Welcome back, community members! I hope you’ve had rest and relaxation this summer alongside some new learning + brilliant ideas.
What are you thinking about as school starts this year? What are you striving to do differently? What are you striving to do the first time? What are you questions? Where do you need support?
I teach 6th grade and really want to teach modes quickly first, the essential basics of each. I then want to spend the bulk of the year mixing & matching the modes into pieces with purpose, like the real world texts they'll read. The hard part is scoping & sequencing this out, as well as finding mentors.
Is this doable? Should it be done? I'm doubting that this can really be done. Any advice, experience, ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Trisha, I am thinking this way this year, too. I definitely think it's doable. Here's what's going to be hard: I think it's going to require me to plan ALL mini-lessons and find ALL mentor texts in advance. And to be honest, that's probably more than I'm going to be able to whip up right now. So I'll probably go slow.
But, my big picture thinking is that we'll all work in the same mode but students can choose the product they create that hits those benchmarks. So, we are all doing persuasive writing, but students might write a letter, a feature article, make a TikTok video, etc.
Totally agree! I have 1/2 of the 1st trimester left & will be using Eduprotocols to teach modes basics. I'm also hunting for mentors, which is a lot of the hard part.
First I will say that this community inspires me and really improves my teaching of writing. This September I am reflecting on the awesome unit Rebekah shared last year at this time using "What I'm Really Into" from NPR as mentor texts and models for a beginning writing unit. My students really benefited from the Choice Board of Min-Moves videos. It has me thinking this September that I would love to offer a Choice Board of different Mini-Move videos for each big writing piece/ essay. I can show students how they may use the same moves in different pieces, and add new ones to try with each writing piece.
Rebekah I think you may have alluded to this idea for your next book at some point during Camp Rewrite?
I just wanted to share how transformative the videos are to my writing instruction. Students loved the ability to watch some on their own time - in class or at home - and have a choice in the moves they use!
I can't wait to see what you share with us this year! Thank you! - Patrice Van Heusen
Aw, thanks, Patrice! I am SO GLAD they are helpful to you and your students.
Yes, I'm currently working on a cross-curricular writing book about mini-moves. It's 55 moves that can be used in any piece of writing in any discipline.
So happy to be back here for year three! I appreciate the inspiration you provide for us and the conversations that perk up and linger here. I am open to all that you have to share. (Thanks also for posting PD over the summer!) We're having conversations about AI as a staff, and while I know I can't ignore it, I can't help but want to preserve the process of writing for my eighth graders. I notice that kids this year are responsive to be off screen and getting messy on the page. I have kids keep a writer's notebook each year, but in addition, I splurged at Walmart and bought 70 page spiral notebooks this year for my students. We're calling them DRAFT BOOKS. These draft books will be a sacred mess-making space for writing. In the past few weeks, they seem to be working? We "talked to the hand" (we trace our hands and then use each finger as a category...fun and easy way to get ideas on the page) when we started ideation for our "Where I'm From" poems (George Ella Lyons inspired) and did your brilliant blue print idea to play with shape and organization, tracing blocks of stanzas. Now that we're heading into an Annotated List of Summer piece of writing, we're doing some list making and organizing in the draft book. It's different from the Writer's Reader's Notebook in that there's more space and it's easier to blue print and trace in these books. Also, writers can take draft books home to help catapult their compositions. I don't know. I just feel like the more we ask them to use the computer for the generative stage of writing, the less we're trusting what they authentically think. Maybe it's wrong? We can use AI in different ways, but I'm leaning into our classroom space as a mess making workshop where we can practice trust and mistake making that leads to big, authentic ideas. I am looking forward to seeing how others use AI as I do feel like I'm putting my hands over my eyes and plugging my ears a little on this one. Thanks to this community for all the thinking and linking and questioning. It feels good to be in this sweet forest of inquiry and inspiration. Happy school year!
Hi Rebekah! Excited to continue my journey of learning with this community. My second year in 7th grade, and started off my classes with 2 of the skills from the executive functioning module and now moving to a whole class core text with a focus on RR. I work at an international school in Shanghai, so the kids are behind due to covid/lockdown. The students are happy to starting back off with a regular schedule with no crazy interruptions like last year. My wondering is for reading conferences, how do you manage a large # of students? I teach all of 7th grade in a blocking schedule.
I think the biggest key is not to try to confer with every student every time you confer.
I have my students log their current book and page number on a Google Form for the purposes of checking in. I have them write a weekly reading response (a la Marilyn Pryle) to log their thinking about books. That way, I can make it to every kid once a week, but I don't feel pressured to see every kid every reading day.
Thank you Rebecca! Do you have an tips on how to start students engaging in club discussion work! One of aspects I (and the students) struggle with is discussions, and this is mainly due to the being in front of a screen for almost three years!
I'm an instructional coach at an independent elementary school. Here's where my mind is at these days:
What are you thinking about as school starts this year? How to support teachers to use formative assessment data to develop a meaningful plan for differentiation/responsive teaching during writer's workshop and word study.
What are you striving to do differently? Balancing teacher strengths/interests with the whole-school 5-year instructional plan/outcomes I hold in my brain.
What are you questions?/Where do you need support? Does anyone have any research/scholarly articles on the topic of dysgraphia (defining, addressing it)?
So happy to have this community back online! Im really looking forward to seeing your unit plans again! They always give me a boost of creativity.
I’m looking for some fresh novels to offer to students for either book clubs or whole class. I teach 11th grade in a conservative community, so I’m struggling to find new, engaging novels that are grade level challenging but also have virtually no language and it feels impossible 😂 Ideas?
I also teach in a conservative county. I haven't had an issue with We Were Liars. There are references to her painkiller addiction after some head trauma. Maybe worth a try? My students really like it and it pairs well with Great Gatsby.
Does anyone else in the school teach The Alchemist by Paul Coelho? I teach it to 10th grade. It is a quick read, classic quest story (I use it to teach archetypes), lousy with Bible allusions which might play well in a conservative community, IF anyone gets the references in the first place (I give the source material for the references, but don't dwell on them.) I would say the language is not too challenging, so it can work with a variety of levels (and no "bad" words I can remember). And the plot is fairly straightforward, so no one will probably get lost. My kids generally enjoy it. It's one of those books I would say works on multiple levels. You can read a nice adventure or you can get deep into some life philosophy.
I second Rebekah's suggestion of Born a Crime. I used it as a whole class novel with my 10th grade students last year, and their feedback was positive. I really struggle lately with which novels to work with.
One thing my team and I have been learning about is Chatgpt…. We read a new book this summer and did a deep dive online. We’re at the cusp really of big change. We are looking at how to use it as a tool in our English classroom versus ignoring it. I’m wondering what your plans are on how to address/tackle/use Chatgpt.
Interestingly, IB is letting students use AI in their researched papers if they cite it as a source. To be honest, I'm not even sure what that would look like ...
One thing we've been doing in our trainings around ChatGPT and other AI is to consider how we can leverage it as a formative thought-partner for our students to provide certain types of feedback. For example, if a student is learning about claims and counterclaims, they could ask the AI what someone who is against this opinion might argue. That's just an example, but the key was to hone in on the use of AI for the formative process.
Hi all! We wrapped up week 2, which saw classroom temps soaring into the upper 80s with "tropical" levels of humidity (New England school buildings are old & built to hold in heat during our cold winters--very few have AC or even climate control/dehumidifiers in them). So it was a difficult first 7 days with students, but hopefully fall weather is right around the corner! My students all seem lovely, and I'm excited for the year ahead. Looking forward to collaborating again--I have freshmen, sophomores, and juniors (AP Lang) this year, so lots of books & units to think about!
Hey! Here is our annual free offer to student and first-year teachers. Please share widely! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeNRQhxfHEbM5JzJogEhGj1i9psTO8OJOErC96jgQfHhY4H6A/viewform?usp=sf_link
Hi there,
I teach 6th grade and really want to teach modes quickly first, the essential basics of each. I then want to spend the bulk of the year mixing & matching the modes into pieces with purpose, like the real world texts they'll read. The hard part is scoping & sequencing this out, as well as finding mentors.
Is this doable? Should it be done? I'm doubting that this can really be done. Any advice, experience, ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Trisha, I am thinking this way this year, too. I definitely think it's doable. Here's what's going to be hard: I think it's going to require me to plan ALL mini-lessons and find ALL mentor texts in advance. And to be honest, that's probably more than I'm going to be able to whip up right now. So I'll probably go slow.
But, my big picture thinking is that we'll all work in the same mode but students can choose the product they create that hits those benchmarks. So, we are all doing persuasive writing, but students might write a letter, a feature article, make a TikTok video, etc.
Totally agree! I have 1/2 of the 1st trimester left & will be using Eduprotocols to teach modes basics. I'm also hunting for mentors, which is a lot of the hard part.
Hello Rebekah and MW Community!
First I will say that this community inspires me and really improves my teaching of writing. This September I am reflecting on the awesome unit Rebekah shared last year at this time using "What I'm Really Into" from NPR as mentor texts and models for a beginning writing unit. My students really benefited from the Choice Board of Min-Moves videos. It has me thinking this September that I would love to offer a Choice Board of different Mini-Move videos for each big writing piece/ essay. I can show students how they may use the same moves in different pieces, and add new ones to try with each writing piece.
Rebekah I think you may have alluded to this idea for your next book at some point during Camp Rewrite?
I just wanted to share how transformative the videos are to my writing instruction. Students loved the ability to watch some on their own time - in class or at home - and have a choice in the moves they use!
I can't wait to see what you share with us this year! Thank you! - Patrice Van Heusen
Aw, thanks, Patrice! I am SO GLAD they are helpful to you and your students.
Yes, I'm currently working on a cross-curricular writing book about mini-moves. It's 55 moves that can be used in any piece of writing in any discipline.
I am so excited for your new book!!
Hi Rebekah,
So happy to be back here for year three! I appreciate the inspiration you provide for us and the conversations that perk up and linger here. I am open to all that you have to share. (Thanks also for posting PD over the summer!) We're having conversations about AI as a staff, and while I know I can't ignore it, I can't help but want to preserve the process of writing for my eighth graders. I notice that kids this year are responsive to be off screen and getting messy on the page. I have kids keep a writer's notebook each year, but in addition, I splurged at Walmart and bought 70 page spiral notebooks this year for my students. We're calling them DRAFT BOOKS. These draft books will be a sacred mess-making space for writing. In the past few weeks, they seem to be working? We "talked to the hand" (we trace our hands and then use each finger as a category...fun and easy way to get ideas on the page) when we started ideation for our "Where I'm From" poems (George Ella Lyons inspired) and did your brilliant blue print idea to play with shape and organization, tracing blocks of stanzas. Now that we're heading into an Annotated List of Summer piece of writing, we're doing some list making and organizing in the draft book. It's different from the Writer's Reader's Notebook in that there's more space and it's easier to blue print and trace in these books. Also, writers can take draft books home to help catapult their compositions. I don't know. I just feel like the more we ask them to use the computer for the generative stage of writing, the less we're trusting what they authentically think. Maybe it's wrong? We can use AI in different ways, but I'm leaning into our classroom space as a mess making workshop where we can practice trust and mistake making that leads to big, authentic ideas. I am looking forward to seeing how others use AI as I do feel like I'm putting my hands over my eyes and plugging my ears a little on this one. Thanks to this community for all the thinking and linking and questioning. It feels good to be in this sweet forest of inquiry and inspiration. Happy school year!
Hi Rebekah! Excited to continue my journey of learning with this community. My second year in 7th grade, and started off my classes with 2 of the skills from the executive functioning module and now moving to a whole class core text with a focus on RR. I work at an international school in Shanghai, so the kids are behind due to covid/lockdown. The students are happy to starting back off with a regular schedule with no crazy interruptions like last year. My wondering is for reading conferences, how do you manage a large # of students? I teach all of 7th grade in a blocking schedule.
I think the biggest key is not to try to confer with every student every time you confer.
I have my students log their current book and page number on a Google Form for the purposes of checking in. I have them write a weekly reading response (a la Marilyn Pryle) to log their thinking about books. That way, I can make it to every kid once a week, but I don't feel pressured to see every kid every reading day.
Thank you Rebecca! Do you have an tips on how to start students engaging in club discussion work! One of aspects I (and the students) struggle with is discussions, and this is mainly due to the being in front of a screen for almost three years!
Hey! Check out these convo cards (https://movingwriters.substack.com/p/q-and-a-establishing-writing-groups?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2Fconversation&utm_medium=reader2) and the discussion cards in the Article of the Week e-book (https://movingwriters.substack.com/p/october-e-book-a-guide-to-article?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2FArticle%2520of%2520the%2520Week&utm_medium=reader2). These have helped my kids!
Hi everyone,
I'm an instructional coach at an independent elementary school. Here's where my mind is at these days:
What are you thinking about as school starts this year? How to support teachers to use formative assessment data to develop a meaningful plan for differentiation/responsive teaching during writer's workshop and word study.
What are you striving to do differently? Balancing teacher strengths/interests with the whole-school 5-year instructional plan/outcomes I hold in my brain.
What are you questions?/Where do you need support? Does anyone have any research/scholarly articles on the topic of dysgraphia (defining, addressing it)?
Thanks and happy new school year!
Jessie
Thanks for sharing, Jessie! So glad you're here!
Friends, I am dreaming up something (or a series of somethings for you). Will you tell me: what whole-class texts do you teach?
The anthropocene reviewed by John green-- teaching it for the first time this year! :)
Ooooh!
So happy to have this community back online! Im really looking forward to seeing your unit plans again! They always give me a boost of creativity.
I’m looking for some fresh novels to offer to students for either book clubs or whole class. I teach 11th grade in a conservative community, so I’m struggling to find new, engaging novels that are grade level challenging but also have virtually no language and it feels impossible 😂 Ideas?
What about It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime. Since it's adapted for young readers, there's no language or iffy content at all.
I also teach in a conservative county. I haven't had an issue with We Were Liars. There are references to her painkiller addiction after some head trauma. Maybe worth a try? My students really like it and it pairs well with Great Gatsby.
Does anyone else in the school teach The Alchemist by Paul Coelho? I teach it to 10th grade. It is a quick read, classic quest story (I use it to teach archetypes), lousy with Bible allusions which might play well in a conservative community, IF anyone gets the references in the first place (I give the source material for the references, but don't dwell on them.) I would say the language is not too challenging, so it can work with a variety of levels (and no "bad" words I can remember). And the plot is fairly straightforward, so no one will probably get lost. My kids generally enjoy it. It's one of those books I would say works on multiple levels. You can read a nice adventure or you can get deep into some life philosophy.
I second Rebekah's suggestion of Born a Crime. I used it as a whole class novel with my 10th grade students last year, and their feedback was positive. I really struggle lately with which novels to work with.
Hi Rebekah!
One thing my team and I have been learning about is Chatgpt…. We read a new book this summer and did a deep dive online. We’re at the cusp really of big change. We are looking at how to use it as a tool in our English classroom versus ignoring it. I’m wondering what your plans are on how to address/tackle/use Chatgpt.
Okay! This is our first Q&A for sure!
Interestingly, IB is letting students use AI in their researched papers if they cite it as a source. To be honest, I'm not even sure what that would look like ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/business/chatbot-essays-harvard-yale-princeton-dartmouth.html?utm_campaign=likeshopme&utm_medium=instagram&utm_source=dash%20hudson&utm_content=ig-nytimes
It was the topic of our first department meeting Friday (When is it/isn't it plagiarism? How do we embrace something that just isn't going away?--similar to the teacher fears of internet sources in research papers 15-20 years ago, how can we use it for good: for us, for lessons, for student help?) In addition to that article, someone also shared this article as a follow-up to our conversation: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/business/college-admissions-essay-ai-chatbots.html?unlocked_article_code=-o9ajgOtnsITHMRTdCsnWotmFRa0KCWkAAgBEM6gBwTczaXUobpyAHMJ1SW0FU-3UN21-lOqKwaRurk24FXo8HF-qLzfSlMgHOks2PuWF5AGzErmjM2XlLLgQp4IYqr3SH6oNb9xIfWONiigcQ7n-dHPJVw4sESH5ZXhoFVApGr9ThsEqgKphFqAv-vAP9KWGI7Mx-tQ31ufSKQTcng1CYo2F2ukrSbAS_V0jO92HKQvG3K88wfytWOQSZho_gXIdbAUNcN3Ai8Ui6WuJQq3dI-Gx9jc-jM6CgiBU2e-JhWvWVHEy85oYuuSUIOxbnzuDYcOU2udhSYcfEttTn3OoCRXJtusEAJF-Nu387RkQA&smid=url-share
One thing we've been doing in our trainings around ChatGPT and other AI is to consider how we can leverage it as a formative thought-partner for our students to provide certain types of feedback. For example, if a student is learning about claims and counterclaims, they could ask the AI what someone who is against this opinion might argue. That's just an example, but the key was to hone in on the use of AI for the formative process.
Ooh, that's a great idea!
Have you seen the latest Atlantic article on it? https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/08/chatgpt-rebirth-high-school-english/675189/
Oh my goodness...yes!!! My colleague shared this with us. So thought provoking. A must read!
AI and Chatgpt are definitely here to stay and the field is growing exponentially—this recent podcast which features an interview with Khan Academy founder, Sal Khan, enlightened me as we weigh the impact of AI on education (including learning how to write) . https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/worklife-with-adam-grant/id1346314086?i=1000624438964
What book did you read?? I am wanting to learn more, for sure!
AI Infused Classroom https://www.amazon.com/AI-Infused-Classroom-Holly-Clark/dp/B0C5KLDF44/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=1331510954103201&hvadid=83219690988039&hvbmt=bp&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=109778&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=p&hvtargid=kwd-83220464309682%3Aloc-190&hydadcr=19139_13352859&keywords=ai+infused+classroom&qid=1693697609&sr=8-1
Hi all! We wrapped up week 2, which saw classroom temps soaring into the upper 80s with "tropical" levels of humidity (New England school buildings are old & built to hold in heat during our cold winters--very few have AC or even climate control/dehumidifiers in them). So it was a difficult first 7 days with students, but hopefully fall weather is right around the corner! My students all seem lovely, and I'm excited for the year ahead. Looking forward to collaborating again--I have freshmen, sophomores, and juniors (AP Lang) this year, so lots of books & units to think about!
Passing along this gem of a mentor text in case you haven't seen it yet. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/listening-to-taylor-swift-in-prison It's a great read for Swifties, for Swift skeptics, or just for the opening line alone! (and of course there's the subsequent teacher callout for our mentor text spotting! https://www.instagram.com/p/CwyW7uDvj4m/)