Learning to Let Go: Putting Kelly Gallagher’s Ideas into Practice

By Angela Hase, RRVWP co-director and Moorhead Public Schools Teacher

About a month ago, I went to the Minnesota Council of Teachers of English Conference (MCTE) to listen to Kelly Gallagher talk about his new book Four Essential Studies: Beliefs and Practices to Reclaim Student Agency that he co-authored with Penny Kittle. Gallagher talked about student agency. He argued that teachers are doing too much of the thinking and making too many decisions for students.


In order to achieve greater student agency, Gallagher advocates for teachers to give more responsibility to students by asking more open-ended questions that give students the opportunity to make decisions. One specific way this can be achieved is through book clubs. Instead of giving chapter questions, ask these four simple questions throughout the reading process:

This was intriguing to me because my American Literature class was just finishing a literature circle unit. For the literature circles, students had four book options to choose from. The students gravitated towards two of them: All American Boy by Jason Reynolds and Brandon Kiely and If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth. So, the conference could not have come at a better time. Literally, the day after the conference, I was going to introduce the final writing project. As a teacher, I was now faced with a significant and difficult choice. Before the conference, I was thinking about how I could give options. I was thinking that I might tell them to pick from theme, character development, symbolism, or plot development. This would have given them some choice.

While I was listening to Gallagher, though, I realized that even in that type of a prompt, I am doing the thinking. I knew I would think through each prompt for the students. I would prompt them to tell me about events from the book, to explain how the topic affected the character, to explain how the topic affected the plot. This is exactly what Gallagher is telling me not to do. I was about to do most of the thinking for the students.

At that moment, I decided to take a risk.

The next day, I went back to my classroom ready to pose the first question from Gallagher’s weekly questions: What is worth talking about.

Did I think this would blow up in my face? Yes.

But, I thought I need to do it, so I know how to do it better next time. The first time doing anything is nerve-wracking. It is full of the unknown and it requires the ability to be okay with everything feeling a bit squishy. It requires us to let go of the familiar. For teachers, it is even more difficult because we have an entire room full of students holding us accountable. But, I want this change, so I went for it.

Here is everything I did:

1. Create a List

First, I just wrote the question on the board: What is worth talking about in this book? I told students that they were going to write a paper that answers that question. It needed to be a full essay with an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion, and it needed to have word-for-word textual evidence. And that was it. That is all I said.

They stared at me. In silence. While I cursed Kelly Gallagher.

Then, I pulled myself together and put them in their reading circle groups. In their groups, I told them to create a list of the things they thought were important in the book or that stood out to them as being something that was worth talking about.

2. Create Claim Statements

After students created their lists, the next step was for them to take their own word lists and use them to write claim statements. At first students just wanted to write sentences that literally answered the question:

• Racism is worth talking about in the book.
• Quinn (a character from the book) is worth talking about in the book.

When I think about what a claim is, I think that it not only previews what the essay will be about, but it makes a small argument within the sentence. It should have a topic, an opinion, and sometimes even reasons are included. So, technically, these are claim statements. They are arguing that a certain topic is important in the context of the book; however, they weren’t saying much else. So, I directed students to think about what the author was saying about the topic. What was the author saying about racism or a certain character? What did the author want the reader to understand about these topics?

Then, I started to get statements like this:

• Lewis gains confidence by the friendships he made.
• Fitting in is not the most important thing in life.
• Spoony did the right thing about sending the pictures to the news.
• Do what you think is right even if it goes against your family.
• Protesting works and has been proven throughout history.

I walked around the room and wrote down one claim statement from each group and put them under the document camera. Here, I gave feedback on what a statement like that would mean for a paper:

After giving them feedback on their claims, students revised their other statements to ensure they would be effective.

3. Chunk the Paper

Next, they needed to decide how to organize their paper. The first decision that needed to be made was how to chunk their paper. Whenever we write in class, we talk about the chunks of our paper instead of paragraphs. This helps students think beyond a five-paragraph essay because a chunk can be any number of paragraphs and a student can have any number of chunks in their paper.

To determine the chunks, students need to look at their claim. The claim will tell students how to break up their paper. Using one of the student-generated claims (Quinn has the most character development in the book), I modeled how to create chunks. I used sticky notes and wrote the name of each chunk on it. This way I could move them around later to decide the order I wanted them to go in. My modeling went something like this:

Me: I can see that I will have to prove that Quinn had character development and when I think about what that means I think it means that he changed the most throughout the story. So how will I prove that? I will probably have to show what Quinn was like at the beginning of the book. (Takes sticky note and writes Beginning of Book.) Now, I can’t just have that one chunk. That won’t show growth through the book, so what other chunks should I have?

Student 1: The middle

Me: (Takes a new sticky note and writes Middle of Book.) Ok, what else?

Student 2: End

Me: (Takes third sticky note and writes End.) So, now I have three chunks. I don’t know how many paragraphs I will need under each one of these chunks yet. I will think about that in a minute. I want to check and see if these three chunks are enough to prove my claim. My claim says that Quinn develops throughout the book. Showing his progress and how he changes in the beginning, middle, and end does prove that. But, that is not all my claim says. My claim says that he has the most character development. How will I prove that his character development is “the most”?

Student 1: Prove that is more than the other characters.

Me: Quinn is a main character, so it is pretty obvious that he will have more character development over someone like Jill or Paul. So, I could easily prove that he has a bigger character arc than a side character like these. But is there a different character that I would want to pay special attention to?

Student 3: Rashad

Me: Both Quinn and Rashad are main characters. If my claim says that Quinn develops the most then I need to have a chunk that compares it to how much Rashad develops and why Quinn’s is more. Otherwise, I am just saying that Quinn changes throughout the text. If I want the word “most” in the claim, then I have to prove it. (Takes fourth sticky notes and writes Compare to Rashad on it.)

After I modeled how to create the chunks, students used sticky notes to create theirs.

 

4. Add Paragraphs to Chunks

At this point, students have created their own claim and thought through how to chunk out their essay. Next, they needed to decide how many paragraphs they will need to prove each chunk. There is a general push in ELA classrooms to move away from the 5-paragraph essay because it is too constricting. In order to help students think beyond this structure, having them think about chunks and then paragraphs within those chunks removes the pressure from students to produce an essay in that format.


To help students understand how to think about paragraphs, I continued to model. It went something like this:

Me: Now that I know my chunks, I need to go back and think about what events I want to talk about to prove my chunks. Let’s look at my first chunk. It just says “Beginning of Book”. Before I can even think about what events I want to use, I need to identify what Quinn was like in the beginning of the book. What was Quinn like?

Student 1: He was scared. 

Me: Yes, he was. I remember that when he saw Paul beat Rashad he just froze. Okay, I think to really help me organize, I am going to use a second sticky note to write down what my points will be under each chunk and possible paragraphs.  (Writes P1. Scared on second sticky note). I also already know that I will want to use the scene when Quinn watches Paul beat Rashad. I am going to write that down. I think that will be one paragraph. I will prove that he was scared and my evidence will be that he froze. (Under P1. Scared writes Reaction During Attack). I’m thinking to myself: Is that enough to show that he was scared? I think so. But, I don’t think that is enough to show where Quinn’s mind was in the beginning of the book. Because yes, anyone watching what happened would be scared. That could be anyone. What is Quinn thinking about what happened at the beginning? I need to identify and prove that. What did he think about the incident in the beginning?

Student 2: He was on Paul’s side. 

Me: Yes, he was. Okay, I am going to write that down on my sticky note as a second paragraph idea. (Writes P2. Paul’s side on sticky note). Is this enough? Will I have proven Quinn’s starting point with these two points? Can you think of any other events or things Quinn was thinking that might be important enough to go into this chunk??

Class: Silence.

Me: I can’t think of anything either…

From here, I let students work on thinking through points and paragraphs for their chunks. By handing over the organization to the students, it allowed them to make an essay that was their own and it gave them the opportunity to make decisions about structure and organization. Check out some student examples here.

5. Write

Did some students write five-paragraph essays? Yes. Did some of the students use my model to start their own thinking? Yes.

But, through this process, the students were making the choices that fit with what they wanted to say. In their conversations, they asked each other how many paragraphs they were going to write and routinely students talked about what they needed to do under each chunk of their essay. They said things like “well, I think I am going to need two to prove that Quinn changed in the end because I want to write about the protest and I want to write about him meeting Rashad” or “I’m not sure how many total but I know that I want this one point under the first part.” This type of discourse showed me that they were not trying to fit their ideas into one structure (5 paragraphs). Instead, they were thinking about how best to prove their points.

In the end, they produced essays that were unique to their own vision. They picked their topic, created their claim, organized their paper, and decided on the amount of evidence needed to prove their points.

Most importantly, they did it with limited help from me.

6. Reflect

When I reflect back on this process, I have to admit that Kelly Gallagher might think that I overtaught this paper. He might even say that “completing teacher-generated step-by-step work is not learning; it masquerades as learning.” He might even be right. Even though students made more decisions than they previously would have, I still walked them through the thinking. I came ready and prepared to change the prompt of my assignment, but not ready to change my teaching. When my students froze in the beginning, I should have been prepared to give them models, but I wasn’t.

Next time, I can dedicate more time to looking at model essays that show a variety of ways to write an essay like this. In class, we could read essays like the following.

• The Political Message of the Hunger Games: This piece focuses on theme and author message
• Jon Snow vs Daenerys Targaryen: This piece compares two main characters
• Lord Voldemort: Dissection of a Villain or Antagonist: The Analysis of Lucy in The Light We Lost: Both of these pieces analyzes one character
• In Defense of the Conclusion of The Little Mermaid: This piece defends a decision in the story

We can create anchor charts of what to include in an essay like this. They can brainstorm with classmates to figure out their plans. So, instead of walking them through a step-by-step process on how to create a claim and organize their essay, they can use the models and each other as inspiration.

I am committed to changing my practice. That will take time. It will take multiple attempts. It will take honest reflection on my part.

But, I am determined to get there. So, I’ll keep taking these risks, taking these small steps, and soon enough, I will learn how to let go.