Action Research Project

Findings

Section 1: Student Voices Shaping our Classroom Design

Section 2: Changing the Way We Think

Section 3: Supporting Academic Discourse

Section 4: Discovering Authentic Audiences

Section 1: Student Voices shaping our Classroom Design

The Beginning of a Journey…

Throughout the summer, I had hovered over journals, notes, and innovative strategies, all of which I was planning to use to start my class in the direction of creating an environment that was unlike anything my students had ever experienced. I filled my plan-book with lessons and activities all designed around the inquiry of my study. My journey with HTH has taught me the valued lesson of listening to my students. So before I changed anything about my teaching methods, the feel and look of our room environment, or even introducing new protocols, I decided to elicit the help of my students. With eraser in hand, I set about re-writing my lesson plans, this time, centered around my students’ voices. I planned to seek the help of my students to develop two definitions of what it meant for them to “Share their Learning” and to “Explain their Thinking”.

Thirteen of my students were returning from my 5th/6th combination class from the previous year, and the remaining eighteen students were a mixture from two 5th grade classrooms. During the start of the day, I allowed the students to sit wherever they wanted as long as they abided by two rules: Each table grouping needed at least two returning students and the girl to boy ratio needed to be fairly equal. Knowing that my returning students understood my expectations for group work, I asked them to guide each table conversation. I divided our tables into six groups, with each group in charge of creating a brainstorm map for “Sharing their learning” or “Explaining their thinking”. Three groups were given the task to list what it meant for them to share their learning, and the other three groups were given the task to define their understanding of what it means for them to explain their thinking. With the students working in groups, I gave them twenty minutes to brainstorm. The following idea charts are two exemplar models of their creations:

After each group shared their idea-charts and posted them on our front board, we gathered together in a whole class discussion to create our two definitions. As I sat back to listen to the discussion, the evolution of our journey had started to unfold. During the first five minutes, our class was fairly quiet and shy, with some willing students awkwardly fumbling through their ideas. But after a little while, the room started to buzz, and voices broke free and floated through our new found environment. But even as they started to open up, their responses came through in small phrases and short utterances, with only a couple of students speaking in complete sentences. Throughout this experience, I struggled with finding the balance as a researcher and guide. Trying to collect data as I helped guide my students proved to be a difficult task, but I jotted down side notes in my journal as I watched their voices awaken. It was then that I understood that I needed to help them build a better capacity of academic vocabulary as well as work on providing them with plenty of opportunities to speak with scaffolding aimed at responses in complete sentences. If my students had come to me with these experiences, I speculate that they wouldn’t have struggled so much with voicing their thoughts. Reflecting on previous years, I have never spent time on developing how my students communicate with each other. My lessons were focused on strict academics, doing whatever we could to raise test scores. It was important for me to note these observations, using it to dictate our plans for making significant changes in our classroom. If students were struggling at speaking due to a lack of experience and vocabulary, how can I expect them to feel comfortable? I needed more information. Reflecting on this observation, I noted a few changes that I wanted to make to their first survey. I needed to make sure that I included questions that would help reveal a better understanding for where my students were coming from. Focusing back on our task at hand, we spent an additional fifteen minutes of rewording, discussing, and rewording again, in the end our class had settled on these two definitions:

Sharing our Learning:

Sharing something we have learned with our partners, tribe members, or the class, as well as exhibiting our work and projects to our learning community

Explaining our Thinking:

Explaining the How and Why of our Work and Projects

In our discussions, my students had commented that sharing their learning meant that “students were talking to each other” and that those conversations could take place with their peers, in their table groups, or even as a whole class. It is important to note that the content of what those conversations could look like was not discussed. As much as I wanted to guide their thinking about conversations to include topics centered on our content area studies and what they were learning, I hadn’t, trying to keep their voices as a priority to help direct me along a path that was most relevant for them.

Throughout this experience, a lingering thought stayed with me: How can I better support my students with school related conversations or academic discourse? Academic discourse can be defined as language used in schools, as it is applied in English for academic purpose (Backman et al, 1996). For my students, the distinction of home language and academic discourse had yet to be discussed or even defined. Were they even cognoscente of how they converse with each other? The goal of this study was to increase comfort levels with students sharing what they have learned with each other; if teaching students how to converse with each other in an academic setting will help us achieve that goal, then I needed to find the strategies and best practices to help us towards that objective.

Gaining an Understanding: “I’m afraid of messing up on what I’m saying.”

After our first day conversations, I felt that my students were ready to take the first survey (appendix 1). In order for me to get a solid baseline of where I should start, I needed to figure out what types of experiences my students had had with opportunities for sharing their learning prior to them starting their 6th grade year. The Beginning-of-the-Year survey was designed to gauge how each student felt about sharing his/her learning both verbally and non-verbally. Students were asked to rate their comfort levels, as well as to respond to two open-ended prompts. During the second day of class, my students sat down and filled out their responses. One particular question I was most interested in collecting data on was how often my students had an opportunity to share their learning in any type of experience, whether it was with a partner, or a presentation in front of their class. The results revealed to me how little of an opportunity my students really had with sharing their learning in any situation:

I was hopeful to see that 19% of my students (6 out of 31) indicated that they have had experiences with sharing their learning more than 3 times a week. Taking a closer look, I realized that all six of those students were also returning students from our 5th/6th combo class. Since my journey with HTH started at the beginning of the previous school year and I had started to implement Project Based Learning in my classroom, I need to take into consideration that that has had some influence on my students who were returning. Looking at the 81% of my students (25 out of 31) who reported having opportunities that ranged from a few times a month to never having an opportunity at all, I decided to take a closer look how they responded to the rest of the survey. After re-sorting the entire class according to their responses to this one question, I was able to take a closer look at how the 81%-group expressed themselves with the short answer questions. The purpose of the second short answer question was to collect data on the favorite ways students like to share their work. Anticipating that students may not have a favorite process for sharing, I decided to attach an alternative choice, allowing students a means to explain why they may not feel comfortable sharing at all:

F.) Describe your favorite ways to share your work with others. If you are not comfortable sharing your work, please explain why.

Nine out of the twenty-five students, who indicated having limited opportunities to share, answered this prompt by providing an explanation of why they are not comfortable with sharing. After recording all of their responses, I noticed one particular theme that seemed to resonate amongst this group. These students reported that the leading cause affecting their comfort level with sharing was deeply rooted in a fear of peer ridicule because of negative past experiences.

Negative Experiences: “…some people laugh at my work…”

While studying how and what I can do to provide a supporting environment, I realized that I have neglected to consider the negative factors that suppress student engagement with each other. Low self-confidence and a fear of peer ridicule have found a place in the hearts of some my students. The student responses to the second short answer question revealed a hidden truth that I had never anticipated. The negative experiences my students have faced, has had a direct impact on how they interact with each other in our classroom. The voices from these four students, best illustrate the types of insecurities and negative experiences these students have encountered:

- “I am not comfortable sharing my work with others because some people laugh at my work that I feel proud of and it just make me feel like I have to throw it away. Some of my closest friends laugh and tease my work that’s why I don’t really like showing my work and when they laugh I want to burst into tears.”

- “I don’t like sharing with others because I think that they are going to [laugh] at me because of my work that I didn’t do as well as they did. I have always been shy to show my work. I have never liked sharing my work to my classmates. When the teacher calls on me I feel more than my hand sweating and [anxious].”

- “I do not feel comfortable because I feel that they are going to make funny of me. I feel nervous to talk them. I just can’t tell them my ideas or my writing or anything. When I get nervous I can’t speak and I can’t say the words. I forget how to say them.”

- “I am not comfortable showing my work to others because for some reason I feel like they’re gonna laugh at it or think its ugly, and I start to think that my own works dumb and ugly. And sometimes I never feel good about my work at all.”

A flood of fierce wonderings overcame my mind:

What can I do so that these students won’t feel like their peers will attack their work?

How do I help them gain confidence within themselves as well as with their peers?

How can I build a sense of team and collaboration within my students?

Using these students’ voices as a pulse on an issue that needed to be addressed, it was important for me to plan accordingly to create an atmosphere that was conducive to counteract these feelings. This may have been a small group, but they still represented one-third of my entire class, and if they have had a few to no opportunities to share and they also felt like if they are given a chance to share, their peers will only laugh at their work, I need to address both concerns, for them and the entire class.

Positive Experiences: “…we get to share our thoughts…”

It is equally important to note that approximately twenty students responded to the same question by writing about a positive experience they have had with sharing their work. After reading through these responses, a common theme of sharing through speaking, ties these students together. Even though these students reported that they have had only a few experiences with sharing their learning, through those experiences, they have identified a few favorite methods:

- “My favorite is talking aloud! with a journal that I have my ideas in.”

- “One of my favorite ways is to leav[e] it on the table and go around and look at the other peoples work.”

- “My favorite way to share with others is by just speaking out and describing my work.”

- “I like working in groups because we get to share our thoughts and we understand what’s happening and [it] helps others.”

While the running theme with these students centered on sharing by speaking, it was reassuring that I had a solid foundation to build upon. Their experiences with sharing their learning was limited, but that did not seem to contribute to how comfortable they felt; through their responses I learned that my students have experienced methods of learning and sharing that resonated with how they like to learn. Listening to their voices and increasing their opportunities for sharing, these students might be able to open up in ways they have never experienced.

Comfort Levels: “…I felt comfortable sharing with my tribe because I’ve worked with them for so long…”

Since my study is dependent upon the comfort levels of my students, I designed a few questions to try to quantify that feeling. Within the initial survey, I made a distinction between verbal and non-verbal sharing. I defined verbal sharing as speaking aloud in class, whether it was through a presentation, small group work, or with peer interaction. I defined non-verbal sharing as sharing assignments or projects with a peer or larger audience through exhibition. The following tables indicate the comfort levels my student had reported:

The majority (approx. 62%) of the students have indicated that they felt “kind of comfortable” to “really comfortable” with sharing their work aloud or through exhibitions. This data was very promising. This critical mass was an important pool of students to gather further data from. If this many students were already feeling comfortable, what was the contributing factor to lead them to this feeling? Considering the data that I received from the short answer question, the same students who responded with a reason why they don’t like to share, answered this question stating that they felt either “not comfortable at all” or “a little bit comfortable”. Equally as important, I focused my attention at this particular subgroup, listening to their voices as a means to make significant adjustments to our classroom culture as a whole. Looking at these students’ surveys, I wanted a better understanding how these students felt when they are speaking aloud in class. When asked the question: When you answer a question in class, which of these do you most often feel? - the students responded as follows:

“My hands sweat, I feel anxious and nervous.” – 19% ( 6 out of 3 1 )

“I am able to answer confidently, and use a loud classroom voice.” – 42% ( 13 out of 3 1)

“I don’t feel confident; it’s hard for me to answer.” – 13% ( 4 out of 3 1 )

“I am able to answer, but my voice is quiet and shy.” – 26% (8 out of 3 1 )

After processing the data, I realized that the issues that I needed to address spanned a range from helping student with gaining confidence to assisting students with learning how to cope and overcome the fear of speaking aloud. Focusing on the students who indicated that they felt anxious and nervous, I wanted to ask a few follow-up questions to dig a little deeper. Through an informal conversation, I asked a few of these students if they could elaborate and explain what made them feel anxious about sharing. Their responses were all fairly similar, citing experiences where other students had made fun of their work. This was a significant factor to why students did not feel comfortable with sharing, cited twice, once within a written response and a second through informal conversations.

Another area that I was interested in understanding was which groups my students felt comfortable with sharing. In the initial survey I asked the students: Which group or groups are you most comfortable with sharing your learning? They were asked to mark all the choices that applied to them:

Looking through the data it is important to note that although the representation of their responses seems to report a high number of students feeling comfortable with sharing with close friends or table peers, those numbers only represent a little more than half of my class (18 students). That leaves approximately 13 students not feeling comfortable enough to share with their own peers, a significant number to have in a small class of 31 students. Two subgroups that I wanted to focus on were students comfort levels with sharing with our principal and with their parents. In both areas, only a few students felt comfortable with sharing, far less students felt comfortable with sharing with our principal. When this survey was given, the students have only known our principal for a short period, because she was still fairly new to our school. My hope was that through increase interaction, my students would start to feel at ease with talking to and sharing with their new principal. My other concern was the large number of student that did not feel comfort with sharing what they are learning with their parents. Not fully understanding why this was the case, I informally asked some of those students why they felt that way. Their answers ranged from the students feeling too much pressure at home to feeling that their parents just didn’t care about what was happening at school. After gaining a better insight, I decided to try to bridge the communication gap by inviting parents to become more involved with the learning in our classroom.

Reflection: “Now that I’m informed, what direction do we move towards?”

Using my students’ voices to shape the design of our class was a different approach from what I had planned during the beginning of this study. But after giving out the first survey and taking the time to analyze their responses, it became clear that this was the path in which I needed to follow. Several themes have opened up due to this first survey.

First and foremost, I realized that concentrating on building a strong teacher to student bond was not as important than building stronger student-to-student relationships. Building close-knit student teams would allow students to learn how to trust and depend on each other, thus creating a climate that would be conducive for sharing.

A second theme that emerged was the need to build student confidence regarding the work they were producing. Many students mentioned through the initial survey and informal conversations that they felt that their work was not good enough to share and that if they did share their work, their peers will ridicule and make fun. It was important to build a new culture for how we produced work in our class, changing this thought process allowed my students to feel proud of the work that they were sharing.

The third theme that emerged was the need for my students to have more opportunities with sharing their work, whether those experiences were all based in class, or based on exhibiting on a larger community scale. It was important for me to plan in daily opportunities for students to converse and share their work through multiple subject areas. Equally important to that, was the need to increase the opportunities for students to share their learning with their parents. Opening the lines of communication between my students and their parents will assist them with building a stronger school relationship as well as allow their parents to have a better understanding of the capabilities and potential of their own child.

The following chapters follow our path and journey together as we attempted to change and build a better culture in our classroom. Instead of concentrating on many changes, it was important for me to focus on only a few significant experiences that I wanted my students to have. This allowed me to dig deeper through each process, giving us a chance to learn about each other through the journey.

Section 2: Changing the Way We Think

Building a Classroom Culture

In order to address the students’ concerns of peer ridicule and insecurities with confidence, it was important for me to build a new classroom culture that was conducive for students to trust each other, to trust me, and to feel like they were part of a classroom family. How could I expect my students to open up to each other with sharing their work, if they felt like the students sitting at their table were strangers? In response to the initial survey, I decided to incorporate team-building activities to start our day for the first couple of weeks, with activities scattered about throughout the school year. I wanted my students to work on group problem-solving skills in a fun and low stress-environment. Hoping that through these activities, my students would be able to bond and get to know each other better, thus promoting trust and family unity. The following activities are a few examples of the types of experiences my students had. Each subsection provides a brief description of the activity with a rationale of the purpose. After each activity was completed, students were asked to respond to exit card questions, their voices are attached to the end of subsection:

6th Grade Bingo: Bridging commonalities through movement and conversation

During this activity, each student was given a 6th Grade Bingo card (appendix 4); each card was divided into twenty boxes, with each box containing a descriptor pertaining to students’ interests. Students were then asked to walk around the room, with the objective of trying to find a classmate that was able to match a descriptor and ask him/her to fill-out one of their boxes on their cards. The object of the task was to allow the students to get to know each other using the descriptors as a conversation starter. When making the cards, I tried to keep in mind the diversity of my class, thus allowing all students the chance to be represented on the cards.

After going over the directions of the task, and answering any clarifying questions, the students set out to fill their cards. As anticipated, students first gathered into their close-friends circles, a few students lingered around trying to avoid the mini-groups. I realized that I needed to set another standard in order for my students to mix around and talk to other students that they really didn’t know. After calling for their attention, I redirected them to decrease their numbers to meeting only in pairs. With directions clear in their heads, the students set out to accomplish their task. The movement around the room went smoothly, students jumped from one to another, asking questions, looking for matches. It was very clear, which students felt comfortable talking with each other. Their speech was relaxed; there was a smile and a sense of camaraderie amongst them. When two students met up, that have never really interacted with each other before, their exchange seemed robotic, following through the motions to only finish the task. But they were conversing, and through their conversation, my hope was that they would be able to find some type of connection with each other that might make their next interaction seem a little bit better and easier. After the activity was over, I asked my students to fill out an exit card focused on reflective questions about their experience. The first question asked the students: What did you learn about yourself through this activity?

After reading through all their responses I found a couple of common threads. A handful of students answered this question by mentioning who they were talking with most, noting that it was much easier to accomplish the task by talking with good friends. But after my redirection, some students realized that conversing with peers they don’t know well wasn’t so bad. These students, best illustrated these thoughts:

- “What I learned about myself is that when we were doing that activity, I figured out that I was not talking to the people I rarely talked to. I was only talking to the people I regularly talked to.”

- “I learned from myself that asking them [questions] can keep me from being shy. Also I got to hang-out with people I never had ever hanged with.”

- “Something that I learned about myself during this activity is that I have lots of things in common. I also learned that I can talk to anyone even if I don’t hang out with them at all.”

Taking this into consideration, it is very important that when my students are put into groups, they are done so, strategically and purposeful. Putting students into situations where they are working with new unfamiliar partners, allows them to learn how to interact and build new connections. Addressing my initial concern to build a close-knit family, teaching my students how to build new relationships was very important. Since my students move onto to middle school in a new district, this social skill will allow them to make an easier transition.

Another thread that bound my students together lay in the idea of discovering that sharing their personal lives holds value. Even students, who have felt shy, found inspiration to break out of their shell a little. The quotes from these three students, gave me a better understanding of building stronger relationships between student and student:

- “I learned that I can share a lot of stuff that aren’t that personal. I also learned that I need to be less shy.”

- “I felt very comfortable asking people questions. I also learned things from my friends that I didn’t know before. I can definitely do this activity again in the future!”

- “I learned that sharing myself with other people may not be so bad because then not only do they understand you more but it can help you express yourself more.”

For the past few years, I have focused on building a stronger relationship between myself and my students, neglecting to consider building the team starting with the students themselves. Through this experience, I have learned to build and scaffold better student teams. Focused on group problem-solving skills, students are able to grow together, learn from each other, and develop healthy relationships all within our academic environment.

Fear in a Hat: Learning that you are not alone

In this team building activity, students sat together in small groups of 5 or 6. With a half sheet of lined paper each, the students were given two topics to choose from to write a short answer. Using the theme of fear as a guide, I asked to students to respond to one of these two prompts: What do you fear most about sharing your work with other students? What do you fear most about school? Students responded without writing down their names and they placed all their responses into a hat. Since 54% of the students from our initial survey indicated that they had some sense of fear about peer ridicule or peers laughing at their work, I thought that this activity would allow for students to share their fears under the guise of anonymity, hoping that they would be able to let go of some of their insecurities, and share them with their group. I was also hoping that through their sharing that they will be able to realize that there are other students in our class that may share the same fears as they do.

Once the prompts went up on the board, students had a few clarifying questions. I gave them a little over nine minutes to respond. As I walked around, my students were busily writing down their responses. After the timer buzzed, the students took turns placing their folded papers into a hat. Taking turns, each student reached into the hat and grabbed one response. Without trying to guess the author, the students read through each paper, taking turns. Throughout the activity, the students were attentive and respectful. After all the responses were read, I gave the students another question to respond to. Altogether, the students responded to 5 questions, with a few centered around general issues, and a couple prompts centered on sharing and learning.

After the students finished sharing out their last responses, I asked the students to reflect on the process of the activity. I wanted to understand how the anonymity of the activity affected them, how comfortable they felt throughout the entire process, as well as what was something they learned from their classmates.

As I anticipated, most students felt better about sharing because they didn’t have to label their responses with their names. By giving students an opportunity to be free with their words without any anxiety about sharing , they were able to open up and extend themselves a little. These few students illustrate the types of response students had about how they felt about sharing their fears:

- “It was really easy to share my fears because nobody in my tribe knew who it was. I love sharing my work in an anonymity way!”

- “I felt more comfortable sharing my fears because my tribemates didn’t know that it was me when they were reading my writing. I really liked my writing being a secret because I could express my feelings better.”

- “I felt more confident sharing without everyone knowing what I wrote.”

My students were able to learn that they actually shared some commonalities with their classmates. Learning from these students voices, I searched the internet for more activities that would give all the students more opportunities to grow closer together:

- “I learned that many of my classmates had the same fears. I also learned that my classmates are fearful of weird things.”

- “I learned that you can know each other more and you can have no troubles.”

- “I learned that me and a lot of my tribemates have the same fears!”

“I learned that my tribemates have almost the same fear as me.”

As I hoped, students were able to share personal stories about what they feared, using the anonymity of the activity. Students were also able find connections with each other, understanding that they are not the only ones who fear something about school. These types of activities allow students to learn something about each other that they may not normally learn in the course of our regular school day. Building more of these team building exercises will help me build connections between students, hoping to create stronger relationships, thus promoting trust amongst each other.

Tower Power: Group problem-solving using planning and teamwork

The first group problem-solving activity my students engaged in was a tower building task using only marshmallows and toothpicks. Each group was given a bag of mini-marshmallows and a box of 150 toothpicks, their task was to build the highest, and most structurally sound tower out of what was given to them. I first gave them seven minutes to create a plan, then they had 20 minutes to execute their blueprints. The focus of this task was three-fold; I wanted to observe how they communicated with each other, I also wanted to provide an opportunity for the students to practice group-problem solving skills, and I wanted to give them a fun experience where is was necessary for the students to use teamwork to succeed.

As the students started to plan, it was evident which groups communicated well and which groups were struggling. I noted my observations, in order to assist me later with creating new groups. When the students started to build, the time constraint worried them. Not giving them advice, I wanted to see which groups divided them selves up, in order to accomplish more. Out of the six groups, only a couple divided their task up, a few of the groups abandoned their plans and started creating two or three individual structures. In the end, five of the six groups accomplished their goals. One of the groups, lost focus, and ended up smashing all the pieces together through frustration.

In the end, there were a couple of themes running through their exit card responses. I asked the students to reflect about the entire process, focusing especially on the teamwork efforts from their group. These four responses encompass the reflective learning from the class, a few voices focused on the listening and compromising skills of their groups, and the last voice gave me a better insight on why the group fell apart:

- “Through this activity I learned that my tribe can work together. At first I thought that we would have a problem because ‘Robert’ usually never cooperates with anything, but on this activity, he helped a lot. He was building all the structures that helped us win this competition. Our communication was great too. Every time we had a different idea, we would talk it out as a group first before we did anything to the tower. Everybody in my group had great listening skills and everybody was working together. I am very proud of my group.”

- “When it comes to communication and teamwork I believe that our group is good at listening. When someone [gave] an idea and we thought it would work we did it. We all listened to what each other had to say.”

- “Through this experience I learned that my tribe works really good together. We kept reassuring ourselves that we would win. I tried to think positive when the tower was falling. But in the end our teamwork paid off because it brought our tribe closer!”

- “A couple of things I learned about my group is that some members mess around and don’t care about this activity, while others really wanted to do this and tried.”

One realization I had while reading through these responses, was that even if an activity requires group participation, it may not necessarily bring a group closer together. In the past, I have always given students group tasks centered around an academic content area; students have created posters, display cases, and other products together, but the processes of those activities, did not initiate any type of bonding experiences for the students. I believe that the group problem-solving nature of the Tower Power activity, allowed students to work together in a way that required them to converse and compromise, thus providing a means where they would have to depend and trust each other. In the other types of experiences where students were only creating a poster or display, the conversations there may not have lend themselves to deep problem-solving experiences. It is important for me to plan my projects and activities around my learning here, making sure that the experiences my students are having, push them in a way that they will need to work together to accomplish their task.

From Students to Craftsmen

Allowing myself to be moved and put into action by my students’ voices, I started to look into what resources I had to help my students with building a new understanding of their work, and what it meant for them to share it with other students. I knew that for them to deal with their insecurities, they needed to change their mind-set on how and what we produced as work in our class. Our first step was to find a method in which they would take pride in creating something that they felt worthy of sharing with a partner or a group. After several minutes of reflecting on this dilemma, a memory from an experience from my Advanced Project Based Learning course with the HTH GSE floated into my thoughts. The conversation in our course that night was led by Ron Berger from Expeditionary Learning. The primary focus was on creating “Beautiful Work” through the means of student and teacher critiques. Teaching students how to become craftsmen of their own work was not only innovatively profound, but completely relevant for our situation. After digging through my book-bag to find Mr. Berger’s book An Ethic of Excellence, I quickly sifted through my notes, and was most struck by this insight:

We can’t first build the students’ self-esteem and then focus on their work. It is through their own work that their self-esteem will grow. I don’t believe self-esteem is built from compliments. Students who are struggling or producing lousy work know exactly how poor their performance is – compliments never seem genuine. All the self-esteem activities and praise in the world won’t make them feel like proud students until they do something they can value (65).

With eraser shavings building around my plan book, I adjusted our week to include a class discussion centered on crafting “Beautiful Work”. My intent was twofold, first I was hoping to create a new culture of producing work, and the second a deeper understanding that through multiple-drafts, all students can produce products of high quality, thus increasing a sense of pride and building self-esteem. Not knowing how well the conversation would go, we set forth first in small groups, then as a whole class. My students took to this notion quickly, and hands shot up around the room with spring-loaded enthusiasm, seeking out the change we needed to turn our environment into a risk free workshop of creative ideas and projects. After several minutes of sharing out and conversing about what each idea looked like and sounded like, this is what we created:

Building this understanding and standard for work was just our first step. To fully launch into this classroom evolution, we needed to build in time into our squeezed-dry schedule to dive deeper. Just acknowledging the characteristics of “Beautiful Work” wasn’t enough, the challenge laid in achieving that status through multiple drafts and effective critical feedback, in a process called critiquing. Giving students feedback on their work is a fundamental practice that teachers use to help and inform their students. Most often that feedback comes in the form of teacher comments both through written and verbal communication. Ron Berger (2003) suggests that “teachers take critique to a whole new level and make critique a habit of mind that suffuses the classroom in all subjects.” Taking this idea, Mr. Berger has created a simple protocol that he uses with students; stating that all participants in the critique session should :

Be Kind. It’s essential that the critique environment feel safe, and the class and I are vigilant to guard against any hurtful comments. This includes sarcasm.

Be Specific. No comments such as It’s good or I like it; these just waste our time.

Be Helpful. The goal is to help the individual and the class, not for the critic to be heard. Echoing the thoughts of others or cleverly pointing out details that are not significant to improving the work also wastes our time. (Berger, 2003)

It is through these processes where I hoped that my students might gain an understanding that creating high-quality work is a process, a process dependent upon their peers and me to engage in meaningful conversations to constantly improve our work. Hoping that those students who have indicated that they felt like their work isn’t good enough, might be able to find a sense of pride, raising their confidence to share their learning with their peers, as seen by this quote from two of my returning 5th graders:

- “…when I’m talking to tribe members it feels like they are my family because they critique my work nicely. They don’t laugh, or treat my work badly.”

- “I like to show my work by doing a [museum] walk. I also like to have Critique Sessions. Another way I like to share my work is by having small critique session[s] with my tribe members.”

It is important to note that these students have had a small experience with critiquing during their 5th grade year, and their voices are a testament to the powerful potential of these processes in boosting self-confidence and more importantly peer trust.

Learning the Art of Critiquing: Building trust to achieve Beautiful Work

When I first introduced the concept of critiquing in the beginning of the school year, the moans and groans filled the air as the understanding of multiple drafts set in. Hands shot up asking questions like, “Why do I have to write it all over again?” “How many drafts do we need?” “When will I know when I’m done?” As these questions built up tension, I allowed myself to soak it in, being careful to listen to my students. I suspected that their “one-and-done” attitudes reflect the type of production ethics these students have been taught to value. Addressing students’ concerns that their work isn’t good enough to share, I wanted to use critiques to teach my students the value of conversing about making their work better. My hope was for them to understand that what they create should be considered a working draft and through a focused structured procedure, students will be able to receive specific concrete feedback to allow them to refine their work. Use Ron Berger’s three rules, I opened a discussion with my students focused on how we can support each other through using those guidelines. After seventeen minutes of conversing and jotting down notes, we settled on creating a chart poster with supporting sentence starters (language frames) to guide our thinking and feedback:

With these rules in mind, I introduced our first piece to critique. Using this process to model and practice with providing critical feedback, it was important for me to start with a piece of student writing from a previous year, making sure to white out the name. I introduced the focus of the writing telling my students that I wanted them to only look at the verbs within the writing. I have found that focusing my students on one aspect to look at, allowed them to center their attention, so that they wouldn’t feel overwhelmed by an entire piece. After reading the writing to my students, I first modeled a couple of wondering questions, then opening the floor, I asked if there were any students that had their own wonderings. Only a couple of hands rose, so before I called on them, I instructed the students to take a couple of minutes to discuss any wondering questions they had. Giving them this processing time, allowed other students to develop their own thoughts, using voices they heard in their groups to strike new ideas in their minds. This time thirteen or more hands rose, and I proceeded to call the two hands that rose earlier. We continued this process, going through each section of our critiquing chart: Appreciations, Fierce Wonderings, and Wicked Awesome Suggestions.

Throughout our first quarter, I held whole group critique sessions, using them as a means to practice providing critical feedback in a safe environment with student products from previous years. After the fourth group critique, I moved from presenting the products on our LCD projector; to giving each group their own copy of the writing or placing the products on each of their tables. During this time I started to make the shift from critiquing to teach the process, to critiquing to teach my lessons, giving us an opportunity to dive deeper with academic content. Ron Berger (2003) explains that his “critique sessions are the lessons.” Instead of teaching students in the “abstract about how to write well, how to compile a good bibliography, or how to prepare a data analysis, [they] sit as a group and critique examples of [their] attempts at this work, refining [their] criteria and vision of what constitute excellence.” Moving my students in that direction has given them a better understanding of content of our lessons. It is through their synthesis of processing of work product, that they are able to define the boundaries of what it means to them to produce quality work.

Our next shift moved the students to start critiquing their own products. We were finishing up our first quarter, so they were well versed with looking a student work. I decided to have them critique a small piece of writing by focusing on looking for specific purposeful adjectives. In order to hold each student accountable for their contributions I gave them a critiquing form to fill out for each other (appendix 5). I adapted this protocol from an experience we had in our Leadership Seminar course in the GSE. Each student received one form that traveled with their writing piece. By using a round robin rotation, students passed their work to the student sitting to their right. Each student was responsible for filling out one rectangle, using the critique language frames as a guide. I encouraged students to break free from using the frames, letting them know that their critique could come in any form, as long as they abided by the three rules (Be Specific, Kind, and Helpful). The following photos are an account of their work through this process:

Throughout our second quarter, my students critique each others work in every subject area. Being strategic in my planning, I pulled small groups to my back table to better support the development of specific students, whom I identified as struggling learners. Knowing that how I provided feedback would allow me to not only re-teach them the concept, but also allow them to fine tune their work using a small focus. At that time, I wanted to gauge how my students were viewing the critique sessions, and our quest towards “Beautiful Work.” After a day of critiquing projects, I gave them a small questionnaire (appendix 6) asking them: How has “Beautiful Work” and Critiquing affect the way you feel about sharing your learning in class? Most of the students responded with positive comments, stating that they started to feel proud of their work, because they understand that critiquing it would help them get closer to making it beautiful. A couple of students responded with cool feedback, feeling that they we’re still feeling ashamed of their work:

- “I still don’t like sharing because I feel its not good enough and I definitely don’t like critiquing because I feel bad when people give me advice because if they give advice that means that its not good enough.”

- “But one that I do not feel comfortable with, is critiquing. I feel embarrassed when someone sees my errors.”

Taking a step back through this process, I made sure to pull these student back myself, to make sure they felt like the feedback they were getting was positive and kind. I proceeded to work with these students for a couple of weeks, pulling them back to facilitate a small group critique session. Through this experience, I learned that it was necessary for me to stop every now and then to review our purpose for critiquing and to discuss the guidelines of being kind, specific, and helpful. Although these couple of students didn’t feel at that time, that critique made them feel any more comfortable then they already feeling, there were a lot of students who found this process beneficial to their work and to their ability to share what they are learning with each other. These students best sum up the feeling of this subgroup:

- “Beautiful work has helped me develop confidence in myself to show/present my work because my work has gone through multiple drafts and critiques allowing myself to feel good about myself. It also affects the way I present it, or present my learning. It changes how I take pride, and dignity in my work. It always makes me want to present my work in the best way I can.”

- “Before I will never want to share any work I had. I never though[t] it was good or neat. But with beautiful work and critique sessions I could share anything. It made a big change in my work, [now] I always raise my hand to share.”

- “Beautiful work has affected me on feeling a bit more confident sharing my work because I know that multiple draft equal beautiful work.”

- “I feel more comfortable sharing, because when you take through multiple drafts I feel more assure of my work because other people helped make it better. Before I was scared to share my work because I thought it wasn’t good enough, but now I am able to be proud of my work.”

Sensing the shift in my students thinking, I was proud to see that they had started to create a new culture for how they create work. It was important for them to build confidence it what they produce so that when it came to sharing that work, they would be able to do so with ease and pride. Their voices spoke our loudly, letting me know that the work we were engaged in was allowing them to share with each other in ways they haven’t done in previous classes. It was important for me to plan our next step, not only looking at how and what we were going to continue with in critiques, but more important who we were going to share our work with. Opening up the idea of intended audience had become our next step. Little did I know that in doing so, it would shift the direction of my study, changing it entirely. The journey of this change is documented in Section 4: Discovering Authentic Audiences.

Section 3: Supporting Academic Discourse

Changing the Environment

Room environment in a classroom depends on the grade level, student needs, and the personal preferences from the teacher. One could walk through every room of a school and find multiple ways to set-up furniture, an array of butcher paper colors, and various uses of wall, counter and shelf spaces. When setting up a classroom, it is very important to focus on the students who will be engaging in and with that environment. Fisher, Frey and Rothenberg (2008) believe that the “physical environment of the room plays an important role in supporting oral discourse, both through room arrangement and through the visual supports on the walls”. I wanted to make a significant change to my room set-up. Originally I had sixteen tables, with two desks attached to each table where students could store their belongings. Because the size of the tables, the best arrangement I could figure out, left us with little space and a set-up that wasn’t conducive for talking within small groups (see Figure A). More importantly than that, having a personal space attached to a table, limited our versatility of moving around and changing groups.

I needed a change to give us space, and to free my students from being anchored to an individual desk space. Heads-together, a protocol for conversation, where students sit up on their elbows and contribute to an open conversation, was difficult to facilitate using our old set-up. So after a few calls, and several favors later, I was able to find enough trapezoids to create seven small hexagonal groups (see Figure B). At first, the students felt awkward, sitting in groups around a smaller table. They were literally face to face, but that was the change that I was looking for. After a couple of weeks, I asked my students to respond to a survey question about how they felt about the new set-up. These four voices are the responses from students who felt that the change was positive:

- “I love the hexagons because we could all see each other in any direction or talk to each other in any direction.”

- “When we sat in these tables, there was advantage and disadvantages. For example these tables were easier to do heads together, because they were close together, so it was easier to bend over.”

- “These tables were actually cool because we were all facing each other and it was easier to talk to each other.”

- “When we began to work with these tables it helped a lot when we had to put our heads together, also when we critiqued our work”

This new set-up allowed the students to converse at ease; with materials right in front of them, they were able to work together without having to turn in a seat or move a heavy desk. Not having a personal space attached to a table to store things took some getting used to. Addressing this issue, we utilized cubby holes underneath our side countertop, so students could store their books and personal belongings. After a few weeks, the students grew accustom to their new environment. Some liked the change, while others still preferred their old desk tables. Using the smaller tables without attached desks allowed the students to move around easily. Throughout our day, I was able to increase their mobility around the classroom, allowing the students to experience learning from different vantage points. Using grouping strategies, students sat with different groups depending on the subject area that we were covering. Although the table arrangements did bring about an ease for facilitating academic discourse within groups, due the size of the tables, and the size of my students, elbow room had become an issue. Anytime the students were working on projects, or using multiple resources, they quickly ran out of room. From the same survey question about the new set-up, these students mention the pros and cons of sitting in the hexagons:

- “It was easier for us to share but it was difficult to organize ourselves because everybody claimed their spots.”

- “Honestly, I hate sitting in the hexagons! I never had any room for my space, or anything that we needed…the only thing it was good for was working together as a group, and we did that a lot.”

- “I think this worked only for when we huddle. The rest of the time you don’t have enough room, and people fought over room.”

- “At first there wasn’t enough space for everyone to put their books on, and we used to fight and draw a line to claim our spot but that didn’t work out.”

These four students were not the only ones responding with a frustration about the lack of room. Every student response mentioned some aspect where the hexagonal tables fell short on. Some students complained about elbow room, others pointed out the fact that they were unable to spread out during project time. So once again I was on the hunt for more tables, and after searching through several resource rooms at my school, I found what I was looking for, large rectangular tables. Understanding that it is much easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission, I waited till late after school one day to switch out my tables. After a couple hours of moving tables around and around, I settled on a configuration that I thought worked the best for our space (see Figure C).

The next day, my students walked through the door with a few shaking their heads as if they were saying, “Mr. Mac is up to his old tricks again.” Not sure how they were going to respond, they sat down and we started a class discussion about their new room. A few students voiced their opinion supporting the hexagonal tables, saying that with the smaller tables, it made our room look larger with more space. A good portion of the class, liked the change, citing the room they had to spread out and work on projects. For the most part, the new changed was received well. After our quick discussion, I asked the students to turn their voices into words, and write down how they felt about the rectangular tables. These quotes best sum up their responses that morning:

- “These are nice sized. It’s easier to work in, also it’s still brings us together so we can communicate with each other unlike the other form, it doesn’t have us knee-to-knee!”

- “Well I really like these tables cause you have your own space and it’s easier to share and it’s more comfortable than the other tables.”

- “When we sit in this form I feel comfortable. We have more room than when we used to sit the other way. It is also easier to talk in groups. We don’t have to move around to talk.”

- “With these tables we have a lot more room and when we do ‘heads together’ it is easier for us to talk and we don’t really argue as much about space.”

With a majority consensus in favor of keeping our new set-up, we proceeded to move through our year using that arrangement. Throughout each remaining quarter, the students constantly moved around the room working with different groups, all depending on the activity or project they were working on. Students were able have table discussions with ease, allowing them to spread out their work as they conversed about next steps for their projects. The rectangular set-up best supported their experiences with engaging in academic discourse. Whether we were engaged in math, language arts, social studies, or science, students were able to conduct their group work and conversations without having to worry about lack of room or having to move around to face each other.

Expectations, Modeling, and Practice

In order for me to better support my students ability to hold conversations centered on using academic language, it was important for me to explicitly teach them how to do so. When planning for this, several factors came in mind. I understood that how I modeled language needed to change in class. The way in which I spoke with my students, needed to model the language I expected from them. Secondly, students needed to understand that it was not acceptable for them to use words like “thingee” or “what-cha-ma-call-it”; I needed to hold them accountable for how they spoke to me, and each other. Creating this expectation was the most important change. It was necessary to set these new expectations of precision and specificity with the way we conversed with each other. The last factor dealt with how I was going to support their academic discourse with room environment, tools, and visual charts.

Supporting my students’ abilities to converse with each other using academic language was two-fold. For the purpose of this study, I wanted to give them the tools to feel comfortable in any situation to share with someone something they have learned. But more importantly, teaching students how to be actively engaged in academic discourse, allowed them to gain a better understanding of content and course work. Fisher, Frey and Rothenberg (2008) state:

“Because learning isn’t a passive experience but one that is innately social, effective classrooms require that a ‘sea’ of conversation occur throughout the day. Students simply cannot learn through listening alone; they need lots of opportunities to try new knowledge on for size if they are to take possession of the concepts and apply them to novel situations.”

By providing more opportunities for my students to practice their academic discourse, my hope was to build capacity and confidence in their knowledge base of our content areas. To achieve our goals, I first started with creating an expectation for speaking in class. For the past couple of years, the students have been used to seeing their learning objectives for each day written on the board. It was agreed upon from our staff, that we would write specific learning goals for students to understand and focus on while they were engaged in the lesson. But while my students were learning, they needed a separate Language Objective, so that they would understand what was required from them to work on, with regards to their academic discourse. Language Objective as defined by Fisher, Frey, and Rothenberg, teaches and provides practice in the academic language needed for the task (2008). Depending on the lesson, activity, or project, I wrote specific language objectives for students to key in on. Every language objective was accompanied by possible language frames (sentence starters) to support the students with their conversations:

As lessons were taught, students would be asked to discuss what we were learning in their groups, and by using the language frames, they were able to start their conversations. Some might argue that using language frames hinder students from becoming free with their words, and that using a frame that structures their sentences, pits students to only use those frames. I would have to agree. If a teacher heavily structures a language frame, where students only have to include a couple of words to complete the frame, in that instance, students would learn to rely on the frames as a crutch. It is important that a teacher strategically creates frames that allow for students to grow beyond that frame, to move and explore with other alternatives to communicate their thoughts. After the first month of using the language frames in our class, a handful of students started to voice out their dislike for the frames I was providing. It wasn’t that they were no longer useful; some students felt that they were bound by only using the frames provided. It was important for me to reiterate to them, that the frames were meant to use as a jumping off point, and not as the only means to communicate. In the beginning weeks, I hadn’t done a good job to instill that value in them. In a reflection question given to the students about their usage of language frames, students responded with mixed responses. Some students wrote about the positive aspects of using the frames in discussions, other students expressed dislike for the frames, saying that they would rather use their own words:

- “I personally believe that the language frames aren’t helpful. Others may need it, but I don’t. Sometimes I want to use my own voice and not to have to look up at them when I’m talking. They sometimes don’t make sense with what you’re trying to say.”

- “I think the language frames kind of helps me, but I still think it[‘s] missing some things. I don’t like them, because when we say them, we sound like robots. I think you should give us some words in the sentence, but the rest, let us make it our own.”

- “Your language frames may help other students, but no offense, they don’t help me much, but they are handy.”

Taking these thoughts into consideration, it was important for me to create frames that were designed to address the various types of learners in my room. Students that felt like they were ready to move past the frames, needed to have a much different support. Their frames could come in the form of sentence prompts rather than starters. Students, who viewed the frames as a positive support, mostly cited their increase ability to be able to talk with students in their groups:

- “For me it’s hard to talk in front of people because I don’t like expressing myself in any way but the language frames really help me out talking in groups.”

- “The language frames help me out a lot. If I don’t know what to say during a shared inquiry I use the language frames to help me out.”

- “Language frames are very helpful to me in many ways. They help me discuss topics in my group, and paint a picture of what we’re discussing. It also helps us begin a discussion, and everyone has something to say.”

It was equally important for me to continue with using the frames in order for me to support my English language learners. These students needed the opportunity to have a resource that allowed them to converse with their classmates without the hindrance of a lack of vocabulary or grammatical structure. Even though it is added work to differentiate language support, the overall result will give all students access to academic discourse; and by providing an equal access to students, my hope was more students would start to feel comfortable with speaking within their groups. To better support my students with these goals, I was able to use a district resource for using and creating language frames (appendix 7). These resources allowed me to differentiate the language support within our room. In doing so, I created various types of charts for students to use as tools for academic conversations. Throughout our room, depending upon the content area, students were able to access various types of frames, from language about argumentation, to inquiry based wonderings, to identification for mathematic concepts. The following photographs are examples of support frames for academic discourse:

Section 4: Discovering Authentic Audiences

Finding our Hidden Voices

One of the benefits of being part of the High Tech High Graduate School of Education is the constant exposure to innovative strategies and projects. One such project introduced me to an online book publishing company called Blurb (www.blurb.com). By using free software, anyone could upload contents to publish a professionally made quality book. So armed with this awesome resource, I brought the idea of creating a book to my students. During class, I projected the Blurb website on our LCD projector and shared various types of books that have been uploaded to the site. My students asked several clarifying questions, centered on what type of books could we make, to what are the limitations to creating a book. Some students expressed their desire to make their own books, while others wanted to team up to create a group book.

As I anticipated, their initial interest was energetic with excitement. But as our conversation shifted to discussing our timeline and possible book projects, the excitement in their voices faded slightly. Looking at our school calendar, we had nine weeks left of school. Making sure to plan for three weeks of processing and delivering time for the book; that left us with six weeks to write, critique, and finalize all student pieces. I asked the students to discuss in their groups the types of possible projects we could make, considering the timeline in which we had to operate with. Several ideas were proposed, and after a short class discussion, we settled on creating a book about their lives. Using various types of genres, students decided to create pieces of writing that reflected how they viewed life through their eleven and twelve year old eyes. But as we discussed informally other types of genres of writing, the question of who was our intended audience came up. The conversation focused on writing a book to inform their parents about how they experience life. Hoping that my students would find enthusiasm for writing a book for their parents, I quickly realized that wasn’t the case. The energy that started our Blurb conversation depleted, and a sense of apathy filled the air.

We sat in a whole class discussion for over fifteen minutes, the focus was largely centered on the overwhelming feeling that my students didn’t feel like their parents would care about what they wrote. One student said, “They’re (parents) only going to buy the book, cause we’re their kid, they don’t care what we have to say.” Another student commented that she felt like her parents never take the time to listen to what she says in person, asking why should she believe that they would be interested in what she had to say with her words. Overall she felt like the project would be “a waste of time”. In her argument, about seven others agreed with her view. There were a few students who spoke in defense for the book, saying that it was important for their parents to hear their words. But others argued against them, stating that it wasn’t worth the time and effort to create something that wouldn’t be valued.

I sat back, and forced myself to listen, trying not to speak out to defend their parents. I wanted to hear what they had to say, so I sat there in silence, and let them talk it out. I didn’t realize at the time, that in doing so, our book project was falling apart. My students had lost interest, and it turned into an assignment, void of relevancy. At the end of our conversation, the overall feeling in the room stared at me in the face and asked, “Do we still have to do this assignment?”

Deflated, I asked the students if we could table the discussion and pick it up the next day. Obliging my request, we moved forward with the rest of our lessons. Later that night, at my Action Research Seminar class, I brought up my dilemma to my director. Upon hearing the frustrations of my students, she asked me one simple question: “If your students don’t want to write for their parents, who do they want to write for?” In trying to focus on listening to my students, I became engrossed with their reasons for not wanting to write, that I completely ignored asking them who they wanted as an audience. Most often in writing, students are given their intended audience, sometimes it’s a principal, other times it may be the mayor or the president. Whatever it is, students rarely have the choice to choose their audience. In our original conversation, my students had settled on writing to their parents, ironically, their choice, led us down a path of lost interest. After teasing out the details with my director and a few others, I entered class the next day with a new game plan.

Restarting the conversation with my students, I asked them to trust me. I let them know that I took the time to listen and that I understood what they were saying, making sure that I validated their feelings. I asked them to consider the book again, without any regards about their parents. Focusing on trying to empower their voices, I let them know that I believed that there were a multitude of people out there that would take the time to sit, read, and listen to their voices. I then asked them to think about their intended audience, asking them to focus on important people they would love for them to read their book. After ten minutes of group discussions, and another ten minutes of charting, this is what we created:

Throughout that discussion, I made sure to circle back trying to get my students to think about their parents, inserting the idea, that their parents may not be their intended audience, but in the end, we could include them when it came time to reveal our final product. It was interesting that the people my students did request were retired teachers, our librarian, the superintendent and executive director, and our principal. They also wanted other students from different grade levels to read their work. In retrospect, throughout that entire time, I never once thought about how far my students had come. In the beginning of the year, it was hard for me to even get them to share with each other. But now, when I asked them who they wanted to share their work with, their list covered a gamut of people, from the President of the United States to their first grade reading buddies.

Our discovery of creating an authentic audience, infused my students with a new drive to create beautiful work, and over the course of the next five weeks, my students wrote, critiqued, revised, and critiqued again, and again, and again. Throughout the room, students gathered in small numbers huddle around one paper, and work-shopped together to help each other fine tune their writing. Examples of their critiqued pieces are attached as appendices ___ to ___. Everything we had worked on all year long, came together, my students were all focused on one goal, to get their piece as close to being beautiful as they could. I had been so focused on collecting student voices, and sorting through data, I hadn’t taken the time to watch my students grow. Everyday when it came to project time, my students pushed themselves to create masterpieces. Per student request we kept our Target Audience poster up on the wall; the students felt that it was important for them to stay focused on the reason why they are writing. Having an authentic audience gave them purpose, drive, and a reason to craft their work with precision and care.

As I met with each student to critique their work, I was amazed at the truth and depth of detail in which they wrote with. Their honesty with their work was beyond any expectation I had had for them. Hoping that through this project, students would discover themselves, and the power of their voices, I wasn’t ready for the openness of their topics. Throughout the year, most of our writing was married to district created prompts, were students were forced into a genre without any choice for intended audience. Through this project, they were in control, with full choice of topic and genre. Some students focused on writing poems, whiles others created vignettes. One student, who struggled with writing all year long, discovered that he could tell a story using the genre of graphic novels. So he sat and drafted his project, a three page comic about schools turning students into robots. Another student opened her heart and drafted a poem about the day her father walked away from her family. When she finalized her poem, Daddy is Gone Forever, she shared her work with our class; and with tears in her eyes, she bravely read line by line. Whether their topic was personally sensitive, or fun and celebratory, each student crafted his/her piece with pride. Never throughout the entire project did one student complain about sharing their work for critiques. They all understood that together, we would be able to help each other turn their work into masterpieces.

About half way through our project, we took some time to design the layout, organize the order of each piece, and create a fitting title. Trying to come to a consensus on a title with 31 opinionated students was a daunting task, but after an hour of small group, and whole class discussions, the students in my class had created the perfect title to describe their journey: Speak Out: Finding our Hidden Voices.

The journey of their project, from conception to final product was full of open discussions and days upon days of critiquing each others work. The students in my class had supported each other through their first professionally published book. As a final reflection, I asked my students to write in their inquiry journals about their book project journey, about their growth as a student, and about what they learned this year. Reading through their responses, I found that out of 31 students, 90% of them reported that they had felt comfortable and confident with sharing their written pieces with a wider audience. Only a few held their skepticism, mentioning that they felt that some adults still won’t care about their work, and that because of that, they didn’t feel like their work was good enough. Of the 90% who felt comfortable, almost all of them mentioned that critiquing their work played a larger factor in their sense of pride and confidence. In summing up their experience and reflecting on their year, these students have given me an insight that I will carry with me every year:

- “This year our focus was not math, writing, not even reading. What we focused on was something that will be useful in the future, something that will be carried on, and something that we will never forget. That something was Finding our Voices!”

- “Through this project I have learned that we have a voice, and with our voices we can influence others. I learned that my voice is not only strong and powerful, it is also beautiful.”

- “I learned the once you have found your voice, you can reach any expectations you can think of. In this past year, I have finally found my voice. I realized once you’ve found your voice, you can do anything.”

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1382100