Five years ago I was introduced to Frank Serafini's work at the Wisconsin Reading Research Symposium through his latest publication, Reading the Visual. This text was exactly what I needed at the time to jumpstart the design of my multiliteracies unit (now Digital Writes) as it helped me to think about how reading the visual in picturebooks could be an entry into author's craft for digital writing. Since then, my students have explored texts using his framework alongside a similarly focused framework provided by Dawnene Hassett. Recently, I found myself wondering how I might adapt this workshop experience to attend to relevant instructional practices beyond teaching author's craft. Why it took me this long to make the connection...no idea. But, I am so excited about the workshop redesign I cannot wait to put it into action!

After reading this chapter on "Studying Writers' Office Work," it is clear that I have not given enough attention to the importance of topic selection in the writing process. Ray makes an important distinction between how experienced and inexperienced writers select topics  highlighting how experienced writers realize that the writing is what makes the reading engaging, not the topic.

This passage helped me to see blindspots in my own writing instruction. In the past, I've focused my efforts on teaching the writing process to redefine what it means to engage in active and ongoing revision, as many of my students still struggle to differentiate revision from editing. But in doing so, I think it's pretty clear I've been shortchanging what it means to actively engage in prewriting. With limited time to delve deep into writing instruction, I also find myself wondering if this perspective could be addressed more strategically within a student writing project as opposed to a separate topic within understanding the writing process?

​In particular, Ray's writing has shifted my perspective for drafting digital texts within my larger-scale multiliteracies book response project. While I position topic selection as based on a writer's individual purpose (emerging from their reading(s), knowledge of technologies, experience with genres, personal interests, etc), I have not been as intentional about (a) how to help them discover that purpose; (b) how to develop that purpose prior to beginning the drafting process; (c) or how to transfer this experience to the classroom for their own students. Moving forward, I can envision how a more intentional entrance into these projects could greatly enhance the outcomes and the likelihood of impacting future practice.

Inspiration from Wondrous Words by Katie Wood Ray.

PBS recently hosted A Chat with Marley Dias, creator of #1000BlackGirlBooks. Marley's efforts have led to the creation of 1000BlackGirlBooks Resource Guide which speaks directly to educators who are looking for text recommendations to broaden their classroom libraries and use of mentor texts. While Marley's work addresses the need for black female protagonists at the center of children and YA literature, a number of additional resources were shared to broaden the scope of representation and culturally relevant reading material.

I've used some of these resources in the past, but two new resources are helping me to rethink how I frame these discussions in future courses. For the past few years, my students at UW have been mostly white, upper-middle class, monolingual females interested in teaching in urban settings. All of our student teaching experiences take place in culturally and linguistically diverse schools, so they are very much motivated to develop understandings and practices to support culturally responsive teachers. There is a very high likelihood that while my future students may share similar demographic backgrounds, they may be less motivated to embrace these perspectives and have less opportunities to teach in diverse contexts. I plan to be more strategic and explicit in addressing the need to broaden representation, themes, and perspectives--within all classroom contexts. Using 'Mirrors & Windows' to frame this process seems like an encouraging route to take.
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In addition, I am interested in the following analysis activity for selecting anti-bias children's books. While these ideas are integrated throughout our discussions, I imagine that completing this type of analysis would help to connect the ideas and their importance to practice (much as I've seen happen with our picturebook analysis that addresses multimodal meaning-making).

Additional resources to draw from include:

• Booklists from the CCBC
• This ppt resource does a wonderful job of synthesizing and articulating the ideas I've been thinking about with clear examples to help students make connections to their current and future teaching contexts. ​​

Finally, I was most interested in attending this webinar because I've decided my Reading Resolution this year will focus on cultural representations in children's texts focusing on the range of middle elementary readers (with selections on both ends). Here is the list I've compiled so far:
1. Aminas Voice
2. Drita My Homegirl
3. Love
4. Looking Like Me
5. Last Stop on Market Street
6. Cinderelly
7. Amazing Grace
8. My Name is Maria Isabel
9. Claudette Colvin
10.  Ninth Ward
11. Another Brooklyn
12. The Skin I'm In

Books provide a venue for making sense of ourselves, our emotions, our experiences, our identities-- even from the youngest years. Sometimes simplicity can go far in helping to introduce complex concepts, feelings, and events to our students. I'll never forget when I first realized the power of this approach when teaching a Holocaust unit to my 7th graders. We read Rose Blanche, a heartbreaking story which approaches the topic in a similar plot to that of The Boy in Striped Pajamas. As one of our opening activities, this story helped to personalize the historical background we had explored and to frame the challenging conversations that would lead us into our longer-term reading of the memoir, The Cage.

It's not surprising that children's books would help students to explore social situations, interpersonal relationships, overarching human themes. However, lately I've been struck by the range of issues being addressed in picturebooks and the opportunities they provide for children to imagine themselves and their worlds in much more nuanced and flexible ways that mirror larger social trends. 

Here I'm keeping ongoing note of some of the recent texts I've been sharing with T.

This past week I had the chance to participate in the PBS For the Love of Lit webinar on NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month. A few takeaways:

• Offering students the prospect of writing their own novels might seem daunting. But many teachers (and kiddos) attested to the power of the challenge in supporting students to claim their roles as not just writers--but authors. 

After reading Kelly Gallagher's Readicide a number of years ago, I've been hesitant about using post-it notes in the reading classroom. In his book, he describes the tedious interruptions to flow as disruptive to the reading experience. Of course he is speaking in extremes, but his words have stuck with me to the point where I've almost discarded sticky notes altogether...almost.

All this time I have been doing it wrong. So wrong. Wasting so many hours typing feedback on lesson plans that is sometimes read and applied and other times never acknowledged. Last year, I decided to address this issue by foregoing written comments to hold writing conferences instead. I thought that if I could talk directly with my students about a limited number of questions/concerns in the form of a writing conference, perhaps it would better support their understandings and ability to use that feedback to actually revise their lessons. Overall, this was a great improvement on use of time and student outcomes. Yet, I still talked myself into circles when working with a few students. No matter how many subtle or explicit attempts I made to explain a high-priority issue that needed to be addressed...my students remained baffled. 

This timely post from Eduotopia looks at assessing project-based learning and the dangers of relying on final projects alone. I've written about this topic previously and identified some strategies specific to assessing digital multimodal compositions. Emphasizing the process of design by looking closely at student thinking through embedded activities is at the core of this work, and really, important to writing instruction more broadly.

But I had never thought about characterizing assessment as play. 

One of the most powerful ideas from the article is repositioning the assessment process as participatory to enable student agency. Our recent work in assessing our Digital Salon projects in ELA Methods resonates well with this approach. However, I thought of the process as reflection-based rather than play-based. How does taking a play-based stance open up new opportunities?

Using "play" evokes.... creativity; multiple pathways to sense-making; collaborative innovations; unintended consequences; whole-child engagement; moments of 'flow'; an array of interpretations. Most importantly, it better captures the experience of learning through doing, in all of its iterations and patterns as opposed to the unidirectional nature of most lesson designs and assessments. This rings true to the experiences of teachers' play we're currently exploring in our upcoming LRA paper. A much-needed counterpoint to the over-reliance on assessment data that limits process and outcome in many K-12 classrooms.

The focus of this final post in the series is developing online modules. Wha wha wha.....
In my experience, using 'module' elicits negative connotations related to self-paced, self-contained, modular-based lectures. For any public school teacher, does the blood borne pathogens module come to mind? Push play. Answer emails until the video stops talking. Click some buttons. Answer the self-apparent questions at the end. Move on.

I've developed a number of online modules as an instructional designer but never for a blended course. This posed a number of new questions for the design process.

Awhile back, I posted about a PD opportunity that helped me to reimagine what engaging webinars might look like. After testing these strategies out in our Coaching program, I was ready to give it a go for the Methods course. Throughout the semester, there were many times when I wanted to meet with students to discuss important themes arising from their work. Given the constraints of the blended syllabus, this wasn't always possible as sometimes we wouldn't meet face-to-face for multiple weeks. Enter the webinar. To address this need, I planned interactive webinar activities around the following three topics.