A Brick House

constructed by Suzanne

Actually it's a paper house but a really cool one!

Think of stories with a significant setting or house that symbolizes something greater.  I can hear Lori screaming The House of Mango Street from here! :)  Students can analyze the literature in this fun foldable.

Start by folding your paper in half horizontally (student speak: hamburger/taco).  Fold the right side into the middle.  Then the left.  Open up this fold.  You are going to press down the top to form the eaves (that's a thing, right?!) of the house.  It looks a little paper airplane-ish.  Do the same thing to the other side. 

You can open up that front section for a shorter writing assignment like a Short Answer Question that explains what the house symbolizes.  For longer writing, have students write on the entire sheet of paper before folding.  We did this with a personal narrative about a significant place.  They generate a list of three meaningful locations.  Then they choose one that has a story they'd like to tell.  Have students draw a floor plan of this location on the front of the paper.  Then they should briefly describe meaningful events that took place there.  This is their pre-writing for the activity.  On the back, they will draft their story about this meaningful place.  Finally, they can complete the directions to create the house.  

See, it's cute!

What Are We Going to Do For the 6th Six Weeks?!?!

your curly friend, Suzanne

Raise your hand if you've asked yourself that question lately.  The test is over, but {for the sake of mental health, I'm not going to count} weeks lie between us and summer.  What's a girl (or guy) to do?!

{insert trumpet blasts}

Might I present to you the 6th installment of our Common Thread series: Growing Up.  If you're thinking to yourself- "Whoa! How did I miss 1-5?!", you're not alone.  Common Thread is a lesson series that I've had envisioned for a while now but just brought the first one to completion...here at the end of the school year.  Whoopsie!  So, we'll get a taste for this AND finish the year strong.  Sound like a plan?  Good!

Common Thread is collection of 12 texts that revolve around a central theme- in this case, growing up.  Students can be as dependent or independent as you want them to be.  You can pick your favorites to whole group.  Choose several texts for students to jigsaw, or allow them to have free reign and choose the texts they want to read.  The goal could be to read all 12 texts or you could ask them to choose 2 from each category.  Several different summarization tools are included.  

After students have spent a class period or two reading, have them select two texts to work with in a connecting Short Answer Question.  Theme-based essay prompts are also included.  

Each thematic until will include a different extension activity.  For this collection, students will end by writing an epic poem of their life.  Step by step instructions are included that help students generate ideas and include poetic devices.  There are also easy ways that you could scaffold up or down as needed.  

I LOVE ending the year this way!  Students reflect on their journey thus far- successes, defeats, and what they've learned.  They then think about the future and what they hope to accomplish along the way.

To recap:
We love this first sixth Common Threads pack because it...
-provides twelve, thematically connected texts (3 literary, 3 expository, 3 poems, and 3 others)
-includes 5 Short Answer Questions, 2 expository prompts, and 2 persuasive prompts

-gives step-by-step instructions so that students are self-sufficient* while writing their epic poem 

-gives you a reason to incorporate and coo over their baby pictures

*As self-sufficient as they ever are.  I'm not a miracle worker!

Baby Lori & her baby 'fro

Baby Suz & her baby 'fro

What's not to love?!  Click here to have the 6th Six Weeks taken care of for you, and look for more in our Common Thread series this summer.

In the Hot Seat

your curly comrade, Suzanne

Welcome to Day 3 of our blogging blitz!  Be sure to check out Day 1 and Day 2.

Especially around test time, I want my students to feel a strong sense of accountability.  Hot Seat is a questioning game where students are expected to be on their toes- ready to think and answer.  

To make this work, provide students with a deck of Say It cards as shown above.  You could provide questions or sentence stems to get your students talking.  I like these question stems from Kelly Gallagher's Deeper Reading:

• What lesson(s) have we learned from a specific character?
• What technique did the author use in this chapter to hold the readers' interest?
• Why did the author write this passage/chapter/book?
• How does the author use setting to advance the story?

Other supplies include dice, a text for independent reading, and a copy of the rubric.  

Either the teacher or students can chunk the text.  Students read until coming to the agreed upon stopping place.  Students will roll the die, and the person with the highest number is in the Hot Seat.  The student in the Hot Seat draws a card responds to the prompt listed.  Other students assess the response and provide feedback using a point system. (See rubric below.)  The student records their points, and the person with the most points wins a cool prize or pat on the back or high five or pride in their accomplishment.

To assess, have the student pick a question to take through the SAQ model and grade that.  

Tomorrow, check back for another high-energy, high-yield review strategy!  

MovieSTAARs

your curly comrade, Suzanne

This post is late in coming, so let's pretend it's November, okay?  Great!  Every crisp Thursday in November we kept our doors open for several extra hours as we held our STAAR lock-ins, preparing for the December retest.  

We were targeting students that were not a part of an acceleration class or pull-out tutorial.  We chose this option based on these facts:

• Kids won't come to teacher tutoring once a week. (We know this because we tried and failed.)
• They also won't come on Saturdays. (We also know this because we tried and failed.)
• They do come to school, so let's work on keeping them there. 

Students were given a schedule tailored to their needs.  We offered sessions for expository writing, literary writing (because it was still our reality),  persuasive writing, reading, and a writing workshop.  Each students was scheduled into three classes which ran for approximately 50 minutes each.  
  
Now, Lori and I can't seem to do anything without a theme, so we used old Hollywood as our inspiration to take the drama out of remediation. 

In our writing stations, students were shown a brief movie clip that inspired the prompt that they would be working with.  Students analyzed iconic movie song lyrics as poetry and completed Short Answer Questions.  

Students got movie theater candy in their first session, popcorn in the second, and we finished our time with pizza.  Yep, we were bribing them.  It's still works for me!
*We have an excellent At-Risk team that made all this possible.  They scheduled, contacted, located, followed up, and even served slices of pizza.  They totally deserve a standing ovation!

We had so much fun, we forgot to take any pictures.  I choose to believe we looked something like this:

This is probably pretty accurate.

But the real winner here is YOU!  We've packaged all our materials:

• 3 expository prompts
• 3 persuasive prompts
• 3 reading texts and SAQs
• WWAM poetry analysis stations
• Autograph book cover

It's ready and waiting for it's debut at your upcoming tutorials.  Check them out here.

And........

Be sure to check back next week as we start our Relevant Review blogging blitz.  Each day we offer a great review strategy that you can implement in your classroom in these days leading up to the test.

I {Heart} Notebooks 2.0

your curly co-captain, Suzanne

We have been blown away by the number of people who have checked out I {Heart} Notebooks!  So in honor of over 1,000 page views, we bring to you the sequel- I {Heart} Notebooks 2.0.

Last year was our first year to use interactive notebooks.  Before school began, we found ourselves with the desire but no direction, so we made it up.  Overall, they were a success, but we did learn some tricks and additions that we've implemented this year. 

As you know, I'm a Lori-proclaimed data queen.  It's important for students to have their information early on, so that you can refer back to it for motivation and focus.  In the first couple of weeks of the new school year, I take about 10-15 minutes to distribute and explain student's data.  Especially for my acceleration students, I focus on positives- "look at how you've grown in this area", "you do this really well"...  Students fold and glue this data inside the front cover of their notebooks.  

Our first 10 pages are for Star Points.  You can read about them here.  They are a great way to address the editing questions on STAAR.  

Next comes the toolbox section (10 pages). Here we take brief notes for skills and strategies.  Pictured are notes over "be" verbs, dialogue rules, author's purpose, pitchforks, and Ba-Da-Bings.

We also included a copy of STAAR rubrics- highlighting important traits and writing in strategies that we have to help us get those points.  This was really empowering to me because it validated that my co-teacher and I had given students the skills that they need to be successful.  Hopefully students walked away with the understanding that they had the strategies needed to be successful; it was just up to them to use them.  

Our toolbox is also where we store our grammar foldable.

I've had an 'Ideas' section before this year, but this year I just saved a couple of pages in the toolbox for ideas.  This is my favorite idea list.  I give students 2-3 minutes to list five movies they know well.  We talk a little about having a variety of movies- not all of the Fast and Furious movies and calling it a day.  After students brainstorm their movies, we talk about hashtags and how they are used on Twitter- as a category or label.  I then give them about 5 minutes to go through and provide hashtags for their movies they came up with.  They need a little direction to come up with hashtags that relate to the message (theme) of the movie, not their reaction to it. 

This was out example in class: 

Madea's Witness Protection  #family  NOT  #hilarious

We repeat this process for 'Events I Know Well' and 'Celebrities I Know Well'.  Once they have a completed list, it is easy to refer back to for examples for expository and persuasive writing.

We started off our Close Reading section (10 pages) with our Short Answer Question graphic organizer.  I'm not great about using this section but hope to utilize it more.  You could have students cut and glue Shared Reading passages into this section to analyze.  The page where they answer the accompanying questions could be loose it's easy to turn in to you at the end of the four days.  Because they have the analyzed passage, it would be easy to turn back to for text evidence or connections to other reading.

Our My Writing section gets all the remaining pages of our notebooks. We spend time in this section daily kerneling essays or revising to include skills from the day's mini-lesson.  Here are pages that hold our literary writing.  Click here to read more about the mini-lessons that were taught with literary/narrative writing.

With expository writing, we focused on organizational structures.  The overall frame of our essay was- State the prompt as a fact (thesis)--Reason 1--Reason 2--Restate thesis in a zesty way.  Reason 1 and 2 could be an example from a book or movie.  One could explain how the topic relates to me while the other talks about it's affect on others.  These reasons could track our thinking- from what I used to think (before) to what I now think (after).  

We also learned strategies like renaming from Gretchen Bernabei's Fun Sized Academic Writing for Serious Learning.  This book is SO great, and you'll be hearing much more from me about it soon (hint, hint, wink, wink)!  On our last expository essay before the retest, I used these cute mini file folders.  I've had them in my cabinet for years, just waiting for the perfect opportunity. I made the class period have a Mission Impossible feel.  These folders contained their unique mission.  They had to utilize the strategy and organizational structure we'd covered in their final piece of writing.  They played along with the theme, and I choose to believe it caused them to stretch and solidify learning.  

We glued our Book Bingo cards to the back of our notebooks.  You can download this freebie from Hangin' with Hekken here.  I had every intention of channeling my inner Donalyn Miller and becoming the 10th grade Book Whisperer.  So, at the beginning of the school year, we glued our bingo card to the back of our notebooks.  I instructed that they were to create one bingo in any direction except straight down the middle- your choice, your choice, your choice- by the end of the semester.  Well...the semester is almost up and becoming Donalyn will have to be my New Year's resolution.  

Have you entered our second curly giveaway?  If not, what are you waiting for?!  There are many ways to enter, and you can tweet or share about the giveaway on Facebook daily to gain more entries.  Click here for your chance to win our English II Shared Readings.

My Anchor Holds

your curly comrade,Suzanne

I haven't determined the rightness or wrongness of using part of a hymn for a blog post title, but I went for it. 

If you remember how this whole thing started, we are on a quest to make secondary instruction colorful and engaging because even big kids want and deserve to have a little fun.  With that being said, something that I stole from elementary education this year is anchor charts.  I wanted my walls to be a valuable, changing part of instruction.  So here is a little look around my walls and a brief description of the skill.

In the first few weeks of school, I had this overwhelming notion that what I was doing wasn't working.  (Gosh!  I hate when that happens!)  So, I pulled out college textbooks and other resources I've acquired and researched workshop classroom models.  My students are not responding to traditional instruction and need something different.  Now for some of them, I'm on my fourth batch of different.  Hello rock!  Hello hard place!  They needed accountability.  They needed instruction to be writing intensive.  

So, we switched.  Mondays are our reading day.  Tuesday through Friday is writing intensive.  We're on a block schedule, so that means that some weeks I lead with my 'A' day (ah, comfort) and some with the 'B'.  It hasn't driven me crazy...yet!  

For one of our first reading lessons, I focused on what is supposed to happen in your head before you read.  It's more than just staring at words on a paper.  Imagine that!  Students brainstormed what happened in their head as they read and shared with the class.  We talked about how writing down brief responses also helped us understand what we were reading.  Students practiced reading and responding.  I asked them to go back and and notice what their notes were mostly about.  They identified the strategy and explained how it helped them on a post-it note and placed it on the corresponding poster.  We talked about how a combination of these thinking strategies would best help us understand what we read.  

This lesson idea and a chart of the thinking strategies are found in Harvey "Smokey" Daniels's book, Texts and Lessons for Teaching Literature.  I also have his book of non-fiction texts, and both are excellent!  They provide brief texts and skill-based lessons for each.

The first six weeks was spent teaching the structure and guiding questions for the Short Answer Questions.  Some students had been taught and feel most comfortable with a different graphic organizer.  Fine by me, but I still wanted them to see how the questions work with both structures.  Find more about how we teach the SAQ here.

I kind love my Ba-Da-Bing anchor chart!  A Ba-Da-Bing is a descriptive strategy for the literary essay.  In theory, it could work for expository and persuasive writing, but I haven't quite figured out how.  We added the notes above to our Writer's Tools, and they practiced the still to start their story.  It could be used throughout the story because it's just that great! In fact, I presented it as English teacher chocolate- we crave it and sometimes have to have it!  I'm going to let the graphic speak for itself, but feel free to email me for more Ba-Da-Bing details.

Pitchforks are easy and effective.  They can be used in any type of writing to add detail.  Since I was taught this strategy in Gretchen's training (Pitchforks and Ba-Da-Bings are both hers), I use them more often in my own writing.  For students, it is a great way to force encourage them to vary their sentence structure.  Remember, that AAAWWWUUBBIS word means we can wear it two ways (reversible jacket).  

So there you have it!  Again, I want these to change out as our instruction changes.  New learning- on the wall.  Old learning- in your head (or saved as a picture in your phone- all about teaching the real world skills y'all).  I would love to see or hear about what's hanging on your wall!

Gimme an S...

brought to you by Lori

Gimme an A...Gimme a Q!

What does it spell? Frustration and angst for all teachers across the state of Texas! 

But seriously...not only is the single Short Answer Question a beast, but the paired SAQ is a task that has caused this curly girl to nearly pull out my luxurious locks. Years ago, this angst began with the TAKS crossover Open-Ended Response. The trend continues with STAAR, but I've now got a tool in my arsenal to tackle it.

Here is a typical paired question stem at the STAAR level: 
How are the themes of x and y similar? Support your answer with evidence from both selections.

And here is the typical pitfall of a student answering such a question:
"The theme of x is [something profound...maybe]. The theme of y is [something completely unrelated to the first thing this kid JUST SAID!]." 

My students just didn't seem to understand that the paired question requires an understanding of how the pieces are connected. Saying it to my kids didn't seem to matter. Looking at examples didn't seem to matter. And practice didn't really fix it either. Good thing I am not above making a fool of myself to (1) make them listen, and (2) help them remember. 

Here's my trick. I grab two sheets of different colored paper...we'll say pink and blue. The pink paper represents one story and the blue paper represents the other. I overlap them to show that the question is asking about how both pieces work TOGETHER. Then I set the blue paper down and tell my students that it's now my job to explain how that first piece works APART...all by itself. Then I switch and hold the blue paper APART, re-explaining and praying that they get it. Finally, I pick up both colors TOGETHER and explain that we have to show that those two pieces are indeed connected. 



For more on how we approach the SAQs, click here.

And...because this is how we keep it curly and quirky, there is the Paired Cheer. Walk by my room on any given day that we're studying two connected pieces, and you are almost guaranteed to see my class on their feet, hear their hands clapping, and their voices yelling.

And their answers usually deserve a cheer too.

Click to watch me and my girl, Suzanne, do the cheer just for you.

Picture This

by your curly-headed friend, Suzanne

Picture a classroom where students are hovered around vying to see the page.  
Picture having to play referee when another group "stole" the book they wanted.
Picture a blur of pleasant colors and sweet tales of a dog and her ball.

Don't get me wrong.  My kids don't ride into class on unicorns.  The above scenario is achievable because my kids are...well...kids.  No matter the age group or ability level, students don't grow out of their love for picture books.  Shoot- I've spend many an hour perusing them at my local Barnes & Noble!  They will revert to their childlike ways and beg you to read to them, grumbling if they didn't get a sufficient view of the picture.

Why not turn this enjoyment into engagement?  Picture books are a great way to build reading skills and a more palatable way to prepare for Short Answer Questions.  

For more on how we approach Short Answer Questions, click here.

Lori and I have some great friends.  One such friend is Kay Shurtleff with the Region 10 ESC.  She came to our campus and did a training on how to use picture books with SAQs.  The following titles and questions are credited to her.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

We worked with picture books during our summer acceleration to prepare for the July STAAR administration.  Students were eager to hold and read through each book.  The content was not intimidating, so we could really focus on building the skill.  The first title we read was...

Raschka, Christopher. A Ball for Daisy. New York: Schwartz & Wade, 2011. Print.

This wordless book features Daisy the dog in a story about love and loss.  This type of text forces students to look beyond the text (or lack there of) and focuses in on how natural it is to make certain inferences.
Possible SAQs: How is the theme of loss important in this story? How can you tell the two dogs are friends?


Reynolds, Peter. The North Star. Somerville, MA: Candlewick, 2009. Print.
This is a story of a boy on a journey where he learns he must find his own way.  There is a clear literal and figurative meaning.  This emphasizes that even when there are words, they don't say everything.
Possible SAQs: What does the journey symbolize? What is one important symbol in this story? How is the idea of change important in this story?


Rosenstock, Barbara, and Mordicai Gerstein. The Camping Trip That Changed America: Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, and Our National Parks. New York, NY: Dial for Young Readers, 2012. Print.
This historical fiction book tells the story of Theodore Roosevelt's camping trip with John Muir which led to the establishment of national parks.
Possible SAQs: Why did the author write this piece? How did Theodore Roosevelt change during this story? What is one similarity between Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir?

These are titles that my campus purchased class sets of.  Being the picture book lover that I am, I might have purchased a few (okay 16) more titles to use in class.  Now you might be feeling a little jipped because this is only a few titles, not the 10 that you were promised. Well, I think I can make it up to you.  For the 16 titles, I typed up color coded labels with scaffolded SAQs for each book.  Again these questions came from Kay during our Region 10 training.  This way students (in theory) can choose a book and complete a question independently as an extension or extra credit.  Green questions are easier; blue are more difficult.  You can download the free set here.  They are formatted to fit Avery 48863 labels (Avery 5163 Template).  

Check back for more SAQ tips and tricks on Tuesday.

Now you've got the picture!
#pb10for10

Can I get a hand with SAQs?

Brought to you by Lori

Everyone across the state of Texas say it with me! If our kids could just __, their SAQs would be so much better! That __ is almost like a bad word. It's hard to teach. It's hard for kids to do. Yes...data yells it loud and clear. Inferencing has taken its toll on kids [and teachers] across the state, and we need help in fixing this problem. 

In the fall, Suzanne and I co-taught a class of acceleration kids. These kids had been unsuccessful on the reading test THREE times. They knew what SAQs were. They had done dozens upon dozens of them. They knew graphic organizers. But their product was less that stellar because of the struggle to make that all-important inference. These kids were consistently writing 0s or 1s. 

More than anything I wished that we could make the SAQ feel more like a conversation for the kids. In fact, I wanted to shift to verbal SAQs for the first few weeks of this Hybrid English class. Kids needed to see that SAQs are really just explanations of a good understanding of the story. You write it just like you would explain it to a teacher. 

After some quick research, we landed on our bestie, Gretchen Bernabei's website and her SAQ questions stems. Folks...they are simple, yet genius. Here's how it works:

Answer the question.

1. How do you know?
2. Huh? What does that mean?
3. How else do you know?
4. Huh? What does that mean?
5. So...your answer to the question is...what?

Questions 2 and 4 are clearly the most important because that is where the inference lives. Questions 1 and 3 are text evidence, where question 3 guides students to add to the evidence already given. It really does help to connect the students' thinking. Below is the link so that Gretchen can explain it better than I can. Don't be alarmed that it says OER instead of SAQ...the strategy still works beautifully.

http://www.trailofbreadcrumbs.net/teaching/composition/testing/oers.html

SAQ Hand Graphic Organizer

To keep it Curly and do it a little differently, we decided to help kids remember the question stems using their own hand as a graphic organizer. To make it even more memorable, you can teach the kids a song. Use the highlighted words above and sing it to the tune of "Old McDonald." It sounds like this:

Old McDonald had a farm..."HOW? HUH? HOW? HUH? SO..." [except don't sing the Old McDonald part...because that would just be weird]

Want to make it even more Curly and crazy? Use washable markers and have the kids write the highlighted words on their hands. Sing the song and point to your fingers. It's all kinds of crazy fun, and it yields better responses. It helps if the kids can work with this strategy verbally several times before they ever move it to paper. We greatly closed the gap for our struggling students, helping them pick up more points on the SAQ.

Use this strategy in your room, and then lend a helping hand to someone else!

Shared Reading Day 4: Let Me Try

By Day 4, students should have a solid understanding of the text.  Here we will work at the highest level of Bloom's.  Based on their knowledge of the text, vocabulary and sentence structure, students will now evaluate or connect this text.  Often the daily task asks them to practice their Short Answer Question (SAQ) skills.  For the sake of time, we often have our students only plan the short answer.  After composing, they can then share with a partner or with the class, and it's time to turn that puppy in.  This is a good summative assessment of the depth of student thinking.

A word about grading:

Do I read every word?  Ummm...NO!  You have been monitoring student work and listening as they share.  You've got a pretty good idea of what's gone on.  I will choose one or two activities that I care most about to read every word of and grade.  

A word about absences:

When a student is absent, they are responsible for the Shared Reading day that they missed.  I print the list of activities for the week and project it from the document camera.  I will show the current day and the previous day at the same time.  This gives them a chance to double time it and catch up.  They are also welcome to come borrow the questions and get caught up when they have time during the class period or after school.

If I had to choose the number one teacher tool I have to prepare for STAAR, Shared Reading would win every time.  After talking to my students, it is clear that they believe in their benefit as well.  This practice allows me to cover genres more frequently than I ever could with an extensive, whole-group text.  It allows for repetition of academic terms.  The Shared Reading forces inferencing skills because of how concise it is and where it picks up in the larger work.  In summary, GO Shared Readings!...Ra Ra Ra!!! 

Already love the Shared Reading and want more?!  Get the full set of 15 English I Shared Readings here.