Bring Current Events into Your Classroom with CNN Student News

The Internet is a wonderful resource, but as teachers there are too many websites to explore and not enough time. When we present content to students, we want to make sure it is relevant, accurate, and appropriate.

For current events and news, there is no better website than CNN Student News. CNN Student News is a free ten minute video posted each day that school is in session. They take off on the weekend, holidays, and during the summer.

The show begins with front page headlines kind of news. Yesterday it was the Boko Haram and terrorists in Belgium. 

About three minutes into the show, is the "roll call," a shout out to schools watching the show. 

For the next two and a half minutes (from about 3:30-6) an issue or topic is covered in depth. Yesterday's topic was a letter written by a Titanic survivor being auctioned off. 

The next in depth topic/issue is introduced by "ID Me,"

which gives students clues about a person, place, invention, etc. before revealing its identity. Yesterday's "ID Me" led into a segment about two men who free-climbed El Capitan, part of Yosemite (from about 6:20 - 8). 

At the end of the show is usually a funny video, often something with animals. This one was a dog who rides the bus by himself. See him sitting by the window?

CNN offers an advisory about previewing the content. I teach ninth graders and show this in my homeroom and never have I been concerned about the content. Unfortunately our national and global news so often includes violence, so I might not show it below fifth grade, but even lower grades could use parts after teacher pre-screening. 

Each show is roughly broken into the same segments with the time (minutes/seconds) shown at the bottom so it would be very easy to start and stop to just watch a segment about a specific topic.

If you don't want to watch it everyday, you can sign up to get a daily email letting you know the topics covered. Then you will know when what they are featuring may directly connect to what you are teaching. I personally love watching it everyday with my students because it keeps me up on current events and provides good topics of conversations.

You can also download the video podcasts. This is great if for some reason your district blocks their website (CNN though? really?) or if there is a topic covered in the video that you want to show at a later date.

Another great feature is the transcript. Need a current nonfiction text for class? Ta-da! Here it is. Click here to see a sample.

On Friday, in addition to the transcript is a weekly newsquiz. This could be used as an actual quiz, but would also be a great extra credit assignment. Perhaps you might want to assign these videos for students to watch at home and the quiz is the homework they turn in. Lots of possibilities.

I hope you start watching with your students. I would love to hear about how you make CNN Student News a part of your classroom.

Tweet Sheets: A Creative Lesson on Characterization & Point of View

Let me first say that at the time I created this lesson, I did not have a Twitter account. I didn't even really know how Twitter worked. But I did know that my high school students liked Twitter. Some of them loved Twitter. Some of them would write their Twitter handles on their classwork, on their folders, on my white board when they thought I wasn't looking, everywhere.

With that in mind as I was planning activities for my literature circles at the beginning of the year, I thought why not make reading more fun and exciting by connecting it to something my students already think is fun and exciting. My students had a choice of five novels, all on the theme of coming of age, at the start of the year. The novel they selected determined which literature circle they were in. One day a week was dedicated to these literature circles. Students had fifteen minutes to read silently and independently before working with their group on an activity for the rest of the period.

The first group activity was "tweet sheets." To introduce the concept, I used the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I asked students what they knew about Goldilocks (she had curly hair, she wasn't afraid of anything or had "no rap" as my students would say, broke into people's houses, etc.). From our list of ideas, I asked students to come up with a Twitter handle for Goldilocks. What would she call herself? My favorite possibility was @CurlyHairDon'tCare. My intro was short and sweet. The kids got it and got excited.

In their groups, students then listed six characters from their own novel and described each character using evidence from the text. Using these descriptions, they created possible Twitter handles for the characters.

On the reverse side, students listed three events that occurred so far in their novel. Finally, students selected a few of the characters and their Twitter handles from the front side to use to respond to the events. Students were directed to use first person as they wrote their tweets and think about how the character would think and feel about the events in question.

At the end of class, students were given a packet of tweet sheets to complete as they continued reading their selected novel. This was their "homework" as they read, to be collected upon completion of reading. I asked that they complete one tweet per chapter or section of their novel to make sure their tweets were spread out. You may ask students to do a tweet for every certain number of pages read. The last page can be copied as many times as necessary.

This activity could just as easily be used with a short story or nonfiction text. Be prepared to read some hilarious things, but also some sad and serious ones (depending on your choice of texts). If you try out this activity with your class, I would love to hear how it goes!

You can find the resources for this activity here. If you are looking for more literature circle activity ideas, check out my posts on literary postcards and character silhouettes.

Common Core Writing: Writing Across the Content Areas

This is number eight in a series of posts about my online course, Common Core: Implementing the Writing Standards. If you are looking to get caught up, check out:
Post #1: an overview of the writing standards
Post #2: the gradual release process and writing
Post #3: explicit teaching of writing skills
Post #4: argument writing
Post #5: informational writing
Post #6: narrative writing
Post #7: research and writing

As you have been reading my posts you may have been thinking, but I'm not an English teacher, does this all even apply to me? The answer is YES. The writing process for argument, information, research etc. should be the the same across the disciplines, only the content will differ (i.e. writing about the French & Indian War in history class, osmosis in science class, etc.).

English does have its own set of writing standards, separate from the writing standards for history/social studies, science, and other technical subjects, but they aren't much different. Let's take a look.

At the 9-10 level in English, Standard 2 is about informational writing: "Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content." At the 9-10 level in history/social studies, science, and other technical subjects, Standard 2 is also about informational writing: "Write informative/explanatory texts, including the narration of historical events, scientific procedures/ experiments, or technical processes." Pretty much the same idea. In fact Standards 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 are identical.

So why is this important to know? Again the writing process should be the the same across the disciplines, only the content will differ. Think about writing at your school. Do English teachers require students to follow the same process for writing research papers in their classroom as the history teachers do? Maybe your answer is "yes" (and that is awesome for you!), but your answer is more likely to be "no" or "I don't even know."

Once upon a time, there was common planning time built into the schedule for high school teachers in my school district. The first school at which I taught used the Step Up to Writing program to make writing uniform across our content areas. Each month, students were required to write an essay in each of their four core classes (English, math, science, and social studies). Each subject area took a week in the month so that students were not overwhelmed with four essays at once.

Step Up to Writing has many components, but the part we used across the board was a simple graphic organizer to help guide our writers. There is a lot of push back right now against formulaic writing and the five paragraph essay, but as Post #3 in this series discusses, struggling writers need explicit instruction and supports. Do you think you will get better essays from students who used a basic organizer like this or those who didn't? I think it is more than fine to teach students the formula first and then show them how they can expand and build on that.

So with this graphic organizer and writing an essay each month in every core content area, did all of our students become super star writers? No. Did we see improvement? Yes. I taught at a historically low performing school, with tests scores of proficiency at less than 15-20%. The year we began writing across the curriculum, over 50% of our students scored proficient or higher on the standardized state tests (and that is with a special education population of 25-30%). Wowzers! Big difference. And if my success story is too small for you, go back and read about New Dorp and their writing revolution in my third post.

Now you are thinking, Ahhhhh! My school doesn't do anything like this. But what you should be thinking is,  how can I get my school on board with this? One suggestion is if you don't know how other teachers are teaching writing in their content areas, find out. Ask other teachers what kind of writing students are doing in their classes, and what kind of process/supports they are using. You may be met with blank stares here. Remember that you as the English teacher are "responsible" for teaching writing. Other subject area teachers may not feel like it is something they should have to do or even know how to do.

Another suggestion is to find a teacher in a different content area to collaborate with: the American history teacher, the chemistry teacher, the music teacher. Come up with a list of topics from their content area and promise that you will teach the students how to write the research essay if the other teacher will help them with the research and understanding the content. Then tell other teachers about your success.

Or, get all of the English teachers together and decide as a department how you are going to standardize your approach to teaching writing. What will the 9th grade teachers focus on? How will the tenth grade teachers build on that?

The article, “Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum” describes four strategies that can make reading and writing across the curriculum more appealing for teachers who may resist it: 1) use low-stakes writing assignments; 2) provide multiple forms of feedback; 3) employ variety in texts and their presentation; and 4) employ a variety of levels of reading difficulty.

So if jumping into collaborating on research papers and longer writing assignments scares you, start smaller. At my most recent school, we incorporated writing across the curriculum by doing weekly constructed responses in all classes, in all subject areas every Wednesday. As constructed responses are a part of most standardized tests, your school may have a similar requirement (maybe not on the same day or with the same frequency). Compare the kinds/levels of questions students are given as well as the supports used. Once you are all on the same page with those shorter writing assignments, begin to plan for a unified approach on larger writing assignments, essays, research papers, etc. I am sure standardized brainstorming materials, outlines, etc. for use in all classrooms would be desired and beneficial for non-English teachers.

I developed these constructed response paragraph forms that could be used by teachers of all subjects and grades in my school. The first form is highly structured with sentence-by-sentence directions. The form has a blank space for students to fill in the prompt for whichever class they may be in, suggested transitions to improve the organization of their paragraph, and a self-check list at the end so students can evaluate their own work.

Giving students this “formula” for writing helped them structure well-developed paragraphs as they responded to texts in English, history, science, art, music, etc. This form also helped teachers of subjects other than English support students as they wrote.

After students become more confident in their writing skills, this second, less structured form can be used. Again the form has a blank space for students to fill in the prompt for whichever class they may be in. Instead of sentence-by-sentence directions, students are provided with a greater variety of transition words to choose from and a scoring rubric which can be used for self and/or teacher assessment. The rubric makes the writing expectations clear to students and makes it easy for teachers of any subject area to grade.

You can find all of my resources with constructed response questions (CRQs) here.

I would love to hear about how your school handles (or doesn't) writing across the curriculum. Next up: assessing student writing.

Common Core Writing: Research and Writing

This is number seven in a series of posts about my online course, Common Core: Implementing the Writing Standards. In my first post, I gave an overview of the writing standards. In my second post, I showed how the gradual release process can be used with writing. In my third post, I explain why it is so important that basic writing skills be explicitly taught, no matter the age or grade level. I then covered the three types of writing in the Common Core: argument writing, informational writing, and narrative writing.

Research is the focus of Common Core Writing Standards 7, 8, & 9. Can't you already hear the students' groans? "Not another research paper!" But a research paper is not the only way to have students practice their research skills. Let's look at each of the standards and activities you can engage your students in to practice research skills.

First, Standard 7 states, "Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation."

While selecting a topic for research may be easy for students, they often struggle with creating an appropriate research question. After reading a short article as a class, show students sample research questions to help them determine which questions are appropriate.

Ask students:
-Is the question too broad or too narrow?
-Does the question require inferences or analysis to answer?
-Is the question centered around a topic of debate?
-Does the answer require information from just one or multiple sources?

For practice, give students short articles on a variety of topics to create research questions. Post the student-created questions around the room. Have the students do a gallery walk using rubrics to evaluate each others questions. Collect the highest rated questions to use as exemplars when the students do write a research paper.

Then comes Standard 8: "Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess the usefulness of each source in answering the research question; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation."

When doing any kind of research, students need to be able to select sources of information that are useful, relevant and reliable. To assess prior knowledge, ask students how they decide what sources to use when doing research. Review with students reasons what makes a source credible or not.

You can also share Wikipedia's protection policy with students, or if you create an account, you can even show students how they can edit an entry. Eek! So not reliable.

For practice, give students a list of websites on a similar topic, such as immigration or gun control. Ask them to visit the sites, noting signs that the site may or may not be credible, and make a decision about whether or not they would use this source for research. Allow students to work in groups at first and then independently.

And finally, Standard 9 states, "Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research." Let's say your students have been studying Shakespeare and you have asked them to write an essay analyzing theme in one of his plays.

You want them to include literary criticism as a part of their essays, but where to find it? Google Scholar is an excellent source for academic literature. Students will find articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions. You can read more about using Google Scholar here.

And remember, research writing does not have to happen in isolation. Research can be a part of argumentative, informational, and even narrative writing.

I would love to hear about how you help students to practice their research skills. Up next: writing across the curriculum.

Common Core Writing: Narrative Writing

This is my sixth in a series of posts about my online course, Common Core: Implementing the Writing Standards. In my first post, I gave an overview of the writing standards. In my second post, I showed how the gradual release process can be used with writing. In my third post, I explain why it is so important that basic writing skills be explicitly taught, no matter the age or grade level.

My fourth post focused on argument writing, my fifth post focused on informational writing, and this post will focus on narrative writing, the third and final type of writing in the Common Core Standards.

Narrative writing conveys an experience, either real or imaginary, which means it can connect with both literature and informational standards. Students should be developing skills like giving detailed descriptions of events, characters, and settings, depicting specific actions (blocking), using dialogue and interior monologue, and manipulating the sequence of events to build suspense by using flashbacks or flashforwards and foreshadowing. So narrative writing = stories, but what about other types of creative writing like poetry or plays? The Common Core does not focus on those types of writing, but leaves that up to the teacher's discretion. To read more on this issue and narrative writing defined, see Common Core Appendix A, page 23-24.

The standard for narrative writing, standard 3, (at the 9-10 levels) reads "write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences." As discussed here, the standard is the same at all grade levels, just more complex over time.

I first want to address the part of the standard that calls for "effective technique." What is effective in narrative writing and how do students learn to write like that? Over the summer I obsessively read Teaching for Joy and Justice by Linda Christensen. I can't recommend her book enough.

In her unit on teaching narrative writing, she included a checklist of criteria she asked students to include in their narrative writing. Effective techniques found, but how to teach students to write like that? Enter mentor texts, the importance of with I discussed in my last post.

I used "Thank You Ma'am" by Langston Hughes and "The Jacket" by Gary Soto (both recommended by Christensen) and added "The Family of Little Feet," an excerpt from The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros as well as student samples from Teaching for Joy and Justice to create a set of mentor texts themed around materialism.

I then created a simple, yet clear graphic organizer listing the effective narrative techniques I wanted students to look for: dialogue, blocking, character and setting description, figurative language, interior monologue, and flashback. The graphic organizer gave a description of each technique and provided space for students to record their own examples from any text.

We used this graphic organizer over and over with our mentor texts through the gradual release process. First I modeled with one text ("I do") and then students guided me through usage with another text ("We do"). After that, students worked in small groups or pairs ("Two do") and finally, independently ("You do.")

When it came time for students to write their own narratives, they had ample examples at which to look back. And when they entered the revision stage, they were looking for these same techniques in their own writing and peers'.

The techniques students were looking for as they self and peer assessed are listed again with their definitions. Using a different color for each technique, students highlighted evidence of the technique in their own writing. They then rated their usage of the technique on a scale of 1 to 4 (1=needs improvement, 4 = excellent). A peer also ranked them.

The color coding made it very clear to students which techniques they were using frequently, infrequently, and not at all. Students now WANTED to add more to their stories.

I also find that because this type of writing is often the most personal, students can take criticism of it the most to heart. Using checklists for students to use while self and peer assessing can help make the process a little more objective, and show students it isn't what they are writing about that needs to change, just how they write about it.

Now let's look back at the standard: "write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences." Effective technique? Check! Well-chosen details? If blocking, character description, and setting description are included in the techniques, then also check! That only leaves "well structured event sequences."

As we were reading our mentor texts, I had students complete a series of quick writes related to the theme of materialism: write about a favorite or least favorite possession, write about a time you wanted something that you couldn't get, etc. At the end of reading our mentor texts, students selected one of these quick writes to develop further. This strategy eliminates the "I don't know what to write about" whiners. The mentor texts also validate that these topics are worth writing about. Once students decided upon their topic, I had them outline their story using a plot diagram.

Charting out the plot of their stories using these diagrams ensured that all students had a clear beginning, middle, and end. We discussed as a class how some of our conflicts might be internal, like wanting something you didn't have the money to buy, or external, like classmates making fun of your ugly jacket, or sometimes both. We also discussed that the chronological order of events on the plot mountain did NOT mean you had to tell your story in that order (i.e. using flashback, flashforward).

And just like that list of narrative techniques reappeared at revision time, so did the plot diagram. After a peer ranked the usage of a student's narrative techniques, he/she then completed a plot diagram for that same student's narrative. I had to remind my students that they couldn't help each here. If a peer couldn't identify the conflict, that meant the author didn't have one or it wasn't clear enough, and that was a place that needed revisions. Students were thrilled when their peers were able to diagram their stories just right. Well structured event sequences? Check! If you are interested in using this lesson with your own students, you can find it here.

With all of the emphasis on nonfiction with the Common Core, you may be feeling guilty about reading fiction and even more guilty about writing narratives, when argument and informational writing may seem so much more important. But who says you can't blend the two?

In this article, "Common Core in Action: Narrative Writing," by Heather Wolpert-Gawron, she discusses how you can incorporate nonfiction by asking students to write science fiction or historical fiction. These types of narratives would require students to do research (and read nonfiction texts) in science or history to make their narratives convincing. Students could also incorporate argument writing by centering their science fiction narrative around debate over a new form of government in a future society, or incorporate informational writing by detailing an important invention in the past.

As my students were wrapping up reading Kindred by Octavia Bulter before winter break, I assigned them a science fiction/historical fiction narrative. Like Bulter's main character, Dana, students would have a character traveling back in time to a time and place of their choosing. They were required to complete research on their period and location to make their narrative realistic. The students loved it and will continue writing when we return after break.

I think it is also important to remember a point that Wolpert-Gawron touches on, but could have said more: the skills that students can build through narrative writing are transferrable. To become good writers, students must study good writing. As she mentions, the literary techniques we use in narrative writing can be used to make any type of writing more interesting. Research shows that telling a story helps students connect to and remember what they have learned. Students can use narrative elements in an argumentative or informational piece to help convey their argument or facts.

I would love to hear about how you are using narrative writing in your classroom or blending the different types of writing. More on research and writing next.