Sunday, February 12, 2012

Why did this take 6 months?

Finally! They're ready. My freshmen are ready for 9th grade.

All year I have been working with the students on their writing. I am a firm believer in the power of writing, and the doors it can open for students regardless of what they eventually want to do. In the past, I have had tremendous success all by myself bringing student's scores up, and helping ELL students gain access to writing. Last year my students showed the most growth out of any other teacher.

My work with the students thus far has been very straightforward, but has been agonizingly slow. The students were apt to forget all progress one week after they had learned it.

First, their ability to organize a coherent thought and write it in a non-fiction paragraph using grade and content vocabulary started at about a 6th grade level. The English Department and I worked with the same organizer forcing students to write topic sentences, concrete details, and commentary. After the eighth one, the students only take one period to create an organizer. Still too long, but better than the two hours it took before.  I also have to be blatant with vocabulary, using "Use the following words: smart growth, infill, and spatial inequality"

Next came the sentence stems. Showing students what grade level writing looked like required basic starters, such as:
"For example_______________________"
"This is important because_________________"
"This shows_________ is _____________________"
"The evidence shows______________________"
"As compared to_________________, ____________ is ___________"

And finally, full quote outlines that show students how to introduce, use, and explain a quote from a primary source.

The last and most agonizing step was the annotated reading. The students just wanted to absentmindedly read, absorbing nothing. The annotation forced them to slow down, react to their reading, and then use a graphic organizer for the content, before the writing organizer.

On top of a bunch of other literacy supports and ELL strategies, using reading, writing, verbal, and getting the students to speak using grade level language the students are now ready. Do this for six months, and eventually the students learn how to go through the writing process without the structure and organizers. 

Most teachers would call this far too structured. According to some, students are not demonstrating what they know and can do when given that much support. I would say the opposite, that only with those supports are the students able to show their ability. Yes, it needs to come from them, but if the students can't do that by 9th grade, major intervention is necessary.

Most other Social Studies teachers would never do this because the amount of time devoted to content suffers. I don't care. I've realized some things about teaching hard to serve students. They don't care about content any more than normal students, and they are used to failure. When they can see and feel success at something, it motivates them. At that point the content takes care of itself. Plus, I would love it if my students left as historians, but what is most important is helping to open those doors where they have the ability to choose their destiny, instead of being limited by their abilities. Yes, I do half the work for them to start with, but by the end they are independent and near/at grade level.

I never wanted to teach middle school level English. It is maddening. Half of the battle of motivation and celebrating the small steps we take for granted. The students love it though, and are finally starting to come around. No longer am I just another teacher who keeps failing them. Hopefully the trend continues and the culture in the classroom and school continues to improve. Yeah, I'm barely in the rejuvenation stage, but it feels a lot better than disillusionment.