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.