I’m gearing up to go on Spring Break, so this may not be my best writing, but I didn’t want to forget to share the high points of an excellent conversation Current Teaching Partner Claire and I had recently about how to best use our 90-minute block days with our intensive ELA1 kids. This is a long post, but if you’re rolling around in a burning dumpster and want to try something different, I want to give you a thorough road map.
Our intensive sections consist of small groups (less than 10) of students reading three or more years behind grade level due to language acquisition issues (ELL) or learning disabilities (SPED). These kids are too high to classify as alternate assessment, but struggling significantly with reading and writing as incoming ninth graders. Our task is to help them improve those skills enough to be successful in a more typical co-taught class next year.
We’ve struggled, ya’ll.
I’ve been working with the “low kids” for a loooonnnng time, and this year has been kicking my ass. Part of the struggle is the attention span. We’re on a modified block schedule, so I’ve got the kids for one 50 minute block and two 90 minute blocks per week. It’s hard to keep a fourteen-year-old who hates reading and writing motivated to persevere for 90 minutes. Hard.
When I’m working with my on-level juniors, it works great to center every activity around a central theme, with all of our tasks relating to the same material in some way. For example, we’re about to start reading The Great Gatsby after spring break. The juniors will front-load by watching a video about the 1920s that relates in some way to the upcoming chapter. They’ll engage in some standardized-test style review questions in their groups about the novel. They’ll read a chapter in the novel and track one theme throughout. They’ll complete writings centered around the novel. We’ll engage in whole-class activities about the novel and the 1920s. We’ll immerse ourselves.
Even if some of the kids HATE The Great Gatsby and think the 1920s is boring (crazy talk), they have the emotional maturity, intellectual capacity, and basic ELA skills to tolerate (if not love) the unit. Their academic careers have been punctuated by success as well as failure, and they are able to take a deep breath and remind themselves “I’ll probably like the next unit better; this is only for a couple of weeks.”
Our intensive ELA1 kids weren’t able to do that. When Claire and I designed our 90-minute blocks as a thematic experience, it was too much for them. Even kids who liked the topic would starting wilting at about the 45-minute mark. Even though the lesson designed looked fantastic on paper, it wasn’t working with actual students.
So…
We’ve been trying a new approach to using the time with this group, and we’ve seen a real improvement in the kids’ engagement and willingness to attempt tasks. While it doesn’t look as tidy on paper as those expansive, thematic units, it’s worth a shot if your students (like ours) don’t have the stamina to focus on one thing for 90 minutes. We’ve been breaking class into four “chunks,” with different materials for each “chunk.” What we are seeing is that kids are developing that “I can do this; I’ll like the next thing better and this isn’t forever” mentality. Here’s how we’ve been setting it up on block days, with a time breakdown:
15 minutes: Bell Work.
It’s not REALLY bell work. It’s a teacher-guided mini-lesson, but the kids freak out less if we call it bell work, so whatever. We use the yearlong bell work unit I designed last year to use with my intensive ELA2 classes with then-teaching-partner Joanna, Story Shorts. Yes, I feel kind of like a smarmy salesman plugging this in a post that isn’t specifically about selling my products, but I swear it really is good resource that I personally use every block day with good results. Quick explanation of what it is/does. Kids read a very short (under 1000 words) story I wrote on a topic that teens find amusing/engaging. All the stories require the student to make an inference about what happens. After reading, we work through the discussion questions. Finally, they write a paragraph that includes embedded quotes (evidence). The repeated practice on the writing has yielded fabulous results, and this is the one task the kids were happy to do even before the restructure. Since I’ve got the whole year planned out, I print out packets every quarter that they keep in their folders, so I never have to think about this part of class ahead of time.
15 Minutes: Vocabulary Study.
We teach our kids Greek and Latin root words. I’ve been using Patricia Rendon Cardenas’s full-year slideshow-based program. It’s easy, clear, and not fussy. Once again, the best part is I’ve got it set up so I don’t have to think about it every day or every week; it’s all done ahead of time. I play Quizlet games with the kids and orally quiz them during this time–that sort of thing. They get the words on Monday (only four roots, so not super-overwhelming) and write them down, we play review games on the first block day, then they quiz on the second block day. I wrote quizzes to go with Cardenas’s program for the whole year that really make the kids think/apply. Claire and I are seeing the kids use the strategy of estimating a word’s definition using roots, so it’s helping.
10 Minutes: Slideshow Questions to Review Prior Days’ Reading
We can complain all day about what a shitshow standardized testing is, but my little ninth graders still have to take the MAP three times a year. Since I don’t give a ton of multiple choice quizzes in ELA, I wasn’t giving them enough practice in taking those types of tests. Like I said, my personal feelings are (per the State of Kansas, the BOE, and my building administration) irrelevant. It was stressing the kids out, so I figured out a way to kill two birds with one stone. I’ve been writing standardized-test style questions to review the prior days’ reading before doing that day’s reading, putting the questions into a slideshow, then having the kids take turns answering them. They end up re-reading key passages and getting practice with standardized test questions. Claire leads this part so I can prep for the next parts of class. We give them a 5-point speaking and listening grade based on their talk-through, not on their accuracy. If they miss the question but talk through how to approach it with Claire, they get the points. It’s a REALLY easy grade and is actually helping them; we are watching their skills improve every day (the first time one of them said “Let me look back at the passage” I literally cried). Once again, I feel weird plugging product in this type of post, but I’ve got slideshows of questions already made for Of Mice and Men, Night, and Animal Farm. Once again, a ton of work on the front end, but now I don’t have to think about it day to day.
20 Minutes: Reading
I’ve been letting each of my intensive ELA classes vote on which book to read since we came back from winter break. Once again, this is making me a ridiculous amount of work up front, but now that the work is done (see question slideshow thing above), I can autopilot. First semester, Claire and I were picking the texts based on the kids’ reading levels and what we thought they’d like, and the approach bombed, which surprised the hell out of us. Conventional wisdom says giving them high-interest books at their reading level is effective. In theory, right? As it turns out, the kids know what their peers in other classes are reading, and they want to read the same books so they don’t feel different. In retrospect, this makes a lot of sense. I started out using my easier-to-read versions of texts with the kids, and that was pretty good. However, I’m getting my best results gathering them all up in a circle on the comfy sofas and chairs in my reading corner and reading aloud from the actual texts and having them follow along. At least right now, I only use my adapted texts when I have them read on their own, and it’s going well for us.
Another thing Claire and I changed at semester was using a study guide. Having them stop and write stuff down was simply taking up way too much of our time for very little return. The slideshow thing accomplishes the same objective and takes MUCH less time. Worth considering.
30 Minutes: Complete Gear-Switch to a High-Engagement, Standards-Focused Lesson
This is where we work specifically on whatever standards the district has on deck for the quarter. Quarter 3, for example, was informational reading and writing. The kids were supposed to be able to produce a research paper. I wrote a unit about researching conspiracy theories and writing a research paper about one of them. We spent the final half hour of each block working on that for about two weeks until it was done. The kids were very worried about having to write a research paper and were flabbergasted that they finished it in two weeks without breaking into hives. They enjoyed the whole thing so much that we’re going to have them do a similar research assignment (but with a speaking/presenting focus) when we come back from break, to ease them into fourth quarter before moving into argumentative writing.
Voila. 90 minutes.
The feedback we’ve gotten from kids has been positive, and we’ve seen a reduction in avoidance behaviors and outbursts (always nice). By not putting all our eggs in one basket, we’re improving the odds of doing SOMETHING everyone likes every class period. And by getting way ahead on my planning, I’m able to conserve my energy for teaching when I’m at work, then go home and recharge for the next day.
Keywords: ELL, SPED, ELA, secondary, 90 minute engagement, lesson plans, unit plans, literacy, citing text evidence, classroom management, research essay, vocabulary, differentiation, reading strategies, standardized tests
