How I’m Bringing Joy into Writing Assignments

by Hattie Maguire Notes from the Classroom

My daughter is writing a great story about the poop emoji plunger she won at our family white elephant party at Christmas.

It’s a great tale of intrigue and strategy. And even though she’s only in kindergarten, she’s already learning that her writing is powerful. In this case, she can use it to make people laugh–and that’s one of her highest priorities these days.

This makes me think about Ralph Fletcher’s Joy Write, a book that’s intended for K-6 teachers, but which has valuable lessons for the upper grades too. Fletcher’s book looks at the ways in which teachers can make writing a joyful experience for students. In the opening chapter, for instance, he compares writing workshop to a hot-air balloon: “For roughly an hour each day the kids would climb in and–whoosh!–up they’d go.”

But how do you create joy when, as in my AP class, there’s a pretty high-stakes test looming?

Let students choose their own topics.

My students have to be prepared to write three very specific types of essays by May. It would be irresponsible to not prepare them to do that.

But I don’t have to dictate their topics.

Why not analyze a song, a TV show, or even a threaded Twitter rant they come across? Write an op-ed on something about which they’re passionate? Research topics of their choosing?

My students won’t necessarily have the same amount of freedom my daughter, Molly, has in kindergarten. But there’s room for a lot of joy if I commit to conferencing with each student and helping each one find ways to connect to their writing topics.

Give students an opportunity to write playfully.

Just as it would be irresponsible to not prepare them to write those three types of essays, I’m beginning to think it’s irresponsible to not give them chances to do other types of writing as well.

Fletcher argues in his book that “writing workshop has become more restrictive . . . less free-flowing, less student centered” and he’s right. He suggests creating a greenbelt that preserves space for “raw, unmanicured, uncurated” writing.

I love this idea, and I think I can make space for a greenbelt in my room, too. Why not dedicate a little time each day to some free, “unmanicured” writing? It will be tough at first; my students have not had many opportunities in recent years to write playfully. But I think if I stick with it, they’ll get there. I might start by just sharing Molly’s poop-emoji-plunger tale and see what that inspires with them.

There’s not enough time for everything, so let some things go.

It’s time consuming to conference with individual students, helping them to find topics. Greenbelt writing eats up class time.

So I have to let stuff go.

When I started teaching AP Language years ago, we examined six or seven really dense essays as a class each unit. Was it important for their critical reading? Sure. But is it more important than digging into a topic they love? More important than feeling the joy of knowing you’ve crafted a sentence that is finally, exactly, what you want?

I don’t think it is. I think whooshing takes time. I think if I want my students to find some joy in their writing, I have to accept that it’ll be a messy process that will happen on a different timeline for each student. Nobody gets anywhere fast in a hot air balloon, but it’s sure beautiful once it’s in the air.

Hattie Maguire (@teacherhattie) hit a milestone in her career this year: she realized she’s been teaching longer than her students have been alive (17 years!). She is spending that 17th year at Novi High School, teaching AP English Language and AP Seminar for half of her day, and spending the other half working as an MTSS literacy student support coach. When she’s not at school, she spends her time trying to wrangle the special people in her life: her 8-year-old son, who recently channeled Ponyboy in his school picture by rolling up his sleeves and flexing; her 5-year-old daughter, who has discovered the word apparently and uses it to provide biting commentary on the world around her; and her 40-year-old husband, whom she holds responsible for the other two.

How We Standardize Our Students’ Voices, and Why It’s a Problem

by Rick Kreinbring Notes from the Classroom

“So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity–I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself.” – Gloria Anzaldua, from “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”

As a teacher of language, I find that I’m often caught between contrary instincts about how to teach voice. I think voice done well is one of the most powerful elements of writing. This applies to all writing, not just what we tend to label as “creative writing.”

Here, though, I’m talking about argument writing, because that’s what I teach.

In my classroom, my first instinct is to follow the rules that were drilled into me by almost all of my teachers. That instinct tells me that I should push traditional rules of writing. These rules say your voice must be neutral, third person, and use standard grammar. Following these rules, the idea goes, highlights the power of one’s argument.

That’s what I was taught. And that approach is still taught everywhere.

But I’m caught between that and another instinct.

This second instinct comes up when female students persist in using the male pronoun, or when I read something that is so bland I can barely stay awake–and my eyes drift to the top of the page and see the name of a student who I know isn’t bland. I look at those names and I notice that they are often female, people of color, kids who speak two or more languages.

And as I circle non-standard usage, I wonder if what I’m really looking for in that neutral, standard voice is actually me: white, male, bland.

It bothers me that we’re stuck, my students and I. They want to get good grades and be successful writers. I want the same for them.

But not at this price.

When I ask them to be tradional, what I’m really asking for is whiteness. Think about those words: traditional, standard, neutral. They’re all pointing in the same direction.

Why do we read, teach, and celebrate the distinctive voices of Zora Hurston, Jamaica Kincaid, and Gloria Anzaldua, only to turn around and tell our students that they shouldn’t write this way for the exam? That these brilliant writers and their voices should be relegated to the “creative” category, rather than using them to show our students that serious arguments don’t always come from “neutral,” “traditional,” “standard” writers?

I hear the words above from Anzaldua every time my classes talk about voice, every time I circle something. And I know she’s right.

Rick Kreinbring (@kreinbring_rick) said many, many years ago that he would become a teacher because “English Major” didn’t sound like a job, and his father really wanted to see him get a job. Rick liked to read and he wrote a little, so he got his teaching certificate and he’s been working at it for over 20 years. Most of the time he’s at Avondale High School, trying to stay one step ahead of his students.

Developing the Writing Habit

by Amy Gurney Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

the knack Writing instruction has become my favorite part of teaching, though it didn’t always come easily. In the beginning, my own writing was stilted in structure and lacked voice. I wrote what I had been taught, which was a five paragraph essay and a five sentence paragraph. Not only was my writing boring. The moves I made to create it were not defined enough for students to use as models, except for stilted, formulaic writing that also lacked voice and a sense of ownership.

It also took a long time to produce this writing because I didn’t care about it. I knew I needed to write more and I needed to write things that I cared about. Essentially, I needed to develop my writing habit so I could help my students develop theirs.

The Value in Habit

One summer, while planning for narrative-poetry writing in the fall, I ordered Getting the Knack: 20 Poetry Writing Exercises. Here I found my dream writing. The challenge was to write for one minute without edits for 10 days. I found that after a minute I didn’t want to stop, so many days I didn’t.

I still use this exercise when I am stuck, or when I have more assigned writing than pieces I choose myself. Overall, it helps to clear my brain and return to the habit of writing.

It helps my students, too. They realized the power to clear one’s brain and write every day, as a way to generate topics. It helped my students set goals as well. If I can write 30 words in just one minute, then how many can I expect of myself in 15 minutes?

Using these exercises, my writing models came faster and my voice showed more than before. But my writing was still very one note. I needed some new craft strategies to vary the way I was writing.

So I studied my units of study, in order to really understand the writing skills and moves that I was asking students to use.

Detailed further in my earlier post “My Favorite Writing Strategy,” I also imitated mentor texts. As I have said before, when imitating mentors, you can learn what makes their writing great, but eventually the writing becomes your own. As I wrote in this way, my model texts became excellent mentors for my students. I used skills I asked them to use, and I explained how and why I made those choices. Metacognition became an integral part of my writing progress and the culture of writing in my classroom.

Other Steps to Keep in the Habit

Writing for students may be hard and it may be scary, but as a wonderful mentor told me once, “You only have to write slightly better than your students.” In the end, if we are going to teach writing, then we have to be writers ourselves.

With this in mind, here are a few other strategies that I have used to remain in the habit of writing:

Found Poetry. The idea is that you choose any text that is 50-100 words long. From there, you choose 25-50 words. Make a list out of those words, and use only those listed words to create a new piece of poetry. You have the opportunity to add just two words to your list that did not come from the text.
50 Images. Make a list of 50 images. These can be things you see around yourself, like magnets lined up on a refrigerator, or a glass of iced tea with melting ice cubes. Make sure the list is labeled with numbers. Then have a friend choose two random numbers. Using the images on your list that correspond to those numbers, create a piece of writing that includes both of those images.
25 “Because” Statements. Make a list of “because” statements. “Because I am almost finished writing this post,” or “because it is Monday,” and many others. Use these statements as a starting point for writing.

Amy Gurney (@agurney_amy) is an ELA and Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator for Walled Lake Schools. She has a Master’s degree from Michigan State University in Educational Administration and is currently pursuing an Education Specialist in Educational Leadership at Oakland University. She is a current Galileo Leader. She worked on the MAISA units of study and has studied reading and writing workshop practice and conducted action research.

The Grid and The Great Gatsby

by Mike Ziegler Notes from the Classroom

toplogo2x My last post was about the new app Flipgrid and my plan to use it to get my students talking about revision. My goal was pretty simple: Get students to make meaningful revisions that they could explain and support as good writing.

In order for students to perform well on this revision assignment, they needed to succeed in two separate phases. First, they had to make revisions–based on very directed feedback from me–that improved a section of their paper. Then, they had to fill 90 seconds of video with their explanation of why their revisions constituted effective writing.

Here’s what my rubric looked like for the video itself. In order to receive full credit:

The video

clearly explains specific and meaningful changes to the text
outlines why the changes were made, using the language of the rubric strand
includes visible and thorough annotation of the revised section to help guide viewers
Clearly demonstrates that the author understands how to improve writing for future pieces
feels polished and uses the full 90 seconds available

When I finalized that rubric, I had to tell myself that if worse came to worst, I could always toss the scores and tell the kids it was a learning experience. I had faith in them, but this assignment basically demanded that each of my writers speak for a minute and a half…like a professional writer.

Which is why I’m pretty comfortable saying that Flipgrid is a game changer. I’m going to let the students’ efforts speak for themselves, but first some context: they revised a narrative that reimagined a scene from The Great Gatsby from a different character’s perspective. My feedback on it narrowed them in on certain areas of their writing that they might choose to improve on (narrator’s voice, organization, etc.), and then they chose one of those for the video. (If you’d like to skip ahead and watch the videos, scroll down to the bottom of this post.)

Flippin’ Fantastic

Turns out my concerns about their meeting the rubric demands were misguided. Most of them killed it with this assignment.

Take note of a few heartening examples:

A student who exited ESL about a year ago added sensory detail describing a character praying on the “cold, painful floor.” His explanation of the revision: “This emphasized that he was really sad and was begging for God’s help.”

One of my more talented writers, whose original narrative was imbalanced with long flashbacks, color coded her revision to emphasize how her new organizational structure improved things: “There’s an obvious balance [now] between what’s going on in the scene and what Daisy is thinking about,” she explained while pointing to the modified paragraph order.
A frame from a student video: note the color coding and annotation of how she developed narrative voice.

A writer who had struggled to establish the voice of her narrator added several lines of narrative reflection to establish her main character’s selfish motivations in the scene, and explained how this transformed the narrative perspective.

A writer who enjoys playing with diction added the phrase “riled me up” to her narrator’s reflections and explained, simply, “I thought that was cool.”

It was cool. All of it was cool. Even the kids whose revisions themselves weren’t quite masterful were able to articulate not only what they had improved in their writing but also why it was better.

Re-vid-sion Is Key

If you like what you’re seeing but you’re also wondering whether the video element really matters to its success, think about this: Talking about writing is a stressful endeavor for most young writers–even the good ones. Using Flipgrid to turn that process into a student-driven, premeditated, predictable, finite process alleviates all sorts of stresses that otherwise tend to silence less experienced writers.

Video is a familiar medium that allows them to combine a visual outline of their efforts with a verbal elaboration of their reasoning. As a result, many of my students suddenly loosened up a bit and actually had some fun talking about their writing (seriously–one student even took a picture of himself with a wad of dollar bills in his mouth as the opening to his video, which I’m going to just presume is a reference to all the wealth in The Great Gatsby and try not to think about ever again).

There’s one more treasure buried in this sea of video footage. My students’ grid of videos are my new models for future writing. Don’t know how to structure dialogue? Go watch Ken’s video. Did I knock your organization last time around? Check out what Lauren did with her opening paragraphs on that last assignment.

It’s the most productive 90 seconds my kids have ever spent on their phones.

The Videos

Here’s a small selection of student videos:

Michael Ziegler

Michael Ziegler (@ZigThinks) is a Content Area Leader and teacher at Novi High School. This is his 15th year in the classroom. He teaches 11th Grade English and IB Theory of Knowledge. He also coaches JV Girls Soccer and has spent time as a Creative Writing Club sponsor, Poetry Slam team coach, AdvancEd Chair, and Boys JV Soccer Coach. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, majoring in English, and earned his Masters in Administration from Michigan State University.

Finding the Details

by Tricia Ziegler Notes from the Classroom

This year as a kindergarten team, we had to decide on a Professional Learning Community goal to enhance our instruction. We decided that we’d like to work on having students elaborate in their writing and illustrations, and include feelings in both.

Here is part of what we’re doing.

In the Beginning

In kindergarten we start off our writing instruction by telling oral stories. This is the perfect time to model the adding of details and feelings to one’s story.

We start off by saying, “I bought a toy,” and see if the students find this to be an interesting story. Of course they always want to know more! When it’s the students’ turn to share stories, we ask questions to elicit more details and to see how they’re feeling.

After a few days of oral storytelling with emotional details, we model a detailed illustration of the event discussed. We also phase in the lessons on labeling (i.e., names, label the items in the pic, feelings, etc.).

Just as you convince young readers they are readers, you also need to convince them they are a community of authors and illustrators. Constant praise and access to writing outlets is key.

Mentor Texts

Mentor texts also show students how authors and illustrators include details to make the story more interesting. When feelings are shown, readers can better relate to and understand the story.

Additionally, mentor texts lend themselves well to lessons on writing what are often referred to as small moments. These are moments that have happened to the students, which they would be able to write about in detail. Young authors often express they have nothing to write about; sometimes they just need a little inspiration, and mentor texts can help with that too!

Below are just a few of my personal favorites. I would love to hear a few of your favorite mentor texts in the comments below; I am always looking to expand my library!

Hug. This is a great example of something young authors could emulate, in order elaborate their feelings.
Bear’s Loose Tooth and Bear Feels Scared (really the entire Bear series). One way to use these texts is to inspire a story about when students may have lost their first tooth, or about a time they were nervous and had someone help them.
Llama Llama books. These books include wonderful descriptive words and the easy flow of the text is fun for children to hear. The descriptive words alone are a great thing to point out for students to add to writing. The storylines are also relatable and a great jumping point when working on details.

Cross-Grade-Level Writing

Something new I’d like to try with my kindergarteners this year is set writing time with our second grade buddy class. Our intention is that writing together will build the skill level of the students as well as the confidence of the second graders. This thought is in its infancy stage and I will hopefully be able to post more about it later in the year.

For now, my coworker and I would like to have the students work together on a book about a character who has struggled to learn and/or do something. They will create a fictional character or write about themselves. We will have lessons built around the details of characters’ feelings, both when they struggle and succeed. The students will work to reflect this in the illustrations and the words.

We will have them share these with each other and other classrooms when completed. The power of an authentic audience is also motivating when writing!

In The End

At the end of the year I know my classroom will be full of amazing authors and illustrators. I know this because I believe in them and because of the growth they’ve already shown in three short months. Most started at the beginning of the year with the creation of what I refer to as sun people–a circle with arms and hands sprouting from it, with a smile inside and no words.

Now they are drawing multiple people with bodies that are separate from their heads, details in the scene, and labels with the picture. Some are adding a descriptive sentence or more about what is going on. I am elated and know they will keep going because they are motivated and believe in themselves too!

Tricia Ziegler (Twitter: @axf96; blog: http://kindergartentreasures.blogspot.com/) is a kindergarten teacher at Loon Lake Elementary, in the Walled Lake School District. She is a part of the Walled Lake iCouncil (Instructional Council) team and is part of starting a coding club at her school this year. She is in her eleventh year of teaching, with nine in kindergarten and two in Second Grade. Prior to that she taught in the Walled Lake Great Start Readiness Program, which is a state-funded preschool program for at-risk students. Tricia attended Michigan State University for her undergraduate degree and specialization in Early Childhood. She then attended Wayne State University for her Master’s in Teacher Education.

Early Choice = Engagement & Excitement

by Beth Rogers Notes from the Classroom

shutterstock_375784555 So it’s November, and it may seem odd to see the title “early choice” in a blog post. It’s not early in the year, and yet for an elementary teacher whose students are blogging, it is.

It takes time to get students used to the blogging format, establish procedures, teach digital citizenship, and truly begin to use the blog purposefully. I’ve been blogging with my 5th graders for a few years now, and there are certain things I always like to do in the first few months of school. But we all know that life throws us curve balls and sometimes you have to improvise.

One lesson I always do on Halloween is based on The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Allsburg. After reading the book to the students, they each choose one story from the book to complete. The story starters all lend themselves to heavy fantasy, which is a genre students don’t get much class time to enjoy in terms of writing.

The day after Halloween, I was unexpectedly out of the classroom (but still in the building) and decided to have the students spend their Language Arts time blogging their stories. (In the past, we had only published these on paper.) The excitement was palpable. Several students asked if I was serious. (“Yes.”) More asked if they could work on it from home. (“Yes!”) A few even asked if they could write more than one installment. (“Yes! Yes!”)

As I read through my student’s stories, I saw them using italics, bold print, and different font sizes, colors, and types of font, all for emphasis. These are things that would not be as easy or evident in regular paper or pencil writing:

I was in a dome made of green leaves and flowers. Then I stepped out and looked up. There were tree houses made of sticks, weeds, and bark. I saw little heads poke out of trees and windows. But there was something odd about the place. There was shimmering dust everywhere. And there seemed to be no end. The land seemed to grow bigger, like there was no end to it.

Giving Students a Reason to Be Excited

The ability to easily add emphasis inspired my students to be more creative and I think, in some cases, to write more. I have students who ended their posts with cliffhangers and promises to the reader that more would be coming. Writing in a digital format ensures them an audience and makes them feel their writing is purposeful, which inspires them to write more, even when it is not an assignment.

Moments like this remind me why I love teaching. It’s easy to become bogged down and overwhelmed by all of the demands on our time these days. But seeing how technology can inspire my students and transform the writing process inspires me to constantly push myself to let go a little more, trust my students, and let them fly.

I have a new post-it note at the bottom of my computer screen now: “Build in more choice.” In a child’s school world of “have to,” choice is freedom. Choice is fun. And from this teacher’s perspective, choice just might be the key to getting my students to new heights.

Beth Rogers is a fifth grade teacher for Clarkston Community Schools, where she has been teaching full time since 2006. She is blessed to teach Language Arts and Social Studies for her class and her teaching partner’s class, while her partner teaches all of their math and science. This enables them to focus on their passions and do the best they can for kids. Beth was chosen as Teacher of the Year for 2013-2014 in her district. She earned a B.S. in Education at Kent State University and a Master’s in Educational Technology at Michigan State University.

Imitation: My Favorite Writing Strategy

by Amy Gurney Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

The author’s imitation of a Haydn poem. Click the image to enlarge it.

Several years ago, I participated in the Oakland Writing Project. Here, I learned a strategy that enhanced my writing and my study of authors’ craft. I began to understand how writers wrote, and I learned to use those same moves in my own writing.

Last week, I spent some time in my friend’s classroom, and she was using the same strategy with her students. The strategy is imitation, and it helps student-writers to develop their voice and enhance their ability to make choices.

Walking into the room, I smiled when I saw this learning target on the board: “I can imitate a mentor poem.” I immediately thought back to the first poem I imitated in The Oakland Writing Project. It was “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden.

This is a short poem with only three stanzas. It describes a routine morning where a dad gets up early to light fires to warm the house. There are also underlying messages like the speaker’s lack of gratitude and a fear of his father.

Through imitation, I could mimic the topic or theme of the poem, or I could imitate the structure and style of the poem. In the picture above, you can see that I imitated the structure by keeping the same number of lines and words.

Imitation in the Classroom

Learning from my own writing experiences, I teach imitation to students.

We start small and grow when students are ready. We start by using the same topic as the writer. We imitate the same number of words per line and the same number of lines in a stanza. To model for kids how to begin this work, a template might look like the one listed to the right. (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

At this point, you’ve given students something successful which they can strive to imitate, but they haven’t made any personal writing choices. As you conference with students, you’ll notice that some are ready to move forward. A great next step for student-writers is to choose a topic of his/her own within the same structure as the mentor poem. This allows the writing to begin to be the student’s.

Another next step is to study the words and imitate craft choices like alliteration and assonance, verb and noun placement, and words that share similar syllables.

Breaking Away from Imitation

In a later draft of my own poem, I used a standalone line. The poem I was imitating doesn’t have a standalone line, but as a writer, I felt that my writing needed that line, which took me out of imitation. So, I started using the strategy and continued by making decisions of my own.

Later, another writing piece became my own, even though I started with imitation. I began with “Patterns,” by Anne Atwell-McLeod. Here is a finished piece of writing that began with imitation.

You’ll notice while conferencing that, as they’re ready to move forward with imitation, some students will continue to use these strategies. They will also grow the strategies they use throughout the year as you expose them to excellent mentor texts.

NaNo What Now?

by Caroline Thompson Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

6th grade gifted writer, Sydney, working on the next great American novel

NaNoWriMo is coming!

National Novel Writing Month happens every November and is something you should bring into your classroom to encourage community, creativity, perseverance, and independence in the writing lives of your students.

NaNoWriMo asks you to write a novel in one month. It seems insane and impossible, but over 300,000 people do it yearly. If you have never participated, you should try it out this year. And if you have a classroom of students, you should use NaNoWriMo’s Young Writer’s Program to help your students engage in this experience.

I made participating in NaNoWriMo an option in my 8th grade classroom. The camps of students who usually participated included: serious gifted writers, everyday kids looking to be challenged, and special education students.

The Young Writer’s Program has lots of tools and resources to help you give your student writers all the support they need. This includes novel-writing workbooks, lesson plans, charts, buttons, and swag. Not to mention an awesome online community of student writers and mentor authors who give great pep talks.

Quantity Leads to Quality

The whole idea behind NaNoWriMo is just to get your story written. Don’t worry if it makes sense, or if you spelled a word wrong, or if your characters are flat. (Editing comes in later months, for those of you grammar sticklers who were wondering.) Just get your story out there and quit making excuses!

Now, some would argue that writing every day is crazy business! And, having participated in NaNoWriMo, I know that it really is rather hard to write every day, on top of all the other things going on in your teaching and personal life. But, because you have committed to doing this, and because you have a community of other crazy writers on your side, something makes you keep going.

Students in the media center at Oakview Middle School, updating their novel progress on the school-wide chart.

Community of Writers

When you commit to joining NaNoWriMo with your students, you are really creating a community of writers. I had a wide range of student writers participate. The special education students had IEP goals in writing and spelling, but they saw themselves as writers and would come with notebooks full of the stories they had started. These were stories that paralleled video game plots or stories they knew from movies, which they claimed as their own and added new twists and turns to. The gifted writers came to try out new genres and forms of storytelling, and to work on stories they had started on Wattpad.

Some years I started an after-school club for NaNoWriMo. This was nice because I could offer it to different grades and was able to get the other ELA teachers in my school involved. Many of them would come to one of the after-school meetings to see their students write and share in the fun. I even convinced our singing-science teacher to create a NaNoWriMo commercial one year.

The NaNoWriMo website also has an online community that students enjoyed participating in. You can friend people if you know their username, you can send encouraging messages to users, or you can post in the private forums to ask for advice or get feedback on sections of your novel.

Sense of Accomplishment

Most of my students who participated met or exceeded their word-count goals. Yet one of the first things we talked about as a group was setting realistic, attainable goals. We used charts and stickers to mark our progress, and our community was really supportive of each other.

We enjoyed the challenge of meeting our daily word-count goals. But another benefit of NaNoWriMo is that students who meet their word-count goal can submit their novel and get a published copy of their writing. This is a highly motivating factor for most students.

I have attempted to write a novel in NaNoWriMo every year since 2010 and I have never won (it all usually unravels for me around Thanksgiving). But I’m still planning on doing it again this year. If you want to do it, but don’t think you can manage during the school year, you should consider Camp NaNoWriMo–where you can pick any month (think summer!) and work on a month-long writing project. And if you like to compose with digital writing and mixed media, check out DiGiWriMo.

Regardless of whether you try it out, you should definitely bring it up to your students as something they might want to try. You might be surprised to find how many aspiring, excited writers you have in your class.

Caroline Thompson (@TeacherThompson) taught middle school ELA for twelve years in Lake Orion before becoming a stay-at-home mom. She supports AARI teachers for Oakland Schools as an independent literacy consultant in the areas of digital media, professional development, and non-fiction resources. Caroline is a Reading and Writing Workshop advocate, a 2008 Oakland Writing Project Teacher Consultant, and a 2009 Oakland County Outstanding Teacher of the Year Nominee. She has a BA in English from Michigan State University and a Masters in the Art of Teaching Reading from Oakland University. She lives in Berkley, Michigan with her husband and their three year old daughter.

Student Voices Matter

by Rick Joseph Notes from the Classroom

InsideOut Literary Arts Project gives student voices power through presence and audience at Western

InsideOut Literary Arts Project empowers student voices through presence and audience

I was thrilled.

On a visit to Western International High School, a Detroit Public School close to the Ambassador Bridge to Canada, I had the opportunity to witness a poetry reading by students who had been part of the legendary InsideOut Literary Arts Project. As is clearly demonstrated on their Facebook page, InsideOut empowers students throughout Detroit by affording them a vehicle to express their thoughts and feelings in creative and unfettered ways. The work dispels despair and replaces it with hope.

Students read, recited, and performed their poetry in Western’s black box theatre. Poems spoke of the reality of growing up amidst the challenges of adolescence. Some poets spoke of the inequity and indignity faced by people of color, and the societal challenges we all must address in order to create a more just reality for everyone.

What struck me as most meaningful was the profound feeling of liberation that accompanied the opportunity to share. While students had no illusions that their situations would change quickly, what endures with me is the profound feeling of empowerment that was on display. Kids’ voices were heard. There is real power in providing a time and place for students to express themselves.

InsideOut enables students to live a writerly life. Kids understand the power that comes with self-expression, and leverage it to speak up and speak out. Messages of hope abound. Students’ voices are heard!

Rick Joseph (@rjoseph852) is a National Board Certified Teacher and has taught 5/6 grade at Covington School in the Birmingham Public School district since 2003. Prior, he served as a bilingual educator and trainer for nine years in the Chicago Public Schools. Rick is thrilled to serve as the 2016 Michigan Teacher of the Year. Through Superhero Training Academy, Rick’s students have created a superhero identity to uplift the communities where they learn and live.

Finding Joy in a “Free Day”

by Beth Rogers Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

shutterstock_358897601 It’s that time of year here in Michigan: the dreaded standardized testing window we now call M-STEP. My 5th graders just endured five days of this testing over a two-week period. The first two days were ELA tests–hours of online reading and writing. Needless to say, after the second afternoon my kiddos were in need of a break.

We did a little bit of our read aloud, which is something that even at 10, 11, or 12 years old my students still truly love. We had a conversation and then it was time for independent reading and writing.

They’d already had hours of it that day, so I decided to let them be in charge of their literacy that day. I told them they could read and/or write in whatever way they chose–they just had to be involved in literacy in some way. The result was not what I expected.

Questions came firing at me:

“Can I write poetry?”

“Can we write a story together?”

“Can I write fiction?”

“Fantasy?”

“Can I do more concrete poems?”

“May I quietly read in the hall?”

Yes, yes, and yes. Then I watched something I haven’t seen in a while: true joy.

Enjoying Literacy

My students were happily engaging in worthwhile activities throughout the room. Even those who are usually off task found this freedom liberating and inspiring. Books were being created (and are now several chapters long). Concrete poems have been published in large numbers and are hanging in the hallway.

shutterstock_344859035 This day really got me thinking about workshop and curriculum. We power through what we need to teach: mini lessons, teaching points, big ideas. We give kids lots of independent practice within the unit we are teaching.

Yet there are always those kids who don’t like the genre, who don’t really engage during independent time, who are just going through the motions waiting for the time to be over. This “free day” was just that for my friends: freedom. They weren’t constrained by what they “had” to read or write or do. This freedom allowed them to enjoy literacy.

Clearly, this is something I need to build into my year, not just at M-STEP time, but all year long. Though I’m not sure how to make it happen, I will. The evidence is clear. This is the outcome we want for our students: to find joy in reading and writing.

Now, when my students ask if we are going to have a “free day” soon, I think back to those smiles and enthusiasm and answer, “Yes.”

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