The Reading Boss

I administered yet another standardized test to my students today. Upon seeing our agenda, they literally groaned with disbelief. I shrugged in sympathy. There is nothing I can do about the 20 days (4 full weeks) of instruction and learning in my class that is replaced by mandated testing. Still, I hate for the kids to get discouraged so early in the year.

"Oh! This one's different," I said. "First you pick the type of passages you like so they give you questions you will find interesting."

They did not seem sold. "How many questions are there?" someone asked.

"It depends," I told them. "It's like..." I grasped for a simile. "It's like a video game. You keep answering until you get a certain number wrong, and then they end your test, tell you thanks for playing, and give you a score."

This they found intriguing. "Do they tell you when you get one wrong?"

"Only during the practice test," I said.

They began to strategize. "Do they get harder as you go?"

I nodded, and I could almost hear the gears turning.

"What if you never miss any?" someone asked. "Do you have to keep going forever?"

"No," I answered. "Eventually, you beat the test."

I guess they had never thought of it that way.

"When can we start!?"

Dictionary Skills

What's an antonym for deficit as in Deficit Thinking?

• abundance
• adequacy
• advantage
• enough

• perfection
• plenty
• satisfaction
• success

• sufficiency
• excess
• superfluousness
• proficiency 

I attended a required work shop for English teachers today. As a result, I got to sleep in by an hour, spend time with some of my favorite teacher friends, laugh a little, eat a free lunch in the sunshine, and get out early enough to go to the gym, walk the dog, and cook dinner.

That was enough.

APS ABCs

Kagan, CRISS,
and SRI,
IA, RICA, oh my my,
SOL, AMO,
writing sample, yes or no?
IB, PIPs, ERO,
catch a SMART goal by the toe.
Synergy is EGP
with less functionality,
and don't forget your UbD:
what's
the
objective?

BS in Literature

I teach a one quarter reading course for the sixth graders on my team. They have four reading teachers over the course of the year, each of us focusing on reading in our content area-- reading in math, reading in science, reading in social studies, and my class, reading in language arts. Because the focus is on non-fiction text, the time the students spend with me is focused on memoir and other forms of creative non-fiction.

Since we only have nine weeks together, we read lots of short memoirs and excerpts, as well as other literature that thematically compliments those selections. For example, so far this year we have read pieces by Jack Gantos, Sandra Cisneros, Billy Collins, and John Scieszka. Another component of the course is having the students write about their own lives, and to tie it together, today the assignment was to read a piece that I wrote.

Oh! I expected it to be well-received, but with this sly group the flattery was so deep I needed a shovel.

"Can you sign mine?" one student started.

"Wait until you read it," I advised.

"Wow!" said someone else a little bit later. "That was the best thing we have read all year!"

I raised my eyebrows. "Realllllllllly?" I replied. "Better than... Jack Gantos?" He nodded vigorously and I continued.

"Sandra Cisneros?

... John Sciesszka?

... BILLY COLLINS???"

He continued nodding and I waved at him a bit dismissively.

"Really!" he said. "I don't know what you're doing here. You should be on a book tour!"

Economy of Energy

Shout out to Sonic dog who figured out there was really no reason to climb all the way out of the pool after fetching the tennis ball-- if you wait on the stairs, someone will toss it again so that you can do what you came for... swimming.

Others may briefly soar, but plugging away offers its own rewards.

School v. Learning

Say what you will about NPR, but whether or not I always agree with them editorially, over the years I have learned a lot from public radio. Today alone is an excellent example. Within 20 minutes this morning, I understood the concept that art is something that puts off more energy than went into making it, and I was also introduced to the narrative structure of Leonard Bernstein's second symphony, Age of Anxiety. Whoa.

As a (okay, sometimes jaded) person of letters, I found these insights into those other arts, visual and music, very instructive, but it was only a few hours later that I was thoroughly schooled in the themes and writing of Ken Kesey in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a novel I thought I was pretty familiar with.

Educators today are fond of saying that we want our students to become life-long learners, but like so many things in public policy, what we mean by that lofty phrase is not always clear. Earlier this week I wrote about the joy of vicariously experiencing my students' ah-ha moments.

Today I had a few of my own.

That's what we're talking about.

Or You'll Sink Like a Stone

My students waded in for their first dip into our electronic community today. In the years that I have been using this online mix of formal and informal writing opportunities with my sixth graders the response of any given group has been unpredictable.

When my colleague and I created and introduced "Write Here Write Now" to our students on a Friday seven years ago only to log in and find a staggering 1000+ posts the next day we were stunned, but we buckled in for the ride and it was one of the most rewarding years of my career in terms of student engagement and growth.

Of course times and technology have changed a lot since then, and being able to communicate remotely with friends is no longer novel for your average 11-year-old, as a student reminded me today when I mentioned that they could use WHWN to write to classmates anytime, anywhere.

"Why would we do that?" she wondered (quite politely). "Don't we have phones?"