October 4 Crumble: Get the GIST

To be able to summarize central ideas or themes of a selection is key in both literature and informational text. The developers of the Common Core Standards felt that this skill was something that should be developed over time and, therefore, mandated that we expect our students to, year after year, prove that they are capable of effectively summarizing.  To be able to summarize a selection, students must choose what is important to the purpose of the writing - calling upon either the author to develop that purpose or some outside source (a teacher or the students themselves) to do this for them.

I find that, in teaching kiddos how to summarize text, more often than not they are missing the boat because their writing lacks focus due to ineffective purpose-setting.  An easy way to teach students to develop summaries is the use of a strategy called the GIST strategy (not an acronym, to my knowledge, but still spelled in all caps).  Although not a CRISS strategy per se, getting the the GIST follows CRISS's Principles of writing and organization along with active learning and transformation of information by giving students a formulaic guide to develop a clear summary of a text selection.  And it's really so simple, it makes me smile.

Here's how it works:

• Students or teacher identifies the purpose of the reading.
• Students read the selection, highlighting or annotating the 5 W's and an H (Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How) as they pertain to the purpose.  All text selections will not develop every component, but careful reading will allow students to identify as many parts as possible.  Rereading may help to identify pieces that might require making an inference like the why and how.
• Once the annotation is complete and/or notes are taken, students should then take the purpose of the reading along with the identified components of the GIST strategy and put them into as few well-developed sentences as possible.  A great writing activity would be to have students create complex sentences using all of the information and correct punctuation!

To illustrate what this would look like, I might ask my students to read a brief text selection about social values of an era in history and the impact that these values had on the art and/or music of the day.  I would tell the students that I'm hoping that they will read to find what impact the values of the era had on art or music and then demonstrate how to look for the 5 W's and an H.  Once students have identified the who (not necessarily one person, but maybe a collective "who" such as a religious group), what happened, where did it happen (could be specific or more general), when did it happen, how did it happen (maybe describe what it looked like OR how people felt while it was happening), and why (what caused it to happen), they can then construct their summary using ONLY the information that they gathered and putting it together into just a few sentences.  And voila! A well-constructed summary! 

Struggling writers may find it more difficult to put multiple pieces of information into only one sentence, so they may need some support.  Modeling the process over and over for them is just good teaching for any student, so be certain to demonstrate your expectations.  Allowing students to work together and giving them immediate feedback while they're working may help those resistant or struggling writers as well.  Try it out a few times.  See what you get.  Once you get a handle on what your kiddos can accomplish, then put some supports in place for them.  In a few cases, you may need to supply some of them with frames for their sentences (writing out part of it and leaving empty spaces for students to fill in words), but try to avoid this if you can.  The idea is to create independent summarizers - even if the sentences aren't perfect. 

See, just talking about this strategy makes me smile because its such an effective use of organization and writing!  Don't forget that strategies like this should be given attention on multiple levels.  Try exposing students to it two or three times before tossing the idea to the wayside.  Ask your students to reflect on their use of it the first time around to see if they can tell that they have more focused summaries.  Then ask them to compare their own summaries the next time you do it to see if they found the strategy less daunting.  By the third time you use it, have them reflect on how it has helped them learn content.  Share with colleagues and see if you can use the GIST in multiple content areas so that our kiddos are being exposed and transferring this skill.  And most of all - tweak it and make it fit your teaching style, personality, and students.  Without your spin on it, it's just another strategy. 

August 30 Crumble - Daily writing ideas for ALL contents

Writing is tricky to weave into some content areas, but it can and should be done as often as possible.  While my previous blog on Reaching Social Students discussed why we should allow students to discuss to process content, another of Project CRISS's Principles and Philosophies is writing for the use of processing content.  Both target different learning styles but are beneficial for all learners.  What writing does that discussion does not is allows an individual to reflect upon himself without the distraction of others' thoughts in the middle of a reflection.  "If we can write about content and explain what we are learning, we can claim knowledge as our own" (Santa, et. al, 2012).

And any teacher can use it.  Our job is to decide how and how often.  Just like with reading, sports, or music - daily practice makes writing a habitual activity.  Throwing it in on a weekly basis is definitely a good start, but what if you required writing daily?  So instead of boring you with theory and pedagogy, I've decided to give you some ideas and choices so you can decide how writing would work best for you:

• Daily writing prompts (could be used as bellringers).  For science, life skills, PE, woodshop, computers, math, and other classes where physical action is required at times, consider having students write out their best idea of how they think they will accomplish a task, how they accomplished a task, or how they think they did on the accomplishment on the task.  Ask students to use a few of the Tier 3 words (content area words) that you've been introducing as a bonus!
• Free writes.  During a lab, lesson, lecture, video, reading assignment, or other academic activity, stop about every six to eight minutes (1 minute per grade level) and ask students to write down anything that comes to mind about what they're doing (a question, prediction, inference, idea, connection, etc.).  They can use their class notebook, a sheet of paper to turn in, sticky notes, or desk white boards (these are always fun).  Change it up each time so they don't get bored with it, but the activity is the same.  Give students a 2-3 minute pause to write.  Decide whether you'll let them share with a partner or just move on.  This acts as a reset button for those who are starting to zone off, and it also allows for some processing time for those who need to catch up or who have questions.  Demonstrate this for your students as you're doing it so they understand that you truly are leaving it up to them!
• Writing templates.  For your struggling writers who can barely get words out of their mouths, let alone produce anything in the form of a complete sentence in writing - use a writing template or paragraph frame for any writing activity!  I used a previous blog to discuss paragraph frames, and wowza!  What a difference it made in the writing of some of our students!  You don't want to give them a template forever, but you do want them to get into the habit of writing in a comprehensible way, so start out with a few templates.  An example of a writing template would be, "I don't understand why . . . because . . . "  or "I can really relate to . . . because . . . "  Giving students four to five templates from which to choose keeps their options open but also takes the stress out of forming understandable thoughts.  These work really nicely as exit slips.  And, again, after a PE activity, math lesson, art lesson, literature lesson - there is no limit here, friends!

• Double entry reflective journals. Although not meant to necessarily be a daily activity, I believe this is one of my favorite of all of the CRISS strategies. To build some background on the topic or unit you're about to introduce, start your students off with a set of questions, quotations, thoughts, problems, etc.  Have them write their thoughts about each one.  Students can write questions, answers, inferences, predictions, reflections, or discuss anxieties about the content.  Then you teach the lesson or unit.  In a third column, have students go back to the same sheet and write their new thoughts about the information they were given before learning took place.  To expand on this even further, have them compare their thoughts before and after learning and write why they think their thoughts changed!  Here is an example of a double entry reflective journal.  If you click on it, it should enlarge well enough for you to see that the student reflected upon who he thought Edgar Allan Poe was after hearing about some of his writing and then who Poe really was after watching a documentary on Poe's life.
• Dialogue journals.  These work similarly to the free-write above but with the added component of having a written discussion with a partner.  As a teacher I can use this as part of the free-write process if I choose.  Once students write their free-write, they can switch papers, read what their partner has written, and then respond.  Some care should be taken to teach students how to respond.  You might consider giving students some options such as: "I agree because . . . " "I understand what you mean when . . . " "I see what you're saying, but in my opinion . . . "
• Observation entries.  These are so much fun and can be used anywhere!  Have students observe anything and write about it.  Period.  What you did to find a research topic, how you play an F on a clarinet, how you work together in groups, how to properly use hand tools . . . anything!  When I went to the IRC Conference back in March, observation was such a key tool in so many of the ideas presented.  Friends, we are the models for our students - have them watch you do what you do best and then have them write about it!
• Perspective entries.  Have students write about what they're learning, but have them write from a perspective other than a student sitting in your class. 

You can't tell me that there isn't one writing idea above that you'd can't use in your classroom this week.  Writing (as you can see) is a bit of a passion for me, and the thought that our students could potentially be doing it eight periods a day makes me giddy!  It would be like a basketball coach watching students practice basketball drills for ten minutes every period while reviewing math concepts before getting down and dirty with a new lesson in algebra!  Can you imagine how much better writers our students would be if we had them writing more often?  Just consider it this week.  Your content areas are so important, and adding a writing component would be like plugging in another tangible way for you to assess how well your students are internalizing what you consider to be important.

Stay cool!

Technology as a motivational tool: May 3 Crumble

The entire month of February I spent talking about motivating our reluctant middle schoolers to take responsibility for their learning.  Intrinsic motivation is not something that instantly appears in a twelve or thirteen-year-old student - it takes years to build this desire for academic success, and most of our strugglers lost that desire years ago when they found themselves failing more than succeeding.  Why try if I'm not going to succeed?  That is an excellent question.

So by middle school, the job of the teacher becomes much more than a deliverer of instruction and nurturer of curiousity.  If you are an educator who is responsible for our struggling middle school students, your job is to somehow re-light that fire that is natural in our young ones and then you can nurture that curiousity and deliver instruction.  You're working with wet wood though.  Wood that has been soaked for years in a downpour of frustration, humiliation, and embarassment and has become a soggy mess of anger, hyperactivity, apathy, and super-social behavior that no longer cares about reading, math, and science.  Pair that up with video games until midnight and Hot Cheetos for breakfast, and you have a pocket full of a hot mess walking your hallways on a daily basis!

These are the kids who make their way into my heart, and it is because of these kiddos that I get up and come to work every morning.  They are the ones that I seek out in the hallway because I want them to know that it isn't too late.  And this is why I continue to dig for answers, motivators, and hooks.  How can I get them to start caring again?  What can we do to motivate them to want to read and write?

Well, one answer that we have found is the use of technology as a learning tool.  I once went to a session where John Orech spoke on the use of technology in lesson development.  In this session, one of his messages was that technology should be our "vehicle to a destination", and we should consider how we are going to get kids places and not "how should I use this technology?"  This message has stuck with me this year because, in my case, technology is one key to getting my kids where they need to be.

Recently, during a collaborative conversation, I spoke with our seventh grade intervention teacher.  She desperately wanted to give these kids one last shot at getting them hooked onto reading.  For three years, now, we have used Neal Shusterman's Unwind at the end of the year as a read-aloud or novel study.  This year, CCSS requires students to be reading at or above grade level before the end of the year, and what better way to continue to support this than by dousing them with a creepy and engaging novel about kids who are just like them.  Most of our kiddos are reading right around the level of the novel or below, and the language of the novel is fun - and so are the ethical discussions!

But the issue with the book always is the kids who flat-out refuse to participate - they sit with their books closed or heads down and they get up for Kleenex or to throw away something every three minutes.  At this point in the game, no number of discipline referrals for behavior like that is going to motivate these kids to open their books and love reading.  Period.

Until we let them crack open the 8-year-old computers we have been "storing" in her room off an on this year . . .

The day that we opened the kidblog site for the class and got the kids logged in, we gave them the anticipation guide and a list of possible prompts for writing. It took about 24 hours for 100% of our kiddos to get engaged in the book! Yesterday we even had one interrupt three times and ask if he could blog!

The first blog topic was written before we even started reading.  It was more of a "let's try this blogging thing out" blog than an actual blog.  The kids did pretty well with it, and they were able to get around the site very easily, so that wasn't a problem at all. 

We knew we had to read and write, and we knew we didn't have much time to get them going, so we gave them the option of using the computers to write down their thoughts in a word document before they wrote their second blog, which was to make a connection with one of the three main characters.  Kids who I have watched drag their feet on the way in the door were thinking and typing about Connor, Risa, and Lev yesterday!  It was reported to me this morning that first period sat silently as they typed and clicked for a half hour on the blog site.  We are actually considering the possibility of opening the classroom during lunch for "beautification" and commenting on the blogs as well.

Now, did we do an amazing job at forseeing the problems we would encounter?  Well, we sent a note home to parents inviting them to join us on the blog site, and we emphasized the idea that if the site is misused in any way (and we gave examples) that the misuser would be permanently removed from the site class.  So in that respect, I think we covered our bases.  But one thing I'm already seeing is the attention that is being paid to the way the blog looks vs. the content.  We have a lot of very pretty blogs.  Now that we have established the idea of the blog and motivated even our most unmotivated student to participate, our next battle will be to up our expectations on the content of the blogs.  I'm a writer, and I love to teach writing, so my expectations are going to get higher and higher for the next fourteen days, and I can't wait to see what these kids can produce! 

So how can you, a content area teacher, use this blog idea to enhance and motivate your kiddos?  Well, first off, edublog and kidblog are two websites that I would consider investigating.  We also have gifted students using edmodo in a "paperless classroom" situation that is truly fascinating!  All of these sites are private and can only be accessed by the members of the group.  They are all set up by the teacher and are accessible from home - some of them even have apps for devices other than computers!  Then establish a use for these fantastic writing tools!  Science logs, social studies journals, music journals, health journals or fitness tracking, favorite recipes, responses to art or music, even extended response questions in math can be adapted to blogging!  Kids can respond to books they're reading - even over the summer - and teachers can still see what they're reading!  You can give students specifications on their writing or have them write freely - just remind them that what they write will be seen by you, their parents, and the entire class!

If you're considering setting up a blog for your kids, let me know if you need help!  Once you get into it and get the hang of it, it is really easy.  And it's such a neat way to get the kids writing without telling them they're writing.