I recently took time to make a list of what worked in our classroom this school year. It’s easy to close the book on a school year and just move on when that last bill rings. However, every school year brings change and growth that shouldn’t be ignored. The further I get into my teaching career (closing out Year 16), the more I think of teaching as a science experiment. Every school year is a chance to figure out the right formula to maximize student learning. It doesn’t require completely throwing out everything you’ve done and trying something completely new the next school year. Often, it’s building on what has worked and then making tiny tweaks to leverage what has been successful. I recommend everyone take the time before the end of the school year to record your wins. Everything fades over the summer months, and when August rolls around and we try to remember, our minds can’t quite reach back with the clarity that we can have if we write it down now. Here are my wins from this school year in no particular order.
- Sentence Level Writing
For every writing unit we did this school year (Product Review, Memoir Vignettes, Literary Analysis, Ask Anything Research), I used Sentence Level Writing as part of our class warm-up at the beginning of the lesson. Every writing unit, we went through the same sequence where we would review a particular sentence type (sentences with appositives, complex sentences, compound sentences, sentences with listing items in a series, sentences with two adjectives to describe one noun) and then students would practice writing that type of sentence. The content of students’ sentences changed depending on their topic for that writing unit.
We used students’ sentences during drafting and analyzed our writing for different sentence types during the revision part of the writing process. Circling back to review the same sentence types again and again while inputting new content allowed students to feel confident in incorporating a variety of sentence types into their writing. Sentence level writing familiarizes students with grammar concepts such as: independent clauses, dependent clauses, subordinating conjunctions, coordinating conjunctions, and comma rules. It also just helps students write in complete sentences, and I think we can all agree that that alone is worth it!
2. Variety of Writing Types and Purposes While Using a Consistent Writing Process
With 76-minute class periods, I find it is too hard to teach a reading lesson and a writing lesson daily. Instead, I alternate between reading units and writing units. This left room this year for four writing units and a poetry unit that involved a combination of reading and writing poetry. Each writing unit focused on a different writing standard from the Common Core, so that we wrote in a variety of genres.
Here is what we did:
–Product Review (Persuasive Writing): Students selected a restaurant, object, business, or piece of technology that they would give a five-star review. In their review they included information about the product, their personal connection to the product, why they would recommend the product, and who they would recommend the product to.
–Memoir Vignettes (Narrative Writing): Students selected a common thread for their memoir vignettes such as a person, place, activity, animal, object, or emotion and picked three moments in time. The vignettes differ from a memoir because we encourage students to write three 1-minute memories that fit together instead of one in-depth memory. We culminated this writing unit by creating videos with students reading one vignette aloud to a slideshow of pictures and video clips associated with the memory.
–Literary Analysis (Informative/Explanatory Writing): Students selected a book they read this school year and three themes associated with the book. In addition to an introduction and conclusion paragraph, students wrote a paragraph for each selected theme to describe how that theme was developed through the characters, setting, and plot of the book.
–Ask Anything Research Paper: Students started this unit by making a list of anything they wonder. They selected one item from that list to become their topic and then wrote four follow-up questions that would become the content of their research. As students were researching, we explored plagiarism, paraphrasing, finding relevant sources, search terms, in-text citations, and created a Works Cited page.
Although all four of these writing units are very different, one thing that stayed the same throughout every writing unit was the process students went through. We always started out with genre immersion, moved on to pre-writing, shifted to organizing and outlining, continued with drafting, transitioned to revising and editing, and then ended with publishing.
Students understood the predictable writing process we would go through and knew our daily writing instructional framework would also remain the same. I realize this is key to successful teaching: student choice and teaching a variety of content while also keeping processes and daily instructional framework the same.
3. Reading Units Focused on a Variety of Genres and Lengths
As mentioned above, because of time constraints in a middle school classroom for an ELA block, I alternate between reading units and writing units. This allowed time for five reading units this school year. Each reading unit focused on a different genre of reading, so naturally the interactive read aloud texts and students’ texts also differed.
Here is what we did:
–Realistic Fiction: Our interactive read aloud for the unit was Forget Me Not and student book choices were House Arrest, Knock Out, Endangered, The Last Song, and Curveball. All the texts were novels, and some were novels in verse.
–Myth & Fairy Tale Inspired Fiction: Our interactive read aloud for the unit was Grump and student book choices were Beastly, A Tale Dark and Grimm, Red, and Just Ella. All of the texts were novels inspired by fairy tales.
–Expository Nonfiction: Our interactive read aloud texts and student texts were short nonfiction articles from a variety of sources on a variety of topics.
–Historical Fiction: Our interactive read aloud for the unit was Projekt 1065 and student book choices were I Must Betray You, Between Shades of Gray, The Night Diaries, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
–Narrative Nonfiction: We used picture books this unit for interactive read aloud texts and student texts. We rotated read alouds and student books every 5 lessons, so everyone read eight books total across the unit. The read aloud books were Jars of Hope, The Unbreakable Code, Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot, and Child of the Civil Rights Movement. The student book were Henry’s Freedom Box, Crossing Bok Chitto, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, and Malala’s Magic Pencil.
I love the variety of genres students were exposed to across the school year through our reading units. Not every book was every students’ favorite, but they knew reading units would always involve choice in student texts, and we would never repeat the same genre twice. Some students excelled in the Expository Nonfiction and Narrative Nonfiction Reading Units that don’t do as well in reading units that involve reading novels.
While the genre of the reading units changed, once again, the daily structure and the format of the overall unit stayed the same. All reading units contained an interactive read aloud that was used as the common text to reference and model with during the reading lesson and allowed students to then independently complete the reading lesson of the day with their books.
4. Giving Independent Reading Time Separate from Everything Else
I committed this year to something I’ve experienced some success with in the past, and that is giving independent reading time toward the beginning of the class period separate from every other part of the lesson. During writing units, all students get independent reading time with a book or text of their choice for 10 minutes at the beginning of the class period after our Word Study time. During reading units, all students get independent read time to read their student text and/or a book of their choice if they’re caught up on reading for 10 minutes at the beginning of the class period after our Word Study time.
This is different than I’ve done in years past because I’ve lumped independent reading time and application/student work time together.
I always assumed students could time manage their time and finish their daily assignment and then shift into independent reading. While some students were successfully able to this, most would finish their daily assignment and then struggle with off task behaviors until the end of the class period and not settle into independent reading. Devoting time at the beginning of the class period just for independent reading shows its importance and allows students to focus just on reading with no other expectations. From a classroom management perspective, it’s easy to monitor because every student simply needs to have a book out and be reading. This does slightly shorten the application/student work time at the end of the class period, but I’ve actually found this is a great classroom management tool. Students have enough time to get their daily task completed but not enough free time to shift into off-task behaviors.
5. Focus Classroom Language on Positive Prompts
Ever since I learned about prompting for positive behaviors instead of singling out individual students for negative behaviors to constantly put out fires, I have tried to improve on this year after year. For example, if I notice there is a lot of side talk, instead of raising my voice and telling students to stop talking I can say something like, “Thank you to all of the students who have their voices at a Volume 0 right now and are ready to hear directions.”
My Middle School Classroom Management Program goes even further in depth with this. The teacher gives several opportunities across the class period for students to earn positive behavior tallies for following expectations. Not only does the teacher constantly look for ways to reverse negative language to positive, but students are able to self-monitor their own behavior. The reason this works is all students like to get feedback on how they’re doing, and this is an efficient way to give whole class comments that impact students at the individual level.
Additionally, I’ve found that students with the most challenging behaviors crave the teacher’s attention, and if they can’t get positive attention, negative attention will work as well. Training our teacher talk to continuously be giving the expectations of what students are supposed to be doing helps all students find success.
6. Be a Reader
As much as I hate to admit it, I lost myself as a reader over the years. I used to always have a book I was avidly reading my way through the first 5 years of my teaching career, but I slowly traded that habit in for motherhood and halfhearted television viewing. I would still read all the books for our curriculum, but I didn’t read for my own enjoyment. Last year, I made a goal to read 24 adult novels (2 books a month) outside of the books students were reading. I met my goal, and so far this year, I have averaged 3-4 books a month.
During students’ independent reading time, I also read my independent book. My passion for independent reading is ignited, and when I talk to students about independent reading, I no longer feel like a fraud. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve had more success with hooking students into independent reading the last two school years than I’ve had in the past 10.
7. Looking at Student Work During Collaboration Time
We are incredibly lucky in our middle school to have a schedule that allows for all grade level content teams to meet several times each week during collaboration time. Our 8th grade ELA teachers met 3 times every week for 45 minutes throughout this school year. These meetings are often focused on making common formative and summative assessments and working on our day-to-day lessons.
This year, we deliberately tried to focus on looking at student work together one day a week. Sometimes we used this time to calibrate our grading after a reading unit summative assessment. We use Standards Based Grading, so we would bring up different student examples that we thought were a “3,” “2,” and “1.” Not only could we make sure we were on the same page as we graded, but we also discussed extension opportunities for advanced students and ways to reach students not meeting proficiency. This was a great way to end a reading unit and make ourselves notes for next year on items to change on the summative assessment or teach differently next year.
Sometimes looking at student work was done in the middle of a unit. This worked especially well during writing units. We would take time to all individually look at our students’ writing and discuss anything we noticed that students were doing. We did this consistently during our Ask Anything Research Writing Unit to end the school year, and it was a total game changer. We were able to determine areas students needed further instruction. For example, in text citations were way trickier for students than we anticipated, so we adapted students’ research outlines and added in more instruction on this topic. We all agreed this was extremely valuable for student feedback purposes and to inform our instruction.
8. Using Google Classroom to Post, Give Feedback, and Grade
This is my third school year of running my classroom fully through Google Classroom. I thrive on organization, and I love the consistency of having one place where everything is posted each day. It also makes it so easy when students have a pre-excused absence or are sick because they know to check Google Classroom for the lesson, materials, and assignment. Furthermore, there is never lost papers or students claiming they turned something in and it must have gotten “lost.”
I also grade and give feedback and comments right in Google Classroom. Once again, this just makes everything so easy. Whether a parent has a question, or our ESL teacher needs a student work sample, everything is always right there.
During reading units, I post the daily Google Slides, the daily reference sheet with the reading lesson concept, an example of a completed Exit Ticket based on our class read aloud, and then I “Make a Copy” of the Exit Ticket for each student so they can complete and submit their assignment right on Google Classroom.
During writing units, I post the daily Google Slides and any necessary handouts for the day. I also post outlines and specific documents for students to draft their writing pieces in. When I used to have students use paper outlines and write out their drafts, it was such a pain to deal with students who lost their drafts when we were almost done with the writing process, or to find out some students had appeared to be working during class time but have almost nothing completed. On Google Classroom, I am easily able to monitor student progress, and never have to worry about lost outlines and drafts.
Here is a video showing what I post daily on Google Classroom.
9. Having a Minimalist Classroom
My husband lovingly calls me a “chucker.” Over the years, I’ve come to really dislike clutter. It stresses me out and makes me feel unorganized and out of control. In my own home, I clean out closets and children’s toys regularly. I like to keep what we need and donate or sell what we don’t. For the last 3 school years, I’ve slowly taken this approach with my classroom as well.
2-3 times each school year, I go through cupboards and closets. I’m finally to the point where I feel like I only have what I need and am not holding onto things that I might use someday. I also keep the decorations and things hanging on the walls to a minimum. I label drawers that students can use supplies from and try to keep areas like our classroom library organized.
Students comment on the organization and how clean my classroom is often. They also treat it nicely and help me straighten it up the last few minutes of class. I feel like we have a shared pride in keeping it organized and clean.
Visual clutter can be overwhelming for some students and keeping the classroom décor simple makes maintaining the classroom easy for me.
10. Using a Variety of Questioning Techniques
A true gift that I have in my role as literacy coach and classroom teacher is the ability to see many different teachers in action. I truly believe this is the best form of professional learning teachers can do is simply to learn from each other in authentic teaching moments.
Human brains naturally look for patterns to categorize what works and what doesn’t. Something that has become so transparent to me is the correlation between a variety of questioning techniques and classroom management/student engagement. A teacher’s “default mode” is whole class question and answer, but the more teachers incorporate other types of questioning techniques such as turn and talks, small group discussion, sticky note jot, hand signal response, etc., the more engaged students appear, and the less classroom disruptions seem to happen.
This is an area I continue to work on in my teaching practice because I think teaching culture sometimes tells us that when we release whole class control and have students talking in pairs and small groups instead, we don’t know if students understand the teaching concept. However, the questioning techniques that encourage all students to share their thinking instead of just the few who consistently raise their hands get more students invested in the daily content.
Here is a blog post that goes deeper into this concept.
Final Thoughts
Another school year has come and gone, but there is always something to take away. The more I reflect on the “wins” from this school year, the more I realize it’s all about continuing to work on small changes over time versus making major changes every year.
