Experiencing Feedback?

Following up on my last post on the writing portfolio, we are well underway with one essay down! We have successfully worked through our rhetorical analysis essay and reflected on our writing. I was really surprised at how much my reading of the essays was affected when I wasn't having to attach a grade to the paper. I was more free to really read what they were saying and provide feedback on both what they were doing well and what things they could improve on for a final paper. The next question is will they be more receptive to the feedback since they are not being penalized for the work? I'll have to come up with a way to gauge that!

Part of writing the paper for the portfolio was to complete a reflection on the essay writing process. The questions were:

Reflection Question

“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful. “ - Margaret J. Wheatley 

Write a reflection on the process of writing your Rhetorical Analysis Essay. Make sure you cover the following questions. You can elaborate on ideas that are not covered in the paper.

·         Do you feel you achieved the paper’s purpose? Provide some evidence to discuss how you did so.

·         What is a successful part of this process and paper for you? Explain why it was successful.

·         In editing this paper, what would you do differently?

·         What did you find you struggled with on writing this essay? Is there feedback you can give that you feel would help you to be more successful next time?

·         What preparation for this essay did you find helpful? What preparation did you find was not as helpful? 

As I read over their reflections, I saw that many of them were really examining the work they had done. They were taking time to think about thinking! It can be hard enough to get them to think, much less think and write, even harder to think and write and think about writing. Whew! In the feedback I asked what prep work was useful and what wasn't. I began to realize for every person who said one thing didn't help, someone else said it was the most helpful part of the process,  but that is what differentiating instruction is. While a chart helped organize some students' thoughts, reading the student sample papers helped create a clear idea of the assignment for others. Peer review in groups gave the feedback some students needed to continue writing their paper, while others felt the group time was the least valuable part of the process .Providing opportunities for each student to find something that works for them seemed to make the class in general feel confident about the assignment. I gained a lot of valuable feedback as to how I will approach this essay next year as well. 

Creating Opportunities for Feedback

What does feedback look like? It could be as simple as an exit ticket, survey, written response or discussion. Here are some things that I have tried so far this year:

Writing Survey  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1JNkSmoKkpJ9a1VVOyh0jYAqHXHz6qJpEqPT78uXQY4w/edit?usp=sharing
- Students took the survey on their own writing abilities before we began the portfolio. I could then use the data to guide what I would spend time on in class. Here is a small part of the analysis. I love ending up with visuals to show the class. 

PollEverywhere.com  This survey helped to gain information at the beginning of class to see what we need to go back over during our discussion on day two.  

After I asked for general feedback of understanding, I asked students to respond with specific ideas that we needed to cover.  This was a great opportunity to have students respond to one another. 

Book Club Survey

Although this one isn't tied to the curriculum, students had been asking throughout the year what I was reading and what other students were reading. Responding to the feedback from students we are in the beginning stages of starting our first book club!  I sent out a survey and the students chose when to meet, what to call the club, and what our first book to read would be. 

http://new.evite.com/?utm_source=gmail&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=host_conf#view_invite:eid=0322AAQZXGL24EVDCEPCPQXTDC4IWI

What do we do with feedback?

Last year at the end of the year I remember the anxiety in the workrooms as teachers sent out a student survey to their classes to gain insight on their teaching. There was a mixture of emotions from various teachers from hurt feelings to anger to appreciation. I found myself focusing on the one or two negatives rather than all of the positives. It is really hard to not take something personal that is personal. There will always be a students to takes this anonymous survey as a golden opportunity to express a feeling about you that has nothing to do with you as a teacher. So how do we handle feedback in an appropriate way? We can never know what we are doing well until we hear from those who are a part of the process everyday. I don't have the answers, but I will share some things I took away from the experience. 

In asking for feedback you have to be ready to hear things that may not make you feel good. That idea of a perfect world where all of our students love us,our class, the work and can already see into the future where they will reap the benefits of their quest for knowledge...is unlikely. You can't ask your husband " seriously, does this dress make me look fat?" unless you can handle the honest truth (which I can not so I don't ask!). We have to take the egotism out of the equation...and it is SO HARD! Here are some things I have to remind myself:

- Focus on the OVERALL feedback. You will always have extremes either way. If all but one person felt an assignment to be worthwhile and meaningful - let that resonate with you.

- Keep the goal in mind. If the goal is to gain insight into what is working and what isn't, keep that in mind when reading the feedback. Don't get caught up on things that are not relevant to your purpose. 

- Really think about how you word the questions. If you want to focus on an activity, make sure you word the questions specifically. Ask for follow up questions that ask for why? or how? or a specific example. This makes the students have to think about what they are saying and support what they are saying with an example. Sometimes we word questions so that students are confused as to how to answer. You may, without realizing it, generate negative responses. 

- Do something with the feedback! If students respond to a survey give them some way of knowing you have read the information and you are taking what they say into consideration as you move forward. 
- Do not punish someone for their responses. If someone says that "you never really explain anything" don't respond the next day by giving them a mountain of notes and homework. It defeats the purpose and you won't get anything out of them in the future. 
-Have a discussion about why you are giving them the survey and what you are doing the information. If they have a better understanding of the "why" then they can better give you what you are looking for. 
- Always and Never statements. I try and speak with my students about making these kind of statements and how they are generally not true. I learned early on in creating a positive environment at home that "thems fightn' words!" They put people on the defensive. 

When we as people feel our voice matters and we have the ability to impact our environment we feel important and connected. That's how we stay engaged. When we are important to the community we begin to interact in the community. 

What mark will I leave on my students' writing?

(all quotes from Jeff Anderson)


I went to the ACTE conference this past Saturday and found myself reeling with ideas about teaching writing. This is always such a struggle- how do you teach someone to write? I have my own about what I can and can not do-  I can teach structure and form, I can give resources to expand vocabulary, I can even help students to properly insert quotations with commentary. However, I can't teach voice. They have to find their voice. How do they find it? Through practice and exposure. The best thing they can do is READ! See writing modeled. See writers taking risks.

"Imitation leads to Innovation."

"By exposing students we make them aware of things without realizing it."  

The question remains how do I help to encourage students as writers? During the keynote speech by Jeff Anderson, the "Write Guy", I began tweeting things he said that really stuck out to me. I am included the quotes in this blog post. Two of those I shared with my students today concerning their writing experience.

  "Create more opportunities for students to have a positive encounter with   writing."  

I started my class with that question today "give me an example of a positive writing experience." The students were excited to share about writing that they have had published, poetry contests they have won, recognition they gained from having their writing used as a "good" sample in class. What I noticed is that majority of these experiences occurred to students during elementary and middle school. I shared my own history of having writing be for me, the one area that I always received positive feedback. Poetry contests (I still remember every word of the poem), reading my essay in front of my AP class in high school (which was really shocking to my classmates since I wasn't the front row, valedictorian seeking student) and college fiction writing classes that made me feel empowered. These things remain vivid memories to myself and my students.

When I asked students to share a negative experience with writing they cited primarily high school experiences. Now, I do understand that there are some justifiable reasons for this. Not until high school are they asked to create writing that critically analyzes a work. The stakes are higher and they are no longer writing for creative purposes. But how do you juggle both?

In addition to the conversation I am having asked students to fill out a personal writing survey http://tinyurl.com/ayzevv2.  Hopefully it will start our process of self evaluation and reflection and give us some data to direct what we need to focus on in class.

"We are a first draft society. Push students to reread what they have written."

I could take on a million different ideas here - but I have taken on an ambitious project of a portfolio for second semester. What is our focus? REFLECTION and EXPOSURE.

We will be taking more time to not only write the essays, but really focus on the reflection. I want to make a deliberate effort to conference with my students on what they are doing well. Also, by giving them this cover page I am holding myself accountable to give them very outlined directions for each essay, take time to look over sample essays and model writing together, and finally spend time looking back and analyzing the work. The hope is with four essays to look back over we can identify things we are doing well, and things to improve on. I hope this portfolio ends up being a good experience for all of us.

The thing I am really struggling with is what is my role? How do I effectively grade 400 essays over the next 4 months?

"Take out the guilt- grading everything students write makes you a bottleneck in the process"

My thought is that I read all the essays and give comments - mindful of giving a positive to each- and have them write a reflection for each essay. They will receive a grade for turning in the assignments on time.  At the end of the semester they will turn in the entire portfolio, but submit one essay for a final grade. I'm not sure yet if that will be doing them a disservice for gaining feedback in the form of a grade, or if it might alleviate some of the pressure and allow us to write and reflect without consequence?

"Give them the freedom to take risks."

What I find with teaching is that I need to also give myself the freedom to take risks. I rarely, even after 7 years of teaching the same thing, give the same assignment in the same way. And I feel a bit of comfort in the fact that I can say I practice what I preach and I am a reflective teacher. I am going to see how this works. If I feel like I am ending up with a product that shows their development as writers I have achieved my purpose. So cheers to taking risks!

Challenge Yourself: The Franklin Challenge

The study of literature is the study of the human experience. I love that what I teach has along with it this great opportunity, and responsibility, to talk about life. Sometimes I hear a students say that we've gotten off topic when addressing an issue in the classroom while reading, and while sometimes true, I would beg to differ that we have had an opportunity to make the reading relevant. In an English class, or at least my English class, learning doesn't always have an end product that can be submitted for points. For some students that can feel like "Well we didn't do anything today" but there is more to learning than a worksheet or test. To be frank, I give very few tests throughout the year- maybe 4 or 5.

As we started our "Rationalist" (aka the Enlightenment, aka the Revolutionary Period) unit we had an unique opportunity to take our literature and study of life to a new level. We read Ben Franklin's Autobiography - particularly looking at the 13 virtues which was a systematic approach to reaching moral perfection. After reading Franklin's rationale, we embarked on "The Franklin  Challenge". So here is what we did:

1. We looked at a sample log of Franklin's day:

Looking at how Franklin logged his day we made  plans to ask ourselves every morning "What Good Will I Do Today?" and follow up every night with "What Good Have I Done Today?"

Next we took on the task of documenting the virtues in our own life:

Students were to take few minutes at the end of each day to mark the virtues in which they had mastered for the day, and those in which they had struggled. 

The end product wasn't to turn these documents in, although I did check them by walking around the room for accountability purposes, but to write a reflection. "What did you learn about yourself this week?"

I was really impressed with the reflections submitted by students. To take a week to be reflective about how you spend your time, be conscious of the actions you take, and be mindful of setting your focus each morning to do something good had an impact. Now I am not naive enough to think that every student took this seriously and and filled in out every night, but I can tell from the reflections that some did. In my directions for the assignment I told them:

In order to become better we have to willing to be reflective. We have to be willing to  praise ourselves for our successes and be honest about our shortcomings. To be self aware can be a hard and uncomfortable- but it is imperative to becoming what we want to be. 

I decided to take this challenge as well. So what did I learn? I learned I struggle tremendously with Tranquility- be not disturbed by trifles or accidents common or unavoidable. I can have an exceptional day. Feel productive in my planning and teaching, make meaningful connections in class, find myself blessed by so much. I will quickly sacrifice all of those positives for a moment I have no control over. Maybe unkind words, or a struggle in the classroom, or anxiety over situations that I can not change. Having that question at the end of the day to refocus my attention had an impact on me 

"What Good Did You Do Today?" 

While I could easily end my day going back over all of the ways in which I fell short, I made myself look at something I did well. What a change that makes! It's all about perspective. Now, I will have to repeatedly remind myself of these things daily, but it had a huge impact for me! Hopefully it had an impact on at least a few of my students as well :)

Homework with a purpose! 

Overstimulation: My struggle with virtual content

My goal was to reflect each week about what is happening in the classroom through blogging. While I am reflecting, I haven't followed through with writing about it. What better to write about then-time management?

Time management and organization has always been a struggle for me. I envy those who it comes natural to. Those who automatically color code and organize things. Without hesitation can envision how things will fit together and can be easily found later. Technology for me this year has added a new layer that I have to adjust to. For me unfortunately the saying is true: out of sight out of mind. That is what technology CAN become in my universe without planning ahead of time. If something is in the back of the fridge, I often forget it is there. If clothes are tucked in a back drawer, they may not get worn for a year. Because I know myself and I know I struggle with these things I find ways around it. Dedicate each shelf in the fridge to certain items as to not have them get lost. Organize my hanging by colors and label drawers. This is the same thing I will have to do in the classroom. Create a system. What that system looks like I haven't figured out yet. Emails, Twitter, Facebook, Moodle, Blogs, Edmodo, Collaborize. These are all things in my educational technological universe. How do I devote time to thoroughly reading, utilizing, and participating in all of these? It does for me create a bombardment of information that can very quickly make me feel overwhelmed and uneasy. Did I miss something?!!?? Each person is different and I don’t know the psychology behind all of it but visual content for me can be serious overstimulation. Bullet points, highlight, large font, tiny font, multiple color font, multiple fonts all together, underline, bold, italics, exclamation points!!!!!!!  It literally makes my brain scream. I need to hear things. It works it out in my head to talk something out and then write it down. Yes- write. Something about the physical act of making my hand create letters on a page makes it make sense for me. Online calendars I forget about. This is just how I operate. While I am trying to figure that out, I am thinking about my students as well.

Not only do they have all of the above things to juggle, but they also have multiple classes using multiple things. Luckily many of the technologies we use have built in organizational features. Calendars, alerts, etc. But again, I can see how it could feel like a huge mountain to climb. It is so very easy to overlook something and have no idea that you didn’t see it.

I think the best thing we can all do is to mainstream information for ourselves and for our students. Just because one thing has a cool new feature and we want to try it, we have to remember all of the other platforms our students are asked to check, read, respond, and work on. Some of the ideas I have had I have decided to forgo for the moment. Sometimes my students want to be able to physically turn in a piece of paper. Much like we give options for our students based on their personal learning needs, we as professionals have to remember that we haven’t outgrown those learning styles. They are still a part of who we are and how we best receive and decode information.

I would love to hear ideas others have for organizing and managing online content and staying organized and on top of everything asked of you!

Words with Friends!

I wanted to find a way to have the students take some ownership of different elements of the class this year. That might be making some selections of things we read, deciding on an assessment, or in this instance sharing words...with their friends!

I said before in a post that I noticed on my Kindle app that is allows you to share a word after you define it. I have already told my students as we have been discussing writing that the best way to improve their vocabulary and writing skills will be to read. Reading allows them to see words in context and to see what good writing looks like. I'll have to do another post on reading after the conversation we had in class yesterday about why people hate to read – very interesting. Giving them a list of words and having them to define them and use them in a sentence sticks...sometimes. Other times it does not. I wrote a previous post about making connections with their words, which seems to be the best way to make them meaningful.

So here is what we are going to “TRY”- let the kids share the words on Twitter using the hash tag #barnesvoc. I am going to go over it today in class and show them how to share. I will update how it goes in class! I hope it will push them to be thoughtful about what they are reading and words that they don't know. It is also nice for them to see something that they took the time to do appear in class for their peers. Maybe inadvertently they will also find something interesting to read from what their peers are reading (happy accidents are welcome)!

Words are powerful!

Here are the steps we are taking:

1. First find the word and select to define.

2. Select "full definition" and choose the optino to "share" - Select "Twitter" (they will have to first connect their Twitter account to Kindle)

3. Add the hashtag #barnesvoc

4. Add the link appears on Twitter!

Here we go technology!

Today was the first day I incorporated technology into an assignment with my students. I've used a lot of these things before (QR codes, polls, etc.). But it's always interesting to see what things you have to fix the first time through and how your students respond.
Our assignment had to do with the discussion of "Dystopia" and The Hunger Games. Besides discussing the term and its connection to the novel I also wanted them to also read an article written about why teens are fascinated with the genre and  look at an info graphic about its connection to historical events. I created QR codes for this assignment to link the to the webpage for both. So here is how it went!

Assignment 1 - Class 1- One of my QR code wasn't working in my first class. Panic right!?! It's that sinking feeling when you've spent time putting something together and it doesn't work. Well thanks to the iPad I could instantly,while walking around the room, grab the link from Diigo and put it on my edmodo page! Problem solved! To be honest besides the novelty of scanning the code, it would have worked better to just have the assignment and links on edmodo from the beginning. I had my students get in groups, so in some groups everyone had a device and could use it while others adapted by reading the article aloud or passing the phone around for the info graphic.

On my iPad I also used Notability to jot some notes down about how each class handled their group assignment and what I would like to adjust for next time. Very handy when you feel overloaded at the end of the day and can't remember!

I finally used PollEverywhere.com to ask my students a question about their ability to access and annotate the short story they had to read for homework from a device. The students were able to text in their response without disruption to the group discussion, and I could immediately see how many people would need copies for tonight. In my first class 100% are choosing to read on a device (we will see how that works tomorrow maybe an Assignment 1-Part II)

Assignment 1- Class 2 and 3- I noticed the closer it got to the middle of the day the more time it took for the students' devices to load the information. Good to know. There also became a larger discrepancy between the students who did and did not have devices.

Assignment 1 -Class 4 and 5- I wasn't sure how to adapt this activity for my regular classes. Yes they can handle the same questions, but sometimes need more guidance getting to the answer. For those classes we took each question one at a time. I let them work in groups and then we shared answers. I was really surprised by how well read (and primarily the boys) my 6th period is. We had great discussions about other books in the same category they had read and wanted to read. They really blew me away! However, by the time I got to my last class only a few students had a device to use. I let one group borrow my iPad and the other read the article from my computer. We looked at the infographic together. They really weren't as interested or engaged. That's to be expected by the end of the day, but I am going to have to work on figuring out what motivates them because impressing the teacher really isn't it!

I am trying to be more reflective (one of my yearly goals- maybe I'll blog about that soon).You never know until you really get into it what you can and cannot do. I quickly realized that what some classes can handle and what they can thrive in won't be the same for another. Great lessons learned!

First Day of School

I am getting ready to pack up and head home from working at school. I completely underestimated the amount of small things I had to do to just get it together for the students tomorrow. This is my eight start to a school year (so weird to say), and yet every year I feel a bit overwhelmed. I have to remind myself that I don’t have to be ready for the whole year tomorrow – just ready for tomorrow.  

As I started getting my first day agenda together, I am beginning to think of the first day of school as a free therapy session. Who are you? What's your favorite music, book, subject, sport, color, cereal? If you were a shoe which one would you be and why? Who do you want to be five years from now? What are your goals for the year? What are your strengths and weakness? Biggest fears? Pet Peeves?

Don’t get me wrong, all of this is much needed information along with their learning style color and astrological sign. However, to be quite truthful their biggest goal for the day, even the year, might just be to make it through the first day back to high school with no real catastrophes. No tripping down the stairs (or up for that matter). Finding someone to sit with at lunch. Hoping no one else has on the outfit you spent days putting together. Hoping you see at least one friendly face in one of your classes. Trying not to look lost, scared or vulnerable. No tears on the first day!

I say all of this to get to the point that we are all anxious on the first day. We all have a desire to start with our best foot forward. The motto my first year of teaching as I heard it from  new teacher orientation was "don't smile before Christmas" - but we all need a little compassion on the first day back. Someone to ask if we need help when that distant stare has overtaken our faces. Someone to give us a compliment or a smile.

 I am always waiting for that one student who finally says something that makes everyone laugh to break that "new class" tension that the teacher just can’t break.

Here is hoping we all have a wonderful first day back with no catastrophes and maybe a little more insight into who we are J