How Is My Classroom Like a Gym?

Working out on the elliptical trainer, I watched an elderly woman weave through the gym with her walker to reach the stationary bike in front of me, and I heard the body builder across the way grunt through his reps. It dawned on me that there are students who come into my classroom with the same reluctance I joined this gym—afraid of revealing my ignorance, looking stupid, or feeling incompetent. And I’m wondering how I can help them feel the way I feel now—relatively unself-conscious, motivated by the progress I’ve made, and equipped to make more. I think the answer has to do with differentiation, scaffolding, and community. 

That elderly woman who takes her walker to get to the stationery bike? She’s my hero—I admire her more than the body builder. She’s committed to stewarding her physical strength by consistently showing up and working. How can I approach my struggling students with that kind of vision?

When I sit down at a weight machine and take the weight down from 120 pounds to 40 pounds before I use it—I don’t give up or even feel more than a passing blush of self-consciousness. I know what matters both for the prior user and for me is that we are showing up, challenging ourselves, and growing. 

When I look at the motivational poster on the wall, I’m struck by how much humans crave community. Look at the number that are about how we relate to each other. I'm also struck that group agreements are not “school” things but life things. If I change the object of passion from fitness to learning, and change the physical objects being taken care of from weights and machines to books and desks, here’s what that list of agreements might look like in my classroom:

• We leave things better than we found them: classroom, classmates, topics of discussion, as well as the larger communities in which we communicate. I hadn't thought of this one before, but I love it, because it's what my mom taught me about the houses I babysat in and what my hiking mentors taught me about campsites. 
• We have fun: with each other and with the beauty and power of language. I considered whether “fun” was too frivolous a word—I prefer joy and purpose. But this is student-friendly language, and it might be good for me to consider. Fun isn’t the goal, but fun is motivational, brain science tells us it supports learning, and it is a result of learning. I think of the volleyball practices I’ve run: a little fun mixed in, but mostly focused on improving skills, because having the skills is what makes the playing more fun, but there are people who forget the fun in the pursuit of excellence.
• We come prepared to learn and help others learn. For me this replaces the “passionate about” line—we are, but I’m just not that effusive. I’m a show not tell kind of girl. When students appear chatty, sleepy, or unnecessarily using the local language—Japanese—I ask with true curiosity, “Are you helping yourself and your neighbor learn English?”
• We love each other. This incorporates uplift, fair play, being united, respect, and being family. 
• We trust each other—to protect the risks we take, listen to our observations, respect our questions, give feedback on our writing. I considered eliminating this one as being part of love, but then I thought it might be important to articulate the necessity of trusting that others will reciprocate our love.

What insights does thinking of your classroom (or other community) as a gym inspire?

A Resource for Supporting English Learners and ALL Learners

Concentrating on the Japanese conversation flying around me at the year-end meeting of our women’s volleyball club, I decided the other women were discussing two new players who had recently attended a couple of practices. They were clearly comparing two things--goichisan and yonisan. Since in Japanese, san is a suffix attached to a last name, like Mr/Ms in English, but at the other end of the word--Suzuki-san, Tanaka-san--it was plausible that the two women’s names were Goichi-san and Yoni-san. However, suddenly it dawned on me that san is also 3, and what my teammates were comparing was not the relative skills of 2 players, but the relative advantages of 2 different set-ups for our 9-person team: 5-1-3 (go-ichi-san) or 4-2-3 (yon-ni-san). I have first-hand experience of how a language learner can get completely thrown off track by one misinterpretation and be lost for the rest of the conversation. Or class.

I thought of this experience as I’ve been reading a book on teaching English learners. The book is Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model (5th edition) by Jana Echivarria, MaryEllen Vogt, and Deborah J. Short. I chose it because I’m moving into a new teaching situation where I’ll likely have even more English learners than I have in the past, and I wanted to find out how I could improve my support for their learning. So I asked my daughter, who has a certificate in ESL, and this was her recommendation. Having finished it, I second her recommendation. 

I had one big epiphany, 2 controversies addressed, and mostly just plentiful reinforcement that all I’ve been learning about good teaching in general is also good teaching for English learners. But it was reassuring to have that affirmation, and helpful to have such a complete list of good teaching strategies with accompanying resources. For example, as I thought about strategies related to providing a variety of supplemental material, it occurred to me that if my volleyball captain had just spread a handful of coins on the table to demonstrate the 2 different set-ups we were discussing, I would have cued in immediately. How can I be even more aware of providing cues like this? After all, a variety of inputs makes information “stickier” for all students.

The epiphany: The importance of clarity. Clarity especially with objectives, assignment directions, and review throughout the lesson. One specific emphasis of the SIOP model is having language objectives as well as content objectives for every lesson. I’ve been teaching this way more and more as I’ve shifted the focus of English language arts class from works of literature to the language skills necessary to understand, discuss, and write about any work of literature and its themes (I expanded on this in "Naming the Arts in English Language Arts"). Still, articulating a language objective brings an even clearer focus for both the students and me. So I tried it out for the poetry lesson plan I wrote for NCTE last week:

• Preparation: Students sit in table groups of 4. Have a copy of “Possibilities” for each student to mark up.
• Essential question: How does a poet use the tools of language to communicate meaning?
• Academic objectives:
• Identify how syntax (parallelism) and diction (simple/literal and complex/abstract) communicate meaning. 
• Make inferences.
• Language objectives: 
• Discuss observations about syntax, diction, and inferences.
• Use parallelism with simple/literal and complex/abstract words to draft a poem. 

Two discussions that seem to surface regularly about teaching English learners are whether students should be allowed to speak in their mother tongue and how/how often to correct English mistakes. Making Content Comprehensible provides authoritative answers.  Answer 1: Providing opportunity for students to use their first language when necessary to clarify understanding is a good thing. Answer 2: Unless an error interferes with understanding, rather than randomly correcting every English error, notice, group, and teach targeted lessons to the class or to small groups. 

“Students engaged approximately 90% to 100% of the period.” That is stunning feature #25 of 30, grouped into 8 components. It’s a long list of good teaching strategies! (See the end of this blog for the entire list.) The list intersects with and contexts all of the strategies I've been amassing over the last 15 years, including differentiation, culturally responsive teaching, and collaborative learning. It's great to have associated resources all in one place (for example, sentence stems for fostering discussion), to have the confidence that I already have many practices in place for helping English learners, and to have the protocol rubric for continuing to reflect on my practice and grow in helping all learners.

Here is a list of my additional observations as I’ve worked through that list:

1. Vocabulary: The work I’ve done with The Vocabulary Book: Learning and Instruction by Michael F. Graves has strengthened by vocabulary teaching.
2. Supplementary materials: I do try to use Google images and videos, acting for drama, and graphic organizers; I may need to work on this even more, including adapting content.
3. Meaningful activities: like writing poems based on models and giving writing audiences.
4. Language practice opportunities: The work I’ve done with Productive Group Work (Frey, Fisher, and Everlove) and Academic Conversations (Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford) has prepared me to do this.
5. Building background:  Cris Tovani's I Read It but I Don't Get It originally cued me in to the importance of this, and Robert Marzano's The New Art and Science of Teaching more recently reminded me.
6. Strategies: Book studies that have helped me include Better Learning (Frey and Fisher), How to Differentiate Instruction in Academically Diverse Classrooms (Carol Ann Tomlinson), and Making Thinking Visible (Ron Ritchhart). Since I have gathered my ideas from so many sources, it is wonderful to have a fairly comprehensive list here in this chapter: a list of cognitive, metacognitive, and language learning strategies, 3 types of scaffolding (verbal, procedural, instructional); a list of teaching ideas for strategies (protocols for discussion, information processing, and notetaking); and discussion sentence stems (133-137).
7. Higher order thinking: I appreciated the research-based reassurance that as a teacher has respect and high expectations for ELL students, so will peers. One crucial strategy for accessing higher order thinking for ELLs is wait time between asking a question and getting an answer. I’ve been working on this for all students, and it’s even more critical for ELL students. 

The approach is backed by 30 years of research-based confirmation of its success with language learners, students with learning differences, as well as with native speakers. I will be keeping this book close in the next year, using the protocol for lesson reflections and the resources for strategy reminders.

What are your best strategies for teaching English language learners? 

(By the way, if you are wondering what in the world SIOP stands for, it appears to be like the letters IBM—originating as an acronym that has become less connected with the component words and more connected with the entity is stands for. In this case the acronym is Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, but it has come to stand for this particular collection of 30 features of effective teaching, especially for ELLs but also for all students, not only in sheltered situations but also in mainstream and bilingual classrooms. It’s pronounced SIGH-op.)   

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SIOP Model

Lesson preparation

• 1) Content objectives clearly defined, displayed and reviewed with students
• 2) Language objectives clearly defined, displayed and reviewed with students
• 3) Content concepts appropriate for age and educational background level of students
• 4) Supplementary materials used to a high degree, making the lesson clear and meaningful (e.g., computer programs, graphs, models, visuals)
• 5) Adaptation of content (e.g., text, assignment) to all levels of student proficiency
• 6) Meaningful activities that integrate lesson concepts (e.g., interviews, letter writing, simulations, models) with language practice opportunities for reading, writing, listening, and/or speaking

Building background

• 7) Concepts explicitly linked to students’ background experiences
• 8) Links explicitly made between past learning and new concepts
• 9) Key vocabulary emphasized (e.g., introduced, written, repeated, and highlighted for students to see)

Comprehensible input

• 10) Speech appropriate for students’ proficiency levels (e.g., slower rate, enunciation, and simple sentence structure for beginners)
• 11) Clear explanation of academic tasks
• 12) A variety of techniques used to make content concepts clear (e.g., modeling, visuals, hands-on activities, demonstrations, gestures, body language)

Strategies

• 13) Ample opportunities provided for students to use learning strategies
• 14) Scaffolding techniques consistently used, assisting and supporting student understanding (e.g., think-alouds)
• 15) A variety of questions and tasks that promote higher-order thinking skills (e.g., literal, analytical, and interpretive questions)

Interaction

• 16) Frequent opportunities for interaction and discussion between teacher/student and among students, which encourage elaborated responses about lesson concepts
• 17) Grouping configurations support language and content objectives of the lesson
• 18) Sufficient wait time for student responses consistently provided
• 19) Ample opportunities for students to clarify key concepts in L1 as needed with aide, peer, or L1 text

Practice and application

• 20) Hands-on materials and/or manipulatives provided for students to practice using new content knowledge
• 21) Activities provided for students to apply content and language knowledge in the classroom
• 22) Activities integrate all language skills (i.e., reading, writing, listening, and speaking)

Lesson Delivery

• 23) Content objectives clearly supported by lesson delivery
• 24) Language objectives clearly supported by lesson delivery
• 25) Students engaged approximately 90% to 100% of the period
• 26) Pacing of the lesson appropriate to students’ ability levels

Review & Assessment

• 27) Comprehensive review of key vocabulary
• 28) Comprehensive review of key content concepts
• 29) Regular feedback provided to students on their output (e.g., language, content, work)
• 30) Assessment of student comprehension and learning of all lesson objectives (e.g., spot checking, group response) throughout the lesson

Risking Growth

With poet Lynn Otto (right) at the Salem Poetry Project reading at Ike Box. 

What risks have you taken lately? 

I don’t mean texting while driving or leaving home without an umbrella on a cloudy day. I mean related to your teaching, learning, or disciplinary identity. Much has been written recently about risk-taking and its relationship to growth mindset, to learning, and to success. Perhaps you’ve seen the quote “If you’ve never failed, you’ve never attempted anything significant.” Or seen the classroom acronym for FAIL: First Attempt In Learning. Or heard the phrase “Fail forward.” 

It's one thing to tell students this; it's another entirely to model it. But it's true: If I want to bless my students with freedom from fear of productive failure, I first of all have to free myself, and to do that, I have to practice. I practiced with 2 risks this week: I read a poem of mine at an open mike event and I accepted an invitation to write an NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) post and lesson about a poet of my choice. 

I’d never even attended an open mike event before. I didn’t even know this event included an open mike! Here’s how it happened. A middle school friend re-established contact a few years ago on social media. It turned out he lives near my grown daughters. Last October, this friend and his wife invited my husband and me over for lunch. I discovered his wife is a poet. I bought and read her book, Real Daughter, appreciating the nuanced look at family relationships. Wednesday I found out on social media that she was doing a reading at a local coffee shop the next night. I attended. 

She greeted me with, “You ARE doing the open mike, aren’t you?” I protested that I hadn’t come prepared, but she pushed, "You have your phone--surely you've emailed someone one." I admitted I could access the poem I’d written and posted on this blog back in July. I signed up for the first available spot, #2, so as to have as short a time as possible to regret my decision. What I learned: (1) What constitutes risk is individual. This seemed like a huge risk to me, but after I read, so many others got up and read—people of all ages and all abilities. Likewise, I need to remember not to discount what feels risky to a student. (2) It wasn’t as bad as I thought. (3) There’s nothing like reading my writing to a real audience to help me revise, realizing words are not just about getting an idea out of myself, but also connecting with these particular people.

There's me on the far right, Lynn across the table from me. Credit: https://www.facebook.com/SalemPoetryProject/photos/pcb.2770797049664694/2770795376331528/?type=3&theater

The other opportunity arrived in my inbox Monday: “I saw your recent blog post on poetry. I wondered if you would be interested in being a writer for this year’s NCTE Verse.” Wow. So I’ve spent this week researching the Polish winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature, Wislawa Szymborska (pronounced Veeswava Shimborska), and fleshing out the lesson I’ve led students through on her poem “Possibilities.” What I learned: The value of over-researching. They asked for a short bio of the poet. There are short bios all over the place—but it’s basically the same 2 sentences in the lit book, on the Nobel Prize web site, and on The Poetry Foundation web site. Two sentences is all I need, but it’s impossible to not plagiarize when 2 sentences is all I know. Then I came across a Polish site dedicated to Szymborska with a long chronology of her life. I realized she lived through both Nazi and Soviet occupations as well as the return to democracy. I collected a half a page of notes, realized I was way past “short bio,” and ended up with 2 sentences similar to all the rest—but now they were MY 2 sentences.

One final lesson taken from this week: With all the negative press social media has been getting, I would not have these opportunities to grow as a writer without it! I’m thankful not only for the opportunities to grow myself, but to be able to model for my students an active writing and reading life—part of being the living curriculum.

How do you actively engage in your discipline, becoming the living curriculum for your students?

Hope to see Wislawa Szymborska on this poster for 2020!

Why Teach Poetry?

Confession #1: I do not particularly like a lot of poetry. But when a line or a thought or an image grabs me—whether it’s by the throat or by the hem of my garment—it’s with me forever. In struggle and sorrow it's, Wendell Berry’s “practice resurrection” from “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” that leaps to mind; every fall, Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Goldengrove unleaving” from “Spring and Fall”; on a day so beautiful I can’t breathe deeply enough, e.e.cummings’ “leaping greenly spirits of trees” from “I thank You God for most this amazing.” I keep a notebook of the poems I love.

Confession #2: There are not many jobs in poetry. It’s true. 

So why teach poetry? Some of us do it because we have loved the old masters, from Shakespeare and Donne to Auden and T.S. Eliot; some because the passion of spoken word poetry ignites us; some because writing poetry was a lifeline to our former adolescent selves; some because we have to—it’s in the textbook, the curriculum, the standards. But none of these, on their own or together, will sufficiently answer a student’s question “Why do we have to study this?” And I believe I need to embrace that question, answering it before students even ask, and encouraging them to ask it if my answer isn’t working for them. Last week I wrote about 5 strategies for tackling poetry that have worked with my 10th graders—because if you’re convinced you should like poetry but you don’t “get” it, that just breeds insecurity and defensiveness. But a pocketful of strategies runs out without a thick purpose. So here are some of the reasons I think poetry is worth studying.  

Poetry is multipurpose: It can confess, celebrate, lament, protest, unite, enlighten. And generally it does this in a matter of lines rather than pages—whether that is 14, 40, or 400. I call my 10th grade poetry unit “Paying Attention” because language is amazing in all its rich variety—sound, meaning, connotation, rich sensory images, provocative figurative images, rhythms, patterns, repetition, contradiction, paradox—and all literature uses language in surprising ways. However, only in poetry do we really have time to pay attention to all the things it does. It is language in concentrated form, and we can re-read every line, every word several times. 

I have an interview with poet Donald Hall from an old Poetry magazine that I share with students. In it he talks about his craft. He says he goes through about 50 drafts per poem, and sometimes up to 500. He pays attention to sentence variety—simple sentences interspersed with compound, complex, and compound-complex. Students are amazed that revision and attention to sentence variety are not things I ask of students because they’re students, but because they’re writers. 

Poetry was the earliest literature, and is today still omnipresent in the lyrics of songs. It pervades the world’s religious texts (40% of the Old Testament, according to one source). (In my Christian school, I often teach a lesson on Hebrew poetry.) Part of the reason for the ancient forms of poetry is rooted in preliteracy—what makes words easy to remember and pass on if they can’t be written down? Those tricks of language that are like the hooks on burrs to catch the human brain and hitch a ride to new, fertile places—tricks of pattern, tricks of sound, tricks of connection. It's what still gets a line of a song stuck in our heads.

So poetry gives us practice in paying attention—to language, to emotion, to thought, to the world around us. And those are skills that deepen joy, empathy, and communication. Which may actually help students get jobs. However, after delivering this apologetic for poetry, I have been known to whisper aside to a teacher, “And if you still can’t find a poem that grabs you, if you still dread, resent, or dislike every poem you’ve ever met, just skip the unit—you’ll only teach the students to dread, resent, or dislike poetry.”

Which leads to the last question: What poem that has grabbed you? If there isn't one, how can you find one? If there is a poem you love, what is it? How did you find it? How do you find new poems to love and for your students to love? I have a couple of ideas already—but that’s another blog for another day.