Secondary Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook

The section on zeros derailing a students overall grade is alarming. I can think back to when I was a student and all the differing methods and policies about late work and remember how depressing it was to forget an assignment, get a zero, and have the whole quarter ruined. We were talking about that in one of my other classes last week and brought it back to what we hope students are getting out of that assignment. Is it our job to teach them to turn their work in on time or to have them gain the skills or knowledge from their homework? It seems reasonable to dock their grade for late work, but zeros can be debilitating and do demoralize them for the rest of the term.

There are a few key ideas that I see repeatedly which are related to grades being clear and meaningful. Not only should the grading methods be clear to students, but to their parents as well. Parents should be able to understand the progress their child is making and how that is being measured. I like the concept of Principle 4 that states that not all information gathered should be graded. Parents will want to understand the difference between what is graded, what is not, and what factors are outside of that process.

Principle 5 is interesting to me because I feel like we always grade on an average. Typically,  it seems like bigger assignments are worth more points or weighted to be a higher percentage of the grade, but I don't think I've seen grades later in the quarter worth more just on the basis that they're later in the term. Bigger projects and assignments tend to be later in the term and usually incorporate several learning points from that unit or term, but you can say the same thing about midterms or end of unit tests. It would be interesting to weight grades more as the quarter went on to track a student's progress as they learn their teacher's expectations as well.  Sometimes it seems like a student would prefer to keep the grades specific to the assignment and not the time frame if they struggle with a particular unit.  For instance, if you struggled with a particular part of ninth grade science, like chemistry, and the rest of your semester/year went really well, then you wouldn't want that unit towards the end of the year to drag your entire grade down.

Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning

The practical examples of how to set up an assessment or evaluation of what the students' reading and understanding of a piece of literature are going to be easily applied to my classroom experience and unit plan.  I liked the criteria for classroom discussion and how it gave clear expectations of what that teacher expected from her students during discussion time. To me, it seems like I will want to find a balance between assessing my students critical thinking and engagement with what we are reading with some testing of the facts. I think about Tovani and how do we catch how much a student is truly understanding and the more varied the assessments in a class, the more opportunities we have as teachers to work with our students on finding their strengths and furthering the development of their weaknesses.

One thing that keeps standing out to me is the need to keep expectations clear to our students. As a student in junior high or high school, I remember a lot of my stress came from not knowing what to expect on a test, quiz or how I would be graded on an assignment especially early on in the school year. Another factor that I'm thinking about is differentiation. Even without ELL students or student with an IEP, there are different learning styles and proficiencies that should be thought about. We had a poetry exam my senior year which included writing our own poetry to show that we understood different poetry styles. Our teacher said she wanted us to have fun with it, but for me it was horrible because I'm not creative like that. For me, it would have been nice to have had some differentiation so that it wouldn't have weighed so heavily on our creativity and more on our knowledge of the differences between different poems. That being said, I remember a friend of mine thinking it was easy and she was happy about it. Finding some middle ground would have been nice, although I can recognize that finding that sweet spot is a balancing act and it will be hard (or impossible) to keep everyone happy all of the time.

Readicide

I enjoyed Readicide as a general guide to encouraging readers in the classroom. Where Tovani walked through specific students and scenarios, the theories presented by Gallagher are a great starting point for creating life-long readers.

The account of Chloe coming home and being frustrated by picking apart a book in class and wishing she were still in Australia where she would have been through four books in the same time frame is a great reminder that we need to support not only our struggling readers in class, but to support and encourage our student who enjoy reading as well. On page 117, he says we need to encourage fun reading, to do more reading in class, and to do it without grading it all the time. Teaching students to be good readers and to even enjoy it is life-changing.  Having the capability to read something and understand it fully and have the skills to apply it to your life is invaluable, not to mention the personal enrichment that can be gained from reading.

I thought Gallagher's take on reading the classics was interesting.  The idea that we develop cultural literacy and can share in that reading experience as a mode of communication is a departure from most of what I've been hearing lately.  Teaching in the "sweet spot" is a great concept that I would expect will serve me well when I get started teaching.  I don't expect to have a lot of control over what I get to teach initially, so having a teaching style that can help make any text palatable or accessible for my students will be a great resource. Referring back to what makes a classic valuable in finding what appeals to us in it as a teacher can be a great encouragement to students; the universals that are present are what make a classic a classic. Finding the balance of working through a text without over-teaching it is something I know I need to reflect on even as I am preparing my unit plan. I feel like it's easier to err on the side of over-teaching than to let students enjoy the text fully by keeping up a good reading flow.

TPA Format and EdTPA

In my overall career as a student who will someday be a teacher, I have only written and taught one lesson plan. The first time I saw the template I remember feeling pretty intimidated, but I was in a group with three other students who were familiar with the format and walked me through the process. After having one relatively successful experience definitely lessens my stress about writing and/or teaching lessons; however, I know there is a lot of room for improvement and that the edTPA is much more than a lesson plan.

In the lesson plan that I wrote last quarter, the only reference that I cited was one of my textbooks and there wasn't much thought on an overall teaching philosophy. I had ideas about how I wanted to do things, but I know that I didn't include as much detail as I should have and that detail should have included more than a mention of a textbook. Learning and implementing theories/theorists is something I need to get better at and more comfortable with. I want to be able to tell students why we're doing what we're doing in class and to have explanations for activities, assignments and readings, which starts with the lesson planning process.

The edTPA process scares me a little, mostly from observing the stress that I see in classmates who will be submitting theirs in the next few months, although I understand the purpose of the process.  It makes sense to have our teaching capability measured by our proficiency in lesson planning and enacting that lesson in class. I'll feel a lot better about the edTPA process once I start getting some classroom experience and can see how I need to improve or tailor my lesson plans to my classes.

We've talked a lot about differentiation in class, but that's not something I've had to actually do in a classroom setting. The hypothetical differentiation of a lesson plan to be inclusive to everyone in your class may be different than the actual needs of a class.  I keep hearing that every class is different and moves at a different pace and will have a different personality, which to me, means that I'll have to learn to differentiate my plans as the school year progresses. Time management or the amount of content to include in one class session is hard for me to get a good handle on for the same reason. Luckily, I'll get plenty of classroom time in over the course of the next year or so before I even need to stress about the edTPA to be thoughtfully preparing for my assessment.

I Read It, but I Don't Get It

This book gave me perspective on how readers who are struggling think and feel. The realization of how demoralizing it is for an adolescent student to ask for help with reading comprehension or to be placed in a reading class is important to reflect on as we think about handling our own students. I liked how Tovani says that, "reading must be about thinking and constructing meaning. It's much more than pronouncing words." Her initial focus on studying what good readers do feels like an empowering approach to give students instead of focusing on what struggling readers do wrong. The self-monitoring of where you're at in a text is so crucial; I think about paperwork I've had to read for buying our house or legal documents and I know that sometimes in writing especially where the terminology is unfamiliar, I have to reread it to make sure I am getting the full meaning of it. Having an image like that to reflect on when considering working on reading with a secondary student will be helpful to me moving forward.

The tools that she presents to help readers are easily accessible and practical for classroom application. I can easily see how a little work with a struggling student to help their comprehension can go a long way towards their success. The fake reading habits that she talks about at the beginning and then the inference drawing that she talks about at the end are going to be interesting things to tackle in the classroom.  The way she describes her success all through high school makes me wonder how I will know if my students are doing the same thing.  The inferences that aren't quite there seem like they could be an indicator for fake reading or lack of comprehension.  The questions I have after reading this are more about how to discover my struggling readers so that I can employ these or other strategies to keep them from getting through high school never having read an entire novel. The idea that finding connections between the students and the text is something that can be powerful in their overall understanding of a book and that we have to be creative to find, but in order to help a student make the connections, I would first need to know that they're struggling.

Social Justice

The article that I found and chose to read is the NCTE's statement and stance on social justice.  Here is the link: http://www.ncte.org/cee/positions/socialjustice I decided to go with this article because it seemed like a practical place to start my understanding of what social justice is in the classroom and especially as an ELA teacher.  The layout of the article is smart as it goes through seven points and gives suggested application in the classroom and ideas for teacher's individual growth as well.  The main takeaway that I got from this article is that social justice doesn't have a cut and dry definition, but it is an ever-changing definition as our idea of social justice as a society develops. The focus of social justice in the classroom is on equal treatment of every student regardless of their background and giving each student the same opportunity for success and achievement.  The idea of diversity awareness is greeted with the idea of putting yourself in someone else's shoes, which applies to both students and teachers alike. One of the striking statements in this article is that,  "Research on student achievement confirms that classroom teachers are directly relational to the 'quality and equitable delivery of education and student academic achievement.'" The representation of social justice in the classroom starts with the teacher.

The second idea that runs throughout this article is the topic of discussion. The tools and questions that are listed are intended to spark a dialogue in the classroom about what kind of oppression students see around them and where power comes from.  The topics of discussion also include praxis and putting social justice into action.  It asks students what they can do to personally make a difference in the world around them and charges teachers with helping them find the tools to make change. One of the reasons the NCTE says it's so hard to define social justice is that every student's story is different; therefore, their version of social justice or, conversely, oppression is different. These are ideas that relate directly to the conversation we've been having this quarter about discussion and student voice as well as to Freire and the conversation of oppression. It also speaks to the use of popular culture in the classroom as we will need to be in touch with the lives of our students to have knowledge of and compassion for how they're interpreting the world around them.

Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom

The case study presented in this article was both intriguing and inspiring. Allowing students to see the bureaucracy of the school system and allowing them to be the impetus for change is empowering and life changing for those students.  It seems like there are times when we as adults may not even know the answers to why things work the way they do. I know there are things my own kids ask me and sometimes I'm not sure and I give them a vague response; however, I know if I tell them, "let's look it up together" they enjoy learning about it more than being appeased.  For instance, my daughter wanted to know what sound a walrus makes, I had no idea so we looked it up on YouTube and we found out together. I can see how the principles that they're outlining in this article are similar, but with much greater implications. Showing students what they're dealing with in school and in life and giving them the tools to develop well-formed solutions sets them up for long-term success.

I felt like the ideas that were presented on combining traditional or classical literature with popular or mainstream media are practices that can be easily applied in our classrooms. The lesson structures and project outlines that they showed are practical and are practices that I would like to incorporate in my classroom. The focus on group work and collaborating as well as in-class participation and presentation give students great practice for whatever is in store for them after high school.

The section about cultural practices and the idea that all cultural practices are meaningful and valuable resonated with me. I like where they describe that studying many cultures and their customs helps us value our own practices as well.  All of our practices are unique and significant in our own way; they're what give each of us our individual voice in the classroom and in life.