teaching

Setting up my standards for Spring semester

Posted on by Mark Isero

Part of moving to standards-based grading is deciding which standards I’m going to assess. What do I want my students to know about be able to do?

After taking a look at the California and the Common Core standards, as well as reflected on what habits I feel my ninth graders need to practice to become college-bound students, I’ve narrowed my lengthy list to the following 10 areas:

College-Bound Student
1. Homework
2. Classwork
3. Class Participation
4. Technology

Reading
5. Reading Identity
6. Analyzing Non-Fiction
7. Analyzing Fiction

Writing
8. Essay
9. Writing Process
10. Conventions

Some may argue that including homework, classwork, and class participation amounts to setting behavioral expectations as standards rather than placing the emphasis on learning. For most of my ninth graders, learning how to do school is extremely important. We’re still in a place of the teacher as responsible for controlling student behavior, rather than the student learning the habits of work required for college-preparatory study. Therefore, my hope is that by making these things standards, I can quit getting annoyed at challenging behavior and turn it into learning opportunities.

Others may ask, “What’s reading identity?” In short, I want my students to see themselves as readers and to read a lot. That’s why I have The 1,000,000 Word Challenge. Are my students consistent readers? How long can they read without stopping? Do distractions cause them to lose focus? If their reading identity is strong, nothing will stop them from reading.

Next steps: First, each category title needs to become a true standard (as in, I need to write some sentences). After that, I can create some easy rubrics for the 10 standards. It’ll be good to get student input, of course. Then comes some backward planning: What’s the best curriculum map to make sure all 10 standards are assessed regularly?

Notice I’m not asking the how-does-this-translate-into-a-grade question yet. There’s still time for that later. 

teaching

Moving toward standard-based grading

Posted on by Mark Isero

Here’s a question I get too often from students: “If I do good on this assignment, will it raise my grade?”

And here’s another: “Can I do extra credit?”

Both questions indicate that my students don’t understand how they earn their grade. Although my grading system seems simple  to me (categories and points), it makes no sense to students. They just keep doing my assignments and hope that the computer spits out an A, B, or C.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to move to standard-based grading. There are many advantages: (1) It aligns better to student learning, (2) It puts more ownership on students, (3) It offers better information about a student’s strengths and weaknesses.

Although I know that standard-based grading is the way to go, I have not yet adopted it because I’m worried I can’t pull it off. Specifically, will PowerTeacher Gradebook let me do what I want to do? I don’t want to be in the middle of the semester and find out that I have to retreat.

And here are some other questions:

1. I teach English. Using standard-based grading is harder in English than it is in Math. I’ll have 10 standards for the semester, but I’m not sure how to calculate each standard’s score. Mean? Median? Mode? Most recent? For most of my standards, using a custom version of “most recent score,” though arbitrary, makes the most sense. But for other standards, mode or median seems more appropriate. I’m pretty sure I have to select one way of determining all standards grades.

2. What’s the best way to determine a student’s final grade? If there are 10 standards, I’d like to see how many standards each student mastered during the semester and then assign a grade accordingly. Does Gradebook allow this? Or would I have to override Gradebook’s calculation, which would lead to mass confusion for students and parents checking grades online?

How exactly does Gradebook calculate the final grade? Would it take all the standards scores and then do the mean, median, mode, or most recent?

I’ll try to find out these answers before I go forward with my plan, but the question is, Will I cave (again) and do something more comfortable?

reading/teaching

Reading as hero-making

Posted on by Mark Isero

I’ve just finished reading Carol Jago’s With Rigor For All, a defense of teaching the classics. When Jago’s talking about classics, she’s not referring to To Kill a Mockingbird. No, she’s thinking Beowulf.

I appreciated her argument, and despite her strong tone and criticism of young adult fiction, Jago would likely agree with Kelly Gallagher’s hybrid approach, where part of the curriculum is independent reading and the other direct instruction.

My favorite part of the book was Jago’s insistence that teaching literature allows students to “have a vicarious experience of the human condition far greater than any of them could ever acquire on the basis of luck and firsthand encounters” (7). Besides offering students a wider perspective, reading classics introduces students to heroes to emulate in their own lives.

Jago writes that she teaches so that students can become heroes themselves. Through reading, as Anna Quindlen notes, students learn who they are, who they want to be, what they aspire to, and what they dare to dream (149). The possible problem with bad young adult literature is that the main characters spend their time just dealing with their problems rather than prevailing, conquering, vanquishing.

As I reflect on my teaching first semester, I am happy that my students have read so much, but I would like bigger ideas to enter the classroom discourse. My focus on process rather than content has left too many students asking about purpose. What exactly are we doing here, and why?

I’ve been thinking about how to expand my teaching second semester, and in addition to introducing novel study, I will encourage my students to think about the heroes in their books. To do that, students may have to read outside their genre. Donalyn Miller requires her students to read a variety of genres. I’m not sure I’ll make that kind of requirement this year, but I will emphasize the importance of reading a variety of genres.

After all, if I stick to my genre, I will meet only one kind of hero. What I gain in depth I lose in breadth. Genre is one place where “less is more” may not be true.

reading

Support the 1 Million Word Challenge!

Posted on by Mark Isero

Help a ninth grader love reading even more. Support The 1,000,000 Word Challenge. There are many ways to donate!

1. Buy a book from our Amazon wishlist. These are books that students have requested! You can bring the book in or ship it to my gift registry address. Feel free to buy the $4 used books, and if you’re feeling generous, take advantage of free shipping for orders over $25.

2. Buy a Kindle book from our Amazon wishlist. Want to make sure the book you donate never gets lost or destroyed from too much reading? Click a book’s “Kindle Edition” and email your order to misero@leadershiphigh.org. Each Kindle book you donate goes on 6 of our classroom Kindles, so it’s like getting 6 books for the price of 1!

3. Make a donation on my DonorsChoose page. DonorsChoose is a non-profit organization that helps teachers get resources they need. Just click on one of my projects and donate as much as you like.

4. Bring in a book that you loved reading as a ninth grader. Was there a book that made a difference in your life? Maybe the most personal way to support The 1,000,000 Word Challenge is by sharing a book you love. Come by Room 317 anytime!

5. Donate directly to our classroom library. If you don’t want to deal with Amazon or DonorsChoose, click the button below and make a donation. You can use PayPal or your credit card. I’ll be sure to use the money where it’s needed!

Thank you very  much! For your generous donation, you will receive my deepest thanks and a letter for tax purposes.

reading/technology

1 student + 1 Kindle + 1 week = 2 books read!

Posted on by Mark Isero

What happens when you give a Kindle to a student who says she doesn’t like reading and then let her keep it for a week?

The answer is, She reads two books, more than what she’s read since the beginning of school.

After spending too long trying to figure out the most equitable way to share with my 75 ninth graders the Kindle I received from DonorsChoose, I finally got around to letting a student borrow it for a week, just as a trial run.

She came on a Friday morning. I showed her the basics: how to turn it on, how to change font size, and how to activate text-to-speech. She wasn’t a big fan of the computerized voices, but she did like being able to make the font bigger.

Then came the exciting part: We bought a book together. I recently got a $500 grant from the Kids in Need Foundation, which will fund books on Kindle. She was excited. “If I finish this one, can I get another one?”

Sure.

Monday morning rolled around, and there she was. Her smile was enormous. “I finished, Mr. Isero!” So we bought another book, which she finished in three days, right before she had to turn in the Kindle.

“Can I have it another week?”

I said no, but I congratulated her for reading so much and for taking such good care of the Kindle. She wore the device with pride — reading with swagger and keeping the Kindle in its protective case.

Now it’s time for my second student — this time a boy. He’s a developing reader, too, who likes to fake his way through reading and who tends to leave his book in random places. Let’s see if the Kindle grabs him, too.