Inspiring students to write

This winter, and now thank goodness spring, I've been working by videoconference with two classrooms in Missoula, Montana, helping them with their writing projects, through iNK Think Tank's Authors on Call program, posted publicly at http://district1missoula-dorothyhinshawpatent.wikispaces.com/.  At Franklin School I'm working with fourth graders, and this month they are sidelined by testing.  But the third graders at Lewis and Clark School have finished their project.  My book, "When the Wolves Returned: Restoring Nature's Balance in Yellowstone," is their guide to writing well, and they have been working very hard at it.

In our first videoconference, I talked to them about the importance of beginning a story with something mysterious or exciting, with a beginning, middle, and end, just like a little story in itself.   Each student is writing about a member of the deer family.  Here is Oliver's first paragraph:

"Imagine walking through the woods.  You see something with fangs.  A lion? A wolf? A sabertooth tiger?  No.  It is a musk deer, the only deer with fangs."

Another student wrote:

"On an early foggy morning you can hear distant clanking in the air. As the fog clears you can see two kudu. You come closer and can that their horns are interlocking. They are pulling and tugging but can't get separated."

Wouldn't you want to read more?

In our second videoconference, students were able to read their beginning paragraphs to me, and I gave them specific advice on how to improve the writing.  When an author makes suggestions, the students accept them very easily, while sometimes if it's a parent or teacher making suggestions they aren't as willing to make the changes.

The students are carefully studying my writing and noting down the "powerful" words I use and looking them up if they are unfamiliar with them.  Then they compare them with "ordinary" words I could have used:

I'm very proud of these young writers who are working so hard to do their best, and I think having a "live" author work directly with them to help them with their  difficulties can lead not only to rapid improvement in their work but also in increased enthusiasm about writing and reading.

If you want to know more about our work with students in the classroom, go to www.inkthinktank.com/authors-on-call .

Authors on Call

iNK Think Tank has been pioneering a new kind of interaction with schools through Authors on Call, a group of nine nonfiction authors who are equipped to do interactive videoconferencing.  (Many authors now Skype but there are other ivc technologies that some schools prefer.)   We call our programs Class ACTS where “ACTS” is an acronym for Authors Collaborating with Teachers and Students.  They are not exactly school visits nor are they professional development for teachers but a hybrid that takes the books and expertise of an author and “bakes” it into the classroom experience with the “buy in” of the teachers and the students. Andrea Warren wrote up her Class ACTS experience and posted it on this blog here.  Let me give you some other examples.

I have been working with, Sarah Svarda, a media specialist from Discovery School in Murfreesboro, TN.  She is using me as a mentor to help her 120 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grade library students learn how to do research.  She teaches these students once or twice a week and since she has so many students and interactive videoconferencing is more effective with groups of 40 or less (so that kids can ask questions) we decided that I would meet the students in smaller groups over the period of time that they were doing their research. Sarah would then model the lesson to the other students who didn’t  interact with me. So I met with the 4^th grade just when they were starting the program, then with the 5^th grade as they were several weeks into their research to help direct it more specifically, and then with the 6^th grade as they were starting to write.  I have one more session to go, which will be some kind of wrap-up.  

The students’ original idea of “research” is to look something up in an encyclopedia (or Wikipedia) and write up what they find, which often includes verbatim material, and turn it in the next day as homework.   So, in effect, I was teaching them what I do when I start a project—a long term process that changes over time.  As it happens, I’m just beginning a new book on hurricanes, so I do what all nonfiction authors do.  I went to the library and took out every book on hurricanes I could lay my hands on.  I showed the kids my pile of 25+ books and told them that I start by reading a lot of sources.  This was a real eye-opener for them. I told them that I don’t read every book but that I look at all the books and read the ones that grab me first.  This was another eye-opener—comparing sources and expressing preferences for different writers.   In addition to the 4 videoconferences, Sarah and I also chronicle what we do on a wiki—a communal document.  You can see the wiki for our work, as can parents and other people in the public, but only Sarah and I can write on it.  Read it from the bottom up to get the chronology of our progress.  

We are also working with a group of teachers in PA.  Sue Sheffer is a retired educator working with the York School District on a Library of Congress grant to help teachers use primary source material.  The group is scheduling sessions with our history authors: Roz Schanzer, Carla McClafferty, Jim Murphy, Andrea Warren  plus  Myra Zarnowski, our children’s lit consultant,who wrote a terrific book for teachers: Making Sense of History.   The raves for each author have been off the charts.

Alexandra Siy is working with teachers from Lewis and Clark Elementary in Missoula, MT.  They are using her book Cars on Mars as a mentor text for their own research.  Here is the link to their wiki.  Again, the enthusiasm for the program is unequivocally positive. 

Here’s what our Class ACTS programs offer that is different from a school visit or professional development for teachers:

1.      Author school visits are considered “enrichment.”  Class ACTS are programs that are aligned with the curriculum and the classroom work of the students. They take place over a period of time from two weeks to several months.  They bring the excitement of a school visit to daily work, although the author isn't present on a daily basis.  Since a Class ACTS program is no ephemeral one-shot, it can be transformative for students.
2.       An author visit is about the author and the author’s book.  Class ACTS is about students and their work.  The shift is to the “demand” side of the school money—it’s where the rubber meets the road in terms of results, so here authors can make a profound difference. Students are discovering that doing work in depth produces a more thoughtful learning experience than simply “covering” material. And content is now starting to matter again.
3.       All educators know that the key to learning is motivation.  When students are motivated they will do the hard work of learning.  Having an author involved in the process provides motivation.  Studies have shown that another character trait exhibited by successful people is grit.  I maintain that none of us nonfiction authors would be here without it.  We also exemplify the skills mandated by the Common Core Standards.
4.        Scheduling is much more flexible than a school visit because it’s just a short time during the day and you don’t need travel time, etc.  So the videoconferences are booked with a short lead time and are given at the optimum time for the students.
5.        Teachers find that all day professional development sessions  are not nearly as useful as having a personal learning network—a place to go to ask a quick question on an as needed basis.  Through Class ACTS, an author becomes a part of the teachers’ pln with very positive outcomes. 

Last year, Authors on Call piloted a program with many authors and one school.  This year we have sold  a variety of programs and we’re learning all the time.  Here’s some of what we’re discovering:

1.       The teachers we’re working with this year are PHENOMENAL.  Make no mistake, there is a lot of extra work figuring out how to use us and our books and our skills so that students benefit.  The teachers we’re currently working with are early adopters who see something for themselves in taking a risk and doing something different.  As a result, they are, perhaps, a self-selected group totally committed to their students and are doing the lion's share of the work.  We authors are learning from them in this truly collaborative effort. I have no doubt that our incredibly successful outcomes are due to the quality of the teachers we’re working with.
2.       Last year, in our pilot program, the best teachers were the ones that signed on first.  They created a bandwagon effect with other teachers joining in because they didn't want to be left out.  But the teachers who joined later were not as effective
3.       A successful program depends on planning, collaboration and commitment. But the rewards are beyond anything anyone imagined in terms of student output.  It is humbling to see how much talent children have when you give them the opportunity to strive, think, create and shine.
4.       It takes patience for a new idea to take hold.  The success of Authors on Call depends on schools that have the videoconferencing technology to understand the value of books and authors and for schools that appreciate books and authors getting the technology.  We’re moving forward, however, and Authors on Call is leading the way. 

For more information on Class ACTS programs, you can download  a pdf of our brochure here.

Guest Blogger Andrea Warren on Using Nonfiction to Help 5th Graders Think About Family History

I have asked author and journalist Andrea Warren to write in my place this month. Andrea has written seven esteemed books about young people who have experienced extreme personal challenges as a result of extreme historical circumstances that changed their lives. Andrea is a member of iNK's Authors On Call videoconferencing group, and she writes about her videoconference experience with a school in New York City.

David  

What's it like to serve as an author-consultant in the schools? I’ve just completed my first experience, and I loved every minute of it.  

As one of the iNK “Authors on Call,” I worked with fifth grade faculty and students at PS 49 in Queens, New York, on a two-week study of the orphan trains. For those who don’t know, the placing out program that came to be known as the orphan trains was the brainchild of Charles Loring Brace and New York City’s Children’s Aid Society. CAS started a number of fine programs to assist poor children. Brace believed that every child needed a family. He did not like institutional care and was especially concerned about street children, many of whom were the sons and daughters of down-on-their-luck immigrants. He theorized that if he could get homeless youngsters to good-hearted farm couples who could afford to feed an additional child and could also benefit from another pair of hands to help with all the work, that they would step up to either foster or adopt one of the train children. A few experiments lent support to his notion, and thus started a movement that over a 75-year period sent nearly 250,000 children west via trains to new homes.

The 5^th grade teaching team at PS 49 had each student read my book Orphan Train Rider: One Boy’s True Story. I suggested supplemental materials, including my young readers nonfiction book, We Rode the Orphan Trains.

We agreed that I would do four Skype sessions. The first was with the teaching team to discuss planning for the unit. They wanted students to understand the history, economics, and culture of the 1850s when the orphan trains began. I made some suggestions and then pulled together some research to assist them. When we had our second Skype session, they were further down the road with their preparation. They had used many of my suggestions and we had a lively discussion.

Then I had a Skype session with the students and talked with them about a variety of subjects related to the orphan trains. The students were well prepared with questions. Many of them come from immigrant families. We talked about the value of them interviewing family members whose stories they did not know. I gave them examples of how they could start their interviews and the importance of taping these to preserve their relative’s voice. The students were lively and engaged during our session. The teachers reported that they bubbled over with enthusiasm about doing interviews and were also excited that they’d met a “real” author.

Instead of a second Skype session with students, the teachers chose to have a third Skype session with me so they could review how the unit had gone. They shared essays the students had written and they reported that many students had gone above and beyond in their research and in buying books for themselves to expand their learning. Among their in-class writing assignments was one in which each student imagined being the eldest child in a large family who was told to go fend for himself or herself on the streets because the family had too many mouths to feed. This assignment helped students imagine how lost and helpless some of the children were who boarded orphan trains. The teachers had some additional questions about how students could interview relatives and asked how students could proceed if their relative was resistant. Again I offered suggestions.

Altogether I invested between 20-25 hours in my initial preparation, additional research to assist the teachers, participation in four Skype sessions, and all the e-mails and other communication that took place. After our final session, Paul Longo, who coordinated my work with the school, said that the unit was a professional high point for several of the teachers. He wrote, “I think this experience has confirmed some of their best instincts as teachers and that has been made possible by you and the good work you have done in your writing and sharing. The whole experience has been extremely positive for all of us on our end of the exchange.”

On my end, too! Should I have other opportunities to serve as a consultant, I will certainly do so. It’s one more way we authors can bring our work to educators and students, and assist in exploring and fulfilling the goals of the CCSS. And it’s a great way to connect with students in the classroom—which in my book is always a joy. 

Getting Involved with Learning

I’m sitting at a table in a condo in Whitefish, MT, not far from the Canadian border, on a writing retreat with two writer buddies, Peggy Christian and Jeanette Ingold. Jeanette writes YA contemporary and historical fiction (most recently “Paper Daughter”, about a Chinese American girl whose internship on a Seattle newspaper launches her into a mystery from the past) , and Peggy has written fiction for young people in the past (“The Bookstore Mouse”) and is now developing a blog (Backwoodsandbeyond.com).

At breakfast we pondered Vicki Cobb’s question for us nonfiction Ink Thinkers—what does our writing bring to the table that’s special, that makes us unique, that enriches the material we write about in a special way? As we talked, I realized that it isn’t just us nonfiction writers who uniquely help ‘educate’ our readers about the world—all good writers do the same thing, perhaps sometimes in different ways.

Historical fiction like Jeanette’s (she always aims to make sure that her information is 100% historically accurate) is a particularly obvious example—when Jeanette drops her characters down into a real situation, such as the terrible firestorm that engulfed the mountain west in 1910, in her book, “The Big Burn,” readers come away with an understanding of this event that’s seared into their memories. The characters may be made-up people, but their experiences of the fire are those of real people who went through that terrible time.

What does my nonfiction book, “Fire: Friend or Foe,” give readers that they couldn’t glean from Jeanette’s story? My work may cover some of the same territory, but it offers a broader view of the role of fire in the world. I can step back from a story like the 1910 fires to provide a greater context for that event, and I can help explain the various factors involved when wildfires rage, as well as provide a modern perspective on that fire’s role in shaping America’s attitudes and policies during the 20^th century and into the 21^st.

Perhaps historical fiction offers a way for readers to become more personally involved in a topic they are learning about. In a way, they are participating in the event, and personal involvement helps integrate information into our brains. A student might read “The Big Burn” and become intensely curious about wildfire, then turn to “Fire: Friend or Foe” for more information. It’s great the way fiction and nonfiction can complement each other.

As we discussed this issue, Peggy commented that when their family lived in New Zealand for three years, her sons were taught science totally experientially. For example, teams of fourth grade students were challenged to figure out how to build a raft that would hold the weight of a student crossing the swimming pool from just two long sticks, some garbage bags, and tape. The early designs failed, resulting in lots of dripping wet students, but eventually, the children realized that if they broke the sticks and used the pieces to make a sturdy triangle support for the plastic, the raft would succeed. What better way to show how triangular shapes impart strength and stability?

The members of Authors on Call, the part of Ink Think Tank that consults with teachers via videoconferencing, are partnering with teachers at Bogert School in New Jersey to integrate experiential learning into the curriculum using our books as tools for discovery. In the process, fifth graders created videos demonstrating geological phenomena and in the process came to understand our restless earth in a way they otherwise wouldn’t have; fourth graders created their own book about government that brims with creative touches such as characters speaking their ideas in cartoonlike balloons, which helps emphasize the most important information; and third grade students have exclaimed with wonder about our fascinating solar system by going to the NASA website online to discover information for themselves, rather than just reading facts from a textbook. And that’s just results from the first three author/teacher/student partnerships so far completed. There's more to come!