The End is the Beginning

This experience has been a Disneyland-like adventure ride. I wasn’t quite sure where it was going, there was a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), and I am still staggering under the weight of what was intended but, maybe not fully absorbed.

That’s it. It was like a lottery.

Or, maybe a shot-in-the-dark.

Staring the School Day with Writing

Well sports fans, this blogfest is ending with a beginning. The start of this writer’s school day will begin with a ticket to enter or as the authors called it, the admit slip.

The admit slip asks the student to bring to class a short piece of writing the next day. This sounds suspiciously like homework. My experience with 8^th grade homework was that it was the least participatory activity of the day, the quarter, the entire grading period. But, that is an unnecessary digression.

The admit slip can be written on a note card that can actually be made to look like a ticket to a great event. The only limit to realism is the teacher’s creativity and use of artistic skill. Art, science and mathematics are all process oriented. Therefore, we science and math teacher types should be able to make short work of the creation phase.

So, what’s the deal with the assignment? Students should reflect (there’s that word again) upon the previous evening’s reading assignment (the homework ogre again) or something that happened during the last class meeting. Student arrival triggers the start of the class period. Hmmm….it sounds like it has a strong relationship to the “ticket to leave.” The major difference the authors point out is that the teacher hasn’t had a chance to read it yet.

A Possible Remedy

My sense of the obvious tells me that the admit slip is more complicated because the teacher has little control or ability to get cheerful cooperation. It is again, homework.  I favor a frontal assault on the problem. The admit slip should be an everyday requirement. If a student arrives without it, he or she must stand outside the classroom to complete it before being admitted to the class. The idea is to make sure there is no incentive for non-compliance. I meant, cheerful cooperation. Cooperation versus compliance. That is what we strive to achieve in developing our classroom management style (E. Emmer and C. Evertson, Classroom Management for Middle and High School Teachers 2013, P 6, Paragraph 4).

I think making up admit slips is going to be funnnnnnn. Admittedly admit slips (no alliteration intended) are a tough writing to learn tool to embrace. Below are some of the author’s creation suggestions for different content areas.

Social Studies

·         How would the United States have been different if FDR lost the election in 1932?

·         Of the three main causes of the Civil War, which do you think was the most important and why?

English

·         What do you think would happen to this character is X happened? Why?

·         If you could submit questions to the author, what would you ask?

Math

·         How could this formula be applied to a real-life situation?

·         Pick one problem from chapter X and write down in words the steps you would take to solve it.

Science

·         Make a drawing of a plant near your home and explain how its structures are similar to those found in your text book.

·         Explain the advantages and disadvantages of indicators versus meters.

Finally, I believe that admit tickets and tickets to leave are both writing to learn (WTL) and classroom management tools. This blog has talked about the use of the WTL. As a classroom management tool the tickets are valuable as routines.

A Step Back Before Moving On

So, how do we put the writing we have been hearing about to work? 

The authors vote for two simple strategies. The first is to make the WTL first and last. First when the day begins as a warm up or bell ringer; first as in the beginning exercise for a new unit; last as the final activity before leaving class. It’s all about activating thinking.

The Beginning - The New Unit

We’re all familiar with the Know, Want to Know, Learned (KWL) exercise. It is a useful tool that can help students access prior knowledge, predict what they do not know about a subject or set goals for their learning, and after all is said and done it can alert the teacher to what knowledge has been gained, what misconceptions have occurred and provide clues about how to proceed.

Along the Way Through the Lesson, Unit, Semester

The authors believe that WTLs should be used constantly to help students stop and collect their thoughts, sort out ideas, notice and hold their thinking (about the current lesson), review and adjust goals (take responsibility for their learning), and move on to the launch pad of progression through the lesson, unit, lab, etc. The writing break is a prelude to other forms of short writing that will help students do more than memorize facts and roll them into answers. Synthesis is the next step. It is taking things that have been learned and combining them into something new.

Think about the following analogy. Flour, yeast, eggs, sugar, salt, water, oil, baking soda, and vanilla are ingredients that are known. A bowl is a receptacle for initially holding them. An oven can be the source of the catalyst (heat in this case) that can transform the ingredients. A certain type of pan (baking pan) can be used to contain the catalytic reaction. The ingredients are mixed together, poured into the baking pan, transferred to the oven, heat applied and after a certain amount of time the ingredients, with the help of kinetic and heat energy, containment vessels and the application of a carefully thought out sequence of events is transformed into a cake. The resultant cake bears no resemblance to what started as separate components, morphed into a soupy mixture and was subjected to a reaction chamber.

Hmmmm….sounds like the churning process inside an inquiring mind that combines information and turns it into something that is more than the sum of the bits of information and instructions that went in-synthesis.

Discussion

Writing is not enough verbal exchange or discussion is required. Confusius and Edgar Dale agree that doing creates understanding. But how can large-group discussion provide the “do” component of the learning process. It can’t because only one student at a time can interact with the discussion leader while the others wait, wait, wait, lose interest. That is why lots of valuable topic talk must be done “student-to-student.”  The authors argue that it can be used on its own or as a prelude to stronger but shorter whole-class discussions.

Short writing plus focus begets synthesis which equals retention.