We're all struggling readers until the right book comes along.

Raise your hand if you loved The Scarlett Letter when you were 15? What about Huckleberry Finn? Seriously?

I was the worst for not reading the assigned classics when I was in school. I knew that if I sat still and quiet that I would get all the answers I needed. Luckily, the classics that I loathed as a teenager didn't turn me off from reading altogether. There were plenty of interesting books at my house. I never lost touch with a love for the written word.

That's not the case for so many of our students. They don't have books at home to remind them that reading can be fun. They don't have parents that show them what readers look like. And if they're dependent on what we sometimes insist on teaching in English class, then they aren't becoming readers there, either.

Teachers can encourage healthy reading habits among teenagers by simply being readers themselves. Many times students just need a nudge in the right direction. Its so important that teachers keep up with current young adult literature--being able to recommend a good book is sometimes all a student needs. And once you've given them something good, they'll come back to you for something else.

We're all struggling readers until the right book comes along. We all struggle with something--no matter how brilliant we are. Giving kids high interest books and time to read them in class will lead to a lifelong reading habit. And lifelong readers make good parents to the next generation.

Technology, Assessments, and Ownership, Oh My!

Students need options. There will always be times when paper and pencil is the right way to go, but there won't be a time when paper and pencil are always the right way to go. Options equal ownership and a chance for students to show off their hidden talents and love.

With the ever-changing world of technology, students are able to show their personality in more ways than just a unique power point slide background. Give them the chance to really show off what they can do!

One way to marry old school and new school is to mix their tastes and loves with the paper and pencil. When teaching Macbeth, part of the culminating project was to create a soundtrack and a video game case for the movie. Students weren't required to bring in a CD of pirated songs--they merely had to generate the list and create a cover depicting the major themes in the music. (A rubric is a great way to ensure success--more on that later!) Some students did go to the trouble of creating a music CD and they were able to share their labors with their classmates.

Students also created a video game idea that supported the major themes in the play. They drew on their own experiences with video games and worked to recreate the action in the play in this virtual world. The boys especially loved this option. And I bet they can all tell you at least a vague summary of the play and the themes explored therein.

Blogs are also a great way to help students with assessment. They can post essays, memoirs, and other pieces to generate feedback from their peers. As I said in an earlier post, don't count on students finding the drive to do this on their own--there needs to be some sort of accountability built in.

I'm currently exploring two new ideas--wikis and book trailers. Before November, all I knew about wikis was wrapped around wikipedia and the fact that it was not the best source for research out there. But then again, when you work with students who think Google is a source, then maybe Wikipedia is a step up. However, I've recently learned that students and teachers can use wikis for their own needs. A wiki is simply a space that allows for reading and writing by its members. Teachers can set up a class wiki and then students can post to it. I suggested this idea to our human growth and development teacher. Her students research drugs every year and do different activities to present their information. Her classes are very mixed across the levels and her options allow students to work within their comfort zones. However, why not push them into creating a wiki full of their information? Now its published for all to see! I've started working with a wiki for SCRI. Its packed with information and I, as the administrator, can decide who can change information on the page. You can check out our wiki at scri.wikispaces.com.

Another idea I'm working on is having students create book trailers using iMovie or Movie Maker. I picked up this idea from a speaker at NCTE this year and am interested in testing it out in some of our classes. Students have always been intrigued by video. When I was a student, we videoed scenes from plays we were studying and created commercials for both economics and Spanish. Video was cool. This year, our chorus teacher had students create their own rap videos. After studying the roots of rap and R&B in music appreciation, she gave them recordings of beats and had them create their own. Of course it was the most fun they'd had all semester--they were intertwining things that they loved! Now, students can take programs such as Movie Maker and iMovie and create their own trailers/movies using clips, pictures, and title slides. I'm still working on this one and trying to figure it out--but what more fun as a book report option than to get in the lab and create a book trailer. And I'm sure after about 10 minutes, most students would be able to teach me the program themselves.

Its important to give students ownership over their learning and assessments. I never wanted to read 150 essays and I'm sure that they don't want to write one every other week. By supplying them with options, the classroom becomes a more authentic place to learn, more real-worldly.

The New Kids on the Block

Let me start this by saying that power point is old hat.  Some teachers think that assigning power points for their students to complete is so very cutting edge.  I say that students learn power point about the same time they wean themselves off the bottle.  If we continue to limit ourselves to power point only, we are robbing ourselves and our students of great learning potential.

With that said, technology offers a great deal for both teaching and assessing--for pushing students in a new direction with their learning.  Let's look at teaching first.  I've noticed that many times teachers use power point slides and then lecture off of them.  How does is this different from old school notes on the board?  It isn't.  Not to say that power points aren't great--but they are better as talking points and most definitely better used sparingly.  However, teachers can use things such as Google Earth, Teacher Tube, and blogging to help push student discussion out of the classroom and into the real world.

Blogging is a great way to get students to talk about what they are learning, reading, and writing.  While I mainly use mine for reflection on my behalf, it was originally geared towards my students.  Students were required to respond to my posts at least 4 times a month.  This was a grade for them.  I've watched other teachers try to implement blogs on a volunteer basis from their students.  They got few if any hits.  Students need the requirement built in to push them past their innate apathy.  But once you push them, they will post for you.  The best way to get this set up is to walk them through the first through months as a class.  Its also good to post helpful links for them and then guide them to use it while in the library doing research.

Two other teaching tools that I haven't gotten the chance to explore yet are Google Earth and Teacher Tube.  Google Earth is one of the many programs that let anyone look anywhere in the world using satellites.  Google Earth, however, has locations loaded that are particularly beneficial to teachers and students.  For example, there is a tour, already created, of 80 sites mentioned in Shakespeare's plays.  Talk about making learning authentic for students--imagine starting them at their school and watching the world turn as they move towards Stratford-on-the-Avon.    Teacher Tube is a video site similar to YouTube.  Since most schools have YouTube blocked, there is now a video site for teachers to use.  I haven't thoroughly explored the site, but I know that I religiously used the Literature Launchers in my Glencoe teacher toolbox.  (Its really one of the only supplemental materials I used.)  Anytime you can show your students a short video on the material they are studying, you are tapping into their video-driven intellects.

We must continue to try to at the very least keep up with what our students are interested in.  If schools continue to be left out in the cold, then they will continue to be meaningless places for students who are simply wiling their time away until they can go do what they really want to do.  But if we stay current in our technology and on the cutting edge of cool, then learning can be fun again--just like it was when we got our first chapter book and could read all by ourselves.

Why sustained silent reading is a must...

Sustained silent reading is a must at the high school level. There is no other way around it. The benefits are all there--increased test scores, increased graduation rates, increased engagement and comprehension. SSR is the best way for any school to build lifelong readers.

I am reminded of the benefits of SSR on a daily basis. Most recently, I was finishing up a round of golf out at our local country club. I drove my cart around to the shed so it could be cleaned and put up and there sat one of the students from the high school, we'll call him Bill. Bill's a nice guy, a good country kid, but not necessarily a stellar student. And there he sat, nose buried in a book. And he was well into it--he had been reading for a while.

The book was one that we supply at our high school in the classrooms. This student found the book during SSR and became a reader outside of school as well. This is the main benefit of SSR. Students have the time and opportunity to read and therefore become readers outside of school. This is how SSR works and why it is a must for high schools.

I love this poem...

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

The Genre of Standardized Testing

I'm taking an assessment course this school year. Let me get it out in the open that I am a huge fan of authentic assessments and student-choice and rubrics, etc. As a classroom teacher, I often gave my students assignments that would push them to create--soundtracks, stage designs, costumes, meals...the list of possibilities was as long as their imaginations. So assessments were always fun. We did the typcial tests every now and then, and they had to learn research and be able to write papers, but there was a fun aspect to assessments in my English classroom.

With that said, I am intrigued by standardized testing. Research shows that high stakes testing is not an effective measurement of a student's growth. Yet we use it anyway. Since testing is not going to go away, it seems necessary that we learn to work within the boundaries that it can set up. We must teach our students how to cope with standardized testing just as we would teach any other genre in class.

So...standardized testing as a genre can lead me to some interesting study. Where to next? How do we implement it into daily learning? What can we do to help students cope with the cold, formal language of the tests that decide their future? Its something that I'm interested in looking into some more.

A Poem for a Monday

Those Who Love
by Sara Teasdale

Those who love the most,
Do not talk of their love,
Francesca, Guinevere,
Deirdre, Iseult, Heloise,
In the fragrant gardens of heaven
Are silent, or speak if at all
Of fragile, inconsequent things.

And a woman I used to know
Who loved one man from her youth,
Against the strength of the fates
Fighting in somber pride,
Never spoke of this thing,
But hearing his name by chance,
A light would pass over her face.

Time for Another School Year

Tomorrow is the first day of school. Today I have the shakes. I'm not sure that I'm ready for another year of coaching. Its demanding work, for sure, and I'll have my hands full at NHS.

There are some great things going on around me. The English teachers and the ninth grade academy are embracing sustained silent reading. Our students will get an hour each week of reading for pleasure. Now if I could just make everyone see the correlation between more reading and higher test scores. I feel like its written on the wall in bright red spray paint. But it must be in invisible ink because few people can make the leap.

High school students don't read for pleasure much anymore. There are other things to be done. I want to change the climate. I want to bring back books for fun. I believe that reading for fun will make testing a conquerable beast.

I'm glad that the English teachers are embracing SSR. Sharon Draper is coming to the school in November and each student will be getting a copy of one of her books. This will be a big visit for NHS. It has the potential to bring reading to the forefront of the minds of our most stubborn students.

But today I have the shakes. I'm going to sit quietly and read for pleasure and hope that I am ready when tomorrow dawns. I guess I have to be. Its coming whether I'm ready or not, isn't it?

A Case for Frontloading

Let me preface this by saying that I am, by no stretch of the imagination, a fan of DOL (daily oral language). I know teachers who have the DOL transparency up at the beginning of class, ready for students who are eager to find the mistakes in three arbitrary sentences. This works for them. It never worked for me. I would lose the transparency, or write on it during first block so that it was unusable the rest of the day, or not be able to find every mistake myself.

Another reason that DOL never worked for me is that I think bellwork (that which entertains the children while we get our own acts together) needs to be related to the lesson at hand. Bellwork can get their minds warmed up in the direction of the content.

Think of all that can happen in the 5 minute class change at any average high school. Students make up and break up; make plans and break plans; sometimes they'll even sneak in a comment about schoolwork. More than likely, its who is kissing whom, who was at the party last weekend, and what time does the game start. Anything but school.

So when they finally get to your classroom, they aren't ready to jump into thinking about literature or history or biology. They are still thinking about the last 5 minutes. This is where frontloading the lesson comes in.

Frontloading is simply a beginning to the lesson. Effective frontloading will get students thinking about what's going to come next. According to Jeffrey Wilhelm, frontloading is a form of assessment, motivation, preparation, and support. Frontloading gets the student ready for the lesson by either activating prior knowledge or scaffolding on new knowledge in preparation for deep textual work.

Frontloading can be as complex as an anticipation guide or a K-W-L chart. But frontloading can also be as simple as introducing the material with a personal anecdote. Or inspiring a quickwrite. Frontloading goes beyond the busy work we often give students so that we will have time to take roll and check homework. However, effective use of frontloading can rev the engines in the minds of high schoolers and prepare them for deeper thinking on the topic at hand.

If I'm not a good reader, does that make me a bad reader?

I'm intrigued by the research on what "good readers" do. The term "good reader" implicates that there must be a "bad reader." Shame on you, bad readers.

I polled my seniors last year to determine what it is that good readers do. I simply wanted to know, who did they think was a good reader and what made them good. They overwhelmingly replied that I was, in fact, the best reader they know.

Well, of course!

However, their reasoning varied. Many of them thought I was a good reader because the words sounded nice when they left my mouth during read-alouds. The power and beauty of the written word lured them under my spell.

Others thought that I was a good reader because I read all the time. If I read all the time, then I must be good at it, right?

Still others thought that I was a good reader because I was able to talk about what I was reading in depth and with breath. They enjoyed discussing favorite books with me because I was always willing to talk and share and recommend new titles.

So who is right? Am I indeed a good reader? I know that I am confident in my reading, but am I constantly making connections and predicting and asking questions? These are, after all, what "good readers" do. All the research says so. Am I a bad reader because these things are not in my consciousness?

When we are teaching our students "what good readers do", are we indeed implying that they must not be good readers? Does one have to constantly connect and predict in order to be a good reader? Teachers who want to promote reading need to promote authentic reading. If you don't do it in real life, then why ask your students to do it?

I won't read and you can't make me!

How many times have you wanted to share a great book with a student simply to be met with pure obstinance? The fate of the entire world may hinge on the consumption of the text, but it isn't enough to convince our most reluctant readers to pick it up.

Many of our students become more and more reluctant to read as they move through school. Studies have timed their reluctance with the 4th grade--just after the beginning of their career in standardized testing. The tests are here to stay, it seems, but do we have to let them give up on reading?

Teachers can lure students back into the world of the written word. It isn't easy, but it isn't impossible either. Teenagers, in particular, simply need to be enticed or seduced, if you will.

One of the most important factors in creating a literacy-rich secondary classroom is teacher modeling. Students need to see what a literate adult looks like. So very often, they go home to an empty house with siblings that need to be kept and fed and homework that needs to be completed. There is a shortage of adults in their lives that read for the pleasure of reading. Teachers can pick up this slack in the lives of their students. Teachers can show students what book-loving adults look like. And honestly, its a great time to catch up on the reading that you don't have time to do!

A second factor in enticing students to read is student choice of reading materials. We need to surround our students with young adult books that are relevant to their lives. The novel that turned you into a reader may not help your 16-year-old students. But there are books out there that will fascinate them. When dealing with a self-confessed reluctant reader this year, I brought in the 50 cent autobiography. He was hooked in 5 minutes. And he learned to trust my taste. From there, I was able to give him authors that I adore--Walter Dean Myers, Sharon Draper, etc. Surrounding your reluctant readers with high-interest young adult novels is key to building a trusting relationship.

The last key to building your reading program is non-assessment. If you truly want to bring students back to the love of reading, then you have to give them time to read without holding them accountable for what they are reading. There is no need to test their comprehension--they won't stick with the same book if they don't get it. You know who is reading and who is not, so trust yourself. If you want to turn students back onto the love of reading, then you have to give them time to enjoy it.

Bringing teenagers back around to the joy of the written word might be a daunting task, but it isn't an impossible one. Many times, a reluctant reader just needs the right book to make that difference in their life. Offer those oh-so-seductive young adult books and then offer the time to read them. Add in a dose of teacher-modeling and you'll love the end product!

Finding Success in a Book Pass

A book pass is an easy way to allow students to preview several titles in a short amount of time. You can make this as structured or as lenient as you like. The only ingredient that you can't work without, is, of course, the books.

The first time I tried a book pass was with a group of high school seniors. The pass was a way to allow them to select their book club choices. The titles were interesting and each book had a hook within the first few pages. As we passed the books around, the students completed the book pass worksheet and rated each title on a four-star rating basis. We were very organized and timely with our passing. Everyone found a title they enjoyed and I was able to promote reading in my senior English classroom.

This year, I was not so organized in my book pass, yet I found success in much the same way. I introduced content area young adult literature into our human growth & development curriculum. I threw the 7 titles into the small cooperative learning groups and let them have at it. I initiated a few passes, but pretty soon everyone was engrossed in their own novel. If they weren't hooked immediately, they switched it up themselves. By the end of the 20 minutes, each student was engaged in SSR with his/her new title.

I have found that most teachers are reluctant to try book passes in their classrooms. The fear of the unknown convinces them that their big, bad seniors aren't going to tolerate this alternative means to picking out new books. Recently, a self-contained special education teacher took the plunge to try to book pass with his students. Not only did they not run out in revolt, they actually found titles that they enjoyed! He realized that he didn't have enough copies of some of the more popular books for the students that wanted them. That's a good problem to have in the high school level.

This young teacher went to the edge and realized that he can fly. He found success with the book pass--all he needed were the books and the will to implement a change in literacy attitudes in his classroom.