Literacy Now

Today marks the 10th anniversary for “I Love to Write Day.” My 5th grade students really do love to write. In fact, they are voracious writers. They can’t seem to get enough writing.

Through the years, I can’t say that my students have always said that. In fact, there was a time when I felt like I was pulling them through each and every writing project while they stubbornly dug their heels in and fought it. What changed?

There are several contributing factors, but the one that seems to have made one of the biggest differences is that now my learners have a relevant reason to write and communicate. They have an audience who is going to read almost everything that they write thanks to the use of the digital tools we have access to in our classroom.

When you come into our classroom, it is very rare that you don’t see one my students at a classroom computer, writing. As soon as that student finishes, you will find three or four more enthusiastic writers clamoring to get to the keyboard next. What are they doing?

They are blogging.

This is a tool that none of my students have ever used before they come to 5th grade. We spend the first week of school setting the groundwork by learning about netiquette and cyber-bullying. This leads us into many deep discussions which produces several lessons on blogging: what it is, how it’s used, its purpose, and its similarities and differences to other types of writing.

One of my initial thoughts as I was leading my writers into blogging was that I wanted to give them the opportunity to reflect and share their thinking and learning on the different content areas with one other. This would encourage students who may not feel comfortable speaking up during a class discussion—due to special needs, English as a second language, low self-esteem, or shyness—to speak up and join the conversations. It would give everyone a voice.

Another thought I had was that blogging would give me a lot of information about my learners. I knew I would be able to determine their understanding of content area standards, use of grammar and mechanics to get across ideas to their audience, personal challenges, and likes and dislikes. I felt confident that by my students using blogs I would be better able to tailor my lessons and mini lessons to their individual needs and interests.

Our Tool of Choice

For this adventure in writing, I chose to use KidBlog. What I like about KidBlog is that it allows the teacher to control what gets published and the audience that sees the blogs. We start off at the beginning of the year where only the people in our class can see the posts and comments. Then I gradually open it for family members to enter as guests and make comments. Once the students are ready for a much larger audience, I open it for comments from all over the world. If you are on Twitter, there is a hashtag, #comment4kids, where you can post that your students would like some comments. Educators and students from all over the world will post comments to the students’ blogs.

For the entire year, I keep the feature where all posts and comments must be approved by me before they are published. I do this for several reasons. The most important one is so that I know all of the content coming out of our blogs. The second is that I want to make sure I don’t miss something important. If a writer demonstrates a weakness in subject-verb agreement or they misunderstand a math algorithm, I want to be able to quickly clear up that misunderstanding. Usually, I call them to the computer and have them explain to me what their thought process was when they wrote a particular post. Many times, they catch their own mistake. However, if they don’t, I have the opportunity to teach a quick little lesson. Since my students set goals, usually this becomes one of their goals until they feel like they’ve mastered it.

Another reason I read everything my students write is because I want to make sure that there is nothing offensive or inappropriate published. Since we have a very diverse population in our classroom and in our audience, sometimes students forget about making the best choices for their entire audience. This is a powerful life lesson for learners to master.

Setting Expectations

Due to having an extremely prescriptive curriculum, we are lucky to have scheduled time for writing twice a week. Blogging addresses that limitation because students can work on their blogs from home or at school. They also have a scheduled time at least once a week during our reading block to blog for 30 minutes. Since many of my students arrive about an hour before school begins, they come to the classroom when I arrive and spend that time blogging as well.

As with all of our projects, my students set the goals, expectations, or rubric. Since these are their blogs, they needed to establish the expectations, not me. Since the group of students changes each year, the expectations vary. After many conversations with my current students, they set expectations that addressed the craft of writing, grammar and mechanics, content, and safety.

Were these the exact expectations that I would have set? Not necessarily, but these are their blogs, their writing, their conversations. This gives them ownership of their writing. These writers also understand that if at any point they don’t like these expectations, they can alter them because they belong to them.

Goals Achieved

So back to my original blogging goals. Did blogging serve as a way for my students to grow, reflect, connect, and join the conversation? Was I able to meet individual needs in each of my students? Yes…and much more.

My students have found their voices. They reflect on their learning. They challenge one another’s thinking in a respectful manner. They share books, thoughts, feelings, and suggestions for tackling challenges they might be facing. I have been able to pinpoint misunderstandings or weaknesses much faster because they are writing and I’m reading their writing much more often.

What I didn’t foresee was the amount of creativity that would flourish just by giving my students an audience with whom they could have a conversation about their writing. This year, my writers have composed poetry, short stories, talk shows, interviews, and fables. Their writing regularly includes book reviews for their peers. One student even wrote an open letter for our board of education about some changes she thought they needed to make. All of this amazing writing was student-driven.

Because these students have a tool that supports the way today’s students want to learn and they were given the freedom to guide how they used it, my students have delved into new types of writing and have begun to share it with an audience that is active. Learners who told me just a few weeks ago that they hated writing are now excited with the anticipation of sitting down at a keyboard to compose something new for others to read.

On this “I Love to Write Day,” my students will have surpassed 900 blog posts cumulatively. Do they love to write? Without a doubt! And your students can too by opening up their world of writing with blogging.

Julie D. Ramsay is a Nationally Board Certified educator and the author of “CAN WE SKIP LUNCH AND KEEP WRITING?”: COLLABORATING IN CLASS & ONLINE, GRADES 3-6 (Stenhouse, 2011). She travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog at juliedramsay.blogspot.com.

by Judith A. Hayn

Booth, C.  (2011).  Bronxwood.  New York, NY: Push.

Bronxwood, a project housing unit in the Bronx, forms the focus of Coe Booth’s Tyrell series. Tyrell (2006) began his story which continues in the third novel. Now 16 and living with his best friend Cal and his brother, Tyrell still struggles against the odds to survive. The brothers deal drugs, but Tyrell refuses; he earns money by DJ-ing local parties, a talent he learned from his jailed dad. Using his party money, he yearns to reunite his mom with younger brother Troy who is in foster care. The novel covers only 23 days in August, and the action is fast-paced. Pops gets out of jail, demands Tyrell help him DJ, moves back in with Moms, and tries to beat the system to get Troy returned. Tyrell now has to decide where his own life is going. He can try the drug dealing trade, go back to his traitorous girlfriend Novisha, return to his parents’ new apartment with Troy, or convince his galpal Jasmine to pursue their growing attraction. Booth’s voice is streetwise, urban smart, and gritty with realism. The series, which also includes Kendra (2008), vibrates with the violence and chaos of teen survival in the city.

Dr. Judith A. Hayn is an Associate Professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. 

This article is part of a series from the Special Interest Group Network on Adolescent Literature (SIGNAL). 

 

More Young Adult Book Reviews

Time for a Pop Quiz. Question: What do you called kindergarten without art or music?

Answer: High school.

(All right, all right, if you said middle school, it’s worth half-credit.)

Now to some of us, the little Q & A above delivers a small chuckle. To others, it represents a brutal reality. The fact is schools are bludgeoning today’s kids with flavorless, sanitized, exuberant-less content nowadays—more so than we ever have ever done before—and too many classrooms are plagued by a contagion of joylessness in the pursuit of standardized, homogenized ideals.

If I ever get a chance to dictate our nation’s educational policy, I am going to bring back that extra-cheesy, covered in orange grease, stored under the heat lamp, pepperoni pizza I used to be able to scarf down at lunchtime (you know, the slices that got thrown under the bus by the politically correct helicopter moms who wanted their little angels to eat tree bark and locally grown organic berries for mid-day nutrition). And I will mandate that the first and foremost rule of educational policy—particularly when it comes to advancing literacy skills—is that KIDS MUST TASTE ACADEMIC FUN! That’s right, I believe in the power of joy to bring out the best in student work and learning.

Now, stay with me here, because no, I am not about to kick rigor to the curb. And no, I do not think that “fun” represents the penultimate aspiration for teaching and learning. And bzzp, my proposal does not warrant a lowering of scholarly expectations, either. In fact, I think the contrary. Extensive experience has shown me that students who enjoy their studies will learn more than students who don’t give a poop. (Note: I can back that up with hard research for all the data wonks out there.)

Indeed, it’s time we collectively go to bat more officially for the power of joy as it relates to learning. Why? Well, to paraphrase a semi-famous theater hack, “Let me count the ways.”

1) The vice grip approach of turning the screws on low-performing students through a drill-n-kill line of attack on elevating skills is contributing to America’s egregious drop out rate and exacerbating the Achievement Gap it actually aims to alleviate. That’s right, our current methodology is creating more of the problems we are supposedly purporting to solve. Really, who does that? (Note: Feel free to fill in your own snarky government/big corporation/family relative’s name here __________________ ).

2) Making learning a pleasurable experience requires no more cost than making it a tedious one… except that it learns the little ones a whole lot better. See, joy, smiles, and delight in school are free. (Not to mention highly effective.) This is key these days because when you look at how the budget cuts have decimated our classroom supplies, eviscerated our nation’s librarians, and levied a full frontal assault on every corner of education in our country, creatively solving problems with a sober recognition of the fact that “there ain’t no money” requires all of us to use the tools we do have instead of complaining about all of the tools we do not.

3) Have you done your professional reading? READICIDE, THE BOOK WHISPERER, THE READING ZONE, MAKING THE MATCH, WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?, TEACHING LITERACY FOR LOVE AND WISDOM… I could go on and on.

4) Have we forgotten that the ultimate goal of education is not to be able to bubble in a correct A, B, C, or D answer choice on a standardized test? Sure, the loons who make policy may have lost their goofy minds by over-emphasizing the information which can be gleaned from bubble test scores and then making political hay with cherry-picked information to advance their own personal ambitions, but that doesn’t mean that those on the front lines need to forget that we are dealing with real kids. REAL PEOPLE. The kind who live, eat, breathe, and come to our classrooms starving for a meaningful human connection to their school work. In fact, this is why I became a YA author in the first place—to write books that reach real kids. Through humor. Through drama. Through the ageless art of telling salient, “Whoa, did I dig that” stories. And what’s my great “here’s how you, too, can learn to reach real kids” secret? Well, understanding that today’s kids are reachable is a good start. (Plus, caffeine helps as well, he added as his left eyelid twitched.)

Fifthly—if that’s even a word—kids like to learn. That’s not a misprint; that’s a fact. And if you don’t know this about today’s young people I’d suggest that you do not know much about today’s students at all. It’s like a great fisherman once said, “You don’t bait the hook with what the fisherman likes; you bait the hook with what the fish likes.” Kids will read. Kids will write. In fact, it could be argued that today’s students are actually doing more reading and writing than any generation prior. (But since we devalue the digital literacy component in the world of academia… okay, okay, I’ll save this tangent for another blog post.)

Now it’s time for points 6 through 2,867 which can best be summarized by connecting a few dots. Fun leads to joy. But fun is like sugar, the high quickly wears off and the need for something more substantive arises. This is where meaningfulness, relevance, accessibility, and challenge come into play. This is also where depth, breath, scope, and purpose come in. This is also where a sense of self-direction, self-discipline, and hard work factor in as well. Kids will do the hard work for objectives they find meaningful (can anyone say, “Boys who game?”) but they will not do so simply because the task has been legislated. Without a doubt today’s students are eager to grow, learn, give a great effort, and demonstrate their aptitudes in mind-blowing ways if they are internally motivated to do so. But if they’re not, they won’t.

Reality is a cold beast. Like it or not, smiles, fun, joy, and personal fulfillment matter.

BTW, if you require more reading on the subject, check out DRIVE, SWITCH, or the thoughts of Sir Ken Robinson. Indeed, they may have killed the orange-oiled pepperoni pizza in our halls of academia, but if we let them kill the fun, they will have ripped out our entire soul. And none of us will be the better for it.

Alan Sitomer was named California's 2007 Teacher of the Year. In addition to being an inner-city high school English teacher and former professor in the Graduate School of Education at Loyola Marymount University, Alan is a nationally renowned speaker specializing in engaging reluctant readers who received the 2004 award for Classroom Excellence from the Southern California Teachers of English, the 2003 Teacher of the Year honor from California Literacy, the 2007 Educator of the Year award by Loyola Marymount University and the 2008 Innovative Educator of the Year from The Insight Education Group. He’s the author of six young adult novels, three children's picture books, two teacher methodology books, and a classroom curriculum series for secondary English Language Arts instruction called THE ALAN SITOMER BOOK JAM.

The Northern Illinois University (NIU) Department of Literacy Education announced that seven more videos of the Raising Readers Video Series from the NIU Literacy Clinic is online at the Literacy Clinic youtube channel: www.youtube.com/user/TheLiteracyClinic. 

The new videos are:

 *   Phonemic Awareness
 *   Phonic
 *   Fluency
 *   Vocabulary
 *   Comprehension Strategies
 *   Comprehension of Fiction Texts
 *   Writing with Younger Children

NIU's College of Education Literacy Clinic provides reading support services for K-12 students, high quality practicum experiences for candidates who are pursing graduate studies in reading, and continuing education and professional development opportunities for reading specialists. Established 40 years ago, the NIU Literacy Clinic supports courses leading to the reading teacher endorsement and the Type 10-K-12 Reading Specialist Certification through the Illinois State Board of Education. For more information, see www.cedu.niu.edu/ltcy/literacyclinic. 

Animal books seem to have an almost universal appeal. Youngsters love listening to read-alouds featuring animals since they can point to the ones they recognize while also learning about those that they have never seen. Once they become readers, animal books are often among the titles they select because of the illustrations and the familiarity. Then, too, savvy teachers have learned to use animal stories to address gently issues such as bullying, cooperation, and social justice. They know that they can rarely go wrong when they choose books featuring animals to share with their students or recommend them for independent reading. Even students entering middle grades search for books featuring animals since they may provide avenues to escape the turmoil of approaching adolescence, appeal to their tender sides, and provide possible career choices. Here are some recently published animal stories with youth appeal. 

This weekly series of book reviews is contributed by the Children's Literature and Reading Special Interest Group (CL/R SIG) of the International Reading Association (IRA). All reviews have been written by CL/R SIG members. Visit their website to join CL/R SIG or to read more about them. 

Grades K-3

Bliss, Harry. (2011). Bailey. New York: Scholastic. 

Precocious Bailey is a dog that wants to add to what he knows by attending school. Like many other elementary school students, he has some problems catching the bus, whether it's heading toward school or on its way home. He loves reading and math, but his favorite subject is lunch when he can trade dog bones for sandwiches. Although things don't always go right for Bailey, he knows that school is the place he belongs, and he makes plenty of friends there. This title would be a great read-aloud for the transition to a new classroom since it effectively reassures those who feel anxious about anything new. The pastel illustrations highlight Bailey's personality in the wiggle of his tail or the frown of concentration on his face. One of the book’s best scenes shows Bailey giving a report on Fala, the canine companion of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt with a tiny photo of the President and a huge one of Fala. Clearly, Bailey has resolved his priorities about who or what matters. - Barbara A. Ward, Washington State University

McDermott, Gerald. (2011). Monkey: A trickster tale from India. Boston: Harcourt. 

Hungry Crocodile lolls in the river and longs for a nice Monkey snack in this final installment of McDermott’s trickster tales series. Monkey is also hungry and craves the delicious mangoes growing on an island in the middle of the river. Since he can’t reach those mangoes by himself, Monkey must outsmart the hungry, wily Crocodile in order to fill his belly with the delicious fruit. Young readers will be amused at how Monkey outsmarts Crocodile and avoids his sharp teeth. McDermott’s bold collage made of cut and torn handmade paper from India perfectly complements this traditional Buddhist story from the Jataka Tales. Teachers will enjoy reading this title aloud, and are as likely to be tickled by the mischievous monkey’s antics as students will be. - Terrell A. Young, Brigham Young University

Godwin, Laura. (2011). One moon, two cats. Illus. by Yoko Tanaka. New York: Atheneum.

As night falls, two cats in separate places wait until their human companions are asleep before heading out for fun. As both felines slip from their homes, they saunter confidently through the dark until noises and movements claim their attention. As the cats race after their favorite prey, mice, they leap acrobatically all over the pages. Just when the demise of a mouse seems imminent, a storm sends the cats and mice in separate directions as they scurry for cover. The cats slip surreptitiously back into their respective dwellings, leaving their human bedmates unaware of their outdoor travels. The descriptions of the cats’ appearance, actions, and personalities are extended through the use of different font sizes throughout the story. The acrylic illustrations show the playful yet sly and sneaky nature of these cats with very active night lives. - Barbara A. Ward, Washington State University

CL/R SIG's Previous Book Review Series

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