Jeff Anderson: I've Never Written so Much

10 July 2017, Ellerslie Event Centre

How Mentor Texts Inspire and Nurture Writers

You can't make children write, but along the way, you can mentor and nurture them.

From Katy Perry, Firework

Teacher, you're a firework

Come on let your colours burst

Make 'em go "oh, oh, oh"

You're gonna leave 'em writin down, oh, oh, oh

What discourages you from writing?

- time

- lack of ideas

- being judged (self-consciousness, inferiority)

- perfectionism

- not knowing how to start

Students are resistant to re-reading their work, they don't want to. Our job is getting them to reread it.

What inspires (encourages) you to write?

- having something to say

- time

- space

- knowledge

- knowing I can write well

- a reason to write (purpose)

- time limit

- communicate

- feedback (encouragement)

Low socio-economic writers do not have fewer experiences to write about, they have different experiences. We need to find writings they can write to.

How do you teach writing?

What do writers do?

How do we support writing behaviours in our classroom?

Our responsibility as writing teachers is to create a space where writing behaviours happen. The more time students spend writing, the more successful they will be.

10 things every writer should know:

1. Motion

Just write

Read a short snippet of text, and ask, "What sticks with you?"

Example - 'Let me tell you something..."

The things that stick with you are the effective things the writer has done. By highlighting them to students, they are learning what writers do. Then read it again and they notice.

more. 

"let me tell you something about _________" (4 minute quick write). It was so easy to write when we had a starting point.

It's about keeping them motivated and keeping them writing - getting them over page fright. They need to get words down on the page to get more words down on the page. 

Power writing technique - give students to words, get them to choose one and write as much as you can, as fast as you can, as well as you can (so it is legible/readable) in one minute. (the rule - don't make a list). Children can start till the timer starts. Get children to record how many words they wrote. Next time, try to beat it. Quality isn't there but they are getting words on paper, which is a starting point.

Variation - do it three times in a row (three minutes of solid writing). Do three days in a row and see how they grow (or don't) and talk about why or why not.

Use as content-area review. Works as a way to review specific words or concepts in any content area. For example, write for three-minutes about photosynthesis or conflict. In composing or listening to what others say, the concept is often deepened. 

2. Models

I learned to write from writers, I didn't know any personally, but I read. - Cynthia Rylant

“When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.”

Everything was grey, then in Oz it was all about colour. With the students, sit somewhere and write about what you see. Or you can do it with your class from memory. Get students to visualise a place in their minds, then silently write using these sentence stems:

I see...

I smell...

I hear...

I feel...

I taste...

Smell taps into memory

5.7.10

Write for 5 minutes

Share with a partner (read word for word, not explaining it) and discuss for 7 minutes

Write some more for 10 minutes

3. Focus

List three things you're interested in or curious about

Choose one item from your list and explain to a partner why it's interesting to you.

Take your Classical Invention Cards - quickly rush through the questions, skipping one or two if necessary (you should be able to make them work).

“You don't know me at all.
You don't know the first thing about me. You don't know where I'm writing this from. You don't know what I look like. You have no power over me.
What do you think I look like? Skinny? Freckles? Wire-rimmed glasses over brown eyes? No, I don't think so. Better look again. Deeper. It's like a kaleidoscope, isn't it? One minute I'm short, the next minute tall, one minute I'm geeky, one minute studly, my shape constantly changes, and the only thing that stays constant is my brown eyes. Watching you. ” 
― David Klass

"What do you notice?" Quickwrites ' "You don't know me..." This does not need to be shared with people.

“Americans make more trash than anyone else on the planet, throwing away about 7.1 pounds per person per day, 365 days a year. Across a lifetime that rate means, on average, we are each on track to generate 102 tons of trash. Each of our bodies may occupy only one cemetery plot when we’re done with this world, but a single person’s 102-ton trash legacy will require the equivalent of 1,100 graves. Much of that refuse will outlast any grave marker, pharaoh’s pyramid or modern skyscraper: One of the few relics of our civilization guaranteed to be recognizable twenty thousand years from now is the potato chip bag.” 
― Edward Humes, Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash

We can relate to the example of a potato chip bag because we can all relate to it. By comparing the size of us to a grace, it sets the mood and shows the seriousness of the situation. It wouldn't have been as effective if it made a comparison to the size of a single bed. it is about the mood created.

Take non-fiction topics down a few rungs - narrow down the topic

Hayakawa's ladder of abstraction

What is it? Making things 

4. Detail

Focus can lead to detail and form

Detail: Selecting the concrete and necessary

The senses feed shards of information to the brain like microscopic pictures of a jigsaw puzzle - Diane Ackerman

Lots of telling that doesn't paint pactures in the mind.

She needed a job. A lot. She was hungry. She was poor. She went to a candy store.

"Emily Watson peered in through the shop window. The afternoon sun made a mirror of the glass, forcing her to shade her eyes to see inside. A long counter ran along one wall. On top were glass cases holding trays of candies — mounds of chocolate balls, butterscotch pennies, peppermint lozenges. Emily’s mouth watered. Halfway along the counter stood a cash register, its gold paint glinting in the sunlight. The lady behind it was plump and motherly. And she was alone. Emily glanced again at the small sign in the window: Help Wanted. She tugged down her too-short jacket and smoothed her skirt. Then, taking a deep breath, she pushed open the door. The jingle of the bell startled her." Factory Girl by Barbara Greenwood.

Take a paragraph from a book. Butcher it (to make it boring - cut it to the main points). Ask kids what they think about it. Then show them the full text.

Construct a table together. On one side, have 'Telling'. Break down your boring text into sections. One the other side, 'Showing' and put the actual text into it.

5. Form

6. Frames

7. Cohesion

8. Energy

9. Words

10. Clutter

uLearn: Personal Reflection

What?

As you can see below, I have recently attended the uLearn Conference in Rotorua. This was a huge affair, with so much to take in and process. Most of the workshops I chose related to Google Sites because it is a part of G Suite that I have never used much before, meaning that I sometimes have difficulty answering some questions from students when they are working on their ePortfolios. I have always found sites to be extremely clunky, which is what put me off learning more.

So what?

I am now much confident about using Google Sites. I was greatly impressed with the work done by Marc Rowlinson at Northcross Intermediate.  He runs a 1:1 digital class, where his touchpoint is a Google Site. I missed the first 10 mins due to there being no buses to get to the venue, which meant I missed how his website is structured - I'm guessing part private, part public.  The students get assignments/tasks on pages, they then upload their progress/questions /final products to the page and then also give each other high-quality feedback. I would love to know more so that I can adapt this for myself.  I particularly loved it because students were demonstrating high-level thinking and were really engaged and creative. They had a variety of devices and found a variety of apps and websites to do what they wanted to do.

Post on Marc's workshop

I also loved my first breakout, where I started to learn to code a website. I absolutely loved it, and am hoping I'll learn more at my Mindlab course, which begins next week. My main decision is to try and figure out how to use this knowledge in a practical way (ie. a purposeful use for it).

Post on coding your first website

Now what?

I would love to spend some time in Marc's class. If this is not possible, I will endeavour to pester him with emails, asking my multitude of questions.

uLearn Breakout 6: Enhancing thought-full classroom dialogue - Karen Boyes

1. Classroom Environment - how we set up our classroom and what goes on in it.

The fear of failure is driving most students. In NZ, students can also be scared of success (tall poppy syndrome).

Tri-Une Brain (three in one brain)

Develops in order (red, blue, and then green)
We also react to things in that order (1st panic, then reason). Can happen in reverse (eg unlocking your front door when the phone rings inside - suddenly panic and you fall apart trying to unlock the door).

25yrs old is when empathy develops (also
deteriorates with age).


Turning fear into fun - students who laugh more, lern more, Dr David Sousa.

If students take risks, thank them for taking the risk (whether right or wrong). Don't play 'guess the answer in the teacher's head'. Too stressful for students. When everyoe tries, say 'thank you' to each of them. Even after you've had the right answer, keep going, then when they've stopped say, 'let's go back an look at...' (with the answer you wanted).

2. Teacher Technique

Managing impulsivity (getting students to think before the event/answering).

Wait time:
The average teacher waits one second afte asking a question - not long enough to think. After one second, the teacher either calls on a student, moves on to another question or answers it themselves. Recommendation is to wait 8 - 10 seconds. Think, pair, share is good here.

3. Listening Sequence

Pause
Paraphrase
Probe
    - Inquire
    - Clarify

In activity, the music was put on loud - it made it harder to concentrate. We needed to adjust how we spoke (leaning forward, raising our voices, gestures, looking at the person); we need to teach students those strategies.

4. The Power of Langauge

Be aware of language - when we use good vocab, students use great language too.

Labeling thinking skills and processes (eg what is the meaning of compare and contrast (a lot of students don't know the differnce between the two words).

Teach the thingking words in from the curriculum document (eg verify, observe etc)

5. Thinking (metacognition): monitoring our thinking

Think Aloud Problem Solving:


6. Questioning and Problem Posing

Test for Mensa gets changed ever 10 years, because peope are becoming more intelligent

Questioning with intention

Unproductive questions:
seek verification,
are closed,
are rhetorical questions,
are defensive (why didn't you complete your homework?),
agreement questions

Productive questions:
Invitational questions (women lover tone, men quieten)
Plurals (eg. What are some of your goals? - easier to answer than what is one of your goals?)
Tentatives - what might be some factors that would cause....? What could...? What hunches....
Invitational stems - given what you know about....
Limiting presuppositions - why were you unsuccessful (assumes that you were unsuccessful)
Empowering presuppositions

Compose a question intended to invite thoughtful dialogue about a topic you may be teaching next week...
Criteria:
Invitation stems
Plurals
Tentative language
+ve presuppositions

As you reflect on this year, what are some of the ways you could approve your Berkley experience?

uLearn Breakout 3: Making eLearning Powerful with Google Sites

David Kinane and Marc Rowlinson

Re-mixing eLearning
What works from UK?
Where are you in the loop?

Anatomy of an eLearning task on a Google site

We looked at David's House Challenge

Students explained and reflected verbally

Next looked at character description

Decision tree programming

Each year, start a folder called 'Learning' and share all the children into it (with full editing rights)

Google Site - set up. Students have complete editing rights to the site (otherwise they can't give feedback etc).

Students call anything they do with just their name (eg. Sarah, not Sarah's...., so that you can do a search for anything they do.).

Tools to capture student voice:

Students come up with success criteria, (max 4 things) and this is used to create a rubric. This rubric is used for their commenting.

Here's a basic rubric for primary school (for getting students to read aloud then self-reflect):

Here's instructions - put a slideshow together. Instructions on the first page, text (as pdf) on the second slide etc.

Remember:

Youtube tutorials...youtube.com/user/dakinane

Hard to get parent interest

uLearn Breakout 3: Making eLearning Powerful with Google Sites

David Kinane and Marc Rowlinson

Re-mixing eLearning
What works from UK?
Where are you in the loop?

Anatomy of an eLearning task on a Google site

We looked at David's House Challenge

Students explained and reflected verbally

Next looked at character description

Decision tree programming

Each year, start a folder called 'Learning' and share all the children into it (with full editing rights)

Google Site - set up. Students have complete editing rights to the site (otherwise they can't give feedback etc).

Students call anything they do with just their name (eg. Sarah, not Sarah's...., so that you can do a search for anything they do.).

Tools to capture student voice:

Students come up with success criteria, (max 4 things) and this is used to create a rubric. This rubric is used for their commenting.

Here's a basic rubric for primary school (for getting students to read aloud then self-reflect):

Here's instructions - put a slideshow together. Instructions on the first page, text (as pdf) on the second slide etc.

Remember:

Youtube tutorials...youtube.com/user/dakinane

Hard to get parent interest

uLearn 2016: Keynote #1 - Larry Rosenstock (HTH)

"It's time to change the subject"

Since when did we move away from 1-to-1 learning? The earliest examples of this was when males would allow societies to travel into the mountains to study religious text.

Segregation has been around for a long time. Girls and Women were not allowed to study in schools until 1850 in what is now the USA.

Campbell’s law was proven when grade 4 teachers began changing the test answers for their students in their own time. Grade 5 teachers discovered this when their students were not working at the level that they had achieved at the previous year.

The Lie from Untitled Productions on Vimeo.

You don't have to segregate subject areas. Collective learning is more effective than individual learning.

Content is irrelevant - it is how students react to learning, what they do, how they do it.

His big theme was project-based learning where students are put into teams. All their learning is based on projects, inquiry, integration, invention, authentic, experiential, exhibitions and assessment is alternative.

In terms of getting students to pass national exams, he says students can prepare intensively for external exams without dedicating the whole year to it.

Big take out: move toward more project-based learning with an integrated curriculum.

QUESTIONS:

1. How do you get around the challenges of having to prepare students for specific exams?

Work completed in the Middle East had many teachers who said ‘but we can’t do that because we have to get our students ready to sit matriculation exams’.

Larry’s team decided to spend the next week interviewing people. What they found was that people said that they prepared for these exams in the 4-5 weeks leading up to the exam. This proves that this preparation can still be done in conjunction with the integrated or project-based work undertaken beforehand.

2. How did you ensure that student voice was used to direct and develop project-based learning?

Student directed the structure of their work.

First you have an inquiry i.e. what are we trying to do? Then we have a plan i.e. how will we do it? (observations, reflections etc.).. Then we have the exhibition (which are extremely popular with the community and parents).

Ability Grouping vs Mixed Ability Grouping

What?

I'm sitting here on a wet Sunday afternoon, planning my reading programme for the next couple. Lately, I've seen a lot of discussions on mixed-ability grouping in maths, which challenges the way I've been teaching for may years.  I'm wondering if I should try it for reading.  Here's some of the posts and articles I've read.

Education Counts (lots of references, but mainly for maths)

Steph's Blog

Headteacher Magazine

“We favour mixed-ability teaching because of its social and equitable benefits, and the fact that we encourage our teachers to see all of our pupils as having different needs, abilities and working styles.” Heidi Conner

This quote seemed important, although it is aimed at whole classrooms being mixed-ability groupings, vs streaming each classroom.

Howard Stevenson's Blog

I also watched these video clips:

So what?

After reading the articles, and viewing the videos, I was most struck by the idea that ability grouping can limit the students and limit the exposure I, as the teacher, give them to more complex work, theories, and ideas.  I could see the idea that grouping students, where in NZ, Māori children would statistically end up in 'lower groups' could be a form of apartheid. I already feel that having to report to parents twice a year that their child may be 'below' the National Standards is appalling in terms of students' self-belief, without me doing it with my groupings.

What next?

I have decided to change my reading groups to make them mixed ability.  I have a lot of students who work very well with their peers, feeding off each others' ideas and knowledge. I will group those students together. I also have some students who don't work well with their friends (they get off task easily, and can be silly). Those students will be spread around the groups.

UPDATE:
Now that I'm putting my social groups together, some of the groups are one gender only...am I being sexist now?

Completing the Same Work as Students

What?

Usually, when my class are  all completing individual work like Quickwrites or silent reading,  I will use the time to complete the roll, send emails to parents or other preparations.  The other day in our computer suite, I taught the students to embed video clips in their blogs, and then got them to complete a quickwrite response.  I did it too, with the following post:

Last night Sarah sent me the following video:

I really enjoyed this, because it didn't sugarcoat the truth - we are destroying our planet, our homes. We are cutting down trees (maybe forgetting the important role trees play in our lives) as if they will regrow really quickly. We are using fossil fuels like they are replaceable (scientists aren't absolutely sure, but they think that it takes the earth hundreds of thousands of years to break plants and small animals into oil). We are filling the oceans with plastic and rubbish, which is killing fish and marine life, as well as altering their bodies on a cellular level.

This is all very true, and there are lots of videos, songs, books and social media posts pointing out the way the earth is heading.  Here is another one:

The problem I have with all of these videos is that they don't offer up real solutions.  Yes, you and I can walk or bike more and put out our recycling, but is that enough? People will still cut down trees because we need paper, cardboard, tissues, toilet paper, packaging. We need wood for our houses and buildings and playgrounds.

To me, one of our biggest problems is plastic, for two reasons. Firstly because of the issue of plastic ending up in landfills and our oceans, secondly because of one of the ingredients in plastic - oil.  Yes, our precious oil is an ingredient in plastic.  Have a look at this list of products which contain oil. It is a real surprise to see some of those items. Read about all the clothing we wear that contains oil. Your school shirt, polar fleece and socks all contain oil.

What are we going to do to save our world? I don't know, which makes it worse. It will take major changes from not just each of us, but businesses and governments to stop the decline.  At the moment, people across the world can't even agree that change needs to happen.  

Tomorrow, you'll wish you had started today

So What?

The experience was good for the students - they saw that their work had value because I was doing it too.  My post also served as a good model, because I wrote with more depth, proposed solutions and showed how when they are working online, they can add more information with links.

What Now?

I will complete work alongside students more often, so they can see its value as well as have a model of the work done to a high standard.

5 Questions to Eliminate from your Class

What?
I came across this picture on Twitter tonight:

It intrigued me, so I read the whole article here. Removing these questions from student's vocabularies are encouraged as students become independent and self-directed in their learning.

So what?
I found the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th questions are doable in my classroom, as the year progresses.  The one that I found a stumbling block is the first one. The article says: 

"This question is a flag that indicates dependent students. Students that are of the understanding that learning is something delivered by an external entity. It assumes learning is an organised event that one attends. Your classroom must build an understanding that learning is constant and use approaches that encourage intrinsic desire to grow and take control of one’s own learning. Make sure your provoking questions are accessible and build habits in students to look after their own learning progress."

I don't know if I can ever get to that stage, and I'm not sure if I want to. I believe that students need guidance from a teacher, knowing the path they can travel. It comes down to "you don't know what you don't know." 

And me?
I will keep working hard to growing independent self-managing students, who want to be the best they can be.  I want students who do the best they can to grow, not to please others.

Most Likely to Succeed

What?
Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend a viewing of the award-winning documentary "Most Likely to Succeed" made by Greg Whiteley. The screening was presented by CORE education, and screened at St Peter's School, in Cambridge.

The film's synopsis:

The current educational system in the United States was developed a century ago during the rise of the industrial age and was once the envy of the world. However, the world economy has since transformed profoundly, but the US education system has not. Schools are attempting to teach and test skills, when mastered, that still leave graduates woefully unprepared for the 21st Century. After presenting this problem, the documentary focuses on the story of a school in San Diego that is completely rethinking what the experience of going to school looks like. As we follow students, parents and teachers through a truly unorthodox school experience, the audience is forced to consider what sort of educational environment is most likely to succeed in the 21st century?

What caught my attention?

• student agency
• meaningful
• soft skills
• feedback
• exhibition
• real audience
• obvious growth and learning
• thinkers
• collaborators
• problem solvers
• re-imaging

Discussion
After the screening, the audience all participated in a group discussion where we shared our thoughts on the following questions:

What changes are happening?
What do we still need to do?
What action/discussion points will I take back to school?
What next?

So what?
I came away from the film with a renewed desire to look at my teaching practice. I was trained under the old style teaching (based upon system created in 1893). To me this system is not adequately preparing students for the society we are moving forward, where it's not about specific knowledge, but instead, knowing how to access knowledge, as well as being problem solvers who work creatively and collaboratively with others. 

I believe that I need to change the way I teach.  Fortunately, we work under a forward-thinking curriculum which gives us the freedom to make change.

Working out my thinking and how I am going to make changes will be a large part of my PLD over the next year or so.