BCTELA

After 26 years at UBC, Joe Belanger's best-before date expired and he was off the shelf. Sidelined but not silenced, here he confesses his Achilles' Heel and dispenses avuncular advice.

(Click here to download this article in PDF.)

In 1965, the Commission on English concluded that the teaching of English was not a profession but a predicament. In many ways, particularly evaluating students' compositions, not much has changed in almost a half century. During my 40-year teaching career, ninety-five of every hundred problems have resulted from trying to quantify the performance of human beings. Usually even the students who received the top grades on an assignment felt somehow slighted. In composition evaluation - that most subjective realm - I think I did a reasonably good job of classifying students' papers into "good," "better," "best" - like the old Eaton's catalogue - but when it came to adding plusses and minuses to these grades (as Hazlitt might say, a refinement of malice), or worse, used numbers from 0 to 100, I was asking for trouble. Of course, there is a good deal more to teaching English than grading students' written work, most of it delightful, but this task can be overpowering both because it has an insatiable appetite for time and because it creates barriers between students and teachers.

Four decades of tinkering, researching, reading, consulting experts, observing students and martyrdom left me with memories of a lot of bright ideas that did not meet their promise and an extensive list of grading practices I would try to avoid in the future. That said, I think there are five general problems in assessment that that would benefit from our attention:

 

1. Time Management in a Black Hole
2. The [Al]mighty Grade
3. Teaching Standard English Usage: The Error Trap
4. Attending to Students' Feelings
5. Engaging Students in Reading and Discussing Our Comments

 

1. Time Management in a Black Hole

The major festering sore in the teaching of English is the amount of time English teachers devote to responding to students' written work. Oh, yes, it is tacitly acknowledged that the loads of English teachers are far above average, but the caveat is added that all teachers respond to students' work in one way or another and all come up with grades for report cards. Teachers who do not mark a lot of essays contribute to the school in other ways such as supervising sports, music or drama or sponsoring clubs or graduation. Still, insights into the English teacher's plight come from some odd quarters. In a recent play at the Jericho Arts Centre the teacher pointed out to the parent that it took her twenty minutes to respond to each grade twelve student's English paper. This is only ten hours for a class of thirty, but she had five classes, so she had to find 50 hours each time she assigned a paper, and that was on top of preparing and teaching and supervising the yearbook.

This is not news: We have a long history of trying to deal with the time problem. In the mid-60's, the Conant Report recommended that the maximum load for teachers of English be four classes, that each class be limited to 24 students, and that each teacher of English have one additional "marking" period in his or her timetable. An Edmonton school board which had three university professors from the humanities as members implemented many of these recommendations. Unfortunately, not long after these board members retired, a budget shortfall took away the English teachers' marking periods and increased class sizes. Some British Columbia school districts hired markers to support teachers of English, but budget crunches devoured these, too.

Unfortunately, what's lacking is strong evidence that (a) English teachers are devoting significantly more time to their jobs than other teachers are and (b) providing English teachers with additional time to respond to students' written work would result in better student writing. Perhaps the paucity of such studies results from the fact that they would be very difficult to design and implement; perhaps it's just that we don't want to risk finding out that we are not quite so exploited as we think we are.

Neil Béchervaise contends that this talk of equitable workloads is just a red herring which distracts us from our real task, devising ways to arrive at fair assessments of students' written work which help students to learn. I have not been able to convince myself that he is more than half right.

 

2. The [Al]mighty Grade

Friends tell me that putting a grade on a paper is easy: once they have read through a paper, the grade it warrants jumps right out. That has not been my experience, and indeed I challenge these friends to prove their prowess by conducting a couple of little experiments suggested by Diederich (1974). First, photocopy a set of student papers early in the year, replace the names with random numbers and regrade the papers after four or five months. If you carry out this experiment and discover you have assigned similar grades to eighty percent of the papers, don't grow hoarse singing your praises: that's about the percentage research would predict. Instead, try to figure out what went wrong on the twenty percent in which the two evaluations are a letter grade or more apart. Alternatively, trade stacks of photocopies with a trusted colleague and assign letter grades to the papers. If you assign exactly the same letter grade to each composition, you will have made history and should write books on the subject.

As part of a team of researchers (Belanger, Allingham, and Sloan, 2003, hereafter "think aloud"), I sat with individual secondary school English students and recorded their responses to papers their teachers had evaluated.2 As might have been predicted, all but one student flipped to the back of the paper to see the grade first, but the big surprise in the study was the way that the grade acted as a barrier to further reflection. Many students who received the grades they thought they deserved simply did not read any further. As one grade-twelve boy reported "Since I got it right, there is no point in reading the comments." Even the top grades did not lead the students to read anything more than the sentence or two of praise at the end. The grade-twelve girl who received the highest grade in her class (46 out of 50) lamented that "I would have liked 48 or 49 a lot better." On the other hand, students who received low or failing grades were generally agitated and did not read the comments either. Instead, they focused on ways to convince the teacher to let them rewrite the paper for a higher grade. When asked how she would handle her failing grade in the classroom, one student said "I would just sit and sulk."

As suggested above, assigning a fair and accurate grade to a piece of writing is no simple task. The first issue is reliability: What is the paper's true value? Would a colleague in your school give it a similar grade? Would someone in a different district give it a similar grade? It turns out that individual assessments of students' compositions are not very reliable. Research suggests that one grade in five may be in error one letter grade or more. Diederich, French, and Carlton's (1961) classic study asked 60 raters (30 professors, 10 lawyers, 10 journalists, 10 businessmen) to arrange 300 university-student essays in nine piles according to merit. (Imagine volunteering for this job!) The results were chaotic. Over one-third of the papers received all nine grades; no paper received fewer than five different grades. Work I did in 1978 with two trained and calibrated raters produced similar results. Diederich argues that team grading procedures - the types used on large scale evaluations - should be used at the ends of terms to establish reliable grades on students' written work. (See Belanger (1985) for a rationale, procedures, and examples.)

The second issue is validity. Are we measuring what we say we are? If the paper is written in response to literature, for example, which part of the grade is based on the subject matter - insights into the literature - and which is based on the writing itself? Can you separate the two? Researchers who have assigned separate marks for content and presentation generally report that raters establish in their minds an overall grade for the paper and then fiddle the categories so that the component numbers add up to the grade they think the paper merits. At their best, the Reference Sets encourage rater training and post-grading discussions and thus come up with more valid and reliable grades. However, teachers tell me that applying the Reference Sets simply adds another task to an already overcrowded schedule.

Of course, all of this technical discussion avoids the fundamental question: Are grades necessary? worthwhile? educational? Some argue that grades provide motivation for students; others say that motivation should be intrinsic to the task rather than the product of some fanciful system of ranking and ordering. Some hold to the "next level up" theory which claims that students need records of grades so that those downstream can make decisions about hiring or admission to more exalted schooling. Others argue that in this case English teachers are simply doing the work that others should be doing. Why should high schools classify students for post secondary institutions or corporations? If these groups want to know how well students can write, let them devise measures which show this. Our job is to teach students to write, not to make it easy for universities to pigeon-hole them - and then complain that we don't do a good job of it.

Some of the most revered fields of study have abandoned letter grades in foundations courses. For example, for the past ten years most of the Faculties of Medicine in Canada have graded pass/fail in basic coursework. In education, there was a collective sigh of relief when Marilyn Chapman spearheaded a pass/fail grading system for the teacher education program at UBC. This change had an extensive evaluation component which sought the opinions of all members of this academic community at regular intervals. Evidence collected from instructors and students and the professorate in general has largely been positive. The caveat seems to be that the program must be all one way or all the other. Having some pass/fail and some graded courses turns the pass/fail courses into second-class endeavours: students know where the money is and put their effort into the graded courses. It turns out that grades in the teacher education program are not very necessary after all. In an informal study I conducted, administrators told me that they were very interested in reports on student teaching experiences but that grades in methods and foundations courses didn't predict very well classroom performance. An argument in favor of grades contended that students could use education grades to bring up their averages to be admitted to graduate school. Unfortunately for those with this on their wish-list, faculties outside of education generally do not pay too much attention to grades in teacher education programs when assessing applicants for graduate school.

It's tempting to suggest that if some university faculties can implement pass/fail grading, so can school systems, but I'm not quite that naïve.

 

3. Teaching Standard English Usage: The Error Trap

In responding to and grading student papers, we make a number of assumptions, many of them questionable at best. A major assumption is that students will learn correct usage if we point their errors out to them. Underlying this assumption is the belief that students will actually read our comments, that they will understand them, and that they will know how to avoid the errors in the next pieces of writing they do.

My favourite error quote is a bit of a mirror for me:

When I consider how many hours of my life I have spent trying to root out these errors by a method that clearly did not work, I want to kick myself. Any rat that persisted in pressing the wrong lever 10,000 times would be regarded as stupid. I must have gone on pressing it at least 20,000 times without visible effect.

(The panelist goes on to note that he gave many tests of usage which showed small improvement from year to year but that the drop-out rate more than accounted for this improvement.)

Panelist, Farrell (1970) Deciding the Future, p. 141

Alfred M. Hitchcock (the professor, not the director) advises teachers: "Don't be a ferret. Overlook many errors." He believes that many errors are just "the blunders of youth which will disappear in due time." Others argue that students assume that anything they have written which is not marked as an error is not an error. So, the logic goes, they will persist in using these erroneous constructions if they are not noted.

One of the major difficulties with noting errors on students' papers is maintaining consistency. In a study of grade-twelve papers marked by one teacher several years back, I found that the teacher would mark one example of a particular error, skip the next three or four examples of that error and then mark another. All of the papers had many notations per page, but there was no systematic effort to root out particular errors. The teacher, of course, was very conscientious - one of the leaders in the profession (Belanger 1986). Gary Sloan (1977) analyzed 2000 compositions he had inherited that had been marked by over 50 college instructors. He noted that inconsistencies in marking of individual papers were rife, especially for those who focused on mechanics. The most amusing observation, however, was that the instructors made the same errors in their comments that they were trying to root out of students' papers. It took me a long time to get into the habit of proofreading my comments.

I have also learned not to send home papers with errors which have not been noted because it gives industrious parents the opportunity to mark all of the errors I missed and send the papers to the principal or school board chair. A solution for this is a cover page for each paper which notes the editorial usage items which have been annotated. As a student teacher, Ernie Hall tried a variation of this: he bought a rubber stamp "Draft only; this paper has been marked for [fill in three or four points]" and used a green stamp pad. These items of usage students can be expected to know and use correctly on their papers. Daniels and Zemelman (1985) suggest developing a chart for each student's folder. Down the left side of this chart, items of English editorial usage are listed. Across the top is a list of the papers the student is to write during the term. Teacher and student can determine the focus for each paper and note the number of examples of each error marked on each paper.

Revising students' sentences to show them a better way of writing may not be as effective as I thought. Students in the "think aloud" study - when prompted to read their teacher's revisions - were at best lukewarm to the practice: "I suppose it's a better way of saying it," admitted one grade-twelve girl grudgingly. More often the response was resentful, "Well that's her style but it's not mine" (grade-eleven boy), or blatantly hostile: "It really picks me when someone rewrites my sentences, as if I can't write" (grade-twelve girl). When I think of the thousands of sentences I have rewritten, modeling what my teachers did but having no idea how my students might respond, I resolve to book an appointment with my psychiatrist immediately.

In the "think aloud" study, one of the most effective ways of teaching editorial usage was by a grade twelve teacher who divided editorial usage into ten categories and assigned three students to become experts in each category. Students offered their peers direct instruction and practice in these items and then became the class experts during peer editing sessions. When we examined these students' papers we found that they made fewer of the errors taught than we would generally expect and that in conversations with them they read the teacher's comments and could explain where they went wrong. Many said that as a result of this system they were much more comfortable with editorial usage.

Perhaps a key question in this is "how do we learn to grade papers?" Unfortunately, most of our models are college or university teachers who have a good deal of time, many more resources, and not a lot of students, so they are able to pounce on every error in a paper. Of course, if you have taught English long, you know the burden of responding and you have probably worked out your own system for handling the paper load. Your system works for you, at least marginally, and it gives you a good feeling having done your part. Addressing such questions as are your practices effective? and how could you make them better? It takes time and energy most teachers would rather devote to catching up.

A major barrier to change is overturning a system that works even if it does not work well. The profession is rife with systems, but the extreme cases are often either amusing or frightening. A grad student once shared her father-in-law's practice with the class. Every evening after supper he retired to his study and marked papers for three hours. He took Sundays off. It would be good to design research studies to document the effectiveness of such dedication. Other systems require more skill but less time. Herman Kirchmeier was ambidextrous and would write corrections in the left margin in red and comments on the substance in the right margin in green. When I taught his students the following year they encouraged me to use his system but I was unable to grapple with it, not having two right hands. On the other extreme, the story circulated in rural Alberta years back about a teacher who had his students write every week; he then locked the papers in his cupboard and had not returned one by the end of the year. On June 30 he piled the papers into the trunk of his car and moved on to his next school, somewhere across the province. Word was that he had done this for a decade before his antics became well-known and he had to move to another province.

 

4. Attending to Students' Feelings

Because students invest their personal beliefs and moral codes in their English papers, it is worth evaluating our comments from the point of view of how the student might feel reading such a comment. Unlike math, physics or chemistry where the answers are right or wrong and the student's investment is technical rather than personal, English essays are places where students can test their beliefs and values, hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares, and expect a response from a sympathetic but more worldly-wise reader.

I think we are beyond the stupid or arrogant comments which elitist teaching assistants once wrote on student papers ("Is English really your native language?") or the back- handed compliments that well-meaning professors might make ("You do a reasonably competent job of a desultory task" [this was 1963; the professor had awarded me the highest grade in the class on an assignment but, apparently, didn't want it to go to my head]). The problem lies in comments written in good faith, not mean or bullying statements written as if they were Acts of Parliament. The major question, one which is too seldom a part of our discourse and [almost] never found in marking rubrics, must be: how might the student who reads this comment feel?

In a graduate class, Jean-Anne Stene provided students with two types of comments and asked them to answer a series of questions, one of which was

How do you feel after reading what the teacher has written about your work?

This question raised a good deal of discussion about class members' experiences receiving comments and ways to avoid writing comments which inadvertently injure students.

5. Engaging Students in Reading and Discussing Our Comments

As a teacher, one of my faultiest assumptions was that students would hunger for my written advice, read each comment carefully, and be sure to avoid the errors that I had pointed out in the future. It sounded like a reasonable trade-off: I'd spend time reading and commenting; students would spend time reading and benefiting from the annotations.

Of course, it did not take too long to disabuse myself of this delusion, but it took a teacher from Sardis to offer the proof that I really didn't want to hear. He said that his wife and children were off to the beach one Sunday while he stayed home and answered the call of duty. As he wrote comments on students' papers he wondered if they were reading them. He then wrote "one Big Mac" in the margins of twenty papers and went out and bought vouchers for hamburgers. Only three students asked him after class what "one Big Mac" meant. I suspect that for even the students who read his comments "one Big Mac" made about as much sense as the universal "awk" or "frag" or "pro agr."

This is not an argument for abandoning marking but one for engaging students in learning from our comments. One of the major disappointments in the "think aloud" study was the miniscule number of students who actually read their teachers' comments without being prodded by the interviewers. With prompting most read the final comment and some of the marginal annotations, but allowed that this was not their usual practice.

What was worse, when we prodded the students to explain the teachers' annotations, more often than not they seriously misconstrued the substance of the comments. The transcripts are too long to reproduce here but can be found in the Technical Report, Appendix H: http://www.lerc.educ.ubc.ca/fac/belanger/technical.html

In my experience, whether they read the comments or not most students demand more than a letter grade on their papers. I asked a class once if they read the comments I wrote on their papers. "Of course, sir," was the response. However, when I asked the students why they were still making the same errors, most admitted that they didn't read the comments in more than a cursory way. "If you are not reading them," I said, "I won't write them." So I handed the next set of compositions back with mere grades. To save being assaulted, I needed to take the papers back and write comments on them. Another of life's little lessons.

In common with many other teachers of English, I have tried to devise ways to ensure that students read my comments with understanding and learn from them. As a graduate teaching assistant in English, I carefully annotated students' papers, put the grade on a separate sheet of paper, and returned the papers in class, keeping the sheet with the grade on it until students came to my office and discussed the annotations with me. A small number of students seemed to adapt well to this system, but most dragged their heels through our discussion of the annotations and then disappeared as quickly as they could once it was over. A small number didn't bother to come. One said that he would find out what his grade was when his transcript arrived in the mail. My wonderful system took a good deal of time; its major effect seemed to be alienating large numbers of students.

On the other hand, probably the most effective activity I used was to divide the class into groups of three, assigning each group to discuss each annotation, examine the underlying principle and discuss possible corrections. I circulated, asking and answering questions. I learned quickly that since the grades on the papers are personal, they had to be removed before the groups examined the papers. This had the disadvantage of having students wait until the end of the period for the thing that really interested them, the grade. It did, however, keep the grades, especially those lower than the students expected, from becoming a distraction. Unfortunately, I have no evidence that their writing improved as the result of these experiences.
Reflections

Where does all this leave us? I believe that there are steps we can take to address each of the five problem areas above. They are not quick fixes which will herald a new age, but they are steps we can take now to grapple with the massive problem of assessing and evaluating students' written work in English.

1. Gather evidence on the marking loads of English teachers and ways that teachers are coping. A series of graduate student investigations (graduating papers, theses, dissertations) which address various aspects of the problem could provide the evidence needed to begin to lobby our organizations to acknowledge the tremendous time commitment required to teach written communication and to respond effectively to students' written work.
2. Work with colleagues to improve the validity and reliability of grades on students' compositions. This will involve department or district work on scoring guides and rating procedures. Then share the findings through conference presentations, journal articles, and blogs.
3. Teach rules for editorial usage systematically, emphasizing selected rules at each grade level, reviewing the rules at subsequent grade levels, and insisting that students' papers be free of the errors studied. By the end of grade twelve, students should have mastered all of the rules in a college handbook.
4. Research the types of comments that students appreciate in both the affective and cognitive domains. How can constructive criticism be phrased so that it brings errors to the student's attention without offending the student's ego? Balance the comments on substance and presentation. In the "think aloud" study we discovered that students were very interested in comments which dealt with their insights and ideas but were not even mildly interested in those which pointed out errors in usage.
5. Articulate expectations and devise activities which engage students in reading and understanding each of our comments. Students should expect to have class time set aside each time papers are returned to read each comment, to discuss possible changes, and to write responses to the comments. If I had been able to do this, I believe I would have had a much more satisfying teaching career. Instead, during my time at UBC, I marked dutifully, handed papers back at the end of term, and saved in a file cabinet drawer the assignments I had marked but students had not picked up. As I was cleaning my office, I sent them off to the shredder in two cardboard boxes. How many novels or books of poetry could I have read? how many walks on the beach could I have taken? how many rounds of golf could I have played instead of writing advice on papers that went unread to the shredder? If all this advice fails to improve your life as a teacher of English, become a math teacher: marking is quite straight-forward and there isn't too much of it.

 

References

 

Belanger, J. (1978). Reading skill as an influence on writing skill. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Alberta.

Belanger, J. (1985). Conflict between mentor and judge: Being fair and being helpful in composition evaluation. English Quarterly, 18, 79-92.

Belanger, J. (1986). Student Written Errors and Teacher Marking: A Search for Patterns. A report presented to the Educational Research Institute of British Columbia (Project Grant 342).

Belanger, J. Allingham, P. V., & Bécheervaise, N. (2004). When will we ever learn?: The Case for Formative Assessment Supporting Writing Development. English in Australia, 141, 41-48.

Belanger, J. Allingham, P. V., & Sloan, A. (2003). Technical Report: Using think-aloud methods to investigate the processes secondary school students use to respond to their teachers' comments on their written work. http://www.lerc.educ.ubc.ca/fac/belanger/technical.html

Commission on English (1965), Freedom and Discipline in English. Princeton, NJ: College Entrance Examination Board.

Daniels, H. & Zemelman, S. (1985). A Writing Project: Training Teachers of Composition from Kindergarten to College. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Diederich, P. B. (1974). Measuring Growth in English. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Diederich, P. B., French J. W., & Carlton, S., T. (1961). Factors in judgments of writing ability (Research Bulletin RB 61-15) Princeton: Educational Testing Service.

Farrell, E. (1970). Deciding the Future: A forecast of responsibilities of secondary teachers of English, 1970-2000 AD. NCTE Research Report No. 12. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Sloan, G. (1977). The wacky world of theme marking. College Composition and Communication, 28(4), 370-73.

 

Footnotes

1. My teaching experience ranges from the junior high school through the post-secondary technical school to the university level. Therefore, my comments are directed to these levels. My observations of elementary classes and discussions with elementary teachers suggest that they have a different set of problems in responding to students' written work.
2. Eight teachers from five secondary schools provided the researchers with 57 compositions they had marked but not returned to their students. Individual students accompanied the researchers to a separate room where they were asked to "think aloud" as they read their teachers' grades and comments for the first time. The teachers were among the most experienced and dedicated in the province: five were current or previous English department heads; six had served on ministry examination assessment committees; five had served on the executives of specialist councils; two had taught as sessional university methods instructors. Who else might risk taking part in such a project?

 

by Krista Ediger

I've been teaching thematically for the nine years I've been in the classroom, but when I heard Jeff Wilhelm speak at the SFU Literacy Continuum Conference last August, his discussion of the importance of using essential questions to frame and focus units led me to reconsider my unit planning. I had been hearing murmurings of backwards design, and was involved in a group planning process two years ago for Humanities 8 which followed many of the principles of backwards design without my being aware of it, and I worked extensively with a partner on English 11 three years ago tackling big assessment questions, but I knew that it was time to explore the process further. The key difference between the unit planning I was used to and backwards design is the piece where, before deciding on instructional activities, teachers articulate the summative assessments they will use to determine whether or not their students have met their stated enduring understandings or learning outcomes.

Last year, I followed much the same program I taught the year before for English 12, and was feeling increasingly ineffective. In February, I decided I needed to plan the rest of my grade 12 course more purposefully, and so enlisted the help of a district consultant, Joanne Panas. In this article, I'll touch on our planning process, and then outline the unit itself, which grew into a multi-faceted, three month unit on story that touched on literary analysis of poetry and short stories, small group discussion, spoken word and personal narratives. Of course there are things I'll change next year when I teach this again, but it's a unit I will teach again, and some of the principles I practised in this unit in both the planning and implementing stages are ones that I am coming to understand as increasingly important in all my teaching: backwards design (identifying clear enduring understandings, essential questions, summative and formative assessments - all prior to the creation of daily lessons), planning with a partner or team, explicit teaching using modeling, gradual release, and differentiated instruction.

Our Planning Process

Before we began formally planning this unit, we had some conversations that focused on materials and activities. In particular, I was interested in a poetry unit Joanne had done last year with her English 10's that used text sets in a literature circle format. I also wanted to incorporate some spoken-word poetry that had been successful with my students in the past. We had a great conversation about how each of us might open a unit on short stories; from this came one of our big ideas: "Why do people tell stories?" After these informal chats, we set up a meeting to plan with a focus on backwards design. To our first meeting, I brought my copy of Understanding by Design, by Wiggins and McTighe; Joanne brought an activity from her staff meeting the day before, which was a boiled-down version of chapter 1 of Wiggins's and McTighe's book.

We began by determining the enduring understandings we wished to address, and these were based on our knowledge of the new ELA 8-12 IRP and its increased focus on oral language. At the same time, we worked out our essential questions. It's important to note that this was something of a back-and-forth process, not a linear one. We wrestled with phrasing, pared down ideas, checked the book, and moved items from one category to another. Once we had these ideas down, we looked at the skills, knowledge, and attitudes we wanted the students to acquire. Though somewhat "old-school," these last three areas are still valid organizers with their practical and concrete nature, but we realized they should come after the enduring understandings and essential questions are determined.

Our next focus was on assessment. For this part, we decided to go back to our two enduring understandings. We created a chart that helped us see how for each of the enduring understandings, we would have a formative piece and a summative piece. We found it easier to divide the enduring understandings up somewhat, as you can see in our final chart. This gave us a good idea of what we would have students do to demonstrate their acquisition of the big ideas. Again, this was not a linear process; we excitedly came up with ideas for instruction and assessment as we chatted, and wrote them down separately for the next section. At times it was hard to keep focused on just the key assessments. As we worked, we realized that we wanted to weave stories and poetry together; from that came the idea of choosing poems for the literature circles that had something to do with the idea of "story," which linked back to our essential questions.

Next, we needed to get a sense of the flow of the unit-how would we instruct and assess students so as to move them toward these final assessments? Actually, it was by then a fairly simple process. I began by sketching out a flow for the unit, incorporating instruction using modeling and gradual release, as well as formative assessment. Together we brainstormed ways to flesh this out, while continually checking back to our big ideas. Once this flow was pretty well set, we went back through it to make sure we were following a clear pattern of instruction and practice, followed by assessment. When we created the chart from our notes, the purpose of each activity was clear.

We met again about a week and a half later; by that point, I had just begun the unit with a class on "stories" - the history of story, their purpose and power, how their roles have changed. We also talked about narrators and points of view and truth and perspective before sharing some of the stories we tell often from our own lives. Then we looked at three short stories: "Man from the South" by Roald Dahl, "The Bet" by Anton Chekhov and "The Chaser" by John Collier, and did a variety of pre/during/post reading strategies, followed by discussion that linked us back to our opening questions and the essential questions of the unit. Joanne and I began our second formal planning session by brainstorming other possible stories for later in the unit. Then we worked on the shift to poetry. We decided to do a "fishbowl" with three teachers, Joanne, me and Gordon Powell, the teacher-librarian at McRoberts, using a new poem for each of my three English 12 classes; in addition, each of the administrators was invited to participate in the fishbowl sessions, and we ended up having an administrator at each one. We also worked on the poetry literature circle idea, and began to think of suitable poems as well as how to make up the text sets. Because we had done so much work last time on getting a clear idea of our focus for the unit, we were able to spend more time on the actual instruction, materials, and student activities we would use. We were also able to take our initial notes from the first planning day and make changes and additions to them to reflect what was happening in the classroom.

This has been a great process, and has solidified for us a few key points: two minds (or more) are better than one; the process of backward design is very practical, but it's not linear; and there is no "one right way" to incorporate the key concepts of understanding by design into your own planning. It doesn't matter what route you take, as long as you get to the desired destination.

 

The following is the result of our initial work with backwards design.

  

Part 1: THE BIG IDEAS
Enduring Understandings

• Students will understand how to engage with and respond to literature and ideas, and to interact with others around those ideas, orally and in writing.
• Students will understand that stories have a variety of purposes in our lives and society, and a variety of effects on us.
  

Essential Questions

• Why do we tell stories?
• What are the ways we tell stories?
• What stories do I (students) want to tell? Skills:

Students will…

• Respond personally to literature and ideas
• Participate appropriately and thoughtfully in small-group and large-group discussions
• Make appropriate choices in diction, language, rhythm, and structure when presenting
• Write analytical paragraphs and essays about short stories and poems

Knowledge: Students will…

• Review and use the elements of literature and literary devices of short stories and poems

Attitudes: Students will…

• Gain an appreciation of the purpose of stories in our lives and culture n Demonstrate willingness to engage in and explore literature and ideas
  

  

Part 2: Assessment

Enduring Understanding	Formative Assessment	Summative Assessment
Engage with and respond to literature and ideas, and interact with others around those ideas, orally…	■ class discussion of rubric for group discussion; students use rubric to evaluate teachers in fishbowl discussion ■ self-assessment and teacher feedback of small-group discussions (first - poetry lit circles and then short stories)	■ self-evaluation of small-group discussions (poetry lit circles)
…and in writing	■ teacher feedback and self/peer-assessment of analytical paragraphs on poems and essays on stories using teacher rubric	■ teacher evaluation of analytical essay on short story
Understand that stories have a variety of purposes in our lives and society…	■ peer/self-assessment of language and presentation skills for group poem written in response to a story or poem, presented to the class	See below.
… and a variety of effects on us	See above.	■ teacher assessment of spoken-word poem (your own story) written by individuals and presented to the class (Poetry Café)

 

Nicole Widdess teaches in Richmond and is the Curriculum Co-Chair for BCTELA. She is committed to teaching diverse learners and is passionate about literacy. Her current focus is teaching students in the middle years.

Click here to open a PDF version of this article.

As one of the Curriculum Coordinators, I am pleased to share that our Curriculum Pack sub-committee has developed new submission criteria that reflect current thinking, research and pedagogy. These criteria are also aligned with the ideas and research presented in the pedagogical considerations section of BC’s new K-7 and draft 8-12 English Language Arts IRPs. We hope that the new criteria will support you, our members, in writing up and submitting units of study for publication.

When you submit a curriculum pack, a member of our committee will provide descriptive feedback to assist you in revising and readying your unit for publication. Once accepted for publication, you are eligible for curriculum resource funds ($400). If you are interested in crafting a unit to be published by BCTELA please be sure to review the criteria below. Please send your unit (or proposal for a unit) to Nicole Widdess at NWiddess@richmond.sd38.bc.ca. Once your proposal or unit has been reviewed, we will be sure to get back to you as soon as possible.

 

Overview

• Identifies essential questions and enduring understandings

o These are the big ideas/inquiries that will guide the unit and the skills/strategies (including cognitive and metacognitive) that will be used/developed by students

• This overview should demonstrate links to the 2006 K-7 and/or the 2007 Draft 8-12 ELA IRPs m cuts across outcomes from the 3 organizers and 4 suborganizers of the ELA IRP

Assessment

• formative assessment/metacognitive activities

o formative assessment practices that help students learn to analyze and critique their work and to set personalized goals in relation to shared criteria

o offer students opportunities to generate criteria and strategies that are both contextual and meaningful

o a variety of assessment activities, including performance-based assessment

• summative assessment m performance-based assessment that includes detailed rubrics and links back to enduring understandings

Lesson Sequences

• a clear, detailed outline of suggested lesson sequences including m gradual release of responsibility

o assessment-to-instruction m metacognitive activities (e.g. using and/or generating criteria, self-assessment, goal-setting, and reflection)

o reading, writing, and oral language activities

o well-structured lessons that help students connect, process, and transform and personalize texts, concepts, and/or understandings

Diversity Considerations

• suggestions for adapting based on students' individual strengths and needs

• ways to differentiate based on student interests and context (e.g. text choices, variety of output options, variety of instructional modes)

Additional Documents

• performance rubrics

• handouts used in the lessons

• resources used, and suggestions for alternative resources

Reflection

• what worked especially well

• what came before this and after this in the year

• how this unit built on or was able to be built upon by other inquiries/units

Would you like support in developing a unit that integrates strategic teaching, formative and summative assessment, gradual release and the use of diverse texts using learning outcomes from the new IRP? Consider attending the Saturday Institute at our Fall Conference October 25, 2008. The 2008 Conference will be held at the Delta Hotel in Richmond this year. BCTELA Executive members Krista Ediger, Joanne Panas, Leyton Schnellert, and Nicole Widdess will be facilitating an institute on backwards design tentatively called "Designing Units with the End in Mind." A description of this institute follows:

So many best practices...how do you put them all together to create engaging, pedagogically-sound units that will help your students learn what they need to? Come and spend the day with us-learn about inquiry and backwards design, modeling and gradual release, assessment-to-instruction-and put it all together in a framework for a unit you can use. To get the most out of this session, bring a topic for a unit and sample texts you might use, and any brainstorming you might have already done.

The Curriculum Pack sub-committee members are looking forward to a year of learning together as we explore the new English Language Arts IRPs and develop new curriculum packs to support their implementation.

 

Leyton Schnellert is Co-Editor of Update and and a part-time Faculty Associate, Field Programs, Faculty of Education, SFU. leyton_schnellert@sfu.ca

Why spend the entire summer assembling an edition of Update? Good
question. Apart from the collective sigh of relief from the
contributors to this edition (who doesn’t want an extra six weeks to
rework the last draft of a piece?), it gives Krista and I a chance to
sit back and reflect on how the year has gone and what lies ahead. We
have recently done the same together with your BCTELA Executive.

 

In BCTELA’s effort to better support English Language Arts teachers we
traverse the landscape of adolescent literacy research and practice.
It’s an exciting and daunting task. In this edition of Update, Chelsea
Prince talks of how teachers in her school shared ideas and lessons and
approaches online. Similarly, at our Spring retreat the Executive
looked at the BCTELA website and realized that in this information age
we need something more interactive. How can members access past
editions of Update and get the latest news in the most intuitive way
possible? Stay tuned.

 

And then there are the new ELA IRPs. Important research-based and
classroom-tested ideas and approaches – pedagogical considerations –
BCTELA members have been exploring for years have found themselves in
the Considerations for Delivery section of the new IRPs. What can we do
as a collective body to support one another in exploring the clearer
focus on oral language, the emphasis on formative assessment, outcomes
specific to cognitive strategies, or ways to design curriculum with
enduring understandings in mind?

 

BCTELA thinks that initially we can help in two ways. First, you’ll notice
that our Fall conference (see the Check This Out department) is
organized in strands based on the pedagogical considerations section
and learning outcomes of the new K-7 and the draft 8-12 ELA IRPs (the
latter will be posted on the Ministry’s website in September). Indeed,
we have sought out leading educators from across the province to
initiate thoughtful explorations of relevant and innovative practices.
Faye Brownlie will start us off on the Thursday night with a “fireside
chat” exploring interesting and exciting ideas to pay attention to in
the new IRPs. We think that our program for Friday (the provincial
pro-d day) may be the richest we’ve ever assembled with a careful
effort to feature innovative work from around the province.

 

Secondly, we see the time is at hand to re-envision our Curriculum Packs. Using
the same current research around unit design, formative assessment and
strategies instruction, we are developing updated criteria for
curriculum packs that we hope will better support those submitting
units and, in the end, provide exemplars for BCTELA members that help
to link student learning, practice, and research. See Krista Ediger’s
piece in this edition as an example of a teacher working (with the
support of colleagues) to incorporate these ideas into her planning and
practice.

 

While BCTELA always strives first and foremost to nurture and address the
questions and needs as they pertain to the teaching of English Language
Arts, we also see how, across the province, more and more English
Language Arts specialists are collaborating with and/or supporting
generalists, special educators, content area teachers (i.e. Math,
Science, Social Studies), teacher-librarians, and applied skills
teachers (e.g. Fine and Performing Arts, Home Economics). When we start
to have conversations about the students we teach and what learning is
in this information age we cannot help but begin to look across the
arbitrary divisions in the school day and see how our goals for our
students can overlap to create more engaging and meaningful curricula.
Reading and writing, speaking and listening, viewing and representing –
the use of language and literacy practices - are crucial to learning
and are present in pedagogy across the disciplines.

 

In this edition we take some initial steps to draw together underlying
concepts that inform literacy-related practices across the curriculum.
From Sue Schleppe and her colleagues’ inquiry unit in Science, to
Carole Saundry’s work on inferring with text in Math, to Joanne Panas’s
update on “second shot” approaches to literacy instruction for
struggling adolescent readers in Richmond, there is a common underlying
message. When teachers are creative and take different avenues that
support students’ active engagement in creating understandings,
students have opportunities to build content knowledge as well as the
strategies they need to make meaning, link ideas across texts and
contexts, and apply what they know to authentic tasks. Colleagues
working together help one another to model and explain their use of
strategies, and emphasize that the more students understand strategies,
the more likely they are to use them and help students to self-regulate
their meaning-making and application of key concepts and approaches.

 

Mara Brkich’s piece highlights how dedication to improving students’
literacy skills – particularly higher-level thinking skills – has
significantly more impact at the school level and not just at the level
of the individual teacher. Students build their ability to
self-regulate when they develop and use a repertoire of strategies that
are needed to accomplish complex tasks, and when introduced to similar
thinking skills in different classes and contexts, they have the
opportunity to understand themselves as learners who can apply and
generalize strategies and approaches. When teachers work together to
implement common goals across a school, classrooms, and disciplines,
they build better learners and thinkers.

 

We do make a difference when we work together to make a difference for
kids. Hopefully, as the Executive focuses on a few key approaches that
can make the biggest difference for members of the Association, you
will feel better supported in making the changes that you feel will
best lead to authentic and meaningful learning for your students.

 

Leyton for Krista and the rest of the Exec.

 

 

Joanne Panas was a teacher consultant for Richmond last year, with a focus on adolescent literacy. She is currently teaching English at McRoberts Secondary in Richmond and working on her first novel. 

( Click here for Joanne's full article, including graphic organizers.)

Leyton Schnellert and Nicole Widdess' excellent article in the Winter 2007 edition of Update detailed where the idea for Second Shot classes came from, the research behind it, and some of the amazing work that went on in Nicole's class. As a district consultant in Richmond this year, I have been the support person for our Second Shot teachers and classes; as such, I would like to take this opportunity to follow up and share what has been happening this year with Second Shot.  

Overview of the IRI and Second Shot

As you may recall from Leyton and Nicole's article, Richmond applied for and received literacy grants from the Ministry of Education for the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years; we have been approved for 2007-2008 as well. These grants are used to support the Intermediate Reading Initiative (IRI) in Richmond. The overall purpose of the IRI is to improve the literacy skills of all students, with a particular focus on grade 8 students transitioning into secondary schools and the additional literacy challenges that come along with that move. To that end, each secondary school in Richmond has a Literacy Leader, who has time in her or his schedule to support school teams and individual teachers as they work to improve their instruction in literacy skills across the curriculum.

Part of this larger picture, which is represented in the recently-updated IRI graphic (Figure 1), is the Second Shot class, which is part of the "Extend" portion of the triangle. This intensive instructional class focuses on students who "survive but don't thrive" in secondary school; often their reading challenges have been minor or masked in elementary school, but when they are faced with the increased amount and complexity of the reading they are required to do in secondary school, they tend to fall further and further behind. These students are offered, in addition to literacy-related instruction in their regular core classes, a "second shot" of literacy instruction and practice in grade 8 which increases the explicit instruction they need to improve.

It's important for me to emphasize here that Second Shot classes are intended to reinforce what is going on in the rest of the school, not fill in gaps of missing literacy instruction. Richmond schools are working to address shared goals set at the school level and across the curriculum in the regular classes; Second Shot classes are part of that school wide-effort. In Richmond, five of our secondary schools have offered a Second Shot class (as each school has its own name for the class, I will use the generic name "Second Shot" throughout this article). For some schools, this is their second year offering this class, and for some it has been their first year. We had new teachers in this role in three of our five schools this year, and the learning curve has been steep! In the next sections I describe some of our successes and struggles.

Sharing and Problem-Solving Together: October

In October 2007, the Second Shot teachers had a day together to discuss their progress, share ideas, and bring up issues of concern. The teachers shared a number of things that were working well for them, including: having one-to-one conferences with students; engaging students with each other through partner talk; incorporating a reading workshop classroom model; using lots of modeling and think-alouds; using graphic organizers; reading aloud to students; guiding students in their choices for independent reading; and using sticky notes to both hold thinking and communicate back and forth with students. Several teachers brought sample lessons and activities to share with the group.

One of the challenges that the teachers identified was that some of the students who had been recommended for the class (usually by their elementary school) were not actually the clientele for whom the class had been designed. For example, some students were reading quite well and did not need to be in the class; in some classes there were students who were reading at a level well below what the class is intended to address. A few students with significant challenges such as emotional or behavioural issues or severe learning disabilities were placed in Second Shot classes; teachers found that the learning needs of these students could be better met through different, more tailored supports in other settings. In essence, there was a lot of confusion-from elementary school resource teachers and grade 7 teachers, to secondary school counsellors and even whole secondary school staffs-about the purpose of the class and the students who would most benefit from the Second Shot experience.

Beginning in January, I solicited the input of all the Second Shot teachers to create a set of guidelines for student selection. Over several months, and with many revisions from the teachers themselves as well as from district staff, we developed a set of documents (see Figures 2-8). In April, I debriefed the documents with elementary principals, with elementary and secondary resource teachers, and with a team from each secondary school, including the Second Shot teacher, the Literacy Leader, and other interested staff. Secondary schools can adapt the documents as needed to their Second Shot program specifications; however, they are keeping the referral form the same for the sake of consistency across the district. The Second Shot teachers have used the documents in their transition meetings with elementary schools; feedback received from the group in June may result in further revisions of the documents for next year.

Second Shot Classroom Partnerships

Part of the role of district consultants in Richmond is not only to support initiatives and school teams, but also to work with individual teachers and classrooms; indeed, it is one of the most enjoyable parts of the job! From January to June I was privileged to be able to work in varying capacities with three of our five Second Shot teachers and classes. My roles included: co-planning lessons and units; helping teachers find suitable materials for their classes; co-teaching lessons; teaching lessons while the teacher observed; and working with individual students and small groups while the teacher worked with the rest of the class.

One classroom where I was able to have long-term involvement was Ian Felgar's Literacy Dynamics class at Cambie Secondary School. Ian and I co-planned a unit on Looking for X by Deborah Ellis, with the goal of teaching students inferring skills; this goal was chosen based on the results of a school-wide grade 8 performance-based assessment (PBA) in the fall, and the students' progress since that assessment. I was able to co-teach many classes with Ian and got to know the students well over several months. (See Figure 9 for an outline of our unit). This classroom partnership was very successful, and Ian and I will be co-presenting the unit and our experiences with this lovely group of students at the SFU Literacy Continuum Conference on August 23 and 24.

In another classroom partnership with Brenda Dewonck at McRoberts Secondary School, we adapted the basic outline of the unit Ian and I developed for use with another novel, Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen. Brenda's goal was to improve her students' inferring skills as well. As part of the assessment-to-instruction cycle, we created and administered a mini-PBA on inferring partway through the unit (see figure 10); using that, Brenda was able to determine what other instruction the students needed to improve their inferring skills.

At the end of the year, both Ian and Brenda were keen to know how their students perceived the Second Shot class, and very graciously allowed me to interview their students, asking questions about their affect, metacognition, independence, and application and transfer-four of the six goals of the Second Shot class (see Figure 11 for all the goals). This has yielded some rich qualitative and anecdotal data about the class; we will continue to collect both quantitative and qualitative data next year and will share it with all our secondary schools.

Looking Back, Looking Forward: June

This June, the Second Shot teachers met to review our year and think ahead to next year. Some Literacy Leaders, as well as new Second Shot teachers for the 2007-2008 school year, were also in attendance. Once again, teachers shared something they had done that worked well, and we celebrated our successes. We collected feedback on various structures associated with Second Shot, including: the student selection process; connections with elementary schools; connections with Literacy Leaders and the grade 8 team; the assessment-to-instruction cycle and the grade-wide PBA; instructional practices including modelling, scaffolding, and gradual release; and professional development. The feedback will be used to help us support Second Shot teachers in a variety of ways next year.

An important part of the meeting was a focus on the goals of Second Shot (see Figure 11). We had a chance to reflect on how well we had met those goals over the year, and what we might do differently next year. We emphasized that everyone had done some work on the goals, but that it was important to strive to reach all six goals in each unit, and ideally to focus on several of them in any given lesson. Using the work Ian and I had done in his class, I was able to show how we had worked on comprehension goals by teaching inferring; we also worked on goals around application and transfer (using a science-based text to teach fix-up strategies), affect (building their confidence with fun scaffolding activities) and metacognition ("Beliefs About Readers" activity and other reflections/discussions). I also noted how we might have worked on improving their fluency (by having them read aloud to us one-on-one), or their independence (by having them choose among several articles to read for background knowledge). The final piece of the reflection was thinking about the assessment-to-instruction cycle; most teachers used the PBA data to set their goals for the year, but saw the value in doing more frequent and specific formative assessments through the year to check in on students' progress, much like Brenda and I did with the mini-PBA on inferring (Figure 10).

Metacognition: How did we do?

As I mentioned earlier, I was able to do exit interviews with two of the Second Shot classes; a third class filled out the interview questionnaire on their own. I was able therefore to gather data from three of our five Second Shot classes this year (27 students) on affect, metacognition, independence, and application and transfer. Did students improve in these areas over the year? Although this was a pilot survey, the results speak for themselves:

• 63% of students report feeling more positive about reading than they did a year ago.
• 63% of students report that they would have missed learning something about reading or literacy if they had not had a Second Shot class.
• 81% of students report using literacy skills from Second Shot in their other classes.
• 74% of students report using new skills when faced with challenging texts.
• 70% of students report feeling at least somewhat confident that they can handle ("I can do it") and/or understand challenging texts.
• 56% of students report an increase in their enjoyment and amount of independent reading.

The words of the students say as much as or more than the numbers do about the effectiveness of this class in building confidence in the students and developing their enjoyment of reading:

• "I feel good about myself because I read a book." 
• "I feel better about reading because I learned new strategies."
• "I can read more challenging text."
• "I feel good about myself understanding it." 
• "I think I have improved in my reading." 
• "I know I can do this."
• "After I took this class it made me connect to the book even more than before because I understand what the author's trying to say."
• "I didn't read on my own before. [Now] I read a lot! Harry Potter, Bridge to Terabithia, Shiloh; I like mystery the most, [it's] more interesting."

And one final, telling detail that dedicated childhood readers everywhere will appreciate, relayed to me with a sheepish grin by a young man who "used to read a little bit" before taking a Second Shot class: "One time I stayed up too late reading and my mom yelled at me."

  Carl Leggo is a poet and professor. After nine years of teaching in Newfoundland, he joined the Department of Language and Literacy Education at UBC where he has been teaching, reading, researching, and writing happily ever since. He has published three books: Growing Up Perpendicular on the Side of a Hill, View from My Mother's House, and Teaching to Wonder: Responding to Poetry in the Secondary Classroom.

A MUSING TEACHER

sitting on the edge of the gym stage
with dangling legs and a histrionic grin
I am the star in the school play,
You’re okay, Mr. Oggel,
a drama written collaboratively
with my students, about
a teacher who muses on his call
visions of hockey stars, lawyers,
politicians, corporate ceo’s
prance and preen
in my dreams
always surprised I am a teacher,
I learn my call and smile
with resigned joy
after the play,
Edith, another teacher, says,
That’s the saddest play I’ve ever seen
once again I am swept up
in a maelstrom of surprise since
I thought I had confessed hope
in a magnetic calling
called by Bob Barker,
come on down, Teacher
called up, like a soldier
in the Salvation Army,
drum echoes of noisy evangelism
for a long time I called,
called and called, but
believed nobody could hear me
yell from the bottom of a well
and only when I stopped calling,
I heard a whisper like light
alive in a stone when April sun
seeps into winter cracks
I never planned to be a teacher
but I am a teacher, no teacher on call,
a called teacher, a calling teacher,
a teacher calling always
calling for students
I am a caller at a barn dance
like Calliope, Muse of poetry

CAN YOU SEE THE POEM?

What poetry knows, or what it strives to know,
is the dancing at the heart of being.
(Robert Bringhurst)
I seek a singular poem, as long as life,
a life-long poem that sings in the infused folds
of the heart where necromancy is spelled
in diction, syntax, grammar because
a poem is a tree afire in autumn’s light,
the whole moon in winter’s night,
a winter stone’s hope in April sun,
the sun awash in summer’s twilight
a poem is caring about words, a call
to read slowly, to linger with words, a poem
spells line-breaks in breaths, no asthmatic gasps,
no near asphyxiation with hurried scurrying
a poem is waiting between the lines
to be called, calling me calling you calling,
singing in the lines, outside the lines,
here and there, yearning and learning to hear

 

B-ING

Beatles
in Beatle boots with a hint of imitation alligator
and Carnaby Street stovepipe plaid pants
ordered in the manic summer of 1965,
the world composed in Sears catalogue
and Ed Sullivan, I wanted to be a model
strutting in the mud of Lynch’s Lane

Beards
yesterday after more than fifteen years
I shaved off my beard because
I wanted to see what my face looked like,
perhaps wanted to become somebody else,
but today I am waiting for it to grow back

Beets
if you eat a lot of beets
you will pee red
and scare yourself half to death
with prognoses of imminent death

Backyard
every winter Cec Frazer Macky
my brother and I spent at least
a month burrowing a long icy tunnel
in the backyard and waxed
our toboggans so they would shoot
faster than bob sleds at the Olympics
and every winter Gordie Stuckless
asked to help and we said no
and late at night while we slept
Gordie Stuckless destroyed our tunnels
and none of us ever went to the Olympics

Bicycling
one summer my brother and I
raced all around town
on Raleigh one-speed bikes,
regularly stopped at the Holiday Inn
Glynmill Inn Corner Brook Hotel,
spotted foreign license plates,
saw all the provinces territories states
except Hawaii and the Yukon,
more fun than grade six geography

Bingo
a game that seeks lines
in letters and numbers,
I am never lucky

Basement
in the last week of June
Cec Frazer Macky my brother and I
waited for Bowater’s Park to open,
and played Monopoly and poker
and table-top hockey
in the basement for at least
sixteen hours a day
and always smelled mouldy

Blackberry Bramble
recalling childhood
is like a swallow
flying light
in a blackberry bramble

Books
with money from a week’s
gathering littered pop bottles
returned to Hutchings’ Store
I bought my first book,
Edgar Rice Burroughs’
Tarzan of the Apes
and put it in a bookcase,
still haven’t read it

Bread
on Wednesdays when Carrie
baked bread she wore
faded blue mauve pink panties
on her head to prevent
stray hairs falling into the dough
and the kitchen windows
always steamed up

Buttercups
I met you in a meadow of buttercups,
you wrote your world, my world, in light,
taught me to see with a photographer’s eye
how you love me with a love
that does not know light’s boundaries,
taught me to see with a daughter’s eye

 

CLICHÉ

as luck would have it
I am a cliché
trite threadbare twice-told
tired but happy, tried but true
a banal bromidic bathetic
specimen of humanity
well-worn warmed-over worn-out
doomed to disappointment
shopworn stale stock

along these lines
I am a cliché
prosaic platitudinous
working like a Trojan
jejune vapid shallow
no bolt from the blue
common flat dull
at the parting of the ways
over-used used-up

all too soon
I am a cliché
hackneyed stereotypical
with method in my madness
rubber stamped ready-made
safe and sound, sadder but wiser
derivative corny old hat
I set the wheels going
lifeless drained exhausted

still I was not always a cliché
once upon a time I was a word
repeated repeat repeated
repeat repeated repeat
once worth repetition
repetition rendered me worthless
the sprite turned trite
last as well as least
unable to keep up with the wor(l)d

as I grow older
always scribbled
I am more and more a cliché
my story more and more familiar
even before I have lived it
while less and less I write
my story written by others
too funny for words at least
a cliché in time saves nine

 

GLOSSOLALIA

glosser, glossator, glossarist, glossographer:
a person who writes glosses
I speak in tongues
in other words
other languages
I do not know
like the believer
who speaks in tongues
from the spirit
not the mind
my words are not mine
but unlike the believer
with anointed words
I am polyglot
with glossitis
my words flat without gloss
I am a babbling poet
a wanderer in the alphabet
seeking my glossographer
but I want no glossarist
who will define me
I call a glossator
who will charge into the dark places
where lines run skew
will you be my glosser?
don’t read my words only
read the margins where
the words begin and end
read the spaces in the words
where the unwritten is written
read beyond my words
to scribbled words
of others almost hidden
in my words

and speak in tongues
in other words
other languages
you do not know

 

PLUMBING

after dozens of meetings that rumbled
with the roar of a souped-up Volaré
with no where to go, interspersed with
e-mail spam and fiddling with pdf forms,
I craved an April morning devoted to poetry

but woke up with a blocked garburetor
and when Cliff the plumber arrived,
I had to stand around and pretend
I just might be useful since a residual guilt
still clings after decades of protests,
I have no talent, or inclination, for tools

although on my way to work yesterday
I saw a carpenter strutting across the road,
a hammer swinging from his big tool belt,
almost like a tail, or a playful puppy,
knocking him between the legs

and for a moment at least I wanted
a tool belt just like his, perhaps even
different possibilities for poetry

 

PREPOSITIONS

I write my lines

across
in
between
through
over
inside
on
under

your lines in dozens
of prepositional possibilities,
a lineal writing, defying
linear measure or equation

 

TREMBLING ASPENS

the forest presses heavy
on the light, full of hope
for names

shadows everywhere,
a dark counterpoint
in the light spaces
of air fire earth water

drawing silence
like the sun calls the sea

light and shadow are
the letters of the alphabet
rendering spaces visible
so we can see

even as language dissolves
revolves solves involves resolves
meaning deferred deferentially
in difference

still clutching the wild
chaotic world in my words

trembling aspens whistle
in the breeze like light rain

Joanne Panas is a Teacher Consultant (Adolescent Literacy), Richmond School District #38.

(Click here for a PDF version of this article)

There were so many choices of wonderful-sounding sessions to attend at the BCTELA conference, but one of my choices was a no-brainer. Dr. Jill McClay was my English Curriculum and Instruction professor way back when I was an Education student at the University of Alberta. We've kept in touch over the years, and of course I wanted to hear Jill's current thoughts on the issues of English and literacy. I settled into my seat with anticipation, knowing that whatever the topic, her presentation was sure to provoke lots of thinking!

Jill began by talking about the "new literacies" of technology, including blogs, instant messaging, sharing videos online, and many other kinds of literacy that go well beyond "print on paper." One of the most interesting and potentially alarming things Jill told us was the fact that eight- to ten-year-olds are the fastest-growing group of users on the internet. Two other statements struck me as related to that piece of information: "Relationship is the work of adolescents" (from Lev Vygotsky), and "Literacy is always about relationships" (Frank Smith). What we have then is a situation where young people are seeking relationships through online literacy, and as we all know, this can have positive and/or negative ramifications.

The core of Jill's presentation, however, was not to showcase cool new kinds of literacy, nor to inspire fear of the Internet, nor to invoke paranoia in parents and educators, but rather to ask a key question: "What is the ethos of this technological literacy?" In other words, a new culture is being created before our eyes, and we need to know what it's like, and what people are doing with it. What are the values of this community? What is its danger and its potential? How should we as a community of educators and parents respond to this new culture?

Jill gave us some examples of the ethos of the online literacy community. Fanfiction.net is one such community; in it, fans of many genres write their own versions of their favourite book, movie, comic, game, and so on, in the style of or in the spirit of the original. Others in the community read them and write reviews. In this way, relationships are created. In this particular online community, the ethos is that of good writing. There is no distinction between amateurs and professionals, young people and adults; all are welcome to write, read, and review. The people who run the site encourage constructive criticism and discourage bad writing, such as wish-fulfillment fantasy, and plot continuum errors.

Online literacy, Jill pointed out, tends to blur boundaries between speed and rhythm (emailmystery.com sends you a novel in installments), between public and private (read others' secrets at postsecret.blogspot.com), and between child and adult (fanfiction.net). Adults worry about these blurred boundaries, and with good reason. According to research done by media-awareness.ca, a non-profit organization that develops media literacy programs, kids can be exposed to inappropriate content and risky situations online, including bullying and sexual harassment. On the other hand, the same survey makes it clear that most young people have positive experiences online, and they use the Internet to foster existing social relationships and create new ones. How can we help keep kids' online literacy experiences positive?

Jill gave us some examples that made us realize that, regardless of the fears (and often, regardless of the rules) of parents and educators, kids are using the web and joining online communities; they are sharing their writing and secrets, reading those of others, and creating relationships. The Internet is not going away; in fact, access to the web is nearly universal in Canada, either at home, at school, or at public libraries and Internet cafes. Children are growing up with computers and they are far outpacing the adults in their lives in their use of the web, but not necessarily in their ability to assess and think critically about it. This is where we, the adults, come in. Jill's final point of the session was that we need to participate in web-based communities and literacy and respect, not dismiss, kids' online relationships. We need to learn the conventions of online literacy. Young people are not going to learn about online safety and security from us unless they see that we know what we're talking about, and that we are also part of that community.

At the end of the session, I had a lot of notes and a lot to think about. I am already part of one online community Jill mentioned, PostSecret, which I check weekly. However, I was unaware of most of the other kinds of technological/online literacies and communities she discussed. I had considered myself a competent user of the Internet; I know how to use search engines, I use email regularly, and have my favourite sites bookmarked. Jill's presentation made me realize how much more was out there, and that a lot of it could be very useful in the English classroom and beyond. But if I was so Internet savvy, and so were many other educators, what was keeping us from using the web in these ways? I realized that there are some practical barriers to that kind of knowledge base for many educators and parents. Time is a major barrier. Most of us don't have the time it takes to find these sites, figure out how to use them, and then actually join in at least semi-regularly. Access to hardware is another barrier for teachers; how can we teach Internet safety when many computer labs are too small for individual and sometimes even paired access, or have outdated computers with very slow connections, or are simply unavailable because other classes have priority? Finally, many teachers might use these sites on their own time, but when it comes to planning how to integrate Internet literacy into the curriculum, many teachers are simply at a loss. We need some guidance from those who understand both technology and curriculum.

So what can we do? One possible way to deal with the barrier of time is to connect with some interested colleagues (from anywhere-this is the Internet we're talking about!) and share your experiences with only one or two web communities in a kind of jigsaw. Teachers might get around limited access to computer labs by creating their own web-based community, so students can use the Internet on their own time, at home or in the library. For example, on-line literature circles could work; many school districts have their own intranet and can set up a conference with student access. Some districts have mobile laptop labs (and technical assistance), which can make computer-based projects a possibility for classroom teachers. Above all, teachers need training and support. Districts might consider giving workshops on the basics of Internet literacy communities. Most schools have at least one person who is Internet-savvy; that person may be able to get some release time to work with interested staff members. Regardless of our own concerns about technology, teachers are working with a generation that sees computers as part of daily life, and that includes literacy. We need to make the effort to get "with it" so we can ensure our students and children are navigating safely and effectively through this territory.

Harold Rhenisch

Harold, lives in 150 Mile House, BC. He won the Confederation Poetry Prize, 1991, and the Arc Poem of the Year Award and the Critic's Desk Award for best long poetry review, 2003. He has been a five-time runner-up in the CBC/Tilden/ Saturday Night Literary Contest and won the BC & Yukon Community Newspapers Association Award for Best Arts and Culture Writing, 1996. His non-fiction book Tom Thomson's Shack was shortlisted for two BC Book Prizes in 2000, and its sequel, The Wolves at Evelyn, will be published by Brindle & Glass in September, 2006. 

"There is a lot of time up on the Cariboo to contemplate the colour of snow: six months out of every twelve, in fact. When you add it all up, it becomes half a lifetime. So, what colour is snow? Well, not white. The snow that falls in November, for example, comes down in the evening like ashes from a July forest fire. The next dawn, it lies on the ground the colour of plum blossoms. By February, after the snow has half-melted and refrozen countless times, the shadows of trees burn across it in tattoos of bright lilac, while between the shadows it is dogrose pink - something between Martha Stewart's "Plaster Pink" and "Heirloom Rose."

Mind you, when I ask students what colour snow is, the answer is most often "white." I know what they mean. This confusion has a lot to do with the generalizing way in which language is most commonly used. Most of the time generalities serve our purposes well, allowing us to set shared terms and to encompass large amounts of information within easily transmissible categories. Where generalities don't always work, however, is in creative writing. However useful generalities might be in conversation or in technical writing, they are not easily going to lead to symbolism or expressive metaphors. To create those, we need enough individual, sensory material to make sufficient connections with our physical, perceptual lives to allow for the opening of unexpected doorways. With those doorways open, there is little, if any, writer's block; with them closed, every sentence can be a struggle. I know about that: when I first moved to the Cariboo, I was silenced completely.

I had just left the Similkameen Valley, where I had lived for thirty-five years, most of that spent working the land. In fact, I knew the land so intimately that I could walk out of my house, smell the cloudless, 35 degree early afternoon air, and tell you that a storm would come at 2 a.m., bringing two inches of rain. I wrote poems and my autobiography Out of the Interior out of that knowledge. Even so, it was not easily transferable: as soon as I moved to the Cariboo the world became generic overnight. I looked out over the lake in front of my new house and saw blue water, white clouds, green trees, brown tree trunks, and blue sky. It was ridiculous. I felt like I had entered a box of Crayola crayons.

My solution was to create palettes of colour. I set myself the task of sitting outside for a half hour every afternoon to create, in the manner of a watercolour painter, a palette of colours which I would be able to apply to my writing. Over the next three weeks, the reeds out on the point revealed their colours: old mason jars in my grandmother's basement, Bibb lettuce, the yellow of a D-9 Caterpillar bulldozer, and even, on the edges where the glaring light burnt into the stalks, the crazy purples of zinnias or petunias and the red of my daughter's rusty wagon. So it went for the whole landscape, until at the end of three weeks I was writing with great energy - no longer creating palettes but applying them. The result was a host of books: poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and, most importantly of all, my latest book Winging Home: A Palette of Birds - the direct result of that experiment with colour. Over the course of writing the book - and living it - the palette did change, of course, from the use of colour to find my connections with the landscape to the use of the lives of birds to find connections between my family, my children, the land, and the social life of an entire community. The book became a celebration - one which would have been impossible without that exercise in creating a palette. The experience was so powerful that I wanted to share the process with others. In short, I wanted to give it away.

I got my chance this spring in Vernon. In early May I met a group of writers at the Alan Brooks Nature Centre in the grasslands overlooking town. During the following six hours, I shared with them a variety of colour palettes, from the rather stultifying soil colour profiles of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Brown, Light Brown, Dark Brown, Dark Yellow Brown, etc.), to the delightful shades of Revlon hair dyes (Honey Glaze, Cherry Cola, Buttered Toast) and the riotous extravagance of Martha Stewart (Hooked Rug, Green Tea, Lamb's Ear) and explored the colours within the landscape of the nature centre grounds itself. Together, we moved through palettes of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet to describe the leaves, flowers, stones, and man-made objects that surrounded us. To focus our discoveries, I set three limitations: first, we would not use the generic names of colours, second, we would describe each colour in terms of a second obect, and third, we would find at least one example of each colour in every type of object. When it came to blue, for example, we found shades of blue within the gravel of the walkways (not an easy task!), in the doors of the Nature Centre storage shed, in the leaves of the saskatoon bushes, in the balsam root flowers, in the sky - everywhere, even where it seemed impossible. By the afternoon, we had a detailed palette for the landscape and were able to write about saskatoon bushes like silk blouses and garage doors like hydrangea flowers, and applied our palettes to our own writings. The results were stunning: generic descriptions of landscape written early in the day suddenly came alive. Instead of each sentence ending a thought and the next sentence coming in with a new one, each sentence suddenly provided doorways for memory, emotion, and gave linkages which bound paragraphs into common threads of thought. The writing now flowed with ease between description of natural and humanly created landscapes, including the growth of subdivisions and the entire history of land use in the valley. All the connections so important to the creation of poems, short stories, and essays had become immediately present. All that was left was to follow them.

A week later, I repeated the exercise with a group of writers in Kamloops. This time, we covered a far larger area, and with a far less homogenous group. The responses varied: some people responded to the walking itself, actively surging ahead to be the first to discover colours, while others hung behind more contemplatively and discovered colours that the more active members had missed. Still others initially bypassed words altogether and collected debris - posters, sandwich wrappers, etc. - blown off of the TRU campus by the wind, to illustrate colours they had noticed earlier in pine bark and lichen. We concluded the day with a thirty minute discussion while looking out over the Thompson Valley and the city of Kamloops. During the discussion, each participant explained what struck them most about the landscape, after which the entire group explored the possibilities of colour, shape, and motion which could create alternate palettes for teasing out the connections within their particular interests. One workshop participant, for instance, was drawn not to colour but to the traffic crossing a distant bridge; the palette we worked out communally for him was a palette of movement, not one of colour.

Right now, I am editing a book on the grasslands of the Chilcotin and am making plans to lead a group of writers there to experience that remarkable and little-known landscape. I'm confident that we will find a palette for it and that if we start with a palette of colour some people will quickly gravitate to palettes of stone, dust, grasses or wind, while others will move as deeply into colour as I did with Winging Home. I see no reason why a dozen other books will not come of the workshop, following the process which Winging Home documents in greater detail than these brief notes can do. As liberating as the grasslands are, to lead this workshop you don't need them, of course, or even a lake, or trees, or even a cityscape. In a pinch, any school yard will serve just as well, or even a collection of natural and artificial objects within a classroom. All that are required to break the bounds of the ordinary are open eyes and a sense of discovery - which, of course, abound, even within our more generalized world.

 

Harold Rhenisch
www.haroldrhenisch.com

You can find out more about
Winging Home from the publisher at
http://www.brindleandglass.com/books/winging.htm
Winging Home: A Palette of Birds
Vital Statistics 1-897142-12-9 ($24.95 C | $22.95 US)
6" x 9" paperback, 288 pages.

 

 

Joanne Panas is a coeditor of English Practice. She teaches part-time English in Richmond and is also an educational consultant and writer. Her biggest challenge is trying to put together all the wonderful things she's learning.  

Background: Teaching Responsively

Over the last couple of years I have been working to become a more responsive teacher. I do have a good idea of what students need to learn in any given year, based on both the ELA 8-12 IRP as well as my own experience of typical areas of growth for each grade. However, in every year, in every class, there are always areas of strength and areas that need work. I try to determine what these are in order to harness the strengths of each group of students and to address their needs. One area of need I have often noticed in the senior grades is in understanding the purpose of literary devices; for example, students can (usually) tell me what a metaphor is, find or give me an example, and even use one or two in their writing. But sometimes it becomes clear that although students can recognize a metaphor (or a parallel sentence or internal rhyme or even a great descriptive word), they don't understand the specific contribution it makes to a piece of writing. This translates into their writing when they choose a metaphor or simile that sounds good on its own but jars with the overall ideas they are trying to convey.

This was brought home to me in one unit I taught last year to my grade 12s. I assigned a paragraph asking students to explain how a writer had developed the theme of a poem using literary devices—a fairly standard analysis question. Several students struggled with this task. In particular, one student wrote that the poet used alliteration to develop the theme and proceeded to give examples of alliteration from the poem; however, he was unable to give any explanation other than the assertion that “the author used alliteration to develop the theme.” It was clear that this student was bluffing and, along with several other students, did not have any real understanding about how a poet develops a theme using literary devices. I realized that I had assumed that if they understood literary devices, and if they understood what the theme of a work was, that they would make the connection of how one impacted the other. Like most assumptions, it was false.

Clearly, I needed to support my students in seeing that every choice a writer makes—not just literary and rhetorical devices, but also form, words, sentences, punctuation, imagery, mood, tone, point of view, and even what is not written—is purposeful and has an impact on many levels. From that “aha” as a teacher (and as a writer), I developed a mini-unit called Choices Writers Make.

 

First Steps: Goals and Summative Assessment

My goal was clear: I needed students to see that literary devices were not just things writers tossed out at random to “spice up” their writing. Students needed to be able to connect what they already knew about literary devices and other choices to the impact of those choices on a piece of literature. My goals for this mini-unit were that students would:

◆ Understand that writers make a variety of purposeful choices in their writing.

◆ Explain how a writer’s individual and collective choices impact the text.

◆ Make purposeful choices that have impact in their own writing. Next, I needed a summative assessment that would match these goals. I created a multi-step assignment in which students were asked to: 1. Choose a short text appropriate to the class 2. Underline and number 15 choices the writer made in the text, using at least 5 different kinds of choices from the list below:

◆ form/genre

◆ individual words and short phrases, including deliberately misused words

◆ what is not stated/said/described (can’t be underlined, so make margin notes)

◆ sentences (e.g. syntax, length, types)

◆ structure, including paragraphing or stanzas

◆ imagery (e.g. sensory descriptions, comparisons such as personification or simile)

◆ other literary devices (e.g. sound devices, rhetorical devices, allusions, rhyme…)

◆ tone and mood

◆ irony

◆ contrast (or opposition)

◆ point of view

3. Explain the impact of each of the 15 choices on the work and/or on the reader (2-3 sentences each); number the explanations to match the underlined choices

4. Write a version of the piece used in #1 with 10 different choices (underlined and numbered); these do not have to correspond to the 15 choices the writer made, but do have to have an overall purpose (e.g., not random changes)

5. Explain the impact of each of the 10 choices they made on the work and/or on the reader (2-3 sentences each); number the explanations to match the underlined choices

6. Write a short paragraph or two explaining the overall impact of the 10 choices they made on their version of the piece, as well as explaining which version is better and why

 

Next Steps: Planning Instruction

When I had my goals in mind and a final summative assessment, I worked backwards to instruction. How could I help students make this significant shift in their thinking about what writers do and why they do it? Despite their experiences with the writing process, it seemed to me that many students had an idea that the pieces they studied just “came out that way” and that writers did not really have to work hard to make their writing have impact on audiences.

I decided to lead students through a number of mini-lessons in which we looked at a number of short pieces and examined the writers’ choices both as a class and in small groups. After each of these lessons, I would ask students to do a short task that was actually a step of the summative assessment (which students received later in the mini-unit). This way, I would be able to monitor their understanding and give them some practice with, and feedback on, the kinds of tasks that they would be expected to do at the end of the unit.

 

Next Steps: Instruction and Practice

Lesson One

I began the unit by explaining to the students the purpose of the unit and how it would be organized, with mini-lessons and practice assignments before giving out the summative assessment. The first text we looked at was Alice Walker’s wonderful short essay, “My Mother’s Blue Bowl.” I chose to begin with narrative prose as it is often more accessible for students than poetry, although sometimes it’s harder to notice writers’ choices in prose than in poetry. With each student following along in her or his copy, I read the first sentence aloud—and stopped. I began the discussion by modeling my thinking about a couple of the choices Walker made in the sentence. Then, working together, we listed all the choices Walker had made in just that one sentence: the choice to write in first person; the list of food (“soup, potatoes, rice” instead of, say, “chips, cookies, popcorn” or “Beef Bourgogne, Coq au Vin, Bouillabaisse”); the choice to omit the “and” from the list of food; the use of dashes instead of parentheses; the way she describes the bowl, including the “noticeably chipped” rim; the length and structure of the sentence; and her overall choice of vocabulary.

We discussed the impact of these choices both individually and as a whole before we went on to the second sentence, where we did the same type of close reading and analysis. The students caught on very quickly to the type of thinking we were doing, and soon were working their way through the essay in partners; before class ended, we stopped and shared some of Walker’s key choices. Students were asked to read the remainder of the essay, making notes on what they felt were the author’s key choices, as well as the impact of her choices on the piece as a whole.

 

Lesson Two

The next lesson included an overview of their thoughts about Walker’s choices, as well as any important ones I felt they had missed. We listed the types of choices she had made, which helped students begin to create categories of choices writers make. Next, we moved to a set of poems that the students were already familiar with and which they had previously annotated for literary devices (I find it helpful to use familiar or easier texts when teaching students a new concept). I asked the students which poem they wanted to look at together; they were nearly unanimous in their choice of “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath, which they had found quite challenging. Using the gradual release model, I modeled the thinking I wanted them to do on the first part of the poem, reading it in short chunks and reviewing the choices Plath had made and the impact of those choices. Working in pairs, they continued to work their way through the poem. We reviewed their thinking together, and then it was time for their first formative task.

I asked each student to choose a poem from the set; they were to underline five choices the writer had made, and write a two or three sentence explanation of the impact of each choice on the poem and/or the reader. Most importantly, they were to try to find different types of choices; they could not simply underline five vocabulary choices, or five metaphors. They had the choice of working on the same poem as their partner or a different one.

 

Lesson Three

When students returned to class, they began by sharing their thinking about the poet’s choices with a partner, and then I asked students to share one key choice the poet had made, and its impact on the poem, with the class (this worked well as all students had read all the poems in the set earlier in the year). I collected the students’ work so I could give them some feedback and see how well they understood the concepts.

The next step in the lesson was a lot of fun for me. I had prepared a re-write of part of “Lady Lazarus” which I put on the overhead and read aloud for the class:

 

Lady Lazarus

Originally by Sylvia Plath; re-written by J. Panas

She has done it again!

One year in every ten she manages it——

A sort of walking miracle,

Her skin bright as a lampshade,

Her right foot a paperweight,

Her face a featureless, fine linen.

Peel off the napkin O her enemy.

Does she terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

The sour breath will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh the grave cave ate

will be at home on her

And she a smiling woman!

She is only thirty.

And like the cat she has nine times to die.

This is Number Three.

What a trash to annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.

The peanut-crunching crowd shoves in

to see them unwrap her hand and foot:

The big strip tease!

Gentlemen, ladies!

These are her hands, her knees.

She may be skin and bone, nevertheless,

she is the same, identical woman!

The first time it happened she was ten.

It was an accident.

The second time she meant to last it out

and not come back at all.

She rocked shut as a seashell.

They had to call and call and pick the

worms off her like sticky pearls.

Dying is an art, like everything else,

she does it exceptionally well.

She does it so it feels like hell.

She does it so it feels real.

I guess you could say she has a call!

 

The students enjoyed my “circus sideshow” version and were able to identify the choices I had made and explain the impact of those choices. They also had quite a good discussion about which version they liked better (alas, Sylvia won that vote). All this was excellent preparation for their second formative task. Using the poem they had chosen for the first task, they had to re-write all or part of it (about 100 words or so) making five different choices. They also had to explain the impact of each of their choices and give their opinion on which version they thought was better. Most students were quite keen on this task and had fun thinking and brainstorming with their partners about how they would rewrite it.

 

The Last Step: Summative Assessment

Lesson Four

To begin this lesson, students shared their re-written poems and the choices they had made with their partner from the last class. A few brave students read their versions aloud. I collected their work for feedback, and then introduced the final assessment. After reviewing it (the steps were familiar to them by now as they had done most of them), students got to work choosing the text they would use for the assignment. There were several guidelines for this choice:

◆ It had to be a published piece of prose or poetry (no personal pieces)

◆ It had to be between 250 and 1000 words long—students could use an excerpt

◆ The piece could be published in hard copy or online, as long as it was appropriate in content and sophistication for the class (e.g. no nursery rhymes or children’s stories)

◆ Students could not choose a piece we had used in class

I gave students access to a number of anthologies as well as permission to use the library and/or computer lab to find a piece for the assessment. Once students had chosen their piece and shown it to me, they were able to get to work on the assessment. They had the remainder of the class and two additional classes to work on the assessment, which gave me the chance to review their last formative task as well as to make sure they understood the summative assessment (including the criteria) and were doing it correctly. In the summative assessment I looked for evidence that students:

◆ Understood literary devices/concepts/terms

◆ Could correctly and purposefully use literary devices/concepts/terms

◆ Supported clear and thoughtful explanations with details

◆ Were thinking carefully and insightfully about the choices writers make

◆ Used structure, conventions and style correctly and purposefully to enhance their writing

The criteria for this task was not ideal, in that I did not use a rubric; rather, I gave students points for completing each section of the task (e.g. students got 0, ½, or 1 for each explanation of a writer’s choice), a practice which is not typical for me but which I resorted to for the sake of expediency. In the end, it did not matter much as most students got an A on the assessment; it was clear throughout the instructional activities and the formative assessment tasks that they understood the concepts and could apply them readily.

 

Reflection and Further Application

This mini-unit was probably the most successful I had last year with that group of students. Although it was created on the fly, in response to a specific gap in their understanding of literature, I will definitely use it again and I will use it earlier in the year; I will also adapt it for my younger students. The main change I will make for all grades is to change the assessment to a rubric, which I will co-create with the students.

This unit was fun for me to teach, because I could sense that it was an “eye-opening” experience for many students as we worked together; there was a real sense of discovery in the class as many students finally “got” what it is writers do to make their work engaging and powerful. Students enjoyed choosing a text to analyze and having a crack at rewriting it; several chose pieces they knew and loved, which they wanted to explore more deeply. Probably the most telling comment came from one student who said that he found the assignment “really fun and challenging”—music to any teacher’s ears!

Students were given the chance to apply their learning about choices writers make in the final unit of the year, which was on the personal essay. They wrote amazing pieces on topics about literature, such as how a book or author had affected them personally. They worked hard to make powerful choices, from sentence length and structure (bring on the rhetorical devices!) to vocabulary, tone, and literary devices. The essays were by far the best ones the students wrote all year, especially in terms of their style. One of the essays from that class was selected for publication in English Practice, and you can read it in the Musings & Meanderings section. And, when I teach the “Choices Writers Make” unit again, I will definitely follow it up with some kind of personal writing unit/task to give students the opportunity to transfer their learning into a meaningful, authentic task.

 

 

Ashley House  

Ashley teaches Intermediate French Immersion at Trafalgar Elementary School. She is currently completing her Masters of Arts in Curriculum Studies at UBC with a focus in critical pedagogies and collaborative research with youth.

 

I believe that one of the most inspiring aspects of teaching is the brilliant questions and comments that students make throughout the day. In my six years as a teacher and through my graduate research with students in intermediate elementary, I have found a knowing, humour and insight in these questions and comments such as:

Are we going to study depressing topics all year? If this is going on then why isn’t anyone stopping it? If our actions didn’t stop the problem, why did we do it? I guess I kind of divide the world into the school world and the real world. Do what you think is right, even if it’s not right.

The comments and questions that are voiced in the classroom underscore how students demonstrate not only the ability to critically consider the world, but also a willingness and capacity to act in ways that seek to address issues they find meaningful. The focus on metacognition in the new English Language Arts Integrated Resource Package (IRP) is a hopeful springboard for thinking about thinking in the socially just classroom. In this article I will describe a social justice pedagogy founded in inquiry, criticality and praxis (ICP) that meets the curriculum goals and description of a “good thinker” represented in the new English Language Arts IRP. The social justice pedagogy I am proposing places student wonder questions and interests at the center (inquiry), focuses on developing critical thinking skills and awareness of how who we are influences how we see the world (criticality)and fosters student activism and reflection on the action throughout the unit (praxis). In my experience, when we, students and teachers, practice inquiry, criticality and praxis, inspiring, transformative and brilliant thoughts and actions emerge from the classroom.

Social justice is a term that is used so often in our work that its meanings are abundant and therefore nebulous at times. In my mind, the social justice classroom values students’ lived histories, experiences and knowledge. The social justice classroom is hopeful, kind and visionary and has as a priority the development of skills for meaningful interpersonal and intrapersonal interactions within a community of caring. This learning space demonstrates active redress of intolerance, prejudice and discrimination. One goal of the social justice curriculum is the nurturing of students’ ability to talk back to the world through a justice orientation with personal, local and/or global foci. Teaching through social justice creates a community of inquiry and is activist oriented. Finally a social justice curriculum underscores the complexity of issues while ensuring an awareness of possibilities for transformative action directed at the historical, social, economic and political systems that support injustice (Bigelow et al., 1994; Kumashiro, 2004; Meyers, 1993; Westheimer, 2005). I believe that to begin teaching for social justice we need to think about our thinking, and further, that the new ELA curriculum offers possibilities for this work. I think that a social justice pedagogy framed through student inquiry, criticality and praxis meets not only the goals of the English Language Arts IRP, but also offers possibilities for students to engage in meaningful and authentic learning wherein, as Ghandi advises, they can be the change they see in the world. The table below demonstrates the parallels between a social justice pedagogy founded in inquiry, criticality and praxis(ICP) and the IRP’s description of the curriculum goals as they relate to “good” thinking.

Initiating the Butterfly Effect

The project “In Search of the Butterfly Effect” and the activities described below seek to promote student inquiry, criticality and praxis through engaging students in critically considering the world, identifying a social justice issue that is meaningful for them, questioning their relationship to the issue, imagining actions that may transform the issue, initiating the actions, and reflecting on their outcomes. The skills associated with the “good thinker” and the curriculum goals described in the English Language Arts IRP create opportunities for students and teachers to practice inquiry, criticality and praxis. This project has resulted in actions ranging from bake sales, to silence-a-thons, to jewellery and bubble tea afternoons, to origami challenges, to garage sales, all with the intention of raising awareness and funds to support initiatives that students support. It has included the creation of hundreds of book marks, letters to the editor, petitions to the government, newsletters, websites, surveys, conversations and skits to raise awareness in federal, local and school communities. The following is an example of a possible sequence of lessons for a unit practising the ideals of a social justice classroom and the skills of a “good thinker”.

In Search of the Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect is a meteorological theory created by Edward Lorenz, which proposes that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Texas could produce a hurricane half way around the world in Brazil. This metaphor represents a world where everyone and everything is connected. The actions of one individual can stir up global change of hurricane proportions in the world. Following is an outline of essential questions for the unit. The unit was not limited to these questions alone. Further the essential questions were not posed following this sequence but were posed and revisited throughout the unit.

What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it! Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. ~ Goethe

In this term-long unit, we begin by building community through team building activities, creative writing assignments and the identification of our common values as a classroom community. Following this stage we develop our understanding of the Butterfly Effect through studying examples of youth who have acted to change social injustice. Next we practise criticality and reflection through critical reading of text and self. Finally, we get to what students refer to as the “juicy” part and social justice actions are planned and initiated. Student and teacher practise praxis throughout the project by actively reflecting on our reading of the world, our understanding of ourselves and our social justice actions.

Inquiry

The inquiry-based approach is a teaching technique where students are challenged to generate questions that direct the curriculum. Lessons are designed so that students make connections to previous knowledge and experience, bring their own questions to learning, investigate to satisfy their own questions through all subject areas and design ways to try out their ideas and possible solutions (International Baccalaureate Program, 2006). Farr-Darling and Wright’s (2004) description of a community of inquiry demonstrates the critical component of a reflective inquiry-based approach. They suggest that in a community of inquiry, there is: an acceptance that knowledge is subject to change, an awareness of and empathy for alternative points of view, a tolerance for ambiguity, a required scepticism of text, and an openness to questions.

Hursh and Ross (2000) suggest that when “students and teachers together raise questions about issues important to their lives – such questions about student racial, gender and class identities or about local community issues” – greater social, historical and political issues in the world gain importance (p.10). Through a reflective inquiry-based approach, curriculum is not only relevant and appropriate for the unique identities and realities of the students we work with but also to the worlds within which we live.

In the classroom, student inquiry may take the form of discussion, wonder questions, collaborative brainstorming and creative writing to determine where student interest and experience lie. The curriculum goals that are described as promoting student comprehension and response to oral and written language in critical, creative and articulate ways; student development of a continuously increasing understanding of self and others; and student communication of ideas, information and feelings in critical, creative and articulate ways (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2006, p.10) may all be addressed through an inquiry model. Examples of creative writing prompts that have supported our explorations of identity are described at the end of this article in the appendix Teacher Guide #1 – Creative Writing Exploring Identity.

Criticality

I suggest that teaching for criticality and “good” thinking are not only important aspects of literacy but also ensure that educational institutions move beyond a passive prescribed learning model towards thinking strategies founded in crisis, collaboration and caring. Kumashiro’s (2004) notion of crisis calls for an abandonment of neutrality and argues that knowledge must be made problematic, disrupted and acknowledged as partial. Kumashiro states that only through discomfort or resistance will we grow and learn. I interpret the new English Language Arts IRP as reflecting this priority in its description of a “good thinker” as being honest with self, identifying assumptions and points of view that shape our thinking and looking for both connections and inconsistencies among our ideas.

Henderson and Kesson define the two additional elements that contribute to my understanding of criticality as applied in a social justice pedagogy: collaboration and caring. Collaboration represents the need for whole schools and communities to dialogue and encounter differences meaningfully. Finally, caring means framing classes as inclusive and non-competitive. If we are to practice the reflective honesty and critical thinking required for this work, collaboration and caring are essential components of learning communities that can work together to initiate the change they require for their worlds.

In a classroom this may involve critically reading texts, reflecting on our identities, deconstructing text and looking for relationships between who we are and where our interests lie. We practice critical reading of fiction in order to begin to converse about the complex nature of identity. We apply critical reading strategies to non-fiction in preparation for researching the social justice issues that form our Butterfly Effect project. Finally, we explore the relationship of our identities to the social justice issues that we have chosen.

Following this article are examples of some of the activities we employed in class to critically engage with our work. The first entitled Student Handout #1 – Multiple Identities, Student Handout #2 – Critical thinking about… and Student handout #3 – Deconstructing Text are used in class to foster discussion and reflection on identity, student and teacher assumptions about the social justice issues that are being researched and critical reading of the texts that provide information on the issues in question. Student handout #4 - The problem we will unleash the Butterfly Effect on is… has as a goal to provide opportunities for students to explore how the issue they have chose relates to their lives and who they are. The intention is to further uncover assumptions and relationships to the issue in an attempt to underscore how local and global issues affect all people.

Praxis

Freire (1977/2000) defines praxis as “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (p. 51). Reflection entails inquiry and criticality to determine what is meaningful to us, how we are positioned relative to social justice issues, and how we understand the discourses that surround them. Henderson and Kesson (2004) state that praxis is almost always identified in the doing. … In education the word praxis is usually used to signify the integration of critical inquiry into teacher’s reflective practice. Critical inquiry involves looking at the big picture, the social, economic and political context of issues (p. 52).

Praxis moves us from the initial step of reflection toward the essential component of action in order to achieve transformation. In praxis there is always a return to reflection post action. This approach seeks to ensure that learning is ongoing and does not come to a close with the completion of a project. To this end, there is an ongoing reflection during the work of the Butterfly Effect project and following its completion. Student handout #5 - Check-In and Student handout #6 - Check-In in the appendix are examples of the reflections the students complete.

Assessment

The nature of a social justice approach to teaching requires just assessment practices. Fragnoli and Mathison (2006), Case (1999) and Singer (1997) argue that good assessment includes both performance and authentic forms, engages students in self-assessment, and develops motivation and metacognitive strategies that foster self-reflection and decision making. For the purposes of this unit my framework for assessment was largely informed by these theorists and is described in Case's (1999) four principles of assessment. The four purposes are focussing on what really matters, providing valid indications, using assessment to support learning and using teacher time efficiently. Case defines authentic assessment as measuring the real, actual or genuine thing. He argues that educators should seek:

• To achieve greater authenticity ~ assessment should measure the educational goals that are most valued (critical thinking, problem solving) as opposed to what is easiest to measure.
• To support learning ~ assessment should be used to determine how to best support student learning. For example, student generated criteria, self and peer evaluation.
• To ensure fairness to all students ~ provide students with an opportunity to show what they know as opposed to what they are expected to recall.
• To use teacher time efficiently ~ assessment should be efficient and take a reasonable amount of time.

In our classroom, assessment tools included the BC Performance Standards for Writing, the Assessment of Critical Thinking Challenge as seen in the appendix, self and peer assessments of group work and the Check-ins presented earlier. Assessment was framed as an opportunity for feedback and celebration of work. These tools were presented in either a partial form and then completed in discussion with the class or generated with the class. For example, students received a copy of the Fully Meets Expectations column of the performance standards and in small groups and then as a class were asked to complete the Meets Expectations and/or Exceeds Expectations column. Alternatively, the development of the assessment tool for group work resulted entirely from class discussion. The check-ins and work on identity were not assessed as they represented personal and at times anonymous reflection. In the interest of formative assessment and maintaining consistency with Case’s purposes, the assessment tools and the form of the final demonstrations of learning were diverse and developed in collaboration with students. Further, the assessment tools are used multiple times and were employed by the teacher, peers and self throughout the project.

Final Thoughts

The problem of how to live and teach for social justice is relevant to our educational systems because the choices we make as educators ultimately determine the kind of society we will help to create. If our classrooms are to be spaces where citizens engage in imagining, realizing and rethinking social injustice then a curriculum focussed on teaching to “good” critical and reflective thinking is in my estimation useful and hopeful. A pedagogy framed in inquiry, criticality and praxis invites students to ask troubling questions and analyze their locations and the societal structures relevant to them through a social justice framework. In nurturing “good thinkers”, spaces are generated in the curriculum where students may engage in social justice actions that are meaningful and authentic.

The activities and projects listed here are not intended to be recipes for teaching and may represent, for many, ideas that have long been established in pedagogy. However, my hope is that they are productive in generating conversations regarding how, as educators, we can use this new curriculum grounded in thinking about our thinking to foster student inquiry, critical consideration of the world and reflection on actions that seek to transform the world. The English Language Arts Integrated Resource Package represents an opportunity for working from within the curriculum to challenge our position, assumptions, and thinking so that schools and classrooms might become “laboratories for a more just society” (Bigelow, 1994, p. 4). I believe that this is the single most significant reason for education.

Appendices

Teacher Guide # 1 - Creative Writing Exploring Identity

These writing prompts explore student identity and provide an opportunity for the teacher and student peers to learn about and honour each other. For each writing prompt we use a creative writing process. The process is a compilation of writing ideas from Liisa House, Linda Christensen and Nanci Atwell.

An abbreviated description of the process is as follows: Initially students brainstorm ideas about the prompt and share them with a peer. Next, they free write in response to the prompt. Following completion of the free write, students highlight their 10 -15 most powerful lines and share them aloud in the class through a voice collage. Next, the students write each powerful line on its own line on a sheet of paper. This is known as the skeleton. The students then add sensory detail, similes and metaphors. After peer editing sessions, the students have an “Oooh, I’m good!” Gallery Walk, at which point their work is posted around the room and their teacher and peers write compliments on post it notes. The students are then asked to reflect on their pieces and the pieces of great writing they have read in the gallery walk and are assigned a final draft of their piece.

 

WRITING PROMPTS

1) I AM FROM – Students might use the line ‘I am from’ to consider what items, memories, historical events, family members or friends have formed who they are today. This writing prompt draws on the use of metaphor and hyperbole. They are encouraged to make the piece sound like home. Previous student work has focused on:

- geographic origins representing the journey travelled to come to Canada.

- items found in their yard or neighbourhood (dog bones, plants, forts...).

- names of relatives or friends.

- memories, events, daily habits.

- sayings that they have heard throughout their childhood.

- foods or dishes that represent their lives. - objects representing personal histories.

- languages spoken. - personal or family traditions.

Adapted from Christensen (2001)

2) THE POWER OF A NAME – Students consider how names have power, tell a story and may reveal power relationships through detailing how they were named. I begin with asking students to consider geographic locations and how the naming of them tells their story. For example – The Queen Charlotte Islands now reclaimed as the Haida Gwaii tells the story of colonization and the endurance of the Haida culture. Previous student work has focussed on:

- the meaning of student names.

- the source of the name be it geographical, a friend or family member or a coincidence.

- the rationale for choosing the name.

- the sound and/or shape of a name. Adapted from Christensen (2003)

3) MAPPING MEMORY – Students generate a map of their neighbourhood, head or hearts as a brainstorming approach to writing creatively about self. They share three stories from three locations on their maps with a peer and choose to write a free verse poem addressing one. This creates an opportunity for students to share a memory or personal story with the class.

Adapted from Liisa House and Nancie Atwell

Professional Resources

Social Justice ■ www.rethinkingschools.org ■ www.bctf.ca ■ www.investinakinderworld.com ■ www.actsofkindness.org/

Poverty ■ www.fosterparentsplan.ca (global poverty) ■ www.unicef.org/voy (global poverty) ■ www.oxfam.ca (fair trade + poverty) ■ www.freethechildren.com (child labour + poverty)

Human Rights ■ www.pch.gc.ca/progs/multi/index_e.cfm (diversity) ■ www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/ online_hate/protect_child_hate.cfm (racism) ■ www.chrf.ca  Canadian Human Rights Foundation ■ www.unac.org United Nations Association of Canada ■ www.amnesty.ca Amnesty Canada ■ www.equalitytoday.org Equality Today Electronic Magazine, Young People’s Press ■ www.hrw.org Human Rights Watch

Environment ■ www.cida.ca Canadian International Development Agency (Geography + International Development) ■ www.davidsuzuki.org David Suzuki (The Nature Challenge) ■ www.eya.ca - Environmental Youth Alliance ■ eartheasy.com/article_enviro_sites_kids.htm (list of environmental websites for kids)

Climate Change – 45 second video ■ https://webmail.vsb.bc.ca/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL= whatcounts.com/t?ctl=190CD0C:54C20EC0780B6DD1 DF5C930127F6316CFDF24EE4C9629B8B

Portraits of Mass Consumption – Chris Jordan ■ https://webmail.vsb.bc.ca/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL= http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7

Sites featuring social justice initiatives by youth

■ www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17665.htm (Severn Suzuki) ■ www.vancourier.com/issues02/052102/ news/052102nn10.html (Vantech Secondary) ■ www.vsb.bc.ca/NR/rdonlyres/8B3DD43E-C8EC-472D- 8F47-C1D2D6CCF571/0/CitySchoolsspring2006.pdf (King George Secondary, Dickens Elementary, Point Grey Secondary and VSB) - GO to page 4J ■ www.freethechildren.com/aboutus/index.html (The Kielburger Brothers) ■ myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp? hero=Iqbal (Iqbal Masih) ■ www.myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp? hero=htaylor_canada_06 (Hannah Taylor) ■ myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp? hero=RYAN_HRELJAC (Ryan Hreljac)

 

Student Resources

Environment

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss The TRUAX by NOFMA Woodflooring Manufacturer’s Association available free online at www.nofma.org

Gender, Self Image The Sissy Duckling by Harvey Fierstein (story book) The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch (story book) Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (novel) Pretties by Scott Westerfeld (novel) Dove evolution film http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/

Children’s Rights Hanna’s Suitcase by Karen Levine (novel) Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr (short novel) White Jade Tiger by Julie Lawson

Poverty If the World were a Village by David Smith (picture book) Iqbal by Francesco D’Adamo (novel) The Arrival by Shaun Tan (graphic novel)

 

References

Atwell, N. (2002). Lessons that change writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

British Columbia Ministry of Education. (2006). Orientation to the English language arts K to 7 IRP. Retrieved December 2, 2007 from www.bced.gov.bc.ca/irp/elak7short.pdf

Bigelow, B. (1994). Creating classrooms for equity and social justice. In B. Bigelow, et al. (Eds.), Rethinking our classrooms: Teaching for equity and justice (pp. 4-5). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools Publications.

Case, R., & Clark, P. (1999). Four purposes of citizenship education. In R. Case & P. Clarke (Eds.), The Canadian anthology of social studies (pp. 17 - 40). Burnaby, BC: Simon Fraser University Press.

Christensen, L. (2001). Where I'm from: inviting student's lives into the classroom. Rethinking our Classrooms. Willinston, VT: Rethinking Schools. Ltd.

Christensen, L. (2003). Writing Up, Rising Up. Willinston, VT: Rethinking Schools. Ltd.

Farr Darling, L. & Wright, I. (2004). Critical thinking and the "social" in social studies. In A. Sears & I. Wright (Eds.), Challenges and prospects for Canadian social studies. (pp. 247 - 258). Vancouver, BC: Pacific Educational Press.

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary ed.). New York: Continuum. (Original work published in 1977)

Harrison, J., Smith N. and Wright, I. (1999) (Eds) Critical challenges in social studies for upper elementary students. Richmond, BC: The Critical Thinking Cooperative.

Henderson, J., & Kesson, K. (2004). Curriculum wisdom: Educational decisions in democratic societies. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson

House, L. (2004). In my backyard: Stores of identity, community, and curriculum through creative writing. Unpublished master's thesis, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Hursh, D. W., & Ross, E. W. (2000). Democratic social education: Social studies for social change In D.W. Hursh & E.W. Ross (Eds.), Democratic social education: Social studies for social change (pp. 1-22). New York: Routledge Falmer.

International Baccalaureate Program. (2006). Inquiry at the IB middle years program. Retrieved on November 6, 2006, from www.ibo.org/myp/slidec.cfm

Kumashiro, K. (2004). Against common sense: Teaching and learning toward social justice. New York: Routledge.

Meyers, M. (1993). Teaching to Diversity: Teaching and learning in a multi-ethnic classroom. Toronto, ON: Irwin Publishing.

Westheimer, J. (2005). Democratic dogma: There is no one-size-fits-all approach to schooling for democracy. Canadian Issues Magazine. September, 25-39.