My BEAM Symposium Workshop: Teaching Poetry with the ELPS

Years ago, I was asked to present an in-service workshop for other ELA teachers in my district, and I did it because I do not like (or know how) to say no. Years and years later, this is becoming a thing, and I am really starting to enjoy this thing. I have now presented at my school and in-district for ELA and district-adopted instructional model workshops, as well as at two state ESL/bilingual conferences for English language learner strategies. Last weekend, I presented my first ever, out-of-district, solo workshop presentation at the 31st BEAM Symposium (Bilingual/ESL Education Association of the Metroplex, Texas). 

For my BEAM proposal, I actually reworked that very first workshop. After winning a copy of Kylene Beers' When Kids Can't Read at  a district training, I was asked to present one of her strategies. I conducted a Tea Party experience with the poem "Grandmother Grace" by Ronald Wallace. Because it has been so long, all I remember about this presentation is that it was my birthday, I brought cookies, I made people cry with the poem, and the feedback was good. 

For the English Language Learner presentation, I started with the basic premise - Tea Party with the poem. This is an activity I use frequently in my classroom in various ways, and it is always a success. It gets kids thinking and engaged with poetry (and other genres) before they even see the poem. And getting middle school students to do anything but glaze over at the mention of poetry is success in my book. 

In my revisions of the presentation, I added more activities: Get the Gist from ReadWriteThink, understanding metaphor from Kelly Gallagher's Deeper Reading, and a final word activity, again from Kylene Beers. Although these strategies are not written specifically for English language learners, they work very well for this specific population. 

I did modify the activities to focus specifically on reading, writing, listening, and speaking, the four components of Texas' ELPS (English Language Proficiency Standards). The reading was a given; we had a poem. For writing, I worked with sentence stem responses to the different activities throughout the lesson. Participants shared their sentence stem writing with partners, allowing them to work on both listening and speaking skills. 

Overall, the workshop went very well. I received positive written and verbal feedback. The teachers in attendance were appreciative of the ability to take something directly back to their classrooms. As a teacher, I know that is something that I always want from sessions I attend. 

I have submitted a proposal to present this same workshop at another state organization conference, and it looks like it could be going to a third based on my ESL Teacher of the Year award. My goal is to wear the mess out of it as I practice my presenter skills, and then I will start working on a new one. Because I believe in sharing/stealing in teaching, it is all here for you, as well. 

I considered leaving the classroom last year, but I am glad I did not. I feel like I am in the best possible place. I get to do what I love and work with goofy children every day, plus I get to go outside of the classroom and share what I do with other teachers. Watch out world. I'm comin' to get ya! 

"Forgotten Language" by Shel Silverstein

My students took their first curriculum assessment of the year a few weeks ago. I intentionally set the test aside and saved it for our fall semester exam review. I am also hoping that the kids will have forgotten most of their thinking from before Thanksgiving, and we can look the reading passages with a fresh perspective..

Review for me is not just looking at answer choices. I will teach the passages from the test in an effort to model how they should be thinking about any reading, not just to answer test questions, but to gain something from the reading. Hefty goal on my part, I know. To them, it is simply a test with stuff to read.

The first passage we are going to look at is Shel Silverstein's "Forgotten Language." There were only three questions on the test regarding this poem, but my students struggle with poetry, and three questions failed are three questions failed. 

To teach this poem, I have incorporated a number of strategies:

• From Notice and Note, I will be using the Again & Again signpost to focus on the meaning of Once and the significance of the repeated last line in connection to the rest of the poem. 

• From Kelly Gallagher's Deeper Reading, I am using two strategies. For the second reading, we will focus on answering three questions: What does it say? What does it mean? What does it matter? I have also added the reflective question, What is the most valuable idea that you can take from this poem?

• I am going to be using Nearpod for students to respond to all questions in the lesson. Because this review is also helping them prepare for their fall final exam, I need all students thinking and showing their thinking. I do not want them being passive and allowing others to answer questions for them. By being able to see their responses (thinking), I will be able to determine who is understanding or not understanding what. (Plus I just got Chromebooks and the kids are anxious to start using them.)

The only thing that makes this a test-related lesson is the incorporation of the test questions. I loathe multiple-choice questions, but such is the mandate of federal regulations; therefore, they must be taught at some point in time. More importantly, though, I hope they discover that Shel Silverstein is much more than a goofy poem writer. 

The Giver 3-5: Creating Analogies

My next lesson for The Giver is ready, and it is going to make some brains in my classroom explode. This lesson has been pieced together from two sources:  I have used Kelly Gallagher's iceberg metaphor strategy from Deeper Reading and the Synectic Analogous Thinking lesson from AVID's The Write Path -  English Language Arts: Exploring Texts with Strategic Reading. Both lessons require students to write comparisons to show attributes of a character through metaphorical thinking. I have used both lessons separately in previous years and finally figured out that they essentially are the same thing.

Students will need to create three analogies. The steps in the lesson are designed to explicitly teach what I am expecting the students to do, and I will have them create the first analogy step-by-step with me. 

Two analogies will show the visible characteristics of Jonas (the top of the iceberg). The third will represent Jonas's hidden side (below the surface). I am only having them do one of these for now because I have a feeling that this part will be very difficult for them, especially so early in the story. Advanced students will have to create two, but I like to keep that part a secret until I actually tell them. 

The lesson also reinforces the use of text evidence. The kids are usually pretty good at finding the information from the text that they want to use, but this year in particular, we are struggling with how to correctly punctuate and site the information from the book. This gives me yet another opportunity to reteach this skill. 

I love this lesson and am likely to extend it to my Milkweed assignments with Pre-AP. I will be sure to share samples on this one.