Do You DARE To Revise?

Now that I'm halfway through the amazing book Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning by Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D., and Patrice M. Bain, Ed.S., I decided to try out some of the strategies I've been collecting for increasing student learning.

I knew my first Creative Writing unit needed to be revised, so that's where I decided to focus my efforts first. Since the unit includes targeted lessons on revision, I'll be practicing concepts I want to teach as I revise the unit. Way to make it gel!

Here are the steps to my revision attack plan.

1. The first step in revising a unit (or a piece of writing) is to gain some distance. You can't revise a piece you've just finished writing because you're too close to it. So, put the manuscript in a drawer and walk away. Take a two-week vacation. Then you can come back to it with fresh eyes. I've done this by finishing my unit draft and teaching from it last fall, then setting it aside for almost a whole year. Let's just say, my eyes are fresh.

2. The second step is to reread the unit or draft with an eye for revision. Specifically, look for elements that can be deleted, added, rearranged, or exchanged. Notice that these verbs form the acronym DARE. I'll be teaching my students this acronym, but I need to apply it to my unit plan as well.

• Delete: I deleted a few activities that did not support student thinking about the unit's essential questions. While the activities are fun and do promote creativity in writing, I wanted to zero in on my standards and EQs more precisely. So that meant some things had to go.
• Add: I added several opportunities for retrieval practice, a topic I'm learning about through Powerful Teaching. Low-stakes and no-stakes retrieval activities allow students to show what they know and get feedback without fear of losing points. Retrieval practice is a learning strategy, not an assessment strategy. Since I want students to remember concepts like the steps in the writing process for the long haul, I needed to add practice opportunities that reduce the need for cramming. I also added a unit assessment in Google Forms, including feedback for both incorrect and correct answers. Feedback is another of the "power tools" from Powerful Teaching, so I know I'm helping students learn and retain understandings.
• Rearrange: In my original unit draft, my lesson on individual revision practice came before my lesson that allowed the class to work together on a revision. Clearly, students would benefit if I placed the "we do" lesson before the "you do" lesson. I also shuffled some of the standards around, rearranging them to accurately reflect what students are learning in each lesson of the unit.
• Exchange: In some cases, my learning objectives were vague or did not clearly match expected outcomes. I spent some time honing each objective to exchange vague words for specific ones and to match the objective's verbage to its expected outcome in the lesson.

3. Ideally, the third step would be to seek peer feedback on the unit or draft. If you are the only teacher in your department because your school is so small (yeah), it might be more challenging to find a peer reviewer. This is where networking at teacher conferences and harnessing social media can help. Connect with friends, ask for help, and get another person's fresh eyes to read your revision. And if you're teaching throughout the revision, see how the revised unit works in the classroom. Seeing which lessons succeed and which lessons flop is valuable feedback. Put that feedback to work for you!

4. If you have the luxury, step four is to put that manuscript back in that drawer for another two weeks or a year and come back with fresh eyes for another round of revision. Okay, we're teachers. That would be ridiculous. But just as we tell our students, "You are never done." There is always something we can delete, add, rearrange, or exchange to help students learn.

I'm almost ready to tuck my unit away again and not look at it until fall. I'm much happier with the strategies and the structure, and I believe students will benefit from my efforts. All it took was a chunk of dedicated time and the daring to revise.

For more on revising a unit, check out this past post.

What are your favorite revision strategies? Share in the comments!

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Revising a Unit

It's been a blessing to be part of a network of Idaho teachers who are learning to be CORE literacy coaches for the past year. This August I begin year two of the training, when I'll be coaching a "newbie" to the program. In the meantime, there are loose ends from last year to tie up.

I'm currently revising the Social Studies/ELA unit I created for CORE coach class last year on the book Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose. My unit received critiques (one of them especially helpful), and now it's up to me to make needed improvements and submit it. My coach says I retain the rights to the unit, so that means I'll be able to post it in my Teachers Pay Teachers store when it's all done. Hooray!

One area in need of revision is the DBIs (Okay, I had never heard of that term before taking the class. It stands for Document-Based Inquiry). Here's how the Idaho Coaching Network describes DBIs:

"DBIs use a multi-phase approach, revealing new information in small mystery-like puzzle pieces, through the integration of variety of text types (visuals, videos, informational texts, primary source documents, etc.), which builds curiosity and engages students.  DBI follows the principles of scaffolding, moving students from simple to more complex texts.  As students move through these phases, they gain new knowledge (puzzle pieces) and assemble a grander picture; all of the phases work together to tell the whole story.  Ideally, each phase will answer questions from previous phases as well as lead students to a deeper understanding of the topic.  Finally, students will synthesize the knowledge they have learned through each of the phases and demonstrate their understanding through written or oral language."

Although I used a DBI when I first taught my new D-Day unit this spring, I realized that more thought was needed to make the learning activity even more effective. I need to think carefully about how to use the artifacts and the process as a whole to gradually lead students toward synthesizing knowledge gained and demonstrating their understanding in meaningful ways. I want to add artifacts (the photos, maps, articles, and other pieces that make up a DBI folder) and be sure that every piece that's included strengthens the inquiry process.

Besides the DBIs, I'm also strengthening the vocabulary and independent reading portions of the unit, as well as making the whole document and its attachments more visually appealing and user-friendly (can't go wrong there!). Portions of the unit that focused on close reading, the theme of leadership, and the culminating assessment (writing and recording a D-Day radio broadcast) were already fairly strong and needed little work.

Even though I feel I procrastinated revising my unit, there is something to be said for taking time off from working on a project and then returning to it after several weeks (or in my case, months). I was able to look at the document with fresh eyes and be more critical of my work in a constructive way. It also helped that I went in to school to work on it instead of trying to work from home. As it turned out, I was unable to work in my classroom because it was being worked on, but I found a home in the school library, which was dim and quiet and cozy, just right for getting some real, focused work done on my unit. There's still work to do, but it's coming along. I'm so thankful!

Coming up on Tuesday, I'll be presenting on narrative writing and on Faith and the Public School Teacher at the P20 Educator Conference at the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls. There's prep work remaining for my presentations, so I'll be a busy beaver for a few days! But I couldn't be more excited.

What helps you revise a unit? Please share!



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