Facing Research Paper Adversity

So... Research

We all have to do it. We all hate it, teachers and students alike. It's just awful. And the worst part is ... well ... everything about it. Research is the time of the year when a teacher really has to decide if she made the right life choices. I question mine every year. Seriously. But there are a few things that have made research bearable.

#1. Practice every part of the process BEFORE the dreaded paper. 

This year we typed a short story in MLA format, used the abstracts to take notes on everything we read, and did a group research project over the Great Depression after reading Of Mice and Men. The final product of the project was a PowerPoint, not a paper. It was accessible, they had their friends, and it was just a presentation.

#2. Do everything the students do.

When I had the kids writing an outline, I wrote one. Body paragraphs, got those too. Intros and conclusions, you bet. I did everything I had them do. This helped in three ways. One, it gave me something to do. There's nothing more boring than watching the kids write. Two, the kids couldn't complain as much because I was in the trenches with them the whole time. And third, and maybe most importantly, it gave me real examples to show the kiddos when they were struggling.

And I didn't type them up all fancy-like either. I just took pictures straight out of my notebook.

#3. Get them interested.

This is a no brainer. Choosing the research paper topic is just as important as writing lesson plans for it. If you pick something the kids hate, they will punish you with terrible writing. In the last few years, I've been tweaking the topic, but it's always surrounded the idea of adversity. It just happens that our research paper falls just before reading The Miracle Worker, which is chock full of dealing with one adversity after another. In the past, I had students pick one person that faced adversity and write a paper about them. In the end I got a lot of biographical papers about mostly interesting people. That's fine, but with the STAAR writing, it did little to prepare them for that. So this year, students wrote "an expository essay explaining how adversity affects people's lives." Sound familiar? It's modeled exactly like an EOC prompt, and the students write their paper like one as well. So instead of focusing on one person, they looked at three different people and explained how each was affected by adversity.

The results: I've never had so many research papers turned in on time as I did this year. Also, I'm not reading about the same twenty people over and over again either. Win win for everyone.

You Want Some of This??

You can get my entire Adversity Research Paper Packet here. Also, I posted a FREE download that I used for the peer review.

Happy Teaching!

Test Anxiety... for Teachers

We live in an age where testing happens more than we'd like. As a teacher, I know I've said on more than one occasion, "When are we supposed to teach when all we do is administer tests?" Unfortunately for most of my state and the rest of the country, testing is the nature of the education beast.

However, tests don't have to be wasted. If we write tests in a way that teach the students how to read better, then we can use our assessments as teaching tools instead of time-suckers.

The Before-the-Test Test

This activity was taken from The Curly Classroom. It's an excellent way of getting passed the typical plot review questions. Instead, it gets to the heart of making inferences about a text. It's called nine squares and it can be adapted for any story. If you like using manipulatives, then this is exactly what you need to ensure your students are reading "on the lines," "between the lines," and "beyond the lines."

The Cold Read

I'm a huge proponent of testing students on skills instead of content. In fact, I've rewritten my entire curriculum to reflect this change in philosophy. It doesn't do any good to read a story, analyze it for the students, then give them on a test on all the things I already mentioned in class. How does that make them #1. responsible for their own learning or #2. better readers on their own? 

For many teachers this shift is difficult. Overall, I get two questions:

#1. How are you keeping students accountable to what you read in class?

Ohhh... wintery! Where's my pumpkin spiced everything?

The short of it is I AM keeping them accountable. The differences lie in WHAT I am keeping them accountable to. It's true, if I read "The Most Dangerous Game" and don't give them an assessment of some kind, students will check out. However, my goal isn't for them to be able to know MDG front and back; my goal is for them to analyze a short story for symbolism, figurative language, character, and ultimately, synthesize their life with the story to find the theme. I can't test to see if students are getting those skills if I just give them a test over MDG and nothing else.  

#2. Is it really fair to test the students over something you haven't covered?

If I could yell through the computer screen, I totally would. OF COURSE IT'S FAIR! Every standardized test does the exact same thing. However, beyond those tests everything students will read from now until eternity is a cold read. That job application, that novel, that report, that internet article, that everything in the whole universe. If we keep telling kids what things mean, they will never become successful readers. For me, the things we read in class are models for how I want them to read on their own. 

For the first installment of the Cold Read Series, I give you "The Most Dangerous Game" Assessment Pack. This pack includes the nine squares activity, a quiz over MDG and a cold read test. The quiz and the test cover the same skills (TEKS) and similar question stems. 

Happy teaching testing!