Greetings! I have been teaching middle school since 1988: first English Language Arts, and now also Digital Design Lab and Broadcast Media. I present workshops for teachers on technology in the classroom, project-based learning, and writing; plus I work with Edutopia, PBS and KQED Learning. I love to connect with other educators, so please enjoy my site, check out my how-to NaNoWriMo site, see my students’ novels for sale on Amazon, and contact me here or via Twitter @LAMBRADLEY.
Ending the year with hope
Usually I’m a planner. I like to-do lists and calendars and vision boards and check boxes. But I’m also fond of those lightbulb moments when an idea pops into my head and I can see an entire project unfold that my students could start tomorrow. And that’s what happened when I read this article from Edutopia: In Schools, Finding Hope in a Hopeless Time, by Nora Fleming.
I have worried so much this year about my students, 7th and 8th graders I have never met face-to-face. We have been learning on Zoom all year, and while I have seen lots of growth, creativity and community in our Zoom classes, I know there has been plenty of pain and struggle that I haven’t been able to see or respond to online.
But now we are on Spring Break, and in a couple weeks we will return to a campus that will be brand new for most of my students. We will finally see each other in person! The sun is out, the days are warmer, flowers are blooming and the cold, rainy weather is fading. Hope is in the air.
But when we do meet in person on campus, with only seven weeks left in the semester, how will I engage my students in a positive way to wrap up this really hard year? How will I motivate and inspire students who may have struggled throughout these past months of isolation and distance learning? How can I give them hope, not only for our immediate situation, but also hope for their futures?
And why hope? Why bother to weave hope throughout my curriculum? I love what the research tells us about hope:
“…people who are hopeful aren’t simply optimists or Pollyannas but are able to think proactively about the future and plan ahead to get there. Research shows that hope is a learnable, measurable skill, and one that has a sizable impact on students’ success and persistence in school. Children who are hopeful are also found to have higher self-esteem and social skills, are more likely to set and achieve goals, and can more easily bounce back from adversity.”
https://www.edutopia.org/article/schools-finding-hope-hopeless-time
While middle school students tend to get stuck in the present, there are ways we can shift their focus to the future and help them be strategic about defining and pursuing their own hopes and dreams. The Edutopia article includes a project from high school teacher Allison Berryhill, who had her students choose a hope they had for their future, and then work backwards to figure out how to make that hope a reality. Thinking about what that might look like in my middle school Design Lab class, my mind went to one of our favorite mediums: computer games. Since games revolve around a character trying to reach a goal, they are a natural for representing one’s own hopes and dreams.
What if my students created a game that took a character through potential obstacles on the way to reaching something they hope for in their own futures? Thanks to Scratch coding, my students will be able to not only design their games, but even code them and share the link with their friends so they can all play. And with remove.bg, my students can use a picture of themselves as the main character in their games. They will be able to literally move themselves past obstacles on their way to seeing their hopes realized. Thinking of the fun they will have as they code toward their dreams fills me with hope. I can’t wait.
#NaNoWriMoTinyTip: just an excerpt, please!
If your students have been pounding away on their keyboards for the past month, drafting a (very very rough) first draft of a novel (thank you, NaNoWriMo!), you might be wondering how you can assess the work they’ve done. It wouldn’t be fair to assess their first drafts, especially since one rule of NaNoWriMo is that we all “silence our inner editors.” How painful would it be for us to read all those unedited first drafts? (insert scream emoji here)
…said no teacher ever.
There is great value in having our students spend an entire month working on one lengthy piece of writing (see just a few of the reasons here), but when it comes time to assess their work, I recommend asking students to choose an excerpt from their novel that they will revise and polish to be worthy of publication. I give some basic parameters for this excerpt, such as:
- between 1 and 2 pages long (800-1200 words)
- includes dialogue
- includes details of setting
- includes details of at least one character (appearance, actions, thoughts)
- has been proofread carefully
- demonstrates your best narrative writing
My students copy and paste their excerpt into a new doc, print it out and bring it to class. I distribute a rubric based on recommendations from the Young Writers Program, and we go over the qualities one would find in an effective excerpt.
Then with highlighters in hand, they identify elements they are proud of and areas that need improvement. They trade excerpts with classmates to get feedback, and they take turns stepping outside to read their writing aloud so they can better hear how it sounds and catch more errors.
Once they have revised, proofread and corrected their excerpt, they add a brief introduction at the beginning to give the reader the broader context from which the excerpt was taken. These polished excerpts are then published in a variety of ways:
- on their digital portfolios
- on our classroom walls
- read aloud at our local bookstore at our own Meet-the-Author event
Since my students have been invested in these stories for most of the semester, their excerpts demonstrate the kind of writing we love to read: student-centered, passionate, and rich with the voice and authority of engaged writers.
Instead of viewing them as just another stack of papers to grade, enjoy them and celebrate the writing journey your students have taken!
Check out more tips for NaNoWriMo assessment here.
#NaNoWriMoTinyTip: Time for Titles
Returning from Fall Break this week, my students have four more days before NaNoWriMo ends. We have two class periods together, plus they will write at home. Our focus this week, after months of planning our stories, collecting writing advice from authors, working through writer’s block, and figuring out how to conclude our novels, is to just get to our word goals. We know the draft we’ve written this month is very, very rough, and we know we want to revise it significantly, but this week it’s all about that sprint to the finish line.
Writing a novel feels like a marathon, but this weeks it’s all about the sprint to the word goal. (Photo by Nicolas Hoizey on Unsplash)
But today, before we dive into writing, we’re going to take some time to brainstorm ideas for titles for our novels. No matter what kind of writing my students are working on, I tell them to wait on a title until they are finished. So often the best ideas for titles come from within the piece itself, so why struggle to name it if it hasn’t been written yet?
Another reason we wait to come up with our titles is that brainstorming titles can generate more ideas for our stories. We look at how authors often title novels with conflicts from the story itself (like Jay Asher’s 13 Reasons Why, or Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games), or with important symbols (like Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, or Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie, by Jordan Sonnenblick). The time we spend listing potential titles can give us ideas for how we will finally conclude our stories, or how we will add more words by inserting a flashback or two.
Our favorite books can inspire our hunt for the perfect title. (Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash)
Here is the brainstorming page that my students will be using this week. You’re welcome to use it, too. Who knows, maybe the activity will inspire an entirely new ending for your novel.
#NaNoWriMoTinyTip: ogres and onions
When my students create characters for their NaNoWriMo novels, I push them to get super detailed: to hear the songs their characters will listen to when they plug in their earbuds; to picture the snack food they’ll pull from their backpack as they walk home from school; to feel the clothes they’ll grab from their closet on a Saturday morning. But those details don’t get to the heart of a character, to the backstory and soul that really drive a person.
So this year I added some layers to our character development lessons. I found this great article by Roxanna Elden on the three layers of a complex character:
- the outer, protective layer, which is usually “socially acceptable but superficial”
- the middle, defective layer, which we try to hide with our outer layer
- underneath it all is our inner, human core, the part of us that helps explain our other two layers. This core is also the part of us that is most universal. Elden says, “If we can see the human core of a character, we will understand and care for them. If a character can find and learn to accept their own human core, they will achieve inner peace to the degree it’s possible.”
Middle school students (and many adults) are not usually fully aware of their own layers, but after just a brief lesson on the topic, along with examples of characters we know well, my students started crafting some deep, layered characters for their novels.
We started, of course, by watching the “ogres are like onions” scene from Shrek (click image to view):
“Ogres are like onions!”
This was meant to be just a fun introduction, but as we watched I realized that Donkey really helped to drive the point home. When he suggested cake or parfait instead of onions, he clarified another reason that an onion is the best metaphor. I put these images on the screen and asked my students what they noticed:
It took them a little while to see what I saw (I’m learning to let it be quiet longer than is comfortable so they can THINK), but eventually someone got it:
“Oh! I know! The onion has a center, but the cake and parfaits don’t. They are stacked layers, not layers that wrap around and hide inner layers.”
And – BAM – that sweet little insight really nailed the concept for many of us. We looked at the character of Snape, from the Harry Potter series, and how in the beginning he seemed to be an angry man who unfairly picked on Harry. But throughout the series he becomes one of the most complex, layered characters of all:
My students spent the rest of class detailing the three layers of their protagonist. At the end of class we shared our characters’ layers in a quick whip around the room, and the depth was staggering. I can’t wait to read the stories of these layered characters!
Bonus: I could see a chipping away of the façade that teens often wear as they heard their classmates speak of the deep, human core at the heart of their characters. This fresh understanding of human layers just might help my students develop empathy both for each other and for characters in the books they read (and write).
Put the kids in charge
There’s nothing quite like the intensity, the chaos, the one-crisis-after-another, the sorry-I-can’t-help-you-go-find-someone-who-can, the exhilaration, jubilation and exhaustion of the first day of production in a middle school broadcast media class.
My brand new group of 7th and 8th graders had met six times in the first couple weeks of school (90 minutes, every other day) and our audience was antsy for a show. Our news program delivers the daily announcements to the staff and students, and at the start of the school year there is a lot of information that students need.
Adjusting the sports/weather camera and tele-prompter.
So after just six class periods of training 12- and 13-year-olds to write scripts, create graphics, film and edit video shorts, set up cameras and lights, read from (and pace) tele-prompters, load media onto a TriCaster, manage the audio, direct the anchors, and operate a video bus and TriCaster during filming (which includes green screen technology, switching between four cameras and four student anchors, and incorporating graphics and videos during filming), it was time to get our first show on the air.
7th grade student learns to pace the tele-prompter for the KTV news anchors.
Suffice it to say, chaos reigned. The script team struggled with the language of dates (“If I’m writing the script today for a show that airs tomorrow, which day is “today,” which is “tomorrow” and what is “next week”?); the graphics team spent far too much time looking for just the right “labeled for reuse” image for the Icebreaker Dance announcement; the producer couldn’t find camera angles that worked for students under five feet tall and those well over six feet; the floor manager nearly fried her Fitbit chasing down graphics and videos from computers all over the classroom and delivering them to the tech team; the audio team assured us the audio was fine (but, par for the course, it was not fine at all); the bus operator kept switching to the wrong camera at the wrong time; and the TriCaster team fought the never-ending battle of green fuzz around the anchors’ heads.
Students learn to create graphics for the KTV news show.
But when the bell rang for lunch, our first show was finished, uploaded to YouTube and tweeted out on Twitter. And the best part? The kids applauded, slapped high fives, and walked out of the classroom taller, prouder and more confident than they had felt that morning. That show was theirs, warts and all, and they knew that they had a part in its production. (Click below to watch our first show of the 2018-19 school year.)
In my 25+ years as a middle school teacher, I have never seen a class that inspires students to take responsibility, invest in their work, own their efforts and develop confidence like I see in this broadcast media class. And I’m pretty sure this happens in large part because I can’t answer all their questions and I can’t solve all their problems. There are far too many tasks and far too many crises for a teacher to be in charge. No, the smartest move I made in that class was to tell them from day 1, “I will not be able to solve all the problems, so don’t ask. Find someone who can help you.”
It takes all hands on deck to produce a daily news show.
Students run the entire show, including the bus, TriCaster and audio.
It’s not easy to let students struggle, to watch them fail, but when I don’t step in to help, they collaborate, communicate and problem-solve to get that show produced. As their “teacher,” it is an honor and inspiration to step back and watch them take charge.
(For more information on our award-winning broadcast media program, see this post that I wrote for KQED; this series on EducatorInnovator’s The Current; and this video from our 2016 Jack London Award for Innovation in Education from Sonoma State University.)
Go ahead: ask your students what they want to write about. They will amaze you!
On my first-day-of-school survey, I asked my 8th graders:
If you could write about anything this year, what would it be?
Their answers remind me why it’s so valuable to give students choice in their writing. I never would have guessed they would want to write about so many interesting topics. Here are some of their plans:
I would write about…
- a kid who is anxious about the future.
- equal treatment for everyone. Or mental health.
- social difficulties and internal conflicts in the modern times because I can easily relate.
- my dog because he’s really goofy.
Photo by Justin Veenema on Unsplash
- an imaginary island.
- people who are stuck in the wilderness, like in Hatchet.
- a realistic fiction novel
(NOTE FROM THE TEACHER: WHAT 8TH GRADER SAYS THEY WANT TO WRITE A NOVEL?!? Must be an 8th grader who knows she will be a NaNoWriMo novelist this year!)
I would write about…
- the U.S. military because it is something I want to be a part of.
- Disneyland!
- owning a corporation and the crazy antics that would follow because one of my dreams is to own a company.
- politics and feminism.
Photo by Jerry Kiesewetter on Unsplash
- the impact of a family that loves and supports you, compared to the opposite because I’ve always wondered.
- natural disasters.
- my friend Jack, who has Down Syndrome. He means the world to me.
- history.
- my puppy being able to talk. It would be really funny.
- a family surviving in a bunker after the world ends.
- different cultures. The stories we would learn would be very interesting and it would be nice to know about other people’s cultures.
- having to evacuate my cabin over the summer due to the Carr fire. I think I can be very descriptive about what happened.
Photo by Denys Argyriou on Unsplash
- current events. It’s important to know what’s happening in the world.
- politics. There are a lot of political issues that need to be addressed.
- intentional and unintentional racism in public schools. It’s a real issue.
- mental disorders, because it’s a topic that nobody ever addresses.
- my trip to Niagara Falls. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.
An added bonus to giving students choice in their writing is how it affects our relationship. When I ask them to tell me about their topics, their faces light up with enthusiasm as they share about the puppy they rescued, the rally they went to with a friend, the business they started over the summer, or the post-apocalyptic world they’ve created. What better way to get students invested in their writing (which means they are more likely to write thoughtfully, proofread carefully, and invest in the final product) than to let them write about their passions? Go ahead, try it! What would YOU write about?
Part 4: Reflections on our bulletin boards
In my last post I shared the beautiful and inspirational bulletin boards that my students created when they were given the challenge to make our classroom walls their own. Not content to end this project with their displays, I then asked them to choose one part of a bulletin board that they liked and reflect on its value to them and our community. Here are some of their responses, which they added to their digital portfolios:
Finally, I surveyed my students to find out what they thought of this assignment. What were they proud of from their own contributions? Did they think the activity improved our classroom environment? Did they learn from it? Do they think I should do it with future classes? This is what some of them said:
“I am most proud of the the melted crayon art, because it was very hard to do and it turned out pretty good. I think the many different colors on this canvas represent how everyone is different but together we do great things.”
“I think that it was a good teamwork exercise because it requires people to work together and listen to each other… or it can go down the drain fast because you’ll have fighting, random things on the boards, and people just in overall bad moods. I learned that I can work with a lot of people, all of us with very different personalities, and we can still make a board that looks amazing and one that we’re proud of.”
“I think it was really fun and let everyone put a part of what they like in the classroom. I enjoyed looking at it when taking breaks from working, it gave me some inspiration.”
“The item I enjoyed the most was the quote by Michael Jordan. I enjoy this quote mainly because it has the most meaning to me. I think this picture and quote can inspire the class to keep working hard and stay positive. Overall I think this quote has been very useful.”
“I think this experience was good and very positive. Personally I didn’t think that getting the materials was hard, but our bulletin board still may have had an affect on somebody’s day. I think at the end of the process the walls looked very bright and organized, and I think they sent powerful messages.”
“It was a lot of fun, and because we had to communicate with each other, we got a little closer.”
“I think letting students be in charge of what we see everyday is fun and gives us a chance to think outside the box, but it can get bad when the group does not work well together. If the group doesn’t agree with one person, drama can start and it can change the students’ behavior in the class with that person. That is why I think it was a good idea to let the students pick their partners.”
“It was cool that something I played a part in was on the walls for my class and other classes to see.”
But of course not everyone enjoyed the project:
“I honestly did not like it – too much responsibility – but I am pretty sure other people liked it.”
“It wasn’t that great and it didn’t really feel like it made a difference to the class.”
“I would have liked it more if my group had done some of the work, but it was kind of fun.”
“It was fun to do, but I don’t think very many people really pay attention to the bulletin boards and look at what’s on it.”
This feedback is helpful for how I can improve the project next year. Because I had made a last-minute decision to experiment with the bulletin boards, I didn’t have a full plan for how it would work. I can see now that we need to spend more time noticing what students put on their boards, talking about its impact, and digging in more to the symbolism. As I have learned many times in education, next year this will be even better!
Overall, I’m happy with their participation and feedback. Even students who didn’t love the project noticed benefits beyond what I had anticipated. While I wanted them to feel that their contributions mattered and see symbolism in classroom decorations, many students also commented on how much they enjoyed the chance to be creative, to work with a group, to learn about each other’s interests, and to feel part of our community of learners. The few negative experiences were far outnumbered by the many who said, “Yes, keep doing this!” I’m looking forward to seeing what future classes do with our classroom décor, especially since it means I will have one fewer task on my to-do list.
(This is the last in a four-part series. Click for part 1, part 2, and part 3.)
Part 3: Bulletin board inspiration
They arrived early on Day 1 of their bulletin board rotation, laden with bags of decorations, eyes and smiles full of anticipation and excitement. I handed them staplers and push pins, and stepped back to watch them work.
I had assigned this group to the largest bulletin board in the first round because I knew them well enough to expect them to produce a creative, thought-provoking display. I also hoped they would be an inspiration for the rest of the class. And they did not disappoint! They brought in beautiful pictures, inspirational quotes, 3-dimensional objects, bright flowers, and even two different strands of twinkly lights. They filled the enormous board with their creations, and then came back the following class day with more. They weren’t content to leave any large empty spaces.
When the bell rang and their classmates started arriving, their hard work was rewarded with “oohs,” “ahhs,” “wows” and “OMG did you bring anything for OUR board?!” Groups who had been assigned to the smaller boards formed quick huddles and started strategizing how they would get their decorations up later in the week. Yes, they were frustrated that they had forgotten, but they were also excited to show that they, too, could inspire their classmates with their own bulletin boards. And they did:
My students were clearly proud of their work and enjoyed seeing their classmates pore over the various images, quotes and objects they had contributed to our classroom. But I wanted more from this project. I wanted my students to better understand symbolism, to see how flowers or twinkly lights or a basketball jersey could represent bigger ideas, concepts that may be hard to explain but could be understood through symbolic objects. So after the boards had been up for a couple weeks, I had students take pictures of the items that were meaningful to them, and then write about the symbolic meanings of one of them.
Tune in next week for part 4 of this bulletin board experiment to see how the students responded….
(This is the third in a four-part series. Click for part 1, part 2 and part 4.)
Part 2: bulletin boards and student #voice
It took me a few weeks to get our bulletin board remodel going, but now we’re making progress. (See Part 1 here.) The bulletin boards are bare and my students are planning what they will create and bring in to hang on the walls.
(I left the life skill posters up on the green bulletin board because they are too high for me to reach and the students agreed that they were helpful reminders. The cursive alphabet is staying, too, if only for nostalgia. Maybe it will even inspire some students to give it a try.)
I surveyed my students a few weeks ago to find out who they would like to work with on a bulletin board, and then I put them in groups based on these requests. Some groups are big (6 or even 8 students) and some are smaller (the smallest is a pair). The size of their bulletin board will depend on their group size.
Today they started by brainstorming what kind of classroom environment they need in order to be successful. Their lists include:
- inspirational
- organized
- safe
- motivational
- encouraging
- positive
- a celebration of accomplishments
- a reflection of their interests
We talked about where they might find such inspiration: words of wisdom from people they admire (including song lyrics); photos of places and things that matter to them; humor that makes them laugh and helps them relax; their own artwork and creative expressions.
I can’t wait to see what they do with this! Photos to follow…
(This is the second in a four-part series. Click for part 1, part 3 and part 4.)
Student #voice: bulletin boards and literary analysis
In my ongoing efforts to give my students more voice and choice in our classroom, I decided last summer that I would hand over the bulletin boards to them. I wasn’t sure my students even noticed what was on our walls, and I was pretty sure that I didn’t know what they needed to see that might impact their learning. But the start of the year came and we hit the ground running with our NaNoWriMo work. My bulletin boards continued to be filled with traditional classroom stuff: reminders of rules and procedures, inspirational quotes, book posters, comics that reflected fun with language, and occasionally some student work.
Over winter break I decided that the start of a new semester in January would be a good time to address this. Our classroom was now an established community, so it might be easier to talk about what we need on the walls: How could the walls support our learning? What could students add to the walls to make the room more their own while also inspiring them and their classmates?
I thought I would go in over the break and take everything off the walls, but then I decided it would be worth taking the time to have my students first notice what was there and try to figure out why I chose it and how it might affect our environment.
Then I opened my plan book and realized that I had a tight schedule in January that included lessons introducing literary analysis and the start of a novel that the class would read together. How could I squeeze in the bulletin board remodel? But then I noticed that the work I wanted my students to do with our current walls (what do you notice? how does it affect us?) could be tied to the very literary analysis lessons we needed to do. So this is my plan for Monday:
- First I will introduce analysis in simple terms:
- what do you notice?
- why does it matter?
- what do you notice?
- Then I will demonstrate this thinking with a couple items from our classroom walls:
- “I notice a poster of a runner going over a hurdle, and the words, ‘Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.'”
- “This matters because it helps athletes connect the work they do in a sport to the work they have to do in school. This also matters because it reminds us that we have to keep working hard, even if we are already talented at the work we need to do.”
- Students will then spend time reading the walls of our classroom and taking notes on what they notice and why it might matter to our environment and our learning.
- We will come back together to share out what we’ve discovered and talk about what they would like to see on the walls.
The next step is still a little hazy for me. I don’t think I should have all 32 students decorating the walls at the same time, and I have another class of 32 students who will also need to participate. My plan is to divide the semester up into 2 or 3-week time periods and assign small groups to be in charge of certain areas of the classroom. To get them thinking about their contributions (while also practicing analysis), they will take pictures of their wall, add it to their Google Sites portfolio, and write a paragraph about what they added, why they chose it, and how it might positively affect our environment.
This is a brand new idea for me and I have no idea how it will be received and what my students will choose to put on the walls. But they didn’t let me down when I gave them ownership over other aspects of their learning (like writing their own novels, publishing their own magazines, choosing their own digital projects, or producing the school’s daily news show), so I am confident that they will surprise and impress me with (and I will learn a lot from) their bulletin boards.
I’ll share again in a couple weeks when our first student-designed bulletin boards are up! In the meantime, has anyone out there given students ownership over classroom walls? I’d love to hear your story.
(This is the first in a four-part series. Click for part 2, part 3 and part 4.)
