The Schoenblog

Before my return to the regularly scheduled posts about my favorite blended learning tools (see Blending Discussion: Using Technology to Enhance Student Voice and Audience), I wanted to share my Halloween plans and plug Kasey Bell’s awesome Halloween Magnetic Poetry activity.

Halloween Magnetic Poetry with Google Drawings! https://t.co/MdMULizaSL #k12 #edchat #edtech #googleedu

— Kasey Bell (@ShakeUpLearning) October 30, 2016

As an English teacher, I usually love the opportunity to bring in some scary stories for Halloween week, with a focus on Poe, Lovecraft, and other favorites. Last year, though, I came across Kasey’s activity at the last minute and fell in love. I gave my students the choice between the Magnetic Poetry and a story, and they chose the poetry, too.

Sometimes I feel that my students don’t have enough opportunity to be creative and artistic in my class, and while no one day activity will solve that problem, this was a great start. Using the Google Drawings template, we created found poems, learned how to edit and filter our search for images, and shared our poems on Twitter and our Community.

This year, I’m building on Kasey’s template to ask students to tell stories of conflict or with figurative language to stretch their creative and poetic muscles that aren’t enough of a focus in English 10.

Here’s my Slide Deck for the lesson:



After they post their poems, I’ll ask students to vote on the most creative and scariest use of images and literary elements. And maybe there will be some candy involved. I’m looking forward to another fun Halloween lesson and am thankful to Kasey for sharing her work.

Find Kasey’s post with the template here: Halloween Magnetic Poetry with Google Drawings!

Halloween poetry in English 10 #SchoenTell pic.twitter.com/6y8WI7osrf

— Adam Schoenbart (@MrSchoenbart) October 30, 2015

Argument writing is a major part of my English 10 curriculum; an argument essay is the major task on the New York State Common Core English Regents, and it’s an essential fundamental skill. Students need to know how to craft, develop, organize, and present their writing and ideas. Whether it’s convincing mom for the later curfew, succeeding on the SAT essay, or making a sales pitch at work, these are skills that matter.

I don’t spend too much time directly addressing the dreaded Argument Essay for most of the year. Instead I focus on developing the skills: crafting claims, using evidence, recognizing counterclaim, communicating effective ideas, and so on. Then, we’re usually able to apply them to the writing without too much difficulty. For the past two years, I’ve tried to add some more fun into it by focusing on debate and create.

To start the unit, my students are randomly assigned a topic and have fifteen minutes to prepare an argument and debate with another group. We then debrief and start to reflect on the elements of argument to help us move into the more formal dialogue and instruction. Then comes the argument video.

How do we get students to read more? It’s one of the those questions that just never seems to be answered well enough for an English teacher. And things get more complicated when we add in the next questions: how do we get them them like it?

Over the past few years I’ve tackled the “independent reading” in a variety of ways. Most often, though, I found that when students are given the freedom to pick their reading selections and have guidance to help them find a book they might enjoy, the chances for success increased. It seemed so obvious--let students read what they want to and help them find things that connect with their interests.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about book matching--can we take a student’s interests and passions in genres of movies, TV, music, etc. and use them to find the gateway book to foster an appreciation (dare I say love of?) literature? With that in mind, I’ve kept my Book Review projects simple in their requirements:

1. Choose a book you want to read.
2. Read it. Enjoy it. If not, consider switching to something you will enjoy. 
3. Then, create a project that reviews the book with a summary and evaluation.

Find the full Project Assignment here but that’s the gist of it. I wanted my students to enjoy reading, but then I asked them to respond to their books by creating a review. This has been an opportunity for me to push my students to create and explore new technology to display their learning and understanding. I offered the option of a written review, but encouraged students to explore videos, podcasts, and other presentation tools.

I’ve written about these ideas and versions of this project in the past, sharing students’ work last April in Students Must Create: Rethinking My Book Review Projects and in a guest post last June on FreeTech4Teachers, Transforming Learning Through Student Content Creation. Today’s post is a direct follow up to the project, skills, and products. I’ll share some student work and reflect on changes for next time.

Sharing with the World

Throughout the year, I ask students to submit work in a variety of ways. Work that is turned in to the teacher is submitted on Classroom for Feedback. If the intended audience is our class community, then it also is shared on our Google Community. For work that I want to share out in an organized fashion, like these projects or Genius Hour blogs, I also asks students to turn in links on a Google Form so I can easily organize and share them. Finally, I often ask students to Tweet their work and share it with the world.

Find a public view of the Database Form that students turned in this assignment on at the link. The form asks students to rate the book, its difficulty, and a few related questions to produce the OHS Book Review Database. This database was created with Awesome Table so that students can search for reviews from past classes to find the books that might interest them. All of my students’ work from the past two years can be found on the database.

The Project Watched Around the World

Within a day of turning in her work, a student named Emma send me the following e-mail and screen shot:

Hi Mr Schoenbart! Check it out! People in Canada, Sweden, and Uzbekistan (wherever that is) are watching my book review video!


I wrote back today and asked her for an update so I could add to this post. She wrote:
Hi Mr. Schoenbart! The video now has 91 views and has been watched by people in America, Brazil, Sweden, Germany, Uzbekistan, Russia, and Switzerland! The power of the internet! ~Emma

I also explained to Emma, and to many students, that some of the views could be automated bots, refreshes etc., but even so her 91 views were exciting. She wrote, “The power of the internet!” and I hope that by sharing our products and our awesome, my students can learn about the power of connecting and collaborating meaningfully and responsibly.

In this project, students are reading, summarizing, evaluating, creating, sharing for authentic audiences, and more. We are essentially developing true 21st century skills through the book report, a staple of the English class. But these projects will live on forever, databased for my future students and online for an audience bigger than our classroom or school.

Sharing Student Work

Below, find a few of the products from this year’s students. For more, explore the OHS Book Review Database.

Here's Emma's video review of To Build a Castle:

It’s been about two weeks since I introduced #GeniusHour in my English 10 classes this year, and I’ve already seen some results worth writing about. The work is still in the hypothetical stages; we haven’t delivered pitches, created proposals, or even published a blog post yet, but I still have a few big take aways from the work. Find my reintroduction to passion projects in my recent article, From #20Time to #GeniusHour: Rethinking Passion Projects, and all of last year’s posts in my series, 1st Time #20Time.

English 10 students starting to blog for #GeniusHour #SchoenTell #OssiningPride pic.twitter.com/NqN1kcWd1a

— Adam Schoenbart (@MrSchoenbart) February 2, 2016

For #GeniusHour, I want to study how social media changes personal traits and personalities #SchoenTell

— Nadia Lau (@nlau0327_) February 8, 2016

I will be studying ways to lower the cost of colleges for #geniushour #SchoenTell

— Grant McKee (@GrantMcKee1028) February 8, 2016

Where do you go to find opportunities for learning?

That was the big question Dani Kennis and I had almost a year ago. We were at the start of our journey as connected educators, having attended a few local edcamps and conferences. We were on Twitter, starting to participate in online chats, and eager to bring back learning and innovative ideas to our classrooms. We spent hours sharing what we found, researching conferences, and making a long list of all of the learning opportunities available to us.

We started locally, with conferences we wanted to and likely could attend, but the list quickly grew to include some larger and regional events. The Google Sheet with this data grew and grew, and we shared it with a few friends, giving us our seemingly perfect guide to taking control of our own learning. With it, our dreams, aspirations, and potential for where we wanted to go and who we wanted to be as educators and professionals grew, too.

Maybe you can relate. Like Dani and I, you too are probably eager to take more control of your learning. Perhaps you have also seen or experienced the exponential benefits of connecting and learning together, and of personalized professional learning and building personal and professional learning networks. That was the experience Dani and I had and we quickly recognized the drive and passion in others. Then one day, Dani asked:

Is there a PD/Conference schedule or calendar anywhere for local conferences in NY/NJ? @wkrakower @AJBianco

— Dani Kennis (@kennisdani) April 10, 2015

This is the question that first led to the creation of The Education Calendar (#TheEduCal). We wanted a place to find, share, and promote great learning opportunities. We wanted to be able to build community and learn together. I’ve always told my students that all of us are smarter than one of us, and we wanted to make this a reality for our professional worlds through collaboration and crowdsourcing. After all, we don’t know every great event or conference in the world--but together we might.

I love comic books. I’ve read them and studied them all my life. I read, collect, and share my passion every chance I get. When I can bring this love into my classroom is when I really get excited. That’s why one of my favorite units for English 10 is teaching Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir Night with Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust graphic novel, Maus II. These two powerful texts work together beautifully to help students understand history, about responsibility, and to examine the style and craft of two wonderful creators.

I pride myself on having taught in a blended classroom for the past few years. Without Google Apps, Chromebooks, and technology, my lessons wouldn’t be effective with their current design. But without me--the teacher--they wouldn’t be effective either. I struggle sometimes finding the balance between facetime and screentime, both in my classroom and home life--for me and students.

My Top 3 Tools for Flipped Activities

As I gear up for the new year, like most teachers, I'm reviewing my course information, updating lesson plans, and rethinking my classroom culture. I'm lucky to be teaching English 10, a course which I've taught, refined, and honed throughout my career. I can teach Elie Wiesel's Night backwards and forwards; I've surely read and taught it enough times. But, like most good teachers, I recognize the need for my practice to evolve.

Each year, I ask myself the same questions: What do I want learning in my classroom to look like? What products will students create? How would I want students to talk about my teaching, lessons, and curriculum? What do I want them to leave my classroom with? Skills? Content? More?

The past few years, my shifts have involved technology and its implementation. Now that I've developed my norms and have a few years under my belt in the 1:1 classroom, I'm looking for more. I want to make more meaningful shifts to help my students create, collaborate, and connect with each other and with the world.

I've seen a quote or meme going around lately, and am disappointed I couldn't find it now. If anyone has it, please let me know, and I'll correct it and eagerly provide credit. Would you want a doctor or lawyer who was not up to date on the best professional practices? Teachers are professionals, too, and experts in their field; we should act like professionals and be treated as such. I've written a lot this summer about the power of being a connected educator, personalizing professional development, and attending conferences. I think there's an unparalleled value in learning from peers, evolving, and moving forward. Technology, the world, and our students won't stop moving. Neither can we.

My 5 C's for 2015

Look how clever I am: 5 C phrases. Maybe I'm on to something here?

1. Centered on Students

2. Connected Learning

3. Creation

4. Community of Learners

5.  Communicate

The struggle to engage and empower students in authentic writing and peer response while teaching form and structure...

In this week's scholarly article pursuits, I read the March and July 2015 issues of English Journal. I've been a member of NCTE for a while and have a stack of these fantastic journals to catch up on, so I'm dedicating some of my reading to keeping up to date with research and practice for secondary English education.

An article that stuck with me in this batch is "Peer Response, Remixed: Authentic Peer Response through Audio Technology" by Michael Hoffman in the March issue. Hoffman posits that most peer response is too scaffolded and automated, to the point of being "student proof" and "manifestly free of investment." By focusing on structure, grammar, and mechanics, often through checklists, students (and perhaps teachers) "do not address the heart of writing: the message that students seek to impart through their text."


One solution Hoffman offers is the remix, a concept which fascinates me. Instead of a canned and automated peer response, students create something new by augmenting the original text with something else. He compares this to the Beastie Boys' album, Paul's Boutique, which samples from TV, movies, music, and sound effects. "The remix in the classroom becomes a means for students to explore meaning and to create meaning that is their own. The anchor text remains in the possession of the original author, but that cannot be said of the remix. It is now a joint production, in which the student as reader and interpreter shares creative authorship and authority." Basically, the responder uses audio clips and additions to remix a recording of the original work. The writer records a reading of the piece, which the second student remixes.

While this ideas fascinates me, it doesn't really serve the same purpose as a typical peer response or evaluation. Creation is essential but so is editing, revision, and evaluation. I've used a variety of peer review strategies over the past few years, ranging from checklists and conferencing and Google Forms to collaborative Google Docs editing and unstructured free responses. I agree with Hoffman's conceits, that these strategies often lead to a narrow and closed response, I'm not sure the remix addresses the real goal of most peer review. However, it still sounds like a lot of fun and a worthwhile act of creation. Instead of responding to mechanics and ideas, the students are truly creating something new. That said, I wish the article had links to some of the audio products his students produced through this work.

Beastie Boys' "Hey Ladies" from Paul's Boutique samples from over a dozen songs and has nearly the same number of allusions, according to this list. Hoffman mentions the band's work on this album as an example of a successful remix. Album art from Wikipedia.

What really interested me in this article are the questions that Hoffman raises and hints at regarding student writing and peer response. He argues that peer response efforts should focus on the "most essential question for an author: Does this text achieve what I intended?" I'm wondering about the balance between teaching students to write in approved forms and structures versus allowing them to choose the form to follow function. But how often do our students truly understand their function or purpose? How do we help them get to this metacognitive point?

I found his article really interesting but it left me with a lot of questions to consider moving in to next school year:

• How do we teach students to understand their purpose and intent as writers?
• Don't students often have the same overall intent? If all students are writing an argumentative essay, the intent is the same. Is this okay? Should the form and structure be the same, too?
• How do we balance the need for student empowerment, voice, and freedom with structure and scaffolding? How much freedom should we allow in writing?
• Is it better to start off by offering students freedom or restriction in writing? Where do we begin?
• When and how are peer responses most valuable? How do we teach students to make positive and authentic contributions?

I typically teach by students writing acronyms to help them structure their writing and find that it helps most students stay focused and organized. These acronyms tend to limit digression but not the development, unless the writer chooses to use them exclusively. It's an understand the rules before you can break them approach, and while it's been successful for me, I'm not sure that it's the best strategy. It may not be broken but I'm not sure it doesn't need some fixing.

I want to think about these questions and issues and write about my answers one day, but for now, I'm purposefully leaving them unanswered. If you have comments, ideas, or answers, I would love to hear them. Please comment or reach out on Twitter!

This is part 4 in a series of posts about my first time trying #20Time Projects with my English 10 Students. In this post, I'll be sharing students' work and discussing their successes and challenges. Find the previous posts here: Part 1: My Intro to 20 Time Projects, Part 2: Managing Student Workflow, and Part 3: What I'll Do Better Next Time.

It's now been a few weeks since school ended and I have new perspective on my students' work. Going back to review some of it, I'm still wildly proud of what they accomplished. One of my biggest successes was how many students explained their challenges. One student said, "I didn't accomplish my goal because it was too big and wasn't realistic in the end," and continued to share what she did learn and accomplish. For me, that's a huge victory. The students learned, reflected, and grew.

I required students to present part of their projects and products to the class, calling it a project snapshot. The reason for this is simple: we ran out of time. Next year, I want to plan more carefully so students can plan and deliver TED Talks about their work. I want more public learning, consistent blogging, and collaboration with the world. I want to do better to help my students do better.

Until then, though, here are some highlights from my students' work. At the link below, find a sheet with students' research questions, topics, blogs, proposals, annotated bibliographies, and projects. I wanted to document all of their work in an organized way so that I have models and resources to share and to use in class next year.

Mr. Schoenbarts English 10 #20Time 2015: Student Work

Elliot, Greg, and Yoo Shin researched how motivation affects the academic success of students. They conducted original research and surveyed hundreds of Ossining students using a Google Form. They also submitted their work to the Genius Hour Fair. They are #17 in the 13-16 category. Vote for their work here!



Nick's Guide to New Earth City 2187 investigates the possibility of our future living on Mars. He wanted to know if colonies on Mars are possible.

Calvin and Alex researched obesity and fast food. Find their presentation here. Here's a screenshot of their work.


Somari created a website on Weebly to help people learn more about how to succeed in an acting career. Her website is awesome. Check it out at http://centerstg.weebly.com.


Reid looked at the future of our town, Ossining, and the role of Sing Sing Prison. His extensive research and plans can be found here.

#20Time excited me and made me so passionate about my students' work. I know many of them felt the same, which is exciting for a teacher. Next time, I'll share some of their feedback for both teachers and students from the final part of our work, the reflections.

A few weeks ago, Richard Byrne put out a call for guest blog posts at http://www.freetech4teachers.com. I proposed a post about how my students' learning has changed since we started creating video and content. I'm really proud of the post and my work this year and was very excited to see it featured yesterday. Thanks for the opportunity, Richard.

Find the post here. As always, I'd love your comments and thoughts.

Thanks to 20 Literary Memes for this!

As an English teacher and avid reader, I love pushing my students to be better readers. One of my big picture goals as a teacher has always been to nurture life-long readers and learners. I believe students today suffer from a serious case of aliteracy--they have the ability to read but lack the willingness to do so. I studied aliteracy in my Master's thesis and it's fascinated me--how can we motivate students to read more? I love the idea of book matching; if I can figure out students' interests, favorite movies, TV shows, experiences, etc. can I help match them to literature that they will like, too?

For years, I've had students pursue independent book projects and create written review. I've databased them on a web site so that each year, I can have students search by genre and difficulty, and read the work of their peers' to inspire future choices. The database form can be found here, and I used a site called Zoho Creator to index the full OHS Book Review Database. At the time, I didn't know the full power of GAFE but thought this site did a good job.

Years later, I've tried to step up my game. Instead of using GAFE and online tools for students to learn, research, write, and curate, I've realized the value of students creating content, too. This year, I asked students to create an online review for the reading projects. Create a written, audio, or video review for a work of fiction of their choice. The full assignment sheet can be found here if you are interested. And the results were fantastic.

I did not restrict or even recommend any sites, apps, or programs for creation. We've built the foundation with GAFE and other web 2.0 tools so I let my students now have free reign to show their knowledge, digital citizenship, and make effective choices.

Today, I want to share some of the results. This work impressed me and inspired me. It showed me mastery of skills and new technologies that helped make their reviews purposeful and effective. Most importantly, it looks like my students had fun and learned. With this project, I also expressed a desire to share with both our class and the outside world. Students were required to submit a public link to their work on a Google Form, which I will soon convert into an Awesome Table to build a new Book Review Creations Database (once I learn how to use the seemingly fantastic Awesome Table).

The full index of student work, which is simply a published sheet edited from the form results, can be found here. Feel free to explore. I hope you enjoy and maybe get some ideas or web 2.0 tools for your own classroom--or reading.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• Yoo Shin created a fantastic infographic on Piktochart. Be sure to check it out in Presentation Mode.
• Elliot had a thorough and well produced emaze review for To Kill a Mockingbird. 
• Azad filmed an edited a fun video, and he gave credit to his music and images, which I haven't taught yet so it impressed me (but I now think I need to!)
• Gabby's trailer for Divergent was great. I thoroughly enjoyed this and it made me laugh. 

A short post today. I'll be away most of the weekend and wanted to keep up my streak.

I'm a bit of a contradiction with planning and organization. I can be super organized and well planned with somethings and am a total mess otherwise. You don't want to try to find something on my desk, for example, but there is one right place for every file in my Drive and every piece of work a student submits. I like procedures and expectations, and I like backwards design. It's tough to teach my students unless I know what I want them to know, do, and learn. You have to know where you're going before you figure out how to get there.

However, sometimes you just need to adapt, adjust, and revise. Sometimes to meet student needs. Sometimes because it feels right. Sometimes because it's just fun.

My next few posts are going to be about times that my students have inspired me to change my lessons and teaching for the better, when their excitement or interest has made me find a better way. This just happened this week.

This week, I introduced argument in my tenth grade class to prepare for the Common Core NYS Regents task 2, which is an argument essay. I had planned a fairly clinical overview of argument: what makes an effective argument?; models and examples; mock debates. Still, the lesson was more about me than the students.

That changed when students started their mock debates. I introduced three SAT-essay prompts, and in groups students prepared arguments and debated. We used polleverywhere.com for students to choose the winner. I planned it as a basic intro but it was fun. The students were creative, innovative, and prepared. When one student took his self-proclaimed "power-stance" in front of the class, started his speech, and opened a slide show of artwork to support his point, I was having fun. And so were they. Even better, they showed an effective start to developing claims and counter claims and supporting them with creative and fun evidence.

After this student finished, I had a realization--I WANT TO FILM THESE! I thought about pulling out my iPhone but thought it would throw off the work in the moment. I wanted more preparation, thought, and even some production. And so was born the Argument Video Assignment...and I got excited and re-inspired by my students and teaching. Next week, I'll share the results.

I started by saying this would be a short post. Oh, well. Next time.