HS English CLC, #5 February 21, 2009 (Rough Draft)

HS English CLC, #5 – February 21, 2009

Objective: . This CLC will focus on execution best practices. . The CLC will be more collaborative in nature than the past CLCs with the goal of building communal responsibility as we move into the CLC-less months of the spring.

Agenda: Hour 1 – Group Problem Solving & Resource/Best Practice Sharing Hour 2 – Session on one of the options below (based on response by teachers to my survey)

Hour 1 – Group Problem Solving & Resource/Best Practice Sharing

The following categories were posted around the room on posters. Teachers spent 15 minutes responding to them (chalk talk style). They responded under the categories: “When I’ve done this well”, “When my kids get stuck”, “What I am struggling with”

. Author’s craft and style . Theme . Getting the reading done (well)! . Students asking specific, interpretive questions about a text for themselves . Students identifying and interpreting the meaning of repetition/motifs . Comparing and contrasting (texts, characters, concepts, beginnings & ends, craft/style, effectiveness, etc.) . Students analyzing & fully explaining how their evidence proves their point Notes from Our Discussion:

Getting the reading done: . Hold kids accountable: o Give 5-10 question reading quizzes on basic comprehension-level questions every day. Call home if a student fails 3 consecutive quizzes.

o Put one word on the board and have students explain how it relates to the reading from the previous night – this serves as a reading check as well as a warm up to discussion. (For example: after the students read chapter three of Animal Farm, put the word “committees” on the board. Students should then be able to list some details about Snowball making committees to do jobs, most of which fail, and how he clashes with Napoleon, etc. This can lead into the discussion for the day.)

o Give students something written to do while they are reading – simply have them summarize each page in 2-3 sentences as they reach the bottom, have them illustrate what they think is the most significant moment, have them answer a sheet of low to medium difficulty questions. For older students, have them pick out the three most significant sentences from the reading and explain their choice, or have them write down several questions prompted by the reading (Note: you have to teach students to ask good, specific questions or else you might get “What will happen next?) Even give them a choice between several options like these.

. Making Sure Students are Adequately Prepared: o Read the first chapters of a book together in class. Students will be less daunted and confused by the book once they have a framework for understanding it that is established in the first chapters. o Don’t expect students to read texts that are at their frustration level while at home. If a text is really hard, it might be better done in class. o Provide students with “vocabulary banks” so that knowledge of vocabulary doesn’t discourage them. (I usually give ¼ page packets that are small enough to slip inside the book at the start of each chapter as a reference for them. This was especially helpful in Night where there was a lot of religious vocabulary.)

Theme: . Long-term planning thematically: Have an anchor text, or two, (like a play/novel) and accompanying songs, short stories, poems. Kick-off the thematic unit with a high interest piece. Example: Read Virginia Tech article and talked about “What makes people ‘mad’?” Then read The Bell Jar and Hamlet. Elena is our CLC expert – can you send out your long-term plans?

. When to interject related texts? Start and end unit with something other than the anchor text as a way of framing the unit’s themes before you begin and deeply analyzing/evaluating them when you have finished. During your reading of the anchor text, use Friday’s as a day to interject shorter related texts. . How to kick-off a thematic unit effectively? o Have the students write personally and creatively on the theme using a prompt that activates their prior knowledge/experiences. (For example: have students write a short description of a time that rumors go out of hand before reading The Crucible.) o Anticipation guide where students rank how much they agree or disagree with theme- based provocative statements before they begin the book. Then collect and keep them to have students redo at the end of the book. This can be the jumping off point for an essay if students find that the book drastically changed their opinion on something. (Variation on this from Josh Bailey: have an “in or out” session where you have statements and students have to move to different corners of the room based on how much they agree or disagree, then discuss with those who hold their same opinions before swapping to discuss with those who don’t. If you are worried about accountability and students just going with friends, have them write their responses on notecards first.) o Have students do a 1-class period research project. Have them search for a single word, such as “genocide” for Night, and challenge them to find it in 2 different genres of sources that they will be unlike their classmates (books, newspapers, magazines, lyrics, poetry, art, movies, speeches, humor (political cartoons), editorials). Have them print and summarize what the word seems to mean in that particular article. In groups, have them discuss. Then gather big ideas on the board.

. How to analyze theme when the anchor text is in progress or almost finished? o Provide the theme to students instead of asking them to pull it out. Then have them analyze how it is created instead of struggling to find (identify) it. (For example: when I taught night, I provided my students with a list of four themes at the end of the book. They then had to go back and find quotes that connected to that theme and write them into boxes on a worksheet; then, they had to explain how these quotes related to the theme. This helped to get them to pay attention to the text itself.)

. The following are anchor texts that many people teach at different grade levels. We should consider working on themes for these books so that we can use them later this semester or pass them on to next year’s corps from the get go: o 9th Grade: To Kill a Mockingbird, Animal Farm, 1984, Romeo and Juliet o 10th Grade: Night, Oedipus, A Doll House, Heart of Darkness, The Alchemist, Speak o 11th Grade: The Great Gatsby, The Crucible o 12th Grade: Beowulf, Macbeth, Canterbury Tales

. Heather – can you send out more thoughts on the theme of “modernity”?

Things we struggle with about theme: . How do we help kids see the difference between main idea and theme? (Some people have been teaching theme as “the moral” as a solution.) . Kids get too wed to the idea of simplistic lessons that they have heard before. Example: “Keep your friends close and enemies closer.” “What happens in the dark comes to the light!” What type of text and length of text is appropriate for lower level readers? o Anchor text at much lower level, then supplemental texts at grade level – This ensures that students are given a manageable anchor text allowing them to do high-level thinking and analysis because you don’t need to struggle constantly against comprehension. However, the supplemental texts give students the challenge that they need to improve their reading ability past where it already is. Move more slowly through higher level texts, pay extremely careful attention to how you frame it and give context before even beginning, and focus on skills appropriate to a challenging text such as drawing conclusions or attending to text structures (like headings or titles) to aid in comprehension. o Finding high level texts  tie contemporary high interest text to a classic (For example: Feed – having a computer chip in your head, corporations take over  with Night)

o Possible lower level anchor texts: . Speak + a documentary called Culture Shock from PBS (follows four girls in a high school), article called “Sexual Harassment in High School”, parts of movies, music/music videos (Rachel, can you send out this article?) . Books by Walter Dean Myers (including: Slam, Monster) . Books by Gary Paulson (including: Hatchet, The Rifle) . Books by Scott Westerfield

o The Bluford Series is a set of very low-level books with themes related to many of the standard texts we use. They will send you a free set. These books might be great for differentiating for extremely struggling readers or providing at home reading that will not frustrate students while also helping them to have a better framework for understanding the themes of harder works. (CAUTION: the editing is BAD, not great literature, be careful, have kids read it on their own.) (Michael, you are our go to guy on this front!)

Hour 2 – Socratic Seminars

A comparison of Socratic Seminars and Five-Step Lessons:

5-Step, Objective-Based Lesson Discussion-Based Interpretation Lesson

Format of 5-Step Lesson with INM, GP, IP Discuss questions of interpretation (using a variety Lesson of skills/knowledge/objectives). Assumes that students have a basic comprehension of the text before discussion begins.

Focus of A particular objective from the standard Developing interpretations about the meaning and Lesson course of study. purpose of a particular text.

Goal of Mastery of an objective (through INM, Practice generating questions about a text, creating Lesson GP, IP) a guess about meaning/purpose of text, and then identify and analyze textual evidence to support or disprove hypothesis about meaning. Why teach By mastering an objective, students gain a By practicing asking/answering questions about a this way? specific tool/term that can be used on any text, students will improve their ability to make text. (For example, learning about meaning authentically using whatever skills are characterization in one text should allow a demanded by a given text. student to recognize and analyze characterization other texts.)

When to Most useful after students have a Most useful after students have a thorough teach this comprehension-level understanding of the comprehension of the text. Focus on a narrow set way? text, but before they’re prepared to jump of pages or even a very short passage so you can into the highest level interpretive questions go in deep and specifically. that require a student to synthesize many skills.

Focus of 1. Development of clear introduction to the 1. Starting with the text as a reader to develop a Planning objective focus question that can sustain discussion by 2. Development of objective-aligned leading students to their own questioning and practice and assessment interpretation 2. Coming up with multiple defensible interpretations that students may arrive at in class 3. Finding multiple citations of evidence in text to point out to students to help answer discussion questions as needed 4. Knowing which focus objectives/skills that you taught in previous classes will help students evaluate the author’s intentions

Use of Planning starts with an objective which Planning starts with a text and how you make Standard will be the center of the lesson and each meaning of that text, rather than the standards. To Course of lesson really focuses on one objective at a make meaning, discussions will require that Study time. students eventually recognize the most important Objectives skills/devices involved in that particular text so the process of interpretation will drive students towards understanding a set of “objectives,” just not in a daily, isolated sense.

“Reading a book on any level beyond the elementary is essentially an effort on your part to ask it questions (and to answer them to the best of your ability.)” – Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

Prerequisite Student Skills and Understandings for Literary Discussion:

(1) Annotating – Students need to be especially skilled at asking specific questions because their questions about particular moments will drive the discussion forward & making connections because they will then be able to link different pieces of textual evidence from the text in order to create meaning that is not explicit.

(2) Deeper Hidden Meaning (reading between the lines, finding implicit messages) – Most students assume that authors say what they mean & say only one thing at once. Students must be explicitly taught the idea of authorial intent to mean something through how things are said, not just what is said.

(3) Using evidence – I teach my kids this procedure: 1. Make a hypothesis about the focus question. 2. Find textual evidence to support it. 3. Use the evidence to prove their response by explaining the evidence.

(4) Multiple Interpretations – Students have been taught to think in terms of right and wrong. We need to help them experience more than one way of understanding a text’s meaning so that they will instead look for well-supported and unsupportable claims instead of “right and wrong.” Notes from Our Discussion of Socratic Seminar Discussions

Framing the Text: “Are you in or out”  frame text with opinion question and four square (JOSH SEND THESE OUT!) . Find someone from the opposite side and convince them they are right (have them write down their opinion on a note card FIRST)

Getting Kids to Use Evidence . Saying over and over in discussion, “Where do you see that in the text? Find me a quote.” Eventually kids will do this without being asked.

. Sticky Notes – have kids write “THE MOST IMPORTANT” quote on the sticky and bring it to the board (putting repeats on top of each other). Then discuss the importance of those quotes as a class.

. Give students the claim, force them to find the evidence OR give kids the evidence and force them to make the claim.

Types of Discussion: . Answer a HW Prompt – they chose one of five and write about it for 15 minutes silently, then go to one part of the room and discuss with others about that same prompt . Passing Notes – silently converse (1,2,3 notecard – “What is insanity?” “What makes a person insane?” “How responsible is someone for their actions if they are insane?” – fold and pass the notecards, then add OR do this with three important quotes) . Pretend to be a character and write to another character (ELENA SEND OUT) . Topic, Audience, Purpose, Format – write from one paragraph to another . Write as if they were in a piece of art to another character . Symbolic Character representation (represent a character with a symbol  a martini glass to represent a heartbreaking, glimmering wealthy woman . Symbolic Themes (represent theme with pictures) . Six degrees of separation – word association  Blindness to quote from Oedipus to … weakness (Josh, send example)

Ordeal by Cheques  hollowness theme  create a story  inferring  talk about the characters from inference .