Remembering 9/11: A Middle School ELA Approach for September 11th

    

     Everyone can tell you where they were on September 11, 2001.  I was sitting in my high school French class, on my way to a Jimmy Buffet concert in Indianapolis that evening.  The first plane hit while we were in study hall and because everyone thought it was an accident, we didn't turn on the tvs until the second plane hit.    Then it became very real that this wasn't an accident at all.  We sat in French class absolutely mesmerized at what was happening.
    Three years ago when talking about this day with a group of seventh graders I realized these events were just stories to my kids, like learning about anything "in the past."  They knew about the day only through stories they've heard and historical fiction novels they've read.
     I guess to some I wasn't directly affected by the events on 9/11, but in a way, we all were, though.  I was seventeen and it was the first time I realized there was a world much larger than the world I experienced everyday. Because someone invaded that world in such a tragic way, I sat glued to the tv, soaking in very piece of information I could, just trying to understand what had happened and why.  I guess I felt like learning as much as I could might help me be more empathetic to those who lost loved ones.
     I suppose that's why I feel so passionate about making sure that my students understand what exactly is being remembered and honored.  My goal as a Language Arts teacher is to make my students more empathetic towards others, from any event, situation, or story.  This why I carefully structure my class on September 11th each year.
    First, I have students complete activities in this Hyperdoc, created by Katherine Baker.  Students have to think about what they already know about the events from 9/11, choose a few videos to watch, do a little research, and post their findings and reflections to a Padlet.  Starting with this activity gives every student some background knowledge. (Be sure to make a copy of the Hyperdoc and update with your own Padlet link before sharing with students.)

The illustrations in the book are gorgeous.

    Next, we read a short picture book called Saved by the Boats, which tells the story of the several boats that heroically helped the people on Manhattan island return home after all other forms of transportation had been shut down.  I love this because it brings in a perspective that most students haven't heard of until now.  While I'm reading, I ask students to write down at least 10 facts mentioned the story. (We use this story for other things throughout the year, so this quick read sets up other lessons in the year.)
    Then, I put a picture from the day on the board.  This particular one seems to generate a lot of discussion.  I ask students to pick someone from the photo and write a from their perspective.  We do a quick mini-lesson review on mood and tone so that students know what emotions to convey, and what tone they need to have as the author.  Their one requirement is to include at least 5 facts from the book in their writing piece.  After 15 minutes of writing, I ask students to share.  (This year I want to try Barry Lane's Human Tableau, where the students come up and mimic the picture.  Then, I call out a person and they read their character's story.  He did it at a workshop this summer with a picture from the Holocaust and it was absolutely breathtaking.)

My students always point out the man going
 in the other direction.  It leads to lots of discussion
 on those who went back to help others.

      Finally, we end class with a close reading of the poem "The Names" by Billy Collins.  It leads to a really good discussion on the different ways we remember people, and I let the kids create a memorial for something or someone special to them.
     I've had two-hour classes for the past two years, so doing all of this in one period was very much possible.  I am back to a more traditional schedule (59 minute periods), so I plan on doing the first two activities on September 11th, and then completing the last two activities on September 12th.  That breakdown just makes sense for me.  I can easily see where you could go into depth with one of these activities and it could last whole period.  If you like any of these ideas, feel free to use them any way you wish.  Hope this helps give you an idea on how to make September 11th relevant and thoughtful for your middle schoolers.

Love and Sparkle,

5 Tips for Argument Writing: Guest Post on 2 Peas and a Dog

Be sure to head on over to 2 Peas and a Dog to check out my guest post on 5 Trips for Argument Writing!  It has my best how-to advice setting up an argumentative writing unit with middle schoolers.  For stopping by, here's a FREE sample unit I created about reality tv!  You can make a copy of it and make any changes you need.  Be sure to leave feedback below.  Thanks!

Love and Sparkle,

Breakout of Boring Routines: How to Find and Use Digital Breakouts

     I was a skeptic.  There, I said it.  I was most definitely a skeptic when first introduced to Breakout games for the classroom.  We were in a summer leadership team meeting and our technology director brought the boxes for us to try.  I had so much fun, and I could see how they could be used to engage students in content or work on collaboration skills, but my mind went into teacher mode - my kids fight with each other like crazy or would lose or reset those locks!  So, another year went by before I started to think about them again.
     Then, I found a digital Breakout about plot structures.  (Actually, it might have been one of my teammates who found the digital breakout, but I'm not really sure.  My team and I spend a lot of time together - A LOT - to the point I'm not sure who had the original idea.  So, teammates, if you shared it, thanks for it and the blogpost idea! Love you!)  So anyway, I thought it might be a good review before our end-of-quarter assessment.  It ended up being a GREAT review!  The kids were extremely engaged and had the opportunity to review concepts.  It was a great alternative to our other review games. And before long, kids started asking if we could do Breakouts at other times.  Yes, you read that correctly - kids WANTED to work on content related material.  It was nothing short of a miracle.

Look at them working together!  They were so engaged.

 So, what are Breakout games?  They are escape-room type scenarios where kids have to work together and use content knowledge to solve challenges to solve an overall puzzle.  My favorite part is that if you don't want to use the boxes, you can use digital Breakout games, where the "locks" are on a Google Form.  Kids analyze clues to come up with the correct codes for the "locks" on the Form.  The locks can be words of any length, directional, number, colors - the sky is the limit!  (Read more about them here).
     Digital Breakouts are available in several places, as more teachers are becoming comfortable with making them.  We've purchased a couple from TeachersPayTeachers gathered some from our favorite blogs, and you can purchase a subscription to Breakout EDU for an unbelievable amount of games for only $60 for the year. (Get creative about getting this financed for you instead of spending that money from you own pocket.  For example, I wrote a grant to our education foundation, and they bought us a subscription for next school year.)  But the place we check first is always the Breakout EDU Digital Sandbox.   These FREE game are organized so that you can search by subject, content, or grade level which makes it very user-friendly.
 

     Breakouts are great, but just like anything else in our classrooms, success comes not from the resource, but the implementation.  Here are my tips:

1) Start with a lesson on cursors.  As weird as this sounds, trust me.  Learn from my mistake. I didn't this year, and the first couple of games we were rough kids didn't see how to some pictures and texts are hyperlinked to take you to a clue.  I know next year,I actually want to start with a mini-lesson on the different cursor types because that's really important in reading online texts and Breakouts.  The cursor will alert you to whether or not something can be highlighted, clicked on, typed in, etc.  Digital readers have to recognize this and what other way can I make that mini-lesson engaging than creating a fun, immediate need for that information?  Digital Breakout for the win! (This lesson from Smekens Education would be a perfect place to start.)

2) Start with a fun, easy Breakout.  I don't start with a content one because I don't want kids to miss out on learning or reviewing specific content as they are trying to master using Breakouts.  The Disney ones in the Sandbox are perfect for teaching how to use the different features of a digital Breakout.

3) Build persistence with consistence.  My advanced kids are used to things being easy for them most of the time.  They have never really struggled with school, so trying something over and over has never really been required of them until they did their first Breakout.  The first Breakout game we did, my kids started complaining around the 7-10 minute mark that this was too hard.  The second time, it was around the 15 minute mark, so I actually gave them $5 Raider Bucks (our school money) because they had beat their time.  The third game it was round the 20-22 minute mark, so I rewarded them again.  This last time we played, I gave them a super challenging one, and they still didn't say anything about it being too hard!  I was super impressed so everyone earned $15 Raider Bucks!  By doing about one Breakout a month, the kids are finally getting used to the challenge...and they enjoy it!

Their end-of-game poses are alway fun!  I laminated the signs so
we use them for every game.

4) Grouping is important.  Breakouts can be completed independently, but I want my kids to learn how to work together, so we do most of these in groups.  Think about how you want to group kids before you begin.  I like to keep the groups limited to 3-4 members.  (Our school blocked Google Sites.  They are wonderful about unblocking specific links for us, but I didn't know our game was blocked until kids started saying, "Ms. Moman, the website is blocked."  Ugh!  So, I had to log into 5 different computers so the kids would have the access they needed, which is why the groups in the pictures have 4-5 kids.)  Also, think about if you want heterogeneous or homogeneous ability groups. You might need to make the groups ahead of time.

5) Reward effort, not time.  The first time we played I made the mistake of only rewarding the first 

group. Guess what happened?  After the first group won, no other group wanted to finish so they lost out on valuable learning opportunities.  Now I reward every group that finishes.  We make a big deal of "breaking out" by taking their pictures with the signs and everyone earning $25-50 Raider Bucks. (Print end-of-game signs from here.)

    That's how we do it.  Once you do one digital Breakout, it actually gets much easier.  Let me know if you use Breakouts in your classroom and what you think.  Also, the links to your favorite digital Breakouts in the comments.

Love and Sparkle,

Teaching Constructed Responses

      In sixth grade, constructed responses for short answer questions become a huge part of our curriculum.  Students are required to answer questions like that in every classroom, not just in ELA.  In fact, students even use it in math when they do an error analysis task.  Students must show mastery on this type of writing on our state assessment, too, so it is important they master it.
    I attended this year's Louisville Writing Project conference on Argumentative Writing, and sat in on a wonderful session about using crime puzzles to get students started on argumentative writing.  I took that idea and adapted it to this.
    Our students use the acronym RACE (restate, answer, cite evidence, explain evidence).  It helps that we use this building wide.  Every teacher posts something about it in their room.  Their might be a bit of variance depending on needs for the content, but every teacher shows students how constructed response questions are to be answered in their room.  We took this a bit further this year, and realized that we need to get students to RACCE or RACECE.  We had already taught students to RACE when I created this, but I know I will need to update this to use it earlier in the year.
     So, here's the plan:
   1) I show students released items from state testing.  I ask them to score the responses based on state rubric.  This leads to a lot of really good discussion.  
   2) I ask students to score their own recent constructed response answer on the state rubric.  They compared their own to the third released item (the highest score).  Almost immediately, they noticed that they were giving one piece of evidence but really needed to provide more.  I had to lead their attention to the explanation part of the answer, the part I felt like they weren't always great at, especially when the evidence lead to an inference (check out my post about teaching inferential evidence). 

These books are a great resource!
I purchased mine from Amazon.

   3) To practice, I gave students a copy of a mystery from the book Crime And Puzzlement: 24 Solve-them-yourself Picture Mysteries by Lawrence Treat.  (Some of the puzzles are inappropriate for middle school, so I purchased several used books from Amazon in order to have enough puzzles.)  The puzzles are a great resource for teaching this!  They combine a short text with picture of the crime scene so it works with all ability levels.  Each puzzle also includes questions to get the reader thinking like a detective.  I used these for scaffolding, when students were stuck on a puzzle. They worked in groups to find three pieces of evidence to prove guilt or innocence for each puzzle. 
    This plan isn't anything crazy new, but the crime puzzles as the text increase student engagement making them actually excited to do this, which helps when I want them to practice this over and over and over and over...
  I gradually released the responsibility from whole class, small groups, partners, and finally to individual students.  We did one puzzle a day for almost two weeks.  The first and second puzzles, the whole class found 3 pieces of evidence to prove guilt and then three pieces of evidence to prove innocence, then we created our constructed response answer together.  This became our mentor text and we put it on an anchor art in the front of the room.  In the third, fourth, and fifth puzzles, students worked in groups to analyze the puzzle, find three pieces of evidence for both sides, and then chose a side to create their constructed response.  In puzzles six and seven, students created the constructed response on their own.  If students showed mastery on it - great!  They were finished!  I used puzzles eight and nine for students who needed extra practice.  We completed them in small group so that I could see where we were getting off track, and then I give mini-lessons for those specific things.

Here's are some of the slides
in the mini-unit.

Me with my "Innocent"
hat!  They loved it!

     I added a bit of dramatic flair to it because, well, I teach middle school, and they are all about the drama.  I had red and blue hats, one for the defense and one for the prosecution.  I told them they had been hired by the defense to prove innocence, and once we had done that, I switched hats and told them they prosecution came along and paid them more money to prove guilt. Each time they were successful, I paid them with our school economy money.  They loved it!!
     If you are going to teach this before you teach argumentative writing (and I suggest you do - this is a great transition.  If they can't do this, than argumentative writing will be extremely difficult!), then you can easily show students how the RA is the claim, and you still need the C & E.  In fact, this is just like a body paragraph in an argumentative piece.
    These puzzles are great! Here's what I use with just a few of the puzzles to get you started - Constructed Response - Crime Puzzles.  Feel free to make a copy and make it your own.

Love and Sparkle,

Inferencing: It's All About the Plan

      My Guided Reading kiddos struggle with making inferences.  Actually, scratch that.  I struggle with teaching my kiddos how to make inferences.  How many of you are in the same situation?  Think about it - making inferences has a lot do with background information and determining relationships between evidence from the text and our background knowledge.  It is really hard to imagine not having that knowledge when you do, and then add the pressure of trying to explain how to do that to others. People who are good at making inferences tend to make them quickly, making it difficult to figure out how to break down the steps for students.
      At the same time, my students were working on developing constructed responses for questions.  I thought they were struggling with explaining evidence, but after a couple of weeks, I realized they were actually having trouble citing inferential evidence - they would ramble on and on, but never really cite the evidence that started their train of thought.  They needed help in identifying they were making an inference.

What I Know Chart from Linder

     Anyway, my brain was super exhausted just trying to figure out how to teach all of that.  Then, enter Chart Sense.
     
Chart Sense by Rozlyn Linder is one of my three go-to books when lesson planning.  I love the book because not only does it include anchor charts (which I love!), it also includes ideas for scaffolding and instructional tips.  Her section on textual evidence includes a chart called "What I Know," which is what I used this year for teaching inferencing to my students in Guided Reading and it worked really well.  So, here's how I planned.
      First, when I introduce a new skill in my Guided Reading class I use movies, commercials, songs - basically, anything that is not print text.  I want them to practice the skill and be successful, so I go out of my way to make sure we do not start with a text where they could trip up over words, get confused about context, etc.  I also almost always go with literature/fiction "texts" first because I think those are easier for specific skills (except main idea - then I always start with something nonfiction).   In this case, we used Pixar shorts.  The questions I created to pair with the clips were similar to ones that our kiddos see on the constructed response portion of ISTEP (our state assessment in Indiana).  (Click here to get a copy of the clips and questions I use!  Less work for you! Yay!)  Students were working on constructed response and argumentative writing in their ELA class and I wanted to make sure I was still supporting their ELA class needs, too.  (My 6th grade ELA team is AMAZING and supportive of each other!  It makes collaboration between Guided Reading classes and ELA extremely successful!)
     Second, I make sure I model whatever I'm asking the kids to do.  In this case, I made the anchor chart 20x22 and laminated it so that I could use it over and over again.  We watched the first clip together as a class and I showed them the question.  Then, I made the kids move to our small group table and stand around the chart.  We went through steps of making an inference, according to the lesson from Linder.  They are:

This book is a MUST for all ELA teachers.

Get it from Amazon here.

1. Read/View the text.
2. Read the question. 
3. List relevant details around the head. (Not evidence - don't use the word evidence.  Not all of these details will be used because technically they are not all evidence that will support a conclusion.  Our kids need to learn that evidence is a detail from the text, but not all details are evidence.)
4. Look for patterns/relationships between the details.  These could be similarities, contradictions, cause and effect, problem and solution, etc.
5. Determine what they mean.  So what is this the relationship and what inference can be made?

     It took about 10 minutes because I did all of the talking and modeling. I didn't ask the kids for any input.  This is extremely difficult for teachers, but important.  Model it for them without questioning and input the first time around.  Maybe the next time it can be an interactive model, but we need to model it without interruptions.
    Seems like a long process, right?  Truth be told - it is.  Our most fluent readers do this in a matter of seconds, but our struggling readers need to be taught to take these steps when they approach a challenging text.  Not only do they need to be taught these steps, but they need the opportunity to practice them over and over and over and over and over and over... get the idea?  We get bored with this repetition so we move on way before our kids are ready.  I can not stress this enough - give this time and opportunity.  We did one every two days (completing the chart one day and creating the constructed response the second day).

Click here to view on Amazon

     We eventually moved to short stories, specifically one-page passages.  I use stories from 25 Complex Text Passages to Meet the Common Core.  I have these books from grades 4-8.  I use the 5th grade book for my Guided Reading because it tends to be just above the current level of my class and I want to push them a bit. When I give them a passage for the first time, I ask them if there are any words they aren't sure how to pronounce and I go through and pronounce anything they need.  Then, we complete the chart for the text to answer questions (for this activity, I didn't use the questions that go along with the passages).  Same structure as the clips - one day on reading and completing the chart, one day for creating the constructed response.  We spend about two weeks doing this.  (While we we working on this, ELA teachers were working on constructed responses in class and using crime puzzle pictures to continue practicing using details to make inferences.  Again, multiple opportunities to practice the skill is so important.)
     But the kids won't always have the opportunity or time to create that chart and use it, so I show them how to follow the steps without the chart.  We underline details that will help us answer the given question.  Then, we mark the relationship between the details in the margin (our annotations).  We did this for about two weeks.
     Six weeks or more on the same seems like a lot, but for a Guided Reading group, it has big payoff.  I had 10 students in my Guided Reading class.  Five students moved to a new Guided Reading Group and two improved so much they graduated from Guided Reading.  More importantly, though, all 10 students showed more than a year's worth of growth in just a half a year!!!  They are THIS CLOSE to reading on grade level!!
     I hope this is something you can use as you return to the classroom in 2018!  Let me know if you have any questions.  Also, be sure to let me know if it helped, or how you tweaked it to make it better!

Love and Sparkle,