Exploding the Moment

I am excited to introduce Chelsea, my (semi-forced) guest blogger today.  Chelsea is one of my sweet colleagues with awesome style, precise organization, and great ideas.  And when she shares those ideas with me, sometimes I tell her, "You need to let me share this on my blog."  And she says yes!

But before I share that great idea with you, let me tell you just a little bit more about how awesome she is... Chelsea is not only a sorority sister, but a soul sister and fellow goof ball.  She is tons of fun to be around and would truly doing anything she could to help a friend out.  In short, she rocks my socks.  (Which, by the way, you should ask her about her husband's thing for colorful socks... He wore coral and blue ones to their super-fun wedding last summer! I digress...).

I made a screen-casted revision mini lesson on how to "explode" the important moments in a writing piece.  (I took an OWP class this past weekend that talked about revision and some different strategies... this was one of those ideas.)  I used Kizzy Ann Stamps (by Jerri Watts) as the mentor text.  This lesson could be posted for early finishers, too as a nice way to extend them.  

Also, it's a super easy site to use!

Enjoy!

Hashtag That

Last week I was teaching on the Civil Rights era when this picture of the 1963 March on Washington prompted a bit of a silly moment...

We were looking at pictures as a way of brainstorming for our upcoming historical fiction pieces and got hung up on the guy taking pictures on the right, about three rows back.  We started imagining him taking "Washington Selfies" and then joking about what he would probably hashtag....which turned into this:

 

I love instructional moments like this...when something organic and memorable makes a connection to students.  Don't you think I can count it as formative assessment?!  :)

Historical Perspectives, pt 1

This past Tuesday I met with the teachers in the online class I have been coteaching this summer for the Ohio Writing Project: Historical Perspectives.  We have been reading one of my favorite texts, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  TGLAPPPS is set in post WWII England and consists of letters between characters in London and a book club in the English Channel.

It has some majorly endearing characters and is a charming historical fiction work.  It's lovely and compelling and has been perfect for our class. 

As part of our time together yesterday, SATP (Summer Awesome Teaching Partner, of course) shared a text set that we created as a companion to TGLAPPPS.

What is a text set you ask?  Well, here are three quotes from the experts that may help you shape your own definition.

● A collection of ... texts that have some connection to one another. "Text" can be defined as
a book, an article, a poem, a movie ... The connections are the reader's and are connected to
personal response.... Any classification that expresses a commonality of ideas or authorship or
time or curricular issue would be the basis of a text set [The Reading Teacher]
 
● Collections of resources from different genre, media, and levels of reading difficulty...to
support learners with a range of experiences and interests more than any single text. They are
particularly supportive of less-experienced readers [NCTE leader, Laura Robb]
 
● The idea is centered around the standards and the requirements of argument, perspective, and
multiple texts [Ohio Writing Project Asst. Director, Beth Rimer]

Basically, a text set is what lots of smart teachers have been doing for years to help students connect literature to all sorts of genres in order to think more deeply about a text/era/theme.

SATP shared our Guernsey text set.  It's yours to browse here if you're interested in seeing an example or you perhaps teach WWII. Among other materials, it includes an interview with one of the authors, Annie Barrow, and several primary source images.

We also wrapped up our book club discussion on TGLAPPS.  But that's not all!  I'll share next week about our Skype session with author Lynne Dorfman.

Historical Perspectives

I can't believe how fast this school year is winding down and that my summer plans are already beginning to take shape.  Among those is an online class I will be teaching with the Ohio Writing Project.  It's one of my dear loves and a great network of teachers who want to continually grow in the art of teaching.

Our course is called Historical Perspectives (fancy!) in historical fiction and nonfiction.  I'm so, so excited to share with these teachers some of my work with book clubs and writing, but even more, to learn from them. 

And the resources and ideas are already coming in.  I met last night with SATP (Summer Awesome Teaching Partner...she has to have a derivative of my school team's nicknames!) and it's going to be an amazing course.  Contact me or OWP now if you're looking for summer credit!

Two resources just to whet your appetite:

1. Our required text is going to be one of my ALL-TIME FAVORITES!  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.  You will not be disappointed...even if you're not a history buff!  It's told through letters by some of the MOST endearing characters in all of literature.

 

2.  The other is an article, Nonfiction as Mentor Text: Style, by Myra Zarnowski, Marc Aronson, Mary Ann Cappiello of School Library Journal.  It gives an annotated list of great nonfiction texts with VOICE and author's craft!  Always a win.  I can vouch for An American Plague by Jim Murray.  It flies off my shelf when students discover the amazing Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson.  TWO amazing texts!

Mary Ann Shaffer (Author)

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Sidenote:  When I did a Google image search for the OWP logo for this blog, two pictures with yours truly in the background popped up!  Good thing it was a good hair day!