CRWP Success Story: Ann Duchsner

Bio for Ann Duchscher

Coordinator for Gifted Education

Fargo Public Schools, Fargo, North Dakota

Ann Duchscher has been in the educational field for the past 24 years serving as a classroom teacher and teacher of the gifted. Presently Ann is a program coordinator and instructional coach for Gifted Services in the Fargo Public Schools.

Ann completed her undergraduate work in elementary education at Concordia College, Moorhead and graduate work at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, in the field of gifted education.

In Fargo Public Schools Ann coordinates the K-8 gifted program, provides professional development and coaching to teachers in the area of differentiation, as well as, serves on a district committees.  Ann has twice presented at the National Association for Gifted Children’s Annual Convention (NAGC) sharing her district’s model for meeting the needs of gifted and academically talented students.

What I am learning as we study argumentative writing 

Kim Rensch and I are approaching this course a little differently than teachers who have classrooms of students to teach.  Neither of our positions are such that we have daily access to students, and so we are implementing our learning in this course through the vehicle of our elementary Gifted Services teachers. We have asked them to implement the mini-lessons and strategies with high ability gifted language arts students in grades 4 or 5. 

Our Gifted Services team has used texts of varying topics of student interest. This included the Jump Start Mini-Lesson on the topic of school start times.   Kim created a Google folder of many other various texts that could be of high interest to gifted children, as well. The teachers are using those texts to teach argumentative writing to 4th and/or 5th graders. We had a good team discussion on Friday, November 4^th about how things were going for their students.  Here were a few of the things the teachers said—

·       Our Gifted Services teachers were surprised some students got so caught up in the Start Time articles, they almost didn’t believe the evidence because they didn’t like the perspectives they were reading.  Since these elementary students didn’t want the school start times to change for themselves, it was hard for them to see beyond their own strong opinions that a change in time might benefit middle and high school students based upon what the research was saying.

·       Their interest in the topic mattered when it came to keeping students’ engaged in the process.

·       The conversations were heated amongst the students.

·       One Gifted Services teacher said she was surprised at how many students polled other students and parents opinions to inform their arguments rather than relying on the text sources.

·       Another Gifted Services teacher thought the idea of the Burkean Parlor might be helpful in teaching the students that they can’t speak to the topic yet until they have more context, background information, and questions answered.

·       Another Gifted Services teacher broke the argumentative rubric down into kid friendly "I can" statements. The teacher went on to say that when the students debated the topic first, their argumentative writing really improved. Some differences included that after a debate, students were more likely to use topic related vocabulary and debate language such as claim, evidence, affirmative, negative, etc. in their writing. Students also provided more evidence, statistics, and quotes from experts.

·       Another Gifted Services teacher said she realized her students really didn’t know the basics, i.e., graphic organizers, topic sentences. She felt the process took far longer because they didn’t have those foundational skills.

·       And another Gifted Services teacher said her students quoted too much.   They had trouble discerning the most important text to pull into their arguments without taking all of it. 

·       Regarding Harris Moves, Gifted Services teachers said students were capable of understanding the difference between forwarding and countering, and they were able to find the extending, too. Students were able to determine what text sources were credible based upon the learning Harris Moves.

And, I asked for questions the Gifted Services teachers still had-

·       Am I teaching them the best way?

·       How do I teach the claim? evidence?

·       If you have to write about the opposite side, then you know what to defend. Should we be including this as part of the process of teaching them to write argumentatively?

·       Should we show them universal arguments? What about the strategy of play-it-out?

So, all of their reflections and feedback leads helps me clarify where to take the teachers next. Some thoughts I had are to show them the common framework for writing paragraphs that are used in middle school called RDF. We could also show them a framework for making universal arguments (to persuade), and the cause/effect structure in play-it-out. I will continue to keep reflective lists of their feedback to help guide them in improving the process with their students.

CRWP Success Story: Kim Rensch

Today we start a March series of Success Narratives written by participants in the College-Ready Writers Program (CRWP). The first story comes from Kim Rensch, who we featured on the blog back in September 2015.

CRWP Success Story by Kim Rensch

Leave it to the National Writing Project to create yet another tremendous learning opportunity for teachers and students. The College-Ready Writers Program (CRWP) has provided us participants with a vast array of text sets, ideas, lesson plans, and support to teach argumentative writing with intentionality.

My co-participant Ann and I have been working together with our Gifted Services team to bring these learning experiences to our district’s gifted student population. Even though the CRWP was geared toward students at the secondary level, there is much that applies to gifted upper elementary students. And because these students often end up in college, it stands to reason that we should prepare them for the academic learning they’ll do there.

It was a slow start to bring our entire team on board with this endeavor. There is such precious little time for our Gifted Services team to work with students, and, frankly, argumentative writing has not been made a priority over the years, so all this was new to many of the teachers. We reached a turning point in our October team meeting, where we analyzed some student writing generated during the “Jumpstart Argumentative Writing” mini-unit. The conversation was spirited as we came to a common understanding of argumentative writing expectations as they relate to our state standards, spelled out by a writing rubric. We discovered that students need a lot more practice with argumentative writing, especially with organizing their thoughts. Teachers left that meeting and carved time in an already-full schedule for students to dig more deeply into argumentative writing. One teacher integrated writing with speaking & listening; her students’ writing was much-improved after holding debates on their topics. Other teachers discovered that topic selection plays a large role in engaging their students in the argumentative writing exercises. We have begun the process of collecting a folder of text sets so teachers have lots of topic options for engaging students.

Our biggest success so far is a collage of many things: common writing tasks that we can analyze together; an emphasis on critical thinking (one of our 21st Century “4 C’s”) through examination of argumentative texts; overcoming our initial reservations to come together in a common task; and sharing suggestions and resources in order to grow as a team. I am looking forward to gaining momentum and seeing what kind of writing is generated by our students at our next checkpoint.

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Stay tuned for more from this series!

Wednesday Wisdom: More Retreat Wisdom

Last Wednesday, I (Erika) shared a little about what I learned at the Winter Writing Retreat. Fellow blogger and Red River Valley Writing Project TC Kim Rensch also wrote what she learned from the retreat on her blog: Speaking Your Language.

Here is a brief excerpt from her blogged reflections:

While I learned a great deal about writing good dialogue, my biggest takeaway from the weekend is that teachers really need to engage in professional learning opportunities that recharge their batteries and fill their teaching toolboxes with tricks of their trades. My challenge to all teachers out there is to take advantage of these sorts of learning opportunities.

For more specifics about what she learned about dialogue along with concrete examples, head over to her blog and read more!

Rejuvenation Friday: Green Hope

Green Hope

by Kim Rensch

It’s not rare for North Dakotans to get asked how we tolerate winter. Those winters that are six months long. The heavy snowfalls. The cold blasts of air. The gray skies for days on end. The brutal wind. Truth be told, many North Dakotans themselves probably wonder why they stick around for the cruelest season. But I think I know why. There’s something magical that comes out of winter. It’s not a magic accompanied by waves of a wand or flashes of light. It sneaks up on us over weeks, so slowly it’s hardly perceptible. It comes after the snow melts and the spring rains wash away the grit of sand and salt, sprayed down to keep cars safe on the road, and the dirt that the prairie wind swept in and deposited over the winter months. The magic comes in hushed tones, poking its head out of the ground in the trumpeted shape of a daffodil; reaching out from the ends of limbs, stretching and sprawling from winter hibernation until a green bud springs forth; reaching up from dormant grass roots, preparing for another season of growing and mowing. This magic dawns on us when we turn the corner for home and look up the street and realize that our landscape is no longer brown, and we don’t know when that happened. All we know is that we’re glad we stuck through the winter because this magic was worth the wait.

Rejuvenation Friday: Good Morning Meditation

Friday Rejuvenation 

by Kim Rensch

I’m a big fan of Good Morning America.  This is important because watching the show led me to the book that I hope to someday look back on and think, “That was the book that saved my sanity.”

If you’re like me (Heaven help you if you are), you’re an educator who throws all you have and then some into your career. You are never quite able to turn off your teacher mind. There’s always something to reflect on, ruminate over, worry about, and stress upon.

If awards were given out for Worrywart of the Year or Ruminator in a Leading Role, I would be on the short list of top nominees. That’s why, for our recent holiday break, I forced myself to pull my nose out of the teaching books and open my eyes to something that might help quiet my busy mind.

Months ago, Good Morning America Weekend anchor Dan Harris promoted his new book, 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story, on the show. He claimed that finding meditation helped him cope with the stress that came with his job, costs nothing, and can be impactful in short amounts of time.

Sign me up.

10% Happier came in a pile of teaching books; I had e-tossed it into my shopping cart during one of my digital shopping trips to Amazon.com. It sat in a pile of teaching books for a few weeks, crushed under the weight of my career expectations, until the holidays rolled around and brought a respite from school work.

Tuesday Teacher Feature

This week's featured teacher is Kim Rensch, a language arts facilitator and gifted services specialist for Discovery and Ben Franklin Middle Schools. 

Kim has always been guided by her “deep desire to ensure a solid education for all students.” Although Kim feels that she has had this desire for as long as she can remember, there have been many people who have inspired and continue to inspire her to further develop as a teacher. Some of these mentors have been her former UND professors, her cooperating teacher while she was student teaching in Grand Forks, her fellow facilitators, and those involved in the writing project, including Erika and Angie, her “My North Dakota Story” partners. Although Kim’s strong desire to foster an educated community has been the primary force behind her perseverance and achievements as an educator, she credits these individuals for helping her stick through the stressful moments of teaching and inspiring her to find new ways to become a more effective teacher.

One of the many ways in which Kim has sought to strengthen her students’ education is through her writing instruction. She believes that it is important to not only learn practical writing skills but to also spend time exploring a variety of genres in order to find joy in writing. As a teacher, she always made an effort to introduce students to as many genres as possible, although she felt that there was never enough time to do this as much as she had hoped. Kim’s desire to provide her students with access to numerous writing genres echoes her lifelong desire to provide students with a solid education.

In addition to writing, it is important to Kim to inspire students to find joy in reading, which has been a vital foundation in her life ever since she discovered the joy in long childhood summer days spent reading at the library. To Kim, reading “is woven into the fabric of [her] being.” Because of this belief, she has always strove to inspire her students to discover their own reading interests. As a teacher, she always kept up with popular titles so she always had a range of reading recommendations for students. In her current position, she continues to encourage students to read by recommending titles to teachers and making conversation with students about books they are reading. Outside of school, even through her busy schedule, Kim manages to read on her own, at times even several books at once! She is currently reading Linda Rief’s Read Write Think and the Fargo community read, Fractured Land: The Price of Inheriting Oil, by Lisa Westberg Peters, both of which she recommends. Kim is clearly an avid reader, and her desire to impart this passion onto students is inspiring.