The Writing Center at East Blasts Off!

3...2...1...LIFTOFF! The Writing Center at East officially opened for business this past Wednesday, and the students who came in for help were very excited and pleased with the feedback and attention they received from the UNC CoachWrite tutors. I am very excited that we are able to offer this service to our students.

As we continue to expand the Writing Center's hours and staff, I wanted to share with you all that the Writing Center will be open ALL periods, as well as lunch, this Wednesday the 4th of February. A sign up sheet is located outside of my office door, Room 268 in upper Quad C, and students can come by and sign up there. If you have a student who you believe could use a little more one on one help with their work, feel free to email me and I will sign them up! We are hoping to have the Center staffed on parts of Monday, all day Wednesday, and possibly some on Friday in the future. The Writing Center is not just for English assignments! The tutors can assist with essay planning and organizing, research writing, creative writing, and more.

Please let me know if you or your students would like to take advantage of this resource! Thanks again for helping to promote the center and its work!

The Writing Center Officially Returns to East!

Hello East faculty!

I am so very excited to say that we are officially opening the East Writing Center, starting next Wednesday, January 28th. UNC-Chapel Hill students, under the services of our district's CoachWrite program, will be here to assist students with ongoing and one-time writing assignments, help students develop their writing style, address issues of clarity and organization and more. Below is a more detailed breakdown of what they do!

The Writing Center Can:

• Assist students with any stage of the writing process, from brainstorming to editing.
• Collaborate with students on developing their critical thinking, as well as their writing style and voice.
• Reinforce the concepts and standards of strong academic and creative writing.
• Discuss with students their teachers’ expectations for writing assignments in any subject areas.
• Provide a non-threatening, even enjoyable, environment to improve communication skills.

The Writing Center Does Not:  

• Seek to “fix” student writing instead of guiding students toward thinking through their own choices and solutions.
• Focus on remediation. Writing conferences can benefit ALL writers.
• Target mechanical errors or flaws in student writing
• Guarantee taking a student from “an F paper” to “an A paper.”

From the UNC Writing Center’s FAQ page:

“We help individuals improve as writers. To this end, we focus on helping writers to develop skills no matter what their writing context. We help writers to make their own choices about a text rather than “fixing” papers for them. We don’t write on students’ papers; we counsel students about the choices they have as writers.

Students who work with a tutor often see improvement in their writing and feel better prepared for courses that require written work. Students may visit the Writing Center occasionally with questions about specific assignments or meet regularly with a tutor to improve their writing habits. They often visit with concerns about developing arguments, organization, evidence, and sentence-level issues.”

Sign up for appointments can be done outside my office, room 268 in upper Quad C. This is NOT just for English teachers! The tutors can assist with writing assignments in a variety of disciplines. I hope you will encourage your students to take part.

The Writing Center will be open in the Media Center during 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 7th periods on the 28th, with other dates and times soon to follow!

Exciting Updates at East!

Happy New Year!

I hope 2015 is off to a great start for everyone! We are rapidly approaching the end of the second quarter, and I just wanted to take a few minutes to share some updates, spread some news, and give you some updates on things that are coming up in regards to the support we are all providing to students at East in the areas of literacy.

The Writing Center is FAST Approaching! 

Some who were here a year or two ago will remember that East had a writing center, with tutors from UNC who were part of our district's CoachWrite program serving as staff, that allowed students to sign up for appointments and receive assistance on a writing assignment or ongoing writing work. I am happy to say that it looks like we will be reopening the center soon! I am working with CoachWrite director Stuart Phillips on staffing, hours of operation, and setting up times with the student director soon. Stay tuned for an official announcement and more information!

Tips for PDP Writing Goal Support

So you've updated your PDP with information on how you are implementing one of the Common Core writing standards into your instruction. Now what? You may be stuck on the scope of the standard, how to progress with implementing the standard further, or how to further incorporate assignments and formative assessments that have students writing in a way that feels natural for you. If you would like some assistance with this, feel free to reach out to me and I'll happily support you in this. Even if it's just talking through an idea, just know that support for continually implementing your goal is here!

Learning Focused Lessons/Max Thompson Work
Yesterday, January 8th, was the second round of training on the Max Thompson strategies for the Civics and Biology PLCs. The discussion focused around incorporating higher order thinking strategies and techniques into our lesson planning, and the discussion was heavily geared towards having us review our own practice and consider how we might ensure that we are challenging our students to do higher level thinking and work. Now that everyone has access to the Learning Focused materials, I would encourage you to ask you peers in those PLCs, or any member of the administration or myself, about the material and was that you might check for HOTS in your planning!

Upcoming Professional Development Opportunities! 
I have thoroughly enjoyed the PD sessions I have had with you all this year, and I'm hoping to continue the pattern of offering one a month, during the school day, where teachers have the option to come during their planning period and receive a 45-minute "course" on a particular aspect of literacy instruction and/or instructional support. I am hoping to have one in January (AFTER the beginning of third quarter) either centered on graphic organizers, close reading strategies, or summarizing strategies. All of these will certainly be topics at some point this year. If you have a suggestion for a session topic, please send it my way!

Have a fabulous weekend. Please let me know how I can assist and support what you do!

Close Reading and Volume Reading: What are the Differences?

As we wind down here at East in anticipation of a nice, long winter break, some of us are beginning to think about all the reading we hope to do over the break. Perhaps it's a mix of reading student work and pleasure reading, but we will be reading nonetheless. While doing your own reading, you might be engaging in volume reading, which has tons of rewards and benefits! Within that volume reading there might also be some close reading, where you really zero in on certain passages, phrases, etc. You may even reread some of them simply to revisit the language or to gain a deeper meaning. With that in mind, we can think about how these two types of reading apply to our students and what they look like in practice. See the handy chart below!

Close Reading	Volume Reading
-Solely instructional in purpose	-Rapidly builds knowledge and vocabulary
-Heavy support from teacher and/or cooperative learning	-Little teacher support
-Few pages	-Varying degrees of complexity
-Grade level complex/appropriate	-Builds more of a love of reading
-Builds reading skill and fluency	-More pages
-Targeted vocabulary support/instruction	-Reserved for guiding or independent reading

As you see, there are differences in terms of the use of both of these. Both can be appropriate and useful for students, but close reading can be extremely valuable when considering building students reading comprehension skills and their ability to paraphrase, summarize, and reflect on their own understanding of what they read. Close reading is a skill that can be very beneficial for students in terms of gauging their own understanding.

On a surface level, close reading involves these steps:
1. Briefly introducing the text (historical context, author, background info, etc.)
2. Read the text (a paragraph, a page, some short text) aloud to the students with them following along. Target specific vocab as needed/wanted.
3. Students reread the text on their own or with a partner and summarize.
4. Teacher has students respond to a series of text-dependent questions for discussion or to use in responding to a writing prompt.

There are many ways to do close reading and ways to support students as they wrestle with a text, and in the new year be sure to look for some tips on these, as well as a possible professional development opportunity!

Best wishes for a restful break and a happy new year!!

Learning Focused Lessons: What are the Components?

All of you know about the district's commitment to implementing the Max Thompson Learning Focused Lesson approach, and while many of us are engaged in the actual training process, perhaps you are wondering about what all of this looks like in practice. I wanted to spend some time and share with you some insight into what the lesson plan template for the Learning Focused Lessons (known as LFLs) actually looks like. Below is a picture of what the LFL template looks like. Check it out and take note of what its components are, the structure of it, and what it contains:

As you see, there are lots of elements that we already incorporate as teachers when we think about planning our lessons. However, it's always helpful to revisit and reflect upon our purposeful instructional practice. One thing that stands out to me is the purposeful use of the graphic organizer. Also, notice the summarizing strategy that is noted on the bottom of the page as well. Give students short, quick opportunities to summarize what they have learned during the lesson. It's not the same as the teacher summarizing the learning for students; it's students explaining to themselves and each other what they have learned.

Don't feel the rush to start using this right now. Everyone in the building is in different places with regards to this and UBD. Just think about the aspects of the template. What is it considering? What factors does it take into account when talking about student learning? Just good food for thought! 

Collaborative Essay Writing? Why Not!

During yesterday's professional development opportunity (which produced some GREAT discussion from those in attendance, so big thank you for that!) we discussed the idea of collaborative writing with students.  While we do group work as a frequent instructional strategy, the idea of students writing and collaborating on developing a written assignment can be a little daunting. However, it can also be full of potential. Consider this video, which shows the practice in action in an English classroom:


As you see, the process can work well, but, like any classroom venture, parameters have to be established. For example, it's important to determine first if the writing task you wish to have students do is appropriate for collaborative pairs/consensus writing. I would also stress to students that they should remember these important pieces: 1. They should work together to establish the thesis/answer the question for the writing prompt in question. 2. They should work together to build consensus on what key details they will use to support their answer/thesis 3. They should work together to decide and agree upon the best approach for addressing all aspects of the writing task. As you see, I'm probably overstating it, but the collaborative aspect is key, as is keeping this task to no more than pairs or trios of students working together. Ideally, this sort of activity works best when students can choose their partners, BUT if you want to have some tiered levels of students working together, that can be a good strategy as well. That raises another set of questions as well: how do I build in accountability for student work and success so that one person doesn't shoulder the burden. This can be addressed in a variety of ways, but one way is to have the students assess each other on their work during the process, especially if you have selected student pairs/trios for the assignment. A rubric is best for this, and you can even make it a factor in the grade for the project as a whole. This can set a tone from the beginning that cooperation and investment in the process is expected from all involved. Interested in setting up an assignment like this? Contact me! I would be happy to support you in trying this out! A bonus to collaborative writing is also fewer papers to grade but the quality of the work is still considered. Think about it!

You Want to Make a Rubric but Don't Know Where to Start

Creating a rubric can be one of the most time-saving and transparent processes for you and students when it comes to grading work. They are a great tool

BUT...they can be a headache when making them!!

If this is the situation you find yourself in when creating a rubric, you are definitely not alone. One of the keys to successful rubric creation can be found in the standards you are addressing with your assignment. Think about the verbs present in the standards. What tasks are associated with the standards? Consider these as a starting point, as you are probably mirroring some of the language in the standards with the language in the assignment that the rubric has been created for.

Once you consider that, I would suggest looking over page one and page two of this document on rubric creation from Balanced Assessment from Formative to Summative by Kay Burke. It provides a road map and self-assessment for teachers as they prepare rubrics and helps keep the focus on what it is the teacher is assessing.

Another section of Burke's book details moving into using weighted rubrics. The key to weighted rubrics is really deciding how to distinguish the different levels of performance within the area of concentration. Check out this example from the book. Also, this page gives a blank worksheet for teachers to use when planning out the criteria they are looking for and how to weight the various categories. This also gives students a chance to see the ways they can earn the best score possible, making the process even more transparent.

Rubrics can certainly be frustrating to construct, but once you have them made, they are a handy tool to have at your fingertips. Feel free to ask for assistance if you find yourself struggling to create one. Ask your colleagues and PLC for any rubrics they might use, and see how it might influence and shape the creation of your own!