Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.

English teachers everywhere are grappling with how to take their discourse heavy classrooms digital. We believe that first principles for meaningful and rigorous English instruction are as practical for students learning at a distance as they are in the classroom. While it might be tempting to reinvent your style as we all go remote, we’ve encouraged our English teachers to keep it simple. Specifically, we’ve centered our core essentials for effective English language arts instruction and made a few adaptations for teaching remotely.

Start with rich, complex texts. While it might be tempting to lean on more simply written or “high-engagement” reads in this era of remote learning, we believe students should continue to read rich, complex texts that will challenge them as readers and substantively broaden their knowledge base. Our very own Seamus Ronan sent his eighth graders home with a retired class set of Jack London’s consummate Call of the Wild—and we love this pick!

To be sure, scaffolding these texts may look different when you’re teaching remotely, but we shouldn’t compromise on giving students rigorous texts worth reading. For example, you might balance students’ independent reading with listening to the text and reading along. This helps students develop an ear for the tone and narrative style of the text, while keeping the thread of the narrative moving along at an engaging pace.

Assign daily pages. It’s just not about volume. It’s about prescribing a healthy dose of reading that students will do with consistency and undivided attentiveness. Assigning a manageable set of pages for daily reading gives students the routine they crave and the satisfaction of completion at the end of every day.

Provide parameters for reading. Offset the complexity of texts with focal points for each set of pages that students are assigned. Explicit framing is especially helpful for struggling readers. Choose to call their attention to the details that students must be attentive to in order to produce a deep, meaningful interpretation (e.g. the appearance of motifs, the development of a theme, an allusion to an important historical event, etc.).

Here’s an example of Seamus’s framing of a chapter from Call of the Wild for his eighth graders:

Create a daily question. As we teach remotely, it’s important to accept that we can’t delicately unpack every beautiful moment from the text we choose. Instead, our planning goal is to create one really, really good, thoughtfully crafted question a day for every student to respond to.

Here’s one Seamus wrote for Call of the Wild:

On page 99 (of my version), London writes, “Mercy did not exist in the primordial life.” What does that mean? Why do you think this is? Give an example of how mercy does not exist in The Call of the Wild.

We love that Seamus has put intense focus on a single line that is emblematic of the novel. If a student remembers this line and their own analysis of it ten years from now—that will be a momentous win.

Critically, his question is also text dependent. It asks students to not only establish the meaning of what they’ve read, but also analyze it. (For more on this, visit Doug Lemov’s Field Notes.) Students can’t answer it successfully having only gleaned the “gist” of the narrative. Better yet, many students will go back and reread pivotal moments from the novel as they formulate their interpretation—a great habit to socialize in all readers.

Prioritize bite-sized feedback: Engage with student thinking as you would in the classroom. Seamus uses Google Classroom so that, as answers flow in throughout the day, he can respond to each comment. If you are more inclined to go low-tech, you could ask students to snap a picture of their writing and email it to you so you can reply once a day.

Whether the student was far afield or nailed it on their first try, strive to make your comment authentic and useful. You may want to help them lock in a key idea they’ve missed or stretch their initial answer to greater levels of sophistication and complexity. But remember, quality beats quantity. Regular bite-sized feedback helps to keep students thinking deeply and provides them an important sense of connectedness.

Look how Seamus rewards Yazmin’s strong initial response with a second, more challenging question:

Lastly, vary the routine … but thoughtfully. Once students have gained traction in the text, spice it up! Assign primary texts to build relevant knowledge and help them understand the novel more deeply. Maybe prescribe a little “Close Reading.” Or introduce useful or domain-specific vocabulary for them to apply in their analyses. All of these things can be layered on to compliment your elegant routine, but don’t overdo it with bells and whistles that may distract from the core goal of reading a tough novel really well.

Having carefully chosen Google Classrooms as his sole digital forum, Seamus’s students have mastered the technology. Now, Seamus has begun tasking them with responding to each other, making their shared reading feel more like a classroom discussion. Take a look at how his students are beginning to run with it:

Brianah’s interjection says it all. This wonderfully straightforward routine has helped Seamus’s students escape into reading and truly enjoy it, while he keeps the bar for their intellectual work unapologetically high.

—

The good news is that even if you haven’t sent your students off with a tried and true novel, there is an abundance of free novels, poetry, and primary texts now available digitally. We suggest you start with Common Lit, Tumblebooks, or Get Epic and take your pick. And as you make your choice, don’t forget the importance of choosing complex texts for all of our readers, even our littlest ones, to grow against.

On March 25, Ohio lawmakers unanimously passed emergency legislation that covers an array of policies affected by the coronavirus pandemic. In the realm of K–12 education, the bill (HB 197) allows high school principals (in consultation with teachers and counselors) to determine whether seniors in the class of 2020 who haven’t yet met state requirements may receive diplomas. It also exempts schools from administering state exams for the 2019–20 school year.

Authorizing school leaders to award diplomas was likely necessary for this year. Seniors still working to meet one of the graduation pathways—whether passing state exams, earning industry credentials, or several other alternatives—have had these options removed due to the closures. Yet as principals make decisions about graduation, they should remain mindful that non-college-going students—likely a large portion of those who haven’t yet met state requirements—will be entering a suddenly rough labor market. Though surely a difficult decision, withholding diplomas to less-than-ready students and encouraging them to repeat senior year might be a better option that having them face the prospect of unemployment.

While the immediate focus may be on the class of 2020, the state testing waivers create complications for future graduating classes. The table below displays the graduation requirements for the classes of 2021 to 2023. The “three pathways” refers to the “original” options that were first implemented starting with the class of 2018, while the “permanent requirements” refers to the recently enacted criteria that modified requirements after much debate. As the table indicates, the classes of 2021 and 2022 have the option of following either the three pathways or permanent requirements criteria to earn diplomas, while the permanent requirements begin full implementation with the class of 2023.

Table 1: Overview of graduation requirements for Ohio’s classes of 2021 through 2023

​

Note: The graduation requirements for the class of 2020 were different—they included several other alternatives (e.g., work hours and capstone projects)—than those for the classes of 2021 and beyond. Under longstanding state policy, students must also meet course-taking requirements, and under the permanent requirements pathway need to earn at least two “diploma seals.” For more details, see Ohio Department of Education, Overview of Graduation Requirements by Graduating Class.

Two things are important to know. First, in the coming years, most high school students will rely on passing the state end-of-course exams (EOCs) to meet graduation requirements.[1] The most critical for the classes of 2021 to 2023 are algebra I and English II, because students can achieve a competency score on them and meet a key graduation requirement. Second, the EOCs are designed to be taken right after students complete the course—much like an AP calculus exam is supposed to be taken after an AP calculus course.

The problem, then, is that a large number of Ohio’s freshmen, sophomores, and juniors (and some middle schoolers, too) are presently taking courses with corresponding EOC exams. If their schools don’t administer EOCs this spring, students will miss a chance to take the test with the material fresh in mind.  

How to solve this conundrum? Like most things during this crisis, there’s no easy solution. But it’s worth going back to HB 197. Crucially, the legislation does not prohibit a school from administering state exams. Rather, it excuses schools from this requirement. Therefore, schools (should they be able to reopen safely) appear to have the discretion to administer EOCs when students physically return to school.[2]

In such case, Ohio schools should consider using their authority to administer the algebra I and English II exams, if not all of the EOCs, especially if they think students have made progress via remote learning. This would give students a much better shot at passing exams than if assessment waited until next year when many will have moved onto other courses. It would also enable schools to know sooner which students need help passing EOCs moving forward (retakes are allowed). At the very least, schools should offer EOCs to any student requesting to take an exam.[3]

Of course, it may not be safe to reopen schools before the school year ends. But even then, there are possibilities: Could schools open their doors over the summer to allow students to take EOCs in a specified window? Could they administer exams as soon as school restarts in the fall, or perhaps after some remediation? Could the Ohio Department of Education work with the EOC test developer to provide an at-home testing option without compromising the integrity of the assessment? (The College Board is working on this for AP exams.) Whatever the case may be, the state and local schools should strive to offer students the opportunity to take the EOCs as close to the completion of a course as possible.

In this extraordinary hour, legislators have temporarily suspended a number of policies that govern life during normal times. Now—more than ever—state and local leaders need to exercise their powers to act in the best interests of students.  

We at Fordham, like so many around the world, are working at home. Our usual colleagues have been replaced by new “coworkers.” These are often of the younger variety, be they human children or beloved family pets. But not always. This is for them:

Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.

Last week we shared our approach to keeping older students deeply engaged with great texts at home. At the same time, we know that broad “code knowledge”—the understanding of how to decode written language and read it aloud fluently—must take center-stage in the early grades.

This means that as our upper elementary and middle school teachers orient their instruction around reading to learn, our pre-K through second grade teachers must make certain that our youngest students continue to learn to read.

Specifically, our early elementary teachers have swiftly adapted their explicit, daily reading skills instruction to remote teaching, grounding themselves in three key themes:

1. It starts with routines.
2. Expert modeling is essential.
3. Varied practice builds mastery and memory.

Below is a deep dive into how our teachers have worked to ensure their reading lessons are maximally impactful for students, with instructional examples from several of our classrooms.

It starts with routines: In the clip below, you’ll see how pre-K–4 teacher Kelia Maul-Vera gives clear directions for how students will interact with her virtual lessons, leveraging a classroom routine for identifying letter sounds that she had previously taught. She reminds her students, “this is just like the activity we do in the classroom. Listen closely with your ear. Tell me what sound you hear. Remember the first sound I say. Raise your hand when you’re ready to play.” With that, students are primed to follow along and chime in when Kelia cues them, just as they normally would in the classroom.

But Kelia doesn’t rely only on routines she’s previously taught. Watch how Kelia rolls out a new procedure her students will use for blending—that is, building words by stringing together individual sounds. Notice her strategic use of repetition and how she prompts students to mimic her movements in order to help build muscle memory for the procedure. We love her co-teacher, Robo Jr., too!

These routines allow Kelia to get right to the good stuff in every lesson—rigorous skills instruction.

Expert modeling is essential: Our teachers place a premium on clear and accurate modeling, which is as challenging as it is critical. As this helpful tutorial points out, letter sounds and phonemes don’t have a one-to-one correspondence, and inexperienced phonics teachers sometimes conflate them.

Watch how Kindergarten teacher Shameika Freeman teaches double letter consonant sounds and spellings with incredibly deliberate and precise articulation, providing a set of examples to make sure it sticks with students.

No doubt, Shameika has put in the advanced practice required to achieve this level of clarity.

Principal Molly Smith reflects on the importance of such studied intentionality:

It is critical to learn how to make pure sounds. Phonics teachers have to carefully guard against drawing out sounds which often results in adding a vowel to short sounds. For example, instead of making the quick, clear “b” sound, inexperienced teachers might say something like “buh” … this really confuses students later on when they begin to integrate sounds together.

Here’s another example from Leslie Ciancuillo, who is introducing two “tricky words” to her kindergarteners. In her classroom, tricky words are those that are in some way irregular and cannot be read correctly with blending because these words break phonetic rules. Students must begin to recognize them by sight.

Leslie’s clarion pronunciation and carefully measured pace make it easy for students to follow along, even at a distance. And while we know this benefits all of our fledgling readers, it is our struggling readers who stand to gain the most. Research shows that the vast majority of students with reading disabilities have trouble with accurate and fluent word recognition stemming from phonological processing. They need early, systematic, and explicit instruction in phonology, sound-symbol association, and syllabic rules.

Varied practice builds mastery and memory: As Molly notes, “it is critical to create clear pathways in students’ brains through repeated practice.”

Below are links to some examples of how Shameika and Leslie have ensured that students get meaningful at-bats with the skills they’ve explicitly modeled and how they sometimes incorporate other skills they are working toward, like letter strokes.

• Shameika Freeman: Double letter spellings
• Leslie Ciancuillo: Phonics

Notice that the next assignment is “adult-facing.” Leslie has provided families with a manageable and targeted way of reinforcing her skills instruction.

• Leslie Ciancuillo: Reading phrases with tricky words

Not only do our teachers ensure students practice skills in bite-sizes, they scale toward more complex, integrated practice as students’ gain mastery. We believe that mixed retrieval practice is necessary for building long-term memory of code knowledge.

Molly adds:

It is critical to structure learning with the awareness that phonics in isolation is pointless. Students need opportunities to push sounds together and pull them apart. This is when phonics instruction becomes more complex. But with consistent practice and a teacher’s focus on refining students’ ability to blend sounds and break down words, they can learn to be very independent!

This is one reason why we love and use Core Knowledge’s reading curriculum across all of our schools. Not only does it provide a coherent scope and sequence of reading skills, each lesson is paired with “decodable readers” that students can read aloud to apply newly acquired skills in the context of a narrative. You can download a free version of their materials here.

We’ve also been thrilled to pilot a second more intensive program, Whole Phonics, innovated by reading specialist Jill Lauren. Early results have been nothing short of transformative for our most struggling, reluctant readers.

A final thought on technology. While we are decidedly cautious about our reliance on digital tools during this period of school closure, we’ve found Loom to be best in class for recording software. Its straightforward design is easy to master quickly and allows teachers to simultaneously record their screens and themselves. They’ve also made this tool free for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis.

Having taught himself to read, Fredrick Douglass said once that learning this code for language would set a person “forever free.” We continue to be inspired as we watch our teachers press forward undeterred to that aim, every day shrinking the distance between themselves and their young, faithful readers.

Days after we shut down all twenty-four of our New York City schools, we opened back up as a remote learning organization serving nearly 10,000 students in their homes.

Operating from the laboratories of innovation of our own living rooms, our educators scrambled to survey thousands of families about their internet capability, became couriers to quickly get equipment and materials to families that needed them, made wellness calls to students and each other, and most importantly, figured out a way to ensure that our students can continue to learn at home for the foreseeable future.

Click here to read the rest of this article in the New York Daily News.

1. On Monday it was announced that Ohio schools will remain closed until at least April 30. (Gongwer Ohio, 3/30/20) The decision to possibly close schools for the remainder of the year is still to come. (Statehouse News Bureau, 3/30/20)
    
2. The longer closure time is forcing schools and districts to reckon with remote learning, whether they want to or not. Luckily for them all, there are no real requirements from the state for them to do anything at all and no consequences whether they do or don’t. Here’s a look at some central Ohio districts giving out laptops and printed work packets to students. (Columbus Dispatch, 4/1/20) At least one Ohio college even suggests things won’t be back to business as usual in the fall, although it seems that some on campus feel that this is simply crisis-based opportunism rearing its ugly head. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 3/30/20)
    
3. Speaking of which, editors in Toledo took a moment to grouch opine about how the EdChoice voucher freeze enacted by the legislature as part of the coronavirus response bill does nothing to solve the problems that they so clearly told us about before. This is very timely, of course, since today is, at last, the opening of the EdChoice application period for the 2020-2021 school year. (Toledo Blade, 4/1/20)

Ours isn’t nearly as sophisticated or elaborate as the “Grandparents’ Academy” that Jake Halpern described in the New York Times, but after ten days of experimenting with it, I’ve had fun, my grandchildren have taken it seriously and worked at it, and we’ve all learned a thing or two.

I’m the happy “Papa” of a fourth grader and sixth grader. For privacy reasons, let’s call them Eleanor and Abigail. Because they live nearby, during normal times we see each other often. One of my occasional grandparent duties is to drop off or pick up at the good school they attend—and we often engage in those slightly frustrating conversations about “what did you learn today?” But in these extraordinary times there’s no school—mandatory shutdowns all over the D.C. area—and spring break also arrived. Hence their school won’t be geared up for on-line instruction until after. (It has announced ambitious plans but of course only time will reveal how well it works.)

The girls’ parents work hard—one mostly at home, the other at an “essential” laboratory—and I’m working, too, in my way, but stuck at home and almost entirely the master of my own time. So it made sense to offer to try to do something online with the kids. Like many of their generation, they’re veteran tech users so there was never a question of them adapting to the “virtual” setting. It’s a lot newer to me, but a kindly (and tech-savvy) Fordham colleague came by in person—socially distanced, of course—to get me up and running on Zoom (which we’re now using for all sorts of Fordham- and Hoover-related meetings and conversations, so I already needed it.)

Papa school doesn’t have anything akin to systematic curriculum, but here’s how it works. E and A take turns—one each day—choosing an educational video or two, sometimes (but not necessarily) drawn from the excellent compilation on the Fordham website. I insist that it run at least twenty minutes, and if there’s more than one, they have to be connected. But today’s doesn’t have to connect to what we worked on yesterday or may turn to tomorrow, which has led us to roam through topics as diverse as Gandhi, Mesopotamia, Hitler, and the Renaissance. It’s mostly been history and biography, not science, art, or literature, but if the kids’ school doesn’t satisfactorily fill the void in coming weeks, who knows what we may investigate.

Once the next day’s video (or two) has been selected by one of the girls, it’s my job to view it and write up some questions for discussion, which I send to the kids. (Recent examples: “What’s at least one reason that Mesopotamian society was not fair and equal, and what is some evidence that it wasn’t?” “What are three examples of things that Gandhi deprived himself of from time to time (or always), and why did he do that? Please include a discussion of fasting.”)

The kids are supposed to be ready—each of them separately—with answers to my eight or ten questions du jour, which they can glean from the videos and additional online research wherever and however they like. Hence I try to send the questions by the end of the day before our discussion. I encourage them to write out their answers and be ready to present them but it’s also fine to have notes to speak from.

When the moment arrives, I’m sitting at my desk in our condo. The girls have been seating themselves in separate places at their house, each on her own device—so it’s a three-way Zoom. I haven’t yet learned how to initiate a Zoom session, so their Mom sends an online invite to all of us. After some throat-clearing, pleasantries, and teasing, we get going. The basic plan is for each of them to answer every question, and I try to alternate who goes first, though I often lose track—and if one isn’t quite prepared for a question, the other may step in, after which I’m certain to lose track.

They’ve done well at preparing for these—I must remember to ask how long it takes—though not everybody has been thorough about every question. While we’re conversing, innumerable distractions present themselves, from noisy snacks (potato chips!), to tech glitches, to friends interrupting with text messages. Occasionally my phone rings (invariably a stupid robo call). Out of my sight, the kids multi-task with each other, too, teasing and texting and occasionally helping with a clue. Sibling rivalry has been known to rear its head. But their own tech prowess has also produced some neat effects: apt backdrops, little videos that run as part of their answers, notes or excerpts that I can see on screen, even real-time drawings they create to illustrate some point they’re making that I’m not grasping. I can’t do any of that myself; I just stare into the webcam atop my screen and try to maintain rough order in our “virtual classroom.” But of course I’m also their “Papa,” so teasing and family stuff also crop up. They take me seriously—but know how to pull my chain, too.

It’s been gratifying and fun. Because I’ve taught, I do OK at devising questions that are worth answering but also roughly age appropriate and that often ask for examples or evidence from the video material, not just an opinion. Because the girls have ample technology and know-how to operate it, we don’t have a hardware problem. It has provided a focal point in my day and in theirs and has given us all something to do together—but safely apart—that’s a little challenging and from which we’re all learning.

Now I have to stop writing this so I can view the videos that Eleanor selected for tomorrow’s session—and then come up with some questions for discussion.

If you had asked me a few weeks ago if I’d be publicly lauding the teachers unions in my state of Rhode Island, I would have probably shot back with a quick “sure, when hell freezes over.” I am a former union member in two states (NEA) and have gone on the record repeatedly to say that I don’t think unions—at least in their current form—should be anywhere near public education. I still believe that.

But let me be the first to say that hell has not frozen over and the teachers unions in my state have stepped up in a major way in this time of crisis to help get our statewide distance learning efforts off the ground. Unlike the teachers unions in San Francisco and Los Angeles who have responded to COVID-19 with lists of impossible demands and efforts to ensure parents can’t access alternative options, Rhode Island’s teachers unions are part of an all-hands-on-deck effort to keep students learning and connected to their teachers.

It is no easy task.

Rhode Island’s commitment to distance learning during this pandemic is largely driven by seven simple words spoken by Governor Gina Raimondo during a March 13: “Some learning is better than no learning.” It is an easy philosophy to rally behind, aided by the fact that she and Education Commissioner Infante-Green have been brutally honest about how messy and hard this is going to be. In saying that we will do the best we can and get better as we go, they have successfully struck a tone of reasonable expectations focused on students rather than one of top down compliance. 

Equity and access are the reasons—or excuses—being used in places like Seattle, New Mexico—to justify the refusal to even pursue distance learning or allow for new instruction. On the contrary, Providence Teachers Union president Maribeth Calabro, cites “equity for all learners” as the top priority in their tireless work over the past two weeks in getting distance learning up and running. She is not shy about admitting that the transition has been messy, exhausting, and far from glitch-free, but she is proud of the around-the-clock efforts she has seen from so many of her members in an effort to ensure that all students—including those with disabilities—will be set up to learn as best they can. It’s important to note that Providence, a capital city school system in the midst of a state takeover, is already getting high marks for its transition to remote learning.

The U.S. Department of Education has been crystal clear that schools should not be hiding behind compliance concerns as an excuse not to provide educational programming during closures due to coronavirus. Unfortunately, lots of districts are doing exactly that. They are allowing fear—and their attorneys—to drive their decisions rather than the simple truth that some learning is better than no learning.

A third grade teacher from northern Rhode Island says the thought of giving up is unfathomable to her. As far as she is concerned, school was ripped away from these kids without warning and they needed to get some version of school back up and running for continuity’s sake and to maintain a strong connection between teacher and student. She found that making read-aloud videos for her students helped during the transition because just seeing her face was reassuring for them. And she has never seen the union, district administration, teachers, and families all rowing in the same direction the way they have since school buildings closed due to COVID-19.

Asked about states and districts who have opted not to move forward with distance learning, she says she “does not understand how any state or school district could decide to leave students twisting in the wind instead of putting forth a good faith effort to continue teaching and learning.” She concedes it is hard and far from perfect but far better than doing nothing. 

And her union agrees.

1. Week three of Ohio’s school shutdown is underway. Schools and districts which have never done remote education before are trying to crack the code, be that take home work, TV school on PBS stations, or actual online learning at home. (WOSU-FM, Columbus, 3/30/30). State Senator Teresa Fedor says, however, that all this effort to do what has not been done before lays bare pre-existing inequities in school resources. (Fox28, Columbus, 3/27/20) And how are things going in terms of food distribution to school kids? Here’s a look at efforts in Cleveland, including those of CMSD and the Breakthrough Schools charter school network. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 3/28/20)
   
   

2. The voucher grouchers in Cleveland Heights-University Heights City Schools have not changed their tune in light of last week’s COVID-19 relief bill. In case you were wondering. (Patch.com, 3/30/20)
    
3. This is an exceptionally poignant look at what the loss of high school students’ senior year may mean to kids. (Dayton Daily News, 3/30/20) Sports and band are already gone, proms and other senior year rituals will probably be next. But most seniors will likely get a diploma no matter what. There’s some worry about that in the preceding piece from the students’ perspective. But complicating matters—as if they need further complicating these days—is the state’s insistence that diplomas earned really only signify that a student is ready for the most menial of work. Nobody asked me, but that sounds like a really bad message to be sending at any point just now. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/28/20)
   

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Joy Hakim runs a storyteller's website intended for anyone who likes to learn—at home, in school, or wherever. It may take you places in the past you haven't been before. It deals with big ideas and true stories, many of which are about science. Its offerings may be helpful for families adjusting to home instruction during the COVID-19 crisis. See it here.