Authentic Note Taking

After reading about Ariel Sacks' note taking process in Whole Novels for the Whole Class, it seemed like a variation of the Question-Answer Relationship method (QAR) although she never mentions QAR. A major difference though between her method and QAR is that students categorize their responses before learning to categorize questions while the QAR method starts with students categorizing questions. Both, however, encourage students to recognize varying levels of thinking and to recognize signal words that elicit different types of thinking.

Sacks: The Three Kinds of Thinking
Sacks introduces different kinds of thinking to her students by asking them to relax, kick back, and listen to a story she tells. She believes storytelling is more novel and thus more powerful than simply reading aloud, but the amount of time it would take to memorize a folktale or short story makes me hesitant to stick with the storytelling suggestion.

At the conclusion of the story, Sacks asks, "What did you notice?" This open-ended question is lauded in numerous reading texts, but the first time you pose it, be prepared for some wait-time. I've found kids are a bit at a loss when the question isn't structured, yet it accomplishes the goal: thinking! It's important to remember though that all comments are valid. You can't ask an open-ended question like "What did you notice?" and then designate some responses "correct" and others "incorrect."

Sacks records each comment until the group has shared at least 10. Then she guides students as they classify the comments into three categories: literal, inferential, and critical. An anchor chart defining each kind of thinking would be extremely handy during this process. Sacks provides an example on page 73 of her text.

Since I envision losing two... or  twenty students during a whole-group discussion of 10+ student comments, I would probably discuss a few comments as a whole-group, ensuring there's at least one discussion for each kind of thinking. Then I would probably incorporate some Kagan structures (Turn and Talk) to keep the energy high. Other suggestions are welcome!

Authentic Note Taking
Sacks then begins to teach her students how to demonstrate their three-ways-of-thinking on sticky notes while they read. I think it's SO crucial to remember that students are going to need several modeling sessions and practice sessions before they're comfortable using the method independently. No matter how much the initial session rocked, they're going to need the lesson reiterated, and since this is a key cornerstone of Sacks' whole novel approach, it's especially important students have a solid understanding of the three-ways-of thinking.

I especially liked Sacks' idea of Power Sticky Notes. These special assignments ask students to combine all three types of thinking on a single sticky note; however, she waits for at least one book study before incorporating them. Not only are these a way to differentiate instruction for students who need additional challenge, but they provide a segue into short response writing.

Assessment
I'm struggling to understand Sacks' grading method. I believe she gives completion grades to students for the sticky notes, but in two of the districts where I have taught, completion grades are similar to paddling students... consigned to a teaching era long gone. The completion grade poses another conundrum for me because she vehemently argues that students shouldn't be required to write a certain number of sticky notes per week or per chapter. She argues, and rightfully so, that this practice defeats authentic note taking. So what constitutes completion?

Has anybody used authentic note taking in the classroom and have suggestions on how to keep students accountable for recording their thinking?

Selecting the Right Books

Ariel Sacks in her text Whole Novels for the Whole Class (2014) emphasizes the importance of selecting the right book when creating curriculum that involves whole novel studies. This seems like an obvious assertion as student interest is crucial in determining the success of any instructional unit; however, some of her suggestions in choosing the right books were novel to me and worth sharing.

Using Developmental Characteristics to Guide Book Selection
I think any English teacher worth his/her beans understands the importance of providing relatable material to students, but I have never checked into the specific developmental patterns of the kids who I teach. Sacks recommends A Sympathetic Understanding of the Child: Birth to Sixteen (1995) by David Elkind as a starting point to understanding students' patterns of behaviors, needs, interests, and conflicts according to their age.

Sacks provides an extensive list of developmental characteristics and a list of adolescent literature that tie into each characteristic. I've included an example of one of Sacks' list for adolescents of 12-15 years.

• Developmental Characteristic: Negotiating distance from their parents. They begin to see their parents as people and think critically about them while still being quite dependent on them for basic needs, approval, and affection.
• Theme: "Parents are people, too", identity, independence
• Book Titles (for suggested grade levels):
• Nobody's Family is Going to Change, by Louise Fitzhugh (6-8)
• The Dream Bearer, Walter Dean Myers (6-8)
• The Rock and the River, by Kekla Magoon (7-8)
• The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, by Nancy Farmer (7-8)
• Somewhere in the Darkness, by Walter Dean Myers (6-8)

Selecting Texts that Offer Mirrors and Windows

I've never heard the phrase "mirrors and windows." It was created by teacher Emily Style (1988) who argues that strong curriculum should provide "mirrors", or material in which students can see themselves, and "windows", material that allows students to experience characters and situations remarkably different from their own, illustrating the universality of the human experience.

Sacks recommends starting the year with literature that serves as a mirror and progressing to literature that serves as a window. In my own teaching, I've understood the importance of starting out the year with a unit of high interest, but I've never considered selecting the curriculum through the "mirrors and windows" lens.

Creating Connected Reading Experiences
I've lamented the lack of "connectedness" in some of my units of instruction, so I appreciate the strong emphasis Sacks places on providing students the opportunity to encounter the same thematic ideas. In the 8th grade curriculum map she provides, the thematic focus throughout the entire year is identity although there are variations in the focus. In one novel study, her students focus on identity and its relationship to home and neighborhood, and then in a following study, her students focus on the extent to which family, race, and culture impact identity.

In most curriculum maps I've seen, there is one theme per unit. For example, all of the materials tie into identity for that particular unit of study, and then the next unit of study shifts to a different focus such as coming-of-age or oppression or friendship. I've never taught with one theme, such as identity, weaved throughout the entire year, but I think the suggestion makes a lot of sense, and I could certainly understand how it would lend to deeper understanding and learning. However, I would see myself relying heavily on resources such as the lists of novels and themes that Sacks provides because identifying variations of a theme and finding correlating novels would be all-consuming. I'd be reading around the clock, chucking books across the room in exasperation when I reached page 128 and realized it wasn't going to work, and spending WAAAAAYYYYY too much money on Amazon Kindle. Not only could this be detrimental to living room walls and my wallet, but there is serious risk of husband suffering, too. Are there any other resources such as Sacks' lists that come recommended for finding novels that tie into a particular theme?

What is the argument for whole novels for the whole class?

So what exactly is Sacks' revolutionary method for teaching the whole novel to the whole class? This was my driving question when I purchased this text.

Ariel Sacks' whole novel teaching approach began with a suggestion she received while student teaching: "Instead of having them [students] read sections and making them answer questions about each one, let them read the whole thing. Then have them talk about it, like adults would do in a real book club" (1). Sacks proceeds to recount her first attempt in which everything went gloriously at the private school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Each student actively read the book - on time no less - and participated in thought-provoking discussion which created a "multidimensional literary world" (2). I just about put the book down after reading page two.

However, in the next paragraph, Sacks shares how her attempt to replicate this experience during her first year of teaching at a Title I middle school yielded drastically different results. Half of her class read the book by the assigned deadline, and the other half didn't seem to understand they should have been reading the book and there was a deadline. Aha! Okay, that's real teaching stuff.

THREE ARGUMENTS SACKS MAKES FOR HER WHOLE-NOVEL TEACHING METHOD
Sacks asserts that student engagement, motivation, and confidence increase when students are allowed to read an entire work without the teacher parsing the experience into chapter-size bites with teacher-driven comprehension questions. Okay... I can agree with this. By the end of the five weeks which I have often dedicated to literature circles, I'm "over it" along with many of my students. The enthusiasm for the reading, and the sheer pleasure of reading, is often missing by the end of a literature circle. However, I do believe that some motivation is compromised when students do not get a choice in their reading material.

She also argues that literary analysis is much more authentic and motivating when students compare their responses to the literature and examine how and why their responses differ. However, as an ELA teacher I have learning standards that I need to help my students meet. If students are determining the direction the analysis takes, how do I ensure that learning targets are being met?  In addition, I gradually release the responsibility of writing discussion questions to my students by the end of the literature circle unit. Yet, I don't always feel that these student-driven discussions are authentic and result in a deep analysis of the text.

She also explains how whole novel studies provide a framework for her classroom curriculum, providing the content that fuels the reading of related nonfiction and providing the inspiration for classroom writing. I love how the curriculum has a natural flow and "connectedness". In one of the districts where I have taught, I felt that the district curriculum caused my instruction to feel linear as students move from one learning target to another and the cyclical nature of an ELA classroom was not achieved.

Whole Class Novels

Here's the dilemma: to teach the whole-class novel or not to teach the whole-class novel. I've heard arguments for both sides.

Most of my teaching decisions align with the camp who believe that the whole-class novel belongs in the last century. Considering the diversity of our students, the diversity of their interests, and the competition technology poses in keeping students' interest, I've agreed that providing students choice in reading material reigns as best practice.

I've conducted literature circles (or book clubs, whichever term you prefer - I've never fully understood the difference between the two terms and have used the two fluidly in a single conversation) in both my 7th, 8th, and 9th grade classroom. The advantage of the literature circle is the ability to cater to the different interests of the 20+ students in the classroom. If the theme of the lit circle is WWII, then boys can opt to read a novel from the perspective of a soldier and girls can opt to read about star-crossed lovers during the war-time era. The previous sentence sounds too cliche, but I've found that this depiction of student choice is rather accurate.

The challenge of conducting a literature circle is... well... everything. First, I believe the teacher needs to have read and previewed each of the novels being read in the literature circles. This alone is a daunting task, especially for a new teacher who perhaps doesn't have any immediate titles tucked away as ideas let alone time. Second, it's a challenge to come up with a way to hold students accountable for the reading and to monitor their understanding of all of the different novels. I've had up to six different novels being read during a thematic literature circle unit. For anyone who has ran a literature circle, you understand this is a lot of comprehension checks to create and a lot of discussion questions to craft. My system has been tweaked just about every year. Third, it is an art to craft questions that encourage students from different literature circles to conduct a discussion, hitting thematic veins that run deeply in each novel.

I have worked with a colleague who adamantly maintained that the whole-class novel was the ONLY way to teach in order to ensure students' learning was deep and not wide. However, she is one of the few voices in the teaching field in 2017 who I have heard make an argument for whole-class novels. Therefore, I was intrigued by Ariel Sacks' text Whole Novels for the Whole Class: A Student-Centered Approach. 

I'm hoping to gather ideas about how to read a novel together as a class without stifling my voracious readers and exhausting my readers who struggle. I plan to share my major take-aways, and I'm sure I will be presented with some ideas to ponder.