poetry analysis practice : self-assessment and feedback

On Wednesday, I had the students choose a poem to practice analyzing. We finished the notes and looking at examples last week. We've been reading poems every day, and just providing surface responses, but I felt it was time to try the full analysis. It was a good starter activity, since on Thursday we looked at the "big" quarterly reading response assignment, which involves choosing a poem to analyze/interpret and memorize/recite for the class. Thursday I also had students answer two questions, one designed to be a self-assessment and the second designed to provide me feedback regarding how we can go about continuing to practice analyzing poems. I really enjoyed asking these same questions, basically, during our fictional analysis unit, and I highly value the student responses. I believe it helped the students understand what direction would be most fruitful for them in their efforts to improve their knowledge/work/scores/etc. So, below are the some of my favorite responses from the students. I have highlighted a few which made me very happy.

Looking at your Poetry CLOZE Notes, on a scale of 1-10 (1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest), how would you rate your ability to analyze a poem? Tell why.

·         If I could look at the notes, then a 9. Without the notes it would easily be under 5. I haven’t memorized very of the poetic elements.

·         8. If I did the practice right, I found it relatively easy because the poetry analysis is like going through a checklist.

·         9. I am good at it, I just don’t like it.

·         I think I am a 7 because I know most of the stuff but not all of it.

·         I would rate how well I can analyze a poem a 9. I think that because it’s easy for me.

·         8. I can analyze a poem really well, but I have trouble with the theme and/or symbolism sometimes.

·         7. Sometimes I get confused on how to analyze the theme or other areas.

·         I have only practiced once and I need more help.

·         8. I can analyze poems pretty well, but it take me awhile

·         8. I’m confident about my ability, but I don’t know everything.

·         5, because I know what I am doing I just don’t know if I am doing it right.

·         On a scale of 1 to 10 I would get a 3, because I do not know what I am doing.

·         I about 5 Im not to good at analyzing poems yet.

·         6.73 I think I have the basics but I don’t totally understand

·         3 or 2 cause you talk to fast for me to understand so I tune out.

·         6, because I understand how to do it but some of its tricky.

·         An 8 or 9. I know how to do everything but the symbolism. I always have trouble with the symbolism.

·         An 8, because I am pretty good at analyzing poems, but I have trouble occasionally identifying elements.

·         I would rate myself as an 8 because I have a grasp of how to analyze a poem, but I can make a few mistakes and/or not remember all the materials.

·         6, I have almost no clue on how to find things like theme or mood. Some poems are easy and some are impossible

·         2—I don’t really know what analyzing a poem means

·         8 because there are some things that are hard to find in the notes.

·         7; with my notes I can manage to get it done, but I still need a lot more practice with it.

·         9. I don’t know why the CLOZE Notes are easy for me but poetry has always been something I enjoy and I feel like can understand and analyze poems well.

·         I rate my ability an 8 because I’m good at it but I’m not perfect at it.

·         6. I know how to find somethings in a poem but others I have no idea.

·         I rate myself a 5 because I have the idea and I know what things I write I just don’t know how to put it in a sentence.

·         I would rate my ability 7.5. I understand the poem and everything, I just don’t know how to write my thoughts down.

·         About a nine because I think I’ve pretty much got it down, except for like some poetic elements. I still have kind of a rough time with that.

·         7. I’m not too sure of what some of the things mean or what I should classify things as. I get confuzzled.

·         9. I wrote a 9 because my notes are clear, explanatory, and have examples; so I feel as though I would be able to analyze poems very well with all of that help.

·         I would give myself a 9, because I definitely understand how, but in the process I may have a question or two.

  

What feedback (thoughts, questions, suggestions) do you have on how to continue to practice analyzing poetry?

·         What I thought about during the assignment was it was cut and dry. Maybe you could make the assignment a little more interactive.

·         I would like more time to work on the analysis practice, because yesterday I felt a bit rushed.

·         I liked the way we practiced last time, but I’d like if we went through it afterwards.

·         I think we should practice as a class with a single poem.

·         I think we are good at it. We’ll just get better the more I use the notes.

·         I need to keep reading and studying as much poetry as possible.

·         I’m not completely sure I understand how to analyze poems. I mostly just read them for enjoyment.

·         Some examples

·         As a class we should analyze a poem

·         I think that we could go over what we do when a poem has very few elements. We could also practice explaining what we know.

·         We could read famous poems on the smartboard as a class.

·         I don’t understand how to recognize alliteration and slang

·         I think we should get with a partner and pick a poem, then read it out loud to each other. When I hear things out loud I understand them more.

·         I need a tutor

·         Take it slower don’t just throw us out there go through several with us.

·         I should ask for help from you or another student.

·         We need to keep analyzing poems and maybe go over symbolism, and poetic definitions again.

·         More examples of an analyzation shown and done with the class

·         I think we should all analyze a poem together one day and if you were somebody that struggled they should be the one to answer the question.

·         I think I need to get all my notes and then practice them more

·         I really think I just need to analyze more poems.

·         I think I just need to read more poems.

·         I could use more practice.

·         I don’t understand how to start writing about what poetic elements and literary elements you find in the poems.

·         I would like to analyze a few more poems in class or with partners.

·         A way to get me to a 10 would be to give me examples.

·         Let use read more examples on how to write this.

·         I just need to learn the poetry elements off the top of my head.

·         We could do some more analysis of poetry, and we could do a computer activity with our shoulder partner, as practice.

·         We can keep doing poetry analysis’s, so we can get a lot of practice.

·         I think we could analyze a poem as a class like we did with fictional literary elements.

·         I think we could practice analyzing poems in class more, sometimes with and sometimes without notes, because I feel like that helped me yesterday.

some quick thoughts

I just read an article on the Harvard Business Review website titled "Dear Colleague, Put the Notebook Down" by Alexandra Samuel.

It's a pretty scathing piece about the use of "traditional" pencil/pen and paper in business meetings. The author makes some very good points about saving time, which leads to greater productivity in other areas. Here are a few of my thoughts:

1. I love notebooks. For 2013 I bought four new, bright notebooks to use to keep my thoughts in. I process really well with pencil and paper. I use them at school and at home. I used one yesterday in a planning meeting with other middle school teachers. I read a lot of nonfiction, and there's a book that I've been reading lately that, whenever I read it, I have the following things nearby: a notebook (to write thoughts into), a post-it pad (to stick onto the page where I have a question or comment), a pencil (to write my notes with), and a laptop (to look up things that I feel can quickly and easily be answered on the web). Sometimes, rather than using my laptop, I use my iPad.

2. Much of the argument made in the article deals with increasing time efficiency and productivity. The author writes:

Unless you reserve 20 minutes after each meeting to transcribe your notes and enter your follow-up tasks, however, most of this meeting's value will slip like sand through a sieve. And if you're taking 20 minutes to transcribe each meeting, you're losing several hours per week of productive work time.

Well, I have to admit that I am the person that does this, occasionally. I don't do it all the time, but sometimes I do. I love putting pencil to paper--never pen. And afterwards, as I process my thoughts and the events of the meeting, I sort through items, organizing and grouping, as I type (or create visually) the notes from the meeting. And that's why I often always start with pencil and paper--the ability to do more with space. Yes, there are programs available, even free, that allow for the graphic organization of thoughts and ideas and even notes. But I'm most comfortable, initially, with pencil and paper. I often progress to the use of my laptop, but not always. And I have to admit that I'm a really primitive user of my iPad; basically I'm only a consumer on the tablet.

Those 20 minutes spent rehashing the events of the meeting, and deciphering my notes, is time well spent. If the meeting is actually worth attending, then it's probably something that will extend well beyond the immediacy of that situation, involving depth of thought, insight, and planning. Each of those "things" takes time, and, in my humble opinion, should not be rushed.

3. What does this article reveal for education? Teachers ask students to use notebooks all the time. I've got a Masters degree. I used notebooks all the time in my classes, all the way through college. Is this article one perspective, and a rather elitist, closed-minded one, at that? Or is there truth to this? If there is truth, then what do we learn from it?

Just some thoughts.

Reading Response Sharing : Reflection Questions and Responses

The only “big” writing assignment we’ve done this quarter has been the Reading Response, in which students choose to either journal as a character in a book or write a letter to an author. We obviously did lots of freewriting, but we also practiced the isolated skill of sentence combining, and practiced organizing and forming strong constructed response answers. I could write a whole post lamenting the "lack" of writing that we've done this quarter, but I'm always encouraged when I look at the students' freewriting, or they tell me about what they're writing in their freewriting, or I hear them sharing their freewriting, which we do every time we freewrite.

Well, after spending time working on these Reading Responses, I had the students share their writing before earning a score. I’ve found that when students share their writing, outside of the “revision” or “peer review” stage, especially after the due date, they look with a more critical eye. Students seem to have the idea: “This is my perfect, finished piece,” in their minds, so they get really worried if they see a mistake. Throughout the “peer review” stage, more significant (or true) revision can occur and reflection, but many students seem reluctant to engage in this revision because of a multitude of reasons--they could be "married to their writing" and don't want to change it, they could be tired of toiling away with the piece and don't want to work on it any more, among many other reasons. Working with students to gain greater depth in their revision is still a skill that I am working on as a teacher; in fact, I’m reading The Revision Toolbox: Teaching Techniques That Work by Georgia Heard right now. But it's amazing how the critical eye of teacher correctness comes out when the students are sharing their writing, after "it's all done."

On Monday I gave the students their papers back and told them that I had not graded the papers yet. I wanted the students to all get to share their writing at least twice, with six to eight different classmates (groups of four and five). But as the students shared, I had them keep a pencil in hand, and make “minor corrections” (what English teachers would call “editing”) to the piece. This would show me that the students are aware of the rule/issue/mistake and work to correct it. Then I asked the students to answer two questions. The questions and some of the responses are below. *I typed the students responses as I read them, without corrections.

1. What is one thing you fixed/changed in your own Reading Response?
• I changed some of my words from characters names to I or me.
• I put commas instead of parentheses.
• I had a few capitalization errors that I changed.
• I fixed a sentence that didn’t fit the topic of the paragraph.
• I combined sentences and made corrections in punctuation.
• I fixed an “a” into the word “as”.
• Some of the sentences I added and took away words.
• I fixed a sentence that needed “The” because the sentence was incomplete.
• I clarified what a port wine stain was.
• I capitalized a title.
• I changed my reading response by adding more words to my sentences to make the reading response much understanding
• I added the spelling and age of the character of choice
• I changed a couple punctuation marks in my writing. I also changed a couple of my sentences.
• I fixed one of my sentences because I forgot to put a word I need in it.
• One thing I fixed was a spelling mistake.
• I changed a few words that were past tense into present.
• One thing that I fixed/changed in my book was when I forgot to add a word and punctuation.
• I fixed the parentheses from my 2nd paragraph.
• I forgot to italicize the title in one spot so I went back and fixed it.
• I added my characters age.
• I fixed a bunch of pronouns.
• I changed a couple of words and phrases that did not make sense and that were pronouns.
• In my Reading Response I took out a part that didn’t make sense.
• I fixed my wording in the summary so now it is easier to understand.
• I fixed punctuation like commas.
• I took out two words out that made sentences confusing.
• I took out a sentence that didn’t make sense where it was.
• I clarified something that I didn’t know.
• I changed a few sentences in my writing.
• I changes some words to past tense.
• I fixed the beginnings of my journal entries by cutting them out. By doing that, I made the entries more journal like.
• I just fixed some words.
• I changed some theres to theirs.
• I saw a place in my letter where a comma was needed so I corrected my paper and added a comma.
• I changed he’s and she’s to the names of characters
• Capitalization
• I fixed many typoes in my story.
• I fixed a sentence.

2. What is one thing you learned about another book/author/character from your sharing? Who did you learn it from?
• I learned some books that I want to read.
• In the book Girl, Stolen the main character Cheyenne is blind and has been kidnapped.
• I learned that Life of Pi teaches you Christian living.
• In Gone, this girls autistic brother can teleport.
• I learn that Mr. Obert Skyle has written great books and has captured Alex’s attention.
• I learned that a boy who gets really attached to someone feels there pain.
• I learnd from Emily’s book I learned that if you love someone that youll do anything to help them.
• I learnt that Bruiser is a book about a boy who when he cares about someone he can take away their pain.
• I learned from Hanna that the little things in life matter.
• One thing I learned about someones book was that Molly’s book has a character named Ethan and he never gives up and no matter how hard he pushes hisself it is never enough.
• I learned that Carl Dueker (author of Heart of a Champion) has another book called gym candy.
• Brant showed me the Diary of a Wimpy Kid stories end happily.
• I learned that in pride and prejudice the author named the main character after herself.
• I learned from Kinsie that the character Savy from the book Boost is very passionet about basketball.
• I learned from Alex that the Haddix books are about kids who travel back in time.
• I learned that Percy is always in danger, and is constantly having to save his girlfriend Annabeth from monsters.
• I learned the story Cracker is about the Vietnam war.
• I learned that Drizzle sounds like a pretty good fantasy fiction.
• I learned that Jane in Bloom is a very sad book, just like I thought.
• Autumn’s response was about Claim to Fame (I think that’s the title) seemed really interesting. It was about a girl who’s famous and fan hear everything anyone can say about her. She ends up isolating herself.
• Jane in Bloom seems like a great book. Its sad that Lizzie dies, but it seems interesting.

These responses don't reveal a depth of revision that I hope to achieve through continued practice, but they do show that students are not reluctant to improve their writing. It would be cynical and wrong of me to assume that students are lazy and don't want to improve their writing, because that would further assume that students don't care about learning and being successful. I am a firm believer in my students, and their human desire to learn and grow, and be successful. In English, that mostly means gaining new, sometimes interesting, but always hopefully effective ways to communicate ideas. That's what I'm here to help these students achieve. I really enjoy the process of learning to become a better writer, because I enjoy the struggle. I also enjoy working with students as they struggle and learn and grow through the process. In the end, we're all struggling together to learn and grow together.

Thanksgiving holiday

I hope everyone has enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday. The days off have been wonderful for me; I have been able to gather with family and friends, do some much needed cleaning around the house, and enjoy a good movie and a good book.

I've told the students about the movie I viewed, The Life of Pi, since it is also a book. I was fortunate enough to see the movie on Friday, while, as I have been told, lots of people went shopping for so-called "big" deals. In class, we watched the trailer to The Life of Pi as we took notes and learned about the seven fictional literary elements we've been studying. I will say that I really enjoyed the movie and feel that Ang Lee did a wonderful job interpreting it into a visual story. It's been at least seven years since I read the book, but if my memory serves me well, all the important elements of the book were treated well in the movie. I would have liked to have seen more elements of the spiritual within the movie, but I must admit that the ending was done exceptionally well, in my opinion. I first recommend that students read the book, even though it might be more challenging for some than others, but I further recommend students and families see the movie. It is rated PG, so I would argue that it is accessible to most, if not all, middle-schoolers.

On Saturday, I read Trapped: How the World Rescued 33 Miners from 2,000 Feet Below the Chilean Desert. I checked it out from the Pleasant View Library and highly recommend it as a moderate-length nonfiction text. I vividly remember watching as the miners, whose story is told in the book, were rescued. I can even remember leaving CNN on throughout the day in my classroom, watching as the rescue effort continued over many hours. The book is not terribly long, and sticks mostly to the facts, but at several points in the story I was almost overwhelmed with emotions--fear for the miners' lives, concern for the miner's families, hope once the first "doves" were drilled and contact was made. I saw the rescue and heard some of the stories, but this book goes into much greater depth, and provides insight that even the national media couldn't provide.

In my first year of teaching at Pleasant View, I helped chaperone a trip to Wichita, Kansas. On this trip we went to the Kansas Underground Salt Museum, where 650 feet below the surface we took a tour of the old salt mine, along with surveying some of the amazing Hollywood memorabilia stored in the mine. My greatest connection, while reading Trapped, was the absolute black darkness of the mine. At the Salt Museum, we had to take a short tutorial on how to wear and use the proper safety gear, in case anything should happen, and we had to ride one of the double-decker elevators to take us down into the salt mine. The elevator was packed tight, and it was darker than anywhere I have ever been in my life. I could not imagine being 2,000 feet down, in complete darkness, for days on end, not knowing whether I would be rescued or not. The whole story of Trapped, and the miner's ordeal, makes me want to continue reading about this story--either individual miner's stories or any other books available on the rescue.

On a school related topic:
In the coming weeks, prior to our winter holiday, we'll continue to study fictional literary elements. We'll read some more short stories and maybe even watch some short videos. Students will get another chance to deeply analyze a favorite book or movie. Before the holiday, students will complete a significant writing piece in response to some of their reading this quarter; students will either write a letter to an author using the Letters About Literature writing competition as a framework, or students will write a response to literature in which they journal as a character in a book.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

second quarter ideas

I haven’t written for the blog for a while, and there has been something on my mind for a while, so I figured it would be a nice way to dip my toe back into the writing waters. But before I do that, I’ll touch on some “school” stuff.

We’re now into the second quarter. Our reading focus is now on fiction. Students are to read six books this quarter, as with all quarters. The choice of genre is as follows: three different types of fiction, one nonfiction, and one poetry; the sixth book can be of any genre the students’ desire. Along with all this reading, we’ll be studying literary elements: plot, setting, character, conflict, theme, and mood. In response to the reading, students will either participate in the Letters About Literature writing contest or write a response to literature, journaling as if they were a character in a fiction book of their choice. Hopefully, should we find the time and seek the depth of learning, students will get to create their own fictional stories; I’m still seeking ideas and thinking about how this might take shape. 

As for writing, we’re moving beyond the “building blocks”—capitalization, parts of speech, end punctuation, internal punctuation—and looking to increase our sophistication as writers by continuing to practice diversifying our sentence structure through sentence combining. Along with growing more sophisticated in our sentence structure, we’re hoping to see variety and sophistication in the organization of our writing—moving beyond five paragraph essays or rigid story structures to something a bit more pleasing and a bit less predictable. It won’t be easy work; it will be challenging and hopefully push us beyond our comfort zones a bit, but this is necessary for us to grow as readers and writers and thinkers.

I’ve added an open ended feedback form on the blog, so if you have any type of feedback, it could even be a question or a concern, please feel free to send it my way. Thanks!

And now, since I've been writing all weekend but am not quite "there" yet for sharing the other bit of writing that I've been doing, I'm only going to post this. Look back soon and hopefully you'll get a bit less school and a bit more "real world" writing.

first quarter reading reflection

We’ve now (almost) made it through the first quarter, and are (basically) one-fourth of the way through the school year. The students have turned in their first quarter reading records and used this document to complete a reflection that (hopefully) helped them process the information.

One of the main goals of all of the reading we do this year—other than developing skills to comprehend, analyze, and evaluate nonfiction, fiction, and poetry texts—is to develop life-long, passionate readers. Passionate readers, who continue to read for the rest of their lives, know themselves as readers: they know the authors they prefer, they know what genres they enjoy, they know the length and level of writing they can work with, and they know how long they can work with a book before they need to abandon the book and move on to something else. These aren’t necessary “skills” that I can teach the individual students, but these are discoveries the students can make for themselves, as they track their reading and process each quarter, looking for trends and information that can inform their future decisions. That is why we read lots of different types of books, and track our reading using the quarterly reading records, and reflect upon our reading.

So, here are some things that I noticed, when looking at all of the different student reported results from the reflection. *NOTE: this quarter, students were asked to read six books: three different nonfiction (one “informational” text, one “instructional” text, one autobiography/biography/memoir), one fiction of any subgenre, and one poetry of any type.

•       Students read a total of 730 books this quarter.
•       3^rd period read 205 total books, for an average per student of 7.59.
•       4^th period read 162 total books, for an average per student of 7.
•       5^th period read 179 total books, for an average per student of 7.78.
•       6^th period read 184 total books, for an average per student of 6.81.
•       The student that read the most books, read 22 books this quarter.
•       62 students chose fiction as their favorite genre this quarter
•       31 students chose nonfiction as their favorite genre this quarter
•       8 students chose poetry as their favorite genre this quarter
•       It’s great to see a lot of diversity in the choices for favorite books, but we did have two books chosen by two people: Slam by Walter Dean Myers and Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. No other books were selected multiple times as favorites.
•      The authors that had their books chosen the most, for favorite book, were: Rick Riordan and Margaret Peterson Haddix.

Students were also asked, “What did you learn about yourself as a reader, this quarter?” Here are some interesting responses. *NOTE: No corrections made to student writing.

•        I learned that i enjoy fiction and poetry books alot more than nonfiction, which caused me to read fiction and poerty alot quicker than it took me to read nonfiction.
•        I still like mythology and Rick Riordan
•        I learned that I like reading about Engineering, and that nonfiction isn't as bad as I thought it was.
•        That reading can and is fun so im going to read more.
•        I learned that i hate non-fiction and that i'd prefer a world of magic and mystery over the rea world (Fantasy > Non-fiction).
•        I like sports books the best
•         I learned that just because I like Fiction, probaly more than anyother gerne, I can still enjoy books of genres, like nonfiction. This quarter also chanellenged me to read more genres.
•        I learned that i can read any book i want to if i put myself upto the challenge.
•        i learned that i am not as fast of a read that i thought iwas and if you speed through a book at the end you wont understand what happend in it
•        That I need to read more and not abandon as many books this quarter.
•        I like books about Tornadoes, Titanic and the Holocaust because I guess they're just really interesting to me . But, if a book is pretty lengthy I'll probably lose interest soon . I like having a short read , sometimes . Also , I like a challenge so if a book has a high reading level I'll more than likely try to read it 
•     I like reading books about science and historical things , whether it be non-fiction or fiction . 
•     I learned that I love reading books about music or musicians or about someones life , in their own words .
•        i learned that i really like science fiction books. i mean i argued with my sister that i didnt and it turns out she was right.
•        I learned that I actually like to read poetry and nonfiction a lot more than I thought I did.
•        I learned that I am very interested in instructional non-fiction and dislike informational non-fictions. I also learned I am not likely to stay interested in a very lengthy book for very long.
•        I learned that I am attracted to fictional books about magic and other unrealistic things. I love characters with strong wills (expecially if they are girls). I hate nonfiction books, because I believe that history is really deppressing.
•        I need to actually take the time to read the books instead of rushing through them
•        Before, I wasn't really sure what genre I enjoyed reading. But after having to read different types of books, I realized that I lean towards fictional books, especially mysteries, much more than I do nonfiction. But I also like reading some nonfiction, but only informational books about the brain.
•        That it's not so bad to just sit down & read for 30 minutes. 30 minutes isn't going to kill you, you'll never get better if you never try. ( :
•        I didn't know that i liked Realistic Fiction so well until i realized that after i finished the reading requirements that, that was all i was reading.
•        I learned about myself this quarter, that I can read longer books. They just have to be in my intrest, and Side Effects was! I've always been pressured into books I had no interest in, and I will be honest... I just "read them", cause youre not gonna read something you don't wanna read, right? The only time I'll read something I don't want to, is when it's for like a HUGE grade! Haha!
•        I learned that I really enjoy memoirs. I think if I hadn't been required to read nonfiction books, I never would have found this out.
•        That I should've tried new genres earlier. Take non-fiction for example: as I mentioned earlier, I've never really liked non-fiction, so it was - all at the same time - a great way and an awful way to start of the year when you made one of the requirements reading 3 non-fiction in a quarter. I knew I could READ the books, that wasn't my problem, it was LIKING them that was it. As I started reading, I realized I actually enjoy non-fiction and am going to read more of it.
•        I learned that while I still enjoy fiction a lot, I also like biographies, because they are more touching, as well as informational.

These are some exciting results! I can't wait to launch in to the second quarter, and see what we accomplish and learn together.

practicing for the big game

As my last post detailed, I’ve been reading Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better, by Doug Lemov, Erica Woolway, and Katie Yezzi. Reading this book, along with continual discussions with other teachers at school, has helped me make some changes to my teaching this year that I believe are already reaping some pretty neat rewards. This week though, we will see if the changes have taken root.

I titled the post, “practicing for the big game” because, that’s essentially what we’ve been doing for the past several weeks. On the second week of school, we began freewriting as a class. At that time, it was a low-stakes opportunity to increase the quantity of writing and to work towards a more thorough and specific understanding of revision, rather than editing. Since then, we’ve studied parts of speech, types of sentences by purpose along with end punctuation, internal punctuation, and types of sentences by structure. I emphasized that good writers learn from other good writers by reading good writing and imitating good writing. (Often, “good writers” came to be defined as the published writers that the students were reading on a regular basis, and “good writing” came to be defined as grammatically correct writing that held the reader’s attention over time and offered some sense of ending or resolution.)

In practice, we found examples of how parts of speech were used in sentences, and different types of sentences and different internal punctuation, and we discovered and explained how each of those grammatical elements were used for effect (or to the writer’s advantage). We also noticed that elements of each of those seemingly separate skills—parts of speech, punctuation, and sentence structure—were intertwined. If we wanted to identify a compound sentence (sentence structure), we needed to first identify two independent clauses, which in turn required us to identify subjects and verbs (parts of speech), and then we could move on to the internal punctuation used for the sentence to be a compound rather than a run-on.

Building upon the identifying and imitating practice, we challenged ourselves during our freewriting in different but intentional ways: to use certain parts of speech while avoiding others, to try out internal punctuation that we don’t normally use, and to include different sentence structures throughout our freewriting. All in a limited time and space.

And all of this practice was for the big game. Last Wednesday and Friday we played several practice games incorporating many of these grammatical elements of writing. Questions were asked and hopefully answered, and examples were found and parsed and imitated. It was pretty fun too. But now one of the big games of the year is upon us.

Monday we will begin working on a Book Review assignment that will be due on Friday. Some students will type their book review and some will hand write, but hopefully all will utilize the skills that they have acquired in understanding how to use grammatical elements for effect, or to their advantage. Students will use much more than grammatical skills, though, to write their book review. Students will summarize the book with a bias; from the beginning the students should be intentionally arguing on the book’s behalf or against the book—for any number of reasons, including: writing style—word choice and sentence structure, narrative structure--organization, presentation. Students will attempt to describe the type of reader who might be interested in this book, based on the cover, title, and content. Students will provide at least two quotes from the book, again with the intent of arguing on the book’s behalf or against the book, for we know and have known long before the CCSS came along that evidence is essential to any argument. And then, in the end, the students can make their personal claims regarding their opinions of the books they have read and are reviewing.

It’s a lot to accomplish, but all the practice has led us to this point. The end of the first quarter is nearly here, and so is the “big game.” We won’t stray far from nonfiction structures just yet, but in the second quarter we will dip into fiction elements, and all the while, I have a feeling that the methods of our practice will be influenced by Practice Perfect, especially my top five rules so far: rule 4, “Unlock creativity … with repetition,” rule 5, “Replace your purpose (with an objective),” rule 8, “correct instead of critique,” rule 10, “isolate the skill,” and rule 12, “integrate the skills.”

processing Practice Perfect by Doug Lemov, Erica Woolway, and Katie Yezzi

Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better by Doug Lemov, Erica Woolway, and Katie Yezzi

Foreward by Dan Heath

•  “The mere fact of doing something repeatedly does not help us improve.” (xii)
•  “The enemies of practice are pride and fear and self-satisfaction. To practice requires humility. It forces us to admit that we don’t know everything. It forces us to submit to feedback from people who can teach us. But surely practice isn’t a sign of weakness—after all, some of the people most famously disciplined about practice are Michael Jordan, Jerry Rice, Roger Federer, Mia Hamm, and Tiger Woods. To practice isn’t to declare, I’m bad. To practice is to declare, I can be better. “(xiii)

My thoughts:

Action does not mean getting better. I know this from observing ugly, ugly soccer practices during which all the wrong things were brought out in scrimmages.

So often practice is applied to sports, or music, or dance, or some performance skill. But as an English teacher, I think of practice for me and for my students.

For me, I want to practice connecting our learning activity to the objective. I knew going in to the year that I wanted to do this better. I guess I should have known that the only way I would do this better would be to practice, but I never thought of practicing it. I guess I’ll have to start doing this when I write my lesson plans.

For my students, my mind immediately turns to the emphasis on reading and writing. I know I’m not a wonderful reading teacher; I emphasize volume of reading, consistency of reading, but also diversifying the types of books read and identifying preferences. I know it’s my own theory, but if I believe part of my goal as a reading teacher is to develop “life-long readers,” then some of the things I want to help my students do is to identify and understand what they like reading and why they like reading it, and to easily identify those types of books based on genre, author, and reading level. I believe that helping my students understand why they like reading a book will lead to deep and rich conversations about narrative style, character development, plot analysis, themes, role of setting, etc.—all the stuff a “good” reading teacher would teach. Further, if I can help my students understand the genre, author, and reading level of a book they like, I believe I have given them the ability to self-select other books that they will similarly enjoy reading. Maybe I’m wrong; I don’t know.

So where does practice enter in my reading instruction? Well, that’s a little less specific. Discussions on Tuesdays and Thursdays about our reading books, including addressing specific questions, could be viewed as practice in identifying “why I like/don’t like this book.” I do think keeping the reading record, and the reflection at the end of each quarter on that reading record, as practice for identifying “what types of books I enjoy/don’t enjoy.” Hopefully those actions—discussion, record keeping, and reflection—lead to better readers. I don’t know if I’ve answered the initial question.

As for writing, I think I’m a decent writing teacher. My goal is to first help the students write a lot—10,000 words this year, at least. If the students have a decent volume of writing, then we can work on fine-tuning the skills the students use as writers. Some of those skills are what might be considered basic: capitalization, end punctuation, pronoun-antecedent agreement/cohesion, verb tense, comma usage. But some of those skills are more complex: introductory adverbial clauses, appositive phrases, parallel structure, combining sentences through diverse ways. Freewriting is our method of practicing these skills. First, we explicitly study these skills in isolation. I want the students to develop a shared, academic vocabulary so that when we practice each skill in context, the question is not, “what is a pronoun and its antecedent?” I want the question to be, “where are my pronouns and their antecedents?” If the student is answering the second question, rather than the first, then during freewriting, we can, in the context of a larger passage of writing, practice ensuring that all of our pronouns have clear and direct antecedents. That will immediately improve student writing. And that’s really, really important.

I think I have a pretty clear idea of how practice is used in freewriting, and then extended to every other writing situation. I think maybe I need to verbalize that to my students, to be more transparent with them. I think doing this will also help me as a teacher to reference the objective more, because if the objective is clear and specific, and the students know that our practice is directly going to lead us to that, then they are more likely to know exactly when they have met the objective and how they were able to meet the objective.

I haven’t done any process writing like this in a long time, and it’s been really fun. I’m really enjoying this book. I’m on page 55, so some of the things I wrote about occur in later pages/chapters, but I only got through quoting my favorite parts of the Foreward. Later, as I read more, I’ll include more favorite quotes and hopefully get to process more as well.