Personalization: 7&8

Personalization Tip #4

Get out of your desk. Better yet, get rid of it! Sit with the kids while they work. For some reason, the teacher desk is scary and easy to get stuck behind.

Time is starting to get away from me. I had every intention of posting this yesterday, but laundry, meal prepping, and The Great British Baking Show took priority.

Usually I start falling behind a little later in the school year, but this is 2021. And I would argue 2021 is worse than anything 2020 threw at us. (At least… that’s how we’re feeling in my neck of the woods).


For us, we have wrapped up Unit 1 officially and are working our way through the learning of Unit 2. Below, I have some notes on navigating end-of-unit, all-or-nothing blackout deadlines and two group activities.
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Blackout Deadlines

Our first hard deadline (“blackout deadline”) came and went last week. That means I had to put some zeroes in for the first time this year. Because I use a decaying average, these will be replaced when I assess the same standard again, but until then, those students are sitting with a 22% in the standards they did not submit work for. (Which - as you might guess - for some of them, is all of the standards thus far). It’s slightly panic-inducing for those kids, but as I tell them, it just means we reflect on where we went wrong and make the appropriate changes. 

Similarly, I had a handful of kids that waited until this blackout deadline and rushed through their final assessment. Not surprisingly, I saw a host of inadequate work. Work that usually would have been revised. However, because they waited for the last second, they didn’t have the time to make these revisions. I have fielded a few questions about improving their grades - as you might expect. Instead of offering more time or re-attempts, I turn these into conversations about time management and making better pacing choices in the next unit. Again, we look at the mistake and make appropriate changes.

In other words, the kids who needed a reality check got one, but the mistakes won’t bury them in the long run. Instead, we focus on what we can do differently. I’ve found that kids will dwell in the past if you keep offering re-attempts or revisions. Sometimes, it is wiser to just move forward. (It’s one of the reasons I haven’t gone back since switching to a standards referenced grading system).
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More Group Activities

I feel I mentioned it before, but even if a class is personalized, there should consistently be times where the class comes together. For my kids, I shoot for two group lessons and pick out the learning targets that I anticipate will slip them up. In this case, it was rhetorical appeals and composing defensible thesis statements. ​

Group Activity #1: Being a Compassionate Writer

One initiative that many schools are starting to implement is a portrait of a learner - or a list of dispositions that the school hopes to foster in students before graduation. Ours is called a Profile of a Graduate. As I designed units this year, I tried to design group activities that would line up with different dispositions. For this activity, I was aiming for compassion.

I used the following PowerPoint to guide the lesson. Notes for each slide are below.

core_values_list.docx
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biden_tulsa_transcript.docx
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• Slide 2: We talked about what compassion is - focusing on how being compassionate means considering other people’s perspectives.
• Slide 3: Then, we talked about what a value is. I asked students to review a list of values and pick out three that were a priority for them. Using Mentimeter, I had them share these to produce a Word Cloud on the board. 
• Slide 4: We discussed what shared values we had. (Those that appear larger in the word cloud). For my classes, family and friendship appeared most consistently. To illustrate how writers appeal to an audience, I posed the question: How might I appeal to you as a group if I had to give you a huge homework assignment? Essentially, I explained that I would anticipate they would hate the time lost with the people they love, so I might argue that those people will understand or that maybe they could do it with a friend from class.
• Slide 5: To transition to the next part, I gave students the context for the day’s passage. [NOTE: I know not all schools will be welcoming to instruction about the Tulsa Massacre. This could easily be changed for any text where the writer needs to act compassionately - such as: _____]. We briefly discussed the values and needs of the audience attending the commemoration.
• Slide 6: I planned to play the audio for this speech, starting at where Biden starts speaking… BUT it didn’t work. (#classic). Instead, I read to them the first three paragraphs. [NOTE: It does get graphic after that, when he is describing the massacre. Heads up!] As I read, I asked students to look for instances where Biden was appealing to his audience’s values or needs.
• Slide 7: Students discussed the passage in small groups. I asked groups to share out.
• Slide 8: I reviewed the rhetorical appeals with students. They have learned them in the past, so it was a quick refresh. I also asked which they thought was most prominent in the reading.
• Slide 9: Their final task was to write a paragraph analyzing a rhetorical appeal in Biden’s speech. Before I let them go, I reviewed paragraph structure and gave them some sentence stems (below).

Biden appeals to ______ in order to….
This is evidence when he said, “...
This shows his appeal to _____ because…
By using this appeal, Biden hopes to…

Group Activity #2: Defensible Thesis Statements

This is an activity that I have used for a couple years. It is a simple review of what makes a thesis statement defensible.

​Here again is the PowerPoint with notes below.

• Slide 1: I use this meme to explain that a vague thesis is a common issue.
  
• Slide 2: I briefly review the criteria from the AP FRQ rubrics. I make sure to cover the common mistakes: summarizing, off-task, and restating information.
  
• Slide 3: Together, we read through an original prompt. I ask them to direct me to the task statement. (I also use this opportunity to explain stable wording and clues they’ll have to direct them to a task statement). We then read through the passage or watch the video of Boyega speaking at Hyde Park. Before I start, I ask students to look out for rhetorical choices.
  
• Slide 4-7: After a short partner debrief, I take students through the sample thesis statements. I have them do “thumbs up” / “thumbs down” if they would give the writer the thesis point. For each, I have someone with the correct answer explain why.
  
• Slide 8: Before the activity, we recap what makes a thesis defensible. 
  
• Slide 9: Then, the students will compose an example and a non-example for a defensible thesis. ​