Before you spout an opinion...Realities of Digital Citizenship

Digital citizenship breaks down into two components – producing and consuming. The teacher is the intellectual dietitian guiding both sides of these processes.

People participate more fully in digital communication than ever before: Our President tweets outside the traditional controls of press, Instagram provides a transient “ish” connection between people, Facebook is a vehicle of personal expression and communication to the world, blogs give rise to published works of voices not fettered by the privilege of acceptance or costs of print and distribution. People in general are PRODUCING content more than ever before. People – including our students are participating in the process of creating things that others consume. With that production, comes a responsibility and a set of ethics not always addressed in our instructional standards. People all over the globe are producing clips and bits and bytes of data that have become a part of the global intellectual diet. The teacher is now a digital dietitian, seeking ways to help students participate in ways that allow them to properly digest to utilize or discard what they consume. The next course for the teacher becomes a lesson in how students can then take that distillation of content to transform it into messages that are ethical, accurate, and responsible – yet at the same time, preserve the student’s response/reaction and “take” on the subject.

In learning to consume, students have to learn about the propaganda and mistruths (alternate facts) that are poisonous and unproductive for themselves, their communities, and the society at large. In today’s society, we don’t often have the change to choose what media we consume. We are assaulted by it. Instead, we must critically evaluate all of it and make a decision about veracity, author’s purpose and message, potential logical fallacies, as well as the application of and consequences to those messages.

In addition, producing is no longer a matter of putting your opinion or ideas out there. What you say has consequences beyond your desire to spout an opinion. Clarity in explaining your response to the ideas is critical in delivering the message others will consume. The message must be produced in such a way that is more than just truth but becomes part of a greater solution – a way of moving the community and society forward.

Digital citizenship involves a recursive – iterative – process. One cannot merely consume information – it must be sorted and digested. Part of that process involves considering what must be cast away or unused. And – as citizenship implies a relationship – consuming is only one side. The process requires a response – producing content. The responsibility in producing new content is in understanding that your message will be consumed. Will be read. Positive digital citizenship requires an attention to your role in being part of the solution or contributing to the problems – of which we have enough. 

Update on EOC Changes (1/11/2017)

Here are my notes from the TETN yesterday with TEA. (Brad Vasil was the invited guest.) The comments below are in order of how they were addressed in the TETN and questions posed from the Region Service Centers.

The goal of the changes was to maintain the 50-50 split between reading and writing.

Why was it so late? They concentrated on reducing the exams
For 3-8 according to HB 743. When they finished the legislative mandate, they wanted to see if there was a way to reduce the testing burden on other areas. The whole thing was a process that began in October and involved looking at data and constructs to see if it were possible, technical considerations, no designing the new exam blueprint.

How will it be weighted? See docs posted on web. Notice that the writing multiplier (essay component) was changed from 3-2

Will there be changes in difficulty? Technically, no. But you need to remember that each test is equated statistically with p values and the raw score conversion tables change to make sure that they go up or down depending on what the p values tell about how the test compares on difficulty to previous years.

 Kids will have the same amount of time to finish, but obviously we expect them to finish sooner.

What will the new questions be about? No new items will be developed in lieu of the short answer. The questions will be similar to what we have seen before...look at the items and SEs that align with the SA from released tests.

No. Teachers can't leave instructional materials up during testing.

All retesters will have to pass the new design- sans short answer.

Cost was not a consideration for the removal. Contracts are fixed cost anyway.

No estimates on what the raw score cut will be. Psychometrically, we just won't know until later.

 Commentary on the post about the poet who can't answer the questions. TEA really can't comment because it is an agent of the state, but here are some data points to consider. Item analysis shows that the hardest item showed p values of 50. Other items showed that 75-80 percent of students were getting the questions correct.  That does NOT mean that 100 percent that the item was valid. Just a data point. In addition, readers must be able to make decisions about the author's purpose. It is a critical skill in interpreting text. Most teachers have not contacted authors (and some of them are no longer living) about their purpose for writing a text - yet the practice is standard and essential in critical thinking and interpretation of text.

 Passages not released- going forward they will make sure we get them. The problems came from the transition to ETS which is A not for profit company. Their lawyers would not allow them to publish the books in print because they could not be procured any other way and would indicate a sole source of access which could point to profit. The copyright situation did not allow them to be placed online.

No new prep materials will be developed because no new items are being developed.

Will there be more DOK 3 type questions? Hard to think of it that way psychometrically. Think less of item by item and more as keeping the test -as a whole -similar to previous exams

TEA doesn't set performance indicators. Look for info from the commissioner.

Karen Miller then reviewed some elements from these topics: Link to ppt below.
 STAAR Updates –Student Assessment Division
Graduation Requirements –Foundation High School Program
Texas AP/IB Incentive Program Updates
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills Review
85thTexas Legislature 

Link to ppt from Karen Miller

ELS: Introducing an Assignment or Project

Earlier in the month, I watched a teacher explain an engaging assignment for students to apply their understanding of logos, ethos, and pathos in a commercial to promote their topic/agenda. They had been studying the Presidential campaigns and speeches. The teacher prepared a clear and concise, well-organized description of the requirements as well as a rubric to make sure students understood the criteria for success.

Since this is his first year giving the assignment, we talked about saving the best student example to use as a model for next year. A quick search revealed this AP lang project. And this one that seems more refined. And this one. Could be places to begin until you have something that matches your assignment. Oh..and this one is labeled by logical fallacies and is FUNNY!

Next, we talked about an instructional "gimmick" that would turn the process of understanding the assignment to the students. Traditionally, a teacher would hand out the assignment and the rubric and explain the requirements verbally.  Very to the right on the TTESS rubric: AKA - boring.

Try one of these approaches to move toward a more student centered approach. (And keep them in mind to adapt to other instructional situations.)

1. 20 Questions Have students read the assignment and rubric. Divide the class into two groups and have them face each other across the room. The person first in line asks a question about the assignment that the team member directly across from them must answer. Since the questions are all closed (yes/no), all members of the class can participate without much modification. When you feel the students have asked enough questions to show their understanding of the assignment, review any key points you wish them to consider and let students get started with backtracking their planning from the due date. (You can assign points for competition, but I find that most students just think that playing the game is enough fun.)

2. Stump the Professor  Basically, the kids create questions to ask you salient questions about the assignment. You can set it up like: "What questions should a student be able to answer about this assignment? What questions remain after reading the assignment?" The teacher can't use their notes to answer. (But why would they need to. LOL.) Kids get "points" for asking valid questions that can be answered from the assignment/text. If students ask a question that was not addressed in the assignment description, but helps clarify the assignment or choices students could make, the student gets "double" points.

3. In the Hot Seat  Jeff Wilhelm developed this one. If I were the boss of a classroom, I'd tell students that I was going to call on a random person to sit in the hot seat to answer questions after we read about the assignment. After time to talk with a group about the assignment and possible questions they could be asked about the assignment, I would start the drumroll as I pulled a lucky victim's Popsicle stick out of my can. That person would come to the front of the room to sit in the hot seat and answer the questions posed by the class. If you are brave enough, ask the student to respond with gestures and accents as if they were you.

These strategies take no preparation from the teacher other than creating the assignment. I hope these are simple go-to strategies that you can make endless permutations and combinations to engage your learners.

Essential Lesson Structures

Teachers are busy. And God forbid if you are a coach. You have time for nothing. Lesson planning - the very thing that guides most of your day -  often gets put aside. Ironic: you spend most of your day in front of the kids teaching your guts out, yet the amount of time spent on other things in the PLC, planning time, staff development, data meetings, and administrative activities often insure that you won't have ANY time to plan at all. And if the lesson design requires that you make something to go with the lesson...out of luck. Not happening. (At least that was what it was like for me. Or I stayed there until 8 or 9 each night.)

Teachers have been asking if there is a solution. When I coach in their classrooms, they ask me - how did you know how to come up with that on the fly? The trick is knowing some basic routines and structures that you can plug in and adapt to anything. Marzano talks about the different levels a teacher goes through in learning about and using instructional strategies. The point he makes is that teachers can get to the level of innovation: "At this level, the teacher is so familiar with the strategy that he or she has adapted it to meet specific student needs." This is true in general lesson planning as well. Teachers can adapt some general structures to fit seamlessly into their curriculum and presentation with little additional preparation. 

So...I'm collecting and thinking about where we could begin. Over time, I'll post an entry that begins with ELS and a description of the category and use in the title of the blog. Let me know how they work. 

Your Fan,

Shona 

Break the Rules:You CAN Just Read for Plot

Compare these versions of the same story: 

The Original The Gift of the Magi

Simplified: The Gift of the Magi 

I can think of a lot of reasons to use multiple versions of the same text: differentiation, ESL, comparison. But I'm always weirded out a little in thinking that some kids might miss out on the beauty and craft of masters like O. Henry. I strive to make complex texts accessible for all students. To do less seems a little like educational segregation or reading level racism. 

Thomas Armstrong spoke at a New Jersey Writing Conference a while back. He spoke on how one would go about comprehending James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, a book Armstrong believes is one of the most difficult books to understand. Believe it or not, he put up a stick figure PowerPoint and explained the plot of one chapter to us before we ever read any of the words. 

He really did. I was shocked too. 

But the text would not have been accessible to me without this support. And my Lexile had nothing to do with it. You can debate about my intelligence another time. The conversations and rich discussion began from experiencing the plot in a simplified text. The conversations about craft and culture and nuance and ideas came after reading the original. To have stopped at the simplified version would have given us the "story" of the text that might be referenced in other literary works. But we would have learned nothing about finding our own meaning and interpretation of the text. We would have missed the quirky and complex reality of what it means to read James Joyce. Frankly, we'd miss the whole point. 

Fast forward more years than I'd like to count. Two weeks ago, I watched a brand new teacher use the same strategy with her Sophomore students! Does she know that she is brilliant like Thomas Armstrong? Perhaps even more brilliant than Thomas Armstrong? The kids read the simplified version on the first day, learning about the plot, the culture, how much  $1.87 cents was worth back then, connecting to their own culture and experience... 

"Suddenly she turned from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brightly, but her face had lost its color. Quickly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its complete length. If a queen had lived in the rooms near theirs, Della would have washed and dried her hair where the queen could see it. Della  knew her hair was more beautiful than any queen's jewels and gifts...So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, shinning like a falling stream of brown water. It reached below her knee. It almost made itself into a dress for her. And then she put it up on her head again, nervously and quickly." (Simplified version).

I bet when they read the second version, everyone was more successful with the original than they would have been without having read the first one for plot. And because they understood the plot, they probably saw a more vivid image the second time around. And imagine the discoveries the students would make! 

"Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass, her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length...Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts...So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her.. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly."  (O. Henry).

"...students can obtain the right schemas in order to come to their own deduction of texts, instead of resulting to unitary deductions devised by an author's style, intentions or societal norms...Using...theories in a classroom in tandem with fervid teaching can create a space that stimulates stronger, independent learners who respond dialogically to literature, thus continuing the intertextual conversation by coming to their own unique understanding. However, this process can only be accomplished if educators allow it. To build a dialogical classroom, students should become involved in the literary conversation in our classes while we inspire response through creative means. If we present enough information about each text encountered in a classroom, students will more easily understand interwoven meanings or contextual allusions. Once students have the tools to work with, response will come naturally, and understanding will erupt through creative conversation" (Whitley, 2016). 

Fervid teaching...stronger learners...with the right tools...involved in the literary conversation...eruptive understanding.

Just Brilliant.

Distinctions in Ratiocination

Sometimes, we get bogged down in the "steps" to do an activity and forget why we are doing them. Often, I find sheets of ratiocination topics and codes that turn into mindless lists for students to use when they are editing their papers. One time, I conferenced with a struggling student about his paper. "I just need a vivid verb in this sentence, Miss." Sure, we can help you with that. Why do you need a vivid verb there? Where do you think one belongs? "Miss, I don't really care. I just have to have one for this paper here," he sighed waving the long list of tasks he was to demonstrate in his paper.

Oh my. Nothing on that sheet was a bad thing for the writer to consider. Not at all. I'm just not sure he understood why he might need to do those things in his writing. He was treating the sheet as a checklist for compliance rather than a tool for meaning to help him communicate with the reader. Jennifer Jackson Whitley, in the 2016 Journal of Literacy Innovation Article of the Year, has a solution: "Students will care if we give them reason to, if they can learn how to make connections from texts to what they care about - from words to life (2016, p. 9).

The teacher and I developed this set of notes to guide our thinking and point students to the reasons we ratiocinate. This, of course, would happen after we have set the purpose with an engaging beginning.

(I've tried to mark the distinctions in italics for those of you that are already familiar with ratiocination.) 

1. Circle all the sentence beginnings.
2. Write them in the margin next to the paragraphs they belong to. (This makes them easier to find when revising.)
3. Come back as a class and discuss: Ask: What did you notice about your sentence beginnings? Record their ideas on the board or on a chart paper. (I think it is very important to "build your board" as you go. Make things visible and retrievable later.)

4. The kids in this class noticed what we all do when first completing this activity. And then they noticed some more. This then gave us a chance to teach from each example. We considered repeated words, articles, pronouns, conjunctions, etc.

CAUTION: Many  times, we have the kids look for things that need to be changed. Sometimes, you DON'T need to change it. You, as the author, have made an intentional choice. Our first discussion came from what the students noticed about how many of their sentences began in the same way. Sometimes, beginning a sentence in the same way is monotonous and the reader becomes bored. Other times, the writer is looking to emphasize something or create a parallel structure that fits the message or craft elements. 

5. The second question we asked about every "noticing" brought us back to purpose, craft, accuracy, and the impact on the reader. The conversation about the use of pronouns is a perfect example of these distinctions and choices. We looked at both the positive (+)  and negative (-)elements of using pronouns and the mechanics and usage features (!) connected to this part of speech. 

+ - to avoid using the same nouns over and over, to create a flow and natural sounding sentence

! - make sure each has an antecedent; example: check to see if you have multiple people that you can still tell which pronoun references which person

- - Sometimes, logical fallacies are found when using pronouns and vague language. This could impact your ethos

-/+ - Vague langue can be imprecise and ineffective; or you could be vague for a purpose such as innuendo

6. Our conversation about sentence variety was equally rich. We had them use alternating highlighters on every sentence. This made it very easy to see run-ons, long sentences, short sentences, etc. Students decided that short sentences served these positive features:

• for emphasis - Were you repetitive on purpose? Why? 
• simplicity in explaining something difficult - Is there a place in the reading that is particularly difficult? How could you shorten the sentences to make sure the point is understood?
• break for the reader - Try reading the sentence in one breath. Will the reader be able to keep all your ideas in mind during this sentence? Have there been several long sentences in a row? 
• to speed up the pace - short sentences can sometimes pick up the pace and tone of a text

Students discussed how having a balance of sentences made the writing feel natural. They also noticed that when the paper was all one color, or seven to eight lines were the same color, that there was probably a runon, splice, or an overly complex sentence that needed revision.

7. Which leads us into the last phase of ratiocination: actual revision. With the sentence beginning activity, we had them return to their papers and highlight any words in the margin that were repetitive or boring. Next, we asked students to  highlight those that were unnecessarily boring or repetitive in the paragraphs themselves. (Not every repetitive beginning needs revision. Students need to focus on the ones that impact their purpose and message.) Now were were ready to focus on solutions: Here are the solutions we brainstormed: (I wish we would have asked students to give their examples.)

•  use a different term/synonym
• change the order of the words
• use a dependent clause at the beginning or the end
• combine sentence
• divide sentences
• use an introductory clause

8. Now it was time to revise and reconsider...we gave students time to compose and then conducted a grouping protocol to share and discuss the effectiveness of their trial revisions. 

Ratiocination "Hook"

Today, I'decided to take all the crap piled in my office and put it in one stack. I'm starting at the bottom and working down. I've come to a lovely set of papers torn from a dear friend's spiral and have begun to decipher the purple scribbles.

The teacher was working on making sure that each lesson began with an insightful "hook" or "anticipatory set." She considered this cartoon. But after we worked with the kids, we realized that there was a more powerful beginning. One of the students, after completing the activity, remarked: "I always wondered how you saw all the things that needed to be marked on my paper. Now I can see them for myself."

It reminded me of an old trick mom showed me with lemon juice and a light bulb. (Or maybe I read about it in Encyclopedia Brown and we had to try it out. Apparently, onion juice works too. Ew.) We put the juice on a toothpick and wrote a message. I remember holding the paper over a light bulb and watching the paper turn brown. Wikihow says you can do the same thing with white crayon and watercolor, milk and an iron, baking soda and juice, and one more that you'll just love.

Wouldn't it be fun to start out the class on ratiocination with an activity like that? It would be illuminating to mark all the sentence beginnings and then use one of those techniques to make the distinctions "appear." You'd transition with a comment like, "If I make the marks on your paper, what will you do when I am not here? If you knew there were mistakes, you'd be able to fix them yourselves. Let me show you how to do that kind of thinking for the paper we are working on now."