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When I started as a teacher nearly 10 years ago, I had a group of wonderful teachers to indoctrinate and support me as a new teacher.  I was given a binder of awesome resources they put together for me with a ton of great ideas and helpful activities and lessons.  I was thrilled to have some great resources right at my fingertips—all free!  I was ecstatic that I didn’t have to spend my meager teaching income (coming off an even worse income as a waitress) to build my library of resources.  I was over the moon when I discovered these generous teachers had spent their time to make me feel welcome with a gift of handouts, worksheets, and pre-built lessons from some great publishers!

It never occurred to me that what I was accepting was actually illegal.  To be dramatic, I was thrilled about accepting the illegal paraphernalia.  These teachers (and I) had no idea that by giving me this binder full of resources—resources they too had shared amongst themselves—they were giving me someone else’s copyrighted materials.  And by sharing, we were really stealing from the publishers.

Who cares, right?  These were huge publishers, bathing in their millions of dollars.  We were just teachers, spending our own hard-earned money to buy dictionaries for our own classrooms.  We were the poor underdogs—they were the evil giants who dictated what we could and could not teach.  I truly felt that way, until I began to write my own materials and founded Secondary Solutions.

Once I began to spend hour upon hour writing my own materials, using my own brain and creative juices to produce something I needed, my mindset began to change.  At first I was happy to share.  But as more and more people were interested in what I had created, they offered to pay me for my work.  I soon realized that it made sense to be compensated for those hours I put in—hours away from my family.  I copyrighted my work and began Secondary Solutions in 2005.  To have someone take my work from me, or expect my work to be given to them for free, began to feel personal.

In 2006, I joined TeachersPayTeachers, which celebrated teacher-authors like me.  As the site took off, it became imperative that teachers not share my work.  I had legally stamped my work as my own—and was making it my business—as were others who had joined TPT.  To learn that someone had posted my work on the Internet, or to have someone buy one copy of a Guide to share throughout a department, like mine had done, was devastating.  The face of the publisher had changed.  It was now mine—or another teacher’s.  It was now the face of the underdog.   Someone worked hard to write and create that product.  The publisher was now someone who might have been struggling to put dinner on the table, or paying student loans, or trying to pay child support.

I am certainly not trying to make this a sob story.  I simply want to make teachers aware.  We here at Secondary Solutions send Cease and Desist letters and DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) Infringement notices daily to teachers, school districts, and PDF “farm” sites for posting our materials to the public without permission.  Sites like Wikispaces seem password protected, but in fact, can be accessed by anyone.  Teachers who post products to their own blogs or classroom websites may not realize that these materials can be seen—and downloaded—by anyone with a search engine, including students.  Often, a careless but well-intentioned teacher also posts answers!  These postings are then “picked up” by PDF farms—websites dedicated to posting PDFs from anywhere and everywhere on the Internet, and the fire spreads, giving access to teachers and students and anyone else, just by quick search.

When a teacher or school buys one copy of each of our 40+ Guides, it is a bittersweet moment, as we want to celebrate a great sale, but are paranoid that yet another department is storing our materials in a library for anyone to use, or are passing our books around for everyone to share.  This practice of teachers sharing materials openly, one that has been accepted for years, will eventually put publishers like us and other small, independent teacher-publishers out of business.

But what about fair use?  The doctrine of fair use states that educators may use copyrighted materials in their classroom if it falls under a certain criteria.  The copyrighted work must be used only for educational purposes, and furthermore, the use of the work cannot interfere with or affect the market of the copyrighted work.  The lines of fair use have been blurred for decades.  While you can use that snippet of that copyrighted movie in your classroom PowerPoint to teach your students (up to 10% or 3 minutes), it is illegal to post this PowerPoint on YouTube, or to even make copies of this work to share with colleagues in your department.  Similarly, when it comes to copyrighted text, you are allowed under fair use to use a portion of a text, making copies for each student in your OWN classroom, but cannot make copies of materials acquired illegally.  Translation: that binder of resources I got would not have even fallen under fair use.

We are by no means blind to the sharing that goes on, and are not naïve enough to believe that it will cease—but it still doesn’t make it right.  My plea to you, and teachers everywhere, is to make yourself aware of copyright on all materials that you use. Understand the laws: know when you can post on the Internet, when you can make copies, how many copies you can make, and limitations on sharing.  We certainly understand budget constraints and are willing to give discounts to schools who purchase multiple copies.  We also have deeper discounts available through site licenses. Not all of us are big corporations trying to make the big bucks.  Some of us believe in what we do—and want to continue to help teachers and make their lives easier through our products. We want to continue to provide you our quality products, and give you more time actually teaching, rather than creating new materials. All we ask is that we are properly compensated in return for the work we have done, so that we, and all small publishers and teacherpreneurs, can stay in business.  That, teachers, is all up to you.

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I am writing this in awe that it is already the 2nd of January!  Time sure flies when you are busy redefining your company!  A ton is happening here at Secondary Solutions…we’re redesigning and redefining ourselves.  Details coming soon, but for now, I am pleased to reveal our new logo:

You may also just see our signature image:

Why have we changed our logo?  Well, the details are soon to be released.  Let’s just say we’re growing..and we couldn’t be more excited about it!

Be sure to follow us on Facebook for more!

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Welcome to the final day of The Twelve Days of Gift-mas Middle and High School Blog Hop!  I hope you were able to find some great freebies!

On the 12th Day of Gift-mas, Secondary Solutions is here to give you… Sentence Building Activities for Struggling Writers FREE today only!  (Regularly $6.00!)

But that’s not all! How about Teaching Argumentative/Persuasive Essays (also normally $6.00!)

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We’ve got 28% off on everything in our TeachersPayTeachers Store Monday and Tuesday!  Don’t miss this last amazing sale of the year! Use coupon code CMT12 and save 28% instantly.  Happy shopping!

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We’ve been busy bees over here at Secondary Solutions, working hard to make sure you have the materials you need! Our latest Guides include:

The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 Literature Guide for grades 5-8

Rules Literature Guide for grades 4-5

Harriet the Spy for grades 4-5

Keep your eyes peeled, as we plan to announce more releases in the days to come!

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I recently wrote an article about the importance of peer editing, and I took a step back and realized that many of you may not know how to implement a successful peer editing program in the first place.  Here are some tried-and-true techniques for teaching your students the skill and practice of effective peer editing.

1. First and foremost, you must create a classroom environment that is open, friendly, and encouraging.  Trying to implement a peer editing program in a hostile classroom where students don’t feel they can speak their mind, tell the truth, or at the very least be respected enough to be listened to can spell failure.  Students must be taught that your classroom is an inviting, encouraging classroom where all opinions are respected, all voices are heard, and everyone matters.  You, most of all, must model this behavior.  You may want to have a class discussion about what it feels like to not be heard or respected, or what it means to really listen to another person respectfully.  Finally, you must teach students that their opinions matter, and they do have something to contribute to their classmates.  They may not feel like the best writer at all, but they do have ideas in their head that can help even the best writer come up with new ways of writing or a new slant on a topic.
2. Students must be given the tools for effective peer editing.  A technique I have suggested in Essay Architect is to make sure students have a colored pencil or highlighter.  The first thing students should do after reading an essay is to go back to the beginning of the essay and reread it, circling or highlighting any misspellings, punctuation errors, or other obvious problems in the essay.  Remind them that they are not responsible for fixing the errors…just circling them!  If they THINK a word is misspelled, for example, they should circle it.  The writer is then responsible for looking up the word to be sure it is spelled correctly.
3. Once the editor has circled (or highlighted) any problems, they can create a T-Chart by folding a blank piece of paper in half, lengthwise. On one half of the paper, write the word “Plus (+).”  On the other side, write the word “Minus (—).”  From there, students should complete the chart with both good points (+) and problems (—) in the essay.  When I was teaching, I required that editors always made sure they had a general balance between both pluses and minuses. This forces students to be creative with their compliments, because as we all know, everyone is a critic!  Remind them that they must be honest, but to really look hard for things they can compliment.  “Good job on writing five paragraphs!” “Font is clear and easy to read” “Way to go putting your essay on white paper” “Very few typing errors!” “I like your point of view—it makes me think.”  You get the idea.  On the “Minus” side, students should write what is done poorly or is missing. Include notes such as: title is boring, need a longer and more interesting thesis statement, choppy sentences, simple vocabulary, topic sentences are not at the beginning of each body paragraph, etc.
4. Once students have finished their initial evaluation, another form from the Essay Architect program has students take their evaluations one step further:

• Using a colored pen, highlighter, or light-colored marker, highlight a) title, b) the first sentence of the essay, and c) the last sentence of the essay.  Is there a title?  Is there a grabber?  Is there a challenge?

• If you have not already done so, using a colored pen, highlighter, or light-colored marker, circle any spelling and punctuation errors you can find.  How many spelling errors did you find?  How many punctuation errors did you find?

• If you have not already done so, using a colored pen, highlighter, or light-colored marker, circle any word that does not fit and highlight any sentences that do not make sense to you.  How many and which words are used incorrectly or don’t make sense? How many and which sentences are awkward or confusing?

• How many paragraphs are there? Count how many details or supporting sentences are in each body paragraph. (Remember, do not count the topic sentence) Body paragraph #1: ___________ Body paragraph #2: ___________ Body paragraph #3: ___________

5. Once they have evaluated the entire essay, students are ready for the optional step of assigning a score to the essay.  It is absolutely important to have a rubric that is tailor-made for that specific assignment (an Informative/Explanatory rubric for an Informative/Explanatory Essay, for example).  However, a general rubric can also be effective.  Students use the rubric to assign a score based upon their evaluation of the essay.  You can then either have another editor or two complete the entire process again (challenging them to look for new points to compliment and new problems to mention) or you can have the editor give the writer back his essay, complete with the T-Chart, Evaluation Response (#4) and score.  Be sure to allow a good 10 minutes or so for the editor and writer to discuss the essay.  Editors should constructively critique the essay, and should be able to support all comments and suggestions.  Writers should feel comfortable asking the editor why she gave the score she did.  There should be an open conversation happening with every editor and writer, as they learn from each other.  And you, as the facilitator, should be walking around monitoring the conversations.

Good luck, and let me know how it goes or if you have any other ideas that work for your peer editing program!

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I am a strong proponent of peer editing.  The benefits of peer editing are numerous, and before any teacher sees an essay, it should have been peer edited at least once.  It is crucial, however, that students know how to peer edit, and why.

1) Students must know what is wrong, often before they can get it right.  By having students learn the steps of the writing process, the elements necessary for a good essay, and what kinds of things are important to include (or leave out) of a well-written essay, they can then apply that knowledge to their own writing.  By having students edit and evaluate poor, mistake-ridden writing, they learn to train their eyes on what they don’t want to do in their own essays.  As students see and evaluate essays that are missing essential elements or are full of errors (topic sentences, sentences that don’t make sense, etc.), they can see the reasons behind avoiding these errors.  The worse the essay is, the more students can “catch.”  The more they do this, the more they realize that their own writing “isn’t so bad!” That does not mean that students should be exposed to another student’s “bad” essay.  Instead, use non-model essays, such as those from previous years’ classes as examples (be sure to block out names).

2) Students should take an active role in the community process of writing.  Too often, teachers and students work in an isolated environment, where student writes essay and teacher grades essay.  An opportunity is missed in this environment: the opportunity for students to read more, have conversations about writing, and learn from each other.  By having students participate in the peer editing process, students take an active interest in each other’s writing, and root for them when their essay comes back from the teacher at the end. By hearing from another student, they learn that they are not being “lectured to,” but that another person—someone their own age—can grasp and use these concepts, and therefore, these goals don’t seem so far out of reach for their own writing.  With only the teachers’ perspective, the student can unfortunately feel as if the writing environment is a “me against her” scenario.

3) Students cannot write in a vacuum.  It is essential for students to get feedback from someone other than an adult, often to really hear what they are doing right and wrong.  By integrating peer editors into the process, students are hearing (in an ideal environment) several points of view, which improves their communication about the writing process, their engagement with the students (and therefore, the world) around them, and they are able to garner different perspectives from students of varied ability levels and backgrounds.  Once students feel confident in a classroom that promotes a comfortable learning environment for making mistakes together, students can feel safe to take more risks in their writing and sharing their ideas and personal perspectives with others.  Your students have varied backgrounds and knowledge levels.  Use them!  Encourage your students to use their own background knowledge and world perspectives to offer insight into that student’s essay about Divorce from a Child’s Perspective, or another student’s essay, Avoiding Procrastination, or another student’s essay dealing with The Themes of Of Mice and Men after reading the book in class!

4) The more students are actively engaged in something, the better they learn it.  According to the Learning Pyramid developed by the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science in Virginia, learners retain 90% of what they learn when they teach someone else/use immediately, 75% of what they learn when they practice what they learned, and 50% of what they learn when engaged in a group discussion. By engaging in peer editing (if done correctly) your students are sure to learn!  Ah, there’s the rub:  doing it correctly!  Students MUST be taught what they are to look for when peer editing, how to engage in relevant and sensitive discussion, and how to constructively criticize.  This process must be taught after students learn what is actually supposed to go into an essay, and you as the teacher must take an active role in making sure students are trained to know what to look for, and that students are on task with the editing and discussions. Should students be looking for the connection of overall ideas?  Should students be looking for punctuation and spelling errors?  Should students be commenting on the essay’s position or ideas?  What they look for is up to the teacher, and students need to have a clear goal in mind when they sit down with their editor’s pen.

5) Less paperwork for the teacher! Sounds great, right?  By having students peer edit, this cuts down on the amount of work you have to do correcting minor, mundane mistakes, and allows you to focus on the bigger picture: fostering great writers.  However, don’t think you can just sit back at your desk.  In order for a peer editing program to be effective, you must be an active facilitator.  This means that students must be monitored.  By walking around the classroom, you will be actively involved in the process, and can ask students why they made that comment, or how they feel about the issue, or why they feel the essay is lacking, or what they feel the essay does well.  Once students realize you take the peer editing process as a serious element of the essay writing process, they will begin to take pride in their own opinions.  They will begin to feel confident in their own abilities, and learn to see more ways that they can improve their own writing.  Once students are able to really learn from, and help each other, this will take enormous pressure off you, freeing up your time for one-on-one writing conferences, individualized attention, and creating differentiated lessons.

Do you use peer editing?  What else do students garner from the process?  Please share!