I can look at warrants and I can look at

30:53

bias or I can look at the colors and I

30:56

can talk about what I see and how it

30:59

makes me feel and in really gone are the

31:03

days of of silo teaching of here is pick

31:09

on Romeo and Juliet but here's Romeo and

31:12

Juliet and this is what I've done but

31:14

instead what is in the news today about

31:18

difficult relationships there are

31:20

different difficult relationships and

31:22

politics there are difficult

31:23

relationships in business and if you can

31:26

hold a conversation about that you know

31:29

that we no longer have college and

31:32

career readiness standards we have

31:34

college career and military readiness

31:36

standards so those standards have now

31:38

changed in the state of Texas and look

31:41

at this strand what kind of skills are

31:45

we asking kids to develop that meet

31:48

industry standards if I'm going to work

31:51

for a chemical company is there

31:53

something here that I'm going to have to

31:55

do to be successful at a chemical

31:57

company is there something here that is

32:00

going to make me a successful realtor is

32:02

there something here that's going to

32:03

make me a success 'full my challenge is

32:07

yes that these are not language arts

32:10

skills but they're this academic

32:12

Discourse

Your Edits: Try it out. Don’t look at mine yet. See where you make the divisions and why.

My Edits:

30:11: Kelly: So I look at this strand, and my goal as a teacher was to always raise good thinkers. And I wanted you to walk out of my classroom -yes being a good reader and a good writer - but overall, I wanted you to be able to make your own decisions. And the response skill strand - I wrote down as everybody was talking -  it's it's not English Language Arts.  It's academic discourse. It's anything anybody puts in front of you whether it's a dance move, whether it's a song, whether it's a poem, whether it's an advertisement, that I can talk about that. And I can look at claims. And I can look at warrants, and I can look at bias, or I can look at the colors. And I can talk about what I see and how it makes me feel.

And really, gone are the days of of silo teaching of here is... - I don’t want to pick on Romeo and Juliet -  but here's Romeo and Juliet. And this is what I've done. But instead: what is in the news today about difficult relationships? There are different difficult relationships and politics. There are difficult relationships in business. And if you can hold a conversation about that...

You know that we no longer have college and career readiness standards? We have college, career, and military readiness standards. So those standards have now changed in the state of Texas. And look at this strand. What kind of skills are we asking kids to develop that meet industry standards? If I'm going to work for a chemical company, is there something here that I'm going to have to do to be successful at a chemical company? Is there something here that is going to make me a successful realtor?  Is there something here that's going to make me a successful... my challenge is: yes! That these are not language arts skills but they're this academic discourse.

Your Revisions: What’s not clear? What needs work? Highlight areas where you are confused or unclear about what we are talking about here.

Shona’s Revisions:

30:11: Kelly: I look at this strand, and I think about my goal as a teacher. I wanted raise good thinkers. I wanted students to walk out of my classroom as good readers and good writers. But most important, I wanted students to be able to make thier own decisions. As I look at the Response strand and the student expectation, I realize that the focus is not English Language Arts:  It's academic discourse. The focus is about developing critical discernment to analyze and interpret anything anybody asks me to consider: whether it's a dance move, whether it's a song, whether it's a poem, whether it's an advertisement. After exposure and time to think, can I have an intelligent conversation about that topic? I can look at claims, and I can look at warrants; and I can look at bias, or I can look at the colors. And I can talk about what I see and how it makes me feel.

Gone are the days of silo teaching where we focused on the content of specific texts. I don’t want to pick on Romeo and Juliet - but here's Romeo and Juliet and how we have traditionally taught this text. Instead, the Response Strand asks us to examine something deeper: what is in the news today about difficult relationships? There are different difficult relationships and politics. There are difficult relationships in business. And if you can hold a conversation about how you can use Romeo and Juliet as a model or example for your thinking and communicate that to others in classes other than Language Arts? That kind of response with academic discourse empowers learners.

Some might be surprised, but we no longer have college and career readiness standards. We have college, career, and military readiness standards. These standards have now changed in the state of Texas. Look at this strand and how it asks us to reconsider the Language Arts classroom. What kind of skills are we asking kids to develop that meet industry standards? If I'm going to work for a chemical company, is there something in Romeo and Juliet and how we approach the text that informs and empowers success at a chemical company? Is there something about the way we do our work in the English Language Arts classroom that is relevant to success as a realtor?  Is there something here that's going to lead to success regardless of what path the student takes?  My challenge to teachers is: Yes! And we must. Our standards are not simply language arts skills. The Response Strand represents and leads to useful and relevant academic discourse.