• To learn more about this project’s purpose and outcomes, you might want to read the first post.
• If you are interested in understanding how this project enabled the teachers and coaches involved to position themselves as learners, you can click through to the second post.
• The third post demonstrates the beginning of instruction, where researchers applied strategies that helped them gather facts.
• The fourth post reveals how learners were taught to make connections, determine importance, and revise their work.
• The fifth post demonstrates how children used Skype to connect with others and seek additional facts as researchers.

And this post will outline the writing process that unfolded as this unit continued.

After these researchers completed their initial fact-finding and used the iPad to design visual notes for each fact found, they began to plan their writing. Earlier in the unit, Heather exposed her students to the concept of planning by modeling the way she planned to design an egg before asking them to do the same:

When I revisited the concept of planning with the class, all of them had a context for what it meant as egg designers, and this made the walk to creating a writing plan an easier one.

Next, we introduced writers to one of my favorite planning tools: the story board. Whether I’m wearing my writer hat, my teacher hat, or my instructional coach hat, I find that there are a handful of power tools that enable the construction of great writing. What makes a tool a power tool in my opinion? Its capacity to support writers of varied abilities and experience levels in their pursuit of varied forms. The story board is a great example of a power tool: often used to organize narrative text, I’ve also watched writers use story boards to develop games, plan projects, construct essays and research papers, design skits and even plan poetry. Heather modeled how she used the story board to begin organizing the facts she found from her own research:

As students began practicing on their own, this provided us a great assessment opportunity. Peeking over each child’s shoulder enabled us to determine whether or not writers had refined their topics and aligned appropriate facts to them. There were some who needed to do more research and capture additional facts by taking more visual notes. There were others who needed to do a different kind of research. Nearly every writer’s work  work revealed something unexpected though: the need for additional specific, refined detail. Heather used this data to determine how and when she would differentiate instruction the next day. She used their boards to determine the design of several  invitational groups. Instruction within each would target a specific student need:

The next day, some writers worked together to research additional facts and design visual notes. Others began making some difficult decisions about the facts that they found and which ones were most important. One writer, Brianna, challenged us in a completely different way, though. Grappling with the questions she raised inspired some important considerations.

As writers continued completing or revising their story boards, Sheri Barsottelli and I noticed that Brianna scrapping nearly all of her visual notes and clearing her entire story board. As I wandered by, she was working up a new plan in pencil:

“I don’t want to write this way,” she told us. “I know a lot about chicks. I have a lot of facts. But I want to write a STORY. I want to write a story about finding eggs in my yard and watching them hatch.”

We intended for the writers to produce expository text, though.

“Can I write a story if I put all of my facts from my research in it? I think it would be more interesting. Don’t you want my writing to be interesting?” she grinned.

Sure we did, but our intention was to have each child produce expository text, even if it wasn’t an outcome for this unit.

“Can you make it interesting without turning it into a story?” I asked.

“I don’t want to,” she told me in a respectful but quite authoritative way. “I’m definitely writing my story instead.”

“Okay,” I told her, eager to respect her choices as a writer and reinforce her willingness to advocate for herself.  I hoped that allowing her to deviate from my intended plan would keep her engaged and nurture her willingness to take risks as a learner in the future. The story that she produced was completely informed by her research. She identified more than three facts, organized them in a coherent fashion, and used her story board to plan her draft. She was performing well around all of our established learning targets. She chose to pursue a different form for her final product, that’s all. I had to remind myself that the outcomes did not require  students to produce expository text. I just assumed they would. Brianna taught me otherwise, and this  experience, more than any other during the unit, has given me a lot to ponder, particularly in relation to the Common Core Learning Standards and the expectations regarding the text types that writers are expected to consume and create. I’ll elaborate on all of that tomorrow.

Heather shared her completed story board with the class. Then, she began a revision mini-lesson intended to model a concrete strategy that would enable writers to revise with the purpose of adding detail, in response to what she noticed as a result of her earlier formative assessment. Adapted from Steve Peha’s Draw, Label, Caption method (located within The Writing Teacher’s Strategy Guide, which you may download for free on his fabulous site), Heather taught students to label each of the elements in their visual notes:

Then, she modeled how to revise each label in order to include greater detail:

As students practiced this strategy, I identified writers who demonstrated the ability to revise and add detail well and distributed them throughout the room, so they could write beside others. I also used their models to reinforce what quality revision could look like. Some writers struggled to determine potential points for revision, and when they did, I directed them to their classmates, who positioned themselves as readers and pointed to the facts that they were interested in receiving greater detail about:

Then, as writers continued working on their revisions, we distributed the iPads. Heather worked with small groups to demonstrate the way she turned her story board into a multi-media presentation using Story Kit:

I think it’s worth mentioning that she only needed to do this once. Every writer in the room was perfectly capable of accessing the app, importing their pictures from the album onto individual pages, and using their story boards and revisions to add appropriate text to each page. Our support was minimal and largely relevant to troubleshooting the few technology glitches that some kids experienced. Those who needed greater help were invited to meet together for short, targeted lessons while the rest continued writing independently.

The next day, Heather and I previewed their completed drafts, provided criteria-specific feedback to those whose work required additional revision, and coached kids to read aloud and record each page of their stories. As they did so, I learned a lot about each writer’s reading fluency.

I’m saving our final reflections on this unit for tomorrow’s post, but in the mean time, I’ve bookmarked the first drafts of these wonderful research-based writing tasks right here. Give them a read and while you do, consider what they reveal about:

• Each researcher’s strengths and needs
• Each writer’s strengths and needs
• Each artist’s strengths and needs

What are these learners demonstrating a readiness to do next?

So…..several weeks ago, a young writer that I know included herself in the merriment we were enjoying at the start of our  WNY Young Writers’ Studio session. We do this every time we meet, as a way of recognizing the goals we are achieving on our way to producing pieces we are proud of. Much of this celebration is about far more than the words we craft or perfect final products, I should add.

Anyway–this young lady found her moment within this celebration. She broke into smile and mentioned with measured confidence that she finished the rough draft of a novel that she began two years ago.This was a tremendous accomplishment. It would be for anyone, I know. What made it even sweeter was the fact that when she began Studio a year and a half ago, her ONLY goal was to finish a piece of writing that she had started. This was her greatest challenge: overcoming a thousand false and quickly abandoned starts. So when she announced that her draft was completed and she realized that she had persevered in developing strategies for getting herself to that place as a writer? Well, there was much to celebrate for certain.

I never recalled her saying that her work was finished, though. She knows that there are many more miles to go. She was simply pausing along the way to reflect on all that she had learned, name it, and celebrate her efforts with those who are supporting her. We did this.

I’m realizing now that we should have done more within that moment, though.

Shortly after, something not-so-unexpected happened, and it resulted in something not-so-wonderful. This young writer, completed draft in hand, began sharing it with others. Several others. And some of these others have mad writing skills and keenly critical eyes. Their intentions are good and their expectations are high, and both of those things can serve writers who are eager to grow.  This young writer wasn’t ready to hear what these people had to say just yet, though. In retrospect, I’m not sure any writer would be, but perhaps that’s not even relevant. This writer wasn’t ready to receive criticism on her work or prepared for the way in which others would share it, so she returned to us beyond crestfallen and questioning her ability to move forward.

Here’s what I realized: we need to help young writers know, own, and advocate for their own processes. They must be able to self-assess and determine when they are in a place that calls for validation and when they are in a place that calls for criteria-based feedback. They also need to know how to ask for these things clearly and how to arm those they approach with methods and tools that achieve this. As a teacher of writing, I’ve learned that I  need to help young writers understand and then advocate for themselves not only within our community but beyond it. The last week has provided me different opportunities for thinking and planning around this, and I’ll be blogging about that in the week ahead. It’s good to be back!

Joy Simpson, Jackie Gerstein, Theresa Gray, Nina Davis, Steve Shann, Linda Clinton, Angela Maiers, Dana Huff, Jim Burke (and this ning), Jim Knight, The Literacy Coach Blog, Kevin Jarrett, Ruth and Stacy, Kim Cofino (check out this recent recent post), Mathew Needleman (and this ning).

Only this isn’t what happened.

Much to my friend’s dismay, the kids who were given the power to approve submissions for the anthology began exercising that power pretty ruthlessly. Selection sessions quickly deviated away from criteria-based conversation about which pieces were strongest. Instead, they blossomed into judgment-driven ego-fests that served no one, including the judges themselves, very well. In the end, some of them decided to abandon their duties and leave the group because the conversations that took place there were so miserable to sit through.

When I asked my friend if he planned to disband the group, he said this wasn’t his intention. He had a different plan in mind for this year. He intended to train his students to use a meaningful protocol that would steer them away from their rush to judge and toward the criteria that could help them make meaningful selections that were less biased.

This entire conversation and his experiences gave me much food for thought.

I sometimes wonder if in our quest to help students grow, we focus on their deficits so often that this is what they think it means to teach. When my friend asked these students why they focused only on the weaknesses in each piece of writing submitted, one told him that he thought this was his job–to separate the wheat from the chafe. “If someone isn’t a good writer, we aren’t doing anyone any favors in letting them think so, after all,” he said.

My friend was mystified by the fact that these leaders had misconstrued their charge: they were asked to identify great pieces of writing for a student anthology. They were not asked to openly criticize anyone’s work. Yet, this is how they spent most of their time together.

Protocols can prevent this sort of thing from happening, particularly when teachers and students are trained to use them skillfully. I’m looking forward to seeing what this teacher-friend of mine puts into place. Do you use protocols with students? If so, which do you value most? Why?