So first I want to fully acknowledge that there are lots of opinions on reading logs. Many of them are very negative. I understand that forcing kids to track something they currently do for the joy of it can definitely endanger their love of the activity. However, I find that only a small handful of my 8th graders consider themselves avid readers. In fact, only 14 out of 160 kids indicated that they love reading. So here is a little bit of historical context. I drank the proverbial Kool-Aid in grad school and was avidly pro-SSR and anti-assignments-that-would-detract-from-their-love-of-reading. I made space for reading in my room each Monday. It was a calm and relaxing start to the week. I spent every spare dollar I earned building a classroom library so my students always had access to quality engaging books and I thought it was working. After two years I moved from teaching 7th grade to teaching 8th grade. I had received some . . . feedback, shall we say, on my collaboration skills and so when I arrived at 8th grade I was definitely over-compensating. The inimitable Karen Johnson was my new teaching partner and she had a rather intense Independent Reading Program. In an effort to be agreeable I let go of my grad-school condescension and just rolled with it. That year I heard from kid after kid that they had "never" finished a book before. When I aggressively reminded Ricky that he had spent over 20 hours of class time reading last year he flippantly responded "well yeah, but I'd just pick up whatever off your shelf and start a new book each week." It was like a knife to my heart. And so . . . I undertook Johnson's program because anything had to be better than that. At it's most basic it's just attaching a grade to certain number of pages each quarter with the goal that they will read a lot. The hope is that the desire for an A or B will push the reluctant readers past their boredom so they actually get into a book. Here is the assignment sheet I give kids: Independent Reading To help students stay on track I divide the page goal I've set for them (1000/500) by the number of weeks until it is due (7 for first quarter) and post how many pages they should aim to read by each Friday. I have compiled a list of resources for my students to help them find books they will be interested in. From genre reading lists to how to access ebooks to how to find more books like ones they already like I think it's vital to give kids lots of access to finding titles that resonate with them. I give time in class on Fridays to read. If I had 90 minute class periods I would have required reading time every day for 20 minutes, but with a scant 45 minutes I have to put it all on one day to make it meaningful. Just like with any routine I use with students I have to explicitly teach the behaviors I want to see from students: Friday Independent Reading Expectations Additionally, each Friday I collect their reading log and write down a "grade" based on those weekly goals. This doesn't actually go in the gradebook, but it does help students maintain awareness of their progress and to hopefully light a fire for kids who fall behind between books or who aren't making time to read. Even though I only put my mark in the gradebook at the halfway point and at the end of the quarter I do keep track for myself of how students are progressing each week. This allows me to intervene early if a student is falling behind. I think something that works for my students is having a page goal to reach as opposed to a number of minutes they need to read each day. By 8th grade many of my kids have sports or time consuming chores like watching siblings or cooking dinner . . . basically stuff comes up that makes it hard for them to read every day. Unless I'm super into a book I don't even read every day. This still holds them to a high standard, requires them to read a breadth of material (thereby exposing them to a lot of words, ideas, and genres throughout the year), while giving them the flexibility they need. A question I often get about this assignment is how I sniff out the fake readers and the kids who are dishonest on their logs. While I think this is a fair question I also try to not put too much energy into "catching" kids messing up. Instead I put routines in place that allow kids to get on board at regular intervals. At the beginning of the Independent Reading class period I take attendance and students respond by telling me the title of the book they have with them. I write this down each week and can compare it to their collected reading logs to determine if they are sticking with a book, finishing books quickly, or picking up a random book each week as Ricky told me he did. This is a catalyst for the second routine I implement: reading conferences. I definitely try to meet with each kid each quarter to check in about what they are enjoying reading and offer suggestions if they are near the end of a book, but I target students who are slow to start, who have stalled, or who haven't settled on a book after a couple of weeks. After a couple of those conversations, if they still aren't diving into an assignment I will call home and ask for parent help encouraging students to read each night. Lastly, I have students do a comprehension assignment and an analysis assignment each quarter to hold them accountable and gauge the depth of their understanding. I rotate through different options each quarter to keep the assignment fresh for the students and for me. For comprehension I have students either complete a book talk or a book events sheet, and for analysis I have an analysis of theme (or another literary element) or a Good Reads review. At the end of my first year teaching 8th grade and requiring 1000 pages a quarter I had two separate students seek me out to tell me that they used to hate reading and now they love it, which was certainly lovely to hear. But what really took the cake was when one of those students found me on Instagram to reiterate the impact I (and this assignment) had on her life. A little grace for typos and a very full heart makes this one of the best messages I've received.
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This summer a teacher friend suggested I start following #classroomdecor on instagram. At first the pictures were just pretty to look at, but the more classrooms that popped up on my feed the more dissatisfied I became with my own classroom. The posters that I purchased 6 years ago suddenly looked distracting, the fabric on my bulletin boards busy, and so much space was taken up by entertaining content that I felt pressed for space for ELA content. I switched out my tables for individual student desks to better facilitate whole class discussions and so I decided it was time for a little room rehab. In lieu of milk crates and hanging files that required two full tables of storage I purchased cardboard magazine holders and colorful duct tape. Now I have student journals and turn-in trays on these shelves that were just random storage in the past. This system has also sped up our beginning and ending classroom routines since students can pass their journals down and put them away in bulk instead of each student needing to find their individual file. Kids these days, am I right? No. I'm not. But when the 15th kid in a day asks me for supplies I start to feel a little curmudgeonly. So, I took inspiration from my dear teacher friends Chelsea and Amadea and got this cart from Ikea. Students can take anything they need from it and return it at the end of class. Eighth graders may not be the best at remembering to keep their binders fully stocked, but having this routine in place helps them problem solve and establish more independence in the classroom. It also keeps them from rifling around drawers, cupboards, and closets so I can better stay on top of what supplies I have on hand and what I am running low on. This is one activity that I definitely feel I've gotten better at over the past six years. I always recognized the importance of co-creating norms with students. It honors student voice and helps them buy in to the classroom "rules" since they were the ones who created them. Does it work out that way for every student? Of course not. Does it help on the whole? I think so. The main challenge I faced was getting authentic responses from students when I asked them what rules would help them get more out of class. They mostly just parroted rules that they had been subjected to in the past. So each year I've tweaked it a little bit and I definitely think this year was a high point. We did a silent conversation carousel activity where students were asked to identify what they would like the teacher to do, their classmates to do, and what they need to do to be successful during different scenarios such as entering class, transitions between activities, group work, whole class discussion, independent reading or writing, among others. From there we compiled the data and I pulled out patterns of behavior and used their quotes as specific examples when we reviewed the patterns as a class. Once students gave me feedback on which of those items we should adopt we had two lists. One of things I agreed to do to make my classroom work for them, and one of things they agreed they do to make my classroom work for themselves and their peers. I'll probably tweak it again next year, but I definitely think I'm closing in on a final approach to this important year-starter. Last year in an attempt to create an easy in class resource for book recommendations for my students, and to model the reading habit I hope to instill in them, I started this bulletin board of the books I read (or, more accurately, listened to during the hour I spend driving to and from work each day). I put up the cover and a notecard with the title, genre, and a brief synopsis. My favorite outcome was a Latinx boy who barely spoke to me all year. One week I checked his reading log and he was reading "We Are Okay," a coming of age story about a young woman who is isolated and struggling with her identity and her sexuality in the wake of her grandfather's death and the truths that came to light after he passed. It's a book that moves slowly as it explores Marin's internal struggle. This is not a book I would have ever matched this particular student up with. But he finished it and when I asked him about it his very verbose response was, "It was good." When I asked why he had tried it he said, "Oh . . . I saw it on your board and figured if you liked it then it'd probably be ok." #bestillmyheart This year I hope to get students to create these synopsis cards for the novels they have loved so they can start offering recommendations to each other. I don't have room for 180 of them in one place, so I'm open to any suggestions for compiling those recommendations digitally. This is an awesome resource I got the idea for from the Instagram teacher community. This calendar has everything we did in class last week and everything we're doing this week and next week. My hope is that by providing context for the work we are doing students will have a better understanding of what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how it connects to the larger whole. So far this is still in the experiment phase. At the end of the quarter I will probably ask students if they have been referencing the calendar or try to gauge their understanding of how individual activities fit into the context of the unit. This is probably the addition to my classroom I am most excited about this year. Inspired by one of my Oregon Writing Project professors, Chrusanthius Lathan, this is our one-stop-shop for all things writing related. On the far left I have a running list of all the pre-writing strategies we have used to generate ideas, next is a list of all the drafts we have written so far, next will be folders with handouts on the revision and editing strategies I will teach them explicitly, and finally is an anchor chart for the genre of writing students are currently engaging in.
I'm so excited to see what my students can create in this new, calmer, student focused classroom. |
Author8th Grade ELA Teacher at Twality Middle School ArchivesCategories |