Reflection #2: Making Literature Meaningful for Students

My last post consisted of discussing how I thought utilizing bellwork and exit slips would help make lessons more meaningful for students.  After that post, I tried implementing what I thought were meaningful bell work questions at the beginning of class that related to the work the students completed the previous day. Unfortunately, these questions did not interest the students one bit, and I was lucky if half of the class even attempted to answer the question.  While I’m going to chalk-up some of this to my lack in classroom management (and maybe the fact that the expectation for completing bellwork wasn’t properly set in the beginning of the class), I do also think that there is another underlying issue. 

Randy Bomer (2011) emphasizes the importance of appreciating the preexisting literacies that students bring to a classroom within his book Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms (p. 20-47).  When I first read this I have to admit that I was not in full support of this statement. This is not to say that I thought we should discredit all things that aren’t academic or that could be considered “leisure” for our students. However, I was under the impression that setting high standards for students meant exposing them to literature and texts that they probably wouldn’t normally encounter.  Thus, when creating my bellwork questions, I focused less on how they related to the student and more about how they would help the student understand the texts. However, I have now come to understand that appreciating what your students bring to the table, and incorporating these things into one’s classroom, is a way of finding some common ground with them and simply understanding the dynamic in which you will be working.

Understanding this dynamic is essential to building rapport with your students, and rapport is essential to building an environment where your students are receptive to and engaged with what you are saying. I noticed that at the beginning of the year there was a lack of getting to know the students in an academic sense.  We did the typical ice breakers and learned about one another on a surface level, but that was where the introductions ended.  Now, after reading Bomer, I am curious to know what would happen if I dug further into these students’ academic histories and asked them to reflect on times that they were successful and the times that they struggled.  What would happen if I asked them to complete a reading autobiography? What would happen if I asked them to tell me where they liked to write the most? What would they say if I asked them to write about what interests them? My initial thought is that they probably wouldn’t even take the questions seriously.  That they would write it off as another stupid thing they have to pretend to do until the teacher gives up on seeing it completed. 

Yet, there’s a more hopeful side of me that thinks that maybe, just maybe, if I put my heart and soul into presenting these assignments, and made them come across as personal exploration, and not so much a requirement, that the students would become slightly interested.  And then, as we began to do more personal exploration, the students would become more and more involved and engaged in the task at hand.  And as they became engaged they would divulge their interests.  They would open up and share and begin to contribute to the classroom culture. They would begin to understand that taking ownership of the classroom isn’t breaking the rules but an expectation, and that they have much more control than they think.   

It’s obvious to me that what I described above is hardly realistic.  A culture has already been formed within the classroom where I observe, and it will be hard for me to change the habits the students have created.  However, I have not given up on the idea that I can change one or two students’ mindsets. And at this point, one or two students learning to even tolerate reading would be considered a success.

I really do believe in the amazing power of English classrooms. They have the ability to completely alter students’ reality and expose them to ways of thinking and ideas they never could have fathomed on their own.  It’s unfortunate, and pretty discouraging, that I am not currently experiencing this within my observations. BUT. I am going to cling to the hope that with a little redirection and shift in focus, I can slowly make these students begin to see how much they truly can gain from a 50 minute English class.

Works Cited

Bomer, R. (2011).  Building adolescent literacy in today’s English classrooms. Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann.

Reflection #1: These are my confessions...about wanting to make each and every lesson meaningful for students

I have a confession.

Here it comes…are you ready?

I AM NOT SPONTANEOUS.  I love planning, and I believe planning is the key to success.

While this may not seem like an earth-shattering declaration by any means, it is one that I think reveals a lot about me as a person, but especially about me as an educator. I believe that most activities within a classroom should be planned with purposeful intent.  I believe that units and activities within these units should all be scheduled strategically so that each lesson builds upon the previous one and successfully sets up the one to follow.  I believe that if students don’t see the connection between where they’ve been and where they’re headed, that they will become so lost, confused, and misguided that they give up and stop trying to make sense of what is being thrown at them.

In other words, the flow of a curriculum is of the utmost importance.

And while some people may disagree and believe in a more “organic” classroom, I have quite a few scholarly educators who are on my side. For example,  Daniel Brahier states in his book Teaching Secondary and Middle School Mathematics (2010) that “curriculum not only is about what is being taught and how it is taught but also is concerned with how big ideas are emphasized and the order in which topics are introduced” (p. 30). 

While this statement is intended for a mathematical setting, I know the same applies for an English classroom.  Students need to be introduced to literary and writing concepts in a way that makes the relationship and connections between them extremely obvious.  For example, if students can see how highlighting and annotating texts will in turn help them support their stance in an argumentative paper, then they will much likely gain more from both activities than if they feel they are aimlessly going about each one.  

Unfortunately, creating a seamless transition from one lesson plan to the next is much easier said than done. Especially as a new teacher I feel extremely overwhelmed when thinking about how I’m going to create this almighty flow that I’ve deemed oh so important.  However, there are two simple items that I think I can incorporate into my classes that will allow me to easily help students recall what they’ve already learned while also preview what they’re going to learn.

Bellwork and exit slips seem to be undervalued by many of the teachers that I’ve observed throughout the past two years.  While bellwork has the potential to reinforce what was learned the day before, or to introduce a new topic, they treat it almost as a nuisance; something that has to be completed, but isn’t worth spending much time over.  Nothing frustrates me more than a teacher who assigns bellwork but then never takes the time to go over the answer and discuss it with the class. WHAT IS THE POINT OF THAT?  Bellwork should serve a purpose.

Fortunately, Randy Bomer provides this purpose in his text Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms (2011).  He mentions that mini lessons are a great way to start the class and give students a preview of what they are going to be working on that day (16).  My thought is, what better way to start off this mini lesson than to use the bellwork problem as the introduction? This will then get the students’ brain focused on the task at hand, while also giving them a sense of direction and a general concept of what they should be taking away from the day’s lesson.  Bomer (2011) also mentions that at the end of a class period, the teacher should schedule five minutes simply for student reflection (16). I think this is the prime time to assign an exit slip which will 1) reiterate the main points of the lesson that day and 2) preview the content for tomorrow.

With all of this being said, I would love to put my theory into practice and see if bellwork and exit slips can work together in order to create the connections that are so necessary for student success.  This theory may be a complete fantasy that has no chance of working in the real-world; however, I think that with a few tries and adaptations, I can really make bellwork and exit slips work in my favor as well as the students’.