San Marcos Writing Project

OMG!!! Please teach this to your kids #YoucanbeABC

"Last week my first grader came home wearing a huge grin. My son, Jack, was made ‘star of the week’ in his class, which gave him a few special privileges throughout the week. He got to be line-leader, bring in family pictures to share with the class, and a few other things to make him feel special. However, the huge grin came from an activity on Friday. As a class culture writing activity, Jack’s teacher had all of the students in the class write something they like about Jac...Continue reading

My narrative writing assignment https://docs.google.com//1tuYyrJf_-qL3hBsW_ho9aRVWk6/copy From Kristen May "Here is a simple narrative organizer I whipped up for my students. I will be using this with my virtual special education class to help organize and edit their myths, legends and fables they are creating! ... Also, just as an FYI, and perhaps I’m late to the party but I’m using the free PDF Escape website to turn these into PDFs with text boxes!! My crew was finding OneNote impossible. " See more

Literary pumpkins by middle and high school students except for "Fish in a tree" made by teacher Carey Johnson. Can you guess the books?

I’m not a reader. It’s a common refrain Julia Torres, a teacher-librarian in Denver Public Schools, has heard throughout her 16-year career. She’s seen students tear up books, throw them away or check them out only to immediately return them all because they didn’t have confidence in their ability to read. As a librarian, Torres feels strongly that libraries should be spaces of liberation, places where students can develop a love of reading at any stage. Reading is a ...Continue reading

" I have, I must admit, a giant crush on the English language. I am embarrassed to say it is the only language I know fluently. But English is extraordinary. We English speakers have stolen, borrowed, invented, flipped, adapted, coined, misused, repurposed, and dreamed up so many words for so many different contexts that we now have the Swiss Army knife of languages: ready for anything you can imagine and everything you cannot. It’s not just the words of stories that I love ... I love words in any context from graffiti to poetry to jingles. That is why I write. That is why I read. That is why I listen, and sing, and laugh at corny jokes. And when I see real virtuosos, people using English to the full extent of its wondrous capabilities (Geraldine Brooks, Barack Obama, Lin-Manuel Miranda) I just stand back in slack-jawed awe. Why am I so in love with words? Some English words are just plain fun to read and hear. Kerfuffle. Parsimonious. Lilliputian. They roll around in your mouth in unexpected ways and make you smile just to say them. Other words are all about the meaning. They are so perfectly specific, that when you find exactly the right one, it feels like a magic trick. Fledge. Petrichor. Penultimate. Words don’t need to be rare and polysyllabic to have unique connotations. Why is SLEEPY adorably cozy while TIRED is cranky and sad? Why does something that brings JOY sound lovely, but predictable, while a DELIGHT is something you enjoyed more than you expected to? Why is GRAVEYARD so much creepier than CEMETERY? Crescent. Naïve. Dewy. And if you can’t find exactly the right word, go ahead and make one up! That’s completely okay in English. I use words now that didn’t exist when I was growing up, and I’m not just talking about things that hadn’t been invented yet, like GOOGLE and EMOJI. Someone out there was the first person to use STAN and SUS and WOKE as an adjective. In my house, the weird little snort/snore/growl our old dog makes is a SCHNURFFLE. I have never written that word down before, although I say it regularly. I just invented its spelling, right this instant. I have that power, and so do you."

"I’d like to try a little experiment. Please read the following two passages. Passage #1: The birds gathered at the feeder, each one eager for their chance to gather some seeds. There was a snowstorm last night, leaving a blanket of white covering the dried grasses and branches and hiding any source of food that the birds could find on their own. But the bird feeder would be their saving grace. As they waited their turn, they chirped greetings to each other. The fat m...ourning doves sat beneath the feeder, gathering any seeds that dropped to the earth from the other too-eager birds. This would be their morning ritual until spring. But then the feeling at the feeder changed. A large Blue Jay swooped in, its brisk squawk not sounding like the sweet chips of the other birds. It squawked again, sending another warning, as the birds waiting on the branches tightened up their feathers. The Jay moved toward the feeder. The other birds scattered. Even the fat mourning dove flew away. Passage #2: The birds gathered at the feeder, each one eager for their chance to gather some seeds. There was a snowstorm last night, leaving a blanket of white covering the dried grasses and branches and hiding any source of food that the birds could find on their own. But the bird feeder would be their saving grace. As they waited their turn, they chirped greetings to each other. The fat mourning doves sat beneath the feeder, gathering any seeds that dropped to the earth from the other too-eager birds. This would be their morning ritual until spring. But then the feeling at the feeder changed. A large Blue Jay swooped in, its brisk squawk not sounding like the sweet chips of the other birds. It squawked again, sending another warning, as the birds waiting on the branches tightened up their feathers. The Jay moved toward the feeder. The other birds scattered. Even the fat mourning dove flew away. Now that you've read both passages, think about the following questions: 1. Which passage was less tiring to read? 2. Which passage was easier to understand? 3. How did you feel after reading both passages? If you are like me, you found the second passage easier to read and understand. Why? Because it had paragraphs. It gave my brain a chance to process what I was reading before bombarding me with the next idea. Using paragraphs correctly is an important skill for all writers because it makes the reader’s job much easier and more pleasant. Why Paragraphs? Paragraphs exist to give the readers’ eyes a rest and a few seconds to process what they’ve read before they start the next line. Paragraphs signal that a change is coming. They tie common sentences together in one neat little area. Readers expect them. Readers need them."

Election 2020 choice board: https://docs.google.com//1tqHISsQPMVUyekTdLfNt0TqZZkY/edit From Torrey Trust

"The first skill that I teach students every school year is always the same: annotation in reading. I use non-fiction reading to implement this strategy because it establishes a routine for the rest of the year when we encounter a nonfiction text, and it transitions nicely to when we are dealing with larger works of fiction. In the past, I have done Article of the Week from Kelly Gallagher to teach annotation skills, but I am finding that online learning is causing me to adap...Continue reading

"These days, many teachers struggle when their tried-and-true pedagogy, developed and refined over years of practice, doesn’t translate to distance learning. Many are embracing the disruption brought about by online learning to familiarize themselves with flexible methodologies that work well in that context, including arts integration strategies. Those that borrow from the dramatic arts, such as readers theater and teacher in role, can be particularly effective. These e...ngaging approaches have been around a long time, and they encourage interaction and collaboration and make content accessible for multiple levels of learners, from emerging readers through high school seniors. They can also inject a much-needed dose of fun into online lessons. STUDENT ENGAGEMENT WITH READERS THEATER Readers theater includes the following elements: Actors/readers use scripts in presentation, and memorization is not prioritized. Actors/readers are stationary and do not use theatrical devices (e.g., no staging, scenery, props, lighting, or costumes). Nuances of the story are communicated primarily through vocal expression. Scripts are prepublished, widely available, and intended for repetitive use. By following a script, students are in a constant state of decoding, and as members of an interdependent ensemble, they are responsible for following their script closely and anticipating their own speaking role, thus increasing focus and engagement. Readers theater scripts are designed to be read and reread multiple times, making their use in the online classroom particularly beneficial for second language learners or other students working on decoding and fluency. Repetition increases retention for all student participants. In many ways, readers theater is an ideal arts integration distance learning strategy because it’s not constrained by the trappings of a typical theater performance (props, costumes, memorization, and the like), and many students’ home learning space can become a stage. For example, I recently worked with the teachers of rising first graders who were in virtual summer school; there were serious concerns that for these students, the last months of kindergarten had been so challenging that they were losing interest in or even regressing in reading. We created a short readers theater script that delivered content about the happy face spider (Theridion grallator, native to Hawaii). The script included a solo speaking line for each student, opportunities for gestures that physicalized their understanding and were visible from the cameras, and humor. Over the course of several weeks, students performed the script multiple times, building retention of the content and reading fluency. A final Zoom performance demonstrated the students’ advances in their reading levels, as well as their joy and confidence in what they had learned." See more

From Mary Ehrenworth: