The conference reminded me of many ideas I have learned over the years. Reflecting on the day I questioned how to take all of this information and create new meaning for students to use in our constantly evolving society. Blending the proven skills with new ideas becomes our challenge. We have so many skills, content knowledge, and processing activities to complete each day in a short amount of time each day it becomes challenging to reach all students needs.
I attended a short Speed Learning Session with Vicki Meigs-Kahlenberg and enjoyed it so much that I ended up purchasing her book The Author's Apprentice . Essentially, Vicki's session was on not letting narrative writing fall by the wayside in the world of high-stakes testing. She talked about teaching students to develop their writing voices by studying the works and process of popular young adult authors such as Kwame Alexander, Jacqueline Woodson, Jason Reynolds, and Lois Lowry. I have always been interested in using mentor texts to teach students writing strategies such as "Show, Don't Tell" and dialogue that develops characters, but I felt like Vicki's process takes this one step further because she has students research the actual authors and learn about their lives and writing processes. There is no one correct way to write. Every author plans, drafts, and revises differently, and I think sharing this with students makes the whole writing process seem m...
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