Alien Pedagogy

I recently posted my November sales pitch about how I tried to sell an increase in assignments to my students as something that would help them. I combined this approach with a focus on teaching students how to develop as better learners.

On the whole, the students bought my proposal. Here are my indicators:

• The class average rose.
• Homework assignments were completed to a greater degree.
• I received more emails asking questions during this unit than during the previous one.
• No one complained about having assignments.

Now I hope they’re able to take the learning routines and strategies that they’ve been working on into the midterm exam.

The major assessment of our poetry unit is a presentation. The focus is on communicating analysis verbally rather than in writing. All students are required to use power point as a back up.

This year, every grade 9 group presented during one of the two classes that we’d assigned to presentations. All presentations were required to be emailed to me last Friday so that I could download them onto our class computer. Though some students missed the Friday deadline, over 90% had emailed their files by Monday morning. The rest were ready by the second class.

As mentioned before, I don’t dock marks for lateness, but I did clearly explain to students the schedule that I’d set up for them. I have been working on framing every class as part of a larger movement and I think / hope that the high number of punctual submissions reflects that students are buying into their learning.

Or maybe it’s just because midterms and report cards are coming up.

I told the 9s that this is the time of year when students tend to do their best work. They’ve spent the first term learning how to learn in the high school classroom and now they’re driving towards the midterm. This is when they’re both able and motivated.

And because of this, I’m going to do them a favor and give them a lot of assignments so that they can take advantage of this efficient time of year.

(I think they bought it. I’ll know within a month.)

So far, my (just) 4 weeks unit on poetry is going well. Students are working through how to read poems and what sort of language and sentence structure they must use to express their response to poetry.

I’ve stressed that students be able to interpret the theme and analyze the poet’s use of at least poetic devices.

It sounds kind of dry, but improvement is happening. Atwell suggests that students become better readers by reading.

Taking this approach, I’ve invited students to analyze two poems written as a class (World of Warcraft and a random one) and two poems from the textbook that speak to a similar theme. Students chose another new poem to analyze as a readers’ theatre, which doubled as a preparation for their speaking skills in the poetry presentation.

I used to dislike English tests, but I’m beginning to like them (I’m not a fan of the Elements of Literature tests). The unit test will present students with a new poem to interpret and analyze, and a similar question will make it to the midterm.

Each class, I introduce how a lesson and task are designed to help the class succeed in their independent reading and analysis of poetry. They’re on board.

I’ve mentioned my use of a scoring guide that pushes students into mastery learning. It’s a challenging assessment, but because I allow students to redo their work as many times as it takes, the average score for essays has improved dramatically. I’m much more satisfied with the essays I’ve received from this year compared to the essays I received last year.

The next steps:

• Train students to study for tests that assess their writing skills rather than their memorization skills.
• Now that students have a basic understanding of structures that allow them to express their thoughts, it’s time to help them think more deeply.