A couple weeks ago I had a much-needed conversation with my mom, a 28-year teaching veteran. She retired from teaching five years ago and now works in test development.
Looking back, from my perspective, our conversation when something like:
Me: I've got some great ideas for what I could be doing in my classroom.
Mom: Oh ya?
Me: Ya, I've been reading some books and articles by [name drop] and [name drop]. I've been having all these great conversations with all my buddies on Twitter.
Mom: That's great. What have you implemented?
Me: Well, I'm still reading. I picked up a new book by [name drop], so I want to make sure I finish that. And I should really talk things through with my PLN before I make any rash decisions.
Mom: Russell, this is your mother speaking now, as your mother and as one of your teaching mentors. What should you be doing in your classroom now? Are your students missing out on anything you should be doing, while you focus on what you could be doing some time later?
Now, my mom wasn't asking me to implement something I hadn't fully thought through. She wasn't suggesting I should just try whatever it was I had spent an hour reading about. After the conversation I've relayed, she laid out for me some concrete tweaks she had thought of for what I'm currently doing in my classroom. Not wholesale changes or the newest fad I was reading about. Subtle changes that refocused my classroom on my students, instead of whatever it was I had been reading about most recently.
The rest of this post is going outline the biggest change I've made, how my students see it as a success already, and the flexibility it brings to my classroom.
Skills-based Journaling
The second quarter (grading period) started at school this Monday. Perfect timing to roll out a new journaling system.
Here's how it works:
Each Monday, I'll put a new list of 4 skills that students will need to demonstrate in their journals each week. This first week the four skills were making a judgement, noting details, predicting, and summarizing. I've discussed with my kids that the list won't change much from week to week, but over the long haul we'll cover everything they're supposed to learn or refine in 6th grade. The point of this system is to get a longitudinal view of their progress toward mastery on each skill. Before going up as a journaling skill, each skill will be taught in mini-lesson form.
Students choose one skill to write about each day, Monday through Thursday. By Friday, they need to have covered each topic. On Friday we will continue our tradition of Free Write Fridays which gives them the opportunity to have a creative journal topic. This was requested by students.
Also on Fridays, I will look through their journals while they are free reading and score each of their entries in a spreadsheet with a 1, 2, or 3 -- this was supposed to be minus, check, or plus, but 1, 2, and 3 work better in the spreadsheet. I've set up the spreadsheet so that a cell with a 1 shows up red, a 2 shows up yellow, and a 3 shows up green. Within a few weeks, I'll be able to note a progression in the individual skills of each student. I'll be able to pull students back for small-group or individual reteaching. If needed, I can do more mini-lessons on specific skills.
Student journal for five minutes after free reading for 15 minutes. The way this framework is built gives me the option to plug any reading skill in as a journal topic. It connects the reading that they are doing, in a book of their choosing, with writing. If I want them to show these skills in conjunction with reading non-fiction, I can give them a piece of non-fiction to read for the week during free reading. It doesn't change the timing at all, and doesn't throw off their structure.
Lastly, I've made it clear the connection between their new journals and blogs. My kids have each posted two blog entries this year -- along with comments on many others. The connection between their journals and blogs helps them understand that the skills they are learning, such as organizing information, transfer from analog to digital mediums and back.
I took a picture of a sample entry and annotated it:
Each "post" has all the characteristics of a blog post, and for good reason. Blogs are organized. Blogs are visually appealing. Blogs prominently display important information.
We label every post in our journal so that we can quickly scan the right margin to find common entries. We have a distinct divider so there is a visually break between entries. We title each entry because titling -- a form of summarizing -- is a skill that is becoming more important as information moves to easily digestible chunks.
UPDATE:
On Friday, I did my first scoring of journals. I had attempted to score all four entries from all 25+ kids during their 15 minutes of free reading. Yes, I thought this was going to work. I got through 6 kids in each class. So, what I'm going to do differently is that I'll score the previous day's entry from each student Tuesday through Friday. I think this may actually work.
UPDATE 2:
I put the scores into a color-coded Google Spreadsheet. I can see at a glance what I need to spend time reteaching tomorrow:
UPDATE:
On Friday, I did my first scoring of journals. I had attempted to score all four entries from all 25+ kids during their 15 minutes of free reading. Yes, I thought this was going to work. I got through 6 kids in each class. So, what I'm going to do differently is that I'll score the previous day's entry from each student Tuesday through Friday. I think this may actually work.
UPDATE 2:
I put the scores into a color-coded Google Spreadsheet. I can see at a glance what I need to spend time reteaching tomorrow:
UPDATE 3:
Got a great idea to involve students in the pedagogical aspects of skills-based journaling from Meredith in the comments (who teachers in my district! How cool is that??). Today the kids and I worked through the criteria for each of the skills that we've learned so far. It was a refresher/solidifier for them. Here are the criteria we came up with:
Any feedback you have is vital to the improvement of this new system. Please share your thoughts in the comments.
