PromptapaloozaComplete3

In this podcast episode, the speaker reflects on their experience with writing prompts and how they have evolved their approach over time. They discuss the importance of allowing students to have a voice and agency in their writing, rather than just focusing on formulaic structures. The speaker also explores the idea of using open-ended questions as a way to assess comprehension and engage students in meaningful discussions. They emphasize the value of individual perspectives and the importance of creating a safe space for students to share their thoughts. Additionally, the speaker mentions the use of critical lenses in analyzing texts and how this can shape writing topics. They believe that giving students the opportunity to choose their own prompts leads to better engagement and quality of writing. Building trust and a sense of community in the classroom is seen as crucial for encouraging student participation. Hi, I'm Jen Curtis and I love connecting with people in the world of education, whether it's about curating learning spaces, strategies for specific writing instruction, or searching for the ever-elusive work-life balance, we're here to get into it. Welcome to Do You Even Pedagogy. Hello and welcome to Episode 3 of Do You Even Pedagogy. This episode is called Prompt-a-Palooza and it's all about the writing prompt. I provided prompts for years with students and it made sense in the moment, right? I want to make sure that kids are focusing on the acts of writing and the process of writing versus thinking about content too much. And you're just trying to focus on the formulaic claim, evidence, explanation, etc. So it bodes well when you're working with younger writers and so they can kind of dial in on the writing process. But looking back, I kind of wish that I had allowed for more voice from the students. Maybe that would have made a difference, you know, in the final product. So I think about the job that I had previously and I was working with students who had some issues with language processing, so the writing instruction was very, very explicit, you know? Not necessarily line by line, but you were really breaking into sentence structure and sentence diagramming, etc. And I thought in the moment, well, if I give them the ideas, they can focus on the writing. But, you know, as I look back more on it, I do think maybe my product would have been different if I had given them more agency, you know, and more voice. So I'm really focusing on that now with my juniors. You know, it takes more time. It takes more discussion. It takes more, you know, it takes that cognitive work that sometimes as teachers we get frustrated with because we really just want to get to it, we want to get to the writing. But I do think it makes a better product, you know? I think it makes them produce a better piece of writing. And I've been talking with students more about this. And my goal for this podcast is to add some discussions with kids at the end of the podcast. And I have some volunteers, which is really cool. This was born from attempting to understand what kids were retaining from readings. You know, I want to find a new way of assessing comprehension. That's where it came from. So the idea was instead of doing a comprehension quiz, which, you know, some kids didn't do well on those, even though I know they did the writing. So it was frustrating for them. It was frustrating for me. Then there was a little bit of panic about, you know, scores and having to do retakes. And so I'm really just trying to look outside of the box and figure out, is there a better way to do this? So I started asking students, and I'm just realizing that I have this very sultry voice because I've been sick, so sorry about that. What is a better homework assignment other than reading and, you know, trying to retain every single detail? So right now, or back when I started doing this, I had students come up with two to three open-ended questions. And, of course, we parsed that out, like, what's an open-ended question? How do you decide if it's open-ended, you know, basically more than just a yes or no, but something that's got some teeth to it? And they're coming into the room with two to three open-response questions. So what I found that was really interesting is, you know, I know that I'm older and I know that they're younger, but the truth is that they always have different perspectives that I don't have anymore because I'm a study buddy, right? They're 17. They're 18. They're looking at text and having a totally unique experience because they are individuals, A, and they're teenagers. Their lens and their perspective of the entire world is really different. So their takeaways and their open-response questions that they created from the readings were always nuanced and unique and varied and different and so impressive. Every single time I do this activity or this strategy, I'm always reminded why I do it, right? The kids come up with brilliant questions. What I really like about it is that it allows you as the teacher, me as the teacher, to give some really specific academic praise and also really be encouraging. None of it's ever false. It's all authentic. But when kids can write their prompts on the board and we can do kind of a gallery walk and everyone talks about their open-ended questions, their open-ended questions, you can stop and say, hey, did anyone else think of this? This is really unique. This is really different. That's a really great idea. And then other kids will kind of chime in about their question and how it related. And you end up having this really positive experience where kids know that they can share. And they also know that their perspective is valued, right? Not only from the teacher, but from their peers. So I think in that way, it also, although there's commonalities to it, it's kind of like your palate, you know, when you're eating or some person next to you can despise the taste that you love or how perfume smells different on every single person and smells different to that person. Reading and literature is the same thing. And isn't that what makes it so magical and cool? Because you can read a book next to someone and they will walk away with a totally different experience based on their own, you know, their own lives, their own lived experiences. And that's what I think makes reading so amazing. So in the same way that music and lyrics can be so personal to someone, I feel like text and literature can offer the same benefit. So we've been playing around with my, with the ideas of critical lenses and critical reading theory with my colleagues. And that helps, too, when you're doing reading prompts, because if you want your students, I mean, at the end of the day, the question is, how do I get kids to be engaged, invested in the writing that they're doing? I want them to work on a common text. But I want them to write about something that they actually care about. As I say that sometimes, you know, I kind of want to chortle a little bit because a lot of teachers know that they're selling a product that nobody wants to purchase sometimes. But you know, that's the deal. And you know that when you have a book, for the most part, when there's a book in hands of kids, even at the high school level, it doesn't matter, there's engagement, right? And so I want those kids to feel like what they're going to write about is the thing that they actually care about. I want them to know that I do truly want to hear what they have to say about that topic that they care so much about. And it sounds kind of touchy-feely and hippy-dippy, but the truth is that that is really where the good stuff is. The writing is so much better when I put kids in the driver's seat and they can choose to write about whatever they want to write about. It's always, it's always better. And there's way more engagement, right? They know that their voice is important, they feel heard, and the truth is that it takes a while to develop trust. Because I've said to kids before, I really want to hear what you have to say, I really want to hear your opinion. And the truth is that you have to, for me personally, that takes a while for kids to really believe that. She really, does she really want to hear what I have to say, or is she just looking for a cookie-cutter response that, you know, 15 other kids in the room are doing? No. But that takes time. It takes time to build that relationship. And that's why, as teachers, we spend so much time when we first meet, you know, new students really building, really building a community, honestly, where kids know they can say things and they know they can write things and that they're in a safe space to do so. I know some people are super tired of the phrase safe space, but it's real, it's legit, and you know, when you don't have a safe space in your classroom, it's going to definitely come out in the products your kids are producing. So getting back to a critical lens or critical reading theory, the idea around this, and I know you probably all know about this, but it was newer to me. So I've been focusing on that as part of my professional practice goal, and really just focusing on the social structure lens. They call it the Marxist lens, but basically, you know, like hierarchies in society. And another lens is the gender feminist theory, right? How does this look? If you put your position of looking at this from a gender perspective, like what are the things that are jumping off the page? And another one that we're really focusing on is the historical lens. You know, like what's going on in our country at this time that would shape how you're looking at this text. And it's interesting because of course, sometimes they all bleed into each other, right? But you know, because if you have a historical lens and you're looking back in time when, you know, women were barely allowed to vote, obviously there's going to be some overlay with a gender and a feminist perspective. But it really does shift how kids are looking at the text. And that's where if you really want to shape a, you know, a writing topic, and you really want it to be in a certain direction, I think you can use critical lenses to do that. And you can have kids say, okay, I really want you to do this open response or whatever from the lens of the female in this narrative, right? And then you can kind of get it more structured if that's what you're looking for. But when you're doing a bigger essay, when I'm doing a bigger essay, this is the most recent work we've done, I really ask the kids to develop their own prompts. So, you know, going back to using the opportunity of homework to create open-ended questions, I kind of started from there. And then I also have them do any sort of notes, right? If you're reading chapters, I want you to do notes, but we did a little unit on sketch notes. Sketch notes are super cool. I can link in the show notes, there's a just a little YouTube video that I use with some great graphics and some kids glom onto it, right? And it lets them use those writing strengths and those drawing strengths to kind of shape something on a page that makes more sense to them than, you know, written traditional notes. So from all of this, this is where A, you know, you're building the trust, your voice matters, but also you're getting all of this content. So when they go to write after they've read something and they've had some time, you know, to really chew on, okay, we've been reading this book, what keeps coming up for you? What is kind of maybe annoying? What do you know a lot about? Because that's where you're going to get good writing. When kids get ticked off about something, I feel like the writing can get better, you know, because they have a lot to say. That's where you can have an argument. And at the end of the day, the thesis is kind of an argument, right? You're proving a point. So putting those things together has been definitely impactful. I've seen better writing since I started using this more consistently. We also do an anthology project in the junior year, and that is, and the kids want to vomit every time we introduce it, right, because it's 20 pages of original writing. But it is actually really manageable, and I will get into the anthology in another episode, but it is far and away the best writing I ever get from students because I don't have, you know, you have to write a five-paragraph essay on comparing and contrasting on the waterfront and the crucible, whatever. They can do that if they want. They can take an old essay that I've edited and give it back to them, and they can edit it, make it better, add on a chunk, that can count towards their anthology. But the reason I started doing the open-ended and the prompts is because of this anthology project. It just really opened up my eyes that when I kind of take my foot off the brake a little bit and I give them a lot more freedom, and they're unbridled, really, it's just the writing that they come up with is just so much more articulate, authentic, and really an expression of how they feel about what you've spent the last, you know, five weeks working on.