Test Prep or Teaching?

A six-foot-ish seventh grade student sits with knees pressing the desk nearly off the floor, hunched over his device scrolling up and down to solve the mathematics equations of the new-not-new state test. The once blanket of snow beyond the window over his shoulder is melting. Specks of brownish grass surrounded by mini puddles of mud wait for this tween to slosh through the patch for track practice, and this six-foot-ish student’s knees want that, too, but first the test — for three mornings this week, for two mornings next.

The test means nothing to this tween or the students grades three through eight testing up to ten hours for the state. It is a state assessment and accountability measure. It is for the state. The students feel stressed, uncomfortable, and often confused, given, in middle school, not every student is in the same level of math and reading. As a teacher, I am not opposed to testing by fear of being held accountable; rather, I am motivated by the ethics of “good” teaching, responsive instruction-assessment cycles, and creative curriculum design that do not align with standardized tests, which, by definition is standardized and not personalized.

While I could resist or encourage opting-out, there would still be students like this six-foot-ish tween faced with stressful testing conditions. Instead, I chose to make very visible how what we do every day together — in our community of readers and writers– translates to the test (content-wise) so that they do not feel daunted by the tasks. After all, there are stories and articles to read.

The moves I offer here, in this post, look like “test prep” because they are in a way. I teach and facilitate transfer from the authentic writing we do in our writers’ and readers’ workshop to the state test. I plan moments to implicitly and explicitly prepare all students for what to do when they see certain phrases and tasks because kids don’t deserve to be in situations that make them think, Why is she typing so much while I can’t even figure out how to begin? What is this question even asking me to do? Why can’t I write my own story?

After looking over the state testing examples and prep books available online, I know that all students will be asked to 1) write a narrative, and 2) write a text comparison essay, so that is the focus of this post.

Narrative Writing

As I have written elsewhere, we do a quick write every day. We write for seven minutes on a variety of topics, but the students, above all, like writing stories — narratives. Back in August, we began writing a short biography of a classmate; I explicitly taught narrative writing moves– sensory language, dialogue, inner thoughts, gestures of characters, events developing the theme. For months, now, students have been integrating new moves that they teach one another. Every week is a new grammar topic researched then taught by a student — complex and compound sentences; appositives; em dash; parentheses; use of semicolons to break up description; anaphora for emphasis; asyndeton for pace: emphasizing action by beginning sentences with gerunds and infinitives. By this time of the year (March), students can write one or two notebook pages of a story. At the end of every term, we add to the notebook’s table of contents, and students can see what they can do (and love to do) in brief writing episodes.

And then to prove that students could still write well under slightly mores stressful conditions, I handed students a very short story from the state test materials along with the prompt: to rewrite the story from the point of view from another character. I watched as students began with a sensory setting lead, used dialogue (with accurate paragraphing and punctuation), included gestures and inner thoughts of characters, and used similar pacing as the original story — nearly the same length. We posted these on our class blog and read and responded to one another. Students said they could do it but felt restricted by the plot line.

We share our stories every week in our open mic on Fridays to learn from and be inspired by our writing community. This week, one student asked if he could present his the test prep narrative (after he added a few plot twists of his own). He wanted an audience, someone to read and respond to his work.

Text Comparison Essay

I have written three columns for The ALAN Review, and while I do compare books as they relate to the issue’s theme, I have never written a literary comparison for any reason other than a test, but I can see the value in comparison and connection across texts, and I might take such an essay in the future. Thinking about the work we had done with choice, whole class, and small group reading, I could help students synthesize their reading experiences in a meaningful way and then explicitly teach how the literary language and concepts transfer to the state test tasks.

Looking over sample test questions and responses for the text comparison essay, it was clear that students would read two or more stories or essays, answer text-based questions (having to return to the text for evidence), and write an essay that compared the writing: “write an essay describing how each narrator’s point of view influences how these events are described”; “write an essay that identifies a similar theme in each text and compares and contrast the approaches each text used to develop this theme”; “write an essay in which you identify a theme from each text and analyze how each theme is developed”; “write an essay analyzing how the narrators have different points of view from their parents and how these differences create tension in both stories.”

Clearly, the students needs to understand that the state is asking for the test-taker to show they can write an essay in a comparison text structure, and this is for every grade. I am not opposed to comparison. Comparing is an effective way to deepen understanding: How are these similar? How are these different? Why does it matter?

The way I design curriculum has lots of layers, and students are always working on something new while deepening their understanding of something prior; we have routines every Wednesday to try new writing techniques and every Friday share stories and interpret poetry. All of this provides students with opportunities to develop those skills and thinking incrementally. Comparison and connection are part of this learning and growth. Below are a few of the experiences that support students in thinking comparatively, and in the week prior to testing, I tried to make this explicit for seventh graders.

Infographic Comparison

From January to March, students wrote a four-part blog series about a topic of interest. They explore the topic using different text structures: description, sequence, comparison, and spoken word. The infographic was a great way to introduce (or reinforce) the comparison text structure. Students planned a graphic in their notebooks around the idea of how their topic is confused with something else; for example, two positions in a sport; two forms of art. The student-writer had to think about the categories or points of comparison; in an essay, these would be topic sentences. And the student had to think of audience. We posted these on our blogs and wrote comments to one another about what we learned and how.

Theme Statement

This term, students participated in two rounds of book groups: for one, the book was set in America; for the other, the book was set in another country. The book group members focuses on the “how” of these books, as in how they were written: the language the authors used to create tone and mood; how changes in the setting symbolize theme (a park could mean safety or danger); how interactions between characters supported or agitated the characters; how passages illuminated reflections of human conditions locally and globally.

Toward the end of the first book group, I conducted a mini-lesson on theme statements to emphasize the difference between subjects the book explores and the author’s position on those subjects as demonstrated by the “how” of the book, the writing.

I began with a sentence: In The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton presents the idea grief is something shared across social classes. I asked students what examples from the book would support this statement. After a brief discussion, I asked if we could change out the word “grief” for another subject like “family” and how that would impact the statement: “…family is not define by blood but by deeds.” Could we find details to support that statement — events from the book, conversations between characters, the way the book ended?

I asked students to meet in their groups do develop a theme statement (or several) and then come to the whiteboard to share. They negotiated the language in these statements, which illuminate how challenging it can be to conflate several hundred pages of a book to one sentence. To check their statements, they began listing just “how” the author developed this idea — point of view, time period, settings, characters, events, symbols, conflict, resolution.

Poetry Theme Statements

On Fridays, two students present a poem and lead a discussion of the poem’s speaker, subject, tone, figurative language, and theme. Every week, we practice writing writing theme statements and supporting the statement with “how” the poet develops it. Then, the class discusses other poem, books, movies that share a similar theme. Students take notes on the poem and create a chart to make visible what they know and how they know it (see below for Wordsworth’s “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways”; note this student negotiating theme with two ideas). Over time, students become comfortable with this protocol and begin to see how different poets use the form, speaker, and figurative language to craft perspective on our humanity.

Comparison Essay: Quick Writes

I integrated comparison essay topics for our quick writes. I used images as our texts and practiced Visual Thinking Strategies to support students in identifying points of comparison in the images. Then, I connected the infographic form with the quick write: what’s being compared; what are the points of comparison; how are they similar and/or different. The image about justice and quality in education was a great one for our class — it has gone around Facebook for a while with different iterations.

Students quickly identified the image on the left was about equality (everyone has the same box) but that it did not work for everyone, noticing the shortest person did not a line of sight nor hands raised. The image on the right was closer to justice, but still there is a fence, which is symbolic of still having obstacles. They “read” the image well and, after discussion and some text-structure support, many were able to construct several paragraphs with ease.

A few of these integrated in our daily writing helped students become more comfortable with the moves in the text structure before having to synthesize direct quotes from a written text.

Comparison Essay: Books

Once students were just about finished with their second book group, we repeated the whiteboard exercise, and then I asked them to do a very quick outline of a comparison essay comparing the themes of their books. I posed a question: Devoid, adjective, entirely lacking or free from. Most main characters are devoid of something — love, peace, shelter, safety, sanity, friendship, morals,loyalty, kindness, acceptance. Ponyboy was devoid of parents, devoid of acceptance from the Socs, devoid of relationships with his big brother. Think about the main character in the two books you read. What were they devoid of and how did they try to get or meet that need?

One student who read Anderson’s Posted and Venkatrman’s A Time to Dance clearly identified a framework for her comparison essay to demonstrate her understanding of the way the author was revealing aspects of humanity in these books.

1a) Frost was devoid of money, a cell phone, and good relationship with his dad. 1b) Veda is devoid of her leg and, temporarily, dance.

2) Frost attempts to fill the void by trusting friends and other family members.

3) Veda attempts to fill the void by getting a prosthetic leg and learning how to dance in a new way.

4)Both characters had awful things happen to them or the people they love. They try as hard as they can to correct the problem to improve their situation and fill the void. Frost tries to bring his friends back after fighting, and Veda tries to learn how to dance again, just like she used to. Below are several other examples.

theme-development-2019

Concluding Thoughts

I have no doubt that my students understand how authors develop a story, how a text is crafted to move hearts and minds. They have read poems, drama, news articles, essays, spoken word, images, and lots and lots of books. They have written hundreds of pages in their notebooks and thousands of words in formal essays in a range of text structures, for a range of audiences and purposes. They have taught lessons on syntax, lead discussions of interpretations. All this, however, was for our class. They did not do this for a foreign entity without a body’s heart or mind.

What this test prep or teaching?

I know that, when faced with a cursor and text box, my students have the ability to write a narrative and a text comparison essay if they choose to, if they can find a “why” as their knees press desks off the floor, as hearts race with test anxiety, as minds ask “who is my audience.” I just don’t have the heart to tell them that their writing will likely be scored by a computer program and never read by a human being.