This is our third post in a series of entries that chronicle our experiences, hiccups, and successes in using the Teachers’ College Reading and Writing Project 8th Grade Writing Unit of Study to help us execute a 7th Grade PBL Unit with our Science department. We are writing this blog to show teachers how we can use these units to enhance curriculum even if you are not in a Project School, to show the merits of Balanced Literacy, and a deeper look at authentic learning.
By Chloe Kannan
On Friday night, Velicia came over and we finally sat down and took a breath. I poured ourselves each a glass a wine and we toasted. “To the best unit we have ever taught and the most growth we have ever seen from kids in writing.”
That was the best glass of wine I have had in a long time.
We have all had that toast and glass of wine. But for some, with the realities of standardized testing, top-down initiatives, and people cutting time from your classes, it becomes more difficult than ever before to plan and execute authentic literacy. But it can be done working smart.
So, what exactly happened to our rigorous, authentic learning excursion- aka grabbing Mary and Cornelius’ TCRWP unit of study curriculum books and giving a unit a go….
I guess we need to rewind.
This post will detail all about the first half of the unit, the hiccups, what we did to fix them, and the results we had going into the second half of the unit. I like the metaphor of going on a cruise (we are too close to Spring Break)
Part One: We are on the Cruise Ship- The Beginning of a New Unit
The first bend was all about building their argument skills. They had none, and they had NO base in argumentative writing. We were on a time-crunch. The kids are on block-scheduling and with school interruptions taken into account, we only had 12 instructional days per class to make this unit happen. Sound familiar?
So we had the kids for homework outline their paper on role-playing simulated violence games, but I knew that this wasn’t going to be enough for the kids to be motivated to write the paper. In the past, they had written a paper over the course of days. Flash-drafting in class was going to kill them. But we had a plan to get them excited.
A few days earlier, I remembered I had a primary source on this topic: my fiancé, Nick Kilstein. He played the game in high school, and he was the best story-teller I knew.
I walked into class and announced that there was another primary source giving a 15 minute presentation on his experiences and that they all should furiously write notes as he would recount his gripping story and sequence of events of his life: you know…the usual events of getting into car accidents, friends bugging each other’s backpacks, creating elaborate full-scale plans of attack. The kids were so excited.
Then the kids asked the question I had been waiting for: But Ms. Kannan, we planned this essay already. What if we decide to change our claim because of this primary source?
Well, that’s the real world. We incorporate NEW evidence and revise our claim to fit our new thinking.
The kids were ready. The kids were engrossed, asked hard questions, and many had to end up following up later through email to incorporate more evidence to fit their arguments. It was a perfect supplement to the unit.
They flash-drafted and finished for homework. For kicks, Velicia and I looked into one class period’s documents.
And oh God, those papers were a mess: High-achievers, EALs, academic support. Guilty as charged- All of them had major gaps.
So much for authentic learning…Now, these kids were excited for the content, but oh NO, these papers are a disaster zone.
The doubts set it: 8th grade unit for 7th grade? Crap, we didn’t do literary essay with them. Is this why it isn’t working? Maybe this isn’t possible. What are we doing? Is the 5 paragraph essay model laughing at our stupidity? Can we just go work office jobs instead?
The desperation became comical in common planning. SO SCREWED, we moaned.
But of course, we refused to let this fail.
Part Two: GET THE LIFEBOATS, NOW- Back to the Basics
- After looking at these drafts, Velicia and I set one major goal for this paper. We would only focus on ideas and organization. We would focus on language usage (run-on sentences everywhere in all papers) and their word choice in the second half of the unit.
After the messy drafts, I had the kids come in and I handed them a blank sheet of paper. I want you to write down your claim at the top in a HUGE box with your 3 reasons listed below. Then I want you to pass the paper to someone next to you and they will put either a check or an X next to each of the reasons. Check for the ones that make sense. X for the ones that don’t. Your reasons must support your claim.
“If I want a transfer to Ms. Pernell’s class because it won’t be as distracting for my learning and I list less homework as a reason, does that make sense?”
I try to be funny…
This solved many of the problems with the paper making sense. Kids realized that much of their reasoning was not actually arguing for their claim.
Then, I checked through each one individually myself and conferenced with them. Some changed up reasons, other revised claims completely. Awesome.
- We somehow had to teach counter-claim and we then were finding kids were not explaining their evidence.
When kids saw counter-claim in the exemplar paper from the actual unit, it seemed daunting. Not just for them, but for us. The kids had NO experience in counter-argument, and how the heck were we going to get to the point where they could not only just write it for this paper, but in a science paper. AGH.
On top of that, we found in kids’ papers, they weren’t actually explaining their evidence. They didn’t understand that evidence had to be really explained to justify their claim. We didn’t have much time, and we knew we needed to do this.
Velicia and I teach at the same time next door. Great in a situation like this. We each taught a 30 minute lesson and switched classes after each segment. I did the explaining evidence and V did the counter-argument.
Counter-Argument was a whole lesson on how we acknowledge “haters.” Yes, I am serious. Acknowledging haters and explaining that you have to get them out of the way. Velicia did this through talk of course, but then actually had kids through transitional phrases write a counter-argument paragraph in class. At the same time, she taught them options of where to put it. Organization and ideas, combined! Check!
For me, I went back to the whole idea of going up to our principal and wanting to switch into Ms. Pernell’s room. “Ms. Curtis, listen, Ms. Kannan’s classroom is distracting. For example, she doesn’t even wear shoes.”
For one, I don’t wear shoes, but the kids figured out real fast that I wasn’t really explaining the connection of the reason between not wearing shoes and the claim that Ms. Kannan’s class is distracting. The kids laughed and got it, highlighting parts of their papers that needed more explanation of evidence. I fed them transitions of how we introduce evidence- For example, for instance
And fed them some transitions of analysis- this demonstrates, this shows, this conveys.
Boom. We got the kids back on the life-boats.
Part Three: Looking back at the Cruise Ship with Humility and Pride- Analyzing Results
That cruise ship was a mammoth. The kiddos cranked out a paper in just a few instructional days. 6 to be exact. These results would determine how we would move into the second half of this unit to write the Science Paper, the most difficult and technical piece of writing they would have to do. We still furiously gave comments before they turned in this paper on ideas and organization, so we hoped they would make some major changes…
Did the lifeboats work? Was the cruise worth it?
So we got the papers back. The results were all over the place. For an average class, 2 kids exemplified the standard, 4 met the standard, 5 approached standard, and 3 didn’t meet the standard. (We designed our standards-based rubrics based on Writing Pathways from TCRWP)
I was proud. I couldn’t believe how great they were, that fast. The power of formative feedback is incredible; actually staggering how Velicia and I looked at papers and gave the feedback made a difference. Don’t look at them all at once. Too much work. But doing it in waves really helps instruction and your kids.
But there were some problems:
- While overall organization made sense, there were problems with the internal organization of paragraphs. Some paragraphs were still HUGE and lots just didn’t make sense and were hard to follow.
- Many kids made up evidence. Some of my highest-level students were using their own conclusions as evidence from either my fiancé or the article they read.
- Connotative language was not taught. So the papers were either too informal or the language was too strong (high-achievers)
We ended up meeting with each kid individually to really discuss in-depth what worked and what didn’t in this paper. We did this as they wrote the science paper… This helped the kids set goals for the science paper, the second half of our unit. It also reminded us of what we need to spear-head moving forward.
We were ready for the hardest teaching excursion either of us had ever taken. And our kids were ready too…
More to come…
Reading, Writing, and Keeping it Real 