Category: AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019)

Interstitial instruction, feedback, and discussion for students in AP English Language & Composition for the 2018-2019 school year.

No comments

1984

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019)

A still from the film version of 1984. Click for more information.

Choosing 1984

In “How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading,” John Holt offers a litmus test for reading:

I would like you to read a lot of books this year, but I want you to read them only for pleasure. I am not going to ask you questions to find out whether you understand the books or not. If you understand enough of a book to enjoy it and want to go on reading it, that’s enough for me…

I don’t want you to feel that just because you start a book, you have to finish it. Give an author thirty or forty pages or so to get his story going. Then if you don’t like the characters and don’t care what happens to them, close the book, put it away, and get another. I don’t care whether the books are easy or hard, short or long, as long as you enjoy them.

The bolded sentences give us our approach to novels like 1984. You’ve had Orwell’s book for a while now, and the important question is this: Have you given the story 30-40 pages? If not, that’s your assignment. You need to read far enough into 1984 to determine if you are going to keep reading or not.

We need to tweak Holt’s language a bit to make it more meaningful, of course. Waiting for an author “to get his story going” isn’t precise enough to be useful, and there are other reasons to continue a book beyond “lik[ing] the characters.” What matters is that you should be getting something out of 1984, and if you aren’t, you have the right to stop reading.

This is part of our reading process, which you should review as necessary:

The Reading Process

To make any decision about what you need, you need to invest in the attempt. You can’t begin a book expecting to hate it, nor should you bring your previous reading experiences to that particular table. Start clean. Recognize that many folks, including your teacher, think highly of the book you’ve been given. Then give Orwell a chance to hook you.

If you invest in the attempt, you can make a respectable decision to stop. Either way, you need to account for your decision, which brings us to what you do after giving Orwell at least 30-40 pages:

Write reflectively and metacognitively about your decision to continue 1984 or your decision to stop 1984. Explain your reasons as a result of earnest attempt to invest in the book’s world and characters. Justify the time you dedicated to reading the rest of the novel, or justify the choice to put it aside and look for other texts.

This will be a formal assignment at some point, and you will be encouraged to choose a “replacement” from a list of other dystopian novels (e.g., A Handmaid’s Tale, Brave New World), if you stop reading 1984.

As always, the thinking that surrounds any decision is more important than the decision itself. Some of you have are deep into 1984, and a few have already finished the novel. Some read it previously. A few will have forgotten that it was assigned. All of you, to a person, can answer the prompt above by reflecting on the decision to keep reading.

I also invite you to share your experience with your peers in class and interstitially. Would you recommend the book? What general reasons for reading it (or not) would you give? Here is a student answering those questions eloquently back in 2016:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F11%2F1984Essay.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=500px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

Reading 1984 Online

Through the following site, you have the option of reading some or all of 1984 online:

http://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/

We have enough hard copies of the book for all students to have a copy during any period of silent, sustained reading1, or for any close reading exercises. We have enough for a handful of you to borrow copies to read on your own. This online version is another way to read, though, and it presents a few unique opportunities.

One compelling reason to use this online version is that we can then use Snap&Read to translate the text, Co:Writer to take notes, and an open browser tab to look up character and plot summaries. We’ll review how those two plugins work as necessary, so that your Chromebook (or other device) can become a powerful tool for navigating a difficult text. Using other resources, from John Green’s Crash Course to old teacher banes like eNotes, is a way to borrow insight from others.

Another compelling reason to work online is what happens if we search “1984” — just those four numbers — in Google. The first page of results contains no fewer than three articles about how the novel relates to contemporary America. Keep looking, and you will find dozens more articles from just the past few years.

This isn’t about the politics of any of those articles, by the way, nor should you read too much into the political perspective shared by many of them; our lesson here is about the way this country talks to itself, and about itself, and how this novel now factors into that discourse. As a makerspace, we are concerned with literary resonance, not political beliefs.

Here is one of the articles in those search results, from The New York Times:

Another is from The Atlantic:

And here is a third, from The New Yorker:

One way to deepen our experience of a novel is to look for how real folks in a non-academic world talk about it. For instance, I might encourage you to scroll back up in this instructional post to the following paragraph:

This will be a formal assignment at some point, and you will be encouraged to choose a “replacement” from a list of other dystopian novels (e.g., A Handmaid’s Tale, Brave New World), if you stop reading 1984.

If you click on those links, you don’t get descriptions or summaries of the novels; instead, you get essays about those novels, and more specifically about how those novels are part of our national discourse. The first one is by the author of A Handmaid’s Tale herself, Margaret Atwood:

The second, from 2017, compares 1984 to Brave New World in the context of modern America:

Again, this is not about advancing a political agenda. We are a course in rhetoric and argument. We must notice, as Charles McGrath does in that second article, how important 1984 and other dystopian novels have become to our country’s discourse. This is the currency of political debate, and you should use the resources of our makerspace to make sense of that currency — and to use it yourself.

Which is to say that it matters what you believe, just like it matters what these writers believe. You need to be able to wade into this discourse effectively, having read some of the literature mentioned, and thus having earned your seat at the table. You need to know how you would respond to the rhetoric in use in the following paragraph of McGrath’s article:

“Donald Trump was inaugurated. All of a sudden, as many commentators have pointed out, there were almost daily echoes of Orwell in the news, and “1984” began shooting up the Amazon best-seller list. The most obvious connection to Orwell was the new president’s repeated insistence that even his most pointless and transparent lies were in fact true, and then his adviser Kellyanne Conway’s explanation that these statements were not really falsehoods but, rather, “alternative facts.” As any reader of “1984” knows, this is exactly Big Brother’s standard of truth: The facts are whatever the leader says they are. If you’re a rereader, thumbing through your old Penguin paperback, those endless wars in “1984,” during which the enemy keeps changing — now Eurasia, now Eastasia — no longer seem as far-fetched as they once did, and neither do the book’s organized hate rallies, in which the citizenry works itself into a frenzy against nameless foreigners. Even President Trump’s weirdly impoverished, 12-year-old’s vocabulary has an analogue in “1984,” in which Newspeak isn’t just the medium of double talk; it’s a language busily trying to shed itself of as many words (and as much complexity) as possible.

We can (and maybe should!) analyze articles like this as a class, looking for how they lean on literature to score political points or to stake a political position. This is how the real world uses literature, after all, and why we use the reading process we use. It’s also why you must choose to keep reading:

Choosing to Read [2018]

To repeat the end of that instructional post, you are always after a novel that

  1. teaches you something about how you read;
  2. serves as “a tool to help us live and die with a little more wisdom, goodness, and sanity,” using most or all of the ideas under that aegis; and
  3. is well-written enough to teach you how to write.

1984 is one such novel. If, through your own search or with the help of your teachers and peers, you find a suitable and more interesting alternative to 1984, you should read it.

Ask questions below. Look to Google Classroom for formal assignments related to 1984.

  1. And we will fold these in from time to time, I think, to see what it does for you. How often do you truly get to read in silence during a school day? It’s worth exploring. ↩

2 Comments

Essay Writing: Five Prompts

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019), Writing Prompt

This assignment builds on the NPR Podcast Challenge we started in early January:

NPR Student Podcast Challenge

You can continue to use the space to complete the challenge, and I’ll make that an ongoing option through the end of March. There is an opportunity here to do more than just a podcast, though. The five prompts provided by NPR could be used for discussion and essay-writing, too.

First, those prompts again:

Tell us a story about your school or community: about something that happened there — recently or in the past — that your audience should know about.

What is a moment in history that all students should learn about?

Show us both sides of a debate about an issue that’s important to you.

What do you want to change about the world? What’s a big change that students today will make in the future?

Explain something to us that kids understand and grown-ups don’t.

Answering these five questions has given you the subject and approach, at least, for five different essays. We will use the writing process(es) outlined here:

The Writing Process

Your assignment is simple: Choose a prompt, and then write an essay in response to it.

You can use your peers for inspiration, by the way, since you can load the Google Form you completed, click on “See previous responses,” and read hundreds of potential approaches:

You have to add your own answers first, of course. If you’ve done that, you now have access to the anonymous suggestions of your peers.

Follow any further directions on Google Classroom, and ask questions below.

No comments

What’s In Your Name?

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019), Writing Prompt

Earlier this month, you were invited to read excerpts from Freakonomics:

What’s In a Name?

The focus overall is on parenting, with the subject of names dominating an entire chapter. That is now our focus: the names we have and what we might write about them.

Prompt and Circumstance

The prompt for this writing assignment is simple: Write an essay about your name. The trick is unpacking that prompt and finding an interesting approach to the subject.

To do this, we’ll us two tactics. First, a work-in-progress guide to writing built on makerspace principles. It’s roughly 90% complete, which means it will work for you:

It will also be shared in class. Following those steps will produce an essay.

The second tactic is to use the comment section of this post to share, discuss, critique, etc., your ideas. Focus on your approach. What is the interesting perspective you can bring to bear on the subject of your name? What questions can you ask and answer? What will interest a potential audience? And so on.

Post your (succinct) comments here, and we’ll let the interstitial mechanisms of the course take over. Follow Google Classroom for deadlines and other requirements.

No comments

Engines That Could

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

See the 2017-2018 version of this post here.

2/13 Update: We’ll be using this year’s set of data on February 13-15 to tackle motivation and engagement in the makerspace. Load a reader- and printer-friendly version of the responses here: https://tinyurl.com/SSCP-19.

The original instructional post is below.

Strategic Coherence

One of the first texts given to students each year is Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on educational paradigms. It introduces one of the animating beliefs of this makerspace, which is that traditional education does not prepare students for the world they will join after high school. That world demands a different kind of intelligence, and it’s a far cry from the “model of the mind” that Robinson criticizes.

Watch the whole thing periodically to remind yourself why we do what we do.

For most students, what this nebulous “real world” will demand matters less than getting into college and/or starting a career. That’s why district’s like ours look more specifically at what those colleges and careers value. That list always starts with empathy, but it also always includes the rest of the nontraditional skills and traits we centralize in this course. As a reminder, the instructional, assessment, and feedback structures in the makerspace are all linked by universal languages:

The GAP Process

Two of these universal skill and traits are self-awareness and self-efficacy, which we loop together like so:

Students need to understand why we do what we do. They need self-awareness and a sense of self-efficacy. There is a permanent place on this website to discuss the Dunning-Kruger effect and imposter syndrome, for instance, because an accurate sense of self is difficult at any age. And as that post on empathy and college readiness notes, we always need an answer to the question, “When am I ever going to have to use this?”

The Most Important Skill

That’s what we have here. The makerspace makes explicit connections to college-, career-, and world-relevance in order to reshape the geometry of traditional education. Our work is rooted in a shared sense of purpose.

Part of that is our focus on metacognition and reflection. Tracking the arc of our learning over time gives us the necessary self-efficacy. And that applies to all stakeholders: Teachers in the makerspace practice metacognition and reflection. Brewster, as a district, also reflects on its progress in order to improve.

Which brings us to the BCSD Strategic Coherence Plan:

This Strategic Coherence Plan has been available to the public for a while, but January 11, 2018 saw the formal release in that post. In late January of 2018, the Tri-State Consortium visited the district for three days to evaluate the SCP, which has led to even more innovation.

A quick aside: You can learn more about the Consortium here. I’ve been involved as a team member for almost a decade, and many of the innovations of this course started with Tri-State. I first heard of Alfie Kohn’s essay on de-grading through one of their study groups, for instance.

Our job as stakeholders is to help the district, and we do that by highlighting the extent to which our Humanities makerspace fits the Strategic Coherence Plan. Through the support of district- and building-level administration, we’ve been able to develop a unique and uniquely nontraditional learning environment, and it aligns perfectly with the SCP:

Load a PDF explaining how by clicking here.

Our particular innovations beyond the SCP are just that: innovations particular to our classroom. We have a unique assessment model, grade abatement, based on growth in universal skills and traits; an interstitial model of instruction that improves on the flipped classroom; and makerspace-inspired assignments that reframe and individualize the important work of the Humanities.

Students in this course can speak specifically to the district’s vision. It’s why feedback and advocacy are essential. The district values that perspective as much as I do, and a sense of how this SCP is enacted on the frontlines will help to shape what happens next. The feedback provided in 2018 is available here:

We do this at the halfway point of the year for two reasons: First, students are now fully immersed in a different way of learning and creating meaning. Like any makerspace, we need time to learn the basics and establish good habits. For a reminder of how this works, load the following post:

The Big Sky

Second, this gives us another semester to use the feedback. As you look at those responses from January of 2018, you’ll be able to see how each prompt is tied to student goals and growth. There needs to be time and space to process the responses while still in the makerspace.

With that said, there are a few notes for current students in the makerspace, who are probably reading this as part of the formal assignment.

Students, recognize this as an opportunity for self-awareness and self-efficacy. It requires the most important kind of reflection and metacognition, which is why this assignment is replacing the usual self-assessment writing that accompanies the GAP report process.

There is also an extrinsic motivation: This form will help you to generate evidence for the top tiers of grade abatement: the use of “inquiry-based tools and structures” in an attempt to “demonstrably improve the learning environment,” for instance. The cited language comes from the fourth tier directly:

This is also an opportunity to “do more than just what is required,” since the quality of your responses is entirely in your control. Those of you who take advantage of this opportunity will find more clarity and purpose, but you will also receive more feedback from me and the other teachers in the makerspace.

Review the questions first, and then write your initial responses in a separate document. Copy them into the Google Form when you’re ready. You can submit multiple responses at different times, edit your answers after you submit them, and get feedback before posting anything. Try to answer as many prompts as you can, and ask for help on prompts that are unclear.

The formal assignment will be posted to Google Classroom. Look there for any other pertinent information. Like everything else in our makerspace, this process is about looped feedback and shared understanding, so you need to work together. You might start by asking questions in the comment section below.

4 Comments

Makerspace Reading Calendar: 2018-2019

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

Here is a printable Google Doc with this information: https://tinyurl.com/ycep9emy

Background: Instructional Posts

These are embedded, in order, after the list.

  • The Reading Process | Covers everything.
  • As You Read: Works of Literary Merit | One version of the analysis process. An updated version is here: https://tinyurl.com/simplifiedanalysis.
  • Choosing to Read: Directions | Covers assigned texts versus student-chosen texts.
  • Literary Analysis Guide | Another version of the analysis process.

The Reading Process

As You Read: Works of Literary Merit

Choosing to Read [2018]

Literary Analysis Guide

Background: Course Syllabi

Each syllabus covers reading goals for the course in full. A note on AP English Language & Composition follows that embedded syllabus.

AP Language follows the reading requirements from the College Board, which are available here: tinyurl.com/210APCB. The most relevant section is this one:

Language & Composition is explicitly focused on a different kind of reading. Canonical literature isn’t excluded, but traditional analysis is discouraged. Nevertheless, the makerspace so strongly emphasizes literature as an aesthetic experience that exceptions must be made. See the course orientation and Ken Robinson’s “Changing Education Paradigms” video for more on this.

Makerspace Reading Lists: 2018-2019

The makerspace shifts us away from mandated reading and toward literary merit and student choice. One of the essential texts in the prefatory reading is John Holt’s “How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading,” which we use to frame that choice:

I don’t want you to feel that just because you start a book, you have to finish it. Give an author thirty or forty pages or so to get his story going. Then if you don’t like the characters and don’t care what happens to them, close the book, put it away, and get another. I don’t care whether the books are easy or hard, short or long, as long as you enjoy them.

As the “Choosing to Read” instructional post says, students navigate the first 30-40 pages of a novel in order to make that decision. Each time, we use a specific protocol to learn more about how students read, what that means for their learning, and where the threshold lies between challenging their habits and forcing the issue until something breaks.

Ultimately, students decide between the assigned book (e.g., 1984, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and another work of equal literary merit. They must read a book. They are encouraged to stick with the assigned one; the choice, however, is theirs.

We then focus on skills, traits, and the common experiences that all works of literary merit provide us. There are no quizzes and no tests. Literature is used in essays when it is appropriate in a real-world sense, or when we must do test prep.

Otherwise, literature is used to teach the reader. Reading gives us life experience, wisdom, and empathy. It also teaches students something about how they read, which is essential to how they learn.

The assured experience is in the skills and traits developed by reading, the discussions that don’t depend just on plot points, and the metacognitive and reflective work that drives growth.

Reading Calendar: First Semester (2018-2019)

My co-teachers and I built the course calendar in September: tinyurl.com/210-2018-cal. For all classes, the Pareto Projects and GAP scoring dates stay the same. Each quarter is divided into panels, like a triptych, with different kinds of literature assigned during each panel.

Here is a post explaining the use of Q1 as a skill-building crash course:

The Big Sky

Through the first semester, a variety of literature and other texts were studied:

Q2 ends with every course having studied a book according to the makerspace protocol, which includes, of course, doing close-reading exercises on prescribed excerpts, discussing thematic elements, and practicing literary analysis.

There are additionally several posts that combat misinformation and disinformation about the makerspace approach to literature. Here is one:

Mongering and Congeries

Here is another that focuses specifically on reading:

Well, Why Read?

Reading Calendar: Second Semester (2018-2019)

Up next will be three full-length books or plays in each course, in addition to short fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

Below (or in the printable version of this post), you can see the major texts cross two GAP panels each, with around 30 class periods available to us during those two panels. This is more than enough time to introduce the literature, begin the reading process, and then make the student-driven choice to continue or to choose a work of equal literary merit.

Each class will keep test prep and the required essays in place, of course, as well as the Pareto Projects and other project-based learning opportunities (like the ongoing NPR Student Podcast Challenge).

Note that the listed texts are provisional. It might be that we decide that Othello is a better play for English 10, for instance, since it is taught in other English 10 classes. We might move up our study of The Catcher in the Rye in English 11 to partner up with other junior classes, too. We are using some of the most commonly taught books in the English Department in order to create assured experiences.

Note on the overlap between English 11 and AP English Language & Composition:

English 11 and AP English Language & Composition are taught some of the same canonical texts. They are also given some of the same essay prompts, including junior-year staples like the personal narrative. This is because AP English Language & Composition, while open to juniors and seniors, is practically and provisionally a junior-level course.

In 2008-2009, it was officially called English 11 AP. In 2009-2010, the course lost its lab periods, dropped the 11, and opened up enrollment to seniors. Since then, 553 students have taken the course. Exactly 20 (or 3%) have been seniors. Over the last four years, sections of AP English Language & Composition have had an average of 29 students. The only three seniors enrolled during that time are all from 2018-2019. The average number of seniors in any section in the last ten years is 0.8 — less than a single student. Juniors take AP English Literature and Composition; seniors do not take AP English Language and Composition.

No comments

NPR Student Podcast Challenge

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

Update for Students: You were overwhelmingly in favor of spending time on this podcast challenge, so it has been folded into all classes. Formal assignments have been added to Google Classroom. You will not be required to produce a complete podcast, nor will you have to enter the contest. Instead, you will have three required assignments: to analyze example podcasts, to gather potential ideas, and to answer six questions about one of those ideas. All of the surrounding information from NPR is critical, of course (click this link for an example), but you will be working more explicitly through the following:

The current deadline for all this is January 25. Let’s revisit that deadline on a class-by-class basis next week.

The Challenge

We’re a makerspace, which means we make things. Sometimes, those artifacts are inspired by people and organizations outside of our walls. Case in point:

This podcast challenge is a ready-made makerspace unit. It requires you to analyze existing podcasts to figure out how to emulate them. It requires all of our universal skills and traits. In fact, if you look through the student resources NPR has provided, you’ll see a mention of a “toolbox” in the first step:

That’s not just a tremendous example of how those universal skills and traits work in the real world; it’s also remarkably similar to a 20 Time or Pareto Project.

The Calendar

Speaking of your Pareto Projects, this is timed well for us. Look at the calendar for the year:

As I write this, we are in between Pareto Projects. February 25 is set aside as the start of the next process. NPR’s podcast challenge ends on March 31. That overlap gives us a unique opportunity:

  • We work on the podcast challenge once a week or so through the February break.
  • In Q3B, which runs from February 25 through March 15, you continue the podcast challenge or begin a new Pareto Project.
  • If you continue the podcast, you will finish and submit it by Friday, March 29.
  • In that case, you would begin a smaller Pareto Project on Monday, April 1.

Projects are meant to be presented from May 28 through June 14, which is the last Friday we meet together. There is, therefore, more than enough time for you to create a podcast and a second, meaningful Pareto Project.

Let’s start with your feedback: What do you think of this podcast challenge? After looking at NPR’s website, are you inspired by the possibilities? How do you think this would fit our space? Talk to me in the comments, where your peers can benefit from the exchange.

One Comment

What’s In a Name?

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

Click here for the post and podcast on names.

Reading: Freakonomics, Chapters 5-6 and More

The focus of our current lessons is an excerpt from Freakonomics, one of the more interesting and controversial non-fiction books available to us. You can learn more about its authors, Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, at that Wikipedia link. You can learn even more by exploring their website, which is also embedded below.

We are reading two chapters: Chapter 5, “What Makes a Perfect Parent?” and Chapter 6, “Perfect Parenting, Part II: Or: Would a Roshanda By Any Other Name Smell as Sweet?” The photocopied packet also includes the epilogue (“Two Paths to Harvard”). The epilogue comes, as epilogues do, at the end of the entire book, but it serves perfectly as a capstone to Chapters 5-6.

You likely began this reading offline and without an instructional post. That’s not just to balance the online and offline work we do, but to stress how important those two photocopied chapters are to our work. There will also be copies posted to Google Classroom.

After you’ve read and annotated them, you can explore the Freakonomics website for other interesting articles, especially those about parenting, raising children, and naming children. The image at the top of this post links to a podcast that you could listen to, for instance, before you load the website proper:

Because Levitt and Dubner have published so many follow-up articles, studies, and books, you are almost guaranteed to find more to read on the subject of parenting and raising children. As a teacher trying to innovate the way we do assessment, I’m particularly interested in this one:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/freakonomics-goes-to-school-and-teaches-us-the-right-way-to-bribe-kids/258672/

You really ought to start with the podcast on names, though. It’s available here or through the image at the top of this post.

Your Reading Assignment

Take notes that track what you find interesting, what you want to discuss, what sparks your curiosity, etc. You can write on the photocopies, in a notebook, or online through Google Drive. As you write, you should discuss what you read with your peers. You can always rearrange the classroom to suit your needs:

Objects in Space

So you have a simple goal: Read carefully, take notes of some kind, and look for what’s most interesting to you. More formal assignments will be given separately.

This is also (as always) a unit designed to test your attentiveness to this kind of flipped instruction — the posts, links, etc, that teach you what to do before you work directly with your teachers. If you’ve gotten this far, you should click below to load a strange and often hilarious website that relates to our reading:

That, too, is part of the fabric of this discussion. The focus on parenting is central, of course, but the power of names is right there.

No comments

Feedback: Improve the Learning Environment

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019), Space Explainers

From one perspective, this is a gamified environment. There are levels, and you can progress through those levels in many different ways. You earn experience (in the gamification sense and in the academic sense) by accomplishing set tasks. To succeed, you must dodge environmental hazards and avoid other elements that damage you.

That’s why the Pareto Projects work as well as they do: Students aren’t graded on them, but the best projects are evidence of the skills, traits, and knowledge that are found in the strongest profiles. Investment in the project is an investment in the process of the project, which is really an investment in gaining meaningful experience.

Pareto Projects are also among the best opportunities to level up collegiality and empathy, which remain the most important facet of your learning. Peer-to-peer feedback is an essential part of what we do in a Humanities makerspace:

View at Medium.com

Here, then, is a post about a few of the most direct ways to generate evidence of peer-to-peer feedback. And it is fine if you look at this as a way to game the system to earn credit. Even if your motivation is less than pure, the net result is positive. That’s the design, at least: You can’t cheat the system, and “faking” your investment still helps others. That idea is explained in the tenth section of an essay on an earlier (but still relevant) iteration of the makerspace:

When you are in doubt, fake it. Force yourself to be collegial. Force yourself to do metacognition. Force yourself to spend the entire period pretending to be the right kind of student.

Do this for long enough, and the skills and traits you are pretending to hone will be honed. You will become a better student. This is the Wiseman effect transposed onto education. It is a kind of psychosomatic inverse: tricking your brain into developing habits by forcing your body to take particular actions.

In here, it’s fine if you try to game the system by generating whatever evidence it takes to justify that GAP 8 or GAP 9. Why? Because there is no gamesmanship — no way to cheat the system, fabricate evidence, or twist the language of the profiles. There isn’t even a way to cheat yourself.

If you force yourself through the motions in here, those motions will inculcate the skills and traits we want. A misanthrope who forces himself to take collegial and galvanizing actions will incrementally learn empathy. A narcissist who forces herself to reflect and metacogitate every week will incrementally find new self-awareness and insight. An apathetic student who grinds through assignments just to get them done will incrementally gain a real appreciation for the value of the work.

This is a subtle conversion. It evades the entitlement at the heart of both helplessness and arrogance. The helpless among you feel entitled to be shepherded from task to task; the arrogant among you overvalue your intelligence and devalue the good work of this course. Both groups anticipate being gifted a high grade through some kind of alchemical magic.

The logic of this course is immutable, however. There is no game to play and no gamesmanship to lean on. This course does not care how naturally gifted you are. It does not care if you play sports and play them well. It does not care what your parents think of you. It does not care what you look like, how charming you are, or how much latitude you have been given throughout your life to do what you want.

It cares only about what you do.

I think I’d add now, a few years later, that I care about all of the things listed in the penultimate paragraph. As a teacher and human being, I care. But the course has a logic to it that focuses purely on what you do. You can force yourself to give effective feedback, and it doesn’t matter, provisionally, if you are intrinsically motivated. As long as it’s effective feedback — that is, not perfunctory, superficial, vague — the eventual effect is the same.

Galvanic Work: GAP 8

The first and second page of this PDF cover the top tier of profiles:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F12%2FGrade-Abatement-Tier-Guide.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

That’s a new iteration of the guide to the profiles. Here is a screenshot of the anchor profile, which is the profile for a GAP 8:

And here, again, one of the many explanations for how this tier works:

Probably the most important requirement of the highest profiles is a feedback loop — an individualized academic connection with the teacher, the materials of the course, and your peers. There are four main ways to do this:

  1. You can learn directly from the teacher in small groups or as an individual.
  2. You can learn directly from folks who’ve done #1.
  3. You can interact thoughtfully with the interstitial instruction of the course.
  4. You can learn directly from folks who’ve done #3.

Learning from an expert peer is nearly as effective as conferencing with the teacher, and it more closely emulates what you’ll need to do throughout your life, which is to read and annotate and think about the writing of others without a teacher standing over your shoulder. Mentorship should be something you seek out, especially as you get older, but it’s not always a given. Collaboration is.

The burden is evenly distributed, too. Once you have learned something meaningful or mastered a skill, you need to teach it to others. That is known as the protégé effect, and it is almost universally accepted as the best way to hone skills and retain knowledge. In this course, we also call it proxy feedback.

That is another key criterion for the highest profiles: evidence that you have contributed to the learning environment. After that, it’s about the other most effective way to learn, which is to think about your thinking — to get to know yourself and your choices through regular reflection and metacognition.

This should all be done through a mix of discussion and writing, and it needs to be insightful and consistent. Throughout the learning process, you should be using the right language — the universal language of grade abatement.

Peer-to-Peer Feedback

Which brings us to what you do now. You are reading this because it is helpful to have direction when you give feedback to a peer. A template is useful. Sometimes, sentence starters are useful. You can default to this worksheet, which comes from collaboration with Mrs. Greenfeld, who runs the other makerspace at the high school. Here’s a PDF of it:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F12%2FFeedback_-Glow-Grow.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

As you can see in the file name, this is adapted from the “glow and grow” model of reflection and assessment. The key is the use of sentence starters. It also helps to have the blurb at the top of each feedback section. Because we are grade-abated, we can use Tony Wagner’s idea of “collective human judgment informed by evidence.” The feedback, again, is the key, not a score.

You have a number of options for giving peer-to-peer feedback. Written feedback has lasting power, so focus there — not because face-to-face feedback is unimportant, because it is so important that it happens naturally. If you are talking in class after a project presentation, for instance, feedback will happen. You could use this template to help you be more specific in your feedback, but it’s in the written feedback that it really shines.

Some options:

  1. Leave feedback on the artifact, if possible. Add comments through Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, etc., if you’ve been given permission to do so.
  2. Make a copy of the artifact, if it’s available but not open to comments, and leave comments on that copy. Then send the annotated copy back to the original owner.
  3. Write a response offering positive and constructive feedback, and then email it to your peer.
  4. Send brief but specific feedback through social media.
  5. Leave comments on any teacher-created version of the artifact, like the Pareto Project pages posted online.

Building Evidence

Here is the most important part of the process, at least in terms of quasi-traditional assessment: You want evidence of your feedback. Look again at the anchoring language of the Tier 4 profiles:

To “demonstrably improve the learning environment,” in this context, means to demonstrate that you gave effective feedback. Again, the gamesmanship of this is built into the system, and there is no harm at all in being somewhat extrinsically motivated. You need evidence of your hard work for the GAP process:

The GAP Process

What does that mean? It means that you are putting feedback in writing not just to make it more permanent, and not just to allow for more thoughtfulness in its construction; you are also preserving copies of that feedback for your records. You can take pictures of handwritten feedback and screenshots of typed feedback. You can make copies of emails and other direct addresses.

Most critically, you can write about the feedback. Be metacognitive about what you said and how you said it. Reflect on your use of sentence starters, since those really do help, and on how the conversation developed. It should be a conversation, after all; delivering feedback with no follow-up is much less effective than a discussion about the work.

Ask questions about this below.

No comments

Moratorium

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019), Triage

Starting Wednesday, December 12, there will be a moratorium in our classroom on the use of any all devices (e.g., phones, tablets) except district-issued Chromebooks and personal laptops. There will also be a moratorium on choosing your own seats1.

We’ll review this together — hands-on, with liberal use of a whiteboard to define and detail certain points — but you may have questions or comments that require an interstitial forum like this one. Remember, too, that this site is for all stakeholders, not just students. Our conversation about technology is an inclusive one.

The most important note is probably this: moratorium refers to a pause or delay in action. It’s a temporary suspension. It isn’t a permanent ban. The second most important note is that you can be part of the conversation about technology use and learning. Start in the comment section here by asking questions, making observations, etc., so that I can reply to you.

Moratorium on Phones

Since smartphones are the most common distraction, “phone” is a placeholder for any device except district-issued Chromebooks or personal laptops.

If you want context for this moratorium, you’ll find it in the unit we did on self-control and self-discipline:

The Return of the Fatal Flying Guillotine

Self-control is one of the most important skills you can develop, so we’ve used the flexibility of the makerspace to give you opportunities to test your focus and discipline. Many students failed those tests.

That’s okay, at least in a larger sense. The purpose of that akrasia unit is, in part, to normalize the problem as a decidedly human one. In other words, we all struggle with self-control, distraction, procrastination, etc., and we all need to improve.

In a more immediate sense, we have to get these phones out of students’ hands. There are, of course, academic reasons to have a phone, and this site is designed to be read on the smaller screens. But those academic reasons continue outside of school. You’d use your phone interstitially, as intended, when you are making the choice to learn, create, question, etc., in an academic sense.

In class, the phone is too much of a distraction. We’ve tested it for three months now, and the rate of improvement is too slow. I imagine that this moratorium will remain in place for a long time.

Assigned Seats

The context for assigned seats:

Objects in Space

All we’re doing now is keeping you in those start-of-period assigned seats until the bell. You need the separation to get work done. We’ll obviously make exceptions when it comes to group projects, but this is otherwise about isolating you from distractions.

It needs to be clarified that collaboration is the stuff of growth, which is why we start the year there; simply being in a group, however, is not proof of collaboration. Being in proximity to other students is just being in proximity to them. Collaboration refers to what you produce. When members of our group fail to stay on task in their chosen groups, it helps to assign seats.

We Have Work to Do

All of this is predicated on the obvious: You have work to do. You are in a makerspace, and that means there is always more work to do. Even that last link proves its own point, because it would take a while to read that entire lecture and process its ideas.

Right now, as the winter holidays approach, you need to be more focused than ever. In every course, the end of your first Pareto Project process requires the following:

Pareto Projects: Final Self-Assessment

Meanwhile, English 10 students are writing personal letters, English 11 students are analyzing and writing short stories, and AP students are applying the makerspace mentality to Santa Claus. This is perhaps the worst time of year to lose focus.

Below is the version of our grade abatement profiles that was affixed to each workstation earlier this week. The color-coded tiers may help you to maintain focus. You shift into the red by ignoring directions and disengaging from the work, and the more you resist, the more you build evidence of those lower tiers. In other words, refusing to focus, especially in the particular way you are being directed to focus, is enough by itself to lower your profile and grade.

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F12%2FGAP-Color-Arial.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

  1. With the possible exception of the AP classes. This is based on group dynamics, which is really about a kind of herd immunity, and AP students have earned a few days to prove they have the requisite discipline to choose their own seats. The moratorium on phones applies to everyone, though, which says something about the addiction we’re dealing with. ↩

2 Comments

The Unseen World: “Yes, Virginia”

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019)

The upcoming winter holidays offer us the perfect context in which to study one of the most famous editorials ever written:

http://www.newseum.org/exhibits/online/yes-virginia/

The Wikipedia page adds more context to the story, plus links to related subjects. It’s worth a read, too.

Here is the editorial again, reformatted for our course:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F12%2FChurch-Yes-Virginia-Text.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

The Work

What you should notice about that last PDF, which will also be shared with you through Google Classroom, is that it was downloaded from a much larger document. This text is part of a much larger conversation about truth, lies, and the way we frame our world. Our next unit will delve into those issues, and what you will read then will help you make sense of the great lie of Santa Claus — an acceptable lie, perhaps, and one I tell my own children, but a lie nonetheless.

Synthesis — that search for related readings and context — also helps us here. Santa Claus is the subject of many thoughtful essays, from this pseudo-scientific back-and-forth on the physics of Santa to this semi-serious discussion of an actual war on Christmas. Tongue-in-cheek humor is a nice contrast to Church’s endearing earnestness, and I think we need both tones. (Irony and sarcasm don’t help us with the “veil covering the unseen world,” as Church puts it.) You will start to make connections between disparate positions and voices as part of becoming a better writer and as part of our prep for the AP exam in May.

The real lesson is that everything connects, and everything is an opportunity to improve the skills and traits of our course. Remember the metaphor Paul Graham uses: that of the river.

To help you understand Church’s editorial, you’ll need to respond to another batch of prompts on rhetoric and style:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F12%2FChurch-Yes-Virginia-ETA.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

These are reprinted below. They serve as discussion questions, too, allowing us to talk about the ideas of the letters as much as their rhetoric. Responding will require you to define new terms, ask for the right kind of feedback, and otherwise work with a different goal than just submitting the correct answers.

The prompts for “Yes, Virginia,” reprinted for reference:

  1. You’re going to notice immediately that this letter may not exactly be targeting one little girl. Be specific here, and take a look at every relevant element of Church’s essay: Who is his audience? How do you know?
  2. Church crafts distinct, intertwined arguments of fact, value, and policy in this letter. Research a working definition of each type of argument, identify each one in the essay, and then analyze how cogent or fallacious his reasoning is.
  3. Church believes Santa is real. Or maybe he doesn’t. How we read this editorial depends on the definition of “real” employed here. What is Church’s definition? Be specific. Figure out what definition — or definitions — he implies, and use his language and logic to support your analysis.
  4. Summarize each paragraph’s main idea in fewer than ten words.
  5. Consider the essay’s use of imagery related to childhood: rattles, fairies, dancing, etc. Pull out two or three of these images and explain their rhetorical effect.

These prompts require a mix of convergent and divergent thinking. Once you have your own responses, you can use the following essay as a way of understanding how to respond:

View at Medium.com

The goal, as always, is to analyze in order to emulate. Formal assignments will be posted to Google Classroom, but the overarching goals fall outside of the Skinner-box stuff: Understanding Church’s writing is how we get at the deepest and most productive discussions about truth, childhood, faith, etc., and it’s also how you become a better writer yourself.

Use this post to discuss the assignment with me or to leave observations. Keep your comments succinct. Spark conversations with each other. This is about the way we define and redefine truth in our society, which is a timeless concern. In fact, you might be interested in another famous article that ran in The Sun — although it isn’t quite what Virginia’s father meant when he told her that “[i]f you see it in The Sun it’s so.” It’s now known as the Great Moon Hoax:

Not the best moment in journalism, maybe, but a highlight in creative writing. Speaking of The Sun, I’ll leave you with their reprinting of Church’s editorial in 2012:

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/yes-virginia/68502/