Tag Archives: middle
What drives the work/learning?
- Identifying a goal/product/performance/culmination that you want to achieve with your students that is connected to the world outside the classroom
- Figuring out all of the ways that you and your students can be writers to accomplish that end (writing reflectively, analytically, and creatively)
- Modeling the writing life through the design of the unit and the way you think, talk, and act with your students.
What does the writing life look like in the classroom?
- Catching thoughts, ideas, questions, solutions, passing fancies down on paper/screen to create a reservoir of potential writing material
- Reading models to help you think and do your own writing
- Discussing models to figure out the moves that make the writing work
- Engaging in idea generating conversations to figure out what you might want to write
- Writing….a lot!
- Returning to a piece of writing to elaborate and craft it based on the understanding you’re developing around the moves
- Sharing works in progress for feedback
- Putting the writing out into the world for impact
- Keeping all writing work to be able to access and use at a later date
What are the kinds of writing that should be happening in a unit?
- Reflective writing: thinking in writing about life and work; post product analysis; question posing; answer seeking
- Analytic writing: writing about reading; reports; essays; criticism; speeches; technical; informational
- Creative writing: stories, poems, plays, memoir, blogs, hybrid-texts
What are potential culminations?
- Performances: plays, public readings, debates, websites, shows, live museums, installations, works of art
- Publications: books, anthologies, individual pieces, newspaper editorials, letters to officials, websites, blogs
- Actions: meetings with significant people (physically/virtually), rallies, service
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