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.