Fall and Halloween Reading

Fall and Halloween are the perfect time to bring seasonal reading into the classroom. These packets contain high-interest reading topics relating to Fall and Halloween. They also have reading comprehension questions, vocabulary work, and a creative writing prompt. The reading level is in the Lexile stretch band for fifth grade through the basic level for eighth grade. These are zero-prep, so you will have more time to enjoy this spooky season!

How to Get Students to Ask for Help

When this student turned in this paper, the first thing I noticed was the scribbled out word "Confused." Since it was scribbled out, I thought, oh good, he figured it out. Then I graded it. You'll notice a slash through every answer.

Why didn't he ask me for help? I was available during class. I was available during office hours. I am available by email. I'd like to think I am friendly and accessible. There are plenty of tutors and resources.

The easy answer was that he started it right before it was due and didn't have time to get help. The harder idea to consider is that there was some reason he felt he couldn't ask.

I read a study that said cultural background and gender factors are considerations. Sometimes members of minority groups feel isolated and are less likely to ask for help. Males are not as likely as females to admit they need help.

Both of these factors might apply to this student and interfere with engagement with his teachers. This is his second time through this class, and when I asked him why he failed the first time, he said, "I didn't like the teacher." I hear this answer frequently, and it tells me nothing, so I pressed him. "I didn't understand what she wanted. Everything just came back with a C on it no matter how hard I tried," he said. "I guess I just checked out."

Now we were getting somewhere. I reassured him that I would give detailed feedback and we could talk whenever he needed further clarification, but then he turned in this. Now I was ready to check out because it was easier to put the burden on him, but then nobody would learn or progress. I decided to try different strategies.

For this assignment, I asked him to stay after class, and we went over the concepts together. I gave him the opportunity to re-do the assignment so he would see immediate results with getting help, and couldn't disengage from me or the material.

I brought in tutors from the writing center to meet the students in person and describe how they could help. I was hoping this student, in particular, would feel a connection with one of the tutors.

We did more group work as a precursor to homework assignments. I was hoping he would ask his peers questions or pick up on their understanding.

I arranged for, and offered, peer tutoring with a student I thought he might like.

Instead of comments on his work, I wrote "See me, please" at the top of his paper. When he came forward, I talked with him about the work so he had an opportunity to engage and connect with me.

I started talking about getting extra help to the whole class as part of the writing process and made it clear that I expected them to seek help in some form. I wanted to remove the perception that only bad students had to get help.

I noticed a shift in this student, and some of the others, by the end of the quarter. Although he still didn't ask me for help in person, he did send several emails with questions, and even an extra draft of an essay to review. He passed the class, just barely, but I consider him a success story because I feel confident that he made progress in asking for help, which will serve him well going forward.

Cell Phone Addiction in the Classroom

This is what I'm up against. The battle against cell phones in the classroom is real, and I'm losing. Not only do students routinely sneak to look at their cellphones during class, several students in one of my classes have TWO cellphones. I snapped this photo while this student was doing an important, graded in-class assignment.

Cell phone addiction is real. I've ripped up a midterm because a student was looking at his phone, despite a warning not to have phones out at all. It's a rule written on the syllabus, and I begin class every day asking students to put their phones away. I've asked students to leave the classroom if they couldn't stay off their phones.

Some might quibble with the idea of cell phone "addiction." I think it depends on your definition of addiction. Mine is this:

A persistent, compulsive need to have something in spite of negative consequences.

Is a failed midterm worth checking Snapchat? What social media post is so important it can't wait for one hour? What text could possibly have such importance that a delayed response of 15 minutes will be devastating? Is it worth losing points, getting behind, possibly having to re-take a test, or antagonizing the teacher? Never mind the distraction from learning.

I understand the draw of constantly checking a phone. I am not an out-of-touch technophobe with a flip phone in my purse for emergencies. My phone is my constant companion; I run my online business on it, I check in with my master mind group on Google Hangouts, I text regularly with family and friends, it tracks my workouts and diet, and it contains priceless pictures, and a whole library of podcasts that provide the background narrative of my life. I fight the urge to check it during class time even when I'm teaching. I understand the urge. I do.

Here's the difference: I don't check it during meetings, during church, while driving, rarely after 9:00 at night, and in many other circumstances. I can leave it behind on a vacation (well, I'll keep in my purse for emergencies). Sometimes I completely forget about it for hours at a time when I'm engaged in a project. I seriously doubt some of my students can say something similar. I am not saying I have some sort of moral high ground. I'm saying there is a difference between regularly utilizing a phone and an an addiction. I have assigned many essays on technology and social media, and combined with what I've read there and their behaviors in class, I can confidently say that there are some who have a true addiction.

Some admit they sleep with their phone so they don't miss any late-night or early-morning texts. Most admit to texting and driving (but I can multi-task!), and in one memorable class discussion, most said if they had to choose between food or their phone for one day, they would choose their phone. I have witnessed the withdrawal symptoms. I used to be able to judge when it was time for a break by the smokers getting antsy, but now that I work on a smoke-free campus, I can judge break time by the sneaky reaches into the backpacks and the anxiety and agitation.

Labeling something as an addiction, however, does not mean the rules should change or that the behavior is somehow more acceptable. When students show up drunk or high, I show them the door. I don't care if they are addicts, it's not acceptable in the classroom. If you take your phone out during a midterm, you will still fail.

Class Rules Activity

It's important to go over the class rules on the first day of class, but there's nothing that makes students check out quicker. After several class periods, it just sounds like so much blah, blah, blah.

Here's an activity that involves students in the process. Not only does it require their attention and participation, I find that students understand and follow the rules better since they feel at least partial ownership.

First, lay out the non-negotiable rules. The fewer, the better. Mine are: Be Respectful, Be Prepared, and Understand and Follow Class Policies.

Ask students to write down their expectation for the class, including for academics, the instructor, and classmates. Then put them in groups of 4 -5 to share and consolidate their ideas. Then have the groups share with the whole class. Decide, as a class, what the rules should be (of course you have veto power, but it's surprising how fair and thorough the students usually are).

You can then prepare a printed version of the rules and add other class policies.

Good luck, and happy first day!

If you want more detailed instructions, a poster, graphic organizers, a template for class policies, and a fun quiz regarding the rules, I have a prepared packet for purchase here:

Opinion Reading and Writing - Improving Critical Thinking Skills

In teaching remedial composition to college students, one misconception that I am constantly correcting is that academic research papers should not have an opinion. Au contraire. Any paper worth its salt is presenting and defending an argument which, of course, is an opinion.

At first, I was surprised at this misconception, and chalked it up to simply lack of exposure to this kind of reading. After more experience, however, I found it's more complicated than that, and a large part of it is in the semantics.

First, when students are learning to write in the early years, they are encouraged to preface opinions with "I think," "I feel," and "In my opinion" phrases. This is important in the process when students are learning to distinguish between fact and opinion. As writing becomes more sophisticated in middle and high school, however, these phrases are eliminated, making statements of opinion less obvious.

The second issue is how students define the word "opinion." Often, they think if a statement is labeled an "opinion" it is something that can't be proven or disproven by facts, such as which is the best restaurant in town. More advanced critical thinking, of course, quickly shows that even solid facts and research rarely conclusively prove anything. Many opinions on the same issue can be supported by facts.

The later elementary grades are a good time to explore these critical thinking skills. My favorite way to facilitate this is to have students do a close reading of two short opinion pieces that are research and fact based, one pro and one con. This helps clarify that different authors reach different conclusions about the same issues, even though the authors are privy to the same facts.  I like to have the students answer questions about each article, learn the critical vocabulary, and then bring it all together by deciding which author they agree with. Group work and class discussions further promote the skills.

To take it one step further, it's helpful to introduce a writing project in the form of a short five-paragraph essay. With this early introduction, students are on their way to developing the critical thinking skills that will serve them all the way through high school, college and beyond.

I've put together some packets that go through the process I described above. These are common-core based, with challenging reading for fourth and fifth grade (in the Lexile stretch bands) and at grade level for sixth and seventh grade.

Back to School Icebreaker for Middle and High School

It's that time of year again to begin planning for back to school. Icebreakers for the first day are hard to find for middle and high schoolers, so I always come back to the tried-and-true Bingo game.

The idea of an ice breaker is to get students to interact, start conversations, and find things they have in common with each other. This activity does that better than any other that I've tried.

You will need eight or nine different Bingo cards, the squares filled in with different things your students may have done or hobbies they have, favorites, characteristics, or anything else unique that you think is interesting. I like to use things they might have done over the summer: jobs, vacations, etc. There are many blank Bingo card templates you can download for free. Just do a search for "Bingo template" and you'll find some. Fill in the squares on the first card, then keep mixing them up and adding and subtracting items for the remaining seven or eight cards. I'll be honest, it's a lot of work, but you can re-use them every year.

To play, mix up the cards and pass out one to each student. On "go," they have to find someone who matches the item in the square, and write his or her name on the card.

Students can only use the same person for two squares, then they have to move on to someone else. When someone gets a Bingo (diagonal, horizontal, or vertical row all marked off) they shout out "Bingo!" In a regular game, that would end it, but I like to give out treats for five or six Bingos to encourage the conversations to go on.

If you don't want to make your own cards, I have some in my store that have been successful with multiple classes. You can find them here: 

Point of View in Academic Writing - the Ubiquitous "You"

When reviewing student drafts of academic essays, I find myself constantly marking the use of second person. With no direction, I find most students use second person. With direction, I find most students still slip into second person.

There are many reasons why second person is the go-to point of view for first drafts. It is the most informal and conversational. Students tend to write like they talk, so second person is natural. They also read a lot of second person online; advice articles, how-to, and informal blogs tend to use second person.

Second person, however, is the point of view that should be almost never used in academic writing. Besides the informality, which is inappropriate in a research paper and other academic essays, the main reason second person is not preferable is because it excludes or alienates part of the audience.

I use a few humorous examples to show this, and that is when it usually clicks with students. For example, I first ask the students, "Who is the audience for this paper?" The typical answer is me, the teacher, but we also discuss that it is anyone who is interested in the topic. Then I read the following passage from a student paper about preventing teen pregnancy:

"You should discuss your sexual activity with your parents or another adult because studies show that if you do this, your chances of pregnancy go down significantly."

I ask the students if I should discuss my sexual activity with my parents or another adult. I also ask a male student if this advice will help reduce his chance of pregnancy. Of course they immediately understand my point, and we don't need to elaborate on how second person excludes part of your audience.

We also review how the tone of this passage is more like a self-help article than academic research. Then I show a simple rewrite:

"Teen girls who discuss their sexual activity with their parents or another adult have a significantly reduced rate of pregnancy" (Smith 21).

There will always be the ubiquitous "you" in student papers, but a simple example requiring students to think about their audience will help them revise correctly.

If you are looking for resources to teach point of view, here is the Power Point and rewriting exercises I use with my classes: 

Free Resources for Secondary Teachers

I am happy to say that my free Thesis Worksheet resource is now available. Brain Waves Instruction, Literary Sherri, and Getting Nerdy with Mel and Gerdy have compiled three free ebooks full of ready-to-print resources for secondary sellers. There are three ebooks, one for ELA, one for math and science, and one for humanities. My resource is included in the  ELA book, plus there is a link to it in my store at the bottom of this post. Each book contains 25 resources, plus a little bit about each seller and the kinds of resources he or she offers. Check them out here:

Here is a link to my resource that you can download for free in my store:

Calming the Chaos

I like to use engaging, small group activities toward the end of the year as opposed to individual work. Let's face it - the students have ants in their pants and engaging socially in a worthwhile activity can settle things down. Here's an activity that I can't take credit for creating, but have been using for a few years. I've found it several places on the internet, and I can't nail down the original creator, so if you know who it is (or if it's you!) please let me know so I can give credit. It's become a favorite, and I look forward to it every year.

The exercise is meant to help students understand that although we may all read the same text, we all react differently, based on our experience, culture, perceptions, emotions etc...Pass out Pablo Neruda's "Ode to My Socks" (link here), divide the students into groups of three or four, and pass out paper and markers. Have the group read the poem, and then create an artistic rendition of the socks. Post each piece of art on the board and have the groups explain why they made the decisions they made and which images spoke to them. A great discussion generator!

FREEBIE! Here is a link to an SQ3R note-taking freebie that will help your students study their textbooks for finals. 

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Note-Taking: Cornell Notes Free Template

The Cornell note-taking system has been around since the 1950s, and it's still around for good reason--it works! In my Success class for incoming freshman,  I pass out this template and do a mini-lecture to let students practice. It's not for everyone, but it works for many, and can vastly improve a student's comprehension.

The idea is that the students takes notes in the "Notes" section during the lecture. Then, within twenty-four hours (I always recommend as soon as possible), they will fill out the Questions and Key Points section and the Summary section. This keeps things organized and easy to find when studying for exams.

You can certainly have students draw the form themselves, but I find it's much better to hand out three-hole punched copies of the template above. Click here or on the picture to download the free template.