Conversation Calendars

While planning with the district literacy coach this summer, I was introduced to a method of recording participation points and building rapport with students proposed by Cris Tovani in her book Do I Really Have to Teach Reading (106-110).  I can honestly say, without risking hyperbole, that it has completely changed the relationship I have with my students.

At the beginning of each week, students receive a weekly calendar with a space for them to write comments and give themselves a score, and a space for me to write comments and record a score.  Sometimes students are asked to write something specific in the space, like "ask one good question or make one good comment about the short story we read today."  More frequently though, they write whatever they want.  Sometimes it's comments about the class or what they did that period, other times it's about the volleyball game they have after school, or about the book they're reading and how's it going.  Sometimes it's pictures or doodles or random graffiti.  Sometimes they don't write anything.  After class, I respond in the space below.  Sometimes a response isn't necessary.  Sometimes a few quick words are enough.  Sometimes the student and I get to carry on a one-on-one conversation throughout the week that we wouldn't have had otherwise.

For one, this increases my contact time with students, something I'm all about.  Students can ask questions they may not have time for or feel comfortable asking in front of the class.  Secondly, I see a different, sometimes truer, side of my students other teachers may not get the chance to see.  I have two particular students who like to start power struggles and make loud outbursts.  One had all sorts of disciplinary interventions last year.  I wasn't sure I could handle it.  Then I introduced the calendars.  Total posers.  They do it to look all bad, but they were honest and almost apologetic in their self assessment the first week and since then they've been slowly working more and more in class - while maintaining their bad image as much as possible.

Another student was having a rough day (I wouldn't let her talk in class even though it was her birthday) and called me an a**hole.  I told her my birthday present to her was not giving her a referral. After class, I flipped through the calendars and saw that she had written "I'm sorry I called you an a**hole."  I thought that was pretty cool, because you don't always get apologies for that sort of thing.

At first, grading 75 calendars a day took about 75 minutes.  Once it became routine, however, my speed increased and I can now get through all three period in 30 minutes.  And those extra 30 minutes a day are definitely worth it for me.

To be fair though, I am only half-time, so maybe for the full-time teacher this exercise could become too time consuming.  Tovani suggests rotating calendars through classes daily or weekly in the team teaching model.  One could also have students do a end of the week self assessment and respond over the weekend.

For those interested, here's a blank calendar. You'll want to download it, Google Drive can't handle all the table-ness involved in the document.

Works Cited

Tovani, Cris.  Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?  Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers, 2004.

Pass / Fail Assignments

My wife recently started her masters of social work at Portland State University.  Her first major assignment was a paper connecting her bachelor's level experience and learning with what she has now begun at her master's level internship.  The paper is a pass / fail assignment (as is the class).

The result I see is that she is less stressed during the writing of this paper than she has been with her entrance essay, scholarship essays or any of the other countless pieces of writing she needed to complete to get accepted to the university.  The stakes were so much higher.

Since my wife is a member of the "new" or "knowledge class" (a term from one of her social work readings), she didn't cut corners on her paper.  I'm wondering what balance I would have to strike to get my student's best work and also offer this nerve-liberating form of grading for papers or assignments.  I could always ask students to revise specific pieces of a paper to get it to a passing grade, but at what point do students say "why bother, I'm never going to get it good enough for him to be happy."  And I can think of a few students who would cut every corner they could - some of them did it last year.  But then again, maybe they shouldn't have passed because of it.

Library Thing for Unit Planning

I taught American Literature this year for juniors, and in an attempt to give the dry, American literature canon some much needed relevancy, I paired our Great Depression unit with the current economic recession and topical book clubs set during the Great Depression.

Thinking of only Steinbeck novels when trying to come up with texts in Depression-era settings, I turned to Library Thing. Using the search page, I searched for all books with the tag "great depression" and got these results. From there, I added the tag "young adult" and got these results.

I recognized some of these books. Out of the Dust was one I had read before, and Esperanza Rising was another I knew of but hadn't read. From the library I checked out these as well as Nothing to Fear, Bud, Not Buddy, and The Truth About Sparrows and began reading as quickly as I could.

My school librarian was able to find and bring from other schools all the books except for Nothing to Fear and The Truth About Sparrows. These were eliminated from the selection and Of Mice and Men was added.

Library Thing can be an excellent tool for thematic unit planning, or for finding literature of any kind. I also used it this summer to find current young adult literature to read and stay current with.