Helping Students do Hard Things in ELA

With every inch of my soul, I believe our students can do hard things.

But doing hard things is not the same as assigning hard things. It’s not the same as providing difficult instruction, then expecting straightforward or immediate results.

Raising the bar and increasing rigor in our classrooms must be coupled with purposeful, intentional scaffolding, compassion, a deep knowledge of our students’ lives and backgrounds, and effective teacher-tested strategies. This blog post features a round-up of TWELVE strategies to try that can both push students toward tackling hard things, but still support them and guide their way.

1. SESAME STREET QUIZZES

When we talk about having kids do hard things, we have to look in the mirror and take a hard look at our own assessment practices. Why is something hard? Is it hard because it requires a high level of critical thinking? Or is it hard because the design of the assessment is something students haven’t tried before? Is it hard because the assessment wasn’t truly created with backwards design and students are attempting a skill they haven’t had enough practice using?

When it comes to assessment, we want to challenge our students’ critical thinking, but we also want to make sure that the assessment is an accurate measurement of skill growth. In the masterclass Down With the Reading Quiz, my podcast partner Marie Morris and I break down three types of formative assessments that can be used over and over again to help students master skills. My personal favorite: THE SESAME STREET QUIZ.

It’s about as simple as it might sound: the quiz shows students four items, three of which are connected, and the other is an outlier (one of these things is not like the other!). In this podcast episode, we break down the philosophy behind using our Sesame Street quiz formative assessments as a regular practice in your classroom. I love that this quiz checks off many important boxes for me in terms of what matters in the classroom and asking students to do hard things:

They promote equity: this is a show me what you can do-type of assessment, not a “gotcha” quiz
They are rigorous, but can also be scaffolded
They can be graded on a rubric rather than using arbitrary points
They help kids understand that you care more about holistic interpretations of learning rather than minute details (unless the details provide commentary on the whole!)

Sesame street quizzes are a HARD THING to ask kids to do, but one that they can get really good at. With scaffolding, practice, and reinforcement, we really can ask our students to do hard things.

Download a sample slide deck here!

2. MAINTAINING EXPECTATIONS THROUGH STUDENT INTEREST

As winter starts to come to an end, many students start to become less enthusiastic about learning as spring nears. Sharena from The Humble Bird Teacher uses student interest to maintain high learning expectations in the classroom through project based learning. With project based learning, the students learn to think critically and solve real-life problems independently. Most importantly, the students are the captain of their education as they dive into topics that interest them and bring about discussion and collaboration and fun! In this situation the teacher becomes the passenger, or guide, who steers the students in the right direction. Project based learning can keep behavioral issues low and help with maintaining classroom expectations because when students enjoy learning, they are more likely going to invest in their education rather than not.

How can you implement this strategy in your own classroom?

Select project based learning assignments that align with district standards.
Pick three to four of them and give students a preview of each one.
Allow students to select the project that interests them. Some project based learning tasks require groups. In this case, have students vote as a class.
Let students get creative and solve the problem presented in the project! This is where the fun and learning begins!

Remember, you are the guide and not the captain. Provide your students with the support they need to be successful, but let them steer the ship. Do you want to learn more about project based learning? Sharena recommends the blog post Project Based Learning and Assessment.

3. ROUTINES THAT CREATE PREDICTABILITY

In order to maintain high expectations and provide support to get there, Samantha from Samantha in Secondary focuses on classroom routines to make sure students feel heard, respected, and supported. It might seem obvious to make sure your routines are intact, but as the year drags on, it can be difficult to maintain that high level of expectation when students are so comfortable in your room. Routines provide stability for your students so they know what to expect from you and your class. Being very explicit about your expectations and routines (even if you find that you’re repeating yourself multiple times) sets the benchmark for student achievement. Evaluating (and maybe resetting) just a few of your classroom routines can make all the difference. Here are just a few to consider.

Bellringers: How are you starting class? Is it chaos for the first few minutes when students come in? (No judgment—everyone has been there!) Provide a reliable structure that students can anticipate so that they understand how to be successful. Consider visual writing prompts or attendance questions as a routine to start. Giving students something to get them started immediately is an invaluable routine that will set students up for a strong class period.
Daily Agenda Slides: Are you being explicit about what’s being covered that day and allowing students to see how they can be successful? Make sure you have a daily agenda slide ready to go. (You can put your bellringer right on there as well—win, win!) Listing the activities for the day and the assessment can show your students immediately how they can be successful and allow them time to think about how they might need to be better supported.
Close Reading: Within your novel units - whether whole-class, book club/lit circle or choice – this powerful instructional strategy teaches students to read with intention and purpose, and it is best achieved as a regular, weekly practiced routine. Whether you are new to close reading or have tried and been frustrated with it, the Mastering Close Reading video (asynchronous) workshop series offers the guidance and support to build a strong routine and effective lessons.
Do Something Fun: You can do activities that are both fun AND academically aligned. Make sure you are showing your students that you care about them as people and students. Strengthening classroom culture only leads to students wanting to achieve more academically in your class. What can you plan today that will lead to stronger classroom culture tomorrow?

One of the things that makes teaching so difficult is the unpredictability of each day. Students need different things at different times and some of the things they need to be supported and successful are completely out of teachers’ hands. One way you can provide support for them to do hard things is to make sure your class is set up in a way that they know how they can succeed. Classroom routines are something you as the teacher can control that can make all the difference.

4. RUBRIC CONSISTENCY FOR GROWTH

Students need to know what the goal is if they are going to reach it, right? Krista from @whimsyandrigor knows this to be true, which is why she has created one rubric to rule them all. (Ok, technically there are two rubrics-one for creative writing and one for analytical writing, but you get the idea.) By this “Almighty Rubric”, she means she has created a single rubric that students use ALL year long, from August to May. This is how they know what to reach towards, how to grade themselves on their work, and how to see their progress throughout the whole year. Because students use the same rubric all year, they get to know (and love?) the criteria and, by the end of the year, basically recite each expectation.

At the beginning of the year, Krista knows that students are going to be below expectations on a few of the traits (maybe their command of a comma is still in development or their ability to explain evidence is at the beginning stages), which is why she only grades students on specific aspects (maybe the intro and the use of topic sentences) and not on every single area, until she actually teaches all of the traits on the rubric. However, she does mark the students’ standings on all of the traits so they can see where they currently stand and know precisely in what areas they can grow. As their skills progress and the units introduce each of the traits on the rubric, Krista slowly starts grading more and more.

Speaking of knowing where to grow, built into each rubric is a reflection piece that asks students to reflect on what they did well and what they can improve for the next assignment. This habit of getting students to reflect on both their strengths and weaknesses is one that will serve them well as a student who truly owns their learning.

So, if you have ever wanted to help students see their goal, monitor their own progress, and not have to create a million rubrics, this might just be the solution for you. Click here to check it out and see if this is a resource that would benefit you and your writers!

5. PROVIDING STAGES FOR LARGER PROJECTS

Molly at The Littlest Teacher found that students were often overwhelmed by major projects, such as the research paper. Big projects are hard-but-valuable experiences for students because they challenge students in the areas of organization, time management, planning ahead, growth mindset, and more.

To provide support while still maintaining her high expectations, Molly turned to heavily detailed scheduling and communication.

The most important way to support students during a big project is by breaking down that project into many smaller steps for students. They need to know much more than “What do we do, and when is it due?”

With a traditional research paper, for example, Molly would break it down into mini milestones, each with their own due date, such as: topic selected by March 5; brainstorm completed by March 6; 5 sources collected by March 9; 20 notes recorded by March 14; etc.

Along with the task and its due date, Molly also included the page number of students’ writing textbook where examples and information for each step could be found. If you’re not using a textbook, consider providing links to videos or webpages that give examples for each step of your project.

Molly compiled all of this information onto a neatly organized and easy-to-read handout that she provided at the beginning of the research project. She put a paper copy of the handout in students’ hands, posted a copy on Google Classroom, and even emailed a copy to parents, along with a brief explanation of the goals of the project.

Building in all these little checkpoints throughout the project helped Molly stay on top of where her students were at in the process, if they were understanding the project and moving toward success, and allowed her to see where students were veering off course from expectations and gave her the opportunity to correct struggles before students got too far into the project.

What’s more, providing so much detailed information about the project gave parents a tool to support their students through the process. This was especially important for struggling students.

When assigning any project that requires multiple steps, taking the time to break down all the details of the project and schedule out checkpoints for students and provide them with a calendar of the checkpoints will simplify the process for both you and your students.

6. ACADEMIC ART THERAPY

Infertility and postpartum depression had left Olivia in a dark place. As she began her healing process, she realized how many of her students were also struggling. She began to prioritize her students’ emotional health, starting with a concept called academic art therapy. Here are a few of her ideas:

When studying Literary Mood, have students illustrate each mood with colors and symbols. This helps students become more aware of their own emotions—and it helps them recognize mood in their reading, too.
Before analyzing a story’s plot, lead your students in a body scan. They can close their eyes if they are comfortable and then pay attention to which parts of their bodies feel relaxed and which parts are experiencing tension. Have them draw a body silhouette (or give them a pre-made template) and encourage them to color in the body with colors that represent how they feel. When you’re ready to discuss a plot diagram, encourage your students to analyze the stress or tension in each part of the story to determine the climax of the plot. Be sure to refer often to the body scan and art therapy as you go!
Have students trace their hands, then fill one hand with illustrations of their past and one with illustrations of their future. When they finish, have them trace their hands again, but this time have them fill one handprint with quotes about a character’s past and the other with predictions about the character’s future.

7. KEEP PARENTS CONNECTED

Supporting students and maintaining expectations sometimes means talking to parents. Parent communication doesn’t have to be anxiety-inducing. Yaddy from Yaddy’s Room makes sure students’ parents and guardians are tracking what happens in the classroom in an effort to maintain expectations. Whether it's to brag to parents that their child wrote a phenomenal intro paragraph that she threw up on the board for other students to examine or its to let a grown up know that their student needs a pep talk on appropriate school behavior.

Parent communication is the foundation of classroom management and the key to reducing nerves when you need to have not-so-pleasant conversations about student behavior or academics. She's found that creating relationships with parents through email and phone calls at the beginning of the year helps to create a dynamic where parents feel they are partners with teachers in their child's education and behavior.

To make parent communication as painless as possible, Yaddy makes sure to follow the following steps to make every communication a painless one. First, she introduces herself as an ally to student success in an email to all student parents with a highlight of engaging activities she will facilitate for students. Then, she makes sure every follow-up email highlights a student’s positive behavior or performance, and then she dives into whatever the objective of the email is. She finishes all parent communication with an invitation to schedule a phone call to address concerns. If you want to see how she does it, you can check out this blog post or download her email templates here.

8. UTILIZE CHOICE BOARDS

Katie from Mochas and Markbooks knows that when it comes to maintaining expectations while offering support, choice boards are just the ticket!

Choice boards provide a system for students to demonstrate understanding of specific curriculum in a variety of ways depending on ability level, interests, learning styles, and so much more!

Essentially, a choice board is a handout or digital slide with a table of boxes offering different options for a task. By offering different choices, students feel empowered and take more ownership of their chosen tasks.

You can direct your students to complete a specific number of options on the choice board, or you can create a Tic-Tac-Toe board where students must complete three tasks in a line, ensuring they hit on specific skills that you have strategically placed. For example, each line in any direction contains a written, verbal and visual option. To check out an example of this type of choice board, click here for a fun freebie!

Here are some ideas of how to use Choice Boards in your ELA class:

Pre-Reading Activity Options
Post Reading Assessment Options
Novel Study Project Options
Bell-Ringer Tasks
Early Finisher Tasks
Themed Choice Boards for Specific Holiday Activities
Poetry choice boards organized by themes or types of poetry
Independent Reading (links to readings and/or after reading response prompts)

The options are really endless - just like a choice board!

9. PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR REFLECTION

Doing hard things starts by putting together a game plan. The game plan for learning is understanding how you learn. Do your students have the attitude that school is happening to them? That learning is a chore they have no say in? Carolyn from Middle School Café has noticed after a year of online learning that many of her students have forgotten how to reflect on their own learning? They are not really sure how they learn, which makes creating their game plan to do the hard task of learning a difficult one to create.

Reflection is a life skill, not just an academic skill. As adults, we learn, process, reflect and adjust every day. To help students learn how to reflect, Carolyn has created these reflection sheets to help students think about their own learning.

By intentionally adding reflection time into her units and lessons, Carolyn’s students have begun to understand how they learn. Each day, Carolyn asks a combination of these 5 questions:

What did I learn? (Academic concepts)
What did I do? (What activities did I do that helped me learn?)
Why was it important? (How did the activities help me learn?)
How well did I do? (Did these activities help me to learn?)
What can I take away from this? (What did I learn about my learning?)

At first students will struggle with identifying how the activities help them learn, however, the more students are given opportunities to make connections between what they are learning and the process in which they learned, the more they will see the role they play in their own education – and stop thinking of education as something that happens to them!

USE INFORMAL CHECK-INS: DURING CLASS, DIGITALLY, & MONTHLY

10. STOP-START-CONTINUE CHECK-IN

Lesa from SmithTeaches9to12 incorporates student voice using a stop-start-continue check in that can be adapted in different ways. At midterm the check-in works for adjustments in how things are being taught to better suit the learners in the class. But it can also be adapted for students to reflect on work habits and behavior. For example, stop procrastinating-start asking for clarification earlier-continue being on time for every class. This can work as an individual element and then as a whole class too. It can help to re-establish class expectations and also opens up dialogue with students to spot those in need of more specific support.

To make this happen, give students three sticky-notes in different colors (eg. stop is pink, start is green, and continue is yellow). This also makes it easy for teacher review. For whole class input, add in big paper labeled with the three elements and have students place their sticky notes (anonymous works best) or simply wander and build directly on the paper. Students can review what others have written so they can expand their own reflection/feedback.

To learn more about supporting students’ needs in your classroom check out this post.

11. USE MONTHLY CHECK-IN SURVEYS

In the hustle and bustle of the tightrope balance that is teaching, it’s easy to forget that the most important thing is the kids. And that they are just kids. Simply Ana P is a huge advocate of relationships over content, and while content, rigor, and high expectations are all necessary, SEL focused activities, like check ins, are equally as vital.

Monthly student surveys are a fantastic way to check for student thoughts/ideas academically speaking, but also a way to check in mentally and emotionally. Life is really hard: heartbreak, trauma, grief, mental health issues, the endings of so many things, etc. - and for youth, they feel things twice fold, or sometimes more, and a lot of times struggle with or simply don’t know how to process or cope.

It can be really intimidating for a student to go up to a teacher and vent or ask for help. Check In Surveys are not a replacement for guidance counselors or the end all be all solutions, but they can serve an outlet for kids and as invaluable insight for teachers.

Ana assigns monthly student surveys at the end of every 3 or 4 weeks and then uses the input to guide her monthly one-on-one conferences with students over the following week. It’s significant for students to know that their teacher not only reads their input, but actively cares to discuss it and/or reply to it.

You can grab one of her surveys HERE - it is completely editable on Google Forms, so feel free to trash or treasure what you’d like. She hopes it can at least serve as inspiration for your next convo with a kiddo. Don’t forget to check in with yourself, too!
***Click this link for extra Google Form survey headers :)

12. DIGITAL CHECK-INS

When was the last time you checked in on your students? Check-ins and conferences can make all the difference in supporting students throughout the school year. Staci from Donut Lovin’ Teacher uses digital check-ins to gain a pulse on student wellbeing, interest, and overall level of comfort in class. These short and ongoing check-ins can help you with seating charts, grouping, and general knowledge about students’ lives. You can quickly whip up a Google Form using some of the questions below.

Try scaled questions (on a scale of 1 to 5) such as:

I feel cared for by my teacher in this class.
I feel cared for by other scholars in this class.
I put in my best effort on a regular basis while in this class.
I can work well with others around me in my current seat.
I am able to see the board well from my current seat.

Try open ended questions such as:

What is one thing going well for you in this class right now?
What is one thing that is challenging for you right now?
Who is one person you would like to give a shout out to in this class? Why?
What are we learning about right now?
What would help you to feel more supported in this class?
What’s one thing that has brought you joy lately?

Another tool to guide your work with students might be through Accountability and Support conferences where students reflect on their learning, behaviors, and growth. This allows teachers to work together with a student to make a plan for continued growth with new support in place. They were originally designed for virtual conferences, but work just as great for in-person conferencing too!

Lastly, If you haven’t tried out Student-Led Conferences yet, they can be a vital tool in connecting and supporting students and the adults that support them! They definitely take a lot of planning in advance, but it isn’t too late to start! You can read more about Student-Led Conferences in Staci’s blog post here.