Packages, Boxes, and Bags

So, we were talking again today about the difference between a fan letter and a letter that tells an author how his or her book made some kind of a difference to you, the reader. One of the examples that students evaluate is a blatant fan letter full of praise and not much else for Dr. Seuss:

I have always read your books and love them dearly. It’s unbelievable to me that in your lifetime you wrote so many books that are so good. They recently came out with the movie, “The Grinch,” after one of your books. Your books are so funny! I love how you make up words instead of using plain words.

"That's definitely a fan letter," one of my students told me.

"I agree," I answered, "but what could the letter-writer do to make it more of a thoughtful correspondence?"

"Maybe he could say something about the Grinch," the student suggested.

"That sounds good," I said. "You know the story, right?"

He nodded.

"Well, what do you think the lesson might be?" I asked.

"Protect your stuff!" he answered without hesitation, "because the Grinch might get it!"

Scaffolding

While some students were finishing up their SRI test today others were working on an assignment to prepare for their next writing piece, a Letter about Literature. (It might be fun to click on the "Letters about Literature" label at the bottom of this post to review all I've written about that particular assignment.)

It was quiet, but there was a steady stream of students with questions coming up to my desk. At last it occurred to me to upload the text of the assignment and see what its reading level was. It came out to be a lexile of 980, which is nearly the median of sixth grade (925-1070). There were a number of students who were not yet reading on that level, however, and that pretty much explained all the questions.

For them this assignment, like many others in school, was doubly challenging: they struggled to read the content, and then they had to use their understanding to apply the information, evaluate the passages, and answer the questions. Teachers know that there will be a range of reading in any given class, though, and so we plan our lessons to accommodate everyone, as I did today. Students work independently, then in pairs, and then we check their answers with the larger group. That way everyone can access the content and concepts despite their reading level.

Even so, it surprised me today when a student approached me to ask about the task. "I don't understand what you mean 'give suggestions'," she pointed to her sheet.

"Oh, that just means that if you think it's a fan letter instead of a thoughtful correspondence, you should write some suggestions for changing it," I told her.

"But I don't know what 'suggestions' means," she said.

Ohhhh.

Redemption

We are starting the annual Letters About Literature assignment, and so we will spend the next couple of weeks analyzing model letters so that the students can figure out what will make a successful piece. The purpose of this activity is for students to write a letter to an author telling him or her how their book changed the student's view of the world or of themselves, and the first mini-lesson is that their letters should, "correspond not compliment." 

One of the exercises has them looking at a letter to Dr. Seuss about How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The piece is nothing but praise, no substance to it, but because I have found that this story is so very familiar to almost every student (regardless of ethnicity or religion) I always ask them to suggest possible revisions to the letter based on the lessons they might take from the classic tale.

You might predict that they would all have something to say about materialism and holidays, but the number one theme my students identified was rather that nobody is as bad as they may seem, and even the meanest person can turn it around.

Literature About Letters

Every teacher knows how it is to have a student who either misunderstands, misses the point of, or in some other way just does not connect with an assignment. I have a particular student right now who has only turned in a draft of his Letter About Literature because his mother has been in daily contact with me for the last week.

Regular readers of this blog may recall that I do the LAL unit with my sixth grade classes every year. (And I write about it, too. Click here for my thoughts in 2009 and here for those in 2010) Sponsored by the Library of Congress, it is a writing contest that has the lofty goal of inspiring kids to compose letters to authors explaining what personal difference their books have made. After re-reading my own observations from years past, I am reminded that it is a challenging task for sixth graders, but I won't be discouraged, either, because despite the challenge, I still think it is a valuable exercise which brings together all the important components of a language arts curriculum-- reading, writing, and higher order thinking.

Well, that's the idea anyway. Back to my recalcitrant student. Here's what he turned in:

Dear John,

Listen and listen closely. I never wanted to read your book but it looks cool and it also was a long book. So be happy that I’m reading it. Now I got to write about you and your book, so be happy cause I’m doing what I didn’t want to so PAY ATTENTION!!

I’m happy you listened closely and understood me. Are you happy I read your book? At the beginning I thought your book was like dew on the grass, now I like it. When I say dew I mean like the yucky stuff on the morning grass. 

Okaaaayyyy... Teacher Quiz!

Test yourself: what is the best response to this piece of writing?

A) I like your honesty.
B) Your voice really comes through.
C) Interesting use of figurative language.
D) See me
E) All of the above

Hard Sell

Earlier in the week, a students asked me to recommend a book for her. I made several suggestions, but none of them sounded quite right to her. As we talked, it turned out that she had just finished a series which she really loved, and she was still in that doldrum period where nothing else could possibly measure up. I understood exactly what she was going through. "I just finished a book I really liked, too," I told her, "and I can't really get into anything else, yet, either." (For the record, it was Moon Over Manifest, the latest Newbery Award winner.) She thanked me and left, empty handed.

Another student overheard the conversation. "Have you read So B. It?" she asked me. I said I hadn't, but I remembered that she liked it enough to write a letter to the author, Sarah Weeks, when we were doing our Letters About Literature assignment. "You have to read it," she insisted." It's the best book ever."

Unfortunately, our library system was being upgraded, and there was no borrowing for two days. On the strength of her recommendation, though, I ordered a copy online. I needn't have bothered though; the next day she brought me her own copy to read. After school, she stopped by my room to see how far I was. I laughed and told her I hadn't had a spare minute to start reading, at which point she picked up the book and read the first chapter to me. It was awesome.

If truth was a crayon, and it was up to me to put a wrapper around it and name its color, I know just what I would call it-- dinosaur skin... The truth is, whether you know something or not doesn't change what it was. If dinosaurs were blue, they were blue; if they were brown, they were brown whether anybody knows it for a fact or not.

This morning I finished the book, and I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't with a big old lump in my throat. More than anything, though, I'm moved by the adamance of the recommendation, and how right my student was.

Examining the Clues

The week after vacation can often seem kind of long, but this one wasn't too bad. My students are finishing up their Letters about Literature, revising science fair intros, and preparing entries for the four writing contests that are going on this month in our school, district, and local area. My class has seemed very workshop-like as students work through the writing process at various paces on different pieces, and I've enjoyed it.

Twice this week they have shown me again how, collectively, they are very different than the classes of the last couple of years by the way they have responded to lessons I've used in the past. For one, there seem fewer children in this group who are able to cognitively make the connections necessary to write any really successful letters to authors explaining how their books changed these kids' perspectives in some way. Then today, I gave them a quick activity where they read a mini-mystery and try to work out who the culprit might be, and oh my golly, they loved it! There was 100% completion. "You should make all of our assignments like this," one student told me.

I can't really blame them-- I like a good mystery, too. I've been teaching long enough to realize that the same activities don't always go the same way from year to year, or even class to class, but these swings this year seem wider than usual, and I've also been teaching long enough to know that understanding why will help me better meet the learning needs of my students, and so I'm on the case.

Oy, My Brain

So, after I posted last night, I was brushing my teeth, thinking about what I wrote, and it occurred to me that part of the problem comes when I assign a grade to an exercise. Exercise is practice, and shouldn't we grade student work that is supposed to show mastery? Granted, the Letters About Literature assignment might have led up to mastery of certain things (thankfully, for many students, it did), but if a writer is not engaged in the topic, is it fair to expect mastery? What message does that send to a struggling writer, other than, here's another assignment you didn't like and didn't do well on, either. Research shows that it is best to teach students writing skills in a meaningful context, like when they're working on something they want to write. Given that no assignment is ever going to appeal to everyone, what's an English teacher to do? When it comes down to it, I don't care if my students can write a good Letter About Literature, I want them to be able to write a good anything.

I'll keep thinking about it.

Letters About Literature

My students have participated in this contest every year for the last three. The premise is interesting: kids are supposed to write a letter to an author explaining how a particular book changed them or their view of the world. Although this task might seem deceptively simple, the sponsors of the contest, the Library of Congress and Target, take pains in their instructional materials to emphasize that students must "correspond don't compliment" and "synthesize don't summarize." These higher order thinking skills can be tough for my sixth graders, but they are by no means impossible, so the assignment turns out to be a just-right challenge-- one that can be done well with enough preparation, work, and support.

The problem lies in the fact that these letters are supposed to be authentic and heartfelt, written by the students in acknowledgment of a significant impact the author's work has had on them. Quite honestly, not every eleven year old has experienced such a profound connection with a book. What then, English teacher? Do you disparage these children as shallow and chalk it up to weak parenting, too much TV, and video games? Do you release them from even trying because they're just not feelin' it?

It's been a tough call for me, but this year I asked all my students to approach the assignment as a writing exercise-- they had to go through the steps to produce a letter, but no one was required to send it unless they wanted to. As I've written before, this year my students are awfully compliant, and so most of them humored their wacky teacher and unquestioningly went through the process: reading models, completing mini-lessons, and then composing, revising, and editing draft after draft of their letters, until today, the day before the deadline, nearly half of them decided to enter the contest. And most of the letters were pretty good, too.

So, I have a stack of letters to grade this weekend, and when I do, I'm going to take a good look at the ones that are not successful to try and figure out how and why the "writing exercise" failed for those writers, because this kind of whole class assignment is exactly the kind of thing that I think undermines my workshop, often at the expense of struggling writers.