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Padlet Timeline – NYT Student Contest Calendar 2020/21

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Padlet Timeline – NYT Student Contest Calendar 2020/21

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This year's lineup mixes classic challenges with new opportunities. Stay tuned for our spring offerings, which we'll add later this year.

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Winners from our Coming of Age in 2021 Contest. We'll be running a version of this challenge again this fall. Credit... Clockwise from top left: Charlie Ballenger, Zubin Carvalho, Amina Bilalova, Osayamen Okungbowa, Jenny Zou and Courtney Duffy

Hundreds of thousands of students from around the world have participated in our contests over the 13 years we've been running them, creating podcasts, writing editorials, making videos, reviewing arts and culture, composing narratives, investigating scientific phenomena, and more.

Teachers tell us they value these challenges because they invite students to take the skills they learn in school and use them to create for an authentic audience. Students tell us they like the variety of ways they can express themselves - and, of course, the confidence boost when they are recognized for their efforts. For us, these contests deepen our daily mission: to help teenagers engage with what's happening in the world, and prove to them that their voices and ideas matter.

But every year we rethink our calendar to keep it fresh. We try to create a balance that responds to the needs of our audience, but also promotes a range of expression, appeals to a broad group of students, and draws inspiration from features across The Times.

That's how we've arrived at the offerings we announce below, and we hope you'll be as excited about them as we are. Here is what you need to know:

Our fall lineup includes classics, like our Review Contest, as well as new opportunities, like the One-Pager Challenge. We're also bringing back the Narrative and Coming of Age Contests, but with a few twists. Find more details below.

Stay tuned for our spring offerings, which we will add to this page later this year.

This year our contests are open only to middle and high schoolers who are 13-19 years old, but, as always, teenagers around the world are invited to participate.

As each contest goes live, we will add a link on this page.

For those contests that have run in the past, you can learn more now by clicking on the "Rules and Guidelines" for each, and taking a look at both the related unit and the work of previous student winners. For those that are new or have been updated, we will post related resources before the contest begins.

To find out more about our contests in general, scroll to the bottom of this post. If you have any other questions, please write to us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com or post a comment here.

Finally, if you need even more encouragement to participate, you might read this essay by 18-year-old Samantha Liu, who reflects on how submitting her work to us over the years helped her stop "trying to sound smart" and develop her genuine writing voice instead.

Sept. 14-Oct. 12, 2022

As we have since 2019, we're inviting students to write a short, powerful story about a meaningful experience from their lives, but this year there's a twist: they must do it in 100 words or fewer.

If that sounds hard, the Style section's Tiny Love Stories series can show you how. Though our version of this challenge allows students to write about any life experience, not just relationships, we'll be looking for the same quality of story as you can find in collections like this one.

Stay tuned for more detail, as well as a step-by-step guide for participating. For now, our narrative unit and this lesson plan can help.

Oct. 12-Nov. 16, 2022

What can you show us that might help explain what it's like to be a teenager right now?

We've been asking that question annually since the pandemic began, and the answers have been extraordinary. This year we're again inviting teenagers to document, reflect and express themselves on any aspect, big or small, of what it's like to grow up now - but this time we're asking you to do it via images only.

Students can submit photos, paintings, drawings, illustrations, comics, cartoons, graphics, screenshots or anything else that can be captured in a still image. Each image must be accompanied by a short artist's statement. More details will publish soon, but until then take a look at the winning visual work from 2020 and 2021, as well as in this additional collection of teenage mentor texts.

Nov. 16-Dec. 14, 2022

Review a book, movie, restaurant, album, theatrical production, video game, dance, TV show, art exhibition or any other kind of work The Times critiques.

Here are last year's rules and guidelines, which will stay the same this year. For more inspiration, take a look at the work of the 2022 winners and visit the related writing unit.

Dec. 14, 2022-Jan. 18, 2023

We're ending the semester with an invitation to teachers across the curriculum that we hope will be both accessible and fun for your students: Make a one-pager in response to any article published in The New York Times in 2022 or 2023.

If you aren't sure what a one-pager is, this explanation from Cult of Pedagogy might be helpful, as will the full lesson plan with step-by-step instructions that we will publish later this fall. We'll be offering a broad selection of elements students can include to respond to their chosen articles, and plenty of encouragement to explore The Times across sections to find topics that fascinate them. Stay tuned!

We invite students to react to the news via our daily writing prompts, and each week we publish a selection of their comments in a roundup for the world to read. Plus, we give a shout-out to new schools that join the conversation.

Why do we run so many contests? We believe in student voice. We want young people to be active content creators, not just consumers. And we're proud to offer places where they can create for an authentic audience of students, teachers, parents and other readers from around the world.

Here's how they work:

All contests except Summer Reading begin and end on Wednesdays. On the day each contest begins, we will add a link here, on this page, to the contest announcement so students and teachers can submit entries.

The work students send us is always considered by our staff and other experts, whether they're Times journalists, outside educators from partner organizations or professional practitioners in a related field. Judging for our contests is blind. That means we see only the entries themselves, and not student names or schools when we make our decisions.

About 8-10 weeks after the contest closes, we'll announce the winners, runners-up and honorable mentions. We usually celebrate dozens of students for each contest.

Winners get their work published on The Learning Network. Somemay also be featured in a special section of the print New York Times.

Students can enter as many contests as they want, but they can only submit one entry per contest. A student's entry must be original - and not plagiarized. An entry must not be published elsewhere at the time of submission, including in a school newspaper, on a radio station's site or in a literary magazine.

All of our contests are open to students ages 13 to 19 who are in middle school or high school around the world. College students cannot submit an entry. However, high school students (including high school post-graduate students) who are taking one or more college classes can participate. Students attending their first year of a two-year CEGEP in Quebec province can also participate. In addition, students, ages 19 or under, who have completed high school but are taking a gap year or are otherwise not enrolled in college can participate. Note: The children and stepchildren of New York Times employees are not eligible to enter these contests, nor are students who live in the same household as those employees.

Want to make sure you don't miss a contest announcement? Sign up for our free weekly newsletter, or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

We can't wait to see what students create this school year!

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Our 2022-23 Student Contest Calendar: Fall Semester

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This year's lineup mixes classic challenges with new opportunities. Stay tuned for our spring offerings, which we'll add later this year. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

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Hamilton's America | Adapting History into Musical Theater | PBS LearningMedia

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Experience Lin-Manuel Miranda's writing process for the song "My Shot" from the hit musical Hamilton, followed by a conversation with Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman about "wrestling history to the stage"; as well as remarks by President Barack Obama in this media gallery from GREAT PERFORMANCES: "Hamilton's America."

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Listen to this post as a Podcast:

The term "lame duck" is most often used to describe a president who is still sitting in office after his or her successor has been elected. Technically this person is still the president, but his or her decision-making power is generally perceived to be minimal.

We have something like that in school: those days when technically we're still in school, but because it's right before vacation, the end of the school year is near, or we're in the middle of standardized testing, those class hours don't have the same instructional potential as your average school day. In some cases, like on standardized test days in certain districts, teachers are explicitly told they CAN'T plan regular instruction. On these Lame Duck days, it's hard to figure out what we can do to still provide valuable learning experiences for our students.

Sometimes instead of days, we have small bursts of Lame Duck time: The leftover 15 minutes after the fire drill, when you know you don't have enough time to actually finish the lesson you were teaching, but you don't want to just let them sit there. We often call the activities we need for these times "sponge activities." Regardless of what you call it or how much you need, we all have those times when students are right in front of us but the regularly scheduled programming just isn't going to work.

What then?

In some schools, they'll still let you show movies. I worked in a place like that, although near the end, we were starting to get pressured to cut that out. And I understand why: As a parent, when ask my kids what they did in school on any given day, and I hear "watched a movie," I'm annoyed. I mean, I can show my kids a movie at home. Surely school can step it up a notch? What's worse, "show a movie" in some classes actually means "Put a movie on, but let students do whatever they want while the movie provides background noise." And when the movie is, say, The Sound of Music, or some other classic I have waited years to experience with my kids, and then they tell me their music teacher puts it on all the time, I feel robbed as a parent.

Okay, that's my rant about showing movies in class. Take it with a grain of salt, because (a) I totally showed movies when I needed a day to grade papers and get caught up, and (b) I'm fully aware that a TON of absolutely amazing movies, video clips, and documentaries are absolutely jam-packed with educational value. So I get that it's not the worst thing you can do, and I know it CAN be done right. This is why I would never support a school banning videos across the board; that kind of blunt policy doesn't respect teachers' ability to make the best instructional choices for students.

HOWEVER...when it comes time to plan for Lame Duck days, we really do have so many more options beyond the showing of videos. So if you've decided you want to do something else, or you've been told you flat-out have to, here's a great list for what to do instead. Some of these ideas come from my own teaching experience, others come from online resources, and a lot of them are from a Facebook Live broadcast I did a few weeks ago, where other teachers contributed their own ideas.

I've broken this list into three sections, based on how much prep you'd need to do to for each one and how much time each one would take.

Some list items contain Amazon Affiliate links; if you purchase from Amazon after going through these links, Cult of Pedagogy receives a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Low-Prep

These activities can be done at a moment's notice, with little to no required materials. They can be used as a 10-minute filler or as the main activity for a whole class period.

1. Clean-up Day: Give students a chance to clean out their binders or lockers and enlist students to help tidy the classroom as well.

2. Learn a Line Dance: Either you teach your students, they teach each other, or you all learn together from YouTube. What's great about line dancing is that anyone can do it, whether they have rhythm or not. Go back a few years to learn the Cupid Shuffle, further back to learn the Macarena or go way back and learn the Hustle.

3. Thank-You Notes: Since this important life skill isn't really a part of any curriculum, a Lame Duck day is a perfect time to have students practice it and show some gratitude to the people who deserve it. Provide them with paper and envelopes and have them write thank-you notes to friends, family members, school staff members, or other students. For best results, show them a few examples of thoughtfully written notes ahead of time.

4. The Compliments Project: This is an incredible activity where students take turns being in the "hot seat" while their classmates write compliments on the board behind them. You have to see this one to appreciate its full impact. Watch here. Although this activity only takes about 5 to 10 minutes per student, which means it would be something you could squeeze into the end of a class period, you should only get it started if you know you'll eventually have time to put every student in the hot seat.

5. Go Outside: Many of the activities listed in this post could also be done outside, or you could just play a classic outdoors game like Red Rover or Red Light, Green Light. Check out this list of games for ideas.

6. Philosophical Chairs Debate: This technique has a lot of different names, like Four Corners, Physical Barometer, and This or That, but the idea is the same: You read some sort of statement to the class, like "Students should be allowed to go barefoot in school." Designate one side of the room as the "Agree" side and the other as the "Disagree" side. Students must physically walk to the side of the room that best represents their opinion. Then have students take turns explaining why they are standing in that spot. (If you want fantastic pre-made questions on a PowerPoint for this, take a look at my This or That icebreaker).

7. Group Story/Progressive Writing: Have every student take out a sheet of paper and have them all write the first sentence (or two, or three) of a story. Then have them pass it to the right and pick up where the last student left off. Keep going until you have a class set of unique stories. One variation of this is to give everyone the exact same sentence to start with, and see how many directions the different stories take.

Medium-Prep

These require you to do a bit of planning ahead of time, but for many, once you've prepared the materials, they can be used over and over again.

1. Improv Skits: Have groups of students compete by performing improv skits. This can be done in so many ways, but two structures you could use are 3-Word Skits, where students are given three words and must come up with a skit that uses all three, and Bag of Titles, where you (or other students) write lots of interesting or odd titles (e.g., "The Lady with 100 Cats") and the performers must come up with a skit that matches the title. Both of these ideas came from the incredible website Drama Notebook. Another great source for improv ideas is this list of games played on the T.V. show Whose Line Is It Anyway? (Screen these yourself first, as they do contain some adult content.)

2. Icebreakers: Get students talking with one of my three favorite classroom icebreakers.

3. Skype: Once you learn about some of the free educational opportunities offered by Skype, you might not want to do anything else in your free class time. One of these is a Mystery Skype, where you connect with another class in an unknown location (only you and the other teacher will know), and students work together to ask a series of yes/no questions until they guess where the other class is. Another is a Virtual Field Trip, where your class Skypes with someone (often a professional in some part of the world, like an ocean exploration with Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of Jacques Cousteau). To learn more, visit the Skype in the Classroom page in the Microsoft Educator Community.

4. Board Games or Card Games: I think we can all agree that no one plays board games or card games as much as they used to, and the simple fun and social learning that can come from them are worth the time and effort. Some of my family's favorites are Pictionary, Spot It!, Dominoes, Scattergories, Scrabble, Quirkle, Uno, or Yahtzee. Or just buy a few basic decks of cards, then check out the Gather Together Games YouTube channel and learn how to play something classic like Gin Rummy, Spades, or Pinochle.

5. Minute to Win it Games: These require some equipment and set-up, but not a whole lot, and they will really break students out of their shells. This list from Happiness is Homemade has 10 fantastic ideas, like "Cookie Face" and "Junk in the Trunk."

6. Mindfulness Practice: Especially during testing season, mindfulness practice can ease stress and give students a skill they can apply in so many other areas of their lives. Two great resources for starting on this journey are the Mindful Schools website, and the book Teach, Breathe, Learn by Meena Srinivasan. Two easy-to-make mindfulness tools are glitter jars and breathing sticks.

7. Kahoot: If you still haven't tried Kahoot, you're in for a treat. This website lets you create interactive, game show-style quizzes that students play as a class on their own devices. You could create a content-based Kahoot, do one just for fun, or even have students create them.

8. STEM Challenges: A hands-on problem that students need to solve with science, technology, engineering or math skills is cognitively challenging, socially engaging, and just a fun break from routine in any class. Here are some fun challenge ideas. (Don't mind that it says "elementary." They would be fun for older kids, too.)

9. Open Mic: This was something I did several times in my middle school classrooms, and it was an incredibly bonding experience. The idea is simple: Invite any student who has some kind of performance talent-whether it's singing, playing an instrument, magic, martial arts, or even creative writing-to take the stage in your classroom and give a short performance. Something truly magical happens when students get to see their peers step outside of the roles they're normally in during class. And if your students are anything like mine were, they will recognize the courage it takes to get up in front of your peers and do this. I can still remember the day when one of my 8th grade girls got up and sang an Alicia Keys song a capella. Beautifully. When she was done the room just exploded with applause. If you have students who are too shy to perform live or whose talent can't be performed in a classroom setting, let them record themselves at home and play the videos in class. One of our great privileges as teachers is helping our students grow into full, well-rounded human beings, and letting them see their own peers in a different light is absolutely one way to do this. (Listen to me talk about this experience on my friend James Sturtevant's Hacking Engagement podcast.)

High-Prep or Long-Term

1. Genius Hour: Just in case you've never heard of Genius Hour, it's a structure for giving students time to explore topics and skills they choose completely on their own. Sometimes they study a foreign language, teach themselves how to code, even start their own businesses. A Genius Hour project usually happens over a period of weeks or even months, in small increments. So if you've already got a Genius Hour program going, these extra bits of time are perfect for continued work on projects. To learn more about Genius Hour, check out my friend A.J. Juliani's webinar and course here.

2. Community Service Project: One great way to make the most of the end of the school year is to have students identify a need in the community, then plan and execute a service project. Check out these 7 ideas for service learning projects from We Are Teachers. Another type of service project could be organizing a school-wide yard sale, with the profits going to charity.

3. Student Video Project: These can take all kinds of forms: end-of-year retrospectives, book trailers, tutorials or welcome videos for incoming students. You could even hold a student film festival where final projects are shown on the last few days of school. This classroom video guide from EdTechTeacher will help get you started.

4. Amazing Race Game: Just like with the Survivor game above, you could coordinate a game based on the show The Amazing Race following a plan like this one.

5. Literature Circles: Amid all these other creative ideas, the humble literature circle may not seem quite so exciting, but never underestimate the value of a small group of students talking about a fantastic book they're all reading. To learn more, see this Getting Started Guide to Literature Circles from ReadWriteThink.

6. BreakoutEDU Activities: BreakoutEDU is kind of hard to explain, but I'll give it a shot: It's a kit that contains several boxes, a few locks, an invisible ink pen and UV light, a USB drive, and a few other pieces of equipment. The deal with the box is that teachers use them to facilitate games, games that feel like a cross between a mystery and a challenge, where clues are left around the room and students have to answer questions in order to find them. In the same way that you can plug questions or content into a platform like Kahoot, you can do the same with BreakoutEDU (they also have a lot of pre-made games available for purchase). Learn more here.

7. Student/Teacher Unconference: Using a chunk of hours or a whole day, teachers and students plan short lessons on things they are interested in outside of school (crafts, yoga, cooking, martial arts, music, dance, technology), then sign up for time slots like an EdCamp. With the schedule in place, students and teachers can then sign up to attend the ones they are interested in. This would definitely take some planning, especially the first time, but it could be so worth it. What is an unconference?

8. TED Talks: Watching these short, powerful presentations has become almost a rite of passage for 21st century humans. Have students watch a few to understand the style, then plan and deliver their own.

Even More Fantastic Ideas:

There's so much more where this came from.
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Listen to this post as a Podcast: The term "lame duck" is most often used to describe a president who is still sitting in office after his or her successor has been elected. Technically this person is still the president, but his or her decision-making power is generally perceived to be minimal.

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For most of my life, I've found myself in the role of the OBF, the One Black Friend in an otherwise white circle of people. While that doesn't qualify me to be The Voice of Black Teachers and Students everywhere, my experiences have taught me a lot about what teachers can do to help students from different backgrounds feel fully included in the classroom, or in some cases, what they do to create the opposite effect.

With all our policies, culturally responsive trainings, and books on cultural diversity, we obviously have the best intentions. But are we reaching desired outcomes, or do our well-intended deeds miss the mark? I could go into statistics about disparities and point to evidence that what we are doing isn't working, but sometimes personal experiences mean more than data. In our hearts, many of us know we are not reaching every student, so I offer this challenge: Is it possible to improve the way you relate to students from diverse backgrounds?

The OBF (or its equivalent for other ethnicities) exists in many classrooms, classrooms where teachers are trying their best to do the right thing for every student. My hope is that my stories and the easy-to-implement strategies I share here will help you improve your practice and avoid some of the faux pas that come with teaching students who may look, think, or opine differently than we do.

Life Through the Eyes of the OBF

My first OBF experience was with my first grade teacher, a gray-haired, gray-eyed "grandma" who looked different than the grandmas I knew. I remember feeling that she didn't like me much but loved the little girl who used to steal my pencils. I knew that the girl who stole my pencils got hugs from the teacher while I got plain pencils to use instead of my fancy ones. I knew it wasn't fair, but it taught me about the value of blonde hair and blue eyes and the lack of perceived value in my brown ones.

As an adult, I moved to Switzerland and my OBF journey continued, first as a teacher, then a mom. Free of American race politics, I learned how to fully enjoy being an OBF with only occasional blips; then I realized that not having "races" or race politics made the Swiss blissfully unaware of the plight of "others." I began to see the hardships of refugees, people with learning or physical disabilities, and even people who were just plain different.

My blissful race-free bubble dissipated with finality the day my 5-year-old son came home with his pants pulled low, excitedly telling me of his neighborhood nickname, Gangsta. Around this same time he came home with a Black-faced, grass-skirted neger for the letter "N" on a worksheet.

It was then that I realized the depth of the "colorblindness" of Swiss society. The fact that there were no colors to see meant that most Swiss had little or no experience "seeing" any other cultures, and when race did come up, the few Brazilians, Tamils, Tibetans and Black and white refugees there were met with a wall of us vs. them as impermeable as the Alps. Without my bubble, the absence of race and race politics were no longer freeing but suddenly a personal affront that led me back home.

After repatriating, I found myself teaching music in a small Lutheran school in Texas. The teachers were welcoming, long tenured, and the school was run by a motherly woman who understood the occasional need to take off for doctor's appointments and sick children. I enjoyed both teaching and the after-hours socializing with my OBF status taking a backseat to the commonality we shared as Christians, teachers, women and mothers. When conversations on local news or social justice issues came up, I used my voice to present another viewpoint, one that women in middle-class white circles had not been exposed to. I felt heard.

Then the 2016 election cycle hit and that was that. Things became uncomfortable. Being Black, divorced, and raising a son alone made me an "other" even in a circle of female believers. We all retreated and gave up on the community. I'm not proud of that, but at the time, I felt too alone and misunderstood to fight to sustain the relationships.

These experiences and others in my OBF journey have framed my teaching practice and provided me with tools to help me better relate to students with various backgrounds and perspectives. I call it my journey because it implies growth rather than an end goal, and the strategies below can help you in your own journey. By making small, intentional changes in the way we relate to the world around us, we can all improve our practice.

9 Ways to Create a More Inclusive Classroom

1. Read, read, read.

There is no shortage of resources, of literature from diverse authors, blogs from minority educators, articles on inclusion from educational magazines as well as scholarly articles from professors and experts. Additionally there are groups that you can join and hashtags you can follow to keep up with actual educators who are working to serve diverse students better.

While you're reading, check your own classroom and school libraries. Book collections should reflect authors from diverse backgrounds and even our youngest students should see picture books with all kinds of people in them. Some of my favorites are Kwame Alexander, Viet Nhan Thien, Sandra Cisneros, Sarah McBride, Samira Ahmed or Poet Laureates Joy Harjo and Maya Angelou

2. Be open to feedback.

I sent a note on that worksheet mentioned above to my son's teacher explaining that there were many N words, and expressed my willingness to help find culturally diverse resources. Her answer? "OK." No expression of regret, no acknowledgement that she needed to do better.

Not knowing is not a criminal offense. Knowing that you don't know and not caring, however, is deeply offensive. If you don't know, ask. If you don't have someone to ask, expand your circle. You'll make mistakes, but if you're sincerely trying to be a better practitioner, people will see that and be generous.

If you do make a mistake-and you will-apologize, learn from it, and do better next time. Just let there be a next time and don't let getting it wrong keep you from learning, growing and trying to build better relationships with all of your students.

3. Expand your circle.

Are you in diverse enough company that someone would tell you when you get it wrong? If not, get involved in the community you teach in. This doesn't mean you have to add more things to your to-do list or take time away from your family. Take them with you to see a student's peewee football game, a church musical or a Juneteenth parade in your school's community. Go shopping there. Pick up dinner from the little restaurant near your school. Find a mentor or make a friend who can help you build bridges to the community you serve. Yes, you will probably be the only white lady at the Black Baptist church and yes you will feel uncomfortable at first, but you will be welcomed. And being the one white face in a sea of brown ones will give you a deeper sense of empathy for your minority students.

When I began teaching in Switzerland, I went to every local event I could. I wanted to know the kids I taught and that meant understanding Swiss culture. It helped me to build deeper relationships and those relationships made me a better teacher. If you really can't manage to get out into the community, start by finding out what your kids did on the weekend. That will provide clues to community life and maybe you'll get an invitation you can't resist.

4. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.

You will teach students who look differently, think differently or represent and believe in different things. You may at times feel challenged, out of step with cultural or modern modes of behavior. You may teach students who represent something you don't believe in. You have to be okay with that and that's not always easy.

My Lutheran school experience resembles challenges that arise in classrooms daily. It's easier to simply relate to the students who are like us and, by default, leave the ones perceived as different, or difficult, by the wayside. It is often unintentional, but always unacceptable. Why should it matter that a child represents different political beliefs, wears a hijab, identifies as non-binary, is another color, or wears "weird" hair? It shouldn't, but it usually does. It's human nature to seek the familiar, so it's understandable that "others" can represent a threat, a challenge to the status quo in some form. But the ability to embrace and enjoy what you think of as new and different is a sign of personal growth and maturity, and who doesn't want that?

Embracing the new and different may come harder if you've been teaching a while and you feel like the goalposts keep moving. That's where the uncomfortable part comes in. Everybody knows if you jump headlong in you get acclimated much quicker than if you wade in bit by bit. Jump in but instead of trying to embrace cultures and ideologies, embrace the child standing before you. Do your best for that one soul. Most of all, realize that you can embrace people who are different without changing who you are. That makes it no less uncomfortable, but it becomes much less scary, much more doable.

5. Don't forget gender.

Teachers are overwhelmingly female. Middle aged, white and female. Our classes are more likely to look like Pottery Barn than a man cave. Yet, we teach students who may feel overcome by estrogen with all the rustic swirls and pretty feminine energy. Is your classroom space an environment with which all genders can identify?

And what about gender and lifestyle diversity? Are we prepared for questions that may come up? Maybe your personal stance is that gender and sexual identity questions should not be a part of primary or middle school education, but what will you do if gender-fluid children or same-sex parents are a part of your educational circle? How will you meet the needs of children who may represent a challenge to your belief system? I don't have the answer, but these questions are worth thinking through-see #4 for advice on how to do that.

Acceptance and empathy are human and our job is to provide a space for all students to feel welcome so they can learn. If you're uncomfortable or unknowledgeable, authors like Bonnie Combs, Rigoberto Gonzales and William Mason can help. Written for littles, without getting into the nuts and bolts of human sexuality, these books teach about diversity and acceptance.

6. Beware "imperceptible" distance.

Sometimes the scars of our collective past come to bear on our classroom interactions. Maybe you were the nerd and you have a hard time dealing with mean girls. Maybe you were the mean girl who has a hard time dealing with nerds. I got beat up in 6th and 7th grade by the mean girls. It shaped me and now I have to work hard at seeing them in all their middle school frailty. They need me as much as the artsy, bookish kindred spirits do, so I work at building relationships with them.

Are you internally putting what you hope is imperceptible distance between you and some students you find less than likeable, or are you leaning in with them? Are you challenging yourself daily to make sure that your actions line up with your intent? Children and young people are incredibly perceptive and they can sense it if you don't like them, so try. Go the extra mile, treat them like your favored student and let your actions say what your heart may not be able to.

7. Validate code switching.

Throughout my early and middle school years, integration became more norm than exception but I never stopped being the Black girl in a sea of mostly white faces; consequently, code switching between two different worlds was my norm.

At home I listened to Motown and Rappers Delight and sang in the Gospel choir. At school I listened to Journey and sang in Madrigal group. I excelled and was well liked. I was smart, pretty, and could sing: the trifecta for Black students in white schools. In high school I reaped my great reward for being a "credit to my race" (btw, not a compliment), where my crowning "accomplishment" was winning "Miss Soul." I couldn't explain then why I felt embarrassed by that award. I know now that it was created so the modest number of Black kids would have a shot at winning something other than Best Athlete or Best Performer. It was the "token" award. You got it if you were Black and whites saw you as not too much unlike the majority culture. You got it if you were a master at code switching. I felt that I was being less than my authentic self until I got to college and found out that code switching is a normal part of growing up a part of two cultures.

You may see your model student get in the car with dad who has Cardi B blasting. If your reaction is to believe that the student is not who you thought he was, think again. Just as we are different as spouses than we are as parents, people fulfill different roles in the diverse communities they belong to. There's an outfit and a language for every setting. On the playground is where Spanglish, urban or southern slang and other regional forms of English are welcome. In the classroom standard English is required. Explain that colloquial forms of English are perfectly acceptable in informal settings but the highest paying jobs (besides ballers and artists) require standardized English. Let them know that code switching is an important soft skill and a necessary one; get them started early.

8. Embrace the elephant in the room.

Race is a complex topic and although it might seem easier to avoid, it's healthier to have open conversations where students can learn to process thoughts and ideas on race in a caring, positive setting. Even the most brutally honest question can be reframed using affirming language. For example, "Why is your skin brown?" could be answered with "Here in America we often see white skin, but the world over most people have skin in shades of brown." "Why do you always wear a scarf?" can be explained with, "That's called a hijab and it's a sign of respect in the Muslim faith." Even requests to touch a student's hair can be redirected by instead having conversations about how exploring different hair textures and products can be fun.

And while you don't want to ask any student to be the Voice of His People, it is perfectly acceptable to acknowledge and discuss cultural differences. Assess in a private conversation if a student feels comfortable talking about Ramadan or Dia de los Muertos with the class, or for that matter, scouting or tuba lessons. If you filter out personal perceptions or opinions about questions that arise and answer factually and calmly, a question will just be a learning opportunity. If, however, you feel that a student question is designed to be intimidating or rude, speak to that as well. Tact and kindness sometimes need to be taught, as does empathy. If tension arises between students, teach respectful conflict resolution using sentence stems.The Big Idea is to create a kinder, accepting society and that can be your guide.

9. Identify and fight bias.

If imperceptible distance is bad, tangible tension is worse. If you are a white teacher teaching minority students, you might feel challenged by a student in a way that feels disrespectful. A racially conflicted history may color the interaction. First, remember that your interaction may have nothing to do with cultural dissonance. Dealing with "attitude" is a part of the job at some point for every teacher, color and culture notwithstanding. Sometimes, however, mistrust and fear need to be overcome on both sides. That can make an interaction feel bigger than it really is and that truth alone can help temper your reactions.

If you really feel there is a racial or cultural disconnect, you might ask a trusted teacher who shares the student's culture or one who has a better rapport with the student to have a meeting with you both. Having a second teacher monitor conflict resolution is helpful even when the issues are not cultural. Finally, if you find that you are having regular conflicts with students who share a similar background, you may want to do some soul searching. Having bias is human. Being biased against certain groups is damaging, to you as a practitioner and to the students you serve.

If you suspect your bias may be keeping your students from feeling truly comfortable in the classroom, I hope you've found strategies here to help. Additionally, both Learning for Justice and Harvard's Project Implicitare great places to gain insight and find resources to help you make a change.

Throughout my journey as an OBF, I'm sure my teachers intended to encourage and empower me, and they often did. But they also told me in hundreds of little and big ways that I was an anomaly and part of a group that was sub-standard. Their well-intended strategies missed the mark. Tomorrow, I hope when you look at your students, you'll remember my one Black friend stories and be able to identify the OBFs-and the equivalent for other ethnicities-in your class. I hope seeing them helps you feel brave, empowered and ready to build stronger relationships. I hope your intentions lead to desired outcomes and that you are able to side-step pitfalls more easily. Most of all, I hope you've learned something that leads you to celebrate all students, starting with the one in front of you at any given moment.

Come back for more.
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Are Your Diversity Strategies Missing the Mark? Nine Ways to Get it Right

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Sponsored by Extempore and Participate For most of my life, I've found myself in the role of the OBF, the One Black Friend in an otherwise white circle of people.

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Ken Burns in the Classroom | PBS LearningMedia

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Ken Burns and his collaborators have been creating historical documentary films for more than forty years. Known for a signature style that brings primary source documents, images, and archival video footage to life on screen, these films present the opportunity to pose thought-provoking questions for students, and introduce new ideas, perspectives, and primary sources.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching

Educators are finding creative, culturally responsive ways to use rap and hip-hop music to teach history, poetry and writing.

Hip-hop music is "the language of global youth culture," says author and educator Carole Boston Weatherford, and has increased in popularity over the last few decades, with a recent spike prompted by the popularity of the musical Hamilton. "In the past, that often meant a well-meaning teacher putting on a gold chain and imitating something you might have seen on Yo! MTV Raps in the late '80s" Hinton writes. "But today, many educators are being more thoughtful about how best to incorporate hip-hop into their lessons."

Hinton describes how Andy Spinks, a library media specialist at Campbell High School in Smyrna, Georgia, created a popular recording studio in the library for students to create music, learn about digital recording, and-most importantly-collaborate."The reason they're drawn to it is because they have things they want to say, they have a way that they want to say them, and they're given a lot of license to do that there," Spinks says.

As educators begin to see hip-hop as poetry, it can open doors for writing instruction: Rap songwriting can spark engagement in students who may be less interested in traditional writing. Spinks' student sophomore Jarrett Modica, for example, found his voice by writing and producing lyrics in the recording studio. "It's a place where you can just be yourself," Modica said.

Some educators hesitate to use hip-hop music because of the profanity, violence, or explicit language featured in some of the songs. Set boundaries and expectations for lyrics, Spinks advises. He tells students to avoid any lyrics that promote bullying and forbids lyrics that are negative about another member of the school community. "You can do a dis track about Drake if you want to, but don't do one about somebody in this school," Spinks said. Give parents advance notice of controversial material, and explain how and why the content will be used.

At West Boca Raton High School, librarian Kristine Cannon has developed a reading curriculum around the book Let Me Hear a Rhyme; the class is reserved for students who failed the state's standardized English tests. "We just thought that the element of the music, the hip-hop, and even the time period would really grab the students," Cannon told Hinton. "We thought that it would give us a lot to discuss with them."

Because it is a topic students are interested in, it can be used as the subject matter for less interesting lessons, too, Hinton writes. Libby Gorman, library media specialist at Edgewood Middle School in Maryland, uses hip-hop examples to teach citation, a subject she concedes is mostly "boring." Using examples such as Will Smith's "Friend Like Me" and Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road," Gorman engages students. She incentivizes proper citation: "The rule was they had to cite it before they could play it, but once they cited it, they could play the music," Gorman said.

But hip-hop can be deeply integrated into the curriculum as well. Librarian Joquetta Johnson uses hip-hop as the culturally responsive foundation for cross-curricular studies that involve creative writing, reading, and even math. In one lesson, "students had to solve a scenario-based math problem about Kendrick Lamar." They identified patterns in his Twitter feed and determined the growth of his fan base. Johnson also uses hip-hop to teach students about digital citizenship, copyright and intellectual property.

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The Power of Rap and Hip-Hop in the Classroom

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Educators are finding creative, culturally responsive ways to use rap and hip-hop music to teach history, poetry and writing.

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"Creativity in and of itself is important for remaining healthy, remaining connected to yourself and connected to the world," says Christianne Strang, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Alabama Birmingham and the former president of the American Art Therapy Association.

This idea extends to any type of visual creative expression: drawing, painting, collaging, sculpting clay, writing poetry, cake decorating, knitting, scrapbooking - the sky's the limit.

"Anything that engages your creative mind - the ability to make connections between unrelated things and imagine new ways to communicate - is good for you," says Girija Kaimal. She is a professor at Drexel University and a researcher in art therapy, leading art sessions with members of the military suffering from traumatic brain injury and caregivers of cancer patients.

But she's a big believer that art is for everybody - and no matter what your skill level, it's something you should try to do on a regular basis. Here's why:
It helps you imagine a more hopeful future
Art's ability to flex our imaginations may be one of the reasons why we've been making art since we were cave-dwellers, says Kaimal. It might serve an evolutionary purpose. She has a theory that art-making helps us navigate problems that might arise in the future. She wrote about this in October in the Journal of the American Art Therapy Association.

Her theory builds off of an idea developed in the last few years - that our brain is a predictive machine. The brain uses "information to make predictions about we might do next - and more importantly what we need to do next to survive and thrive," says Kaimal.

When you make art, you're making a series of decisions - what kind of drawing utensil to use, what color, how to translate what you're seeing onto the paper. And ultimately, interpreting the images - figuring out what it means.

"So what our brain is doing every day, every moment, consciously and unconsciously, is trying to imagine what is going to come and preparing yourself to face that," she says.

MindShift has a podcast! Listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, NPR One or your favorite podcast app. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, NPR One, Stitcher, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

Kaimal has seen this play out at her clinical practice as an art therapist with a student who was severely depressed. "She was despairing. Her grades were really poor and she had a sense of hopelessness," she recalls.

The student took out a piece of paper and colored the whole sheet with thick black marker. Kaimal didn't say anything.

"She looked at that black sheet of paper and stared at it for some time," says Kaimal. "And then she said, 'Wow. That looks really dark and bleak.' "

And then something amazing happened, says Kaimal. The student looked around and grabbed some pink sculpting clay. And she started making ... flowers: "She said, you know what? I think maybe this reminds me of spring."

Through that session and through creating art, says Kaimal, the student was able to imagine possibilities and see a future beyond the present moment in which she was despairing and depressed.

"This act of imagination is actually an act of survival," she says. "It is preparing us to imagine possibilities and hopefully survive those possibilities."
It activates the reward center of our brain
For a lot of people, making art can be nerve-wracking. What are you going to make? What kind of materials should you use? What if you can't execute it? What if it ... sucks?

Studies show that despite those fears, "engaging in any sort of visual expression results in the reward pathway in the brain being activated," says Kaimal. "Which means that you feel good and it's perceived as a pleasurable experience."

She and a team of researchers discovered this in a 2017 paper published in the journal The Arts in Psychotherapy. They measured blood flow to the brain's reward center, the medial prefrontal cortex, in 26 participants as they completed three art activities: coloring in a mandala, doodling and drawing freely on a blank sheet of paper. And indeed - the researchers found an increase in blood flow to this part of the brain when the participants were making art.

This research suggests making art may have benefit for people dealing with health conditions that activate the reward pathways in the brain, like addictive behaviors, eating disorders or mood disorders, the researchers wrote.
It lowers stress
Although the research in the field of art therapy is emerging, there's evidence that making art can lower stress and anxiety. In a 2016 paper in the Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, Kaimal and a group of researchers measured cortisol levels of 39 healthy adults. Cortisol is a hormone that helps the body respond to stress.

They found that 45 minutes of creating art in a studio setting with an art therapist significant lowered cortisol levels.

The paper also showed that there were no differences in health outcomes between people who identify as experienced artists and people who don't. So that means that no matter your skill level, you'll be able to feel all the good things that come with making art.
It lets you focus deeply
Ultimately, says Kaimal, making art should induce what the scientific community calls "flow" - the wonderful thing that happens when you're in the zone. "It's that sense of losing yourself, losing all awareness. You're so in the moment and fully present that you forget all sense of time and space," she says.

And what's happening in your brain when you're in flow state? "It activates several networks including relaxed reflective state, focused attention to task and sense of pleasure," she says. Kaimal points to a 2018 study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, which found that flow was characterized by increased theta wave activity in the frontal areas of the brain - and moderate alpha wave activities in the frontal and central areas.
So what kind of art should you try?
Some types of art appear to yield greater health benefits than others.

Kaimal says modeling clay, for example, is wonderful to play around with. "It engages both your hands and many parts of your brain in sensory experiences," she says. "Your sense of touch, your sense of three-dimensional space, sight, maybe a little bit of sound - all of these are engaged in using several parts of yourself for self-expression, and likely to be more beneficial."

A number of studies have shown that coloring inside a shape - specifically a pre-drawn geometric mandala design - is more effective in boosting mood than coloring on a blank paper or even coloring inside a square shape. And one 2012 study published in Journal of the American Art Therapy Association showed that coloring inside a mandala reduces anxiety to a greater degree compared to coloring in a plaid design or a plain sheet of paper.

Strang says there's no one medium or art activity that's "better" than another. "Some days you want to may go home and paint. Other days you might want to sketch," she says. "Do what's most beneficial to you at any given time."
Process your emotions
It's important to note: if you're going through serious mental health distress, you should seek the guidance of a professional art therapist, says Strang.

However, if you're making art to connect with your own creativity, decrease anxiety and hone your coping skills, "by all means, figure out how to allow yourself to do that," she says.

Just let those "lines, shapes and colors translate your emotional experience into something visual," she says. "Use the feelings that you feel in your body, your memories. Because words don't often get it."

Her words made me reflect on all those moments when I reached into my purse for my pen and sketchbook. A lot of the time, I was using my drawings and little musings to communicate how I was feeling. What I was doing was helping myself deal. It was cathartic. And that catharsis gave me a sense of relief.

A few months ago, I got into an argument with someone. On my bus ride to work the next day, I was still stewing over it. In frustration, I pulled out my notebook and wrote out the old adage, "Do not let the world make you hard."

I carefully ripped the message off the page and affixed it to the seat in front of me on the bus. I thought, let this be a reminder to anyone who reads it!

I took a photo of the note and posted it to my Instagram. Looking back at the image later that night, I realized who the message was really for. Myself.

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What Happens in Your Brain When You Make Art

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"Creativity in and of itself is important for remaining healthy, remaining connected to yourself and connected to the world," says Christianne Strang, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Alabama Birmingham and the former president of the American Art Therapy Association.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching: 4 Misconceptions | Cult of Pedagogy

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In some cases, teachers think they’re practicing culturally responsive teaching, when in fact, they’re kind of not. Zaretta Hammond helps clear things up.

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Debates about exam grades and retaking tests tend to coalesce, eventually, around the same arguments. One faction prioritizes subject mastery, the idea that it's more important to get students to take incremental steps towards proficiency than to punish them with bad grades. The other side emphasizes personal responsibility, insisting that there are very few second chances in life, and that regular opportunities to retake tests simply teach kids that consequences are negotiable.

But in a recent Facebook and Twitter poll about whether our teachers allow makeup tests, the discussion took a more practical turn. Most teachers agreed that retesting was sometimes appropriate, but expressed concerns about setting clear limits around the practice. A widespread problem: When given the option of makeup tests, students often gamed the system, failing the initial exam to see what it looked like-and then simply regurgitating the correct answers later. Under those circumstances, it's a net-zero game: Neither subject mastery nor personal responsibility is achieved.

"This has backfired on me so many times," lamented teacher Misty McClaskey in a comment that drew hundreds of sympathetic reactions from our audience. "Students don't study more. They do just as bad or worse on the retake. That's a waste of my time and theirs. And I have found if they know a retake is available, they actually study and prepare less."

Still, teachers weren't giving up on mastery or on makeup tests, and clear solutions emerged in the course of the back-and-forth. A consensus emerged around some key guidelines for retesting:

Consider partial credit: It remains controversial, but most teachers withheld full credit for retakes-though a wide range of standards for partial credit emerged. Some averaged the two grades, while others established a maximum possible score. An interesting wrinkle: a few teachers replaced the initial grade with the newly earned grade, even if it went down.

Make parents aware of the retake: Dozens of educators suggested looping in parents when retakes were requested by students. In some cases, teachers asked students and parents to cosign contracts setting out the terms of the retesting.

Keep the rest of the class on track: Don't slow the march of progress in your classroom to accommodate students who need to retest-unless the exam reveals a broad lack of mastery. Instead, most teachers conduct reteaching and retesting during study halls or before or after school.

Don't give the same test: Yes, it imposes more work on the teacher, but our educators agreed that if you're going to allow retesting, the second test should be different from the original-and just as challenging.

Require students to relearn: Students often fail tests because they haven't put in the work to master the material. Retakes should not be another spin of the roulette wheel-students who want another shot should demonstrate that they've made a genuine effort to study.

Don't assume all subjects are the same: In subjects like foreign languages and math, which rely heavily on sequential skill building, the need for retakes is crucial. Prohibiting retesting can strand students at a critical juncture with no good way to recover. Allow retakes and use the guidelines above.

Finally, a few of our teachers suggested more comprehensive approaches to retesting that seemed to work-and garnered lots of follow-up questions from experienced teachers looking for tried-and-true methods to use in their classrooms.

Mastery Quizzes

It takes some extra teacher time-most of these retesting alternatives do-but math teacher Laura Kirschenbaum offers what she calls "mastery quizzes," which are tailored specifically to "what the students failed to master on the original exam." These quizzes are short, often consisting of only two to four questions, and can help students earn back up to half the points they lost on the original test.

An advantage of this strategy? Students are retested only on what they didn't know. As Kirschenbaum explains, "It seems silly to retest them on topics they already understand."

Reflective Test Corrections

In Christina Gregory's eighth-grade math class, students are required to reflect on, and write about, the questions they miss on tests. Marked exams are returned with the correct answers, and students then "explain the process they went through" to arrive at their incorrect answers, identify their mistakes and show how they affected the outcome, and share how they intend to "correct this misconception or mistake on future questions."

According to Gregory-who received dozens of enthusiastic responses and questions from interested teachers-these "reflective responses" are about one paragraph long and have several clear benefits: They show students that so-called bad answers are often just a simple, correctable glitch in their processing; they reduce math anxiety by demonstrating that even hard-to-master problems can be solved with more effort; and they get kids to verbalize their thinking and thereby scaffold tough mathematical concepts with language skills.

A Peer-to-Peer Approach

There's a lot of research that suggests that teaching a topic to someone else is one of the best ways to learn it. Preparing to impart knowledge, it turns out, forces teachers to identify holes and weaknesses in their own knowledge, creating a mutually beneficial process of learning for both teachers and students.

Spanish teacher Karen Vargo is on to something, then, when she asks students who did well on a test-usually it's just for the larger, end-of-unit exams-to create a lesson and teach it to those who didn't perform as well. If students who retake the test pass, both the peer student and the peer teacher receive extra points. Vargo credits Sal Khan of Khan Academy for the idea, and says that her students have embraced the approach, which she loves because she sees that "both students are improving."

Metacognition Has Me Thinking...

In Ohio, high school teacher Theresa Grossheim Mengerink allows retakes, but only after a student has submitted a form that asks them to reflect on the past, present, and future of their testing efforts. Kids are asked to reflect on "why they failed and what they are going to do to improve" on the retake, and "how to prevent failure in the future." Questions might prompt students to look at how many hours they actually studied, what strategies they used to master the material, and where and under what conditions the studying occurred.

Research suggests that this kind of metacognition is important for high school students, who are still developing long-term planning skills and benefit from opportunities to practice. According to Laurence Steinberg, one of the world's leading researchers on adolescence, one metacognitive strategy that's remarkably similar to Mengerink's shows great promise: High school-aged students who are taught to plan for a long-term goal, imagine obstacles, and consider strategies for overcoming them show improvements in grades, attendance, and conduct.

The author of this article is the chief content officer at Edutopia. You can follow him on Twitter @smerrill777.

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Allowing Test Retakes-Without Getting Gamed

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Hundreds of teachers discussed the best ways to guide students toward mastery-without being taken advantage of.

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These cross curricular activities utilize tech to support critical thinking & argument. They are designed as history lessons, but could be easily modified for any content area. Templates here:
Google Sheet | Google Drawing

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PBS American Portrait is a national storytelling project that asked people all over the country to submit their stories by responding to thought provoking prompts.

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6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students

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Support every student by breaking learning up into chunks and providing a concrete structure for each.

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Enter names, spin wheel to pick a random winner. Customize look and feel, save and share wheels.

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Passion blogging is a low-stakes chance for students to analyze texts of their choosing before they move on to complex literary texts.

Analysis rhymes with paralysis, I have discovered: Too often in the past, the texts I asked my freshman English students to analyze left them frozen, detached from their own thoughts and feelings. They scratched at the surface of literature that was not particularly meaningful or accessible to them. The result was cold, inauthentic writing, and I dreaded teaching analysis.

But last summer I read Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell's book Beyond Literary Analysis and decided to use their approach. Marchetti and O'Dell uncouple the task of analysis from traditional literary texts and instead invite students to delve into a broader definition of text: "anything that has a beginning, middle, and end and can be broken down into smaller pieces and studied."

Songs, movies, sports events, and personal experiences are all texts for our students. Marchetti and O'Dell argue persuasively that the keys to strong analysis are passion, ideas, structure, and authority. Students do their best analytical work with texts they know and love.

Enter Passion Blogging

I had tried blogging with students in the past, but prompt-generated blogs felt forced and student-generated blogs often devolved into rants or stream-of-consciousness free writes that were painful to read and not especially helpful to my students' growth as writers.

Passion blogging is founded on what students know and care about. Their online space is built on their own authority. Their classroom community of readers provides a genuine audience, and the focus on analysis gives shape and purpose to their writing.

Before setting up blogs, my ninth graders created heart maps, as suggested by Marchetti and O'Dell-they drew large hearts and filled them with illustrations and words about their interests and passions. I nudged them in this process by asking them what they would do if I gave them 20 minutes to look up a topic on the internet. What did they want to know more about? What topics fascinated them?

Students selected interests from their heart maps, determined related research to explore, and began the analysis process. Because they were already knowledgeable about and invested in their topics, they could apply their writing energy to developing a strong structure and ideas with sound support.

We read mentor texts, including movie and video game reviews, to explore how professional writers analyze their topics. In addition, students wanting to follow their mentor texts by enlivening their posts with photos learned about open source licenses and photo attribution, and formatting the blog posts gave students practice with transferable tech skills.

My 36 students and I wrote 10 posts apiece during our first semester. Before each blog post, I reminded students to research support for their analysis and then attribute, quote, and link to their evidence. That provided opportunities to discuss the credibility of sources.

After each post, we each read and responded to at least five posts. Teachers can ask students to respond to at least five blogs that have fewer than five comments to ensure that all students garner feedback-they can respond to blogs with more than five comments but can't count those toward their required five. A bonus of peer reviewing is that it creates opportunities for lessons in digital citizenship.

Our class blogs are intended as a practice space for developing skills, and I grade them accordingly. Blogs that show attempts at passion (voice), authority (attribution and care with mechanics), structure (organization and transitions), and ideas (supported with examples) earn full credit. Intermittently, I meet with students for writing conferences to discuss strategies for strengthening their blogs' effectiveness.

My students' passion blogs resulted in creative, voice-filled analyses on wide-ranging topics such as the 19th Amendment, the best local hiking trails, why Austin Forkner is an amateur Kawasaki legend, a student's cataract surgery, ways school kills curiosity in students, a weekend of pheasant hunting, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, an Across the Universe movie review, hunger strikes, a grandfather's escape from Iran, and the Best of Iowa competition at the county fair.

Toward Literary Analysis

Analyses of news events, political proposals, new technologies, and entertainment options flood our digital lives. Analytical dexterity is essential for participating in this world of arguments. But as English teachers, we also want our students to analyze literature to understand how writers bring ideas to the page.

As Marchetti and O'Dell note, students can and will transfer what they learn through blogging to literary texts. My students and I have used what they learned from blogging to guide our discussions of poems and short stories.

In November my freshmen wrote their first formal literary analysis papers of the year, based on George Orwell's Animal Farm. The work we had done in passion blogging was evident in students' confidence as they approached the assignment. Their ideas-the heart of strong analysis-were bold and supported with examples from the text. Their voices reflected the authoritative tone we had worked on in blogs. They employed transitions similar to the ones they'd used to engage their readers in their blog posts.

Students given frequent low-stakes opportunities to analyze living texts of their choosing will develop the skills of structuring arguments, providing evidence, and explaining their thinking-skills they can apply in the analysis of literature.

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Tapping Students' Interests to Develop Literary Analysis Skills

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Passion blogging is a low-stakes chance for students to analyze texts of their choosing before they move on to complex literary texts. Analysis rhymes with paralysis, I have discovered: Too often in the past, the texts I asked my freshman English students to analyze left them frozen, detached from their own thoughts and feelings.

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John Meehan provides a collection of open source templates for teachers to modify for their content/grade level. He also highlights these uses in his Open Source Template Tuesday blog posts. Here's an example I love.

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Here's where you'll find a bunch of templates, links, and planning resources to supplement the lesson materials included in the book. Most of these items are Google Slides and Google Docs presentations, and you can click the "FILE" menu to "SAVE A COPY" and adapt any of these templates to your liking.

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Here's where you'll find a bunch of templates, links, and planning resources to supplement the lesson materials included in the book. Most of these items are Google Slides and Google Docs presentations, and you can click the "FILE" menu to "SAVE A COPY" and adapt any of these templates to your liking.

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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced that it will be regulating-and possibly punishing-expressions of protest at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games. This decision comes in part as a response to events last fall at the Pan-American Games, where athletes Race Imboden and Gwen Berry protested during their medal ceremonies by kneeling and raising a fist, respectively. But the tradition of Olympic protest dates back more than a century and most famously manifested at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics when Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists to protest injustice.

Reading about this announcement with students and discussing the motivations and implications of possible choices by the IOC and by athletes at this summer's games present an opportunity to practice close reading and analytical skills while also opening valuable conversations about power, voice and protest.

Here's how you might start:

1. Check Students' Previous Knowledge

Ask if students are familiar with the #TakeAKnee protests. If you do need to provide some context, the TT article " Discussing #TakeAKnee in Class " provides a useful overview of the reasoning behind the protest.

2. Read Together

Have students read the CBS News article " International Olympic Committee bans political protest by athletes at 2020 games." (Hold the accompanying video for later in the discussion.)

3. Clarify Student Understanding

Ask students to work individually, in pairs or as a group to answer a few text-dependent questions. For example:

According to the article, what specific forms of protest have been banned?

According to the article, who has made this decision? What is the reason they gave for banning protest?

According to the article, what is one recent example of athletes protesting? What consequence(s) did those athletes face?

According to the article, what is one older example of athletes protesting? What consequence(s) did those athletes face?

According to the article, if athletes do choose to protest during medal ceremonies at this summer's Olympics, what punishment has the IOC decided on?

4. Share Necessary Background

Provide additional context for students to connect the announcement to previous athletic protests. You might try:

Showing the short video "Tommie Smith reflects on iconic Olympic moment"

Sharing this quote from an article about Gwen Berry: "'At the last part-land of the free and home of the brave-something just came over me,' she said. 'It made me want to say, like, OK, this is a great country, this is a great land, but as Americans, are we really standing for what the anthem says? And I don't think right now we are. ... As a human being, you have a lot of power, and you don't really know it until you do something that creates something, and they say, Oh, wow, I do have a lot of power. My voice does matter.'"

Talking with students about the long history of athletes protesting injustice.

5. Talk Together

Facilitate a discussion with students about the announcement from the IOC. You might begin with the following questions:

The IOC announcement has made a lot of news recently. Is this something we should care about? Why or why not?

The announcement explains that this new policy exists because "the focus at the Olympic Games must remain on athletes' performances, sport and the international unity and harmony that the Olympic Movement seeks to advance." How do protests work to disturb "unity and harmony"? How do they work to build it?

The announcement details when and where athletes are allowed to protest at the Olympics. Do you think there are right or wrong places to protest? Why?

Who should get to decide when and where people protest? Why?

The IOC, which made this decision, is a committee of 115 people. Most of them are not active athletes. Do you think they were the right ones to make the decision? Why or why not? What steps could they take to make this decision in a way that is fair and ensures all perspectives are heard?

Do you think any athletes will choose to protest at the summer Olympics this year? Why might they choose to do so? Why might they choose not to?

The history of athletic protest has shown us that athletes often pay a steep price for choosing to highlight injustice. Why do you think that protests continue? How could people without a (literal) platform work to address these injustices?

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Teach This: Regulating Protest at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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This collection of online courses teaches through interactive explorations. While it is a subscription service, there is a limited free version that includes access to their Daily Challenge, which could make a great do now or enrichment activity.

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Brilliant - Build quantitative skills in math, science, and computer science with hands-on, interactive lessons.

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The Census Bureau has some excellent resources on their site, including lesson plans/activities, visualizations, and maps.

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New activities designed specifically for the 2019-2020 school year spotlight the 2020 Census and the importance of making sure everyone is counted, especially children. The decennial count impacts the federal funds that communities receive for special education, classroom technology, teacher training, after-school programs, school lunch assistance, and more.

Use activities for pre-K through 12th grade today to help your students, school, and community.

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New activities designed specifically for the 2019-2020 school year spotlight the 2020 Census and the importance of making sure everyone is counted, especially children. The decennial count impacts the federal funds that communities receive for special education, classroom technology, teacher training, after-school programs, school lunch assistance, and more.

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Manifest Destiny tells the story of the United States in 141 maps from the Declaration of Independence to the present.

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This story map requires JavaScript, but running JavaScript is not currently allowed by your web browser. If you wish to view this story, please enable JavaScript in this browser or try a different browser.

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Using Visual Modeling Tools to Reach Students with Learning Disabilities

(Building Dynamic Conception of Similarity)

Casey Hord, University of Cincinnati

Susan A. Gregson, University of Cincinnati

Jennifer B. Walsh, Sycamore Community Schools

Samantha Marita, University of Cincinnati

https://library.osu.edu/ojs/index.php/OJSM/article/download/6236/5066

Spatial Geometry - Approach to problem solving using Robocompass

(Jurnal MATEMATICS PAEDAGOGIC)

Rizka Apriyani Putri1, Jambi university, Indonesia

Damris , Jambi university, Indonesia

Jefri Marzal , Jambi university, Indonesia

http://www.jurnal.una.ac.id/index.php/jmp/article/viewFile/355/303

Improving Learning Ability and Skill in Mathematics Using ICT Tools

(International Journal of Engineering Science Invention (IJESI))

Charles Paul, Lawspet, Pondicherry

Chitra, Lawspet, Pondicherry

http://www.ijesi.org/papers/Vol(7)i8/Version-2/B0708021114.pdf

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Robocompass | A Robotic Geometry Box on 3D

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Using Visual Modeling Tools to Reach Students with Learning Disabilities (Building Dynamic Conception of Similarity) Casey Hord, University of Cincinnati Susan A. Gregson, University of Cincinnati Jennifer B.

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Challenging problems with several paths to the solution encourage students to develop their understanding of mathematical concepts.

Agencja Fotograficzna Caro / Alamy Stock Photo

Imagine a math problem that could appropriately challenge all of your students, give you the ability to clearly distinguish between what they understand and what they're struggling with, and provide context for powerful student discussions. To explore what that looks like, let's compare three problems on subtracting three-digit numbers. Take a few minutes to work on these problems and then continue reading.

Problem One: Solve.

812 - 357 =

Problem Two: Using the digits 1 to 9 at most one time each, place a digit on each underscore to make two three-digit numbers that form a true number sentence. Solve the problem twice; you may reuse digits from the first sentence in the second sentence. (I recommend not allowing students to use 0 in these kinds of problems to prevent them from using a leading 0-e.g., 091 = 91.)

_ _ _ - 291 = _ _ _

Problem Three: Using the digits 1 to 9 at most one time each, place a digit on each underscore to make a difference that is as close to 329 as possible.

_ _ _ - _ _ _ = _ _ _

Problem One is a fairly typical problem for subtracting three-digit numbers. If a student gets this problem wrong, we know that's not good. However, if she gets it right, does it guarantee that she deeply understands the concept? We've all had students who appeared to understand a concept, only to find out later that they had hidden misconceptions. So when a student gets this right, it may not guarantee deep understanding.

Problem Two is not easy. I made the problem, and it still took me four attempts just to find one number sentence. Picking digits randomly is an inefficient strategy, so students are forced to use conceptual understanding to think about what digits would be better choices to start with. I bet you can picture students who would have no issues with Problem One but would struggle with Problem Two.

Problem Three is really challenging. Even with a calculator it would likely take multiple attempts to solve the problem. Again, if students are randomly picking digits and subtracting them, it's going to take a really long time to figure out an answer. Ultimately, this problem forces students to move beyond being a human calculator and build conceptual understanding.

For example, I would hope that students realize that the number on the left has to be greater than 329 or the difference will be closer to 0 than to 329. That's not enough, though. For example, if a student starts with 987, what comes next? Does she randomly guess digits for the number on the right? Perhaps she starts thinking, "Hmm. I guess the number on the right needs to be about 300 less than the number on the left?" Even using that level of conceptual understanding will really help. Alternatively, students might think about Problem Three as an addition problem and think, "What three-digit number plus 329 equals my other three-digit number?" There are many options for how students might approach it.

What Students Get From This Kind of Problem

You may wonder how students handle these three problems, so let me share data collected from hundreds of third graders who have worked on them. You probably won't be surprised to learn that students had the most success with Problem One, with 62 percent of students correctly solving the problem, while fewer students solved Problems Two and Three correctly-36 percent and 29 percent, respectively.

This suggests that using only problems like Problem One could give us false positive results, which may incorrectly lead us to think that our students understand what we taught them. I wish I had known this earlier in my career, when I used countless problems like Problem One with my students. I've come to realize that when we ask superficial questions, we get superficial information back about what students know.

Problems like Two and Three are called Open Middle problems-a term I learned from math educator Dan Meyer-because there are a variety of strategies students can use to solve them. Most math problems begin with everyone working on the same problem and end with them arriving at the same answer-the beginning and ending are closed. What varies is the middle. Sometimes a problem's instructions tell students to complete a problem using a specific method (closed middle). Other times, there are many possible ways to solve the problem (open middle). Problems with open middles tend to be much more interesting.

These problems work great anywhere you might give students practice doing the same kinds of problems over and over, such as classwork or homework. As you might imagine, a single Open Middle problem often necessitates similar amounts of repeated practice as an entire worksheet, but with better conversations and deeper understandings. This kind of problem can also be used as an assessment to help you better understand which students are mastering a concept and which are struggling and need your help.

Open Middle problems can reveal students' hidden misconceptions, help build their conceptual understanding, and lead to great classroom conversations about how different strategies are connected to one another. And kids love doing them. At Open Middle, you can find hundreds of free problems for all grade levels, including hints you can offer students when they get stuck.

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Getting to the Heart of What Students Know in Math

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Challenging problems with several paths to the solution encourage students to develop their understanding of mathematical concepts. Agencja Fotograficzna Caro / Alamy Stock Photo Imagine a math problem that could appropriately challenge all of your students, give you the ability to clearly distinguish between what they understand and what they're struggling with, and provide context for powerful student discussions.

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Don't forget to scroll down to the bottom of this post to download the Creative Ways to End the Semester Resource Pack. This is a post I first wrote a decade ago, when I was teaching middle school. Each year, I have revised it and updated it.
Let's just put it out there. December is exhausting for teachers. The days are shorter. The weather grows colder and (at least here in Oregon) wetter. Students are anxious - whether it's a buzzing excitement for vacation or a sense of dread that some kids feel in homes that are unsafe during the holidays.

And teachers are tired. They're tired of redirecting behaviors and tired of the mid-year pressure of the test and simply tired of the sheer energy it takes to be a teacher.

It's no wonder that so many teachers begin playing holiday movies around this time of year. They want to create a sense of fun and escape and enjoyment, and a motion picture promises exactly that. Maybe that's okay. Maybe that's a part of creating a culture of joy. So, please don't read this post as a slam on teachers showing movies before the break. If this is a part of a positive classroom culture, keep doing it. This isn't meant to be a guilt trip or a rant or a "you're doing this wrong" post. This is meant to be a yes/and post offering other options.

For my first few years of teaching, I showed a movie the day before the winter break. However, within minutes, kids were disengaged. They were passive. It wasn't special. My students could go home and watch a movie whenever they felt like it. It had me wondering . . . was there something that they could do in my class that they couldn't do anywhere else? Was this actually the chance to do something epic and make something memorable?

Over the years, I've learned that kids don't grow tired of learning. They grow tired of school. This is the chance to tap into wonder and curiosity and creativity.

Watch the Video

I tried something different this time and created a 22-minute video (about as long as a TV episode). I'm thinking of doing these longer videos on a regular basis as another way to access this content.

Listen to the Podcast

If you enjoy this blog but you'd like to listen to it on the go, just click on the audio below or subscribe via iTunes/Apple Podcasts (ideal for iOS users) or Google Play and Stitcher (ideal for Android users).

http://www.spencerauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/End-on-Creative-Note.m4a

Twelve Creative Ways to End the Semester

Here are a few creative ways you can spend the last few weeks before the winter break. I realize that teachers have curriculum maps and expectations, so you'll notice that these ideas are all things that still include the standards and still require critical thinking. We also experience the time crunch, so I want to note that some of these are single day activities and some of these cover an entire week.

#1: Genius Hour

Time Required: 1-5 Days

Materials Required: This works best when you have devices.

Description: Genius Hour (also called 20% Time) is a chance for students to engage in an inquiry-driven, independent project. They own the entire learning process, from the concept to the questions, to the research, to the project management to the ultimate final product. Here's a quick video description of what Genius Hour looks like:

Here's a video you can use with your students. Note that you can get a free copy of both videos (in case YouTube is blocked at your school) in the Ten Creative Ways to End the Semester Resource Pack at the bottom of this post.

#2: Scratch Video Game Projects

Time Required: Full Week

Materials Required: This project works best when you have one-to-one devices

Description: If you haven't checked it out before, go take a look at Scratch. It's a way to teach logic and programming through the use of blocks that students use to manipulate objects. Students can start out small by following the directions to create a Pong game. Afterward, you can encourage them to move on to a place where they hack the game and make it their own. Then, you can have them set up their own games that they truly design.

If you're interested in launching a Scratch video game, check out the site and start with the Pong game. I also have instructions on how I taught Scratch (the three phases) with middle school as well as a list of 8 lessons I learned along the way. You can find those in the Ten Creative Ways to End the Semester Resource Pack at the bottom of this post.

#3: Design Thinking Project

Time Required: Full Week

Materials Required: Design thinking can work well with technology or with low-tech options

Description: Design thinking is a flexible process for getting the most out of the creative process. It is used in the arts, in engineering, in the corporate world, at universities, and in social and civic spaces. You can use it in every subject with every age group. It works when creating digital content or when building things with duct tape and cardboard. It can even be used in planning events or in designing services. So, the idea here is that you are providing a meaningful structure to help students design a product that they will launch to an authentic audience. The following video helps explain the process:

This is the perfect time of year to test out design thinking. While other classes are watching Frosty the Snowman, your students can engage in inquiry, research, ideating, and prototyping. They will do something creative - and they'll remember it forever. If you're interested in trying design thinking, I have included the Create a Sport Challenge and the Tiny House Project (math-related) in the Ten Creative Ways to End the Semester Resource Pack at the bottom of this post. Both projects include lesson plans, student notebooks, slideshows, and the videos.

#4: Thematic Blogs (High-Tech)

Materials Required: Blogging works best with desktops or laptops but can still be accomplished with smartphones or tablets

Description: In keeping with the theme of student ownership, thematic blogs are blogs based on a student's interests, passions, and ideas. It could be a foodie blog, a sports blog, a fashion blog, a science blog, or a history blog. They choose the topic and the audience. It's a great way for students to practice writing in different genres (persuasive, functional, informational/expository, narrative) with specific blog topics they choose. They can also add multimedia components, like slideshows, pictures, videos, and audio.

Think of all the blogs out there that people actually make outside of school. That's what you want students to create. It's their chance to participate in the global blogging community by tapping into their own expertise and interests. If you're interested in getting started, I have included things like sentence stems and other student handouts that might be helpful as you begin the process. You can find it all in the Ten Creative Ways to End the Semester Resource Pack at the bottom of this post.

#5: Video Writing Prompts (Low-Tech Alternative)

Materials Required: You can go low-tech with this and do visual writing prompts on a screen (projector or interactive whiteboard) and have students use composition books

Description: If you don't have the best technology in your classroom, but you do have a projector or interactive whiteboard, consider doing visual writing prompts with a picture or a video. The idea here is to choose high-interest ideas that get students excited about writing. I have included a free set of video prompts in the Ten Creative Ways to End the Semester Resource Pack at the bottom of this post.

Here's an example of a writing prompt you could do to get students excited about writing.

If you like that, would you consider subscribing to the channel at videoprompts.com?

#6: Sketchnote Videos

Time Required: 25 minutes (easiest version) to a full week (most challenging version)

Materials Required: This can be mostly low-tech, with paper, pencils, markers, whiteboards, etc. But the video portion will require a video camera or smartphone.

Description: I love the idea of making ideas visual and sketchnoting is one of the strategies you can use to help students take complex ideas and convey them in a way that is visual and concrete. But I also love taking it to the next level by having students craft short sketchnote videos that convey an idea, concept, or process. So, it might be something like life cycles or how a bill becomes a law. There are four layers of sketchnote videos that work well, ranging from easiest to hardest.
Level One: Flipbook Style (Very Easy)
Here, students create multiple pages with a sketch and a core idea. Afterward, one student flips the pages as another student videotapes the pages and a third student reads the script. This is essentially a picture book on video. But if you want to get more complicated and show any kind of movement, check out level two.
Level Two: Stop Motion (Fairly Easy)
This is the stop animation approach. Students sketch out their ideas and then cut them out. They can then maneuver these ideas with their hands in a video. When they go to film it, one student uses a smartphone while a second student moves the items around. A third student reads a script. Afterward, they can post it online or share it with their teacher.
Level Three: Whiteboard Videos (Moderately Difficult)
Students start out by storyboarding a concept they've learned throughout the quarter. They then record one member of their group sketching out the ideas in an RSA Animate style with the whiteboard. Next, they speed up the whiteboard drawing, edit out any mistakes, and add an audio layer that they record in iMovie or Movie Maker. It doesn't require a ton of technology, but it does require some creative risk-taking. What I love about this is that you can have multiple students making the videos in small groups and then rotate who edits it on the computer. So, if you have limited student computers, it can still work.
Level Four: Animated Videos (Very Difficult)
These are the types of videos I enjoy making. They can take hours to make and they require Photoshop. If you're interested in the process, here's a detailed description in a blog post I created after my son spent a full day making his video. This is the video he created. I think it's pretty awesome. Then again, I'm his dad, so that's par for the course, right?

If you're interested in doing sketchnote videos, you can find more detailed instructions in the Ten Creative Ways to End the Semester Resource Pack at the bottom of this post.

#7: Maker Projects

Time Required: One class period

Materials Required: Maker projects can work well with technology or with low-tech options. Note that the two examples I am giving are both low-tech.

Description: There are a few ways to approach maker projects. The first uses design thinking to go through the entire design process (see the design thinking option listed in #3. The second involves less research and planning and gets students into rapid prototyping as soon as possible. The idea here is that students make something with physical products that they are upcycling - often duct tape, cardboard, and plastic. Here's one that's a little more math and science-related:

If you're interested in doing a maker project, you can find a free maker project in the Ten Creative Ways to End the Semester Resource Pack at the bottom of this post.

#8: Divergent Thinking Challenge

Time Required: 40-90 minutes

Materials Required: You can determine your own materials but it helps to keep it low-tech and to limit it to 2-5 items that are seemingly unrelated. The more unrelated they are, the better!

Description: Divergent thinking challenges are a simple way to move into rapid prototyping while inspiring divergent thinking. Here's the basic premise of it.

#7: Wonder Day / Wonder Week

Time Required: Single Day or Full Week

Materials Required: This project works best when they can do online research.

Description: This is a fun, easy way to get students engaged in non-fiction reading. I use it as a high-interest way to help students learn the research process. Students begin with the sentence stem, "I'm wondering why/what would/how/if __________" and from there they ask tons of questions. This ultimately leads to research and finally a place where they share what they learned.

For more ideas on how to bring wonder back into the classroom, check out this post.

If you're interested in doing a Wonder Day project, you can find more detailed instructions in the Ten Creative Ways to End the Semester Resource Pack at the bottom of this post. I also include a video showing a simple approach to teaching students how to engage in media literacy.

#8: Hands-On Simulations

Time Required: Single Class Period

Materials Required: Simulations work really well when they are low-tech

Description: Simulations are a powerful way to push critical thinking. You don't need a maker space or fancy gadgets or anything like that.

They work with any subject where you are trying to get students to think about a complex, abstract idea or system. Simulations bridge the abstract and the concrete. They are fully immersive. You are moving around, physically maneuvering your environment to make sense of the information. In the process, the information sticks after a simulation. Simulations become mental models that students go back to in order to make sense out of what they have learned.

Student engagement skyrockets. Most simulations have a goal in mind and students are actively making decisions that allow them to process the information in real-time. They go beyond what Schlecty calls "strategic compliance" (high attention but low commitment) and into a place where they have full buy-in. Moreover, students at any ability level can access the information in a simulation. It is not necessarily reading-dependent or writing-dependent.

Note that simulations work best when dealing with abstract ideas and complex systems. A predator and prey version of tag can help students think about the food chain, but a simulation showing how stanzas work will tank. A simulation factory is a great way to make sense out of the industrial revolution but it's probably not the best way to show how phonics work.

With students feeling antsy, these hands-on, movement-oriented simulations can provide the perfect outlet while also reinforcing concepts they have been learning in any subject. I have a quick guide for designing simulations inside the Ten Creative Ways to End the Semester Resource Pack at the bottom of this post.

#9: Podcasts

Time Required: Single Day (or Multiple Days)

Materials Required: Smartphones or microphones, and computers (optional)

Description: I love having students create videos. However, videos can take time and it's more of a challenge to deal with props, lighting, staging, etc. This is why I love podcasts. They can work individually, with partners, or in small groups. It can be more scripted or more open. If you want, you can have students edit the podcasts and add music by using Garage Band or Audacity. But you can also do a simple recording with smartphones.

If this seems interesting to you, I created a quick sheet called 20 Ideas for Student Podcasting that you can find in the Ten Creative Ways to End the Semester Resource Pack at the bottom of this post.

#10: History Mystery

Time Required: 1-2 Days

Materials Required: This can be low-tech or high-tech

Description: This is a way to get students to create a theory about why something exists within history. For example, why are there ships buried under the city of San Francisco? You start with the key question (often a visual to go with it) and then you ask students to formulate a hypothesis and defend it. They then form groups and agree on a key idea. Afterward, the whole class debates the core reason. Then, you introduce them to an informational text about it. I have a specific lesson on this connected to a great episode of the 99% Invisible podcast. You can find the slideshow for the lesson in the Ten Creative Ways to End the Semester Resource Pack at the bottom of this post.

These last few weeks before the quarter are a chance to be different. They are an opportunity to innovate and try something new. It might not work. Mistakes are bound to happen - and that can feel daunting when you're already exhausted. But I've found that piloting something new is often the very thing I get re-energized and to increase student engagement. Ultimately, this is a chance to make something meaningful - something that your students will remember forever.

So, if you are thinking about doing something creative or innovative, please leave a comment below sharing what creative thing you plan to pilot in the upcoming weeks. Also, you might want to check out the free resource below.

Please leave your first name and email address below and click the yellow submit button to receive the free resource. I will also send you a weekly email with free, members-only access to my latest blog posts, videos, podcasts and resources to help you boost creativity and spark innovation in your classroom.

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Twelve Creative Alternatives to Showing Movies Before the Break

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Don't forget to scroll down to the bottom of this post to download the Creative Ways to End the Semester Resource Pack. This is a post I first wrote a decade ago, when I was teaching middle school. Each year, I have revised it and updated it. Let's just put it out there.

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Personality:

Are you propaganda proof?

Think you're not susceptible to propaganda? Think again. Propaganda producers know you a lot better than you think - your likes and dislikes, your hopes and fears. Take our short quiz to reveal how propaganda makers could target you and what steps you can take to prevent it.

Is there a target on your back?
Take our quiz to reveal:

Let's get started!

Introduction

Propaganda makers think about a lot more than just politics and protest. Their job relies on knowing you better than you know yourself: your likes and dislikes, hopes and fears.

Pick your preferences - from food to fashion - to reveal how you see the world... and how propaganda makers could target YOU.
Next

Your Disin.fo Propaganda Profile Quiz Results

Straightforward & Direct

You see the heart of the issue and aren't easily distracted by complicated claims or fancy footwork. You like your arguments simple and classic.

First the good news! You have an amazing strength that protects you from certain types of propaganda. But the bad news is that you've also got a weakness that makes you more susceptible to other types of propaganda. Learn more about your strengths and weaknesses below and then find out how to make yourself #propagandaproof.

Strength:

Exaggeration

You're great at spotting propaganda that relies on exaggeration to build up its cause and show off its strength.

Learn more

Weakness:

Simplification

Propaganda creators could target you using simplification because it takes advantage of your dislike of complexity and clutter.

Learn more

Let the world know you're on your way to being #propagandaproof! Share your results and see how you stack up against your friends and family.

Not the results you were expecting? Take the quiz again.

Retake

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Think you're not susceptible to propaganda? Think again. Propaganda producers know you a lot better than you think - your likes and dislikes, your hopes and fears. Take our short quiz to reveal how propaganda makers could target you and what steps you can take to prevent it.

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Whether you're across the world or right next door, check out NewseumED's virtual classes that bring us to you! All classes are free of charge. Classes are offered Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET. Classes typically run 30-50 minutes and can be adjusted to meet your bell schedule.

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Click on an element to open a popup window that provides the Wikipedia entry for that element.

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Interactive periodic table showing names, electrons, and oxidation states. Visualize trends, 3D orbitals, isotopes, and mix compounds. Fully descriptive writeups.

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Click on an element to open a popup window that provides a 3D model of the atomic structure for that element.

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This is a Bohr model of the atom. This model was proposed by Niels Bohr in 1913. It is not completely correct, but has many features that are sufficient for a general understanding. In this representation, the electrons are rotating in a 2D plane unlike the Bohr model which suggests the electrons move in a 3D path around the nucleus. The 2D representation is for simplicity>

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A 3d visualization of periodic table. This 3d representation has a table view which shows initially and an atomic view. Click on each element to explore atomic view.

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Students with dysgraphia have an unexpected difficulty with spelling and writing skills. Here are the red flags to look for, and ways to support these students.

Cultura Creative (RF) / Alamy Stock Photo

Jeremiah is a student in my second-grade intervention classroom. He's verbally expressive, full of positive energy, and eager to please. He's been sent to me because benchmark assessments reveal he's below grade level in reading.

Once he's in my classroom, a more pressing issue comes to light. If Jeremiah is slightly below grade level in reading, he is significantly below it in writing. He's nearly 8 years old, and his letters are not uniform, his spelling is inaccurate, and written tasks are laborious for him. I also note the social-emotional effects when he's writing: This energetic, social boy melts into a quiet anxiety, twisting his hair and not making eye contact.

I ask Jeremiah's teacher about his writing skills. She has seen the same things I have, and explains that his writing is difficult to decipher and his assignments are never complete. She also reports that previous teachers have also aired similar concerns. She and I suspect that Jeremiah is struggling with dysgraphia.

Understanding Dysgraphia

If you feel uncertain about what dysgraphia is, you're not alone. Michael McCloskey and Brenda Rapp, researchers at Johns Hopkins University, explain that dysgraphias are "common and have significant consequences for those who suffer from them, yet these deficits have received relatively little attention from researchers."

Currently it's estimated that students with dysgraphia make up 7 to 15 percent of students in general ed classrooms. In order to support all our students, it's critical that teachers better understand what dysgraphia is, what it looks like, and how to support students who struggle with it in the classroom.

According to McCloskey and Rapp, dysgraphia is unexpected difficulty with acquisition and production of spelling and writing skills. The word unexpected is an important part of this description because dysgraphia-like dyslexia-is not related to intelligence and persists despite adequate learning opportunities.

This does not mean that students with dysgraphia have difficulty hearing or seeing. Rather, due to natural variations in their cognitive abilities, students with dysgraphia have difficulty processing what they hear and see.

How Does Dysgraphia Affect Students?

Effective writing depends upon the complex process of manipulating speech sounds (phonemes), pairing them with written images (graphemes), and then producing those learned images from memory. And with multiple cognitive variations at play, dysgraphia, like dyslexia and developmental language delay, occurs on a spectrum.

To better understand the processing differences that students with dysgraphia struggle with, consider this analogy: You enter a destination into Google Maps, but instead of being directed onto the wide-open highway, you find yourself on windy back roads, and the trip takes three times longer than it should. You still get to the destination, but you have to focus harder because of the roads taken.

This is what happens when a student with dysgraphia works on a writing assignment. While their neurotypical peers take the wide-open highway and quickly complete the task, students with dysgraphia default to back-road navigation. When they arrive at their destination, their work, compared with that of their peers, looks sloppy, misspelled, and incomplete-a poor reflection of the effort it took them to get there.

Poor phonological awareness

Poor pencil grip

Persistent inconsistent letter formation

Illegible writing

Slow writing fluency

Difficulty copying visual information accurately

Inaccurate spelling

How do you know if a student has dysgraphia? Keep an eye out for these red flags:

If you suspect that a student is struggling with dysgraphia, refer them to your school's child study team for evaluation.

Remediation and Accommodations

Allow extra time on written assignments

Allow speech-to-text tools, or teacher or peer scribes for written assignments

Allow students to write numeric formulas as opposed to math word problems

Provide a written copy of whiteboard notes

Create an inclusive classroom that allows all students to use accommodations, not just the students who need them

Classroom accommodations are critical for students with dysgraphia because they provide an on-ramp that allows these students to access the highway and produce work more in line with their intellectual ability. Because of the cognitive variations that contribute to dysgraphia, accommodations should be student specific. A comprehensive list of classroom accommodations can be found at Understood.org -here are just a few helpful options:

My student Jeremiah continues to make solid progress with intensive phonological awareness, spelling, and handwriting instruction. He was also found eligible for both occupational therapy and special education services-he's now getting the support he needs. Hopefully, with increased awareness other students with dysgraphia will too.

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What Teachers Should Know About Dysgraphia

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Students with dysgraphia have an unexpected difficulty with spelling and writing skills. Here are the red flags to look for, and ways to support these students.

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Jasmine Stiles has been teaching PE at Carmel Valley Middle School for the last 19 years. Her goal this year as the San Dieguito Union High School District PE coordinator is to dispel the myths in the community about what happens in PE class.

"A lot of families don't know how awesome our program is and how important it is for social, emotional and physical development," Stiles said, noting that many students opt into Independent Study PE. "I want to expose as many kids as possible to our program because I know what it does. There are so many positive benefits."

This is not the PE most people grew up with-the teacher bringing out the equipment and setting kids off to play. And it's not just running endless laps.

"We no longer do participation gets credit," Stiles said. "The biggest question PE teachers must ask is: 'How do you know every student is learning?'"

To teach physical literacy, Stiles stresses student engagement.

According to the SHAPE America national PE standards, physical literacy is "the ability to move with competence and confidence in a wide variety of physical activities in multiple environments that benefit the health development of the whole person."

At Carmel Valley Middle School, rather than just sending the kids out to play street hockey, the game is broken up into skill learning. The students use three to five point rubrics for each skill. For example, when learning how to pass, the rubric spells out hand position, blade position and keeping the knees bent.

Stiles has developed rubrics for every single sport and for conditioning exercises such as curl-ups and push-ups.

Students work the skills on their own using the rubrics, guiding and giving each other feedback, like "get your dominant hand lower." Students evaluate and rate themselves and others, sometimes using video to study their forms.

"We teach technique to the nth degree," said Stiles, adding that students never leave a unit without learning the essential skills that will help them be successful at the game or activity.

In PE class, the goal is to get moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) 60 percent of the class time as well as for students to recognize the value of physical activity for health, enjoyment, challenge, self-expression and/or social interaction.

Students take PE three times a week, starting each class with flexibility and ballistic stretches, strength and conditioning exercises and cardiovascular conditioning to get their heart rates up and challenge their lungs. At least once a month they do a 1,500 meter timed run and in May, every student runs a 5K

One day a week is a shorter class and they focus on a health and wellness -they have done a self-defense unit, learned about nutrition, focused on drug prevention and trends like vaping, and done social emotional learning activities on friendships and relationships.

"I believe at this age, this is the most important class these kids take," said CVMS PE teacher Michelle Brown.

Brown was an English teacher for 25 years before making the transition to PE this year. As much as she loves getting the kids' hearts pumping, she finds it so valuable to catch kids at an early age to teach them about making good choices and setting habits now, "helping them understand and believe in the importance of being healthy. Your health affects everything, as we all know as adults."

The activity units are three weeks long and range from yoga to lacrosse to pickleball. Stiles said while they could choose to devote longer to each activity or sport, she wants to expose them to as many things as she can so they have options when they are older.

"The ultimate goal is lifelong fitness. The more options they have, the less afraid they will be to try something as an adult," Stiles said.

Students might not like every activity but overcoming obstacles and challenges only makes them stronger both physically and mentally. She said there is value in helping students learn the skills they need to be successful, so they can feel accomplished, to see that they have improved, to help gain self-confidence or discover a sport or activity that they didn't know they could love.

She knows that three of 50 students will stay in shape the rest of their life, 10 will be in and out of shape for the rest of their lives and, unfortunately, 75 percent to 85 percent will stay out of shape-Stiles doesn't want that to happen, she wants her students to break the mold.

"You have one body. The most valuable asset you'll ever have is your health," Stiles tells her students.

Stiles works to set a positive example for her students-recently she became a professional in prone paddleboarding at the age of 54, which she tried for the first time six years ago.

"You can compete at any level and you can be excited about the goals you set," said Stiles, a masters swimmer who surfs, lifts and runs. "I know personally that lifelong fitness changes your life."

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PE in San Dieguito school district stresses physical literacy with goal of lifelong fitness

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Jasmine Stiles has been teaching PE at Carmel Valley Middle School for the last 19 years. Her goal this year as the San Dieguito Union High School District PE coordinator is to dispel the myths in the community about what happens in PE class.

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Do you have 15 minutes... for some uplifting mathematics?
Join more than 5 million students, teachers, and friends that already have tried this astounding mathematical experience! See mathematics like you've never seen it before and take part in a global math conversation with your students.

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The Exploding Dots Experience - The Global Math Project

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Do you have 15 minutes... for some uplifting mathematics? Join more than 5 million students, teachers, and friends that already have tried this astounding mathematical experience! See mathematics like you've never seen it before and take part in a global math conversation with your students.

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3 Ways to Ask Questions That Engage the Whole Class

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These techniques guide all students to process course content and then actively demonstrate their learning.

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NYT Mentor Texts Page
“Each entry will spotlight a Times text, then offer guided practice to help students both identify effective “writer’s moves” and emulate them in their own work.”

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We've been welcoming student writers to our site for years, inviting them to post thoughts to our daily prompts, analyze multimedia compositions in our live-moderated forums, and submit formal work to our many annual contests.

But there has long been a missing piece. Though we've provided plenty of places to practice, we've only occasionally published resources to help teach young people how to write.

This school year, we're making up for that gap with a new series called Mentor Texts.

If the term is new to you, here is how the National Writing Project defines it:

Mentor texts are pieces of literature that you - both teacher and student - can return to and reread for many different purposes. They are texts to be studied and imitated ... Mentor texts help students to take risks and be different writers tomorrow than they are today. It helps them to try out new strategies and formats. They should be [texts] that students can relate to and can even read independently or with some support.

And of course, a mentor text doesn't have to be in the form of a book - a mentor text might be a poem, a newspaper article, song lyrics, comic strips, manuals, essays, almost anything.

Thanks to the 1,000-plus fresh articles published every week on NYTimes.com, we're in no danger of running out of possible material. In fact, the hardest part of creating this series may be choosing from among too many good options.

In general, though, each edition in the series will ...

Spotlight an excellent piece of writing published in The New York Times, whether on the front page or from sections like Opinion, Arts, Science, Sports, Business, Food, Travel or Style.

Try to demystify for students the effective craft moves writers make, then provide exercises that invite them to try those same moves in their own work.

Show students how the writing genres they study in school can be used in real-world contexts.

You can find the whole series in this column, beginning with several intended to support narrative writing. We've created these - on telling short, memorable stories; using details to show rather than tell; crafting a narrative arc; and more - to accompany the first unit of our yearlong Writing Curriculum, which will culminate in a Personal Narrative Essay Contest for students. Over the course of the school year, we'll also be creating Mentor Text editions to support argumentative, informational and analytic writing, among other genres.

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We've been welcoming student writers to our site for years, inviting them to post thoughts to our daily prompts, analyze multimedia compositions in our live-moderated forums, and submit formal work to our many annual contests. But there has long been a missing piece.

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Teach Writing With The New York Times: A Free School-Year Curriculum in 7 Units (Published 2019)

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A flexible program for middle and high schools based on the real-world writing found in newspapers, from editorials and reviews to personal narratives and analysis essays.

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A low-cost intervention can make a big difference for students in their formative years, according to a new study by University of Wisconsin researcher and professor Geoffrey Borman. In an interview with Borman in Time, writer Belinda Luscombe explores how a simple writing exercise improved the experiences of more than 1,000 new middle schoolers.

While other social and emotional interventions cost more than $500 per student, according to researchers, the writing intervention costs a tiny fraction of that-an eye-popping $1.35 per student-and the results outperform the more expensive interventions, Lunscombe writes.

Middle school is an especially difficult time for many students because in addition to developmental and physical changes, they move from a single teacher to multiple teachers, often in a new location. "The process of alienation and disengagement from school often takes root at the beginning of middle school," Gorman says. The study's intervention was designed to ease that transition by reminding kids that their fears are common and by fostering a sense of belonging with peers and teachers.

The proposed solution is simple: New middle school students in the study completed two 15-minute writing exercises at the beginning of the year that asked them to reflect on statements like these from prior students: "Almost all 7th graders said they had worried a lot about taking middle school tests at the beginning of 6th grade, but almost all 7th graders say that they now worry much less about taking tests," and "Almost all 7th graders said they had worried at first that they did not 'fit in' or 'belong' at the beginning of 6th grade, but almost all 7th graders say that they now know that they 'fit in' and 'belong.'"

The materials also included individual anecdotes and quotes from prior students about their test fears, social anxieties, and relationships with teachers-all in an effort to show incoming students that their challenges were normal and surmountable.

The short writing prompts asked three simple, open-ended questions:

"Name one or two reasons why a 6th grader like you might worry about taking tests."

"Name one or two reasons why a 6th grader like you might worry less about taking tests after a little bit of time."

"Name one or two reasons why a 6th grader like you might do well on tests even if you worry about taking tests."

The survey then asked participants two multiple-choice questions about how students who preceded them might have felt about test-taking in 6th grade as compared to how they might feel about test-taking now. A month later, students responded to similar questions meant to guide them through difficult transitions related to social interactions and new relationships.

Students who participated in the intervention exhibited a shift in attitude with far-reaching consequences. Study participants "reported trust in their teachers, that they liked school, were not as nervous about big tests, and that, ultimately, felt like they fit in. These more positive attitudes about school help students worry less, which helps them devote more cognitive and psychological resources to doing well in school," Borman told Time. The students also had fewer absences and fewer disciplinary problems. "Over time, these shifts in student beliefs and behaviors improve academic performance, which then reinforce students' positive beliefs," Borman says.

The cost of the intervention is low-researchers estimate the cost per student is only $1.35 for "printing costs for the materials and for the time that it takes teachers to administer the two 15-minute activities." In comparison, Borman says, Columbia researchers estimate some of the popular social-emotional interventions cost more than $580 per student.

The cycle of positive attitudes makes this very short, low-cost intervention a very powerful tool. "Over time, these shifts in student beliefs and behaviors improve academic performance, which then reinforce students' positive beliefs."

The simple, replicable questions could be asked of any middle school students. Encouraging students to reflect on their fears and anxieties while at the same time reminding them of the struggles of the peers creates confidence and strengthens relationships with teachers.

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A Simple Practice Yields Big Results in Middle School For Less Than $2

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A low-cost intervention can make a big difference for students in their formative years, according to a new study by University of Wisconsin researcher and professor Geoffrey Borman. In an interview with Borman in Time, writer Belinda Luscombe explores how a simple writing exercise improved the experiences of more than 1,000 new middle schoolers.

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Why do we smell different when we're sick? Why does cheese smell like feet? Why don't vultures get sick from eating rotting meat? Science is filled with stories: some of them are beautiful and some of them are gross. Really gross.

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This is what 50 years of human migration looks like

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Visualizing a half century of data helps us understand why people make the choice to leave and where they go.

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StoryMapJS is a free tool to help you tell stories on the web that highlight the locations of a series of events.

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TimelineJS is an open-source tool that allows you to build visually rich, interactive timelines using nothing more than a Google spreadsheet. Step-by-step video tutorial.

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Access thousands of primary sources  — letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps, videos, and other document types — spanning the course of American history. Includes document-based activities created by the National Archives, and teachers around the world or create your own activities using the online tools.

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Access thousands of primary sources - letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps, videos, and other document types - spanning the course of American history. We're always adding more!

Borrow from an ever-expanding collection of document-based activities created by the National Archives, and teachers around the world. Copy and modify activities for your students.

Create your own activities using the online tools. It's as simple as: (1) selecting a tool, (2) choosing your primary sources, and (3) customizing instructions. Learn more >

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Access thousands of primary sources - letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps, videos, and other document types - spanning the course of American history. We're always adding more! Borrow from an ever-expanding collection of document-based activities created by the National Archives, and teachers around the world. Copy and modify activities for your students.

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This would be a fantastic cross-curricular project and would work with any document. Original tweet:
Tried something new this year. Students take the Declaration of Independence and create a blackout poem about their feelings about America today. Results were surprising and fantastic! #apgov

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Fantastic cross-curricular project!

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Hurricanes are also hundreds of miles wide, and the cone shows only the possible path of the storm's center. Heavy rain, storm surge, flooding, wind and other hazards may affect areas outside the cone.

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Opinion | Those Hurricane Maps Don't Mean What You Think They Mean

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Hurricanes are also hundreds of miles wide, and the cone shows only the possible path of the storm's center. Heavy rain, storm surge, flooding, wind and other hazards may affect areas outside the cone.

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Regardless of a child's age or challenges, parents can encourage sound homework routines for a successful start to the school year.

By Brian Platzer and

Every cartful of new school supplies is loaded with promise: binders organized by subject, crisp homework folders and pristine notebooks. But for many parents it can feel like it's just a short hop from those freshly sharpened pencils to a child in full meltdown over a barely started English essay.

You don't have to let go of the optimism. As parents, teachers and tutors, we have some concrete advice for staving off the tears - for both parents and children.

Regardless of a child's age or challenges, parents can encourage sound homework routines for a successful start to the school year. First, students should consider how to create organized work spaces, backpacks and lockers cleared of clutter and systematized for easy retrieval of important assignments. Second, nightly to-do checklists are a must to help prioritize and plan ahead.

But many students still struggle when it comes to homework. Their stress tends to be exacerbated by three primary challenges: procrastinating, feeling overwhelmed and struggling to retain information. Ideally, parents can help elementary school children develop effective homework habits so they will not need as much guidance as they get older. Parents who are not home during their kids' prime homework hours can try out some of these ideas on the weekends and pass along the best practices to their caregivers.

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Credit... Ji Hyun Yu

Many students finish reading a sentence, and then refresh their Instagram feed. Ideally, their phones should be nowhere near them during homework time. Or they should disable or mute apps and texting functions on the phone and computer while they work. We know this will mean a grumpy adolescent. But it's a battle worth fighting. Establish a family tech-space where phones and laptops go when not in use. And model these boundaries by leaving your devices there, too!

Kids ultimately thrive in the comfort and reliability of a structured approach to homework, so each afternoon they should follow the same steps in roughly the same order.

It might be helpful for you to model the planning process, so your kids can see how you schedule a series of tasks. Try to make a point of letting them in on the process when you're running errands, preparing for a trip or completing a project for work. Then take advantage of some set time (Sunday tends to work best) to plan the coming week.

Students should break down large assignments into more manageable chunks and then backplan from the due date, recording on a calendar what they'll need to do when in order to complete each major task and its components.

In the early grades, this could mean reading a book by Tuesday in order to write a book report on Wednesday. By middle school, it could translate to finishing the research for a science project with enough time to make a compelling poster to display at the science fair. The more practice students get with planning, the sooner they'll become self-sufficient.

Students should estimate how long each assignment will take and develop a schedule accordingly. Even if the estimate is wrong, the process of thinking through timing will allow them to internalize how best to proceed when juggling multiple tasks. It will give them a better gauge of how long future assignments will take and make the evening ahead less intimidating.

Most kids' instinct will be to complete the fun or easy to-dos first. But they should start with the hardest work. Otherwise it will be later when, energy depleted, they begin trying to outline their term paper. Encouraging them to do the most challenging work first will allow them to devote attention and energy to the demanding assignments - then they can coast through the easy tasks.

Memorize information in stages that build upon one another. When students are confronted with vast swaths of material, it can be overwhelming and difficult to recall. Suggest that they break it up into a series of discrete parts based on the number of topics and the number of days they have to study for the test. For example, students might divide a history test study sheet into sections 1 to 3. The first day should be for studying section 1. The second day, section 2. The third day, reviewing sections 1 and 2, before moving to section 3 the following day. This way, by the time students get to section 3, they haven't forgotten what they learned in the first section. This cumulative approach reinforces retention of content through review and repetition.

A big block of text on a study sheet can be difficult for students to absorb and memorize. Instead, they should break the sentence or paragraph up into a series of points, highlighting the keywords and then creating their own mnemonic device to remember it. Sometimes the silliest mnemonics stick the best, and remembering the first letters of words will help trigger ideas that they might otherwise forget. (Remember the DR & MRS VANDERTRAMP verbs from French class, or Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge when learning musical notes?)

Some students can best synthesize information by creating charts or other graphic organizers. Rather than feeling overwhelmed by writing several paragraphs with important information about how a cell works, for example, students might present the same data in streamlined form with a chart. Charts distill and organize numerous sources (parts of a cell) according to the same set of criteria (form, function, location), creating a categorized snapshot that's easier to memorize.

Other students prefer narratives that link ideas to their context. Instead of trying to memorize various inventors, students could recall how they built on one another's accomplishments. Most students thrive when both these approaches are used simultaneously.

We know it's old-fashioned, but writing out information helps commit content to memory far better than typing it. If writing out the material longhand is too onerous, kids should still create their own study sheet digitally, rather than borrowing one from a friend. The work of creating the study sheet is a crucial step in internalizing its content. Active is always better than passive studying. Most students benefit from being orally quizzed on the material so they can determine both the information they know inside-out, and what they still need to review. Online resources like Quizlet can work well to prepare for straightforward vocabulary quizzes, but is less helpful when it comes to tests covering more complex information. Most importantly, students should generate their own study material to make the most of using Quizlet, rather than relying on pre-existing content that others have posted.

Some kids believe they'll never be prepared, even after hours of studying. Others barely crack a book open and declare they're done.

The best way to know that study time is over is when students are able to perform the task that will be asked of them on the in-class test, quiz or essay. Initially, children can review the material orally. They should write down any material they missed to help commit it to memory. Then, they can take a sample test from a textbook, or create a mock test with class notes, homework and study guides. When students demonstrate a verbal and written command of the information, studying should be complete.

Talk through these study habits now, so that on the first day of school, your child will not only have the requisite sharpened pencils, but also a plan of action.
Abby Freireich and Brian Platzer are the founders of Teachers Who Tutor | NYC and the authors of a book about homework to be published next summer.

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Regardless of a child's age or challenges, parents can encourage sound homework routines for a successful start to the school year. By Brian Platzer and Every cartful of new school supplies is loaded with promise: binders organized by subject, crisp homework folders and pristine notebooks.

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On-Demand Webinar: Teach With Graphs From The New York Times

Example: 9/11/19 Hurricane Maps

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Graphs, maps and charts from The Times — and an invitation to students to discuss them live.

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On-Demand Webinar: Teach With Graphs From The New York Times

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Graphs, maps and charts from The Times — and an invitation to students to discuss them live.

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Impossible. That was my first thought when I saw the class roster. In one of my ninth grade English classes, 13 of my 27 students had IEPs. Additionally, about one-third of the students had failed the class the previous year. I dreaded the first day of school. But then something wonderful happened: The principal assigned me a co-teacher, a special education expert to serve as another set of hands (and eyes and ears!) during this class every day. I was thrilled.

My co-teacher Sandie was a joy to collaborate with, but our relationship was by no means perfect, especially at the beginning. We often struggled to find planning time. Sometimes we disagreed about how to best help a particular student. However, we nurtured the co-teaching relationship and, in time, found a rhythm that worked for us-and for the students we served.

In the years since I co-taught with Sandie and other teachers, I've coached and consulted with dozens of successful and not-so-successful teams. Co-teaching, when done well, offers benefits for both students and teachers. When not done well, it can be confusing or downright frustrating for all involved. If you are or will be part of a co-teaching partnership, this post will show you some ways to make your partnership work beautifully.

What is Co-Teaching?

In a co-teaching relationship, also known as a "push-in" arrangement, a general education teacher partners with a specialist who may be certified in teaching English Language Learners (ELLs), students with learning disabilities, or some other special population. A co-teaching team works in the general ed classroom; for the majority of the time, students with special needs are not pulled out to receive services in another location.

For instance, a middle school social studies teacher may have an ELL teacher co-teaching with him during one class period because five students in that class are newcomers to the United States and speak only Arabic fluently. A high school teacher may have one or two sections of biology to which many students with IEPs for reading are channeled; a co-teacher who specializes in reading disabilities co-teaches in these classes. A 4th grade teacher may have two students with 504 plans and another three who have specific learning disabilities in her class; she works alongside a special education teacher daily during lessons in the four core academic subject areas.

For more background, download this Brief History of Co-Teaching.

Co-Teaching Structures

General education teachers working with specialists in a "push-in" model often work in one of the following structures described by Friend and Cook (1996):

One teach, one observe: One teacher delivers instruction while the other observes student learning. Usually the observer collects data on student understanding so that the co-teaching team can better plan future instruction. Sometimes, specific students are watched closely so that the teachers can determine new strategies to use with them.

One teach, one assist: One teacher takes the lead in providing instruction while the other moves around the classroom, assisting struggling students. This help is not limited to students with special needs; the assisting professional is there to serve whomever needs support.

Parallel teaching: The class is divided in two groups and the same material is presented simultaneously by both teachers. The teachers plan the two groups deliberately to maximize the success of all students; this is not simply a "pull-out" or intervention group sitting in the same room.

Station teaching: Both teachers are actively involved in instruction as students are divided into groups and rotate from one station to the next. There may be stations where students work independently or with a paraprofessional in addition to the two stations the co-teachers facilitate.

Alternative teaching: One teacher takes a small group of students and provides them more intensive or specialized instruction that is different than what the large group receives from the other teacher.

Team teaching: Both teachers teach the content at the same time in tandem or "tag team" fashion.

It is important to note that both teachers have equal status and equal responsibility in all six of these arrangements. In the co-teaching relationships that work best, at no time is one teacher seen as subordinate to the other. Both professionals are credentialed professionals, although each may have his or her specific areas of expertise.

How to Make the Most of a Co-Teaching Partnership

Researchers and practitioners have tons of advice about how to co-teach effectively, and as a person who has been "in the trenches" with several different co-teachers, so do I. The advice below sums up the most common recommendations.

1. Respect each other.

Not surprisingly, mutual respect is critical to the co-teaching relationship. You'll have to share ideas openly and do much of your work facing students together, so respecting each other is paramount. Sometimes you'll disagree, and that's to be expected. As co-teacher and ELL specialist Melissa Eddington says, it's fine to disagree with someone's ideas, but don't make the disagreement about the person.

Teachers in co-teaching situations that don't work well often report feeling disrespected. Amy* is an ELL specialist paired with a middle school social studies teacher. When they collaborate, Amy feels her suggestions for tweaking whole-class lessons are not taken seriously by her partner. "She respects me as a professional," Amy says of her co-teacher, "but I think because I'm not experienced in her content, she doesn't see my input as valuable."

Susan*, who is licensed in both secondary science and learning disabilities, works with two physical science teachers and one biology teacher. The physical science teachers welcome her ideas and eagerly adjust their lessons based on her suggestions. They are seeing a steady increase of students mastering the required standards in the classes Susan supports. The biology teacher, however, dismisses many of Susan's ideas and accuses her of "dumbing down" his content. Susan feels disrespected and finds it hard to even be in the room with the biology teacher because he constantly positions himself as "the expert" and places her in a subordinate role.

Words and gestures speak volumes. Take care to show respect for your partner in all you do.

2. Clearly define roles and responsibilities.

Co-teaching works better when the partners agree on who does what, when. Clearly defined roles and responsibilities prevent either partner from feeling the other has overstepped a boundary or shirked responsibilities.

Natalie Marston (2002-2015), an elementary special ed teacher, recommends co-teachers reach agreement on scheduling, classroom procedures and behaviors, classwork and homework policies, grading, and school/home communication together so they present a united front at all times.

Obviously this type of planning requires a great deal of time, ideally before school starts. If extended time is not available prior to the beginning of the school year, then the co-teaching team should expect to put in extra hours before and after school in the first few weeks so things get off to a good start.

My co-teacher Sandie and I did not have advance warning of our assignment. We found out about it on the first teacher workday, leaving us only a few days before the students arrived. For weeks, we both felt like we were playing "catch up and keep up," but found that having lunch together (and some happy hours together) helped us stay in sync.

3. Be flexible.

Innovation is difficult. That's why so many teachers find themselves falling back on comfortable (and even tired) activities and strategies. Co-teaching allows you to gain another person's perspective on how instruction might be improved, how students might be best assessed, what resources to use, and so much more. Sometimes this means one person has to put aside his or her favorite tried-and-true strategy and try something different.

When Susan suggested a tactile, quiz-like method for reviewing the periodic table to her physical science co-teaching partners, they were skeptical about the time and materials it might require. They initially felt it would be more efficient to simply give additional notes to their students and then pair students to quiz each other. However, they agreed to try the review Susan's way. The students loved the activity, and almost every student with special needs passed the chapter test two days later. All three teachers were thrilled and committed to using the activity in future years.

4. Plan together.

The co-teaching relationship brings together two people with wonderfully rich expertise and experiences. Special educators are typically skilled in individualizing curriculum and instruction based on children's needs (Dettmer et al., 2005; Volonino & Zigmond, 2007). General educators, on the other hand, tend to have broad knowledge of the curriculum, standards, and desired outcomes for the larger group. Therefore, when general educators plan lessons, they tend to aim for the masses (Dettmer et al., 2005). Both perspectives are important, and co-teaching teams need ample planning time to work through how to best utilize each one.

Lack of planning time can lead to territorialism. Without time to plan for a good balance of content and individualization, a general ed teacher may become protective of his subject matter, or a specialist may become protective of his students. Emma*, a high school special ed teacher partnered with two geometry teachers, has experienced this. One teacher often asks Emma to pull aside the five or six students with specific disabilities within his class and work only with them. He sometimes says to her, "You worry about your kids. I'll worry about geometry." The principal is now providing an additional hour of planning time for Emma and this teacher. An assistant principal who oversees the math department facilitates the meetings so Emma feels supported and the geometry teacher has another content-area expert to hash things out with.

Keep in mind that planning must include both instruction and assessment. Considering many students with special needs have legal accommodations for assessment (like being provided translation, extended time, or oral reading), it's best to include both partners fully in designing quizzes, tests, papers, and other high-stakes assessment tasks.

How much time is ideal? One study found that co-teachers desired, on average, 15 minutes to an hour each day for planning (Dieker & Murawski, 2003). This figure corresponds to what worked for my co-teacher and me, and it also confirms what I hear from many co-teachers in the field. Strive to find that time any way you can.

5. Don't take yourself too seriously.

Innovation requires failure. Many times, teachers feel they've failed somehow during instruction, and in reality, the students haven't even noticed. We are often our own worst critics. Revisiting or correcting something later in the day (or the next day) doesn't mean you failed earlier. It means you've learned something since. This is the kind of ongoing learning we want to model for our students.

And, as in most situations in life, a little bit of humor goes a long way. Laugh with your co-teacher. Allow students to see both of you laughing with each other and with them when something is surprising, silly, or just doesn't go the way you planned. In the words of Jennifer Wolf who co-teaches with Melissa Eddington, "Take the work seriously, but don't take yourself too seriously."

Eddington adds, "You gotta laugh at each other! Our job is hard, and if you're not laughing and making light of some things, then it's just not going to be a good place to be."

6. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Planning time is one thing; constant communication is another. Not only should co-teachers frequently plan for what standards will be covered, how material will be taught, and how students will be assessed, they should also regularly communicate in less formal ways.

Co-teaching teams have different methods to create and sustain that communication:

Eddington and Wolf use the Voxer app throughout the school day and on their drives home to send messages back and forth. Voxer works like a walkie-talkie and allows back-and-forth conversation in real time when two people are not physically close to each other. Melissa says, "We're constantly communicating. We're talking about specific students. We're looking at assessments to see what areas are lacking...different things we want to bring to the classroom, things we don't want to do..."

Some other teams I've worked with use texting and emails throughout each day to share updates. Voxer, texts, and emails can all work well, especially if one teacher has urgent information or an urgent question about a particular student.

Teams can use Google Docs or other shared documents to keep track of lesson planning and to share feedback with each other on how lessons went. Collaborative documents can also be used to provide each other with information about targeted students.

In addition to ongoing communication, Ariel Sacks (2014) reminds us to periodically check in with our co-teacher about how we are doing in general. She recommends asking your partner the following:

Are there management items we should clarify, such as when are students allowed to go to the bathroom?

Are we sharing airtime well?

Are we dividing grading in an equitable way?

Would different teaching formats better utilize the two of us in the classroom?

Finally, co-teachers need to present a united front when dealing with parents. Some partners go as far as to create a shared email address from which all communication flows. This may or may not be practical in your situation. At the very least, important parent communication about a student's progress should be drafted by both parties.

For more in-depth information about communicating and collaborating with your co-teacher, see Communicating and Collaborating in Co-Taught Classrooms (Conderman et al., 2009).

7. Seek administrative support.

Sometimes, teachers have been scheduled to co-teach by administrators but didn't have much advance notice. This is what happened with Sandie and me. We were able to find snippets of time during the school day to use for planning and checking in with each other, but we had no common planning period. If you and your partner don't have a common planning time when you can frequently collaborate, ask for it. Go to your principal with a couple of proposals about how this can work without too much disruption to the rest of the schedule.

Sometimes co-teachers may not understand fully why they are being asked to team. If this is the case, ask for a meeting with the principal and any others responsible for the assignment. Ask them why they thought the two of you would be a good fit and what they hope you will accomplish with students.

If you're already in a co-teaching partnership that's not working well, and you've tried to address this with your partner, turn to a trusted administrator next for advice. If you and your co-teacher have not recently been observed, ask the administrator to come sit in on part of a lesson. Tell him or her what you'd like feedback on or what feels like it's not working well. Debrief with the administrator, ideally with your co-teaching partner. When an observer offers data and feedback to both of you, it may feel different for your partner than when you share things from your perspective. (This co-teaching observation form can help.)

It's important not to go to other teachers with your concerns. Respect the collegial relationship you have with your co-teacher and don't do anything that might undermine it. And it should go without saying that you don't want students to perceive any problems within the co-teaching relationship. Be cognizant of your demeanor, tone, and body language. Students are quite perceptive and can easily spot trouble. They are also experts at "good cop/bad cop." Don't let students play you and your partner against each other. If your colleagues or students give you any evidence that they know the co-teaching arrangement is ineffective, head straight for that trusted administrator to support you. ♦

*These names have been changed.
References:
Conderman, G., Johnston-Rodriguez, S., & Hartman, P. (2009). Communicating and collaborating in co-taught classrooms. Teaching Exceptional Children Plus,5(5). Retrieved January 26, 2017, from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ967751.pdf

Dettmer, P., Thurston, L., Knackendoffel, A., & Dyck, N. (2009). Collaboration, consultation, and teamwork (6th ed.). Columbus, OH: Pearson.

Dieker, Lisa A., Murawski, W. M. (2003). "Co-teaching at the Secondary Level: Unique Issues, Current Trends, and Suggestions for Success." The High School Journal, 86(4). Retrieved January 26, 2017, from http://search.proquest.com/docview/220220652/13494E2D48D1DB506F0/8

Friend, M. & Cook, L. (1996). Interactions: Collaboration skills for school professionals. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Marston, N. (2002-2015). Six steps to successful co-teaching: Helping special and regular education teachers work together. National Education Association. Retrieved January 26, 2017 from http://www.nea.org/tools/6-steps-to-successful-co-teaching.html

Sacks, A. (2014, October 15). Blog post. Eight tips for making the most of co-teaching. Retrieved January 26, 2017, from http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2014/10/15/ctq_sacks_coteaching.html

Volonino, V. & Zigmond, N. (2007). Promoting research-based practices through inclusion. Theory into Practice, 46(4), 291-300.

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Angela Peery is the author of The Co-Teacher's Playbook, which will be available in September 2019.

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When done well, co-teaching offers benefits for both students and teachers. When not done well, it can be confusing or downright frustrating for all involved.

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Quick activities that can be used to check for understanding or emphasize key information at the end of a lesson.

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Formative assessment-discovering what students know while they're still in the process of learning it-can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes-for teachers, not students-because we're using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts? Or, more likely, which students are ready to move on and which need a different path?

When it comes to figuring out what our students really know, we have to look at more than one kind of information. A single data point-no matter how well designed the quiz, presentation, or problem behind it-isn't enough information to help us plan the next step in our instruction.

Add to that the fact that different learning tasks are best measured in different ways, and we can see why we need a variety of formative assessment tools we can deploy quickly, seamlessly, and in a low-stakes way-all while not creating an unmanageable workload. That's why it's important to keep it simple: Formative assessments generally just need to be checked, not graded, as the point is to get a basic read on the progress of individuals, or the class as a whole.

7 Approaches to Formative Assessment

1. Entry and exit slips: Those marginal minutes at the beginning and end of class can provide some great opportunities to find out what kids remember. Start the class off with a quick question about the previous day's work while students are getting settled-you can ask differentiated questions written out on chart paper or projected on the board, for example.

A quick way to see the big picture if you use paper exit tickets is to sort the papers into three piles: Students got the point; they sort of got it; and they didn't get it. The size of the stacks is your clue about what to do next.

No matter the tool, the key to keeping students engaged in the process of just-walked-in or almost-out-the-door formative assessment is the questions. Ask students to write for one minute on the most meaningful thing they learned. You can try prompts like:

What are three things you learned, two things you're still curious about, and one thing you don't understand?

How would you have done things differently today, if you had the choice?

What I found interesting about this work was...

Right now I'm feeling...

Today was hard because...

Or skip the words completely and have students draw or circle emojis to represent their assessment of their understanding.

2. Low-stakes quizzes and polls: If you want to find out whether your students really know as much as you think they know, polls and quizzes created with Socrative or Quizlet or in-class games and tools like Quizalize, Kahoot, FlipQuiz, Gimkit, Plickers, and Flippity can help you get a better sense of how much they really understand. (Grading quizzes but assigning low point values is a great way to make sure students really try: The quizzes matter, but an individual low score can't kill a student's grade.) Kids in many classes are always logged in to these tools, so formative assessments can be done very quickly. Teachers can see each kid's response, and determine both individually and in aggregate how students are doing.

Because you can design the questions yourself, you determine the level of complexity. Ask questions at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy and you'll get insight into what facts, vocabulary terms, or processes kids remember. Ask more complicated questions ("What advice do you think Katniss Everdeen would offer Scout Finch if the two of them were talking at the end of chapter 3?"), and you'll get more sophisticated insights.

3. Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they're sometimes referred to as dipsticks. These can be things like asking students to:

write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,

draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or

do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach. A focused observation form is more formal and can help you narrow your note-taking focus as you watch students work.

4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students' understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes per student would take quite a bit of time, but you don't have to talk to every student about every project or lesson.

You can also shift some of this work to students using a peer-feedback process called TAG feedback (Tell your peer something they did well, Ask a thoughtful question, Give a positive suggestion). When you have students share the feedback they have for a peer, you gain insight into both students' learning.

For more introverted students-or for more private assessments-use Flipgrid, Explain Everything, or Seesaw to have students record their answers to prompts and demonstrate what they can do.

5. Methods that incorporate art: Consider using visual art or photography or videography as an assessment tool. Whether students draw, create a collage, or sculpt, you may find that the assessment helps them synthesize their learning. Or think beyond the visual and have kids act out their understanding of the content. They can create a dance to model cell mitosis or act out stories like Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" to explore the subtext.

6. Misconceptions and errors: Sometimes it's helpful to see if students understand why something is incorrect or why a concept is hard. Ask students to explain the " muddiest point" in the lesson-the place where things got confusing or particularly difficult or where they still lack clarity. Or do a misconception check: Present students with a common misunderstanding and ask them to apply previous knowledge to correct the mistake, or ask them to decide if a statement contains any mistakes at all, and then discuss their answers.

You can use sticky notes to get a quick insight into what areas your kids think they need to work on. Ask them to pick their own trouble spot from three or four areas where you think the class as a whole needs work, and write those areas in separate columns on a whiteboard. Have you students answer on a sticky note and then put the note in the correct column-you can see the results at a glance.

Several self-assessments let the teacher see what every kid thinks very quickly. For example, you can use colored stacking cups that allow kids to flag that they're all set (green cup), working through some confusion (yellow), or really confused and in need of help (red).

Similar strategies involve using participation cards for discussions (each student has three cards-"I agree," "I disagree," and "I don't know how to respond") and thumbs-up responses (instead of raising a hand, students hold a fist at their belly and put their thumb up when they're ready to contribute). Students can instead use six hand gestures to silently signal that they agree, disagree, have something to add, and more. All of these strategies give teachers an unobtrusive way to see what students are thinking.

No matter which tools you select, make time to do your own reflection to ensure that you're only assessing the content and not getting lost in the assessment fog. If a tool is too complicated, is not reliable or accessible, or takes up a disproportionate amount of time, it's OK to put it aside and try something different.

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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Within these methods you'll find close to 40 tools and tricks for finding out what your students know while they're still learning.

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Providing feedback is proven to increase student learning, and there are ways to make the work involved more manageable.

NuPenDekDee / Shutterstock

We know that giving students feedback works: In his meta-analysis, John Hattie found that it has an effect size of 0.7, which is beyond the "hinge point," or average effect size, of 0.4-meaning that it has a significant effect on student learning.

However, giving feedback can be challenging, and it's certainly a lot of work. We've all taken student assignments home over the weekend or stayed late after school grading papers. This may be necessary from time to time, but there are strategies we can use to reduce this workload by working smarter for our students.

Reducing the Feedback Workload

1. Recognize when instructional feedback is called for: Sometimes written feedback is not the best or most effective strategy for improving student learning. If you collect an assessment and notice that there are significant errors common to many students' responses, it may be more appropriate to correct these errors through reteaching.

This is instructional feedback-using student assessments as a tool to reflect on our teaching and reteaching the content in a new way. Instead of providing written feedback for each student, we can say to the class, "I noticed that many of us didn't do so well. Rather than give feedback on every student's paper, I'm going to do something different to help us all learn."

2. Promote thinking, but don't do the thinking: A common mistake in giving feedback-one that often takes a lot of time, and isn't the best use of that time-is providing it in a way that does the thinking for students, rather than pushing them to think and learn. An example of this is correcting every grammar or punctuation mistake in a paper-circling all the capital letters that should be lowercase, or correcting all of the end punctuation. The student is given the answer and isn't required to do any cognitive work.

Instead a teacher might verbally say, "I'm noticing many capital letter and punctuation mistakes." Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey refer to this as providing prompts and cues that guide student thinking. It's better for the students because it requires them to figure out where they're going wrong. And handing this work to the students takes it off the teacher's plate.

3. Don't provide feedback on summative assessments: This might seem counterintuitive-or perhaps even mean. We always want to support our students, so why wouldn't we give feedback on major assignments?

The key question when giving feedback is: Will it be actionable and useful? If an assignment is truly summative-an end-of-unit test, for example-students most likely won't have an opportunity to redo it or to use the feedback. If that's true, providing detailed feedback may be a waste of time.

But note that if you're going to allow students to redo the assessment, you should provide the students who will redo it with feedback that will help them learn the content better. You don't need to provide feedback to the students who will not redo the assessment.

4. Address feedback requests: Another way to work more efficiently is to have students request feedback when they need it, rather than giving feedback to all students. Students may request it at any time-even on a summative, when you don't ordinarily give feedback.

One teacher I worked with offered feedback conferences that interested students could sign up for. These were similar to the 60-second interview, except the teacher's intent was to give feedback rather than to check for understanding. She worried that students who really needed the feedback wouldn't sign up, and she was correct about that-initially they didn't. But as other students found the conferences to be useful, all of her students became more inclined to request one when they felt they needed it because the conferences provided "just in time" feedback. These took place during normal instructional time.

5. Focus on self-assessment and peer feedback: Instead of doing all the work, put some of the onus on students to provide feedback. In his meta-analysis, Hattie found that self-assessment or student-reported grades had a significantly positive effect on student achievement. Giving students assessment criteria and having them gauge their progress not only increases student learning, but also saves time.

Peer feedback can also benefit both students and teachers, while promoting a collaborative classroom and culture. It takes clear protocols and modeling to support students in doing peer feedback, but the effort is worthwhile.

6. Don't wait: Instead of spending hours in epic sessions of writing feedback on a full draft, provide it in smaller ways that are spread out over time. This is not only more efficient but better for students, who get more digestible feedback that is actionable and timely.

For example, instead of providing feedback or setting up a peer review session that covers all parts of an essay-from the thesis to the organization to the conclusion-give feedback in chunks. Do a peer review on the thesis and the introduction, and then later give feedback on the next body paragraph, and so on.

Feedback is powerful and is proven to increase student learning, and there are many strategies teachers can use to make it more effective and efficient.

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6 Tips for Managing the Feedback Workload

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Providing feedback is proven to increase student learning, and there are ways to make the work involved more manageable.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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On September 20, students will kick off a week of action with a global climate strike . We are watching the birth of a new mass movement. In solidarity, the Zinn Education Project invites you to pledge to teach climate justice this fall. Make your pledge here to inspire, and be inspired by, Zinn Education Project colleagues.

I am a young woman of color, so I feel drawn to a lot of issues. ... economic justice, climate justice, racial justice, women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, all of that can be part of the Green New Deal. ... So when I'm fighting for climate justice, I'm fighting for everything else, too.
Continue reading.

The most comprehensive resource for teaching about climate change and climate justice is the Rethinking Schools book, , edited by Bill Bigelow and Tim Swinehart. A People's Curriculum for the Earth

As Naomi Klein says, " A People's Curriculum for the Earth is an educator's toolkit for our times."

The climate crisis is an emergency. On September 20, students and teachers will walk out to join a youth-led #ClimateStrike, demanding that leaders respond to this emergency. This is the launch of a worldwide week of action. Join at globalclimatestrike.net.

The latest issue of Rethinking Schools focuses on schools and The Green New Deal ---- and the role and responsibilities that educators and education activists have in this moment to fight for climate justice.

It also includes a series of articles about high-stakes testing and the SAT's new "adversity score" by Leigh Patel, Wayne Au, and Stan Karp. And there's lots more!

To participate in the book giveaway, describe how you used one or more of our climate justice lessons to teach about climate change, environmental activism, and issues related to land rights.

We are seeking a Campaign Organizer to design the next phase of the Teach Reconstruction Campaign. (One year, part-time position.) Please share this announcement with your networks.

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On September 20, students will kick off a week of action with a global climate strike . We are watching the birth of a new mass movement. In solidarity, the Zinn Education Project invites you to pledge to teach climate justice this fall. Make your pledge here to inspire, and be inspired by, Zinn Education Project colleagues.

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New teachers-and experienced ones too-can find ideas here on how to stop disruptive behavior before it begins.

In the 1950s, psychologists Jacob Kounin and Paul Gump discovered a curious side effect of discipline: If a student was being disruptive and the teacher responded with strict disciplinary measures, the student might stop-but other students would start exhibiting the same misbehavior. Kounin and Gump called this the " ripple effect," and it demonstrated that efforts to control a classroom can backfire.

"The teacher who is interested in controlling ripple effects can generally do so best by giving clear instructions to the child rather than by exerting pressure on him," Kounin and Gump wrote.

Decades later, classroom management is still a thorny issue for teachers. Nearly half of new teachers report that they feel "not at all prepared" or "only somewhat prepared" to handle disruptive students, in part because the average teacher training program devotes just eight hours to the topic, according to a 2014 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality. This lack of training comes with a cost, as teachers report losing 144 minutes of instructional time on average to behavioral disruptions every week, which comes out to roughly three weeks over the course of a year.

Recent research confirms what Kounin and Gump discovered decades ago. A 2016 study found that while negative attention-reprimands like "Stop chitchatting!"-may temporarily stop misbehavior, students eventually became more likely to engage in disruptive behavior. Students in the study felt disengaged, had difficulty concentrating, and weren't able to effectively regulate their thoughts and emotions-a vicious cycle that "actually amplifies students' inappropriate behavior," the study authors explain.

8 Proactive Classroom Management Strategies

Instead of handling disruptions after they've happened, it can be more effective to set up conditions in which they are less likely to occur. Here are eight classroom strategies that teachers have shared with Edutopia, all backed by research.

1. Greet students at the door: At Van Ness Elementary School in Washington, DC, Falon Turner starts the day by giving each of her students a high-five, handshake, or hug. "During that time, I'm just trying to connect with them.... It's kind of like a pulse check to see where they are," she says.

In a study published last year, greeting students at the door helped teachers set a positive tone for the rest of the day, boosting academic engagement by 20 percentage points while reducing disruptive behavior by 9 percentage points-adding roughly an hour of engagement over the course of the school day.

For older students, give plenty of warning if you need them to follow instructions. Reminders and cues are helpful ways to encourage students to follow instructions without being overtly controlling or forceful. For example, if you can anticipate a disruption-such as students getting out of their seats if they finish an assignment early-give a short reminder of what they should do instead.

Reminders are commonly verbal, but can also be visual (flicking the lights to signal that it's time to be quiet), auditory (ringing a small bell to let students know they should pay attention to the teacher), or physical (using a hand signal to let students know to get back in their seats).
Courtesy of Emily Polak
But that doesn't mean choice is always bad. Giving students a sense of ownership in the room, paired with clear expectations for behavior, can have surprisingly positive effects. A welcoming space can reduce anxiety and boost academic performance. Emily Polak, a ninth-grade teacher in Madison, Alabama, gave her room a cozier feel by adding a couch, a loveseat, rugs, a coffee table, and posters. Her students decide where to sit-but if they can't get their work done, they get moved back to a desk. "Discipline issues have significantly decreased. My students seem to feel more relaxed and more motivated in a setting that honors their choices," Polak says.

It's also helpful to avoid using the word don't, suggests Alyssa Nucaro, a sixth-grade English teacher in Memphis. Students are more likely to listen to instructions that include clear reasons.

6. Set clear expectations: Instead of just displaying rules for behavior, have a discussion with your students about why those rules matter. Bobby Shaddox, a seventh-grade social studies teacher in Portland, Maine, works with his students to create a list of norms-words such as inclusive, focused, and considerate -to build a sense of community. "It helps us own the behavior in the classroom," Shaddox says. "Instead of a top-down list of rules that a teacher gives a class, these are words that we generated together. These are words that we believe in."

A 2017 study found that a teacher's nonverbal cues-such as smiling and making eye contact-can "reduce physical and/or psychological distance" with their students, boosting students' positive feelings toward the teacher and the course material while improving behavior.

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New teachers-and experienced ones too-can find ideas here on how to stop disruptive behavior before it begins.

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Several years ago, my father died as he had done most things throughout his life: without preparation and without consulting anyone. He simply went to bed one night, yielded his brain to a monstrous blood clot, and was found the next morning lying amidst the sheets like his own stone monument.

It was hard for me not to take my father's abrupt exit as a rebuke. For years, he'd been begging me to visit him in the Czech Republic, where I'd been born and where he'd gone back to live in 1992. Each year, I delayed. I was in that part of my life when the marriage-grad-school-children-career-divorce current was sweeping me along with breath-sucking force, and a leisurely trip to the fatherland seemed as plausible as pausing the flow of time.

Now my dad was shrugging at me from beyond- "You see, you've run out of time."

His death underscored another loss, albeit a far more subtle one: that of my native tongue. Czech was the only language I knew until the age of 2, when my family began a migration westward, from what was then Czechoslovakia through Austria, then Italy, settling eventually in Montreal, Canada. Along the way, a clutter of languages introduced themselves into my life: German in preschool, Italian-speaking friends, the francophone streets of East Montreal. Linguistic experience congealed, though, once my siblings and I started school in English. As with many immigrants, this marked the time when English became, unofficially and over the grumbling of my parents (especially my father), our family language-the time when Czech began its slow retreat from my daily life.

Many would applaud the efficiency with which we settled into English-it's what exemplary immigrants do. But between then and now, research has shown the depth of the relationship all of us have with our native tongues-and how traumatic it can be when that relationship is ruptured. Spurred by my father's death, I returned to the Czech Republic hoping to reconnect to him. In doing so, I also reconnected with my native tongue, and with parts of my identity that I had long ignored.

Courtesy of the author

While my father was still alive, I was, like most young people, more intent on hurtling myself into my future than on tending my ancestral roots-and that included speaking the language of my new country rather than my old one. The incentives for adopting the culturally dominant language are undeniable. Proficiency offers clear financial rewards, resulting in wage increases of 15 percent for immigrants who achieve it relative to those who don't, according to economist Barry Chiswick. A child, who rarely calculates the return on investment for her linguistic efforts, feels the currency of the dominant language in other ways: the approval of teachers and the acceptance of peers. I was mortally offended when my first-grade teacher asked me on the first day of school if I knew "a little English"-"I don't know a little English," was my indignant and heavily accented retort. "I know a lot of English." In the schoolyard, I quickly learned that my Czech was seen as having little value by my friends, aside from the possibility of swearing in another language-a value I was unable to deliver, given that my parents were cursing teetotalers.

But embracing the dominant language comes at a price. Like a household that welcomes a new child, a single mind can't admit a new language without some impact on other languages already residing there. Languages can co-exist, but they tussle, as do siblings, over mental resources and attention. When a bilingual person tries to articulate a thought in one language, words and grammatical structures from the other language often clamor in the background, jostling for attention. The subconscious effort of suppressing this competition can slow the retrieval of words-and if the background language elbows its way to the forefront, the speaker may resort to code-switching, plunking down a word from one language into the sentence frame of another.

Meanwhile, the weaker language is more likely to become swamped; when resources are scarce, as they are during mental exhaustion, the disadvantaged language may become nearly impossible to summon. Over time, neglecting an earlier language makes it harder and harder for it to compete for access.

His death underscored another loss, albeit a far more subtle one: that of my native tongue.

According to a 2004 survey conducted in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, fewer than half of people belonging to Generation 1.5-immigrants who arrive before their teenage years-claimed to speak the language they were born into "very well." A 2006 study of immigrant languages in Southern California forecast that even among Mexican Americans, the slowest group to assimilate within Southern California, new arrivals would live to hear only 5 out of every 100 of their great-grandchildren speak fluent Spanish.

When a childhood language decays, so does the ability to reach far back into your own private history. Language is memory's receptacle. It has Proustian powers. Just as smells are known to trigger vivid memories of past experiences, language is so entangled with our experiences that inhabiting a specific language helps surface submerged events or interactions that are associated with it.

Adrian Giddings/Flickr

Psychotherapist Jennifer Schwanberg has seen this firsthand. In a 2010 paper, she describes treating a client who'd lived through a brutal childhood in Mexico before immigrating to the United States. The woman showed little emotion when talking about events from her early life, and Schwanberg at first assumed that her client had made her peace with them. But one day, the woman began the session in Spanish. The therapist followed her lead and discovered that "moving to her first language had opened a floodgate. Memories from childhood, both traumatic and nontraumatic, were recounted with depth and vividness ... It became clear that a door to the past was available to her in her first language."

A first language remains uniquely intertwined with early memories, even for people who fully master another language. In her book The Bilingual Mind, linguist Aneta Pavlenko describes how the author Vladimir Nabokov fled the Russian revolution in 1919, arriving in the United Kingdom when he was 20. By the time he wrote his memoir Conclusive Evidence in 1951, he'd been writing in English for years, yet he struggled writing this particular text in his adopted language, complaining that his memory was tuned to the "musical key" of Russian. Soon after its publication, he translated the memoir into his native tongue. Working in his first language seems to have prodded his senses awake, leading him to insert new details into the Russian version: A simple anecdote about a stingy old housekeeper becomes perfumed with the scents of coffee and decay, the description of a laundry hamper acquires a creaking sound, the visual details of a celluloid swan and toy boat sprout as he writes about the tub in which he bathed as a child. Some of these details eventually made it into his revised English memoir, which he aptly titled Speak, Memory. Evidently, when memory speaks, it sometimes does so in a particular tongue.

Losing your native tongue unmoors you not only from your own early life but from the entire culture that shaped you. You lose access to the books, films, stories, and songs that articulate the values and norms that you've absorbed. You lose the embrace of an entire community or nation for whom your family's odd quirks are not quirks all. You lose your context. This disconnection can be devastating. A 2007 study led by Darcy Hallett found that in British Columbian native communities in which fewer than half of the members could converse in their indigenous language, young people killed themselves six times more often than in communities where the majority spoke the native language. In the Midwestern U.S., psychologist Teresa LaFromboise and her colleagues found that American-Indian adolescents who were heavily involved in activities focused on their traditional language and traditions did better at school and had fewer behavior problems than kids who were less connected to their traditional cultures-in fact, cultural connectedness buffered them against adolescent problems more than having a warm and nurturing mother. Such benefits appear to span continents: In 2011, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that aboriginal youth who spoke their traditional language were less likely to binge drink or use illegal drugs.

Why is a heritage language so conducive to well-being? Michael Chandler, one of the authors of the suicide study, emphasizes that a sense of cultural continuity makes people resilient by providing them with a cohesive self-concept. Without that continuity, he warns, aboriginal youth, who have typically experienced plenty of turbulence, are in grave existential danger. They risk losing "the thread that tethers together their past, present, and future."

As my siblings and I distanced ourselves from the Czech language in our youth, a space widened between us and our parents-especially my father, who never wore English with any comfort. Memories of our early family life, along with its small rituals and lessons imparted, receded into a past that drifted ever further out of reach. It was as if my parents' life in their home country, and the values that defined that life, didn't translate credibly into another language; it was much easier to rebel against them in English. Even the English names for our parents encouraged dissent: The Czech words we'd used- Maminka, Tatinek-so laden with esteem and affection, impossible to pronounce with contempt, had no corresponding forms. In English, the sweet but childish Mommy and Daddy are soon abandoned for Mom and Dad -words that, we discovered, lend themselves perfectly well to adolescent snark.

I watched as my father grew more and more frustrated at his powerlessness to pass on to his children the legacy he most longed to leave: a burning religious piety, the nurturing of family ties, pleasure in the music and traditions of his region, and an abiding respect for ancestors. All of these became diluted by the steady flow of new memories narrated in English, laced with Anglophone aspiration and individualism. As we entered adulthood and dispersed all over North America into our self-reliant lives, my father gave up. He moved back home.

For the next two decades, I lived my adult life, fully absorbed into the English-speaking universe, even adding American citizenship to my Canadian one. My dad was the only person with whom I regularly spoke Czech-if phone calls every few months can be described as "regularly," and if my clumsy sentences patched together with abundant English can be called "speaking Czech." My Czech heritage began to feel more and more like a vestigial organ.

You lose the embrace of an entire community. You lose your context.

Then my father died. Loss inevitably reveals that which is gone. It was as if the string section of the orchestra had fallen silent-not carrying the melody, it had gone unnoticed, but its absence announced how much depth and texture it had supplied, how its rhythms had lent coherence to the music. In grieving my father, I became aware of how much I also mourned the silencing of Czech in my life. There was a part of me, I realized, that only Czech could speak to, a way of being that was hard to settle into, even with my own siblings and mother when we spoke in English.

After my father's death, my siblings and I inherited a sweet little apartment in a large compound that has been occupied by the Sedivy family since the 1600s, and where my uncle still lives with his sprawling family. This past spring, I finally cleared two months of my schedule and went for a long visit, sleeping on the very same bed where my father and his brothers had been born.

I discovered that, while I may have run out of time to visit my father in his homeland, there was still time for me to reunite with my native tongue. On my first day there, the long drive with my uncle between the airport and our place in the countryside was accompanied by a conversation that lurched along awkwardly, filled with dead ends and misunderstandings. Over the next few days, I had trouble excavating everyday words like stamp and fork, and I made grammar mistakes that would (and did) cause a 4-year-old to snicker. But within weeks, fluency began to unspool. Words that I'm sure I hadn't used in decades leapt out of my mouth, astounding me. (Often they were correct. Sometimes not: I startled a man who asked about my occupation by claiming to be a savior- spasitelka. Sadly, I am a mere writer- spisovatelka.) The complicated inflections of Czech, described as "character-building" by an acquaintance who'd learned the language in college, began to assemble into somewhat orderly rows in my mind, and I quickly ventured onto more and more adventurous grammatical terrain. Just a few weeks into my visit, I briefly passed as a real Czech speaker in a conversation with a stranger. Relearning Czech so quickly felt like having linguistic superpowers.

Surprised by the speed of my progress, I began to look for studies of heritage speakers relearning childhood languages that had fallen into disuse. A number of scientific papers reported evidence of cognitive remnants of "forgotten" languages, remnants that were visible mostly in the process of relearning. In some cases, even when initial testing hinted at language decay, people who'd been exposed to the language earlier in life showed accelerated relearning of grammar, vocabulary, and most of all, of control over the sounds of the language.

One of the most remarkable examples involved a group of Indian adoptees who'd been raised from a young age (starting between 6 and 60 months) in English-speaking families, having no significant contact with their language of origin. The psychologist Leher Singh tested the children when they were between the ages of 8 and 16. Initially, neither group could hear the difference between dental and retroflex consonants, a distinction that's exploited by many Indian languages. After listening to the contrasting sounds over a period of mere minutes, the adoptees, but not the American-born children, were able to discriminate between the two classes of consonants.

This is revealing because a language's phonology, or sound structure, is one of the greatest challenges for people who start learning a language in adulthood. Long after they've mastered its syntax and vocabulary, a lifelong accent may mark them as latecomers to the language. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the star of many American movies and the governor of the country's biggest state, but his Austrian accent is a constant reminder that he could never run for president. The crucial timing of exposure for native-like speech is evident in my own family: I can pronounce the notoriously difficult "ř" sound in Czech-as in the name of the composer Dvořák-but my brother, born three years after me, in Vienna, cannot.

Phonology's resistance to both attrition and later learning may be due to the fact that the sound structure of a language is fixed in a child's mind very early. Before 6 months of age, infants can distinguish most subtle differences in speech sounds, whether their language makes use of those distinctions or not. But over the second half of their first year, they gradually tune their perception to just the sounds of the language they hear around them. Children who hear only English lose the ability to distinguish between dental and retroflex sounds. Children learning Japanese begin to hear "r" and "l" as variants of the same sound. Linguist Pat Kuhl, who has studied this phenomenon for decades, describes the process as one of perceptual narrowing and increasing neural commitment, eventually excluding native-like perception of other languages.

One of the most striking examples of the brain's attunement to native sounds is apparent in languages such as Mandarin, where varying the tone of an utterance can produce entirely different words. (For instance, the syllable ma can mean "mother," "hemp," "horse," or "scold," depending on the pitch contour you lay over it.) When Mandarin speakers hear nonsense syllables that are identical except for their tones, they show heightened activity in the left hemisphere of the brain, where people normally process sounds that signal differences in meaning-like the difference between the syllables "pa" and "ba." But speakers of non-tonal languages like English have more activity in the right hemisphere, showing that the brain doesn't treat tone as relevant for distinguishing words. A recent study found that Chinese-born babies adopted into French homes showed brain activity that matched Chinese speakers and was clearly distinct from monolingual French speakers-even after being separated from their birth language for more than 12 years.

The brain's devotion to a childhood language reminds me of a poem by Emily Dickinson:

The Soul selects her own Society-
Then-shuts the Door-
To her divine Majority-
Present no more-

Unmoved-she notes the Chariots-pausing-
At her low Gate-
Unmoved-an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat-

I've known her-from an ample nation-
Choose One-
Then-close the Valves of her attention-
Like Stone-

Those of us who received more than one language before the valves of our attention closed may find, to our surprise, that our earliest language lingers on in our soul's select society, long after we thought it had faded.

I've become aware of the deep sense in which I belong to the Czech language, as well as the extent to which my formative memories are tinged by its "musical key." For me, the English phrase "pork with cabbage and dumplings" refers to a concept, the national dish of the Czechs. But hearing the Czech phrase vepřo-knedlo-zelo evokes the fragrance of roasting meat, pillowy dumpling loaves being pulled steaming out of a tall pot and sliced with sewing thread, and the clink of the nice china as the table is dressed for Sunday dinner, the fulcrum of every week.

Since coming back from the Czech Republic, I've insisted on speaking Czech with my mother. Even though it's more effortful for both of us than speaking in English, our conversation feels softer, more tender this way. English was the language in which I forged my independence, the language of my individuation-but it was in Czech that I was nurtured, comforted, and sung to.

It has also gotten easier to hear the timbre of my father's voice in my mind's ear, especially when working in my garden. It's no accident that many of my conversations with him, and more recently with my uncle, have been on the subject of horticulture. My father's family has lived for centuries in the fertile wine and orchard region of Moravia, and on my recent visit, I saw my relatives gaze out at their land with an expression usually reserved for a beloved spouse or child. Throughout my own life, I've given in to the compulsion to fasten myself to whatever patch of land I happened to be living on by growing things on it, an impulse that has often conflicted with the upwardly and physically mobile trajectory of my life. It's an impulse I submit to once again, living now in the lee of the Rocky Mountains; neither grapes nor apricots will thrive in the brittle mountain air, but I raise sour cherries and saskatoons, small fruits native to western Canada. As I mulch and weed and prune, I sometimes find myself murmuring to my plants in Czech as my father did, and the Moravian homestead doesn't seem very far away.

My newly vocal native tongue, and along with it, the heightened memory of my father's voice, does more than connect me to my past: It is proving to be an unexpected guide in my present work. I've recently left my job as an academic linguist to devote more time to writing, and I often find myself these days conjuring my father's voice by reading a passage in Czech. Like many Czechs I've met, my father treated his language like a lovely object to be turned over, admired, stroked with a fingertip, deserving of deliberate and leisurely attention. He spoke less often than most people, but was more often eloquent. I may never regain enough of my first language to write anything in it worth reading, but when I struggle to write prose that not only informs but transcends, I find myself steering my inner monologue toward Czech. It reminds me of what it feels like to sink into language, to be startled by the aptness of a word or the twist of a phrase, to be delighted by arrangements of its sounds, and lulled by its rhythms. I've discovered that my native language has been sitting quietly in my soul's vault all this time.

Julie Sedivy has taught linguistics and psychology at Brown University and the University of Calgary. She is the co-author of Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You and more recently, the author of Language in Mind: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics.
Additional Reading
Hallett, D., Chandler, M.J., & Lalonde, C.E. Aboriginal language knowledge and youth suicide. Cognitive Development 22, 392-399 (2007).

Hernandez, A.E. The Bilingual Brain Oxford University Press, New York, NY (2013).

Pavlenko, A. The Bilingual Mind Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2014).

Singh, L., Liederman, J., Mierzejewski, R., & Barnes, J. Rapid reacquisition of native phoneme contrasts after disuse: You do not always lose what you do not use. Developmental Science 14, 949-959 (2011).

Slavkov, N. Language attrition and reactivation in the context of bilingual first language acquisition. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 18, 715-734 (2015).

Wang, Q., Shao, Y., & Li, Y.J. "My way or mom's way?" The bilingual and bicultural self in Hong Kong Chinese children and adolescents. Child Development 81, 555-567 (2010).

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bilingual mind cambridge university press

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The Strange Persistence of First Languages - Issue 30: Identity - Nautilus

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Several years ago, my father died as he had done most things throughout his life: without preparation and without consulting anyone. He simply went to bed one night, yielded his brain to a monstrous blood clot, and was found the next morning lying amidst the sheets like his own stone monument.

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60 Second Strategy: Appreciation, Apology or Aha!

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60-Second Strategy: Appreciation, Apology, Aha!

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Streamline class management while providing every student with individualized learning experiences. Create, customize, and collaborate on lessons to help learners grow their skills. Use virtual classrooms to promote learning any time, anywhere. Keep meetings, documents, and reports all within reach.

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Google for Education - Online Resources for Teachers & Students

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Access educational and online tools for teachers and students, including lesson plans, apps, and games to advance learning in the classroom at no cost.

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Background & cover photo by Vladimir Mokry on Unsplash

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A recent interview with British neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, the author of the 2018 book Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain, begins with a caveat.

"I think it's important to know before we start that up until 20 years ago we really didn't know that the brain changes at all after childhood," she confides. "That's what I was taught during my undergraduate degree. We now know that's completely untrue."

In matters of settled opinion, science has often found itself in the role of provocateur, even saboteur-prodding at conventional wisdoms until they yield unexpected truths, and sometimes toppling them entirely. The mysteries of celestial bodies, heredity, and mental illness have all undergone dramatic rethinking.

So it shouldn't be entirely surprising that new technologies that allow us to peer into the brain as it processes information are driving a revolution in our understanding of human cognition. Images from fMRI machines, for example, reveal that the brain is less like a collection of discrete, specialized modules-one for speech and one for vision, the old model-and more like an integrated network of functions that support each other. Those same images show that cerebral networks undergo dramatic, global maturation well into our 20s.

The findings have cast doubt on many theories about adolescence. For too long, assertions about teenagers-from their purported irrationality to their apparent sense of invulnerability-have circulated widely and uncritically. The new research suggests that we have plenty of rethinking to do.

Of Mice and Minors

Adolescent rodents and adolescent humans are susceptible to peer pressure-and members of both species take risks at much higher rates when in the presence of companions their own age.

In a study conducted in 2005, neuroscientist Laurence Steinberg asked teenagers and adults to play a virtual driving game that tested their willingness to take risks as traffic lights turned from green to yellow to red. Participants were penalized when accidents occurred. Adolescents responded to the risks as well as adults did and performed about equally when playing alone. But in the presence of peers, risk-taking surged among the teenagers and young adults-risky driving increased threefold for 13- to 16-year-olds, and the number of crashes spiked-while remaining flat among adults.
Illustration by Leigh Wells
A study involving mice and alcohol consumption reached a similar conclusion. That 2014 experiment exposed rodents of different ages to the equivalent of an open bar: They could drink alcohol at their leisure. The adolescent mice-those at the tender age of 4 to 5 weeks-drank about as often as adult mice when by themselves. But in the presence of other juveniles, they settled in for a bender, drinking 25 percent more of the time. There was no change in the drinking of adult mice.

These results aren't just laboratory tricks. Using real crash data from 2007-10, a study published in 2012 found that the risk of death for teenagers driving alone increased by 44 percent per mile when traveling with one peer, and quadrupled with three peers in the car. By contrast, Blakemore writes, traveling companions are actually a "protective factor" for adults over 26, "who are less likely to crash if they have a passenger than if they're alone."

In a few recent experiments, peer pressure emerges as a measurable biological phenomenon, crossing over into the perceptible world like the first earthquake waves etched onto a seismograph. A 2013 study found that when human subjects were told that a peer was watching them, skin conductance readings-a measure of the electricity triggered by stress and arousal-were consistently higher in adolescents than in either adults or children. Brain scans administered at the same time revealed telltale flares of greater activity in key regions of the teenage brain linked to self-awareness and the ability to understand others.

It's never been a question of feeling invincible. For teenagers, there's just something about the presence of peers that is transfiguring-they understand the risks, and take them anyway.

A Telling Mismatch

A likely culprit in adolescent risk-taking is a brain network that stretches back deep into evolutionary history-the limbic system, the seat of primal instincts like fear, lust, hunger, and pleasure. "These are regions in the deep center of the brain," explained Blakemore. "They are much older, and we share these systems with a lot of other animals."

In 2014, Blakemore and two colleagues gathered brain images of 33 people and plotted the growth rates of individual limbic systems over time. They also looked at another critical brain region: the prefrontal cortex.
Illustration by Leigh Wells
The charts that resulted (above) show that limbic structures like the nucleus accumbens changed only modestly during adolescence while the prefrontal cortex experienced a dramatic shift in volume, shrinking and reorganizing as it pruned away unused synaptic connections. The upshot? The brain scans seem to indicate that the limbic system-the brain's reward system-is mature and firing on all cylinders in teenagers, while the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for things like self-control, planning, and self-awareness, is still busy developing.

"One major theory of adolescent development is that there is a mismatch between these two systems," Blakemore elaborated. "The limbic system, which gives you the rewarding feeling of taking risks, is structurally more developed before the prefrontal cortex, which stops you from taking risks."

If that seems too neat to you, Blakemore agrees. "I wouldn't discount social factors like changing schools," she cautions, or "overlook individual differences in teenagers."

Still, there's plenty of evidence that the limbic system is hyperactive during adolescence. It's not youthful irrationality or a flair for the dramatic at work; teenagers actually experience things like music, drugs, and the thrill of speed more powerfully than adults do. In his 2014 book Age of Opportunity: Lessons From the New Science of Adolescence, Steinberg draws a straight line to peer influence as well, noting that teenage peers "light up the same reward centers that are aroused by drugs, sex, food, and money."

All Natural Plastic

It's not all gloom and doom. The teenage years are "the last, great neuroplastic era in our lifetimes," according to Steinberg, referring to the brain's continued capacity for intellectual and emotional growth. The same emerging circuitry that makes teenagers vulnerable to risky behavior and mood swings also confers significant advantage on adolescent learners.
Illustration by Leigh Wells
At the deep neural level, new information is written into the gray matter of the brain itself-expressed in structural changes to synapses, which, through repeated exposure, form increasingly durable webs of memory. A study conducted in 2002 provides a fascinating window into the brain at the very moment of learning. The chart above shows the electrical response in both adolescent and adult mice to a novel piece of information, represented by the red arrow. Like a bell struck more sharply, the brain of the adolescent mouse produces a more dramatic reply-and then sustains it for longer.

That's good news-and a clear signal that the teenage brain is by nature more receptive to learning, says Frances Jensen in her 2015 book The Teenage Brain. Adolescent animals simply "show faster learning curves than adults," and we retain the capacity to improve even fundamental attributes like our IQ well into our teenage years.

Reaching Teenagers in Class

Take the direct approach: Talking to teenagers frankly about their brain development can provide useful context for their emotional worlds, and reset their expectations about their potential for continued intellectual growth. "We know that people like biological explanations. It's true in neurological stroke patients-showing that the brain is plastic and can change and rehabilitate is really useful," Blakemore said.

Explaining the role of the limbic system, the influence of peers, and the malleability of the teenage brain establishes a basis for students to better understand themselves and exert control over their emotional and academic lives. Blakemore insists there's also a simple question of respect at stake: "They have a right to know," she says emphatically. "It's happening in their brains."

Make good use of peer pressure: Peer pressure and social influence can be used for good, too. Smoking research shows, for example, that teens ignore warnings about the long-term health consequences of cigarettes, but respond to the social effects. It's more convincing to remind teens that cigarettes "give you bad breath, or put younger children in danger," said Blakemore. Teens "also respond to the idea that this is an adult industry that is exploiting them to make money. That has been shown to help for smoking and also for healthy eating."

Schools are aware of many of these social dynamics, and have used teen leaders, social influencers, and appeals to fairness and justice to change behaviors around vaping, bullying, and academic cheating.

Teach self-regulation: It's not too late. The prefrontal cortex, which governs executive functions, is still developing and remains highly responsive to the environment and to training during adolescence. It stands to reason that explicitly teaching self-regulation, long-term planning, and empathy might have particular benefits for teenagers.

According to Steinberg, efforts to improve the self-regulation of teenagers "are far more likely to be effective in reducing risky behavior than are those that are limited to providing them with information about risky activities." And social and emotional learning programs that show adolescents "how to regulate their emotions, manage stress, and consider other people's feelings" can have positive effects on executive functions more generally, improving focus and self-discipline, and setting teenagers up for academic and professional success well beyond high school.

The author of this article is the chief content officer at Edutopia. You can follow him on Twitter @smerrill777.

The charts in this story were drawn by illustrator Leigh Wells, and adapted from studies by 1) Margo Gardner and Laurence Steinberg, 2005; 2) K.L. Mills, A.L. Goddings, L.S. Clasen, J.N. Giedd, and S.J. Blakemore, 2014; and 3) N.L. Schramm, R.E. Egli, and D.G. Winder, 2002, via Synapse magazine, courtesy of Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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Decoding the Teenage Brain (in 3 Charts)

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A recent interview with British neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, the author of the 2018 book Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain, begins with a caveat. "I think it's important to know before we start that up until 20 years ago we really didn't know that the brain changes at all after childhood," she confides.

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Most students leave high school without an adequate understanding of the role slavery played in the development of the United States-or how its legacies still influence us today. In an effort to remedy this, we developed a comprehensive guide for teaching and learning this critical topic at all grade levels.

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Most students leave high school without an adequate understanding of the role slavery played in the development of the United States-or how its legacies still influence us today. In an effort to remedy this, we developed a comprehensive guide for teaching and learning this critical topic at all grade levels.

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The author Toni Morrison has died at the age of 88. She was the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and best known for her nuanced discussion of race in America. Credit Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times

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Toni Morrison, the Nobel laureate in literature whose best-selling work explored black identity in America - and in particular the often crushing experience of black women - through luminous, incantatory prose resembling that of no other writer in English, died on Monday in the Bronx. She was 88.

So begins Margalit Fox's obituary for Ms. Morrison that ran Aug. 6. Read the rest of the obituary and watch the short related video, posted above, to learn more about the author's life and work.

Why is Ms. Morrison considered such a towering figure in the literary world and American culture? What impact has her work as a writer and an editor had on the world? In what ways do you see her legacy today?

Ms. Morrison's books are part of the English curriculum in high schools across the country. For many, her work is considered integral to the American literary canon, and particularly the black American literary canon. But, as The Washington Post notes, her work has also been challenged, with some schools and politicians seeking to ban books like "Beloved."

Did you read any of Ms. Morrison's work in school? What did you think of it? Do you have a particular favorite work? Why do you think some schools have tried to ban her books? In your opinion, how important is it that students read Ms. Morrison in high school? You might turn to our 2016 lesson plan " Ways to Celebrate Banned Books Week " to find more ways to honor the author's work.

_________

After Ms. Morrison's death was announced on Aug. 6, readers all over the world took to social media to write about what she meant to them, many echoing thoughts like the one in the Twitter post above. The Washington Post has collected several in an article titled " They read Toni Morrison in school - and she changed their world."

In this piece, Times readers share the characters, settings and words from Ms. Morrison's work that have had a lasting impact on them. And generations of authors, editors, other artists and luminaries pay tribute to her here and here. We have woven many of these appreciations throughout this teaching collection.

For example, the Times critic Wesley Morris writes about what the author meant to him and to his family in an essay titled " Toni Morrison Taught Me How to Think." It begins:

You need to be able to read to be able to read. Especially if Toni Morrison did the writing. I at least thought I knew what it was for my eyes to sail across and down a page, through a flight of description or a feat of characterization. At 11, I thought I could read. Then I read her. My mother told me I wasn't ready. Not for Toni. My Aunt Katie caught my little-boy eye on her brand-new, great big copy of "Beloved" and told me: That's for grown people. I tried it anyway. Then Toni seemed to tell me: All that reading you did before? That won't cut it. You have to read me. She was going to make us work, not as a task, not for medicine, but because writing is an art and a reader should have a little art of his own.

After describing a young adulthood spent reading her work, he writes:

Hers is the kind of writing that makes you rewind and slow down and ruminate. It's the kind of writing that makes you rewind because, god, what you just read was that titanic, that perception-altering, that true, a spice on the tongue. These spasms of disbelief are so ecstatic that immediate rereading is the only cure - I get them from Nabokov and from her.

Morrison is dead now, her legend long secure. But what comedy to think how the writers and critics who loved her labored to get her mastery treated as majesty when she's so evidently supreme. The women in my family knew that long before the Swedes threw her a Nobel party. So did the people who took up writing in her wake. She did for generations of writers what Martin Scorsese did for generations of filmmakers - jolt them, for better and worse, into purpose. Morrison didn't make me a writer, exactly. What she made me was a thinker. She made the thinking seem uniquely crucial to the matter of being alive.

What did Toni Morrison mean to you? How might you represent that, whether through social media or in an essay of your own, or via visual art, music or some other form of expression?

What other books and authors have taught you what it really means to read? What is your reading history, and how has it shaped who you are today? You might use our lesson plan Reflecting on the Self as Reader to help answer those questions.

_________

In her acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Toni Morrison said: "We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives."

Here is how Margalit Fox describes Ms. Morrison's language in her obituary of the writer:

In awarding her the Nobel, the Swedish Academy cited her "novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import," through which she "gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."

Ms. Morrison animated that reality in prose that rings with the cadences of black oral tradition. Her plots are dreamlike and nonlinear, spooling backward and forward in time as though characters bring the entire weight of history to bear on their every act.

Her narratives mingle the voices of men, women, children and even ghosts in layered polyphony. Myth, magic and superstition are inextricably intertwined with everyday verities, a technique that caused Ms. Morrison's novels to be likened often to those of Latin American magic realist writers like Gabriel García Márquez.

Another description of Ms. Morrison's prose comes from the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:

Reading Ms. Morrison, you knew she gloried in the joy of language, sentence by sentence, that she dared even to invent her own syntax, and as a reader you trusted her to lead you. She was a lucid thinker in her nonfiction, curious and knowledgeable and reasonable, and in her fiction she showed a compassionate and moving familiarity with the contradictions of human beings.

How would you describe Toni Morrison's use of language? Which passages from her novels do you think show her unique style, voice and vision?

The Times has chosen 12 of her most memorable quotes, on language, creativity, identity and other subjects, taken from her speeches, interviews and writing. Which quotes stand out for you? How can you connect them to your own life, to other works of literature or art, or to our world today?

Video

The Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, known for "Song of Solomon" and "Beloved," died at 88. We interviewed her in 2015. Watch as she reads from her novel, "God Help the Child." Credit Credit Colin Archdeacon/The New York Times

Toni Morrison's novels unapologetically centered subjects and lives that had previously been marginalized in the Western canon of literature.

In a 2015 profile in The New York Times Magazine, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah writes:

On one level, Morrison's project is obvious: It is a history that stretches across 11 novels and just as many geographies and eras to tell a story that is hardly chronological but is thematically chained and somewhat continuous. This is the project most readily understood and accepted by even her least generous critics. But then there is the other mission, the less obvious one, the one in which Morrison often does the unthinkable as a minority, as a woman, as a former member of the working class: She democratically opens the door to all of her books only to say, "You can come in and you can sit, and you can tell me what you think, and I'm glad you are here, but you should know that this house isn't built for you or by you." Here, blackness isn't a commodity; it isn't inherently political; it is the race of a people who are varied and complicated. This is where her works become less of a history and more of a liturgy, still stretching across geographies and time, but now more pointedly, to capture and historicize: This is how we pray, this is how we escape, this is how we hurt, this is how we repent, this is how we move on. It is a project that, although ignored by many critics, evidences itself on the page. It has allowed Morrison to play with language, to take chances with how stories unravel and to consistently resist the demand to create an empirical understanding of black life in America. Instead, she makes black life - regular, quotidian black life, the kind that doesn't sell out concert halls or sports stadiums - complex, fantastic and heroic, despite its devaluation. It is both aphorism and beyond aphorism, and a result has been pure possibility.

She then quotes Ms. Morrison:

"What I'm interested in is writing without the gaze, without the white gaze. In so many earlier books by African-American writers, particularly the men, I felt that they were not writing to me. But what interested me was the African-American experience throughout whichever time I spoke of. It was always about African-American culture and people - good, bad, indifferent, whatever - but that was, for me, the universe."

What do you think it means to write "without the white gaze"? How do you see this quality in Ms. Morrison's work? What specific passages, scenes, characters or lines from her work can you find that show this especially well? How does her work present black lives with a fullness and richness that hadn't been reflected in literature before her?

In the same profile, Ms. Morrison tells her interviewer that the books she edited and wrote were "her contribution to the civil rights movement. By publishing black geniuses, she was also forcing the ranks of the big publishing houses and the industry to become more hospitable to her point of view, to the idea that a black writer could write for a black audience first and still write literature."

Do you think Ms. Morrison's vision has come to pass? Have the books and writers who are published and celebrated become significantly more diverse over the past few decades? Have the books we teach and learn from in schools become significantly more diverse? Why and how might it matter to represent a richer range of voices in our culture and society in general? Whose voices are missing from your own shelves?

_________

"I don't know if we would have the vocabulary for contemplating the impact of slavery upon contemporary selfhood and nationhood, let alone for speaking publicly about it, were it not for the work of Toni Morrison," writes Tracy K. Smith, a former poet laureate of the United States.

In 1988, a collective of 48 black writers and intellectuals published and signed a statement in The New York Times, upbraiding the publishing industry for not giving Ms. Morrison the national recognition her fiction deserved. They singled out "Beloved," now widely considered Ms. Morrison's masterpiece. The novel, they felt, had finally given expression to "a universe of complicated, sweetly desiring, fierce and deeply seductive human beings hitherto subsumed by, hitherto stifled by, that impenetrable nobody-noun: 'the slave.'"

As your students read "Beloved," they might ask themselves how fiction can capture and express the horrors of slavery in different ways than nonfiction can. How does the symbol, metaphor and fantasy in "Beloved" convey this deep and painful reality and legacy?

And whether you're working with "Beloved" or any other text that focuses on slavery, you might consider using a major new Times initiative, The 1619 Project, alongside it - to make connections, deepen background knowledge, put texts in conversation with each other, and promote inquiry. The project is a series of articles, poetry, fiction and multimedia that observes the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery and "aims to reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are." The Pulitzer Center has created a free curriculum, including reading guides, activities and other resources, to help teachers and students use this resource in the classroom.

Finally, when working with any of these texts, Teaching Tolerance's guide to " Teaching Hard History: American Slavery " can help. It notes that "most students leave high school without an adequate understanding of the role slavery played in the development of the United States - or how its legacies still influence us today."

_________

Tracy K. Smith writes in the Times Opinion section, "I don't believe there is a writer who understood America better and loved it with more ferocity than Toni Morrison." She goes on to elucidate some of the essential questions Morrison's work poses for all of us:

Black life is the canvas for Ms. Morrison's body of work. It yields the conditions and the characters that fascinated her as an artist. But I believe her subject is America, this place founded upon conflict and driven by the need to define one group against another. Her work asks: Who are we? What have we built and broken together? What does it mean to regard one another deeply, humbly, hopefully? And what are the consequences for our refusal to regard one another? Across Ms. Morrison's novels and essays, these questions operate in the intimate spaces - in families, friendships, marriages - that serve to determine the terms of our engagement with the wider world. And the reverse is true as well: The terms of the wider world seep inevitably into the most private regions of our lives.

Read Ms. Smith's full essay, then, perhaps, take on the questions she lists in italics above. How would you answer them? In what texts besides Ms. Morrison's might you try to find answers? How would a reading of the news in 2019 offer responses to these questions, and what might those responses be? What can art in general, and Ms. Morrison's art in particular, offer that might help bring us together?

_________

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'Her Subject Is America': Teaching Toni Morrison With The New York Times

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Toni Morrison, the Nobel laureate in literature whose best-selling work explored black identity in America - and in particular the often crushing experience of black women - through luminous, incantatory prose resembling that of no other writer in English, died on Monday in the Bronx. She was 88.

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The 1619 Project Curriculum from the Pulitzer Center.

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American slavery began 400 years ago this month. This is referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country’s true origin.

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Direct Instruction Is Still Necessary in a PBL Classroom

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Early on in my project-based learning journey, I made a vow to go 100% project-based. My students would learn everything through exploration and discovery. I would remain the guide on the side observing the process and helping out only when necessary. After leading students through a highly-structured documentary project, I decided to pull back entirely. This would be more student-centered and authentic.

Then it tanked.

Not a week later or a month later. Two days into the project, I realized my mistake. My students didn't have enough background knowledge to navigate the complexity of the project. I had skipped the concept attainment lesson with the goal of learning through the project. However, my students didn't have a conceptual understanding of the topic. Still, I pushed forward, though the inquiry phase and into research, where I realized that most of my students were unable to do online research. At that moment, I took a timeout. I used direct instruction to build some conceptual understanding of the topic. I then used direct instruction and guided practice to help students learn how to do research.

I learned something valuable through those mistakes. Authentic projects can coexist with direct instruction. If authenticity involves making the learning real and relevant to students, then there might be moments when direct instruction might be the authentic choice. Yes, we want the learning to be student-centered, but as teachers, we still have moments when we need to use direct instruction. True, it's important to be a guide on the side. However, you're still the expert and sometimes you need to teach students the concepts and skills they need in order to thrive in an authentic project.

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If you're new to PBL, here's a quick explanation of the model:

The Buck Institute for Education (PBL Works) identifies the following seven project design elements:

1. Challenging Problem or Question

2. Sustained Inquiry

3. Authenticity

4. Student Voice & Choice

5. Reflection

6. Critique & Revision

7. Public Product

Note that project-based learning can work in tandem with other pedagogical models, like inquiry-based learning, design thinking, and problem-based learning. But the key idea remains that students are learning through projects and as a result, they engage in deeper learning.

When you look at those seven design elements, they don't initially seem compatible with direct instruction. However, there are some key reasons to use direct instruction within your PBL units plans.

1. Direct instruction is necessary to build background knowledge and conceptual understanding.

I began this article with the story of a failed project. My biggest mistake was assuming that students had the background content knowledge they needed to engage in the sustained inquiry and research phases of their project. Although my goal was to honor student agency and choice, I failed to provide the opportunity for students to wrestle with the concepts. From an equity perspective, I need to give every student the opportunity to gain background knowledge.

This is a key reason we still need direct instruction within PBL. According to John Hattie's research, inquiry-based learning had only a .31 effect size on student learning. However, Hattie clarified that inquiry is still vital for learning. Inquiry-based and problem-based learning are ineffective in learning surface-level information. However, they are highly effective in learning deep information. Hattie argues that inquiry should occur after students have gained prior knowledge.

We can build this prior knowledge through direct instruction. It might involve an outline of core concepts or the front-loading of vocabulary. Often, it includes a concept attainment lesson. Note that concept attainment lessons don't have to be long, drawn-out lectures with slide after slide of text. Some of the best concept attainment lessons are actually discussions, guided experiments, simulations, or game-based learning activities.

By starting with an interactive approach to direct instruction, you can actually pique students' interest in the project while also helping them gain a deeper conceptual understanding of the topic.

2. Direct instruction can reduce cognitive load.

Greg Ashman wrote an interesting article about the downside of inquiry-based learning and student achievement. In his article, he makes the distinction between epistemology (what it means to know something) and pedagogy (what it means to teach something). Scientists can engage in open inquiry because they have a wealth of prior knowledge (addressed in the last point). However, students who lack that prior knowledge often struggle with cognitive load. This was a key issue raised over a decade ago by Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark, who linked a minimalist approach to PBL to cognitive overload. However, a year later, Hmelo-Silver, Duncan, and Chinn pointed out that the researchers had conflated unstructured discovery learning with project-based learning, problem-based learning, and inquiry-based learning.

The bottom line is that direct instruction can reduce the cognitive load for students. This might include an initial concept attainment lesson or a smaller direct instruction activity embedded within the project.

3. Direct instruction can help facilitate skill development.

Creative projects require students to master certain creative skills. This might involve research, problem-solving, brainstorming, or peer assessment. However, you might need to introduce these skills through direct instruction. I've heard teachers say "don't waste time showing kids how to make a video. Let them make a video." However, a video is challenging to make. Whether they learn it through a tutorial or a guided lesson, they need some direct instruction in order to master the skill. Similarly, a short direct instruction lesson can help students learn the best practices for making slideshows or podcasts.

When my students did Scratch video game projects, we used a Gradual Release of Responsibility approach starting with direct instruction, guided practice, a mash-up game (where they combined two games) and finally their longer video game they created from scratch. Similarly, when my current students learn to write lesson plans, craft assessments, or design their Professional Educator Blogs, I use direct instruction to help facilitate skill development.

Initially, I viewed this as less authentic than "real PBL." But then I realized that in nearly every creative skill I learned, I sought out experts who guided me through direct instruction. I watched videos on YouTube to learn about techniques.

4. Direct instruction can help facilitate guided inquiry.

The Buck Institute includes "sustained inquiry" as an element of project-based learning. However, inquiry doesn't necessarily mean students are on their own asking whatever question they're curious about and finding the answers. Heather Banchi and Randy Bell conceptualize inquiry on a continuum from a more guided to open approach. Note that their approach focuses on science but the process can be generalized to other content areas:

Level 1: Confirmation Inquiry
The teacher has taught a particular science theme or topic. The teacher then develops questions and a procedure that guides students through an activity where the results are already known. This method is great to reinforce concepts taught and to introduce students into learning to follow procedures, collect and record data correctly and to confirm and deepen understandings.

Level 2: Structured Inquiry
The teacher provides the initial question and an outline of the procedure. Students are to formulate explanations of their findings through evaluating and analyzing the data that they collect.

Level 3: Guided Inquiry
The teacher provides only the research question for the students. The students are responsible for designing and following their own procedures to test that question and then communicate their results and findings.

Level 4: Open/True Inquiry
Students formulate their own research question(s), design and follow through with a developed procedure, and communicate their findings and results. This type of inquiry is often seen in science fair contexts where students drive their own investigative questions.

I explore these ideas in this short video (warning: there is a Harry Potter reference)

Here's where direct instruction comes in. As teachers, we may need to engage students in a direct instruction activity to help facilitate structured inquiry and guided inquiry.

5. Direct instruction can work as an embedded intervention

When project-based learning runs smoothly, you will have students working independently. However, you might have students who need additional support. It might be an ELL student who needs a small vocabulary or grammar mini-lesson. Or it might be a student who is struggling with a particular skill set within the project. In these moments, you can do small group direct instruction as a support for students.

6. Direct instruction can reduce project fatigue.

This sounds odd but even in a highly engaging project, students often need a break from the routine that sets in within a project. When engaging in creative work, it's common to experience project fatigue. Even if they love the project, students will often get tired of doing research, working on prototyping, or revising their work. A highly engaging period of direct instruction can create a sense of mental space while also building background knowledge or helping with skill development.

So, what does this actually look like within a larger project? Consider the phases of the LAUNCH Process. This is a design thinking framework you can use to structure the phases of a PBL unit:
L: Look, Listen, and Learn
In this first phase, students look, listen, and learn. The goal here is awareness. It might be a sense of wonder at a process or an awareness of a problem or a sense of empathy toward an audience. You might use a concept attainment lesson at the start of a project However, you might also pull aside a small group and do a direct instruction mini-lesson to clarify misunderstandings.

A: Ask Tons of Questions
Sparked by curiosity, students move to the second phase, where they ask tons of questions. You might do guided inquiry here and use direct instruction in a way to facilitate the inquiry process. But you might also pull aside a small group and do a skill-based inquiry lesson with sentence stems to guide students who are struggling with the question process.

U: Understanding the Process or Problem
This leads to understanding the process or problem through an authentic research experience. They might conduct interviews or needs assessments, research articles, watch videos, or analyze data. In this research phase, you might do some direct instruction on a part of the research process. For example, we also used the five c's of critical research:

Initially, I might need to do some direct instruction and have students practice the research process. However, I might also need to pull aside a small group and do direct instruction as a small group intervention.

N: Navigate Ideas
Students apply their newly acquired knowledge to potential solutions. In this phase, they navigate ideas. Here they not only brainstorm, but they also analyze ideas, combine ideas, and generate a concept for what they will create.

In this area, you likely won't need to embed direct instruction into the project. However, you might need to do some direct instruction to help students understand the brainstorming process. If it's a longer unit, you might do some direct instruction on how to do project management.

C: Create a Prototype
In this next phase, they create a prototype. It might be a digital work or a tangible product, a work of art or something they engineer. It might even be an action or an event or a system. Typically, you'll have students working independently in this phase. However, they might need to learn a particular prototyping skill. If it's a documentary, you might need to do optional mini-lessons showing how to film videos and operate a camera or how to use a program like iMovie or Final Cut for editing. If it's an engineering project, you might need to show students how to use a 3D printer or how to navigate 3D modeling programs.

H: Highlight and Fix
Next, they begin to highlight what's working and fix what's failing. The goal here is to view this revision process as an experiment full of iterations, where every mistake takes them closer to success. Here, you might need to do direct instruction as a review of skills for the previous prototyping skill. You might also need to clarify misconceptions through a small group direct instruction intervention. But this is also where you might take a break from your project and do a direct instruction lesson to help break up the monotony and reduce project fatigue.

Launch to an Audience
Then, when it's done, it's ready to launch. In the launch phase, they send it to an authentic audience. Here, direct instruction might involve a mini-lesson on marketing or a whole class discussion on what it means to launch.

I tend to brace against the idea of lecturing. It conjures up images of a crowded hall and a professor droning on and on while we sit in the audience feverishly taking notes. But lectures aren't inherently bad. After all, I love a good podcast or TED Talk. I regularly deliver keynotes for conferences, school districts, and universities. Great direct instruction is often an act of storytelling. It's exciting and fun. The following are a few ideas for how to keep direct instruction engaging for students:

Keep direct instruction interesting. Some of the best direct instruction involves storytelling. It's engaging and motivating. You might have visuals or videos you use to tap into student interests.

Make direct instruction interactive. You might use game-based learning or simulations to teach a concept. You might add pair-share and discussion activities to break up what would traditionally be a lecture. Or you might add a TPR (total physical response) to the front-loading of vocabulary. But the idea is to give students the opportunity to make sense out of the information and build on their prior knowledge.

Tie the direct instruction to the larger project. Help students to see that the direct instruction will help them understand the concepts or develop the skills they will need in their project.

Ultimately, there's a time and a place for direct instruction within PBL. A student-centered approach does not require us to ditch all things "teacher-directed." Sometimes, the most authentic, student-centered approach might just be a quality direct instruction mini-lesson. Direct instruction can feel less authentic. However, it might just be what students need in order to gain the skills and conceptual understanding needed to access a project - and if that's not authentic, I don't know what is.

Are you thinking about getting started with project-based learning? If so, you might want to check out the PBL toolkit. It includes resources, a free eBook, and a sample project.

If you're interested in learning more about PBL, fill out this form below and get the toolkit. You might also want to check out this PBL webinar or the PBL Master Course and use the coupon code Spencer to get 20% off.

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Direct Instruction Is Still Necessary in a PBL Classroom

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Early on in my project-based learning journey, I made a vow to go 100% project-based. My students would learn everything through exploration and discovery. I would remain the guide on the side observing the process and helping out only when necessary. After leading students through a highly-structured documentary project, I decided to pull back entirely.

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A few times a day I chuckle at a text message or social media post with a meme. Maybe it's a Game of Thrones reference sent by a friend or a corny joke sent by a family member. Either way, a meme requires a certain level of topical knowledge and a big dose of creativity to really get laughs.

Creating memes with students is a great classroom activity. It asks students to think deeply about a topic, apply what they've learned and create something ready-to-share with the world. Although you might think of meme activities as something popular in an English Language Arts classroom, you can make memes with students in any subject area.

In our book 40 Ways to Inject Creativity in the Classroom with Adobe Spark, Ben Forta and I share dozens of classroom activities with Adobe Spark. There are also lots of graphic organizers for students. In this blog post, I'll share another activity that promotes creativity. It asks students to think about course content from a new angle. In the math classroom, you can have students create memes to illustrate an idea or bring a concept to life.

Memes in the Classroom

So here's a sentence I couldn't imagine writing a decade ago... Merriam-Webster defines as "an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media." You've certainly come across memes in your own social media spaces, and there are lots of classroom creations too. A quick Pinterest search will bring up lots of cross-curricular examples, like this math meme featuring Drake.

In this activity, students can brainstorm what they'd like their meme to communicate and create their own math meme in just a few steps. Spark Post makes it easy for students to layer text over images. This is just like the memes students are used to seeing in social spaces. Students can think of a meme, search for the perfect picture, add text to their image. Then they can share their meme with classmates, family, or any audience.

Making Math Memes

To start making math memes, head over to Adobe Spark's website or open up the Spark Post app on an iOS or Android device. Students can use one of Spark Post's templates or start from scratch. If you have the branding features set up for your school ( learn more here), you can access them during this first step too.

For the meme I share in this blog post, I started from scratch and first chose the shape and size of my graphic. These sizes are optimized for different social media platforms. You can resize your graphic at any time and even add custom dimensions. I chose a square to keep it simple.

Searching for Images

Since I already knew that my meme was about fractions - with a pizza reference - I searched for free photos right from within Spark Post. When your students brainstorm and plan their meme before opening up Spark Post, you may want to encourage them to write down 3-4 search terms for their image. This way they have several options to work with when looking for images.

After students search for and choose an image, they are prompted to add text to their Spark Post graphic. The colors are chosen automatically to match the image. However, you can change the font colors, alignment, and any other details manually. I actually included two lines of text on my meme, so I used the plus sign at the top righthand corner of the screen.

Students looking for design inspiration can use the Design suggestions built right into Spark. This feature makes it easy to create a beautiful graphic without having a design background. Students can tap on each design idea and then tweak the text, colors, and arrangement to create their perfect meme.

Using the Download button at the top of their screen, students can then save their meme as a picture file. If students are on a Chrome browser, there is also the option to download the graphic as a PDF file. Alternatively, students can publish their meme as a link.

You may have seen other ideas on my site for using Spark Post. Check out these two blog posts on using this tool for exit tickets and vocabulary study. Or head straight to Adobe Spark's website to get started with this powerful, easy-to-use creation tool.

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Quick Classroom Activity for Making Math Memes with Spark Post - Class Tech Tips

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A few times a day I chuckle at a text message or social media post with a meme. Maybe it's a Game of Thrones reference sent by a friend or a corny joke sent by a family member. Either way, a meme requires a certain level of topical knowledge and a big dose of creativity to really get laughs.

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Geoboard is a tool for mathematical exploration. Stretch bands around the pegs to form line segments and polygons, and make discoveries about perimeter, area, angles, congruence, fractions, and more.

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Sponsored by Learners Edge

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

There is no shortage of ways we all can benefit from teaching graphic novels. They engage reluctant or struggling readers, they are gateway texts for more complex literature, they build necessary background knowledge, and they develop visual literacy skills.

But another important reason to teach students to read, analyze, and create a graphic novel is that the form invites them to express hard truths about themselves and their experiences in a way that is different from what they can do with pure prose.

And perhaps a more surprising reason is for the impact it can have on a teacher's relationship with students. Teaching the graphic novel to my high school English students wasa way for me to see that there was pain in my classroom and the role I might be playing in students' difficult experiences.

How the Graphic Novel Form Inspires Deeply Personal Storytelling

I taught my first unit on the graphic novel in my high school World Literature classes. We read Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir Persepolis, in which a young Marji describes her experience growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. For their culminating project, students created their own graphic memoirs about a significant experience in their lives, using Persepolis as their mentor text.

As I turned page after page of each student's story, I discovered that this unit had accomplished a goal I never intended. I didn't expect so many students to delve into deeply personal, often traumatic, experiences from their past. I had read engaging personal narratives from students before, but this was different. Some used the project to announce an aspect of their identity they had kept secret. Others revealed the reasons behind certain challenging behaviors they exhibited in class. They created stories that would be healing for them and, in some cases, for their relationships with me.

What is it about the graphic novel form that made this possible?

Cartoons Invite Empathy

Anyone who has opened a comic or graphic novel before would immediately recognize that cartoon drawings are a defining feature of the medium. While a photograph or portrait tends towards realistic depiction, a cartoon leans more toward an abstract, iconic representation of a person, object, place, or idea. (Think of how a circle with two dots and a curve for a smile represents a happy person.)

In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud explains that when drawings of characters in graphic novels are less realistic and more iconic, readers can more easily put themselves in the situations of the characters. The cartoon image "is a vacuum into which our [the reader's] identity and awareness are pulled" (36). A detailed drawing of a face with specific features would be harder for readers to identify with than a simplistic cartoon face. According to McCloud, if we are less focused on the specific details of the character's drawing, then we are freer to enter the world of the character and participate in their experiences.

Graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier even explains that the creative team at Graphix "had the good intuition to use something more iconic" (20) for the cover image of her memoir Smile. Instead of using a full-body drawing of the main character, they opted for something even more simplistically drawn: an emoji with braces. One can imagine that a more specific cover image of the book's protagonist might not have instantly connected with as many book browsers as the abstracted emoji did.

So, if iconic images help readers empathize with characters' experiences, then a graphic novelist who has traumatic events or complicated emotions to narrate can do so knowing that an empathetic readership awaits.

Cartoons Allow for Distance

And while the iconic images unique to comics and graphic novels allow readers to connect with characters (and, by proxy, the writers), the abstraction also allows the writer some distance from their emotional story. With very realistic drawings, or with prose narrative alone, sharing the experience might feel too revealing. The writer is less vulnerable, however, if their experience is portrayed with some abstraction. This didn't happen to me specifically. This happens to lots of people. This is a universal experience.

It makes sense to me, then, that a student of mine would use the most abstracted icons-stick figures-to share something especially private with our class in his own graphic novel, Spoken of One.

This student-I'll call him Louis-was selectively mute all through high school. Sitting in the back row, completing all assigned written work but never raising his hand or contributing to partner interactions, Louis frustrated me. I had 36 students in my class, and I didn't have the expertise to find ways to draw him out. It was easier to assign his partner to someone else, to simply not expect that Louis would participate since apparently he never had before.

For the graphic novel project, Louis chose to communicate that he was making an effort to speak, but encountered debilitating obstacles like stigmatizing labels from peers and teachers.

With the anonymity offered by iconic representation, Louis perhaps felt safer in telling his story than he might have if he were asked to write a personal narrative. There is a comforting distance between his own identity and that of the universally drawn protagonist in his story. Maybe knowing that the reader could see the story more universally made it possible for him to share something so private.

Readers are Reflected in the Story

Louis knew that I would be reading these panels, but he also knew his classmates would read them during peer feedback. Perhaps the ease with which readers can identify with universal abstract icons might mean that his classmates and teacher would reflect on their own complicit actions in labeling him with declarations like "He doesn't talk." The simplicity of the nameless, faceless, abstract peers and teachers in this student's panels invite my students and me to see ourselves.

When we move away from realistic representations and towards abstraction, McCloud explains, "we're not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details " (30). Louis draws teachers with such abstraction that the only distinguishing features are a simple square (representing a briefcase?), their position within a given panel (at a distance from students), and an absence of any facial markings (dots or lines for eyes, nose, mouth). Without being explicitly told what to see, readers can imagine their own rich details.

As a teacher, I could vividly see my own impatience with certain behaviors and the emotional weight that impatience had on my students. I thought my sighs were inaudible, my nonverbals (standing at a distance, unsympathetic facial expressions) unnoticeable. Maybe Louis wasn't addressing me specifically in his panels, but that's irrelevant. The iconic representation of people and events works like the "vacuum" McCloud describes, inviting me to reflect on my own complicity in Louis' experience.

In another panel, the hallways of the school are stripped to the bare essentials: a white vacant floor on which to sulk. The specificity is so absent that a reader could "fill up" this iconic form with almost any other setting. The actual place, person, object, or idea being represented matters little.

Readers Must Help Tell the Story

Compelling texts are often ripe with ambiguity. Graphic novels, by their very design, contain "gaps" that readers must fill as they connect one panel to the next. By making connections and drawing conclusions in the gutters-the empty spaces between panels-the reader can help tell a story the writer can't tell alone.

McCloud describes this reader participation as "committing closure," and some transitions ask more of the reader than others. Many comics rely heavily on simple moment-to-moment and action-to-action transitions that require less participation (picture a person lifting a cup in one panel and drinking from it in the next). Others make powerful use of aspect-to-aspect and subject-to-subject transitions. These require readers to connect different experiences, time periods, and perspectives from one panel to the next. (Imagine a person lifting a cup in one panel and the next panel shows a different scene five years later).

In their own graphic novels, students generally struggle to create transitions that leave space for the reader to participate, but I think Louis found the gutter a helpful tool to tell his story without having to say too much.

What happens after the teacher prompts Louis to speak? How long does he pause before the next panel shows him defeated on the ground? How did his peers react? When I look at these two panels, I fill out the story: I hear his peers snickering, I see them rolling their eyes, my hands get sweaty thinking of how long the silence must have felt for this student compared to how brief it probably was to everyone else in the room.

It's not that graphic novelists are off the hook from having to explain and narrate difficult moments. It's that they are able to be selective with what they do show so that more readers can participate in ways that are personally relevant. And, I think that first learning about how gutters and transitions work in Persepolis, especially at certain difficult points in Marji's story, encouraged students to include their own hard-to-describe experiences in their work. I don't have to find words for every moment. I don't have to show kids rolling their eyes. That can be for the reader to imagine in the gutter.

No Story is Too Complex

Thecombination of words and pictures helps writers communicate hard stuff-no story is too complex to tell with this medium. Comics have a long history of teaching complex subject matter. There are graphic novels that discuss scientific phenomena, race, gender, cancer, and mental health. Satrapi catches us up on thousands of years of Persian history through carefully composed panels. Some of my students were able to portray subtle racial and gender-based microaggressions they experienced without even needing to know the term "microaggression." Others described complex learning disabilities and mental health issues without using a clinical vocabulary.

And because of the ability to "control time" (as comics expert Will Eisner puts it), the stories we tell in graphic novels are open to a wider readership. Young or inexperienced readers can make meaning from panels without necessarily drawing sophisticated conclusions from the gutters. As Gene Luen Yang explains (via McCloud), "Time within a comic book progresses only as quickly as the reader moves her eyes across the page. The pace at which information is transmitted is completely determined by the reader ... this 'visual permanence' firmly places control over the pace of education in the hands (and eyes) of the student."

Since readers of all ages and backgrounds can participate in reading graphic novels, my student writers could share sensitive stories with a variety of people in their lives, not just their teacher.

How I Taught This

To initially learn about the form of graphic novels, I read McCloud's Understanding Comics, which provides a thorough explanation of the variety of elements and devices at work in a comic or graphic novel. Over the years, I also studied Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative.

To choose a mentor text for my 11th grade World Literature classes, I considered what would be grade-level appropriate and rich enough in terms of the devices I had learned about. What will connect with students' experiences but also expose them to new ideas or challenge their understanding about certain concepts? Satrapi's Persepolis jumped out as the perfect option: teenage Marji narrates her experiences navigating religious, political, and social conflicts during a tumultuous time in Iran's history. When choosing your own text, you might also consider connections to social studies or science content students have learned. Or you might choose an adaptation of a text you've already read or to connect to a theme or genre you are teaching.

The Launch

Determine Prior Knowledge
I distribute a page from a graphic novel, not necessarily from the one I will teach, and ask, What is happening? How do you know? Students' written responses show me how familiar they are with noticing the subtle devices at work to communicate meaning in a visual text. With this information, I can partner students more effectively during upcoming lessons and keep their starting point in mind as I consider the unit instruction, tasks, and outcomes. Students also see for themselves how well or ill-equipped they are to do this type of reading, which for some students makes them curious to learn how.

What do students want to know?
After attempting a close read of a graphic novel page, many students discover they either don't have a lot to say or they know more than they thought. Then, they complete a KWL chart (Know-Want to Know-Learned) about graphic novels and Persepolis. My students have wondered, "How do you choose what to put in each box," "Does the order you read matter," and "Why is it called 'Persepolis,'" The most exciting part of the chart is, of course, the "Learned" column that students complete at the end of the unit.

Personal Goals
At the beginning of the unit, students indicate "Where I started" and "Where I want to be." I provide options of end objectives that students choose from. This tool is revisited at the end of the unit and students complete the "Where I am" and "Where I want to go next" columns as part of the assessment process (scroll down to "Assessing the Results" for an image of the chart). Because students articulate their own learning goals, ones that make sense given their starting point and the relevance of the topic to their lives, they are more invested in reaching those goals. And they often exceed them.

Reading The Mentor Text

We read the novel mostly in class, with students working together to reread for deeper meaning. Before we discuss what we've read in class, students spend five minutes independently free-writing everything they notice from one page of Persepolis. I ask: What happened? How do you know? What have you learned about characters? With less time, students simply record one question they have about the assigned reading. In partners or small groups, they share their observations and questions and develop some consensus around how the page is working. Then they report their conclusions to the whole class.

In whole class discussion, I introduce the terms and devices only after students have had the opportunity to express them in their own language. When they report that they know Marji feels weak because she's drawn smaller than usual and she's in a really small box, they learn to incorporate terms like "scale" and "frame." When they notice a page has no panels, and the drawing fills up the entire page, they learn the term "splash." When they notice one panel's scene does not seem to connect to the one before and after, they learn to describe a variety of panel transitions with phrases like "action-to-action" and "subject-to-subject."

For an example of how to model close reading of a graphic novel, watch me discuss page 6 of Persepolis with another reader in the video below. Reference this handout if you'd like to use the video as a teaching tool in your classroom.

Students are routinely asked to choose a panel to closely read and analyze in writing. I collect these as formative assessments that tell me if a device or specific page from the text needs review and if students are reading beyond the surface. Sometimes I provide a specific prompt, like "What do you think the author is communicating with the different uses of black and white in chapter 10?" or "Describe the significance of varying shapes and sizes of panels in chapter 1." Other times, I solicit prompts from students or invite them to write about any discoveries they have made about the story and characters, supporting their observations with references to the techniques involved. For models of written close readings, I use previous students' work, book reviews of graphic novels, and excerpts from Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art.

Two examples of students' written responses to close reading.

When student observations show me that a particular panel or page is challenging to understand, I post a copy of the pages on chart papers. Groups circulate and add their theories, questions, predictions, and interpretations. Meaning becomes evident through multiple reads of the page and collaborative discussion.

I use frequent but brief exercises that get students thinking about how the devices work in a graphic novel. For example, "If you had to show the emotion of fear with only lines, how would you draw them?" Or I might provide students with a sequence of panels with pictures but no captions and ask them to write the captions. Another day, I give them panels with only text and ask them to add the pictures. The key is to give the same panels to multiple students so they see the variety of ways they each interpreted specific text or visuals.

One student chose this specific panel's techniques to try in his own panel. He connected Marji's experience to his experience attending a new high school. The towering building, drawn with the same repetition as Satrapi's trees, dwarfs my student, who changed schools also for access to a better education and preparation for some unknown future.

These "micro-writing" assignments help students learn the devices, but they also serve as early drafts of their final graphic novel projects and begin to convince even the most reluctant students that what we are learning is valuable.

The Culminating Project

In the past, we have agreed that their stories would provoke thinking-more specifically, they would challenge assumptions, initiate a conversation, connect deeply with readers, and nudge them to act. To accomplish such worthy goals, they would need to skillfully use at least three devices, their words (captions and speech bubbles) would work interdependently with their pictures to communicate more than what either could accomplish alone, and some panel-to-panel transitions would move beyond moment-to-moment or action-to-action.

Drafting
To decide on a topic, students reference their "micro-writing" assignments, create brainstorming lists of potential experiences, and free-write about each one. Students examine their most promising free-write and tease out a rising action, a climax, and resolution.

Then, students create a visual outline of each page, mapping out their ideas in a panel layout, describing what they plan to illustrate and why. They consider how they will distinguish their characters. They identify the emotions and moods they want to communicate for specific scenes and note devices that could help accomplish this.

I model this process at the start of class by attempting my own project, one panel at a time, in front of the class, thinking aloud and soliciting their help. A bonus is that my clear lack of artistic skills shows students that beautiful artwork is not necessary for this project. While sketching, I narrate, "I want to show this character feels bold and confident. I think I will remove the frame altogether (create a "splash"), or I could keep the frame and draw the character so large she goes beyond the border (a "bleed")." At this point I ask for students' input-which technique would be more effective and why.

Workshops
During the drafting process, students sign up to attend mini lessons, facilitated either by me or a peer, on topics like "creating captions and speech bubbles," and "showing emotions with facial features and gestures." I schedule two 20-minute mini lessons per workshop day. When students aren't in the mini-lesson, they work on their panels independently, with support resources I provide (from Eisner, McCloud, and Barbara Slate). Topics for new mini-lessons are created in response to the challenges and needs students pose.

I don't want to force students to share their personal stories with their classmates for peer review, so I ask them to choose at least one completed panel to share for feedback. Sometimes, I collect one panel from each student and anonymously re-distribute them to the class for feedback. As reviewers, students ask themselves, "What is happening? How do I know? What assumptions am I being asked to challenge? How I am I connecting with this story?" Their comments help the creator understand how readers are responding to their narrative and design choices.

Sometimes, students volunteer to share their pages with the whole class for feedback. I project the pages and we perform a close read like we have done so many times with the pages of Persepolis. Students who do not seize this opportunity to get such thorough feedback on their work still benefit from providing and listening to the feedback given for a peer's work.

Assessing the Results

In the past, when I had scored these projects with As, I felt like I was sending a message that the learning was done. That their few-page attempts could just not be any better. But the goal is not that a student becomes a master at incorporating graphic elements into their own memoir after a few weeks of practice. The goal is that they have discovered a new form to explore with rigor beyond our classroom and have some creative independence with a new set of tools to tell all kinds of stories.

Instead of a four-point rubric that shows tiers of success leading up to the end goal of an A, 100, or "meets standards," I decided to create a single-point rubric and define an "A" by listing what we agreed the project had to contain in order to demonstrate the student was ready to continue on their learning trajectory A utonomously. That means they would be prepared to independently and critically read graphic novels of different genres. They could start experimenting with devices, and maybe create their own, to communicate a range of experiences. They could research the work of other comics and comics movements, and learn the history of the form. They could connect with the larger world of graphic novelists by joining the conversation online.

The success criteria we established as a class allows students to focus primarily on their ability to use the graphic elements they studied to portray a significant event in their lives (not writing conventions or artistry). We do discuss how grammatical errors can really confuse the reader and how a hastily sketched image can ruin the effect of the device. The grammar and drawing expectations are in service of the larger goal and don't need to be assessed with their own categories on the rubric. The focused criteria also help me avoid pitfalls of the past while providing feedback on students' graphic novels, such as correcting grammar errors that didn't actually impede understanding and praising artwork that didn't actually develop the story.

Finally, students complete the "Learned" column of their KWL charts, proudly listing the discoveries they made about how to tell stories in a different way. They also reference their rubric feedback to respond to the last two columns on their Personal Goals form: "Where I am" and "Where I want to go next." If students are not yet ready to pursue this work autonomously, what additional practice is needed? What resources can help? If they are ready for continued independent learning and practice, what books, websites, and writers can they explore? Students also have the option to continue working and resubmit their project for additional feedback later in the year.

Compared to my first attempt at assessment, this revised model communicated to students that the learning didn't stop for anyone, even those with an A.

Why Teach Students How to Create a Graphic Novel?

After my first foray into teaching the graphic novel, I discovered that the benefits went beyond teaching literacy skills. Though the initial objective was for students to hone their close reading skills, it turned out that I also learned to read my students more closely, especially the ones I perceived as disengaged learners.

Without access to students' stories, educators are likely to interpret certain behaviors as challenging. As Sarah MacLaughlin describes in an article about trauma-informed teaching, behaviors that have developed in response to a difficult home environment or experience can be interpreted as defiance in a class setting: "Trauma can manifest in so many behaviors! Hypervigilance can masquerade as hyperactivity... Fear can look like aggression: flight, freeze, or fight," or in Louis' case, selective mutism.

While reading my first class set of student-created graphic novels, I started to reconsider everything from my assessment practices to my nonverbal signals. I didn't change into an enlightened, empathetic teacher overnight, but I started to approach interactions with students with the understanding that there were stories inside them that I wanted to hear, that I could make instructional decisions that would decrease cortisol and build relationships.

I know that without this project I would have continued to overlook Louis' mutism. How would I have had such intimate access to a mute student's perspective without his graphic novel? Louis put it so simply but elegantly on the first page, despite the grammatical error: "Why am I talking now? Well, your [sic] in my head and your just reading my mind."

Teaching students to create graphic novels gives you the power to read their minds, which can change everything about the way you teach. More importantly, it gives them the power of voice-a superpower that can change their worlds. ♦️

Read the Book!!

Since writing this post, Shveta Miller has written a full-length book on this topic: Hacking Graphic Novels: 8 Ways to Teach Higher-Level Thinking with Comics and Visual Storytelling. If you're ready to really dig into this process, the book will tell you everything you need to know!

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The Surprising Benefits of Student-Created Graphic Novels

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If no one has ever encouraged, pushed, or insisted that you build more higher-order thinking into your students' learning, it's possible you've been teaching in a cave.

Higher-level thinking has been a core value of educators for decades. We learned about it in college. We hear about it in PD. We're even evaluated on whether we're cultivating it in our classrooms: Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching, a widely used instrument to measure teacher effectiveness, describes a distinguished teacher as one whose "lesson activities require high-level student thinking" (Domain 3, Component 3c).

All that aside, most teachers would say they want their students to be thinking on higher levels, that if our teaching kept students at the lowest level of Bloom's Taxonomy -simply recalling information-we wouldn't be doing a very good job as teachers.

And yet, when it's time to plan the learning experiences that would have our students operating on higher levels, some of us come up short. We may not have a huge arsenal of ready-to-use, high-level tasks to give our students. Instead, we often default to having students identify and define terms, label things, or answer basic recall questions. It's what we know. And we have so much content to cover, many of us might feel that there really isn't time for the higher-level stuff anyway.

If this sounds anything like you, I have a suggestion: Try a curation assignment.

When a museum director curates, she collects artifacts, organizes them into groups, sifts out everything but the most interesting or highest-quality items, and shares those collections with the world. When an editor curates poems for an anthology, he does the same thing.

The process can be applied to all kinds of content: A person could curate a collection of articles, images, videos, audio clips, essays, or a mixture of items that all share some common attribute or theme. When we are presented with a list of the "Top 10" anything or the "Best of" something else, what we're looking at is a curated list. Those playlists we find on Spotify and Pandora? Curation. "Recommended for You" videos on Netflix? Curation. The news? Yep, it's curated. In an age where information is ubiquitous and impossible to consume all at once, we rely on the curation skills of others to help us process it all.

In an educational setting, curation has a ton of potential as an academic task. Sure, we're used to assigning research projects, where students have to gather resources, pull out information, and synthesize that information into a cohesive piece of informational or argumentative writing. This kind of work is challenging and important, and it should remain as a core assignment throughout school, but how often do we make the collection of resources itself a stand-alone assignment?

That's what I'm proposing we do. Curation projects have the potential to put our students to work at three different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy:

Understand, where we exemplify and classify information

Analyze, where we distinguish relevant from irrelevant information and organize it in a way that makes sense

Evaluate, where we judge the quality of an item based on a set of criteria

If we go beyond Bloom's and consider the Framework for 21st Century Learning put out by the Partnership for 21st Century Learning, we'll see that critical thinking is one of the 4C's listed as an essential skill for students in the modern age (along with communication, creativity, and collaboration) and a well-designed curation project requires a ton of critical thinking.

So what would a curation project look like?

Suppose you're teaching U.S. history, and you want students to understand that our constitution is designed to be interpreted by the courts, and that many people interpret it differently. So you create a curation assignment that focuses on the first amendment.

The task: Students must choose ONE of the rights given to us by the first amendment. To illustrate the different ways people interpret that right, students must curate a collection of online articles, images, or videos that represent a range of beliefs about how far that right extends. For each example they include, they must summarize the point of view being presented and include a direct quote where the author or speaker's biases or beliefs can be inferred.

Here is what one submission might look like, created on a platform called eLink (click here to view the whole thing).

Because they are finding examples of a given concept and doing some summarizing, students in this task are working at the Understand level of Bloom's. But they are also identifying where the author or speaker is showing bias or purpose, which is on the Analyze level.

Ranked Collection: Students collect a set of articles, images, videos, or even whole websites based on a set of criteria (the most "literary" song lyrics of the year, or the world's weirdest animal adaptations) and rank them in some kind of order, justifying their rankings with a written explanation or even a student-created scoring system. Each student could be tasked with creating their own collection or the whole class could be given a pre-selected collection to rank. This would be followed by a discussion where students could compare and justify their rankings with those of other students. (Bloom's Level: Evaluate)

Shared Trait Collection: This would house items that have one thing in common. This kind of task would work in so many different subject areas. Students could collect articles where our government's system of checks and balances are illustrated, images of paintings in the impressionist style, videos that play songs whose titles use metaphors. It could even be used as part of a lesson using the concept attainment strategy, where students develop an understanding of a complex idea by studying "yes" and "no" examples of it. By curating their own examples after studying the concept, they will further developing their understanding of it. (Bloom's Level: Understand).

Literature Review: As the first step of a research project, students could collect relevant resources and provide a brief summary of each one, explaining how it contributes to the current understanding of their topic. As high school students prepare for college, having a basic understanding of what a literature review is and the purpose it serves-even if they are only doing it with articles written outside of academia-will help them take on the real thing with confidence when that time comes. (Bloom's Levels: Understand for the summarization, Analyze for the sorting and selecting of relevant material)

Video Playlist: YouTube is bursting at the seams with videos, but how much of it is actually good? Have students take chunks of your content and curate the best videos out there to help other students understand those concepts. In the item's description, have students explain why they chose it and what other students will get out of it. (Bloom's Levels: Understand for summarization, Evaluate for judging the quality of the videos)

Museum Exhibit: Task students with curating a digital "exhibit" around a given theme. The more complex the theme, the more challenging the task. For example, they might be asked to assume the role of a museum owner who hates bees, and wants to create a museum exhibit that teaches visitors all about the dangers of bees. This kind of work would help students understand that even institutions that might not own up to any particular bias, like museums, news agencies, or tv stations, will still be influenced by their own biases in how they curate their material. (Bloom's Level: Understand if it's just a collection of representative elements, Create if they are truly creating a new "whole" with their collection, such as representing a particular point of view with their choices)

Real World Examples: Take any content you're teaching (geometry principles, grammar errors, science or social studies concepts) and have students find images or articles that illustrate that concept in the real world. (Bloom's level: Understand).

Favorites: Have students pull together a personal collection of favorite articles, videos, or other resources for a Genius Hour, advisory, or other more personalized project: A collection of items to cheer you up, stuff to boost your confidence, etc. Although this could easily slide outside the realm of academic work, it would make a nice activity to help students get to know each other at the start of a school year or give them practice with the process of curation before applying it to more content-related topics.

Most of the above activities would not be very academically challenging if students merely had to assemble the collection. Adding a thoughtfully designed written component is what will make students do their best thinking in a curation assignment.

The simplest way to do this is to require a written commentary with each item in the collection. Think about those little signs that accompany every item at a museum: Usually when you walk into an exhibit, you find a sign or display that explains the exhibit as a whole, then smaller individual placards that help visitors understand the significance of each piece in the collection. When students put their own collections together, they should do the same thing.

Be specific about what you'd like to see in these short writing pieces, and include those requirements in your rubric. Then go a step further and create a model of your own, so students have a very clear picture of how the final product should look. Because this is a genre they have probably not done any work in before, they will do much better with this kind of scaffolding. Doing the assignment yourself first-a practice I like to call dogfooding -will also help you identify flaws in the assignment that can be tweaked before you hand it over to students.

It's certainly possible for students to collect resources through non-digital means, by reading books in the library or curating physical artifacts or objects, but doing a curation project digitally allows for media-rich collections that can be found and assembled in a fraction of the time. And if you have students curating in groups, using digital tools will allow them to collaborate from home without having to meet in person.

Here are a few curation tools that would work beautifully for this kind of project:

Elink is the tool featured in the sample project above. Of all the tools suggested here, this one is the simplest. You collect your links, write descriptions, and end up with a single unique web page that you can share with anyone.

Pinterest is probably the most popular curation tool out there. If your students are already using Pinterest, or you're willing to get them started, you could have them create a Pinterest board as a curation assignment.

Symbaloo allows users to create "webmixes," boards of icons that each lead to different URLs. Although it would be possible to create a curated collection with Symbaloo, it doesn't allow for the same amount of writing that some other tools do, so you would need to have students do their writing on a separate document.

Diigo is a good choice for a more text-driven project, like a literature review or a general collection of resources at the beginning stages of a research project, where images aren't necessarily required. Diigo offers lots of space to take notes about every item in a collection, but it doesn't have user-friendly supports for images or other media.

I'm so excited about all the different ways we can use curation in the classroom, and I would love to hear your ideas as well. Please share them in the comments below. If you have links to student samples, share those, too! ♦

Curation is just one of the modules in JumpStart, my new online technology course created especially for educators. I thought carefully about what specific skills teachers need to make the most of classroom tech, chose 9 of them, and designed hands-on projects that will show you exactly how to use them.

If you're ready to take your tech skills from so-so to rock solid, this course will change everything for you.

Learn more about the course here.

There's more where this came from.
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To Boost Higher-Order Thinking, Try Curation

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A digital curation project is a fast way to engage critical thinking in any content area. Here's how it works.

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Six years ago, I led my first PBL workshop for a group of high school teachers. It was the summer after my tenth year in the classroom and I felt fairly confident that I could facilitate a whole day of professional development. I knew, for example, that the things I didn't know or understand would be filled in by the people around me; that we would all learn from each other. I understood that the smartest person in the room is the room. Actually, that's not true. The room isn't very smart. It's just drywall and sheetrock and paint. But the people collectively, as a network, have experience and expertise that I will never be able to match. On this particular day, though, I learned that I had been ignoring a group of teachers with a wealth of knowledge.

Although the workshop seemed to be going smoothly, I noticed something. A team of teachers kept looking away with their arms crossed. A few times, they passed notes and chatted with one another. Finally, I worked up the nerve to talk to them.

"How is this group doing?" I asked.

A woman shrugged. "This isn't really for us."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we're the P.E. teachers. You've talked about having students do reading and research and I get that. But I need kids moving. That's not what I teach. I teach P.E.," she answered.

The man next to her added, "It's always like this. We go to trainings but they don't really apply to what we teach. At least you're entertaining. You've made us laugh."

"Yeah, you're not dry," the woman said. "I've enjoyed some of this but really this doesn't apply to what I do."

A third teacher added, "When you teach P.E., people want to tell you how to integrate reading and writing and math into the curriculum. But what about the core subjects? What could they learn from us?"

That question lingered for days. In fact, it's lingered for years.

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For the last six years, my approach to PBL workshops have changed dramatically with more of a focus on what PBL looks like in every subject - including P.E. I've observed more art, music, and P.E. teachers as a professor and I've worked with other professors who came from those fields.

But there's still that question. What can we learn from P.E.? This question has also changed my approach to how I conduct workshops and how I teach my university courses and how I taught in my last three years at the middle school level. When that teacher challenged me to learn from P.E. teachers, I began to pay attention to the P.E. teachers in my building. I watched Coach Yancey give more precise feedback than I typically gave. I sat down with my brother-in-law, David (a phenomenal elementary P.E. teacher), and asked him, "What can STEM and journalism teachers learn from P.E. teachers?"

For the last two weeks, I've been teaching my brand new cohort of pre-service teachers. Six of them have Physical Education as their primary focus area. They've been reminding me, yet again, that P.E. teachers have so much they can teach the "core" subject area teachers. The following are a few lessons master P.E. teachers can offer teachers in other subjects.

1. Make learning fun.

Often, P.E. teachers make a conscious effort to get students excited about the content area. They create games and contests to get kids excited about movement and skill development. They play loud music (including those dreaded Kidz Bop songs). My initial thought is, "Well, P.E. is a fun subject. Kids come in liking it. But what about math?" However, most kids don't walk into class excited about running. While many kids will say, "I'm not good at math," I'm guessing the same number of kids will also say, "I'm not an athlete." The best P.E. teachers inspire kids to fall in love with the subject by making it fun.

Don't get me wrong. There are so many science teachers who do this with experiments and simulations. There are math teachers who have turned their rooms into interactive, exciting spaces and social studies teachers who make history come alive. There are language arts teachers helping kids fall in love with reading and writing through things like choice reading and blogging. These teachers create a sense of fun and joy in their classrooms. But in many buildings, P.E. is the subject where fun is at the forefront. It's visibly noticeable. I think we can learn from that.

2. Assess on the go.

When I first began teaching, I viewed instruction and assessment as two separate activities. I would instruct during class and assess at home. Each week, students would take a quiz, which I would use to redesign future lessons. As I shifted to PBL, I realized that we could "assess as we go." I began using assessment in the moment to modify lessons. Over time, I implemented peer assessment, such as the 20-minute peer feedback system:

I incorporated more self-assessments, including concept maps, reflections, and student-generated checklists and surveys. I also began using checklists and observations in the moment to monitor student progress. While my assessment journey took years, it would have been faster if I paid closer attention to our P.E. teachers. They regularly used checklists. They walked around giving frequent feedback. Our P.E. teachers knew that shorter, in-the-moment, specific feedback would help students monitor and adjust on their own.

By default, I viewed assessment as a noun. It's something you give to students. It's something they take. But P.E. teachers reminded me that assessment is a process. It's an action. It's a verb. By changing my approach to quicker, more specific, timely feedback, I was able to help students when they actually needed the help.

3. Break tasks down.

This was a real weakness of mine as a classroom teacher. I tend to be a big picture person and I struggle to make things concrete. I thrive in teaching concept attainment lessons and in doing larger PBL projects. However, I've always struggled whenever I needed to teach a specific skill. It might be a Photoshop or iMovie lesson during a documentary project or a specific math skill lesson while we were learning about linear equations. However, I improved this skill from watching a few master P.E. teachers. Typically, they would break a task down to the most concrete level and have students practice it. Often, they would include peer feedback, so students could learn from one another. Next, they would add new skills, combining the new set with the previous set. In other words, direct instruction was never entirely teacher-directed. It was highly interactive. By breaking the tasks down, they reduced the cognitive load.

Again, this is something many math and language arts teachers do well. However, I've noticed that it's a strength for many of my P.E. teacher candidates and it's one that I am still working toward improving.

4. Movement matters.

P.E. teachers often remind us that learning happens with the whole body. It's easy to view it as a cognitive process but emotions, energy levels, and tactile interactions play a vital role in cognition. We learn through viewing, listening, speaking, and touching. Learning is inherently physical.

Consider the role of energy levels in learning. In Daniel Pink's recent book When, he shares fascinating research on the best time of day for learning new content, analyzing information, and thinking divergently. When I shared this research with my cohort, the pre-service P.E. teachers responded with, "Everyone knows that. You teach totally different lessons to the morning and afternoon groups." However, this was eye-opening to some of the rest of the students, who hadn't really considered the role of the physical body on deconstructing a text or solving an equation.

As classroom teachers, we can incorporate more movement into our lessons. Instead of doing a typical discussion, do a value line activity. Instead of sitting down for a full close reading activity, do a rotating reading activity, where students move from table to table deconstructing the texts and adding to their graphic organizers. It might mean using Kagan activities, like stand-up/hand-up/pair-up or a carousel activity. Or it might involve a TPR (total physical response) for learning vocabulary.

A simple diagnostic question is, "Are students using their whole body to learn in my class?"

Innovation isn't always about piloting a new skill or strategy. It's often about borrowing an idea from another discipline or domain. Darwin changed biology when he was a geologist. Kahneman and Tversky reshaped economics by offering perspectives from psychology. Similarly, math teachers can learn a thing or two from language arts teachers - and vice versa. However, too often, we work in silos. Too often, P.E. teachers end up in the most rigid silos, left out of conversations about teaching and learning. Their classrooms seem too different. Indeed, they're often not even rooms, but fields or gymnasiums. But it's this difference in context and experience that makes their perspective so much more valuable.

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Four Things P.E. Teachers Can Teach Us About Innovative Teaching

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Six years ago, I led my first PBL workshop for a group of high school teachers. It was the summer after my tenth year in the classroom and I felt fairly confident that I could facilitate a whole day of professional development.

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Short lesson plans based on Times content

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Philadelphia
Michele Haiken isn't quite ready to do away with student essays.

But the veteran English teacher at New York's Rye Middle School would much rather get her students writing podcasts and movie scripts, creating infographics, designing e-books and websites, and producing their own TEDtalks.

"Basically, we've been preparing our students for standardized tests when it comes to writing," Haiken said during a talk here at the annual conference of the International Society for Technology in Education. "We're not asking them to actually write in the ways we write every single day in our work lives."

Earlier this month, ISTE published Haiken's new book, "New Realms for Writing: Inspire Student Expression With Digital Age Formats." The big messages:

Digital tools dramatically expand ways in which students can produce written work.

Technology can help teachers get to know their students better and provide them with customized options for writing out their ideas.

And tech can amplify students' voices and help them reach new audiences.

"It's about giving students access to diverse formats, genres, audiences, and writing opportunities," she said.

What does that look like in a real classroom?

Here are three examples Haiken described at ISTE.
1. Mixing poetry and coding
For this unit, Haiken asked her students to curate five different songs or poems that represented who they are. Then, the students pulled words from those anthologies to make their own poems, plus drew accompanying booklets or posters. From there, they used Makey Makeys (an electronics and coding toy that lets users connect everyday objects to computers), Scratch (a kid-friendly coding platform), audio recording software, and other digital tools to make their products interactive.

The end result?

Instead of just reading each other's poems, Haiken's students could touch them to prompt computers to play related music, a dramatic reading, or an author's note.
2. Working across disciplines & giving students choice
"By making it interactive, we were really able to talk in new ways about tone, inflection, message, and purpose," she said.

Haiken said her principal is a big believer in consistency and collaborative planning time. That means for the past three years, she's gotten to work closely with the same science, math, and social studies teachers--when their students are studying World War II in social studies, for example, Haiken does a related unit.
3. Murder mysteries with a twist
That kind of partnership has allowed for a great deal of student choice. Take a recent science research project. Students selected and researched their own topics. Then Haiken worked with them to showcase their work in either a traditional, text-based annotated bibliography, or in a more visual infographic. At the end of the unit, the students could choose to disseminate their conclusions in a podcast, a videorecorded TEDtalk, or in a traditional narrative nonfiction essay.

"Trying out different formats helps [students] expand their own verbal and written communication," Haiken said.

Not every writing lesson Haiken does is quite so involved. This past school year, for example, her class was moving along briskly, creating a little unexpected slack. So Haiken broke out on of her favorite stories, an Agatha Christie murder mystery.

As they read, students had to pick a character, identify a theme song that fit the character, and produce a quick music video tying the two together.

"They got 40 minutes," Haiken said with a laugh. "They were running around the school, and I got in trouble with the principal, but it was great."
Photo of Michelle Haiken by Benjamin Herold for Education Week Follow @BenjaminBHerold for the latest news on ed-tech policies, practices, and trends.
The larger lesson?

New technology tools offer fresh ways for teachers to strike a balance they've long struggled with.

"My job in my school, working in New York state, is to help students meet their learning targets," Haikens said. "But at the same time, I want to make writing meaningful and purposeful. It shouldn't be, 'I'm doing this because I have to.'"

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The 'New Realms' of Digital Writing: 3 Classroom Examples From ISTE

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Philadelphia Michele Haiken isn't quite ready to do away with student essays. But the veteran English teacher at New York's Rye Middle School would much rather get her students writing podcasts and movie scripts, creating infographics, designing e-books and websites, and producing their own TEDtalks.

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Summer reading suggestions from Lois Lowry, Jason Reynolds, Kate DiCamillo, and more.

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Get your child genuinely excited to read this summer with Slate's kids' summer reading package. Got a reluctant reader on your hands? This librarian can help. Got an awkward middle schooler on your hands? He should read these books. Want to broaden your high schooler's horizons? Read YA author Tochi Onyebuchi on school summer reading lists.

1. I Couldn't See Myself in Any Book I Read in Prep School. It Changed Me More Than You'd Think.

2. Ask a Teacher: How Can I Prepare My Awkward Child for Middle School?

3. Got a Reluctant Reader on Your Hands? This Children's Librarian Can Help.

In parents' fantasies, summer, with its long days and more languorous pace, is a time for our children to be engrossed in wonderful books. In real life, our kids feel the pull of Fortnite and rebuke our summer reading prompts, subconsciously (or consciously) considering it "homework." Not to mention we parents can be at a loss for quality book recommendations powerful enough to truly lure our kids into another world.

So we've gone to the experts to bring you a list of books that will captivate your young reader this summer. We asked 14 authors of important and influential children's books-many of them suggested by the Slate Parenting Facebook group -to tell us about the book that shaped them the most.

Consider this list a resource on two fronts: First, the authors we approached-including Lois Lowry, Kwame Alexander, Kate DiCamillo, and many more-write some of the most beloved books for young readers out there. If you're not familiar with their work, get thee to a bookstore. Second, these authors' touching tributes can remind you of forgotten classics and provide some new inspiration.

We're also hoping our list will offer parents some much-needed ammunition. Your daughter couldn't put down the Wings of Fire series? You've probably recommended Anne of Green Gables ad nauseam, but maybe she'll finally consider it after reading Wings of Fire author Tui T. Sutherland's endorsement.

I finally learned to read when I was 7, and this, I knew, was the key to happiness. I had spent a lifetime watching the everyone in my family sit transfixed by books. Still, each week when we visited our little public library, I was deposited at the picture book table, as though I were an illiterate, while my older sister made a beeline for Junior Fiction, the paradise where they kept the stories that I knew would change my life if only I were allowed to read them. For months, I sat in my bitty chair and fumed.

And then, one day, I rose up and stormed Junior Fiction. I thought someone would stop me, but no one did. I wandered through the shelves, fingering the lovely spines, until I found Ellen and the Gang,a book about teenagers who were involved in wicked camera-stealing activities,. And I was right. It did change my life. Everything that has happened to me since is in some way a result of Ellen and the Gang. Not that I learned how to steal cameras-what I learned was that I could find out about stealing cameras. That was the revelation: I could find out anything I wanted. The grown-ups in my life might not be willing to divulge their secret information, but I didn't need them. I had the library, I had Junior Fiction, and I had power.

I could easily name several wonderful children's books that had an impact on me (and have named them quite often in other conversations), but one major influence that I sometimes neglect to mention is the Encyclopedia Brownseries by Donald J. Sobol. When I was a kid, I desperately wanted to be a detective-to solve mysteries, decipher clues, and find missing items-and the Encyclopedia Brown books, more than any others, gave me the best chance to pretend. Each book contains a number of short mysteries in which the ingenious young detective is presented with clues, and the reader can attempt to solve the mystery before turning to the back of the book and discovering (or better yet, confirming) Encyclopedia Brown's solution. As a reading detective I was sometimes successful, sometimes frustrated-but I always wanted more. I read as many of those books as I could lay hands on, and now, decades later, I find myself writing about clever characters who solve riddles and clues that the reader, too, might conceivably solve. What children's books shaped me? No mystery there.

Back in the 1960s, when I was the same age as the majority of my readers (fourth to sixth grade) we didn't read books in school. Nope. We had ... [ shudders] ... something called SRA, which was a big box of color-tabbed essays. When you answered all the questions about the, say, blue essay correctly, you moved on to the next color. When you got to the final color, the teacher might let you read an actual book.

So my love of reading and writing didn't come from children's books (I would've loved Edward Eager's 1954 book Half Magic -if only I'd known it existed). No, it came from "the usual gang of idiots" at Mad magazine. I bought my first subscription with five dollars I got for my tenth birthday. And all year I saved my money so I could purchase Mad books-collections of previously published material-when my family went on vacation to Florida.

Mad taught me the power of words, humor, and satire. They used to knock the stuffing out of everything-movies, TV shows, politicians, advertisements. Nothing was sacred. Later, in middle school, when I became the target of bullies, I think it was the spirt of Mad that helped me fight back with my wits instead of my fists. And, yes, I still subscribe to Mad to this day!

I wasn't born in India. My father was not a diamond merchant. At 11, I'd never been to London or set foot in a boarding school. And yet I found a kindred spirit in Sara Crewe of Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess. I knew rationally, of course, that Sara's life was nothing like mine, yet Burnett had created a character I yearned to be, living out a fantasy I didn't know I had. How did Burnett know so much about me? Every day when I sit down to write, I hope I can give an 11-year-old this same deep reading pleasure that books like A Little Princess gave to me.

Bonus: My favorite books this year include The Night Diaryby Veera Hiranandani,Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed, and by Kelly Yang.

Many books have shaped me, but the first one that comes to mind is Anne of Green Gables. I wanted to be more like Anne. Yes, her friends sometimes scoffed at her, she was an orphan, she wore ugly clothes, and she herself thought she was homely. Yet in spite of all that, she never considered herself less than her friends or peers. I, as a young Asian-American girl lost in a sea of white faces, who often felt lesser or out of place, longed for that same sense of self. No matter what embarrassment Anne caused herself, what catastrophe happened, she kept trying, believing that tomorrow would be a better day.

So how did Anne of Green Gablesshape me? It gave me a beautiful philosophy of cheerful perseverance that I attempt to incorporate daily in my life. It gave me a heroine who didn't let others or her circumstances decide her worthiness. And, most of all, it gave me a friend whom I can always return to when I'm in need of comfort.

My favorite Astrid Lindgren book wasn't her famous and wonderfully unruly Pippi Longstocking. It was and still is The Brothers Lionheart, the tale about two brothers whom death cannot part. Some critics accused Lindgren of describing what awaits us after death in such appealing ways that children might be tempted to kill themselves-an accusation Lindgren did of course smile about as she understood children far better than those critics. For me The Brothers Lionheart is an unforgettable tale about friendship, love, selflessness, and courage. Lindgren celebrates the circle of life in this book and shows death as just another door. She celebrates kindness and the willingness to fight for what we believe in without ever sounding like a missionary. She is far too good a storyteller to make that mistake!

The book that most inspired me to become a writer would definitely have to be The Young Landlords by Walter Dean Myers. Myers is most known for his masterpiece, , but this more obscure novel sent me into creative disarray, simply because I'd never read anything with such a cutting voice. And by cutting, I mean ... familiar. The plot is simple-a group of kids inherit a slum building for a dollar, therefore becoming young landlords. But they have no idea what it takes to deal with the complicated tenants and the janky joints of the building. It's a hilarious story of young optimism, even in the midst of kids unfairly taking on the responsibilities of adults, all told in razor-sharp rhetoric, drawing the reader into Paul, the protagonist's, life. I read it and immediately knew I could (and would) be a writer.

When I was in my 30s, I worked for a book wholesaler. My job title was "picker." I went around the warehouse filling orders, picking books off the shelves. One winter day, late in the afternoon, I picked a book called The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963. I read the first chapter of Christopher Paul Curtis' beautiful novel while I was standing on the warehouse floor. My arms were full of books. My feet hurt. Sunlight was streaming in through the windows, and I thought, "This. I want to try and do something like this. I want to write a book that makes someone laugh and cry. I want to write a book that tells the truth." I've been trying ever since.

For me, it was Anne of Green Gablesby L.M. Montgomery. Every time I reread it, I realize again how much it made me want to be a writer, an optimist, a kindred spirit, and someone who never stops finding things amazing, just like Anne. I've found a few other heroines I love the same way: the girls in Sanity & Tallulahby Molly Brooks, Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, Cilla Lee-Jenkins in the series by Susan Tan, and Nimona in by Noelle Stevenson, for example. But I think Anne Shirley will always be the character who first showed me the kind of person I wanted to be, how far imagination and determination can take you ... and how to think of each tomorrow as "a new day, with no mistakes in it yet."

It started with Fox in Socks. My mom would read it to me as a toddler. Then, I memorized it. And, I fell in love with poetry and stories and books. Until fifth grade. That's when everything changed. That's when my father made me read the encyclopedia. And if I didn't know what a word meant, he sent me to the 10-pound dictionary in our garage-turned-library. In middle school, he gave me his dissertations to read. Three of them. Then he quizzed me. Because of this, I started disliking books. Actually, loathing them.

And, then, one day while cleaning out the "library" I discovered a copy of The Greatest: My Own Storyby Muhammad Ali. It was a 400-plus page book about Ali's life, and I picked it up and started reading. I'd seen clips of his fights, read about him in a few children's picture books, and generally looked to him as the coolest, baddest, most incredible athlete and man to ever walk the earth. I was 12 years old, and I'd never read a book more than a few hundred pages. I couldn't put it down. The rhythm of his story. His bold voice. The audaciousness. The boxing. The jabs and the knockouts. I was enthralled. Read it in one night. It captivated me. Made me want to read again. And, I did. Reminded me that books could be cool. Made me want to be the greatest. How cool is it that, 30-plus years later, I am now writing a book for young people. About Muhammad Ali. Ain't life grand?

I was, I think, 10 years old when I checked A Tree Grows in Brooklynby Betty Smith out of the library in the small college town where I lived. Before I got home, the librarian had called my mother to express her concern. Apparently it was an "unsuitable book." It had, after all, been published for adults. My mother chuckled and ignored the librarian's warning. Thank goodness for that, because A Tree Grows in Brooklynbecame a life-changing book for me, a glimpse of real life with all its drama and tragedy and humor and grit. I hadn't found any of that in The Bobbsey Twins or Nancy Drew!

I first read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton five years after becoming a refugee from Vietnam. At the time, I was trying to find my own tribe, and The Outsidersgave me an insider's view of the social quagmire embedded in high school. I didn't see myself in any of the characters, but I clawed onto the ideas of family, honor, upward gaze, and authentic fun. I also found the book magical in how the opening scene circled around to the closing scene. Before reading it, I had not known a writer had the power to not just tell a story but choose which voice, whose point of view, and where to begin and end. Much later, as I attempted a novel, I often thought back to howThe Outsiders made me feel-pained, enlightened, angry, warm, hopeful, entertained-and challenged myself to do the same in my writing.

Matt De La Peña, award-winning author of children's and young adult books like Mexican WhiteBoy

I wasn't a big reader as a kid. All the books they assigned in school seemed like schoolwork. I painstakingly consumed them with my brain and never my heart. That all changed when a middle school teacher assigned The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. It was the first time I ever lost myself in a text. I felt like she was writing about the border community where I was born. The characters reminded me of my aunts and uncles and cousins. They reminded me of myself. And I'll never forget the moment that changed my perception of reading forever. In one of the vignettes, "Darius and the Clouds," Cisneros gives one of the book's most deeply philosophical and poetic lines to a boy character who is earlier described as "sometimes stupid" and "mostly a fool." Wait a minute, I remember thinking. Regular kids like me and my cousins can be portrayed as deep, too? I went on to read The House on Mango Streetover a dozen times, always with my heart. Back when I was a kid, it helped make me a reader. Today, it continues to guide me as a writer.

Sometimes you read a book and immediately know it will change your life. Other times, you meet a book at different stations on your life's journey and realize that its influence on you has been subtle, but no less powerful for the quiet ways it has shaped you as a reader, writer, and human being. One of those books for me is The Things They Carriedby Tim O'Brien.

Some might not classify this book as young adult, though most characters are young people on the cusp of adulthood who are pushed into adult situations as they are confronted by the worst horrors of the Vietnam War and its power over them, even once the war is over. This book occupies an interstitial space-neither solely memoir nor fiction, neither novel nor short story collection, both heartbreaking and healing all at once. I first read it when I, too, was on the cusp of adulthood, and then taught it to high school seniors. As a writer, I turn to it to reexamine its structure, theme, and the wrenching lyricism of its deceptively simple prose. The Things They Carried is a book about war and death and also about life and living memory-spaces I explore in my own writing. It's a book about tragedy that is also filled with hope. For me, it is a stunning example about the power of the word and singular brilliance of the human imagination that allows us to keep those we love with us, forever. There is a quote from this book that is taped to my desk, even though it is also etched in my mind: "But this too is true: stories can save us."

Slate has relationships with various online retailers. If you buy something through our links, Slate may earn an affiliate commission. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. All prices were up to date at the time of publication.

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Your Kids' Favorite Authors Tell Them What to Read This Summer

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Get your child genuinely excited to read this summer with Slate's kids' summer reading package . Got a reluctant reader on your hands? This librarian can help . Got an awkward middle schooler on your hands? He should read these books . Want to broaden your high schooler's horizons?

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Letting students discuss a test with peers before they take it can reduce anxiety-and it creates an opportunity to ask deeper questions.

Let's face it: A lot of students have test anxiety. How do we change test-taking so that we're creating a comfortable environment for our students to show what they really know? A strategy called Test Talk, which my late co-teacher Diana Herrington and I created, has helped my students relax during exams. Our students are pre-service elementary school teachers, but since I wrote about this strategy on Twitter several months ago, teachers around the country have let me know how they have used this with their K-12 students (and in subjects other than math).

Four years ago, Diana and I decided to dedicate the first five minutes of the testing period to having our students look over the test and talk about strategies to solve the problems. We would have them put their pencils on the ground so they could focus on having a conversation. Our students were grouped in fours, and they would talk within their group, but I've seen videos from other teachers trying this where their elementary students walk around so they can talk to any other student, and I now follow suit.

The purpose of this was twofold: First, we wanted to test the way we taught-students collaborated a lot in our class, so we decided to include some collaboration during the test. And second, we realized that a lot of our students had both math anxiety and testing anxiety.

What This Looks Like in Class

One of my favorite hobbies is listening to students talk about math. On test days, I walk around the classroom listening to pre-test conversations, and they're some of the best mathematical conversations I've ever heard. It's great to hear students collaborate and problem-solve, all while using mathematical vocabulary. For example, the test question below was to write a number sentence for each figure and to find the equation of growth for Figure n.

As I listened in, I heard comments like these (I'm paraphrasing):

I see a big square, with two extra rows and a single block each time

I counted from left to right, so I saw a row, a vertical column, a rectangle, then another row

I made one huge rectangle that fits the entire shape, then chopped off rectangles until I got the desired figure.

As these students shared their methods, I saw other students listening intently, asking clarifying questions to really understand the math, which is always a plus.

A Positive Reception From Students and Teachers

When I asked my students for their opinion about this approach, one of them said, "I'm not sure if it's just me, but I've had my fair share of experiences where I question absolutely everything I know in the few minutes before a test. The five-minute Test Talk gives me an opportunity to double- or triple-check my uncertainties with my classmates to give me more confidence and to settle my nerves before taking a test. I don't see it as an opportunity to try and learn something brand-new right before the test, but more as a chance to briefly collaborate about what I've already studied."

Since I first posted this idea on Twitter, many teachers have shared their variations on it. A teacher named Andre Sasser does her version of the Test Talk in the middle of the testing period-every student has something to contribute since they've had more time to think.

Some Concerns

There are many benefits to Test Talk: lowered anxiety, better energy in the room, better products, and great discussions. There are, however, some concerns about this strategy. For example, some teachers are hesitant because it might help to students who didn't study-and that might encourage them to not study in the future.

I can see that being true on a multiple-choice test, but on my tests the emphasis is on the explanations. And if we assume that we're going to have students talk before the test, we can ramp up the Depth of Knowledge level so that the test makes students think and collaborate together. For example, rather than write a test question having students compute 24 x 15, we can say, "Show how to compute 24 x 15 in three different ways that promote fluency."

Overall, I think of it this way: If I'm concerned that students will solve all the problems in five minutes, how can I make the test better so there's deeper thinking involved?

A potential complicating factor is students with disabilities who need to take their tests in a separate room. What I do for these students is give them the option to join the class for the five-minute Test Talk. If they do, they just walk to their testing room after the five minutes is up.

Measuring Learning After the Test

After the test is done and graded, my students still have the opportunity to prove that they know the content. It's OK if they didn't understand it by test day-some may take longer to grasp concepts, and I try to honor that. Because of this, I have students do revisions on their tests-I have them do this on a separate piece of paper so they can refer to their original thoughts. I strongly believe that we learn through reflection, so I have my students finish these sentence starters first:

I got this partially incorrect because...

I now know...

After identifying what went wrong, they do the problem again.

If we believe that it's important to meet the needs of all students, how do we create a testing environment in which students are less anxious, especially in a math classroom? With Test Talk, I've seen students who entered my class deathly scared of math gain the confidence to bring up great mathematical ideas for their group members to ponder.

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A Strategy for Reducing Math Test Anxiety

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Letting students discuss a test with peers before they take it can reduce anxiety-and it creates an opportunity to ask deeper questions. Let's face it: A lot of students have test anxiety. How do we change test-taking so that we're creating a comfortable environment for our students to show what they really know?

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Cult of Pedagogy's library of posts on assessment. Worth scrolling through.

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Tell me if this sounds like you: You hear about a new teaching idea and decide you'd like to try it. Then for the next two, three, six months, you put it off, waiting for the day when you can get it just right. Your "idea" file grows thicker and thicker, and most of it never gets used.

If this is you, it might be time to add a little beta to your practice.

In the tech world, the term beta refers to software or other products that have not yet been perfected, but are released to the public for a kind of trial run. In this piece from the online tech magazine MakeUseOf, Joel Lee explains: "The beta phase begins when a product propels from 'functional but hideous' to 'polished and ready to go.' Bugs are hunted down and fixed, features are improved or revamped for maximum usability, the interface and graphics receive an overhaul, and performance issues are optimized."

When I see the word beta attached to something, I get excited: Here's something brand-new! Anything could happen! But beyond that sense of anticipation, I have a great deal of admiration for developers in beta. And envy. Because in software development, the beta phase is an accepted, normal, predictable stage of product development. Problems and bugs are expected. It's a culture whose motto - " Release early, release often " - lifts up the notion that continuous improvement is way better than eternally holding out for perfection.

The concept of beta is now making its way into the business world. In their book The Start-up of You , entrepreneurs Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha advise readers to put themselves in a state of Permanent Beta. "We are all works in progress," they write. "Great people, like great companies, are always evolving. They're never finished and never fully developed. Each day presents an opportunity to learn more, do more, grow more. Permanent beta is a lifelong commitment to continuous personal growth."

Tech first, then business. So how about education? Isn't it time we consider making beta a standard part of our approach?

If we treated our practice the way developers treat software, we'd end up with a better product and greater job satisfaction. We already try new things all the time. The difference is our attitude about the process: So many people in education expect perfection the first time around. When we don't get it, we reject the good idea, move on to the next new one, and repeat the cycle. We're chasing our own tails.

But imagine if we embraced beta, if every attempt at something new were treated as the first in a series of iterations - repetitions of a process with the goal of making improvements each time around.

Here's what it might look like:

In Our Own Teaching: Mrs. Roberts has heard about Project-Based Learning (PBL), but she doesn't know where to start. Working with a colleague, she converts her smallest, simplest unit to one that incorporates more PBL aspects and takes it for a trial run. She's up front with her students, telling them this is the first time she's taught this way - this unit is still in beta - and she asks them for feedback at regular intervals. When something goes wrong, rather than immediately deciding that PBL is nonsense, she makes note of it for future iterations.

With Student Work: Mr. Bruno has tasked his science students with designing, conducting, and reporting on their own experiments. Rather than set a single deadline for finished work, he plans several phases: The first one is the beta phase, where students design and conduct their experiments, report on them, then make plans for improving their designs and going through another iteration.

In Administration: Dr. Stewart wants more of her staff to flip their classrooms this year, but instead of mandating it ("Everyone will flip at least 20 percent of their lessons. End of discussion."), she tells them this will be their beta year for flipping, that everyone should flip at least three lessons, spacing them far apart to allow time to learn from each attempt. She adds a 5-minute "What Went Wrong" feature to every faculty meeting, where different teachers report on something they learned about flipping from mistakes they made in one of their attempts.

On a Macro-Level: A new set of standards has been proposed! Rather than adopting them whole-cloth and mandating full implementation within a short span of time, your state institutes a series of beta years,during which teachers craft lessons using the new proposed standards, and a regular series of meetings and workshops is held to refine the standards. Several years later, the revised standards are released in their finished form.

Adding more beta to your practice can be very simple - just embrace the concept at times when everyone gets too focused on finished and perfect.

If you'd like to take things further, to develop an entire workflow that embraces the idea of iteration and trial and error, I recommend Design Thinking for Educators, a free 80-page pdf written by the global design firm IDEO. The manual shows teachers how to use the same process designers use to creatively solve problems with curriculum, physical spaces like classrooms and cafeterias, and processes, such as the way your school handles students' daily arrival and departure.

The guide includes step-by-step instructions for developing and testing ideas, and it includes case studies to show you the principles in action. There's even a set of worksheets to take you through the planning. It contains so many ideas that I had never even thought about, but would be so useful in an educational setting, such as the section on how to pitch a concept, which shows you how to convince others that your idea could work for them. And although it's not named as such, the notion of beta - of prototyping and revising solutions in cycles of continuous improvement - is present throughout.

As an educator, you are a designer. A developer. You design and develop spaces, materials, systems and experiences. It's time you start thinking of yourself that way.

Now. Go dig into that idea folder. ♦

Stay in touch.
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Teaching in Beta: What We Can Learn from Software Developers

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We already try new things all the time, but we expect perfection the first time around. When we don't get it, we reject the good idea, move on to the next new one, and repeat the cycle. We're chasing our own tails.

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While this is written for science teachers, I feel like there is so much here we could all put into practice, so I’m posting it in ELA too.

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There are a variety of ways to incorporate literacy strategies in science education without sacrificing content.

©iStock/Nadzeya_Dzivakova

Written and spoken language play a significant role in all classes. But if you're trained as a science teacher, how do you support literacy development without losing content time for science?

Rethink Literacy

Asking students to think critically while reading science reports, news and pop science, graphs, and documentaries;

Challenging students to connect multiple sources of media, analyze a source's potential bias, or identify an unreliable source; and

Asking students to write or speak about science findings from a review of research or their own experiments with an audience in mind.

Good news: You already teach literacy. Science teachers offer students many opportunities to improve their literacy skills, including:

Components of literacy are already present in the science classroom. The key is to mindfully support the levels of reading, writing, and speaking skills your students possess, while focusing on content.

Embed Supports

A key method to support skill development without taking away content time is to embed supports.

When you're in direct instruction, acknowledge your strategies. Model reading a science text by thinking aloud with your questions about the text, making connections, or summarizing as you read.

Include multiple types of sources: Students can be given a chance to discuss a chart or watch a short video to set some baseline understanding before tackling a text on the same topic. Be sure to ask students to connect the different mediums-you may be surprised at how many of them initially see the pieces of information as unrelated.

Embed writing supports: Provide opportunities for students to write parts of their notes in their own words, with structure. For example, ask students to summarize a main idea as part of their notes for the day. For students who need more support, create a sentence frame and word bank. Mentor texts are another great way to clarify expectations and demonstrate strong writing; choose a former student's work to share with the class and ask students to identify what is right about the response.

Original prompt: Describe the process of photosynthesis as it relates to glucose production. Explain how plants and other living organisms depend on one another.

Annotated version: Describe the process of 1) photosynthesis as it relates to 2) glucose production. Explain how plants and other living organisms 3) depend on one another.

Annotate the prompt: Science prompts are often multifaceted, and scoring depends on students' responding to each component of the question. Students who miss points often know the materials but have difficulty processing the entire question. Students can learn to identify each part of a prompt and use each identified requirement as a section in their writing. Here's an example:

Readers Below Grade Level

Some students can discuss the science topics but struggle to access any material they have to read. There are several ways to address these below-grade-level readers' needs.

Engineer a text: Take a grade level piece of text and center it on a page. Create a column to the left where you pull out and define key vocabulary, and one on the right where you ask questions of the reader. These questions can be tailored for many levels of readers, ranging from supportive, fact-based questions (helping students read to find out the key facts) to application and extension questions for your readers above grade level. The result is differentiated instruction for your students.

Use technology to expose students to texts: Even if a student is unable to independently read a text, they can develop grade-level literacy skills by interacting with vocabulary, sentence structures, and content of higher-level texts through technology. Several devices have the option to enable text-to-speech functions, which have the device read the text out loud. Speech-to-text functions allow students to speak what they want to have typed. This function requires some practice-don't ask the student to use it for the first time on an assessment.

The Immersive Reader program from Microsoft also reads texts to students. It includes other enhancements, like syllable recognition and the ability to highlight as you read. It even has parts-of-speech recognition to support writing.

Two more benefits for science teachers in promoting literacy: As my students improved their engagement with the literacy inherent to science class, I noticed an increase in engagement with the content and a decrease in disruptions.

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Supporting Literacy in the Science Classroom

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There are a variety of ways to incorporate literacy strategies in science education without sacrificing content.

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Using "I Am" Poetry for Synthesizing Text

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Using "I Am" Poetry for Synthesizing Text

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AMLE - Association for Middle Level Education

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Much of the writing we assign our students is public writing-writing to communicate with others. Writing-to-learn is personal writing, writing that helps students increase comprehension of texts-fiction and nonfiction-in all disciplines. Reader response compels readers to interact with the text and makes visible for readers and their teachers the depth of text comprehension. This is the eighth in a series of columns on scaffolding writing-to-learn by teaching a variety of reader response strategies before, during, and after reading.
The first six Write to Learn columns focused on before-reading response and a variety of during-reading response strategies. The previous column, this column, and the next two columns in the series will share strategies for employing after-reading response across the disciplines. Effective after-reading response employs a text reformulation strategy where readers reconstruct text read into another type of text. This synthesis, a critical thinking skill that involves putting together assorted parts to make a new whole, helps readers in all disciplines not only relate information learned, but also rethink the meaning of this learning and connect to other learnings and readers' developing views of their world.

The "I Am" Poem

In "I Am" poetry, readers write from the perspective of something they have read in a text or textbook. They could be writing from the perspective of a character in a story or poem; a person from a memoir or biography; a scientist or a scientific theory, element, or concept; a person, event, or place in history; a mathematical concept or principle; or a disease, condition, or issue in health.

The "I Am" poem follows a format that requires readers to read and analyze how the character, person, item, or event would view its world and its place in the world, returning to the text multiple times to apply what they have learned. This writing also causes readers to synthesize new material with information they already know or new information they may research to create their poem. In the case of items, events, or even places, particularly in social studies, science, math, and health classes, the writer would employ personification.

There is a standard format readers/writers can follow (see Figure 1), but they are encouraged to modify the verbs to fit their topic and their own visions. This format places the reader into another's shoes, so to speak, and requires that they read more deeply, closely, and critically as they explore text from a particular point of view (Roessing, 2016).

Figure 1
"I Am" Poetry Standard Format

I am __________________________
[character's name and identity]
I wonder _______________________
I hear _________________________
I see __________________________
I want _________________________
I am __________________________
[not the name in Line 1, but additional information about the character]

I pretend _______________________
I feel __________________________
I touch _________________________
I worry _________________________
I cry ___________________________
I am ___________________________
[not the name in Line 1, but additional information about the character]

I understand _____________________
I say ___________________________
I dream _________________________
I try ____________________________
I hope __________________________
I am ____________________________
[character's name, including more information about the character as a conclusion]

To plan their writing, the class can first brainstorm perspectives from which the text they read can be viewed. If students are reading different texts, individually or in a small group, a short article, story, or poem can be read to provide an example. For example, in the poem "Casey at the Bat," someone could write from the perspective of Casey, one of his teammates, a fan (one of the "patrons of the game"), or the Mudville coach. For the article, "The Great Pandemic of 1918-19," students brainstormed that they could write from the perspective of a man, woman, or child living in Philadelphia in 1918-1919; a victim of the Great Pandemic; a Philadelphia funeral director; the mayor of Philadelphia, 1918-1919; or even The Great Pandemic itself (Roessing, 2016).

Students choose the perspective(s) from which they will revisit the text. As they reread, they first mark details that now become important from that viewpoint. Students consider the "I Am" poem format and examine and analyze the text for ideas, considering what the character or entity would see, feel, worry about, say, understand, or any of the verbs they will substitute that may better fit their interpretations and responses. Readers, especially in the disciplines, may add research from other sources.

When readers alter perspective, they modify and amend meaning, the details that they notice, and the facts and evidence that become important. Teaching readers to read from varied perspectives leads to reading through multiple lenses, thereby, discovering differing points of view. This practice results in considering differently and understanding more profoundly and meaningfully (Roessing, 2016).

English-Language Arts

In ELA classes, the students read Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman. This small novel is comprised of chapters that are each written by a different character. After readers read and discuss the novel, they can choose a different character from whose perspective they will write an "I Am" poem. The "I Am" poem should incorporate more than that character's chapter as the characters interact and influence each other throughout the book. In the example in Figure 2, the first two stanzas are the poem of Kim, the character of the first chapter, and all information is extracted from that chapter or inferences from the Chapter 1 text.

Figure 2
Example from Seedfolks, I Am Kim

I am Kim, a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl.
I wonder if my father would have loved me if he had lived until I was born.
I hear my mother and oldest sister crying past midnight on the anniversary of his death.
I see the candles, incense, rice, and meat offered to honor my father.
I want to plant beans because my father had been a farmer.
I am going to plant them in the vacant lot across the street; our apartment has no yard.

I pretend that my father will be able to see my beans grow and know I am his daughter.
I feel the hard ground as I dig six holes with my spoon.
I touch my cheeks which feel like marble in this cold Cleveland April.
I worry if I will be safe because the lot is full of trash; I show bravery.
I cry when my mother and sister cry but think of something to do.
I am the first gardener in a poor, ethnically and racially diverse neighborhood where no one talks to each other.

A third stanza would be comprised of critical thinking about her relationships with characters and events from other chapters so all students review the entire novel-or their during-reading response journals-on all chapters.

When all students have written their poems, they can assemble in a circle around the room reading their poems in the order the characters appear in the story. As they read aloud, each can take on the persona of their character through their voice and attitude. Readers can each present their first two stanzas, based on the characters' chapters, and then circle again, reading their third stanzas, which demonstrate the relationships built through the novel.

Writing "I Am" poetry causes readers to reflect on their reading, the characters, their environments and relationships, their personality traits, and how those traits determine their goals and decisions-positive or negative. Creating this poetry causes readers to look more critically at texts, synthesizing what they are reading with what they know, have read, and have learned.

Responding to novels, readers can not only write from the perspective of a character but the creative writer can pursue an innovative direction. For example, in Linda Sue Park's novel A Long Walk to Water, readers can create poems from the perspectives of either of the two main characters, Nya or Salva, a minor character, or even, as happened in one class, from the perspective of Water. In response to Seedfolks, a student may write from the perspective of the developing garden or from the viewpoint of an inhabitant of the neighborhood who does not appear in the story. This is a format that encourages creativity in thinking, rather than inhibiting it.

Social Studies

In social studies classes, students more commonly read textbook chapters and articles while studying a unit. When studying a unit on the Holocaust, students read supplemental articles on different topics within the unit, one topic being the Warsaw ghetto. They then may write "I Am" poetry about people, real and fictitious, who were impacted by the topic they explored. When reading articles about the Warsaw ghetto, the poem in Figure 3 was written as an after-reading response.

I am a child of Warsaw, October 12, 1940.
I wonder what it would be like to live out in the open, in our own house again.
I hear the sounds of 400,000 people crowded together in this ghetto in a 1.3 square mile area, surrounded by a wall, the largest ghetto in Poland.
I see Nazi soldiers yelling at people and taking families away-To where?
I want something to eat; food is becoming more and more scarce.
I am a Jew in a time and place dangerous to be Jewish, wearing a white armband with a blue star as identification.

I pretend life is as it once was-Warsaw a major center of Jewish life; 30% of the population was Jewish.
I feel that life as we have known it has now ended.
I know that Poland was invaded by the Germans in 1939 and nothing has been the same since.
I touch the sides of the truck that takes my friends out of the ghetto. It is August 1942.
I worry that I will never see them again; we hear that "work" camps are really death camps.
I cry as people die even here in the ghetto-83,000 from starvation and disease.
I become part of the Jewish Combat Organization, a self-defense resistance unit in the ghetto; in January 1943 we forced the Germans to withdraw.

I understand that when Hitler came to power everything changed for the Jews and others who are not Aryan and that these troops will return.
I dream there is a chance that life will be as I planned with my own family practicing my own religion accomplishing in my own profession.
I take part in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944; 7,000 Jews died.
I try to hide in the ruins of the liquidated ghetto where the Nazis had leveled every building.
I was shipped to a labor camp and am one of the few Jewish survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Not only were facts from the article such as dates, names, places, events, and statistics included, but when composing the poem, the writer had to reflect on what someone in this young man's situation would have seen, wanted, worried about, dreamt, and hoped. The reader of the poem can observe not only what the writer has read, but also what the writer has inferred and synthesized with prior knowledge he had or what he learned about the Holocaust in the social studies unit. The poem necessitates and demonstrates critical thinking, and the format encourages and promotes many trips back to the text for clarification and deeper comprehension and learning of the material.

Science

In science class, students were asked to review the past unit on forces and motion and choose a topic as the focus of an "I Am" poem. They could use their text and were to review their notes. The teacher helped the students brainstorm appropriate verbs, and students wrote as gravity, force, friction, inertia, Newton's Laws of Motion, or a stomp rocket (which they were designing and testing in class). Asleigh's poem (Figure 4) about friction personifies and explains friction and illustrates what she has learned.

I am friction.
I engage when two objects rub together.
I yank back objects from moving.
I supersize when the object gets heavier.
I slip between the sled and the snow.
I am friction.

I slide between the brakes and wheels when the car tries to stop.
I pull to the opposite side where the object is trying to go.
I struggle to keep the object from moving.
I worry when there is less of me because it is harder to stop.
I cry when it is raining because there is less of me; rain causes accidents because objects have no grip.
I am friction.

I take many forms: static, sliding, rolling, and fluid.
I crackle when two hands rub together to create heat.
I am stronger on solid objects when they rub together than liquids.
I activate when you are running and you stop quickly.
I like to shock you when I build up and you touch metals.
I am friction, and just know that the next time you go down a slide, I will be there.

Chase's poem "I Am Gravity" reveals, "I make it harder to get off the ground. I wonder why people even bother jumping because I will always win," concluding that stanza with "I am the pull that keeps everything down." Later in the poem he adds more information about this topic, "I become weaker on planets such as Pluto, Mars, Venus, and Mercury because they are less massive," and he ends the poem by making the point, "I am Gravity, and I keep the planets in orbit around the sun."

Other Classes

Students can also find topics to write about in mathematics, such as I Am a decimal, a fraction, area, a rational number, a variable, an exponent, or the Pythagorean theorem. In health class, students can write an "I Am" poem from the perspective of someone affected by a disease or a condition, such as "I Am an Athlete with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)," "I Am a Smoker," or "I Am a Teenage Mother." Or students can write from the viewpoint of the topic, as "I Am Alcohol."

In these examples, besides encouraging and training readers to read and examine topics from particular perspectives, "I Am" poetry is employed as an after-reading response strategy encouraging readers to return to the text multiple times, manipulating text to comprehend at a deeper level as they analyze to synthesize learning. Because writing "I Am" poems allows for choice, creativity, and fun, students are motivated and engaged, the key to successful learning.

Reference

Roessing, L. (2016). "One text-Many perspectives: Writing the "I am" poem to read through divergent lenses. AMLE Magazine, 4(1), 42-46.

Lesley Roessing taught middle school for 20 years before becoming the founding director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project and senior lecturer in the College of Education of Georgia Southern University, Armstrong campus. Lesley has published four professional books for educators, as well as chapters and articles on literacy. The ideas in this column were based on The Write to Read: Response Journals That Increase Comprehension (Corwin, 2009).
lesleyroessing@gmail.com Published inAMLE Magazine, April 2019.

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After-Reading Response: "I Am" Poetry for Synthesizing Text

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Much of the writing we assign our students is public writing-writing to communicate with others. Writing-to-learn is personal writing, writing that helps students increase comprehension of texts-fiction and nonfiction-in all disciplines. Reader response compels readers to interact with the text and makes visible for readers and their teachers the depth of text comprehension.

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Learning to Read Like Writers With ‘Anatomy of a Scene’

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Learning to Read Like Writers With ‘Anatomy of a Scene’

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An English teacher explains how she uses “Anatomy of a Scene,” a New York Times weekly video series in which directors comment on the craft of moviemaking, to help students step inside an author’s mind so they can begin to analyze and evaluate literature like a writer.

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Learning to Read Like Writers With ‘Anatomy of a Scene’ (Published 2019)

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An English teacher describes how she uses the weekly video series to deepen students’ literary analysis.

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I love this idea. If you want to try it out, I'll support you!

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If you make the kind of visual books I do, they really have to be seen to be understood. I came across these "art book walkthroughs" by Graeme Franks a few days ago. Simple, perfect online advertisements for my kind of books. Here's the one for Steal Like An Artist and here's the one for Show Your Work!

I had my six-year-old do (a more hurried & shaky) one in the trailer for :

And way back in 2010, I did one for the Newspaper Blackout trailer. I think I used some sort of HD camcorder, but now, of course, you can just use an off-the-shelf iPhone. (And get better quality, too!)

UPDATE: Graeme made one for , too!

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If you make the kind of visual books I do, they really have to be seen to be understood. I came across these "art book walkthroughs" by Graeme Franks a few days ago. Simple, perfect online advertisements for my kind of books. Here's the one for Steal Like An Artist and here's the one for Show Your Work!

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“I had been found out. Holden Caulfield would have called me a phony. How could I expect my students to read if I wasn’t making the effort?“ Her advice:
1. Go beyond the book talk.
2. Get off the shelf & out of the classroom.
3. Say it with me: young adult literature is PD

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Recently, student teachers on campus caused me to reflect on my own teacher preparation program and on a conversation that altered two aspects of my identity I had yet to unite in graduate school: reader and teacher. Our professor was discussing possible interview questions for an upcoming teacher recruitment event with my cohort. The question that bewildered us as future English teachers may surprise you: What have you read lately?

What followed was an uncomfortable silence, then rationalized defenses of being too busy to go beyond the required reading of journal articles and textbooks. I sat at the table feeling inadequate. I had been found out. Holden Caulfield would have called me a phony. How could I expect my students to read if I wasn't making the effort?

My professor then led us through an honest conversation about how feeling busy was an inevitable part of life, and how, if reading mattered to us and our students, we would need to make that distinction both now and moving forward into our teaching careers.

Now in my fourth year teaching high school English, I've developed a teacher reader identity that is both noticeable and familiar. Reading is routine. This matters because, when students see their teachers as readers, they continue to develop their own literacy practices.

If you're looking for new ways to build your teacher reader identity, the following suggestions have worked for me and my classroom:

Go beyond the book talk.

The way you spend your time says much about who you are; how you spend instructional time with students is no different. It's not enough to give an occasional "book talk" and expect students to see you as a reader. Dedicated class time for reading self-selected texts is key for developing readers, both students and teachers alike.

In my classroom, we have at least twenty minutes of protected class time to read a text of choice every day. We establish norms and give each other permission to explore books with this simple truth: some books aren't for everyone (and that's okay!), but there is a book for everyone and when you find one, it's simply magical.

By the way, the teacher must read during this protected time, too. Attendance, grading, and other tasks can wait while you get lost in a book and show your students you're reading alongside them.

Get off the shelf and out of the classroom.

Many teachers utilize social media accounts to connect with students and others beyond the physical classroom. These accounts can allow teachers to recommend texts and curate a reading identity outside of the classroom.

Last year, I began sharing book recommendations by using a hashtag: #ShelbsTheReader. Students quickly began interacting with these posts-tagging friends, comparing books in the comments, and even asking to borrow books after seeing my posts online.

If you don't want to manage an account, consider sharing already established social media accounts of other book reviewers, local booksellers, and publishing companies that frequently recommend texts that you would also recommend.

Say it with me: young adult literature is professional development

I used to feel guilty about spending weekends devouring a book while other seemingly more important tasks like grading or curriculum planning languished on my to-do list. My perception changed when I began to notice how the young adult literature I was reading informed conversations I was having with my students and impacted my pedagogy.

For example, when I read Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram, I learned about the dangers of minimizing conversations around mental health, which I applied in my classroom through curriculum-centering discussions on toxic masculinity and imposter syndrome.

Also, the transition from high school to college portrayed in Emergency Contact by Mary H. K. Choi helped me navigate conversations with students about to graduate. The texts you choose to read and share as a teacher, especially those stories that reflect your students' identities and lives, affirms their humanity and celebrates their existence in your classroom.

So, what have you read lately? For the love of reading, find time to display your teacher and reader identity to your students.

Shelby Boehm teaches tenth-grade English language arts at P. K. Yonge Developmental Research School, the University of Florida's affiliated K-12 laboratory school. She can be reached at sboehm@pky.ufl.edu or on Twitter @TeamBoehm.

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For the Love of Reading: Developing a Teacher Reader Identity - NCTE

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Recently, student teachers on campus caused me to reflect on my own teacher preparation program and on a conversation that altered two aspects of my identity I had yet to unite in graduate school: reader and teacher. Our professor was discussing possible interview questions for an upcoming teacher recruitment event with my cohort.

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In honor of Music in Our Schools Month: Nine Teaching Ideas for Using Music to Inspire Student Writing

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Kelela performing at the 2016 Sónar festival in Barcelona. What artists do your students believe are the future of music? This is just one of our many music-related writing prompts. Related Article Credit... Xavi Torrent/Redferns

Some of the greatest written works of our time have been inspired by music. Walt Whitman conceived of and wrote "Leaves of Grass" while listening to opera. Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, Ntozake Shange and Ralph Ellison were all moved by spirituals, jazz and blues. And Lin-Manuel Miranda's rap musical "Hamilton" was born of his love of hip-hop. These writers understood what many educational researchers know - that music opens up pathways to creative thinking, sharpens our ability to listen and helps us weave together disparate ideas.

In this teaching resource, we suggest nine exercises to use music to inspire student writing - from creating annotated playlists and critical reviews to music-inspired poetry and personal narratives. Each idea pulls from Times reporting, Opinion pieces and multimedia on music to give students a place to start. The activities are categorized according to three genres: creative and narrative writing; informative and explanatory writing; and persuasive and argumentative writing.

How do you use music in your classroom? Let us know in the comments.
_________ Exercise #1: Write a story or poem inspired by music.

One way you might let your students be inspired by music is to have them describe in words what they hear, a method Jean-Michel Basquiat employed in his poetry and paintings.

In " Bowie, Bach and Bebop: How Music Powered Basquiat," Ekow Eshun writes:

In 1979, at 19, the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat moved into an abandoned apartment on East 12th Street in Manhattan with his girlfriend at the time, Alexis Adler. The home, a sixth-floor walk-up, was run-down and sparsely furnished. Basquiat, broke and unable to afford canvases, painted with abandon on the walls and floor, even on Ms. Adler's clothes.

The one item that remained undisturbed was Ms. Adler's stereo, which had pride of place on a shelf scavenged from the street.

"The main thing for us was having big speakers and a blasting stereo. That was the only furniture I purchased myself," said Ms. Adler, who still lives in the apartment. When Basquiat was around, she recalled, "music was playing all the time."

On Thursday, the exhibition "Basquiat: Boom for Real" opened at the Barbican Center in London. The show focuses on the artist's relationship to music, text, film and television. But it is jazz - the musical style that made up the bulk of Basquiat's huge record collection - that looms largest as a source of personal inspiration to him and as a subject matter.

Next, have students listen to a song or playlist (perhaps one they created, one you created or one of these Times-curated ones) and, like Basquiat, let them write what they hear:

* describe the images that come to mind;
* name the feelings and thoughts triggered by the imagery and sounds in the music;
* mimic the pacing and rhythm through word choice, sentence structure and line breaks;
* borrow the words, phrases or lines that resonate most;
* or build on a theme or message.

Here's an example of what one composer wrote as he listened to his own classical piece, "Become Desert":

From the stillness around you a high glassy sound descends, like first light. Each new sound seems to breathe - emerging from and receding back into the stillness - and the glint of bells, like desert plants, here and there.

Almost imperceptibly the music swells and continues falling in pitch.

From somewhere above - like a gleam of metal, like sunlight emerging from behind a ridgeline - comes the sound of flutes.

You are in a strange landscape. You don't know how to read the weather or the light. You are unsure how long you will be here, or how challenging the journey may be.

To take this exercise a step further, students might use what they wrote while listening to music to develop a short story or poem. They might share their writing and song choices with the class so their classmates can analyze how music inspired their writing.

Exercise #2: Pen your own song or rap.
Invite students to write their own music about topics, events or themes you are studying in class. How can they summarize in song the role of the mitochondria, the main themes of "Romeo and Juliet" or the events that led to the Civil War?

Here's an example from Julien Turner, 20, who produced this music video called " XY Cell Life " for a college biology class:

For inspiration, students might check out the Times " Diary of a Song" video series to see how songwriters and musicians like Zedd, Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber make hits. What stands out to them about these songs? What are the artists' processes for making music? How do they write lyrics and sounds that resonate with an audience? How do they communicate content and emotion?

Or, invite them to make their own music videos or recorded songs. In this case, you might refer to use our lesson plan " Project Audio: Teaching Students How to Produce Their Own Podcasts," which has a helpful section on audio editing and advice for gathering non copyrighted sound effects and music.
Exercise #3: Share what music means to you.

We have published over 1,000 writing prompts for students, including many, like the questions above, dedicated to personal and narrative writing about music. You might have your students choose a question that speaks to them and read the related Times article. Then invite them to share their thoughts, stories, opinions and experiences in writing.

You can search "music" to find our newest music-related writing prompts here, which are open for comment indefinitely.
_________ Exercise #4: Connect songs to current events.

Music has always been a reflection of and window into society, culture and history - and the current era is no different. Hip-hop, folk, classical and even opera music draw on current events and politics for source material.

What connections can your students make between the music they listen to and current events? How does learning more about the context in which a song was written help them better understand it?

You might start by having students read and analyze how journalists make connections between music and current events every day. Take Childish Gamino's latest video, " This Is America," for instance. In a roundup of the best writing about this music video, Judy Berman writes:

But Glover's graceful moves aren't exactly the point. There's plenty of messaging about race, violence and the entertainment industry in the song and video - which helps explain why fans and critics have devoted so much time to dissecting its references and debating its meaning.

And Doreen St. Félix from The New Yorker relates the video to the present day:

The video has already been rapturously described as a powerful rally cry against gun violence, a powerful portrait of black-American existentialism, a powerful indictment of a culture that circulates videos of black children dying as easily as it does videos of black children dancing in parking lots.

You might have students read the roundup or one of the articles it excerpts, or let them choose another topic or genre that interests them, such as:
Beethoven's 200-Year-Old 'Fidelio' Enters Today's Prisons
Mouse on Mars at M.I.T.: A Symposium Becomes a Dance Party
Eminem Lashes Out at Trump in Freestyle Rap Video
New 'Hamilton Mixtape' Video Takes Aim at Immigration
Celebrating Women's Rights, 'That Most American of Operas'
Watch 5 Moments When Classical Music Met Politics
Can North Korea Handle a K-Pop Invasion?
Review: Beyoncé Is Bigger Than Coachella
For whichever article they choose, students should consider: What current events does the music they read about reference? How do these allusions contribute to the artist's message? What other themes in the music can they relate to what is happening in the world?

Then, challenge students to pair a song of their choosing with one or more Times articles and write an essay that explains the relationship between the song and the current or historical events.

Students might start by annotatingsong lyrics themselves or referring to Genius to find explicit connections and discover underlying themes that in some way relate to society, culture, history and politics. Students may also choose to research the artist to find out more about his or her background, beliefs and politics.
Exercise #5: Create an annotated playlist of songs related to a topic.

Every Friday, The Times publishes " The Playlist," a weekly tour of notable new music and videos. Times pop music critics choose about a dozen of the week's most popular or intriguing songs and music videos and write a short commentary for each. They even create a Spotify playlist of the songs each week.

Students can read through several of the past columns and listen to the playlists to determine what makes for compelling commentary. For example, on Billie Eilish's and Khalid's "Lovely," Jon Pareles writes:

"Lovely" is the song of someone inextricably attached or trapped: "I hope someday I'll make it out of here," Billie Eilish sings with Khalid - not in dialogue or counterpoint, but in unison, as if they're each others' partner and burden. "Wanna feel alive outside/I can fight my fear." The backdrop is piano and strings lingering on two chords; the melancholy never lifts, and at the end Khalid and Ms. Eilish share a chilling greeting: "Hello-welcome home." J.P.

And on First Aid Kit's "Fireworks," Mr. Pareles writes:

First Aid Kit, a duo of sisters from Sweden who usually favor a folky, countryish approach - they've got a song named "Emmylou," after Ms. Harris - turn to a gauzy retro sound in "Fireworks," a song always about ending up lonely: "Why do I do this to myself every time/I know the way it ends even before it's begun." With a 1950s slow-dance beat and echoey guitars, it's already nostalgic for the next failed romance. J.P.

Ask students: What do they notice about h ow the commentary is written? What does the writer include and why? How is it organized? What makes it interesting (or not)?

After students have curated their own playlists, they are ready to write song annotations. Some ingredients they should include in their writing are: a claim explaining how the song relates to the topic or theme; evidence from the song (e.g., lyrics, instruments, rhythm or melodies) illustrating their claim; and analysis that explains the significance of these aspects of the song.

Students can share their final playlists on Spotify so that everyone in the class can listen to and comment on them.
Exercise #6: Profile an artist in an imagined interview.

The Times Music section regularly profiles artists from different genres, time periods and corners of the globe. Students can use these articles and interviews as mentor texts before doing research and writing their own mini-biographies of a music figure they admire.

In an "imagined interview," students, working individually or in pairs, play the part of both interviewer and interviewee. They do background research on an artist they select, come up with a list of questions and answers for the interview, and then write a profile on their subject.

To start, have students read one of these interviews with musicians:
Khalid, the Teenager With 5 Grammy Nominations: 'They Got It Right This Year'
Jay-Z and Dean Baquet, in Conversation
John Mayer Has More to Say: The Outtakes
Bruce Springsteen on Broadway: The Boss on His 'First Real Job'
Adele on '25': Song by Song
In Hip-Hop, Inspiration Arrived by Way of Kirk Franklin
Gwen Stefani on Spirituality, Insecurity, Pharrell and 'Truth'

Ask students: What types of questions did the interviewer ask? What subjects did the two discuss? What questions were missing from the interview that you wish were asked?

If you plan on having students write narratives based on their imagined interviews, they should also read at least one example of how Times writers write narratives based on interviews. Here are a few:
The 5 'Handsome Girls' Trying to Be China's Biggest Boy Band
'I Could Barely Sing a High C': Pretty Yende Finally Conquers Lucia
For Milford Graves, Jazz Innovation Is Only Part of the Alchemy
Dua Lipa Was Raised on Pop Bangers. Now She Writes Them.
Valee, Kanye West's New Signee, Is a Rapper Who Just Might Build You a Koi Pond
Rafiq Bhatia Is Writing His Own Musical Language
Ashley McBryde Takes Nashville, No Gimmicks Required
While reading, they should consider the following: What information did the reporter include and why do you think they made these choices? How did they effectively weave in biographical details to tell a story about the artist and the music?

Next, assign students to choose their own musical artist to interview and profile. The following steps can guide students through the process:

1. Do Your Research: To learn more about the artist you selected to interview, do an in-depth study of several song lyrics or an album, read published interviews with the artist, watch a video or listen to radio interviews to see how the artist speaks.

2. Prepare Your Questions: Consider this artist's particular music and biography. What more do you want to know about the artist and his or her music? What in the songs or videos you studied struck you that you would like to ask about? For more inspiration, our lesson plan " Beyond Question: Learning the Art of the Interview " provides additional advice on how to conduct good interviews.

3. Conduct Your Imagined Interview: Based on your research of artists - their background, their music and the way they speak - imagine how they might respond to your questions. Be creative, but try to stay true to who the artist is. Alternatively, you could role-play the interview in partners, where one person is the interviewer and the other is the artist. It might be helpful to record the interview and take notes.

4. Write Your Article: You may choose to write your interview in a question and answer format, or create a narrative.

5. Share the Final Product: Share your imagined interviews with your classmates and reflect on the activity. Was your writing convincing to readers? What did you learn about writing artist profiles?
_________ Exercise #7: Review an artist, album or song.

Which artists, albums and songs can your students not stop talking about - either because they love them or hate them? Channel that energy into an argumentative essay using our culture review-writing lesson plan. In this lesson, students read Times reviews and heed advice from Times critics to write their own. They practice developing a clear claim, citing evidence and writing with a strong voice.

You might allow students to choose one of their favorite (or least favorite) artists or songs to practice writing passionately and knowledgeably about a subject. Or, challenge them to explore a genre of music they might not normally listen to and see what they can learn.

Consider having your students submit their finished pieces to our annual student review contest. They can read winning reviews from past years here.
Exercise #8: Weigh in on the latest criticisms, trends and news in music.

You can invite students to weigh in on the music-related topics they care about most in a group writing activity that mimics the conversational style of this podcast. Here, they learn how to make a claim, develop it with evidence, write counterclaims and respond directly to one another in an informal and fun way.

First, you might start by having students listen to one full episode or excerpts from " Popcast " to analyze how the discussion unfolds. What background information is provided? How do the critics talk to and respond to one another? How do they open and close each episode?

Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar Break Boundaries

A Coachella set stunning in scope and execution. The first Pulitzer Prize winner who isn't from classical or jazz. Hear a conversation about the two artists' triumphs.

Or, you might have students examine what a conversation like this looks like in writing. " Kendrick Lamar Shakes Up the Pulitzer Game: Let's Discuss " by Times music editors provides a good example. The conversation begins:

JON PARELES To me, this prize is as overdue as it was unexpected. When I look at the Pulitzers across the board, what I overwhelmingly see rewarded are journalistic virtues: fact-gathering, vivid detail, storytelling, topicality, verbal dexterity and, often, real-world impact after publication. It's an award for hard-won persuasiveness. Well hello, hip-hop.

ZACHARY WOOLFE ... But there is also wariness, which I join, about an opening of the prize - not to hip-hop, per se, but to music that has achieved blockbuster commercial success. This is now officially one fewer guaranteed platform - which, yes, should be open to many genres - for noncommercial work, which scrapes by on grants, fellowships, commissions and, yes, awards.

PARELES That response is similar to many publishing-world reactions when Bob Dylan got the Nobel Prize in Literature - that a promotional opportunity was being lost for something worthy but more obscure, preferably between hard covers. A literary figure who had changed the way an entire generation looked at words and ideas was supposed to forgo the award because, well, he'd reached too many people? Do we really want to put a sales ceiling on what should get an award? The New York Times and The New Yorker already have a lot of subscribers ... uh-oh.

Then, in small groups, have students come up with their own music topics worthy of debate. For inspiration, they might browse some of the past "Popcast" episodes.

You might then have them brainstorm some initial ideas and conduct research in the Times Music section to deepen and broaden their knowledge about the subject.

Next, invite them into a written conversation about their chosen topic. One student initiates the conversation and then each person in the group takes a turn responding to what each other writes - acknowledging their classmates' remarks, voicing their own opinions, making connections and citing evidence to support or disagree with others.
Exercise #9: Write an editorial on a music-related topic.

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Nine Teaching Ideas for Using Music to Inspire Student Writing

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Some of the greatest written works of our time have been inspired by music. Walt Whitman conceived of and wrote "Leaves of Grass" while listening to opera. Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, Ntozake Shange and Ralph Ellison were all moved by spirituals, jazz and blues.

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When I think about certain books, I am transported back to milestones in my life the way other people are brought back by smell or song.

I turned 11 along with Harry Potter as I read The Sorcerer's Stone. I found The Perks of Being a Wallflower at exactly the right time-in the midst of the new frustrations and freedoms of high school. The Book Thief sang to me during my first year of teaching. I bought A Prayer for Owen Meany during the weekend of my sister's wedding.

When I think of the books that shaped me, I'm struck by nostalgia and appreciation. But now, as a library media specialist, I've also come to a realization: Not a single one of these texts was a graphic novel.

Where were they? Graphic novels certainly existed when I was in school. But looking back, I don't remember picking up any books with pictures after hitting middle school. Perhaps I thought of them as books for a younger audience, something to start with before you ascended to "real" books. This is a sentiment I occasionally hear echoed by educators. Perhaps I thought they only dealt with superheroes. I definitely did not foresee the graphic novels of my future.

My Awakening to the Genre

I first became aware of graphic novels while teaching high school English in Redding, Conn. A colleague and friend of mine introduced a graphic novel into her journaling course: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, an account of the author's childhood in Iran. Our department also purchased a few copies of The Odyssey, a graphic novel by Gareth Hinds, which depicts Odysseus' journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

But still, I was very surprised when I made the transition to middle school media specialist last year and witnessed the storm of interest in graphic novels. Our 6th through 8th grade students, regardless of reading level, flocked to the graphic novel section, the only area separated by genre in our fiction section. I was intrigued and began flipping through them as well.

These books were by no means intended for surface readers. While short on text, many were rich in complexity. My teacher mind immediately switched into overdrive. How can we use graphic novels as tools to benefit our curriculum and provide our students with new ways to access text? How can teaching graphic novels elevate the rigor of our classrooms?

Introducing graphic novels into the classroom provides a unique opportunity to teach a different type of literacy: visual literacy. Students can be taught to "read" and analyze not only text, but color, shape, texture, layout, and more. This skill (also noted in the Common Core State Standards) is going to become increasingly important in their world of digital media. It can also be transferred to text-based novels.

After observing colleagues implement successful lessons working with visual literacy, I started using a process that worked well. Here it is:

A Process for Teaching Graphic Novels

Begin by presenting students with a spread of graphic novel pages and asking them what they notice about the figures included or emphasized, the colors used, the arrangement of text and images on the page. Students can work in pairs or as a whole class to gather observations.

For example, in Paige by Page by Laura Lee Gulledge, a story about a girl facing anxiety after moving to a new home, one image features the main character, Paige, with a new sketchbook she has bought. One panel shows a close-up of her clutching the sketchbook; in the next, she holds both the sketchbook and a tin can to her ear. Students will notice that Paige is alone: The tin can is connected to a string, but no one is on the other line. In the next panel, the background suddenly appears blank, and Paige wonders to herself, "So I bought a sketchbook ... maybe it can help."

Once students gather observations, the class is then ready for analysis, to draw meaning from what they noticed. How are we meant to feel while looking at this image? Overwhelmed? Sad? What do you think the author/illustrator's message is? What evidence do you have? In the example from Paige by Page, students will ultimately recognize the loneliness of the main character, and her hope that art can help her to create meaningful bonds.

This same observation-analysis process can be applied to a quotation, poem, or passage.

Teachers can also juxtapose graphic novels and their text-based counterparts. For example, Jane, the Fox, and Me by Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault interweaves the story of ostracized, modern-day student Helene with scenes from Jane Eyre.

Ask students: Why would the author/illustrator select this particular scene from Jane Eyre and include it at this moment (over others)? Does this visual representation of the original novel differ from the way you envisioned it? Do you think this author/illustrator effectively preserved characterization? The tone and mood of the scene? The author's message?

Students should be pushed to defend their responses using evidence from both texts. Students could also be challenged to create and defend their own graphic panel of a particular scene from a text-based work, which would challenge them to make important decisions regarding selection of images, text inclusion, color, and shading. This lesson promotes skills like developing a claim and supporting a claim with evidence, while also encouraging creativity.

Finally, graphic novels are an excellent resource for struggling readers and English-language learners. By providing students with the graphic novel version of a scene or chapter from a text-based novel prior to reading, students will have a general understanding of plot beforehand, and can focus on details. Alternatively, providing the graphic chapter after reading the text-based novel also supports comprehension. Students can reflect on their own learning: What had they missed or misunderstood before that became clear? What important plot points or ideas from the text have been reinforced in the graphic novel?

As an educator, I wish I could return to my child-self and whisper, "Hey, there's a whole other world of reading out there!" My hope is that we start to view graphic novels not as poor substitutions for text-based novels, but as opportunities to engage and challenge our students.

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Graphic Novels Belong in Your English Class. Here's How to Use Them (Opinion)

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When I think about certain books, I am transported back to milestones in my life the way other people are brought back by smell or song. I turned 11 along with Harry Potter as I read The Sorcerer's Stone.

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"Accessible, image-driven prompts that invite a variety of kinds of writing."

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Accessible, image-driven prompts that invite a variety of kinds of writing.

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Using "I Am" Poetry for Synthesizing Text

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Using "I Am" Poetry for Synthesizing Text

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AMLE - Association for Middle Level Education

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Much of the writing we assign our students is public writing-writing to communicate with others. Writing-to-learn is personal writing, writing that helps students increase comprehension of texts-fiction and nonfiction-in all disciplines. Reader response compels readers to interact with the text and makes visible for readers and their teachers the depth of text comprehension. This is the eighth in a series of columns on scaffolding writing-to-learn by teaching a variety of reader response strategies before, during, and after reading.
The first six Write to Learn columns focused on before-reading response and a variety of during-reading response strategies. The previous column, this column, and the next two columns in the series will share strategies for employing after-reading response across the disciplines. Effective after-reading response employs a text reformulation strategy where readers reconstruct text read into another type of text. This synthesis, a critical thinking skill that involves putting together assorted parts to make a new whole, helps readers in all disciplines not only relate information learned, but also rethink the meaning of this learning and connect to other learnings and readers' developing views of their world.

The "I Am" Poem

In "I Am" poetry, readers write from the perspective of something they have read in a text or textbook. They could be writing from the perspective of a character in a story or poem; a person from a memoir or biography; a scientist or a scientific theory, element, or concept; a person, event, or place in history; a mathematical concept or principle; or a disease, condition, or issue in health.

The "I Am" poem follows a format that requires readers to read and analyze how the character, person, item, or event would view its world and its place in the world, returning to the text multiple times to apply what they have learned. This writing also causes readers to synthesize new material with information they already know or new information they may research to create their poem. In the case of items, events, or even places, particularly in social studies, science, math, and health classes, the writer would employ personification.

There is a standard format readers/writers can follow (see Figure 1), but they are encouraged to modify the verbs to fit their topic and their own visions. This format places the reader into another's shoes, so to speak, and requires that they read more deeply, closely, and critically as they explore text from a particular point of view (Roessing, 2016).

Figure 1
"I Am" Poetry Standard Format

I am __________________________
[character's name and identity]
I wonder _______________________
I hear _________________________
I see __________________________
I want _________________________
I am __________________________
[not the name in Line 1, but additional information about the character]

I pretend _______________________
I feel __________________________
I touch _________________________
I worry _________________________
I cry ___________________________
I am ___________________________
[not the name in Line 1, but additional information about the character]

I understand _____________________
I say ___________________________
I dream _________________________
I try ____________________________
I hope __________________________
I am ____________________________
[character's name, including more information about the character as a conclusion]

To plan their writing, the class can first brainstorm perspectives from which the text they read can be viewed. If students are reading different texts, individually or in a small group, a short article, story, or poem can be read to provide an example. For example, in the poem "Casey at the Bat," someone could write from the perspective of Casey, one of his teammates, a fan (one of the "patrons of the game"), or the Mudville coach. For the article, "The Great Pandemic of 1918-19," students brainstormed that they could write from the perspective of a man, woman, or child living in Philadelphia in 1918-1919; a victim of the Great Pandemic; a Philadelphia funeral director; the mayor of Philadelphia, 1918-1919; or even The Great Pandemic itself (Roessing, 2016).

Students choose the perspective(s) from which they will revisit the text. As they reread, they first mark details that now become important from that viewpoint. Students consider the "I Am" poem format and examine and analyze the text for ideas, considering what the character or entity would see, feel, worry about, say, understand, or any of the verbs they will substitute that may better fit their interpretations and responses. Readers, especially in the disciplines, may add research from other sources.

When readers alter perspective, they modify and amend meaning, the details that they notice, and the facts and evidence that become important. Teaching readers to read from varied perspectives leads to reading through multiple lenses, thereby, discovering differing points of view. This practice results in considering differently and understanding more profoundly and meaningfully (Roessing, 2016).

English-Language Arts

In ELA classes, the students read Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman. This small novel is comprised of chapters that are each written by a different character. After readers read and discuss the novel, they can choose a different character from whose perspective they will write an "I Am" poem. The "I Am" poem should incorporate more than that character's chapter as the characters interact and influence each other throughout the book. In the example in Figure 2, the first two stanzas are the poem of Kim, the character of the first chapter, and all information is extracted from that chapter or inferences from the Chapter 1 text.

Figure 2
Example from Seedfolks, I Am Kim

I am Kim, a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl.
I wonder if my father would have loved me if he had lived until I was born.
I hear my mother and oldest sister crying past midnight on the anniversary of his death.
I see the candles, incense, rice, and meat offered to honor my father.
I want to plant beans because my father had been a farmer.
I am going to plant them in the vacant lot across the street; our apartment has no yard.

I pretend that my father will be able to see my beans grow and know I am his daughter.
I feel the hard ground as I dig six holes with my spoon.
I touch my cheeks which feel like marble in this cold Cleveland April.
I worry if I will be safe because the lot is full of trash; I show bravery.
I cry when my mother and sister cry but think of something to do.
I am the first gardener in a poor, ethnically and racially diverse neighborhood where no one talks to each other.

A third stanza would be comprised of critical thinking about her relationships with characters and events from other chapters so all students review the entire novel-or their during-reading response journals-on all chapters.

When all students have written their poems, they can assemble in a circle around the room reading their poems in the order the characters appear in the story. As they read aloud, each can take on the persona of their character through their voice and attitude. Readers can each present their first two stanzas, based on the characters' chapters, and then circle again, reading their third stanzas, which demonstrate the relationships built through the novel.

Writing "I Am" poetry causes readers to reflect on their reading, the characters, their environments and relationships, their personality traits, and how those traits determine their goals and decisions-positive or negative. Creating this poetry causes readers to look more critically at texts, synthesizing what they are reading with what they know, have read, and have learned.

Responding to novels, readers can not only write from the perspective of a character but the creative writer can pursue an innovative direction. For example, in Linda Sue Park's novel A Long Walk to Water, readers can create poems from the perspectives of either of the two main characters, Nya or Salva, a minor character, or even, as happened in one class, from the perspective of Water. In response to Seedfolks, a student may write from the perspective of the developing garden or from the viewpoint of an inhabitant of the neighborhood who does not appear in the story. This is a format that encourages creativity in thinking, rather than inhibiting it.

Social Studies

In social studies classes, students more commonly read textbook chapters and articles while studying a unit. When studying a unit on the Holocaust, students read supplemental articles on different topics within the unit, one topic being the Warsaw ghetto. They then may write "I Am" poetry about people, real and fictitious, who were impacted by the topic they explored. When reading articles about the Warsaw ghetto, the poem in Figure 3 was written as an after-reading response.

I am a child of Warsaw, October 12, 1940.
I wonder what it would be like to live out in the open, in our own house again.
I hear the sounds of 400,000 people crowded together in this ghetto in a 1.3 square mile area, surrounded by a wall, the largest ghetto in Poland.
I see Nazi soldiers yelling at people and taking families away-To where?
I want something to eat; food is becoming more and more scarce.
I am a Jew in a time and place dangerous to be Jewish, wearing a white armband with a blue star as identification.

I pretend life is as it once was-Warsaw a major center of Jewish life; 30% of the population was Jewish.
I feel that life as we have known it has now ended.
I know that Poland was invaded by the Germans in 1939 and nothing has been the same since.
I touch the sides of the truck that takes my friends out of the ghetto. It is August 1942.
I worry that I will never see them again; we hear that "work" camps are really death camps.
I cry as people die even here in the ghetto-83,000 from starvation and disease.
I become part of the Jewish Combat Organization, a self-defense resistance unit in the ghetto; in January 1943 we forced the Germans to withdraw.

I understand that when Hitler came to power everything changed for the Jews and others who are not Aryan and that these troops will return.
I dream there is a chance that life will be as I planned with my own family practicing my own religion accomplishing in my own profession.
I take part in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944; 7,000 Jews died.
I try to hide in the ruins of the liquidated ghetto where the Nazis had leveled every building.
I was shipped to a labor camp and am one of the few Jewish survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Not only were facts from the article such as dates, names, places, events, and statistics included, but when composing the poem, the writer had to reflect on what someone in this young man's situation would have seen, wanted, worried about, dreamt, and hoped. The reader of the poem can observe not only what the writer has read, but also what the writer has inferred and synthesized with prior knowledge he had or what he learned about the Holocaust in the social studies unit. The poem necessitates and demonstrates critical thinking, and the format encourages and promotes many trips back to the text for clarification and deeper comprehension and learning of the material.

Science

In science class, students were asked to review the past unit on forces and motion and choose a topic as the focus of an "I Am" poem. They could use their text and were to review their notes. The teacher helped the students brainstorm appropriate verbs, and students wrote as gravity, force, friction, inertia, Newton's Laws of Motion, or a stomp rocket (which they were designing and testing in class). Asleigh's poem (Figure 4) about friction personifies and explains friction and illustrates what she has learned.

I am friction.
I engage when two objects rub together.
I yank back objects from moving.
I supersize when the object gets heavier.
I slip between the sled and the snow.
I am friction.

I slide between the brakes and wheels when the car tries to stop.
I pull to the opposite side where the object is trying to go.
I struggle to keep the object from moving.
I worry when there is less of me because it is harder to stop.
I cry when it is raining because there is less of me; rain causes accidents because objects have no grip.
I am friction.

I take many forms: static, sliding, rolling, and fluid.
I crackle when two hands rub together to create heat.
I am stronger on solid objects when they rub together than liquids.
I activate when you are running and you stop quickly.
I like to shock you when I build up and you touch metals.
I am friction, and just know that the next time you go down a slide, I will be there.

Chase's poem "I Am Gravity" reveals, "I make it harder to get off the ground. I wonder why people even bother jumping because I will always win," concluding that stanza with "I am the pull that keeps everything down." Later in the poem he adds more information about this topic, "I become weaker on planets such as Pluto, Mars, Venus, and Mercury because they are less massive," and he ends the poem by making the point, "I am Gravity, and I keep the planets in orbit around the sun."

Other Classes

Students can also find topics to write about in mathematics, such as I Am a decimal, a fraction, area, a rational number, a variable, an exponent, or the Pythagorean theorem. In health class, students can write an "I Am" poem from the perspective of someone affected by a disease or a condition, such as "I Am an Athlete with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)," "I Am a Smoker," or "I Am a Teenage Mother." Or students can write from the viewpoint of the topic, as "I Am Alcohol."

In these examples, besides encouraging and training readers to read and examine topics from particular perspectives, "I Am" poetry is employed as an after-reading response strategy encouraging readers to return to the text multiple times, manipulating text to comprehend at a deeper level as they analyze to synthesize learning. Because writing "I Am" poems allows for choice, creativity, and fun, students are motivated and engaged, the key to successful learning.

Reference

Roessing, L. (2016). "One text-Many perspectives: Writing the "I am" poem to read through divergent lenses. AMLE Magazine, 4(1), 42-46.

Lesley Roessing taught middle school for 20 years before becoming the founding director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project and senior lecturer in the College of Education of Georgia Southern University, Armstrong campus. Lesley has published four professional books for educators, as well as chapters and articles on literacy. The ideas in this column were based on The Write to Read: Response Journals That Increase Comprehension (Corwin, 2009).
lesleyroessing@gmail.com Published inAMLE Magazine, April 2019.

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After-Reading Response: "I Am" Poetry for Synthesizing Text

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Much of the writing we assign our students is public writing-writing to communicate with others. Writing-to-learn is personal writing, writing that helps students increase comprehension of texts-fiction and nonfiction-in all disciplines. Reader response compels readers to interact with the text and makes visible for readers and their teachers the depth of text comprehension.

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"Our team at Art Prof has designed eight visual arts projects, each based on some aspect of The New York Times and our own area of expertise. From quirky GIFs inspired by the popular advice column, Social Q’s, to mixed media collages based on the life of a person from the Obituaries, these projects offer students a tangible starting point and empower them to determine their own destination."

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From Metropolitan Diary and Social Q's to Obituaries and Travel, The New York Times is an excellent launchpad for art projects that are simultaneously concrete and flexible.

A student example of a "Paper Trail" - one of the many art projects we suggest in this lesson. What will your students make? Credit... Artwork by Alexia Towle

This lesson was suggested and co-written by Clara Lieu, an adjunct professor at Rhode Island School of Design, and a team of six Teaching Artists she advises at Artprof.org, a free website for visual arts education. Art Prof seeks to foster equal access to art education by offering free online lesson plans and videos on drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, digital media and more. It is not supported, sponsored or endorsed by RISD.
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In visual arts, anything is possible. Often times, the most challenging part is knowing where to start. For this reason, designing art projects for students can be tricky. You don't want a project to be so open-ended that students get lost and have no clue how to begin. On the other hand, projects that are too specific and rigid run the risk of delivering monotonous results.

The New York Times is an excellent launchpad for art projects that are simultaneously concrete and flexible. With dozens of sections and columns organized around specific themes, The Times provides students with just the right amount of inspiration, insight and structure for artwork that is creative and personal.

Our team at Art Prof has designed eight visual arts projects, each based on some aspect of The New York Times and our own area of expertise. From quirky GIFs inspired by the popular advice column, Social Q's, to mixed media collages based on the life of a person from the Obituaries, these projects offer students a tangible starting point and empower them to determine their own destination.

In this lesson, we've included an overview of each project, step-by-step instructions, supply lists, helpful links and a few video tutorials explaining more complicated techniques. But if you want more, you can click the project name for visual aides, materials, video tutorials, student work samples and more at Artprof.org.

Do you use The New York Times to teach visual arts? Tell us how in the comments.

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How do you read The New York Times? What sections do you turn to first? Which do you skip? What kinds of stories tend to hold your attention and which ones will put you to sleep?

In this project, students explore these questions and more by creating collages that "map" their personal reading habits.

As they plot their routes through the digital or physical paper, they experiment with core visual arts ideas like design, typography, composition and humor. Art Prof intern, Roshan Antia, played with these concepts to create the paper trail collage, above:

I actually used to read The New York Times before making this. Unfortunately, I read it digitally and was really not excited to create a digital collage, so I asked my friend for a copy. I read through it, and realized that the front cover page is very much a road map to most of what you'll find in that edition of The Times.

I then used the cover along with the section headers. After creating the collage, I decided it might read more like a map if I put it in the context of a phone navigation app, so I recreated the frame ...

Since there are as many ways to read The Times as there are readers, you can bet that each of these projects will be one-of-a-kind.

To complete this project, students will need a copy of The New York Times ( online or in print), and if using digital collage, editing software like Adobe Photoshop.

1. To start, examine an edition of The New York Times. Note what sections attract your interest, the order in which you read them and which sections you linger over versus those you skip.

2. Then, in pencil, sketch a map of your journey through the paper.

3. Try designing the map on a single page as if it were for a walking tour, with the different sections of the newspaper represented as physical locations.

4. Create the final piece using traditional or digital collage, or both.

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Dear Diary:

On Saturday mornings when my windows are open, I sometimes hear a trumpet player practicing as I'm waking up. The silvery tones ring through several courtyards on my block. ...

One day, at the top of an octave, the mystery trumpeter added an unexpected flourish. The note hung suspended in midair, then blossomed into a haunting movie theme.

The screen is pitch black when this film opens. A solo trumpet plays, "Daaaah ... da da | Daaaah ... da | Da-daaaah ..." As the melody repeats, the credits read, "Paramount Pictures Presents." The music continues, and the writer's name and the movie's title appear. In the darkness, the first line is spoken: "I believe in America."

I treasure the moment six years ago when I first heard Nino Rota's "Godfather Waltz" echo eerily through my West Harlem block.

So goes " 'Godfather Waltz,'" a submission by reader Paul Klenk to Metropolitan Diary, The Times's weekly column for readers to share their only-in-New-York experiences.

This column is packed with the kinds of quirky encounters, daily dramas and laugh-out-loud snippets that make ideal subjects for pen and ink illustration. An Art Prof intern, Alexia Towle, relied on core illustration ideas like positive and negative shapes, composition, concept, mood, action and point of view, to bring Mr. Klenk's story to life:

I tried to capture the iconic Don Corleone with movie theater curtains and the trumpet notes floating by the writer! Inking the words and Corleone's sinister glare were probably the most stressful moments of my life, but I like how they pop out against the black "screen."

This was a really fun assignment because it pushed me to really think about the best way to communicate an idea that is not my own. I will definitely be checking the "Metropolitan Diary" entries for inspiration in the future!

With more than 40 years' worth of Diary entries to pick from, the inspiration is endless!

For this project, students will need a pencil, a brush pen, paper and The Times's Metropolitan Diary column.

1. First, choose an article from Metropolitan Diary to illustrate.

2. Count the number of paragraphs in the article. Then, draw small rectangles, or thumbnails, in pencil that are equal to the number of paragraphs in the article. In each rectangle, sketch the main idea of each paragraph.

Are you a fan of The New York Times Crossword puzzles? Could you imagine doing one with clues that were pictures instead of words?

What would "a radiator sound" look like? What about a "screw up?" "Cardi B's genre?" The "title creature in an Aesop fable?" "A really long time?"

In the Mini Crosswords, there is no obvious relationship among the clues, so students are challenged to weave the unrelated words into an original image that makes sense both in terms of the visuals and the meaning of the clues. They might do this in a number of ways: inventing an artistic style that can be applied consistently throughout the artist book; constructing a story that involves every clue; composing imagery that interacts somehow; or anything else.

For example, high school student, Anushka Srinivasan, used patterns as the unifying theme in her book:

I decided early on that I wanted to do something with patterns, and so I started thinking about how I could show the ideas that I got from the brainstorms and make them into a design that captured its essence. Once I found a pattern for each word, I thought about how I wanted to put it all together. Being at a summer program at an art school, where creative fashion choices were the norm, I saw someone wearing a patchwork dress, and that's the idea I decided to use to put all the patterns together.

For more ideas on how to translate a crossword puzzle into an artist book, students might turn to " How to Make a Crossword Puzzle: The Series," where Times Crosswords editors reveal how they come up with the themes, clues and designs for their puzzles. It might give students some insight into the puzzle-making process and help them see and build a visual narrative among seemingly disparate subjects and images.

You'll need the Daily Mini Crossword Puzzle, supplies for an artist book, gouache paint, tracing paper and colored pencils.

4. On another sheet of paper, sketch the layout of your artist book in pencil. Be sure that your sketch matches the exact shape of your artist book. Visually integrate the crossword puzzle clues to create a cohesive composition.

5. Place tracing paper over the pencil sketch, and fill in the shapes with colored pencil. Create three color schemes, so that you have three colored pencil sketches total.

6. Sketch your layout in pencil on your artist book, then use gouache paint to fill in the shapes.

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Spiced Chickpea Stew with Coconut and Turmeric. Crawfish Étouffée.Ratatouille. Strawberry Pie.

These are just a few of the thousands of recipes from NYT Cooking and, as students will discover, they aren't just good for making mouthwatering meals. Their descriptive language, colorful ingredients, cultural diversity and potential for adventure also make them ripe for visual storytelling.

An Art Prof intern, Clarisse Angkasa, discovered just that as she attempted to cook and illustrate " Summer Pasta With Zucchini, Ricotta and Basil ":

I thought this was an unusual project because it seemed as though the main exercise was following the recipe while the illustration part was secondary. As I was cooking (or attempting to cook), I remembered how hard it is for me to follow recipes exactly.

A degree of improvisation was required and I realized that these personal touches are what makes the illustrations interesting. Instead of being generic illustrations to act as a visual aid for each step of the recipe, they became a series of sketches that illustrate my personal experience trying out the recipe.

This project challenges students to not only create educational illustrations that integrate image and text, but to tell stories complete with a setting, characters, conflict, drama, humor, plot twists and, hopefully, a satisfying (and edible) ending.

For this project, students will need a Times subscription to access the recipes in NYT Cooking and any 2-D color drawing media, like a Rapidograph pen or watercolor, for illustrating.

1. Choose a recipe from NYT Cooking to illustrate.

2. To get inspired, you might first cook the recipe yourself. Take notes and make sketches as you prepare your dish.

3. Map out how you want to visually depict the recipe. Do you want to make a list, a comic, an instruction manual?

4. Sketch out characters in pencil, and establish your drawing style for the images.

5. Draw the layout of your final drawing in pencil.

6. Draw over your pencil lines with a pen, or whatever media you are using. Add color or gradients.

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These accounts are chock-full of interesting tidbits that make them ideal for playing with mixed media, color, texture and layering in a collage. A high school student, Annabeth Tao, experimented with these concepts to incorporate details like "Italian singer," "jazz and pop," "exciting performance," "fashion dressing style," and "aerobics promoter" from Lara Saint Paul's obituary into her piece:

I bought a lot of luxurious materials like golden wires, fabric, beans and glitter in the secondhand store to make Lara Saint Paul look as fabulous as she was. I accidentally saw two large records lying on the table in the secondhand store, and successfully got the idea to use them as my collage base.

I learned to connect the key words and materials that I can use for the collage and freely explored the way to present the obituary in a very interesting way so that the audience could notice her characteristics at the first glance￼.

With thousands of obituaries to choose from and the freedom to use any materials they want, these mixed media collages are a great way to spark student creativity and ingenuity.

Students will need to refer to the Obituaries section to find their subjects. For the collage, they can experiment with a vast range of materials - magazines, text, fabric, found objects, stamps, photographs, wire, beans, glitter, newspaper, original drawings - anything goes! You can find more ideas for collage supplies here.

1. Choose a New York Times Obituary.

2. Read it and, as you read, brainstorm images that are associated with the person in the obituary by creating a mind map. Keep in mind that the images do not have to be of the person.

3. Find and experiment with a vast range of materials to create the collage. Magazines, text, fabric, found objects, stamps, photographs, wire, beans, glitter, newspaper, original drawings - anything goes!

4. Assemble your final collage. Layer the materials to make a cohesive composition.

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What should you do with a gift you don't want? How do you politely get your friends to leave after they've overstayed their welcome? How many times should you try to make plans with someone before giving up?

These are the kinds of questions readers seek guidance on every week in Social Q's, a Times column offering lighthearted advice about awkward social situations. And, as Ruth Lee, an intern at Art Prof, explains, they are perfectly suited to short, stop-motion animations:

Telling stories by bringing simple objects to life opens up endless possibilities for creativity, because it forces you to take the ordinary and give it its own unconventional twist. And although the fancy technology and film effects nowadays are eye-catching, there's something uniquely personal and intimate about a simple stop-motion animation that has its own kind of equally powerful charm. Especially when presenting scenarios like those in Social Q's, stop motion perfectly suits the raw organicness of encounters in everyday living, and it was so fun to let out my quirkiness in a brand-new medium that I haven't touched before.

Indeed, this project is a fun way for students to try out a new animation technique and explore core ideas like movement, timing and symbolism.

For this project, students will use a Social Q's article of their choice for their GIF inspiration. They will need found objects and construction paper to create the animation and a smartphone, a cellphone holder and the Stop Motion Studio app to film it.

1. Pick a Social Q's article to animate.

2. Brainstorm for your animation by creating a mind map that relates to the article. Then, circle five words from the mind map that capture the main ideas in the article.

4. Draw six frames (rectangles). Start by drawing a sketch of the first frame of your animation. Draw that same sketch and place it as your last frame. This ensures that the animation will loop. Create four more sketches in between the first and last frame. You should end up with six sketches total.

5. Make your visual components for each frame. You might use found objects or make drawings on construction paper.

6. Set up your smartphone on a cellphone holder, and face the camera directly down toward a flat surface.

7. Use the Stop Motion Studio app to create your animation:

8. Finally, export your animation as an Animated GIF.

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You'll find editorial illustrations all over The Times, from the classic Op-Art of the Opinion section to those that accompany pieces in Technology, Books, Style, Well and Smarter Living. They are "art with a message" - enriching the act of reading by illustrating the main idea, essential meaning, emotion, or most compelling elements of an article.

The combination of traditional and digital media in this project pushes students to editorialize a text not only with what they draw, but also with how they draw it, by playing with composition, line and color.

An Art Prof intern, Anya Chen, did so in her piece, above, based on the article, " Looking Through the Eyes of China's Surveillance State ":

I wanted to display the pressure of a million eyes constantly watching you (I used various angles of my own eyes for the background) as well as the rigid political nature of the country through the very stylized edits I made to my traditional media on Photoshop. I played with perspective in both traditional and digital media too; I drew my main figure from a worm's eye view, and exaggerated it via Photoshop.

To get ideas, students might first look at what other illustrators have created for The Times. They can skim any of the sections mentioned above, follow @nytimesopinionart on Instagram or check out the roundups of the best illustrations from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012.

In addition to a copy of The Times, students will need any kind of 2-D media for the traditional illustration and a tablet and editing software for the digital illustration.

1. Choose any New York Times article that you would like to illustrate.

2. Brainstorm ideas based on the article by creating a mind map. Decide whether you will start with traditional art media or digital art media.

3. Create thumbnail sketches to plan out your composition. Make your sketches diverse and different from each other.

4. Sketch out the final illustration. If you started with traditional art media, finish with digital art media, or vice versa:

If you're looking for texts to inspire brilliant artwork, you need look no further than The Times Travel section. Allow Jada Yuan, former 52 Places Traveler, to demonstrate why:

The valley was unspeakably beautiful: honey-colored hills flanked by mountains covered in pine trees. Dark shrubs dotted the expanse, as did wandering cows, temples and clusters of 108 white Buddhist prayer flags. Relatives of the dead plant the flags - thin strips of fabric that run the length of tall poles - during the 49 days it takes to guide and protect the soul as it moves toward the next life.

Indeed, if anyone knows how to paint a picture with words, it's travel writers.

The challenge of this project is translating the picturesque landscapes and culture-rich cities from Travel pieces like these into an image simple and clear enough to carve onto a piece of rubber. An Art Prof intern, Cindy Qiao, attempted to strike this balance with her stamp, above, based on the article " Seeing a City the Old-Fashioned Way: One Step at a Time ":

I think the part of this project I had the most difficulty with was definitely creating the design itself. I was tempted to make the design intricate and detailed after I had read the article I chose. I had all these ideas of putting detailed buildings in the design and nice lettering. But I realized because of this material and the purpose of this stamp, the design was meant to be made simple.

Even the simple lettering of the date and the postal service were hard to carve out. But overall, I loved seeing my design go from a simple sketch to a postmark stamp.

In creating their stamps, students will learn how to represent complex ideas, cultures, places and feelings through core visual arts ideas like design, symbolism, and positive and negative space.

To complete this project, students will need a copy of The New York Times Travel section, materials to create a rubber stamp, and an envelope to print their stamps on.

1. Choose an article from the Travel section and write a list of images significant to the article.

2. Turn the list of images into five different thumbnail designs for a postmark stamp. Consider size, shape, text, font, logo and color. Your postmark must include a date, location, post service and cancellation lines.

3. Pick one of your thumbnail designs and draw over it with a black brush pen or marker.

4. Then, use the graphite transfer technique to transfer the thumbnail sketch to a block of Speedball Speedy Carve.

5. Carve the block with a linoleum cutter:

6. Lastly, print your postmark stamp on an envelope with a postage stamp on it!

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GIFs, Stamps, Collages and Illustrations: Visual Arts Projects Inspired by The New York Times

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From Metropolitan Diary and Social Q's to Obituaries and Travel, The New York Times is an excellent launchpad for art projects that are simultaneously concrete and flexible. This lesson was suggested and co-written by Clara Lieu , an adjunct professor at Rhode Island School of Design, and a team of six Teaching Artists she advises at Artprof.org , a free website for visual arts education.

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"Short documentary films, most under 10 minutes, and related discussion questions."

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Short documentary films, most under 10 minutes, and related discussion questions.

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From Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon 😂

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I love everything about this post. It does contain a map that’s not appropriate for kids though, so caveat emptor. 😜

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A passage from Ted Gioia's How To Listen To Jazz:

Strange to say, new art forms are similar to the plague or a virulent flu in how they spread. Art and disease proliferate via contagion, and similar conditions favor both. Densely packed populations, many individuals coming and going via land and waterways, an overheated mixture of people recently arrived from different locales, informal settings where they intermingle in close contact, a culture and environment that emphasize communal activities and get-togethers-these are nightmare conditions for anyone trying to stop an epidemic, but they are the same ingredients that can spur world-changing artistic revolutions.

Jazz, for example, emerged in New Orleans, "one of the unhealthiest cities in the world." "The first jazz records were released shortly after the 1918 flu epidemic decimated the city." But before that, the Renaissance emerged around the time the Black Death was spreading through Florence. Plagues in London around Shakespeare's time. "We talk nowadays of cultural memes going viral, but this isn't just a poetic way of speaking."

" Influence and influenza in fact have the same etymology," notes Elisa Gabbert in her essay, " The Great Mortality," collected in her forthcoming book, The Unreality of Memory:

"Pandemic" sounds to me like automatic hyperbole, like "pandemonium," but it's fairly well defined in epidemiology: Unlike an "outbreak," which affects limited people in a limited area for a short time, or an "epidemic," which affects a larger number of people in multiple areas at the same time, "pandemics affect many people in many parts of the world at the same time."

(It would be interesting to map artistic movements to these terms.)

I'm thinking now of maps of scenius, the networks or scenes that lead to artistic movements, and how much they resemble the maps of viruses spreading:

(Clockwise from top left: a page from Show Your Work!, a MoMA map of modernism, a screenshot of a video game called Pandemic, a Harper's diagram of the romantic and sexual activity in a midwestern high school.)

Here is a diagram of the spread of SARS, taken from Edward Tufte's Beautiful Evidence. And an example from the same book, the cover of Cubism and Abstract Art:

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Here are Galileo's drawings of the moon, made over 400 years ago. And here are my comparatively pathetic doodles of the moon phases, copied from online diagrams yesterday in my diary to try to memorize them:

Why bother copying a diagram of the moon? Because copying is how we learn, of course, and in the course of learning how to learn again, I've discovered that if you want to understand something, you need to draw it out, with your own pencil and paper, to force yourself to really look at what you're copying and internalize it.

Even better if you can start sneaking what you're learning into your work:

Filed under: the moon

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After reading my post on maps of scenius, my friend Julien sent me these photos of a wall in the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona.

Last year I read Joan Miro: I Work Like a Gardener, which re-publishes a 1958 interview with the artist interspersed with images of his work. He said:

I work like a gardener or a winemaker... Things come slowly. My vocabulary of forms, for example, I didn't discover it all at once. It formed itself almost in spite of me.

(See: " The gardens where ideas grow.")

As if providing a future commentary on these maps, he also said, "An artwork should be fertile. It must give birth to a world."

Reminds me of what Bruno Munari said about trees: "A tree is a slow explosion of seed."

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Here's a particularly great example of showing your work from @derekwalmsley:

A while back, I started drawing a chart of which musicians had studied with others according to passing references in @thewiremagazine, and six months later (with access to music education still more difficult) we have a brand new special issue

Here's the special issue online.

In my talks for Newspaper Blackout, I traced the history of blackout poetry backwards, doing what my friend Alan Jacobs calls " swimming upstream." I got a terrific email from the brilliant Tom Phillips, the granddaddy of the form, who mentioned that he used to do a slideshow called "From Eno to Raphael," in which he traced his particular teaching lineage from Brian Eno (who was his art school pupil) all the way back to Raphael in something like 20 steps. He wrote, "I ended with Raphael as a big gun though the list perforce goes back to some caveman in Blombos at the Cape."

See also: climbing your own family tree, maps of scenius

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Here, courtesy of MoMA, we have an interactive map of scenius, showing the connections between the artists who were involved in the development of abstract art.

Abstraction was not the inspiration of a solitary genius but the product of network thinking-of ideas moving through a nexus of artists and intellectuals working in different mediums and in far-flung places. Its pioneers were more closely linked than is generally understood.

Clicking on Kandinsky, for example, gives you this:

Which looks a lot like this page about scenius from Show Your Work!:

And they both remind me (perhaps perversely) of one of my favorite maps, which ran in Harper's in 2005, and depicts the sexual activity in one American high school in the Midwest:

And I also couldn't help but think of Ad Reinhardt and his amazing art comics (collected in the beautiful book, How To Look):

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I love maps. I love looking at maps and I love thinking about maps and I love collecting maps.

When I was studying at Cambridge, I was writing essays for my tutor about Dickens and Dostoevsky, and they were just awful. I think my tutor thought I was a moron. (Or just an American student. Same thing.) Then one day I came in with a rough hand-drawn map of the London in Dickens' Our Mutual Friend. He said my scribbled map was the best work I'd done.

I knew then, I think, that my talent was going to be for using pictures and words together, and maps would serve as useful inspiration. A decade ago, I published a blog post collecting a bunch of fictional maps, and I'm thinking of them again, thanks to a beautiful new book, The Writer's Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands.

A few bedtimes ago, both the 5-year-old and I were just lying in his bed looking at maps and talking about him. A rare moment of bliss. (His book was entitled, simply, Maps.)

A while back I read an article about how to you have to get children to fall in love with the world before you ask them to save it. ( Gary Snyder: "The first step, I think... is to make us love the world rather than to make us fear for the end of the world. Make us love the world... and then begin to take better care of it.")

Part of the author's research was looking at maps children of different ages make of their worlds. He describes the cartography of the different age groups:

From ages four to seven, children's homes fill the center of their maps, and much of their play is within sight or earshot of the home. Children often describe the worms, chipmunks, and pigeons that live in their yards or on their blocks, and they feel protective of these creatures.

From eight to eleven, children's geographical ranges expand rapidly. Their maps push off the edge of the page, and they often need to attach extra pieces of paper to map the new terrain they are investigating. Children's homes become small, inconsequential, and often move to the periphery of the map. The central focus in their maps is the "explorable landscape."

cFrom 12 to 15, the maps continue to expand in scope and become more abstract, but the favored places often move out of the woods and into town. Social gathering places such as the mall, the downtown luncheonette, and the town park take on new significance.

As Michael Chabon once put it, " Childhood is a branch of cartography."

Here's Rebecca Solnit talking about why she loves paper maps (author of, among other books, A Field Guide to Getting Lost and Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas ):

Maps are ubiquitous in one sense, and completely missing in another. A lot of younger people don't own maps and atlases and don't have the knowledge a map gives you. We call things like MapQuest and Google Maps on your phone interactive... but are they? Are they interactive? It's a system that largely gives you instructions to obey. Certainly, obedience is a form of interaction. (Maybe not my favorite one.) But a paper map you take control of - use it as you will, mark it up - and while you figure out the way from here to there yourself, instead of having a corporation tell you, you might pick up peripheral knowledge: the system of street names, the parallel streets and alternate routes. Pretty soon, you've learned the map, or rather, you have - via map - learned your way around a city. The map is now within you. You are yourself a map.

Many of my favorite artists use maps in their work. Saul Steinberg is famous for his view of New Yorker provincialism, but he drew tons of other maps, including the one above, which was never actually published in his lifetime. Beautiful.

"Maps are arguments," says Denis Wood. Maps tell stories. ( They can also lie.)

Years ago, I found this online migration map that shows you how people move in and out of different counties.

Three maps that tell three stories.

The top map is Cleveland, where I used to live. Everybody's leaving. It looks like an explosion.

The middle map is Austin, where I live now. Everybody's moving here. It looks like a black hole.

The bottom map is Pickaway County, Ohio, where I grew up. Hardly anyone leaves. Hardly anyone moves in. It looks like a puddle.

I'm interested in how maps can move beyond geography towards mapping other things in the world. Here's one of my favorite maps of all-time, from a 2005 Harper's:

I love looking at those diagrams and thinking about the stories behind them. (For example, where is the single dots, depicting the virgins?)

Just this week I became obsessed with the plot maps on the back of new editions of the Choose Your Own Adventure series:

Around the same time I got interested in maps, I discovered " mind mapping, " and started making my own mind maps of the books I was reading:

When pictures and words are laid out in the same space - broken out of the linearity of normal type - you can see new relationships between them and come up with new ideas. I find this kind of drawing with pictures and words to often be way more powerful than simply writing longhand.

Years ago, I read Peter Turchi's Maps of the Imagination, and it had a big impact on me. (I later got to interview him about his work.) Turchi suggests that writers are cartographers, in a sense: they help people figure out where they are in the world.

I continue to be taken with this idea. I think of my books as way-finding devices: they show you how to get from where you are to where you want to be.

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If you read John McPhee's

McPhee learned the technique from his high school English teacher, Mrs. McKee, who made him do three writing assignments a week. "We could write anything we wanted to, but each composition had to be accompanied by a structural outline, which she told us to do first. It could be anything from Roman numerals I, II, III to a looping doodle with guiding arrows and stick figures. The idea was to build some form of blueprint before working it out in sentences and paragraphs."

These little inscrutable blueprints reminded me of the diagrams scattered throughout the notebooks of Paul Klee ( collected in The Thinking Eye [ PDF] and The Nature of Nature [ PDF]):

I was also reminded of Sylvia Fein's First Drawings, which collects cave drawings alongside children's drawings and work by famous artists:

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This is a diagram I copied out of Mitchel Resnick's book, Lifelong Kindergarten. I've been thinking a lot lately about how essential it is to stop thinking of our creative lives in terms of linear progress and think of them instead as cyclical, seasonal, and non-linear.

It's an idea that's been essential to my own practice, and one I've fiddled with in various visual representations. Here's a page from Show Your Work!:

And here's a blackout:

Here's another doodle from my diary, where I've mapped some of the concepts from Resnick's book onto the various parts of the spiral. (You'll note my extra steal/ share annotations.)

By now you might have noticed that the spiral is similar to the feedback loop of the Scientific Method or Joseph Campbell's " Hero's Journey." What's essential is that the spiral doesn't have an end - it is a lifelong spiral.

This morning I watched a livestream of Resnick presenting in Reggio Emilia, the Italian birthplace of the famous educational approach. Resnick talked about how it was a visit to Reggio 20 years ago + a (fantastic) book by Norman Brosterman, Inventing Kindergarten, that brought him to the idea that the ways we learn in kindergarten should be "spread through a lifetime." (I just got done reading The Art of Tinkering, a book from Resnick's bibliography, which seems to me a catalog of artists who have retained a lifelong kindergarten-like sense of play.)

Thinking more and more about the spiral, I remembered a drawing I drew for someone who asked me a question about how I balanced creating and consuming:

Another endless learning spiral...

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Pictures and words in space:

What I'm trying to do when I make a mind map: I'm trying to construct a 2-D memory palace on paper. By making notes in a non-linear manner, by arranging images and words in space, I can SEE connections that would otherwise be impossible with just words written in sequence.

I use mind-maps for several things:

1) Brainstorming

Generating ideas, rather than just preserving them.

2) Taking notes on books

(Oddly, I have only attempted non-fiction, never fiction. Not entirely sure why this is.)

3) Taking notes on documentaries

4) Recording meetings and events

5) Remembering conversations

See all of my mind maps.
Note: this post was a response to the Vizthink prompt, "In what unique way do you use Mind Maps?"

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Maureen McHugh has started to blog about the process of her novel-in-progress. She drew this hilarious chart to illustrate the steps:

I have all but abandoned my graphic novel. If you were to plot my stage on the chart, it'd be "dark night of the soul," only that dark night was months and months ago. Maybe last year. At this point, I'm way past it, and thinking of a new project, and thinking about how I might be able to actually put out a book-length comic.

I got a lot of advice when I was trying it the first time around. Some told me to just plot the whole thing out, and then draw. Do an outline. I was even told that with 20 pages of artwork and an outline, I might even be able to sell the thing.

This really made my guts churn. I'm with Maureen on this one:

I don't outline. Outlining is for hacks. I believe in the difficult but fulfilling process of finding my novel as I write it; letting inspiration and the shape of what I've already written shape what comes next. Which is why I've thrown this novel out five times already.

My wife, who always has the best advice, if only I'd listen to it, suggested I just draw the whole thing out in my sketchbook, with nasty, sketchy thumbnails: the drawing equivalent to a "first draft." Turns out this was the advice that I should've followed.

You don't get a graphic novel much bigger than Craig Thompson's Blankets. That was almost 600 pages, and his new one is going to be even bigger. Even bigger? How does he do it?
The answer is thumbnails.

"I draw the entire book in this loose ballpoint pen format and edit, before ever starting the final pages. BLANKETS was thumbnailed for a year."

A YEAR of thumbnails. This makes me very hopeful.

My wife, again, came in with more advice: "You just need to FINISH something?" Ah yes, finishing. Getting to the last of Maureen's stages, "It's done and it sucks but it's better than I thought."

Craig Thompson, again:

...just...finishing things is a good idea! I had started a lot of projects before then where I'd get 20 pages into it and then I'd lose interest, then a couple months later start up a new project. I was never finishing anything. And so, whether Good-Bye, Chunky Rice has limitations or weaknesses or whatnot, just the fact that I finished it was a big deal, and it ended up being quite successful for that point in my life. So Blankets was a lot easier. Even though it was going to be a much bigger book, I was like, "Well, all I have to do is finish it."

Because I'm into this Myers-Briggs gobblygook, I should note that my particular personality type, ENTP, is notorious for starting projects and then abandoning them once it figures out how they should be executed.

"ENTPs are less interested in developing plans of actions or making decisions than they are in generating possibilities and ideas. Following through on the implementation of an idea is usually a chore to the ENTP. For some ENTPs, this results in the habit of never finishing what they start.

The "secret to success" for me that my career book gives me?

"Prioritize, focus, and follow through."

Trying.

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Ideas spread like the plague - Austin Kleon

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A passage from Ted Gioia's How To Listen To Jazz : Strange to say, new art forms are similar to the plague or a virulent flu in how they spread. Art and disease proliferate via contagion, and similar conditions favor both.

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I’ve used this a few times and it’s been pretty effective. I pasted a copy into a Google Doc and used Orange Slice to provide feedback.

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The practice of using single point rubrics is slowly but surely catching on. The simplicity of these rubrics - with just a single column of criteria, rather than a full menu of performance levels - offers a whole host of benefits:

Teachers find them easier and faster to create, because they no longer have to spend precious time thinking up all the different ways students could fail to meet expectations.

Students find them easier to read when preparing an assignment. With only the target expectations to focus on, they are more likely to read those expectations.

They allow for higher-quality feedback, because teachers must specify key problem areas and notable areas of excellence for that particular student, rather than choosing from a list of generic descriptions.

Want to Learn More?

I first talked about this type of rubric in an earlier post ( Know Your Terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics). If this is the first time you've encountered this type of rubric, reading this will give you some background knowledge on all the different types of rubrics and why the single-point deserves world domination.

To give credit where it's due, I did not come up with the name single point rubric. Although the idea for a simplified rubric with a single set of criteria came to me independently, when I went looking for academic support for its use, I found that the type of rubric I had in mind was given the name "Single Point Rubric" in 2000 during a conference presentation by someone named Mary Dietz. Attending that conference was a researcher named Jarene Fluckiger, who published a study on its effectiveness in 2010. (The reference to Dietz is in Fluckiger's paper, but no one named Dietz has published anything on the topic.)

Show Us Your Rubrics!

I urge you to take one of your most convoluted rubrics and make a single-point version of it. Then show it to the world, so other teachers can learn: Take a screenshot of it and post the picture on Twitter with the hashtag #singlepointrubric. If you aren't on Twitter or don't feel like doing this, just put a link to your rubric in the comments below. Help us start a movement to rid the world of ineffective rubrics!

Another Variation (Added in 2017)

After considering some of the limitations of this format, I played around with the rubric a bit more and came up with this variation:

The original version of the single point rubric allowed no space for actually pointing out when the student hit the standard, apart from maybe circling or highlighting the middle column. With this format, teachers can pinpoint where the student is on each descriptor, then offer feedback, either constructive, positive, or both.

To grab a copy of this for your own modification, click here.

Need Ready-Made Rubrics?

My Rubric Pack gives you four different designs in Microsoft Word and Google Docs formats. It also comes with video tutorials to show you how to customize them for any need, plus a Teacher's Manual to help you understand the pros and cons of each style. Check it out here:

Stick around.
Join my mailing list and never miss another post. You'll get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration - in quick, bite-sized packages - all geared toward making your teaching more effective and joyful. To thank you, I'll send you a free copy of my new e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half. I look forward to getting to know you better!

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The practice of using single point rubrics is slowly but surely catching on. Try one for yourself and let us see it!

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Supporting Literacy in (Any) Class
While this is written for science teachers, I feel like there is so much here we could all put into practice, so I’m posting it in ELA too.

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There are a variety of ways to incorporate literacy strategies in science education without sacrificing content.

©iStock/Nadzeya_Dzivakova

Written and spoken language play a significant role in all classes. But if you're trained as a science teacher, how do you support literacy development without losing content time for science?

Rethink Literacy

Asking students to think critically while reading science reports, news and pop science, graphs, and documentaries;

Challenging students to connect multiple sources of media, analyze a source's potential bias, or identify an unreliable source; and

Asking students to write or speak about science findings from a review of research or their own experiments with an audience in mind.

Good news: You already teach literacy. Science teachers offer students many opportunities to improve their literacy skills, including:

Components of literacy are already present in the science classroom. The key is to mindfully support the levels of reading, writing, and speaking skills your students possess, while focusing on content.

Embed Supports

A key method to support skill development without taking away content time is to embed supports.

When you're in direct instruction, acknowledge your strategies. Model reading a science text by thinking aloud with your questions about the text, making connections, or summarizing as you read.

Include multiple types of sources: Students can be given a chance to discuss a chart or watch a short video to set some baseline understanding before tackling a text on the same topic. Be sure to ask students to connect the different mediums-you may be surprised at how many of them initially see the pieces of information as unrelated.

Embed writing supports: Provide opportunities for students to write parts of their notes in their own words, with structure. For example, ask students to summarize a main idea as part of their notes for the day. For students who need more support, create a sentence frame and word bank. Mentor texts are another great way to clarify expectations and demonstrate strong writing; choose a former student's work to share with the class and ask students to identify what is right about the response.

Original prompt: Describe the process of photosynthesis as it relates to glucose production. Explain how plants and other living organisms depend on one another.

Annotated version: Describe the process of 1) photosynthesis as it relates to 2) glucose production. Explain how plants and other living organisms 3) depend on one another.

Annotate the prompt: Science prompts are often multifaceted, and scoring depends on students' responding to each component of the question. Students who miss points often know the materials but have difficulty processing the entire question. Students can learn to identify each part of a prompt and use each identified requirement as a section in their writing. Here's an example:

Readers Below Grade Level

Some students can discuss the science topics but struggle to access any material they have to read. There are several ways to address these below-grade-level readers' needs.

Engineer a text: Take a grade level piece of text and center it on a page. Create a column to the left where you pull out and define key vocabulary, and one on the right where you ask questions of the reader. These questions can be tailored for many levels of readers, ranging from supportive, fact-based questions (helping students read to find out the key facts) to application and extension questions for your readers above grade level. The result is differentiated instruction for your students.

Use technology to expose students to texts: Even if a student is unable to independently read a text, they can develop grade-level literacy skills by interacting with vocabulary, sentence structures, and content of higher-level texts through technology. Several devices have the option to enable text-to-speech functions, which have the device read the text out loud. Speech-to-text functions allow students to speak what they want to have typed. This function requires some practice-don't ask the student to use it for the first time on an assessment.

The Immersive Reader program from Microsoft also reads texts to students. It includes other enhancements, like syllable recognition and the ability to highlight as you read. It even has parts-of-speech recognition to support writing.

Two more benefits for science teachers in promoting literacy: As my students improved their engagement with the literacy inherent to science class, I noticed an increase in engagement with the content and a decrease in disruptions.

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Supporting Literacy in the Science Classroom

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There are a variety of ways to incorporate literacy strategies in science education without sacrificing content.

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There are plenty of studies that isolate the effects of light, acoustics, or air quality on learning. But the research on flexible classrooms is frustratingly scarce.

There are good reasons for the apparent lack of interest. Variables like natural light and acoustics lend themselves to single-factor experiments that can be conducted in a laboratory setting. Give subjects a task to complete in a room with ample windows, for example, and then administer the same test in a room without them.

But flexible classrooms are complex, living systems. One flexible space looks nothing like the next, and often dozens of children and one or more teachers operate within them, pushing and pulling furniture into novel configurations, dimming or turning up lights, and otherwise reshuffling things to suit an almost infinite variety of personal preferences. Studying flexible classrooms, it would seem, means circulating among real children.

Despite the challenges, an ambitious effort to study the design of lived-in classrooms, including looking at hard-to-define factors like flexibility, was completed in 2015 by the University of Salford, in the United Kingdom. Researchers put in the legwork, visiting 153 classrooms in 27 schools across the country-from small, remote village schools to much larger suburban buildings on the outskirts of metropolitan London. In the end, the effect of classroom design on academic performance was studied across 3,766 British children aged 5 to 11.

"We were trying to take a holistic perspective," explained Peter Barrett, the lead researcher and now an honorary research fellow at the University of Oxford. "In other words, we were trying to look at spaces as experienced by people. So this isn't just air quality, this isn't just temperature, or an effort to measure the factors separately. This is the whole lot together."

The Findings

The study looked at three dimensions of classroom design: naturalness (factors like light and temperature), stimulation (factors like color and visual complexity), and individualization (factors like flexibility and student ownership).

The big insight? Optimizing all of these physical characteristics of primary classrooms improved academic performance in reading, writing, and mathematics by 16 percent. The personalization of classrooms-including flexibility, which Barrett defined as "student choice within the space"-accounted for a full quarter of that improvement.

Another way to look at it: When isolated from other measured factors, classroom flexibility is about as important as air quality, light, or temperature in boosting academic outcomes.
Katherine Madden
Barrett's team singled out the effectiveness of learning zones-"a reading area, a wet area, usually a carpet area for whole-class activity, tables usually in blocks of four or six"-and made special note of unique classroom shapes, which seem to allow for easier partitioning of the space. But the study doesn't prescribe fixed solutions, setting out loose guidelines instead. When I described American flexible classrooms, which are even more individualized than their British counterparts, Barrett agreed that the Salford findings applied.

A few insights surprised even the researchers. Flexible, welcoming spaces had a startlingly large effect on learning in math- 73 percent of the students' progress that was attributed to classroom design was traced back to flexibility and student ownership. The reasons are a mystery, but Barrett and his team hazarded a guess: Academic subjects that provoke anxiety-in math, that's a known issue -are better addressed in classrooms that feel comfortable and familiar to students.

And some of the air quality data came as a shock. Despite a 2015 Harvard study that showed steady declines in higher-order thinking when carbon dioxide levels exceed 500 parts per million-the gas is a by-product of human breathing, for those who've forgotten their biology-the researchers consistently recorded levels over six times that high in a classroom they observed. That's alarming-and fixable.

"If air quality is OK at the start of the class, it won't be by the end unless you do something," according to Barrett. "It's an absolute fact. So you have to open a window or a door. But you have to do something."

Form, Function, and Flexibility

So will lugging new furniture into your room improve student outcomes? Do Hokki stools and throw pillows drive up test scores?

The answer is no.

Barrett thinks it's the old dictum that form follows function at work: Flexible classrooms are successful because they go hand in hand with a change in pedagogy. That conclusion never fails to emerge in teacher-led discussions on Edutopia. Flexible spaces, educators agree, alter the fundamental dynamics of teaching and learning, giving students more control and responsibility, improving academic engagement, and undermining the typical face-forward orientation of the traditional learning environment.

In other words, it's not the inert fact of the furniture itself-the new couch in the center of the room or the standing desk near the window-but the dynamic use of the space by the teacher and students that pays, in the end. Changing the layout of your classroom will almost certainly have no impact at all-if you don't change your teaching too.

The takeaway: Flexibility, combined with characteristics like acoustics and air quality, has a real impact on student achievement. If used properly, flexible classrooms produce better academic outcomes among primary school children than more traditional, static classroom designs.

The author of this article is the chief content officer at Edutopia. You can follow him on Twitter @smerrill777.

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Flexible Classrooms: Research Is Scarce, But Promising

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An ambitious study of 153 classrooms in the United Kingdom provides the best evidence that flexible spaces can boost academic performance.

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Teaching Comics and Graphic Novels w/ Resources from NYT

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From Superheroes to Syrian Refugees: Teaching Comics and Graphic Novels With Resources From The New York Times (Published 2018)

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Activities to both teach with and teach about the genre, with help from dozens of Times comics, articles, essays and videos.

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"Intriguing Times images stripped of their captions -- and an invitation to students to discuss them live."

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Intriguing Times images stripped of their captions — and an invitation to students to discuss them live.

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Seven Strategies for Maximizing Time for Project-Based Learning

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I've been at the college level for a little over three years and every time I visit one of my college students in the midst of their practicum, I am struck by how fast time moves in a classroom. It's easy as a professor to forget the frantic pace, with the bells and the announcements and the interruptions that occur on a regular basis. I can sometimes forget what it's like to have to scarf down a meal and run an errand in a twenty-two minute lunch period. Most teachers I know have crowded curriculum maps punctuated by fire drills, assemblies, field trips, and testing days. So, every time I visit a classroom, I'm struck by the breakneck pace of teaching. You're always in a time crunch.

So how do you make time for projects? How do we make time for project-based learning and design thinkingwhen your schedule is already packed?

It can feel like you're simply adding another item onto an already crowded plate. However, PBL isn't about adding things to your plate. It's about re-arranging your plate so that students can work at a deeper level. But how does this actually work?

If you enjoy this blog but you'd like to listen to it on the go, just click on the audio below or subscribe via iTunes/Apple Podcasts (ideal for iOS users) or Google Play and Stitcher (ideal for Android users).

http://www.spencerauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Time-and-PBL.mp3

The following are specific strategies you can use to maximize time for PBL. Before getting into this, I want to share a quick caveat: it's all about context. There are so many human dynamics at work and ultimately, you know your students the best. You are the expert. Often, we learn through trial and error. I had projects that tanked or went a full week off course. I still don't have it figured out perfectly. However, I have learned a few strategies along the way, through my own experiences and through observing some amazing PBL teachers.

#1: Less Teacher Talk

This was the hardest one for me as a middle school teacher. Direct instruction can feel so efficient as a way to convey information. And it is. You talk, they listen and take notes, and that's it. However, with PBL, students spend more time doing the work themselves. They ask more questions and find more of the answers on their own. Sometimes I am a guide, helping them out one-on-one. Other times, I am a curator, sharing specific resources they will need. But the goal is for me to talk less and for students to work more.

While this can feel less efficient, students often learn at a deeper level and retain the information for a longer period of time when they wrestle with it. It might not look as efficient but we actually save time by having students maximize their work time within a class period.

Note that isn't just spending less time on direct instruction. It's also the idea of spending less time explaining directions as students work on the project. I remember having an intern observing me and asking him to do a time audit of how I spent my class time in a PBL unit. To my surprise, I spent way too much time giving directions and clarifying directions for the whole class. So, I tried something. I would write the directions on the board and then answer clarifying questions as I walked around the room. It worked.

#2: Shorten the Timeline (But Build in Wiggle Room)

Ever noticed that students tend to waste time at the beginning or middle of a project and then rush toward the end to get it done? It turns out, we tend to work harder on a task when we are close to finishing it. By contrast, there's an idea called Parkinson's Law, that explains how "work expands to the time allotted" (as described by this great Planet Money episode). In other words, if you give yourself three weeks to do a project and it should only take two weeks, you will find a way to use all three weeks rather than finish early.

Now, there are definitely times when students rush through projects and finish early. However, often students will spend longer than normal on a project because the timelines are too loose. I've found that it's easier to set tighter deadlines and then give students some additional days rather than creating really loose time deadlines. It helps to break projects into phases, which is why I love design thinking. With the LAUNCH Cycle, we have specific phases that students walk through as they engage in creative work:

So, students move through inquiry, research, ideation, prototyping, and revision in distinct phases. It also helps to have students keep track of their own progress by teaching them to engage in project management:

However, sometimes students struggle to meet deadlines, which leads to my next point.

#3: Focus on Quality Over Quantity

When I first began teaching, I would wait for the slowest student to finish an assignment before moving on as a class. So, when it took a student thirty-five minutes to write a paragraph, we would all wait thirty-five minutes. I then stuck with that same timeframe for the entire year. A few months into the school year, I had students fill out a survey on my teaching and, to my surprise, the biggest complaint was that we were moving too slowly. Finally, I realized that we could move faster and I could excuse students from a second assignment to finish the paragraph on their own.

Eventually, this led to a breakthrough for me. What if I got rid of the requirements around quantity and instead focused on quality. So, during a warm-up, I said, "Try and write at least a paragraph. Many of you will do two or three but the goal should be to get your thoughts across clearly." When I switched to flexible assignments, students began to thrive. I no longer had students getting bored and off-task because they had finished early but I also didn't have the students who were scared of being behind all the time.

As I moved to project-based learning, I realized that I needed to embrace flexible assignment design and allow students to focus on quality over quantity.

So, when we worked on blogging projects, I had students who wrote ten blog posts and others who wrote three. I had students who wrote 2,000-word posts and others who wrote three hundred words. Initially, there were questions of equity and fairness but because we framed it through the lens of personal goals, students realized that equity isn't about sameness. It's about helping each student reach their full potential. When we discussed it as a class, I would compare it to silent reading time, when each student read a different number of pages. Although it feels counterintuitive, this flexible approach actually saves time, because each student is more likely to work toward their maximum potential.

#4: Use Structures to Save Time

Early on in my PBL journey, I told students, "I want you to create a documentary. You need to develop a plan and then make it happen." It didn't happen. Students stood around talking without getting started. The larger project was too daunting, so I began to incorporate structures that would build interdependence and collaboration.

Structures are actually vital for creative productivity. It turns out people who are inexperienced at a task often fail to plan and have more false starts and mistakes while those who are experts tend to plan ahead. Structures provide the necessary creative constraint to push divergent thinking and they help facilitate the actual work of creative work. One of the fascinating things I've learned in researching collaboration and innovation is how often organizations, teams, and companies use structures to facilitate creative work. Pixar uses the Brain Trust concept and countless companies have used the Radical Candor structures developed by Kim Scott. If you haven't checked out her book, I highly recommend it.

Nearly every discipline uses a framework or blueprint for their creative work, it's a writer's workshop structure, an engineering process, the scientific method, or a design thinking framework. When we incorporate these frameworks into our PBL units, we not only save time, but we also teach students how to do creative work in various disciplines.

#5: Chunk Your Standards

The traditional approach to teaching focuses on isolating specific skills and teaching them systematically to students. However, with PBL, we can have students learn a concept while also practicing a skill. They can work on multiple, interconnected standards at the same time instead of going sequentially through each standard. When this happens, students move more slowly through the standards rather than going through the stop-and-go traditional methods.

In some cases, you might go fully competency-based and allow students to skip standards that they have already mastered. For example, in the research phase of a project, students can work on specific reading skills they need to master and skip the skills they have already mastered. For a mini-project, you might even have students use this choice grid, where they self-select skills and standards.

#6: Teach New Content Through the Project

According to the Buck Institute for Education, one of the key differences between a culminating project and a PBL unit is that students should be learning through a project rather than learning first and then doing completing the project afterward.

Note that you will still need to do direct instruction and you might even begin your project with a quick concept attainment lesson. In fact, John Hattie recommends focusing on concept attainment before ever moving into student inquiry. Moreover, there are times when you might need to review a concept or a skill together with students before they move into a new phase of their projects. However, these more traditional approaches should occur throughout the project. The goal is to integrate direct instruction in a way that feels authentic.

#7: Assess As You Go

With project-based learning, you can incorporate frequent formative assessments into each phase of the project. Here you treat assessment more like a verb than a noun. It's something you do rather than something you take. You can observe students as they work by keeping a checklist of mastery or pulling them aside for one-on-one conversations. You can also embed self-assessments, peer feedback, and shorter five-minute student-teacher conferences so that they can set goals and clarify their mastery of the content.

In the process, you save time, because you are not having students completing tests or weekly quizzes. This can feel risky. I remember wondering whether or not my observations were accurate and feeling afraid that my students would tank when it came time to take an actual test. For what it's worth, I would always take thirty minutes to go over test-taking strategies at the end of each quarter when we took a benchmark test. However, because our projects were so challenging, students tended to excel on the tests. There was never a guarantee and the research on PBL and student achievement levels is mixed. However, when you teach above the test, students tend to view the test as easier.

Ultimately, project-based learning involves a different way of thinking. It's about choosing quality over quantity and shifting toward student ownership. While it can feel like things are moving more slowly, you can actually accomplish more and learn at a deeper level.

If you're interested in getting started with PBL, you might want to download this toolkit or check out this free webinar.

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I've been at the college level for a little over three years and every time I visit one of my college students in the midst of their practicum, I am struck by how fast time moves in a classroom.

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Reading Like a Historian
Beyond the Bubble
Civic Online Reasoning

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We're committed to providing educators accessible, high-quality teaching tools. That's why all our lessons and assessments are free. Please consider donating to SHEG to support our creation of new materials. All gifts are made through Stanford University and are tax-deductible.

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Delaying the Grade: How to Get Students to Read Feedback

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I have a confession to make: I am terrible at handing back papers. That sounds silly, right? I mean, you literally just hand the paper to the kid whose name is at the top.

But teachers everywhere know how disheartening that small act can be. (It can't be just me, right?)

There are the eye rolls and the whispering to each other of "What did you get?" and "She gave me a ___." Next thing you know, the paper you spent so long reading and marking has been shoved into the abyss of the backpack or tossed carelessly in the recycle bin.

Wow, glad I put so much time into that assignment, said no teacher ever.

I honestly got to a point where I would just wait so long to give things back, the kids would kind of forget, and then so would I. Oops.

In English I ask my students to write a lot. I don't grade everything they write, but when it comes to the "big essays"-the graded, polished drafts-what grade they will receive becomes the sole motivator for their writing. This frustrates me, and, in my opinion, distracts them from what they should actually care about: writing.

This intense focus on the all-important grade was my least favorite part, and it was definitely what kept the stack sitting on the counter behind my desk...for an embarrassing amount of time. It really bothered me that kids didn't care about the feedback I put on their essays, not just because I took the time to do it, but because I did it to help them. I want them to grow as writers, and most of them do throughout the year, but so many only seem to care about that number.

I won't lie: It made me angry. Not only did I feel like I had wasted my time, I felt like they just didn't care. And then the snowball of thoughts would start: How will they survive if they don't care about feedback? What's going to happen in college? Or when they get jobs? Ugh! I'm done!

After dealing with this for about nine years, I couldn't take it anymore. I either had to get over it or fix it. Since I'm not usually one to give up, I set out to find a way to get my students to actually read their feedback and care less about the grade.

The Fix for Ignored Feedback

The solution was remarkably easy and accidentally originated out of my laziness (score one for being a little lazy!). Last year, kids had turned in essays on Google Classroom, but rather than pasting a completed rubric into their essay as I usually did, I made hard copies of the rubric and wrote on them. This meant that I could return papers with comments but without grades.

And from this a whole new system was born: Return papers to students with only feedback. Delay the delivery of the actual grade so student focus moves from the grade to the feedback.

The simple act of delaying the grade meant that students had to think about their writing. They had to read their own writing-after a few weeks away from it-and digest my comments, which allowed them to better recognize what they did well or not so well. The response from students was extremely positive; they understood the benefit of rereading their essays and paying attention to feedback. One boy said, "Mrs. Louden, you're a genius. I've never read what a teacher writes on my essay before, and now I have to."

The Plan

1. Grade the Papers
After collecting student papers, grade them (hard copy or electronic) as you usually would with comments on the written piece, but keep the rubric separate.

2. Plan Independent Work
Plan accordingly by creating opportunities for students to do independent or group work for a few days when it's time to return papers to students. This is probably the most vital part of the process, because it will give you time to conference with individual students.

3. Return Papers
When you finish grading the papers, return just the written work to students, not the completed rubric. When I first tried this with students, I put the following directions up on the board when I returned the essays:

Read over your whole essay, including what you wrote and my comments.

Write THREE observations based on your reading and TWO follow-up questions to discuss with me at our conference. Ask about comments, how to improve things, how to do things differently, etc.

Use the rubric (posted online) to grade yourself.

Be ready to discuss all of this.

I now incorporate these instructions into the student copy of the rubric. Below is one page of that rubric, which includes the reflection section.

4. Time to Reflect
Return the essays during class, allowing time to explain, time for kids to read their essays, and time for them to clarify if needed. Encourage them to go slowly. ( Bonus step: Walk around and listen. Hear the difference. Honestly, you probably won't hear a lot of talking or comparing. If they are talking, it will be to themselves about what they are noticing.)

5. Conference with Each Student
This step is where the magic happens.

Since you've planned for independent work, you will have time to meet with each student individually. I do my conferences on a large whiteboard-painted table; I have found that since moving these from my desk to this table, our conferences are more productive. I'm not distracted by the stuff on my desk, kids are able to spread out (Chromebook, reflection, essay, etc.), and as a bonus, we can use the surface of the table when we need to do some planning. These meetings don't have to be more than a couple of minutes per student.

When kids get to my table, I start with "What do you want to talk about?" and let them guide the conference. It is so cool to hear what they have to say. So many of them make comments like "I can't believe I did <insert careless mistake>" or "I'm sorry I turned it in like this" or "I'm embarrassed; I see so many mistakes!" Or my favorite: "You specifically told us not to do this." The level of reflection is deeper than any I've ever encountered. I assure them that it is fine and I don't expect perfection, but on the inside I'm so excited that they're seeing the things I see.

Next they usually ask questions. This is exciting because some of their questions make perfect teachable moments! I have watched many students grow this year from these conversations. Take Alex, for example. He writes the wordiest sentences I've ever read, but he's gotten to the point where he puts his own comments on his essay as he writes so we can discuss while he's still in the writing stage. At least half of these are related to wordiness. I'm excited that he's learned to identify it, if not quite how to fix it yet.

Finally, I end by asking students how they graded themselves according to the rubric. I enjoy this part because more often than not, they were much harsher on themselves than I was. I then share the rubric with the grade and the rest of my general comments. For once, kids are usually happy about their grade because it was higher than they expected, contrary to the old days when they'd say "she gave me C" but they thought they deserved an A.

6. Revision
I always offer students the opportunity to rewrite their essay. Above all else, my goal is to help students become better writers. If this means they have to do it a couple of times, then so be it. Depending on the assignment, these are the usual requirements:

The student must meet with me 1 to 3 times (depends on the student and the essay) before it is due. These meetings are quick "check-in" style meetings: What are you planning to do? What have you done? What questions do you have?

The student must make substantial revisions, not just grammatical edits.

The student must turn in the original and the updated draft on time.

And that's it! Okay, looking back over what I said, it sounds like a lot, but really it's very easy for you. I think this is the best change I have made to the writing process in the last few years. Students have become more reflective ( and sympathetic of how long it takes me to grade-haha! ), their writing has improved, and I return papers much more quickly-and happily-than ever before. ♦

Stick around.
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Delaying the Grade: How to Get Students to Read Feedback

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You spend hours marking and commenting on student work, and then they don't even read your feedback. The solution is all in how you time it.

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Using "I Am" Poetry for Synthesizing Text

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AMLE - Association for Middle Level Education

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Much of the writing we assign our students is public writing-writing to communicate with others. Writing-to-learn is personal writing, writing that helps students increase comprehension of texts-fiction and nonfiction-in all disciplines. Reader response compels readers to interact with the text and makes visible for readers and their teachers the depth of text comprehension. This is the eighth in a series of columns on scaffolding writing-to-learn by teaching a variety of reader response strategies before, during, and after reading.
The first six Write to Learn columns focused on before-reading response and a variety of during-reading response strategies. The previous column, this column, and the next two columns in the series will share strategies for employing after-reading response across the disciplines. Effective after-reading response employs a text reformulation strategy where readers reconstruct text read into another type of text. This synthesis, a critical thinking skill that involves putting together assorted parts to make a new whole, helps readers in all disciplines not only relate information learned, but also rethink the meaning of this learning and connect to other learnings and readers' developing views of their world.

The "I Am" Poem

In "I Am" poetry, readers write from the perspective of something they have read in a text or textbook. They could be writing from the perspective of a character in a story or poem; a person from a memoir or biography; a scientist or a scientific theory, element, or concept; a person, event, or place in history; a mathematical concept or principle; or a disease, condition, or issue in health.

The "I Am" poem follows a format that requires readers to read and analyze how the character, person, item, or event would view its world and its place in the world, returning to the text multiple times to apply what they have learned. This writing also causes readers to synthesize new material with information they already know or new information they may research to create their poem. In the case of items, events, or even places, particularly in social studies, science, math, and health classes, the writer would employ personification.

There is a standard format readers/writers can follow (see Figure 1), but they are encouraged to modify the verbs to fit their topic and their own visions. This format places the reader into another's shoes, so to speak, and requires that they read more deeply, closely, and critically as they explore text from a particular point of view (Roessing, 2016).

Figure 1
"I Am" Poetry Standard Format

I am __________________________
[character's name and identity]
I wonder _______________________
I hear _________________________
I see __________________________
I want _________________________
I am __________________________
[not the name in Line 1, but additional information about the character]

I pretend _______________________
I feel __________________________
I touch _________________________
I worry _________________________
I cry ___________________________
I am ___________________________
[not the name in Line 1, but additional information about the character]

I understand _____________________
I say ___________________________
I dream _________________________
I try ____________________________
I hope __________________________
I am ____________________________
[character's name, including more information about the character as a conclusion]

To plan their writing, the class can first brainstorm perspectives from which the text they read can be viewed. If students are reading different texts, individually or in a small group, a short article, story, or poem can be read to provide an example. For example, in the poem "Casey at the Bat," someone could write from the perspective of Casey, one of his teammates, a fan (one of the "patrons of the game"), or the Mudville coach. For the article, "The Great Pandemic of 1918-19," students brainstormed that they could write from the perspective of a man, woman, or child living in Philadelphia in 1918-1919; a victim of the Great Pandemic; a Philadelphia funeral director; the mayor of Philadelphia, 1918-1919; or even The Great Pandemic itself (Roessing, 2016).

Students choose the perspective(s) from which they will revisit the text. As they reread, they first mark details that now become important from that viewpoint. Students consider the "I Am" poem format and examine and analyze the text for ideas, considering what the character or entity would see, feel, worry about, say, understand, or any of the verbs they will substitute that may better fit their interpretations and responses. Readers, especially in the disciplines, may add research from other sources.

When readers alter perspective, they modify and amend meaning, the details that they notice, and the facts and evidence that become important. Teaching readers to read from varied perspectives leads to reading through multiple lenses, thereby, discovering differing points of view. This practice results in considering differently and understanding more profoundly and meaningfully (Roessing, 2016).

English-Language Arts

In ELA classes, the students read Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman. This small novel is comprised of chapters that are each written by a different character. After readers read and discuss the novel, they can choose a different character from whose perspective they will write an "I Am" poem. The "I Am" poem should incorporate more than that character's chapter as the characters interact and influence each other throughout the book. In the example in Figure 2, the first two stanzas are the poem of Kim, the character of the first chapter, and all information is extracted from that chapter or inferences from the Chapter 1 text.

Figure 2
Example from Seedfolks, I Am Kim

I am Kim, a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl.
I wonder if my father would have loved me if he had lived until I was born.
I hear my mother and oldest sister crying past midnight on the anniversary of his death.
I see the candles, incense, rice, and meat offered to honor my father.
I want to plant beans because my father had been a farmer.
I am going to plant them in the vacant lot across the street; our apartment has no yard.

I pretend that my father will be able to see my beans grow and know I am his daughter.
I feel the hard ground as I dig six holes with my spoon.
I touch my cheeks which feel like marble in this cold Cleveland April.
I worry if I will be safe because the lot is full of trash; I show bravery.
I cry when my mother and sister cry but think of something to do.
I am the first gardener in a poor, ethnically and racially diverse neighborhood where no one talks to each other.

A third stanza would be comprised of critical thinking about her relationships with characters and events from other chapters so all students review the entire novel-or their during-reading response journals-on all chapters.

When all students have written their poems, they can assemble in a circle around the room reading their poems in the order the characters appear in the story. As they read aloud, each can take on the persona of their character through their voice and attitude. Readers can each present their first two stanzas, based on the characters' chapters, and then circle again, reading their third stanzas, which demonstrate the relationships built through the novel.

Writing "I Am" poetry causes readers to reflect on their reading, the characters, their environments and relationships, their personality traits, and how those traits determine their goals and decisions-positive or negative. Creating this poetry causes readers to look more critically at texts, synthesizing what they are reading with what they know, have read, and have learned.

Responding to novels, readers can not only write from the perspective of a character but the creative writer can pursue an innovative direction. For example, in Linda Sue Park's novel A Long Walk to Water, readers can create poems from the perspectives of either of the two main characters, Nya or Salva, a minor character, or even, as happened in one class, from the perspective of Water. In response to Seedfolks, a student may write from the perspective of the developing garden or from the viewpoint of an inhabitant of the neighborhood who does not appear in the story. This is a format that encourages creativity in thinking, rather than inhibiting it.

Social Studies

In social studies classes, students more commonly read textbook chapters and articles while studying a unit. When studying a unit on the Holocaust, students read supplemental articles on different topics within the unit, one topic being the Warsaw ghetto. They then may write "I Am" poetry about people, real and fictitious, who were impacted by the topic they explored. When reading articles about the Warsaw ghetto, the poem in Figure 3 was written as an after-reading response.

I am a child of Warsaw, October 12, 1940.
I wonder what it would be like to live out in the open, in our own house again.
I hear the sounds of 400,000 people crowded together in this ghetto in a 1.3 square mile area, surrounded by a wall, the largest ghetto in Poland.
I see Nazi soldiers yelling at people and taking families away-To where?
I want something to eat; food is becoming more and more scarce.
I am a Jew in a time and place dangerous to be Jewish, wearing a white armband with a blue star as identification.

I pretend life is as it once was-Warsaw a major center of Jewish life; 30% of the population was Jewish.
I feel that life as we have known it has now ended.
I know that Poland was invaded by the Germans in 1939 and nothing has been the same since.
I touch the sides of the truck that takes my friends out of the ghetto. It is August 1942.
I worry that I will never see them again; we hear that "work" camps are really death camps.
I cry as people die even here in the ghetto-83,000 from starvation and disease.
I become part of the Jewish Combat Organization, a self-defense resistance unit in the ghetto; in January 1943 we forced the Germans to withdraw.

I understand that when Hitler came to power everything changed for the Jews and others who are not Aryan and that these troops will return.
I dream there is a chance that life will be as I planned with my own family practicing my own religion accomplishing in my own profession.
I take part in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944; 7,000 Jews died.
I try to hide in the ruins of the liquidated ghetto where the Nazis had leveled every building.
I was shipped to a labor camp and am one of the few Jewish survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Not only were facts from the article such as dates, names, places, events, and statistics included, but when composing the poem, the writer had to reflect on what someone in this young man's situation would have seen, wanted, worried about, dreamt, and hoped. The reader of the poem can observe not only what the writer has read, but also what the writer has inferred and synthesized with prior knowledge he had or what he learned about the Holocaust in the social studies unit. The poem necessitates and demonstrates critical thinking, and the format encourages and promotes many trips back to the text for clarification and deeper comprehension and learning of the material.

Science

In science class, students were asked to review the past unit on forces and motion and choose a topic as the focus of an "I Am" poem. They could use their text and were to review their notes. The teacher helped the students brainstorm appropriate verbs, and students wrote as gravity, force, friction, inertia, Newton's Laws of Motion, or a stomp rocket (which they were designing and testing in class). Asleigh's poem (Figure 4) about friction personifies and explains friction and illustrates what she has learned.

I am friction.
I engage when two objects rub together.
I yank back objects from moving.
I supersize when the object gets heavier.
I slip between the sled and the snow.
I am friction.

I slide between the brakes and wheels when the car tries to stop.
I pull to the opposite side where the object is trying to go.
I struggle to keep the object from moving.
I worry when there is less of me because it is harder to stop.
I cry when it is raining because there is less of me; rain causes accidents because objects have no grip.
I am friction.

I take many forms: static, sliding, rolling, and fluid.
I crackle when two hands rub together to create heat.
I am stronger on solid objects when they rub together than liquids.
I activate when you are running and you stop quickly.
I like to shock you when I build up and you touch metals.
I am friction, and just know that the next time you go down a slide, I will be there.

Chase's poem "I Am Gravity" reveals, "I make it harder to get off the ground. I wonder why people even bother jumping because I will always win," concluding that stanza with "I am the pull that keeps everything down." Later in the poem he adds more information about this topic, "I become weaker on planets such as Pluto, Mars, Venus, and Mercury because they are less massive," and he ends the poem by making the point, "I am Gravity, and I keep the planets in orbit around the sun."

Other Classes

Students can also find topics to write about in mathematics, such as I Am a decimal, a fraction, area, a rational number, a variable, an exponent, or the Pythagorean theorem. In health class, students can write an "I Am" poem from the perspective of someone affected by a disease or a condition, such as "I Am an Athlete with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)," "I Am a Smoker," or "I Am a Teenage Mother." Or students can write from the viewpoint of the topic, as "I Am Alcohol."

In these examples, besides encouraging and training readers to read and examine topics from particular perspectives, "I Am" poetry is employed as an after-reading response strategy encouraging readers to return to the text multiple times, manipulating text to comprehend at a deeper level as they analyze to synthesize learning. Because writing "I Am" poems allows for choice, creativity, and fun, students are motivated and engaged, the key to successful learning.

Reference

Roessing, L. (2016). "One text-Many perspectives: Writing the "I am" poem to read through divergent lenses. AMLE Magazine, 4(1), 42-46.

Lesley Roessing taught middle school for 20 years before becoming the founding director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project and senior lecturer in the College of Education of Georgia Southern University, Armstrong campus. Lesley has published four professional books for educators, as well as chapters and articles on literacy. The ideas in this column were based on The Write to Read: Response Journals That Increase Comprehension (Corwin, 2009).
lesleyroessing@gmail.com Published inAMLE Magazine, April 2019.

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After-Reading Response: "I Am" Poetry for Synthesizing Text

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Much of the writing we assign our students is public writing-writing to communicate with others. Writing-to-learn is personal writing, writing that helps students increase comprehension of texts-fiction and nonfiction-in all disciplines. Reader response compels readers to interact with the text and makes visible for readers and their teachers the depth of text comprehension.

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Why the sum of the outside angles of a polygon = 360°

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Find Your [Be a] Marigold: The One Essential Rule for New [All] Teachers

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Welcome to your first year of teaching. This year will test you more intensely than just about anything you've done up to now. It will deplete all your energy, bring you to tears, and make you question every talent or skill you thought you had. But all these tests, if you approach them the right way, will leave you better and stronger than you are today.

Advice is available everywhere you look, and some of it is very good. Still, with everything you have to do right now, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it all. And the fact is, a lot of those tips won't work very well if you fail to follow this one essential rule:

Surround yourself with good people.

By finding the positive, supportive, energetic teachers in your school and sticking close to them, you can improve your job satisfaction more than with any other strategy. And your chances of excelling in this field will skyrocket. Just like a young seedling growing in a garden, thriving in your first year depends largely on who you plant yourself next to.

Many experienced gardeners follow a concept called companion planting: placing certain vegetables and plants near each other to improve growth for one or both plants. For example, rose growers plant garlic near their roses because it repels bugs and prevents fungal diseases. Among companion plants, the marigold is one of the best: It protects a wide variety of plants from pests and harmful weeds. If you plant a marigold beside most any garden vegetable, that vegetable will grow big and strong and healthy, protected and encouraged by its marigold.

Marigolds exist in our schools as well - encouraging, supporting and nurturing growing teachers on their way to maturity. If you can find at least one marigold in your school and stay close to them, you will grow. Find more than one and you will positively thrive.

Few teachers will be lucky enough to be planted close to a marigold - being assigned to one as a mentor, co-teacher, or team leader will be rare. You will have to seek them out. You can identify them by the way they congratulate you on arrival, rather than asking why anyone would want this godforsaken job. Or by the way their offers to help sound sincere. Or just by how you feel when you're with them: Are you calmer, more hopeful? Excited to get started on a teaching task? Comfortable asking questions, even the stupid ones? If you feel good around this person, chances are they have some marigold qualities.

Once you've identified your marigolds, make an effort to spend time with them. Having a hard day? Go to your marigolds. Not understanding how to operate the grade reporting system? Go to your marigolds. Confused by something the principal said at the faculty meeting? Marigolds. They may be on the other side of the building, out of your grade or subject area, or otherwise less convenient to reach than others. If your school is especially toxic, you might have to find your marigolds in another school, or even online. Make the effort. It's worth the trouble.

While seeking out your marigolds, you'll need to take note of the walnut trees. Successful gardeners avoid planting vegetables anywhere near walnut trees, which give off a toxic substance that can inhibit growth, wilt, and ultimately kill nearby vegetable plants. And sadly, if your school is like most, walnut trees will be abundant. They may not seem dangerous at first. In fact, some may appear to be good teachers - happy, social, well-organized. But here are some signs that you should keep your distance: Their take on the kids is negative. Their take on the administration is negative. Being around them makes you feel insecure, discouraged, overwhelmed, or embarrassed.

WALNUT TREES ARE POISON. Avoid them whenever you can. If you don't, they will start to infect you, and soon you'll hate teaching as much as they do.

Doing this may be a challenge: Your supervisor might be a walnut tree. You may be co-teaching with one. You might work on a whole team of walnut trees, spending hours with them every week. Touching base with your marigolds will help flush out the toxins that build up from contact with the walnut trees. On top of that, simply identifying certain co-workers as walnut trees can help dilute their power over you. If I'd had a label I could mentally place on certain people in the schools where I worked, they would have had far less of an impact on me.

So in the spirit of identification, here are some common walnut tree varieties to look out for:

Kid-Hatin' Kate, who will snort every time you share a positive anecdote about your students. Spend enough time with her and you'll believe every single one of them is a lying, cheating little sneak and you're a fool if you think otherwise.

Retirement Dan, who regularly reports on how many years he has left before he's "outta here." He then adds with a chuckle that you have about thirty, right? Dan will find your enthusiasm about school "cute," but will then tell you to "just wait...it'll wear off."

Twenty-Page Tina, who sets impossibly high standards for her students and brags when kids fail. You had your kids write a five-page paper? Tina assigned twenty. Your mid-term had fifty questions? Tina's had a hundred and fifty, and only a dozen kids passed it. The students say her exams are the only ones they ever have to study for. After talking to Tina, you'll feel the urge to triple your kids' workload and add at least ten trick questions to your assessments, just to get your average down.

Badass Bobby, who overhears you talking about your students acting up in class and says, "They would never try that crap in my room." Whenever you leave a conversation with him, you go and scream at your kids.

Hattie-Who-Hates-the-Principal. Self-explanatory.

Lawsuit Steve, who sees you touch a student's forearm and says you better watch out. He "had to give up hugs years ago" and is always reminding you to "be careful."

My-Time Margaret, who counts the number of minutes she got for lunch, complains about serving one more day of car-rider duty than anyone else, and knows precisely what time she's legally required to be in the building each day (not a minute earlier).

And Good-Old-Days Judy, who hates anything new and never fails to mention how much better things used to be.

Be especially vigilant during PDs, when you'll find yourself in a veritable forest of walnut trees. It will be the worst when the presenter asks you to perform some task - read student work, for example - in groups. The trees will slowly turn toward the center, leaves rustling, snarky comments dropping off their branches like walnuts whacking the table. It won't matter how potentially interesting the activity might be, as soon as they huddle up it will be snark, snark, ugly, ugly, hate, hate. When this happens, recognize that you are surrounded, hold tight to your roots, and remember your marigolds.

Your search for marigolds will yield imperfect results: Not everyone is all-marigold or all-walnut tree. There will be some in the building who just make you happy - go to them for a mood boost. Some who aren't terribly good at the teaching part, but love the kids to death - seek them out when you need to be reminded of how much you love them, too. Others will take care of you - encourage you to rest, slack off a little, not beat yourself up. And some who are intensely into the craft, who always have a great strategy on hand and keep up on current research - they can really help you stretch your abilities. Learn who has what marigold qualities and get what you can from each of them.

Finally, try to find some compassion for the walnut trees. Their toxicity comes from a place of real pain, and they themselves probably fell under the influence of the walnut trees who came before them. Plus, it's not like their complaints have no basis in reality. Teaching is a ridiculously hard job, some say almost impossible.

Before you climb that peak, you'll need to choose a sherpa to escort you through the trek. The first option is Walter Nutt, who starts by asking why in the world you'd want to do something like this. He describes the many others who have died trying to do this climb, how sick you'll get, how people have polluted the trail, all but destroying what was once a pristine and beautiful mountain. The second option, Mary Gold, congratulates you on your courage, sits down with you to map out some important strategies, and finishes off by saying It's a crazy-hard, mammoth task, but you know what? We're going to kick that mountain's ass.

Who do you want leading you up that peak?

Find your marigolds and stick close to them. Grow big and strong. Kick that mountain's ass. ♦

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Find Your Marigold: The One Essential Rule for New Teachers

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Advice is available everywhere you look, and some of it is very good. But a lot of those tips won't work if you fail to follow this one essential rule.

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Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools® invites you during SXSW EDU to join the Unified Generation.

Did you know that over 6,500 schools nationwide are considered centers of inclusion? With the support of the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs at the Department of Education, Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools® equip young people with tools and training to create climates of acceptance.

In Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools®, students with intellectual disabilities feel welcome and are routinely included in, and feel a part of, all activities, opportunities, and functions. This is accomplished by implementing inclusive sports, inclusive youth leadership opportunities, and whole school engagement.

They are creating an Inclusion Revolution. Join the Special Olympics movement by participating in these SXSW EDU activities and engage with themes of inclusion using #SpecialOlympicsSXSW:

Monday, March 3
Early Bird Social: Austin Convention Center, Ballroom A, 6:00pm-8:00pm
Come mix and mingle with your fellow attendees on Sunday evening after picking up your SXSW EDU registration badge and meet some representatives from Unified Champion Schools.

Monday, March 4 - Wednesday, March 6
SXSW EDU Expo: Austin Convention Center Ballroom, 10:00am-5:00pm
Unlocking Inclusion Exhibit: Come experience this interactive exhibit to discover more about Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools®

Unified Bocce: Take a break from the amazing sessions to play some bocce with local Special Olympics Texas athletes and volunteers.

Monday, March 4
Featured Panel "A Unified Perspective": Austin Convention Center, Room 18ABC, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Dr. Timothy Shriver, Chairman, Special Olympics International
Jamaal Charles, Retired NFL Player
Erika Guerrero, Alamo Heights High School, Texas
Tajha Ilerant, Unified Champion Schools US Youth Ambassador

Wednesday, March 6
"Unified Generation, Youth & Social Inclusion": Austin Convention Center, Room 17A, 3:30pm-4:30pm
Andrea Cahn, Senior Director, Unified Champion Schools, Special Olympics
Soeren Palumbo, Senior Director, Unified Schools, Special Olympics
Mitch Bonar, Youth Leader, Special Olympics Indiana
Ivalis Guajardo, Youth Leader, Special Olympics Texas
"Teaching the Unified Generation Meet Up": Hilton Austin Downtown, Room 602, 5:00pm-6:00pm
Jennifer Paolantonio, Ponaganset High School, Rhode Island

Visit www.generationunified.org to learn more about Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools®, watch case studies, and hear the stories of the remarkable individuals who are creating a Unified Generation.
Sponsored Content and Photo Provided by Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools®

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Creating the Unified Generation with Special Olympics - SXSW EDU

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Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools® invites you during SXSW EDU to join the Unified Generation. Did you know that over 6,500 schools nationwide are considered centers of inclusion? With the support of the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs at the Department of Education, Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools® equip young people with tools and training to create climates of acceptance.