Transcript: The Role of Writing in Early Literacy Learning
Angelica Cruz (00:00):
We are all so grateful that you are joining us today, and we’re going to just jump right in. So we will start if you can move to the next slide. Perfect. Thank you. We’re going to start by just getting to know each other a little bit. We’d love to see who all is here with us. If you could please in the chat, add your name, your role, and where you work, so district or ESD, as well as a favorite memory that you have about teaching, writing, and chat should be open so folks can add name, role, and favorite memories. Hi Lisa. Hi Kim. Thanks for joining us. Alright. Lewis and Clark, we’ve got representation from more than folks who are just in the classroom. This is excellent. Alright. Portland Village School. Thanks Lisa.
(01:29):
Give folks just a couple more minutes to add your name and role in the chat and a favorite memory. Oh, awesome. Oh, great memories, Ika. Hearing that about children, having children share their stories at an author’s team. Always wonderful. Hi Tina, thanks for joining. All right, great memories popping up here, writing a piece of writing and then sharing it at a public. Reading always helps bring that relevance in. Great memory, shadow puppet performance. All right, preschool children. I love it. These are great poetry slams. Oh my gosh, so many good memories about teaching, teaching, writing. Thank you all for sharing those. Alright, we’re going to move on to our next slide and go over our objectives. We have two objectives for this webinar. Our first goal is for everyone to learn how Oregon’s Early Literacy Framework supports writing as an essential component of early literacy instruction. And our second goal is for you to learn about instructional practices that support students in a writing rich classroom. We’ll also add a link to the slides in the chat for anybody who would like to follow along on their own as we go through. And next slide. Thank you.
(02:59):
This is our agenda for our time together today. We’ve just completed a little welcome and a little community building and next we’ll provide an introduction to writing within Oregon’s early literacy framework. And then we’ll spend the majority of our time together reviewing key ideas about writing, and we’ll also get to hear from an Oregon teacher in the field about what great writing looks like in her classroom. And finally, we’ll end with a reflection and a closing and next slide before we launch into our writing lesson. Today I just wanted to do a quick overview of our Oregon Early Literacy Framework. The purpose of a statewide literacy framework is to help build momentum and capacity for making literacy instruction stronger in Oregon so that all of our students leave elementary school reading and writing with grade level fluency, confidence and competence in at least one language.
(03:56):
It also serves to build coherence, common ground and clarity across the state for the vision of literacy instruction so that we can work together to improve literacy outcomes for every Oregon student. It aligns with the governor’s vision for improving literacy outcomes across our state with an intentional emphasis on how the framework elevates the literacy and language assets that diverse learners bring. This framework is intended to be actionable for districts and building leaders useful for teachers and informative for families and communities. So if you haven’t had a chance yet to read it, I bet you already all have. You can access it on our website.
(04:35):
And next slide. Within the Framework, there are seven principles that guided the development of the framework and serve as core values within each section. And we won’t go deep into these today, but you can read them there on the slide. Early literacy begins at birth, children are full of literary promise. Families and communities play an important role. Multilingualism benefits everyone. Foundational skills matter, teacher knowledge and practice are critical and every student can be taught to read and write. And next slide. And as I said earlier, we’ll be talking about section six of the Framework today, which is our focus on writing. There are eight different sections of the framework, all of which are equally important and necessary conditions in order to create high quality literacy experiences for students. Today we’ll be zooming in on section six, which is a write up there in the leaves of the literacy tree on the right, and we’ll be talking specifically about what high quality writing instruction looks, sounds and feels like. And now I’m going to turn it over to Linda and Amy with WestEd to launch our section on key ideas around writing. Next slide.
Linda Friedrich (05:56):
Hi everybody, I’m Linda Friedrich. I am the director of literacy at WestEd and I’m going to be turning it over to my wonderful colleague Amy Woodbridge, who’s going to start us off on this section.
Amy Woodbridge (06:11):
Thank you. Thanks everyone for attending and thanks Linda. My name is Amy and I’m a Research Associate here at WestEd. If we can move to the next slide, we want to begin this section before we dive in, we want to begin by hearing your thoughts and what’s important to you about teaching writing. So you’ll see a link in the chat and there’s a QR code here on your screen. Either we’ll take you to Mentimeter and we’d like you to respond with a word. What is one word that describes how you want students to feel about writing after being in your classroom? So you should be able to use this QR code or go to menti.com and use the code 9 4 1 1 1 1 1. From there you should be able to enter a word and we can see your responses as they’re coming in here. As these words grow bigger, we can see that several people are sharing the same word here so we can see what’s most important to everybody.
(07:22):
Excellent. I see confident, powerful, valued, joy, inspired and excited seem to be important words to everybody too. It’s great to get an idea of where everybody is as we’re diving into this webinar here. Excellent. Thanks everybody for sharing these. I think we’ve reached capacity here, but it’s great like I said, to see what’s important to everybody. So let’s go to the next slide where we have a statement on screen and we’re also going to open the chat again for this slide. This statement here is a key takeaway on writing from Oregon’s Early Literacy Framework. And as we read this statement, what’s one word from this quote that really stands out to you? Please go ahead and share that in the chat. The quote is, “writing practice helps students solidify and make sense of foundational skills, allows them a creative outlet to emulate story and text structure and creates opportunities to connect in meaningful ways with the world around them.”
(08:40):
I see connect and meaningful are really standing out to people here. Again, this is taken directly from the Early Literacy Framework and it leads us right into the three big ideas about writing instruction that we will cover today. So let’s go to the next slide and review those three big ideas. First, that writing reinforces and expands foundational literacy skills, that there’s a reciprocal relationship between reading and writing development and that writing presents opportunities to welcome student identity, voice and experience into the classroom. So thanks everyone for sharing here in the chat and let’s go right into this first big idea. Writing reinforces and expands foundational skills to understand how it does this. Let’s as briefly as possible review what we mean by foundational skills. I have five here on screen. First print concepts. This refers to understanding the features of written text and how it’s organized.
(09:45):
For example, letter recognition or knowing the direction that print is read in a particular language. Phonological awareness is the awareness of the sounds that make up words and language and the focus here is on the sound, not on the written letters that represent the sound. So examples of phonological awareness are understanding rhyming, understanding syllables. It can be segmenting words into sounds, so taking the word “dog” and segmenting it into the sounds or doing the opposite by blending sounds together to make a word. We can also add delete or substitute sounds. So what happens when we change that first sound to a “h,” we get hog instead of dog? These are all examples of phonological awareness. The alphabetic principle is the understanding that there is a systematic and predictable relationship between a sound and a letter. Then building off of these phonics and word recognition. When students learn phonics, they learn sound and spelling patterns in a way that allows them to identify the relationship between a particular sound and the letter or letters that represent that sound.
(11:05):
In print learning, phonics allows students to decode and encode decoding, being seeing a word in print and translating it into speech. So sounding it out based on their knowledge. And encoding is again doing the reverse, translating a word from speech into print. Word recognition then is the ability to recognize words quickly and in the moment without having to focus on that process of decoding the words so carefully. Finally, fluency is a foundational skill of reading and when we consider a student’s reading fluency, we’re considering how accurately and quickly they read whether they read with appropriate intonation and phrasing and their comprehension of what they read. Now let’s go to the next slide. Most of the foundational skills we just went over apply to both reading and writing, but there are also foundational skills specific to writing, handwriting and letter formation, just the process of writing letters, spelling, which is generally used interchangeably with encoding.
(12:11):
When students learn spelling, they learn many rules about the environments in which the relationships between these letters and sounds occur. Sentence construction refers to writing sentences that convey meaning, and it also refers to writing conventions and mechanics like punctuation and capitalization. And finally, like handwriting, typing and word processing are considered foundational skills for writing. The goal is for foundational skills to become automatic so that children can are freed up to focus their efforts on other higher level aspects of writing. So let’s move on to the main points that we want to highlight here. The first point we want to make is that students need explicit and systematic instruction in foundational skills. This supports them in becoming readers and writers. Research tells us for example, that when children receive explicit instruction in phonological awareness, phonics and fluency, their spelling is improved and instruction should integrate different foundational skills when you’re teaching handwriting and letter formation.
(13:31):
At the same time, introduce or review the corresponding sounds or sounds that are made by that letter that you’re practicing the letter or letters when teaching sentence, sentence construction. One activity might be to encourage students to create multiple sentences using their phonological awareness to make sound substitutions to keywords. So if they’re writing the word wake in a sentence as a spelling word, you might encourage them, how do we change that first sound? Or what word do we get if we change that first sound to a sound? And now let’s write a new sentence with the resulting word dig. So these are ways that we can integrate instruction of different foundational skills within the same activities to solidify them. Also, instruction should incorporate meaningful opportunities to write. So for example, when learning spelling words, rather than simply writing lists of spelling words, maybe challenge students to write the beginning of a story using five of their new spelling words.
(14:38):
This is a meaningful way to practice and solidify foundational skills. Let’s move on to the next slide here where we want to point out that writing helps to reinforce foundational skills that are used for both writing and reading. For example, spelling instruction improves word reading and improves reading fluency. So all these skills are interconnected. Reading and writing reinforce and support each other and reading and writing instruction should also be integrated. In a few minutes, my colleague, Linda here will discuss additional ways that reading and writing support one another. But before we move on, I want to spend a few minutes sharing ideas with each other about building foundational skills. On the next slide here, we’ll open the chat again and take just a minute to ask you to share with each other some writing strategies or activities you’ve tried in your classroom that have helped students build foundational skills.
(15:51):
I’ll get you started using an example from the What Works Clearinghouse Educators Practice Guide on Effective Writing. One activity might be to have children write sentences or short texts using as many spelling words as they can. Once they’ve done this, they can circle the spelling words they’ve used and then double check their spelling using their word list. This is an example of a short activity to reinforce foundational skills. So we’d like to ask you to take a minute to think and suggest a strategy or activity that you have used in the chat with the hope being that you can give each other ideas and share some strategies that have worked for you. Draw a picture related to the sentence, excuse me, I see dictation of words and sentences highlighting that target phonics label aspects of their drawing label pictures. Again, excellent. Please keep sharing as many ideas as you want to share. Again, we hope this will be useful for you, but I do want to turn it over to Linda who’s going to discuss our remaining key ideas for today.
Linda Friedrich (17:31):
Thank you Amy. And we can go to the next slide. So one of the things that I’m seeing in the chat is that people are already picking up on the bigger idea of all of the ways that reading and writing and writing and reading help to reinforce each other. And that idea is really reflected on the quote on this slide from the National Council of Teachers of English. It’s self-evident that to write a particular kind of text, it helps if the writer has read that kind of text in order to take on a particular style of language. It also helps to have read that language, to have heard it in one’s mind so that one can hear it again in order to compose it. And this quote just is a really lovely way to talk about the deep interconnections between reading and writing. You can go to the next slide please.
(18:35):
So I’d like to start by really highlighting the ways in which teaching research-based writing practices lead to improved reading comprehension. Over the past decade or so, there have been a series of research syntheses that have looked at the impact on various writing practices, on reading comprehension outcome. And there are three big ideas that really stand out from this research. The first big idea is to invite students to write about what they read. And I really want to point everybody’s attention to the idea of writing summaries of texts. And this approach, especially for elementary students in grades K through five has a particularly strong and consistent impact on reading comprehension and it also helps students to learn some specific composition strategies. Teaching specific writing skills and approaches also leads to improved reading comprehension. So teaching students a process for writing, teaching text structures, and we see that idea of sentence construction coming up.
(19:59):
Again, all of these things help students actually better comprehend the text. And then finally, as somebody who loves and is passionate about writing and the teaching of writing, the research for elementary school students really shows that by increasing the amount of time that students spend writing and in writing instruction, we’re improving reading comprehension as well. And I think for all of us who are educators with so many things on our plates, it’s really important to highlight that when you’re teaching writing and students are writing, they are also really getting additional supports in reading comprehension. So that time is doing double duty. You can go to the next slide.
(20:55):
This is one example and I think it’s just so interesting that sentence construction and teaching that is really powerful both for reinforcing foundational skills. It’s very effective for improving students’ writing and it supports reading comprehension. This particular example comes from the What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide: Teaching Elementary Students to Write Effectively. And this particular example is on sentence expanding where you take a short sentence like I love to ride my bike. And then the teacher can take that sentence and model ways to add in showing correct punctuation and spelling. This isn’t just a one and done activity though with the teacher standing at the front of the room, inviting students ideas in and continuing to model, providing students opportunities to practice individually and in pairs and then to respond to each other’s writing of these sentences all helps with supporting reading comprehension and improving writing.
(22:17):
Let’s go to the next slide. And we can think about the ways in which teaching students to read like writers also improves writing. So I think many people have heard of the idea of mentor texts, and one of the things that the practice guide emphasizes is that for students to get better at writing, they need lots of practice for writing a variety of purposes and audiences. This is another wonderful way to connect reading and writing. So as you’re reading with your students, helping students to understand what was the purpose that this writer was writing for? So if you’re reading a description in science about a scientific procedure or you’re reading a description of a butterfly or you’re reading a story, those are different purposes. Expanding students’ concept of who the audience is, teaching students to emulate the good features of writing and then teaching students techniques.
(23:24):
So with each piece of writing, you can first look at things in the reading and then provide opportunities for students to emulate those strategies in their own writing. Let’s go to the next slide and look at a particular example. And again, this comes from the What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide that’s linked in the chat. And I think this will be a pretty familiar example. So if we think about the purpose of writing to describe when you’re describing something, you want those rich sensory details and really great writing that students are reading has those sensory details. So you might have your students read a piece of writing that they’re about to emulate and think about these five questions, what they see, what they hear, what they touch, smell, and taste. And then take one or more of those and emulate what the writer did in their own writing. Let’s go to the next slide. Now, I would love to invite people to add some additional ideas for how you’ve brought reading and writing together in your classroom.
(25:07):
And I have a high tolerance for quiet and wait time, so I’m just really excited and I think we’re all excited to learn what people are doing, but question the author strategy and its four components. Yeah, that’s a great connection, bringing in preschoolers, curiosity. Awesome. Great. So curiosity can be about something like names Wonderful. And again, I’m going to invite you to keep adding things to the chat while we go to the next slide. I think that some of these ideas are really connecting to how do we build classroom communities that are welcoming, that invite our young people and our children to bring their whole selves. And one of the quotes that I really appreciated that Oregon brought to light in its Oregon Early Literacy Framework is this one from the National Council of Teachers of English. Seeing ourselves in stories and other texts is a powerful human need.
(26:47):
Being able to say, look, there I am, feels good. And it helps us to know that who we are is recognized and validated and that we are not alone. So let’s go to the next slide. So one of the things that I truly love about writing and working with children on writing is that it is a wonderful way for students to bring their whole selves, their identities, their cultures, their assets to school. And it’s a way for us as educators to get windows into their world. So these six big ideas are ways to really bring a culturally responsive lens to our teaching of writing. So using those evidence-based practices that are outlined in the writing practice guide, including building a community of writers, is a way to hold high expectations, building one’s own understandings about students’ backgrounds and their communities. And then identifying and tapping students’ language when they write, ensure that students see themselves reflected in reading and writing as you’re choosing that high quality instructional materials, how are we seeing our students offering opportunities for students to choose what they write and to create that sense of community and belonging?
(28:23):
And I am really excited because let’s go to the next slide. I’m going to write, invite everybody to share a practice that’s been helpful in students connecting to the world around them. And this is such an amazing transition as you share your ideas into some of the work that Kim is going to share about her classroom. And we’ll give you just another 30 seconds to add things into the chat and then turn it over to Kim poetry based on their senses. That’s a lovely way to connect and to bring ideas in and I think it ties back to that connection between reading and writing as well. So Kim, I’m going to turn it over to you now.
Kim Neiswanger (29:31):
Thank you, Linda. We can go to the next slide. Thank you, Linda. And I just want to thank you all for inviting me to give you a little glimpse into my classroom and share a little bit about what I do in my classroom and how I connect reading and writing and a piece of the early literacy framework. I’m Kim Neiswanger. I’m from Ruch Outdoor Community School. It’s a little rural community outside of Jacksonville in southern Oregon, and I’m a part of the Medford School District. Go to the next slide, as I said. So I teach second grade. This is actually my first year of teaching second grade. I have been teaching first grade for, this is my 15th year. So I’ve been teaching first grade for 13 years. My very first one was half day kindergarten and now I’m doing second. I’ve done a few one two blends here and there as well.
(30:35):
We’re an outdoor school in a place-based school. And for those of you unfamiliar with a place-based school, that simply just means that we’re sorry, yes, place-based, that we’re engaging students and learning by using our community as our classroom. So that means that we do a lot of interdisciplinary work. We’re outside a good majority of the time, especially when the weather’s nicer, but we’re out there using our community as our classrooms, so that means connecting science and reading and writing and math and social studies and all those together in one big project or one big timeframe. And so we do a lot of interdisciplinary writing as well. I love teaching writing, it’s my passion. And for 12 years I have been engaging students in a book writing unit that uses the writing process that starts from brainstorming and continues on through publishing and celebrating their work.
(31:42):
So we can go to the next slide. So when I talk about a writing rich classroom, so my writing in my classroom integrates into every subject area. As I mentioned earlier, students are gauged in writing every day and students practice formal and informal writing. So what that looks like is maybe the first thing in the morning when we have our reading block, I do some whole group instruction, but then I run some reading centers and always one of my reading centers is a free write journal where they practice. They also have sentenced writing center, but in the journal, I want to talk about that for a minute. In the journal I say it’s free write because most of the time it is free write. I tell them, write me a story. And they have 15 minutes to just write in that journal. And what that does for them is it gives them an opportunity to just be creative and to write whatever they want to.
(32:48):
And often times I’ll hear, can I write about? And yes, of course it’s your journal, you can write about whatever you want. A few times though, I will connect because as Linda said so beautifully that it improves comprehension when you take a text and you have your students respond to that text. So sometimes I’ll have, I think I saw in the chat that somebody said, have the students answer a question, what would you wear if you were a king or a queen? And so that could be a question that they would answer in their journals. We maybe just have read a fairytale or read about kings and queens or something and then they can write about that in their journals. But what I really like to use the journal for is to give them an opportunity to really get some ideas down because then that’s helpful at the end of the school year when I do my book writing unit, it’s helpful for them to have a bunch of ideas that they can go back to.
(33:51):
Sometimes they ask me in their journal writing, can we go back and work on a story we already worked on? Yes, of course you can. That’s always an option. And after lunch is my specific writing block, and that’s where I do my specific explicit writing instruction. I believe you can’t teach grammar unless it’s in context. It’s super hard to just teach grammar out of context and say, oh, we’re learning about nouns today. Really, if you attach it to your writing instruction or your writing lesson for that day, and then you’re focusing on whatever piece that you’re teaching, it is more meaningful and has more impact. And so when we have that explicit writing instruction, the first part of my school year up until a week before spring break, is then getting them ready to write those books that we publish. So teaching them capitals and periods and how a sentence flows and nouns and verbs and adjectives and all the good meaty writing stuff that they are going to need to be successful in their book writing unit.
(35:06):
And then in the afternoons in our science and social studies, time is often we do some nonfiction writing with a mentor text. And my kids are working on a project that we can take, let’s say that we can take the social studies guide in our books and then I have them with that as their mentor text. Then I’ll maybe have them rewrite it in their own words or rewrite it for somebody who we’re going to take a hike on a trail and maybe somebody can’t access that trail. So write some interpretive signage for somebody who can’t access that trail so they know what it’s about. So then they have to go to their mentor text and dig into that to find out, well, I don’t know, how do I write this? And then also kind of gives them a help what to write. So we’re writing all throughout the day in all different forms.
(36:15):
Yeah, so say we’re practicing formal and informal writing. Both can go to the next slide. So this is my unit, my book writing unit that I created 12 years ago, we called it. You have a story because every student has a story, every person has a story. But oftentimes students don’t believe that they have a story. And so in this, they’re going to learn about the writing process from the beginning to end, as I said. And it is so cool that I’m doing this webinar now because we’re in the middle of our book writing unit right now. And I just came across this situation where I have some kiddos that are finished right now with their rough draft and some kiddos that are just starting their rough draft. And so I was talking to those kids that are finished with their rough draft and I was telling them the next steps in the process.
(37:24):
And one of the boys is like, oh, really? And I said, yes. And what he was responding to is that I was telling him, you have to write and then we’re going to edit, and then you’re going to write again, and then we’re going to edit, and then you’re going to write again. And when they come to that point of realization, they do start getting tired. So we start with the pre-write and I give them, we just take one whole day to brainstorm. And this year it was pretty cool because I looped with some of my kids, and so they already wrote a book last year, and so they knew it was coming. And so when I went to do this brainstorming part piece of it with them, I gave them graphic organizers with it. And when I gave them the one to just generate some ideas, they weren’t writing.
(38:20):
And I said, how come you’re not writing and you’re brainstorming? And they’re like, but I already know what I’m writing about. And so they already had that idea, but I make them go through that step anyway, still going through it because they think it’s valuable. I tell them, you can keep it for later and maybe you have another story to write, or if you get stuck writing this story, maybe those ideas will help you. So I make all the students go through the brainstorming portion of it just because it’s good practice. And what I really like to keep in mind and keep in focus is this quilt from Jim Burke. And it says, books are not just an assignment to get through for a passing grade, but a gateway for students to gain deeper understanding of themselves and the world. And I would add to that. So my purpose as a teacher is that books are not just an assignment to get my students through the standards that I have to teach, but it’s also a gateway for them to be creative and to have a deeper understanding of themselves in the world. So we can go to the next slide. So with this slide, we’re going to dive into a layout of the unit that I teach.
(39:40):
We start lesson one. As I said, we start with the story elements. And in this case, this would take place either during my writing time, my writing block, sometimes I’ll have somebody come in or I’ll do it at my table, my center. But then in small groups is when I also teach some of this character setting problems in children’s books for an elementary student K through I’d say all the way up through five. That idea of having a problem in your story is still really a tough thing to grasp your head around. So if you take time and use mentor texts and help students pull out what is a problem in the story and just read stories and just for the main focus of what is the problem and then what is the solution. And then we also do the idea generation for possible characters and then possible problems for their own stories.
(40:47):
So that’s all in one lesson. And I take right about half an hour, maybe 40 minutes to do that. Lesson two is peer feedback. So brainstorming partner conversations, reports from partners, review story elements and structure. So I teach the students how to give each other feedback because one of the parts of the writing process in my classroom is a peer editor. So you have to read your story to a peer editor. And so we’re teaching them really to get ask good questions, not just say, oh, that’s good, but say, oh, how did this character get here? Or how did this happen in your story? And to really ask genuine questions to help their partner further their story and to make it better. And like I said, all of these lessons that I do are about 30 to 40 minutes depending on the content. Lesson three, I invite them to think like an author. So this is where I hand out their writing folder to them. Their writing folders have pockets in them, and there’s one pocket for each piece of the process. And so folder day is a big day for them. We’re really going to do this. So we hand out there, we give them their folder, and that’s really when we start doing the brainstorming is that day. And then when they’re finished and they slide that paper into that number one slot that says brainstorming, they feel accomplished.
(42:39):
You can see the joy on their face when they do it. They just light up when they get to slide something into a folder and say, I accomplished something. I’ve already accomplished something because I have brainstormed. I have an idea for a story. And this says in lesson three, excuse me, that we begin drafting sometimes, sometimes that we run out of time when we do that brainstorming. Sometimes it’s the next day. And actually between lesson three and lesson four, maybe a couple of days. And just depends on the kids on their pacing and how well they generate ideas and how well they can begin their drafting when they start their rough draft. I can usually pretty well tell if a kid has a story that they’re really passionate about in that first paragraph because they really are just writing. I tell them, don’t worry about spelling, don’t worry about anything else other than getting your ideas on the paper.
(43:51):
Because for me, as an adult, when I’m writing, if I have to worry about how to spell something, then I get stifled in my creativity and I don’t want to stifle their creativity. So we just begin drafting and we just begin writing. So after their first draft is finished, and like I said, this year that has taken five days for them to write their rough draft because again, we don’t have a big chunk of time. We write for 30 to 40 minutes. And yes, I do get second graders to sit and write for 40 minutes because they’re invested in what they’re writing because I gave them a choice in what they wanted to write. And so they’re really invested in their writing. Lesson four is that revision piece. So that’s where we respond to a friend and revision number one. So that’s at the spot where some of my students are now and most will get there soon.
(44:46):
And that’s meeting with a friend and having a peer editor and having that friend give you some good feedback that you can use. I had a pair of my boys, the very first pair of my boys that did it, they just finished the other day and yesterday or Friday, and they said, one of them was like, yeah, I got a good question to answer. And so they get excited about their peer mentoring, I mean peer editing as well, because my friend understands my story and my friend has a question that can help my story. So they don’t ever, we talk about this, they don’t ever get bummed out or feel like they’re being put down or anything from their peers. They are genuinely excited that their peers have given them an idea to help with their story. And after they meet with the peer editor, then they meet with an adult editor.
(45:51):
And like I said, there’s a few days in between this because this time I’m having them, when they do their peer edit, I’m having them respond to that. And I use, we use sticky notes. And so if they write a question on a sticky note, then they can stick it right in the story where it needs to be changed. And then they can write also right there on that sticky note and not have to erase a bunch of copy and stuff like that. They can write it right on that sticky note and know when they rewrite that, they need to put that in that spot. And so after that, they stick those in and then that’s when they meet with the adult editor so that we can read that piece. I usually have them sometimes rewrite in between that. And that’s a lot. I will say that’s a lot for kindergarten through second grade.
(46:46):
It’s a lot to rewrite so much, but there’s also a lot of power in them rewriting because then they’re invested and the reward at the end is greater. So also it could get a little bit messy, and that’s why we rewrite. So then we check with an editor, an adult editor, and that’s where then I check for the punctuation and the spelling and sentence structure and to see if they have any other missing pieces. And then throughout all of that, as they’re waiting for an editor or adult or peer or whatever, then we have them illustrating, they illustrate their own books as well. So we can go to the next slide.
(47:39):
So lesson five is round two revision revised based on the editor’s questions like with the post-its and stuff like that. And then their illustrations, lesson six, we tie up the loose ends. So they get to write a dedication page, they get to have their title, they get to write an about the author page. They edit, proofread, meet with the editor for the one last time, and then they submit their manuscript to the editor. And then lesson seven is the final touches. I have them set with me at the computer. We use an on-demand book publishing company called the Book Patch. And so all you have to do is upload your PDF already there and then they print it for us. And so the kids get to set with us and upload it to the print company. So they get to see that process as well.
(48:31):
They get to pick the cover of their color and stuff. And then when everything comes back and all that hard work is finished in between the time of going to press and waiting for it to come back to us, then we reflect a lot on our process and what we did. But at the end, when our books come back, we have a celebration with an author’s reception and the kids each get to read their book to their audience. I split ’em up into however many different groups. So there’s four or five kids in each group, and they have parents. We have parents who community members come and they get to read their story to their audience. And that’s where really the joy where you see the big joy of the big tasks that they’ve completed come through. So we can go to the next slide.
(49:22):
So there’s a lot of ongoing learning leading into the book publishing unit connections that enhance, they don’t take place or supplant, high quality instructional materials in the curriculum. We have many writing lessons based on the standards, read alouds with vivid imagery to stimulate imagination and like strong adjectives. And then one of my big reflections is it takes time, it takes patience and it gets messy, but the results are worth it. And then here’s just a couple of our student voices. Don’t rush your story and always write your first draft, your second draft and your third draft and keep writing. Don’t stop. That’s what Maya says. And then Arthur says, your book will change a lot. And I love that quote because their books will change a lot. And I tell my kids, we have a good story and we’re going to take it to an amazing story. And that’s usually how it ends up. Next slide.
(50:22):
So when writing is learner directed, the students shine, they really do shine. Writing is therapeutic. I have students that rewrite their own stories because they have no control over their stories. So then they rewrite them in their book and they become the hero of their story in their book. And it’s beautiful. Remember to provide time for students to free write, embrace the process. It gets messy. I have volunteers during my writing time, and that’s a game changer. So if at all possible ESSes or aids or anything, parent volunteers, that’s a great time to invite parent volunteers in. And then my favorite quote to end this is there’s no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting. And so I hope, I know I kind of rushed through that, but there’s a lot goes into it. And as you can see, I’m super passionate about it. So you get into it and your kids get passionate about it as well. So just keep working, just keep writing. And I think I’m going to pass it to Angelica on that one.
Angelica Cruz (51:27):
Thank you so much, Kim. That was so wonderful. Thank you for sharing the glimpse into your classroom writing. It was great to hear you talk about how you make writing so engaging and joyful. And I especially loved the importance of teaching your students how to revise again and again and again because it’s never done right. We’ve summarized our key takeaways that we hope you all gain from this webinar today on this slide, integrating writing throughout the school day and across subjects, deepened student learning, connecting writing to students’ identities and lives outside of school builds belonging and increases engagement and rich writing, learning experiences, strengthen literacy development. We invite you to add any other takeaways that you gain from this webinar into the chat. And we will go on to our last slide and close out. So thank you again everybody for joining us today. We hope that you found this webinar helpful.
(52:28):
We have one last request of all of you. If you can please take just a few moments to fill out a quick survey for us about today’s learning. It will help us plan our future webinars. I promise it’s short only a few questions and it really won’t take much time, but it will be very helpful for us to tailor future professional learning experiences. There’s a QR code here for you to take the survey, or you can click the link in the chat to access it. We’ve also included my contact information here in case you have additional questions regarding how to bring writing to life in your school and classroom. Feel free to reach out anytime. And finally, a shameless plug for our future webinars. We will be hosting some additional webinars on other sections of the framework this coming month in May, as well as a couple more next fall so you can find more information on our upcoming webinars and register them webinar on the Oregon Instructional Frameworks website, which is also added in the chat for you there. So thank you everybody for coming today, and thank you for all that you do to embrace and uplift literacy for our students in Oregon. I.