Expectations

This week my 10th graders were preparing to give their presentations of their critical readings of children’s books. They have been using critical lenses to analyze other texts like Toy Story and an episode of Glee where Ms. M did a lot of modeling and thinking aloud, but with the gradual release of responsibility, it was time for the students to work in groups of their own choosing (according to the books they wanted to analyze) and consult one another (rather than me) to make meaning of the text. As I took a few minutes to sit down with each group, I quickly noticed their engagement and depth of thinking in the process. They were crafting strong thesis statements and finding evidence to support their reading. My role was to push them further and make sure they were ready to present.

Since Ms. M and I had done this same lesson with the 11th graders the week before, I knew that I wanted to set clearer expectations for the presentations. Though we had discussed the rubric and talked about presenting something the audience would want to pay attention to, the groups struggled to create an engaging hook. When they got to the front of the room, they said their names, the title of their book, mentioned the author, and began their summaries. Despite our best efforts to tell them what an engaging hook might be, they weren’t able to internalize it. They had no models. With the 10th graders, however, my very first lesson was all about different introduction strategies (using a question, quotation, statement, description, etc.). Though this lesson was to help them write essays, I was able to remind them of the strategies and they more easily transferred the skill.

One group joked that they should ask a question and have their classmates raise their hands to agree or disagree, thinking it was an outlandish idea.

I told them to go for it.

And they did.

              The class was hooked.

This second time around I also wanted to push the students to show, not just tell, their evidence to the class. To my dismay, only one of the 11th grade groups pointed to specific pages in the book that supported their thesis (again, probably because I didn’t make this expectation clear enough). I realized this was something I wanted all the groups to do, so Ms. M suggested that I give the 10th graders sticky notes to mark the pages that they will show during their presentations. This suggestion has worked like magic.

Yellow sticky notes protrude from the edges of the books.

                Groups whiz gracefully through their presentations.

                                Far less fumbling with papers and fewer looks of befuddlement.

It’s one thing to know what you expect of your students. It’s one thing to tell them what you expect. And it’s another thing to have clear, high expectations and provide models and scaffolding to help students exceed those expectations.  Here’s to models, scaffolding, and good old “I do, we do, you do.”