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Writing Revolution at the Academy for Young Writers

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you know what I like about the answer Yolanda gives is it based on the facts of what we learned but it goes that 1 step further it just doesn't repeat the facts it draws a conclusion based on that uh don't you know we're talking about a river sounds don't you know talking about a river coming in the world an impact that seen with using the strategies has been some sort of cultural shift within the staff um staff are now wanting to try something new in their classroom because they have something that is tangible something that um has cleared outline steps and because of that um they feel that they can do it in a space and um that's huge because if teachers are able to feel confident in trying something new or vulnerable enough to do it it then it impacts culture sometimes there's push back about like schoolwide initiatives I would say from students and teachers um but what I said is this doesn't have to be like this extra thing it's something that you already do we're just kind of enhancing it and getting on the same page we're trying to have this shared language so that when we're teaching this skill across different subjects it just makes sense and we can and we can start making those connections across classes and do that interdisciplinary learning and it's been great to be part of the English Department and have a common language uh to be talking about um the struggles that we have in teaching writing and something that has surprised me as a first-time user of the uh writing revolution has been the impact it's had on um helping me think about reading instruction as well are they any specific strategies that you feel like has stood out that you feel like kids are more excited about using by using more often when you're looking at their writing um because much so in a science class we also use it in math class for students to elaborate on their reasoning so he mentioned that because when they use that conjunction because they explained the reason but it's like a change in Direction so we use but when we're doing error analysis and then so kinds of kind of wraps up and like the students State their conclusion we now have to show analysis and we're going to do that by using because but so the enduring issue of modernity versus tradition stayed the same because the enduring issue of modernity versus tradition stayed the same but the enduring issue of modernity versus Traditions stayed so and we've been experimenting with notetaking and sentence expansion and because of what so a lot uh and what I like about note taking specifically is because there's so much reading in the biology course and Earth and space for that matter um it just helps these kids uh better understand what the relationships are between these Concepts in the text um it helped me understand what the passage was saying and the symbols helped me um construct a better sentence so I understand what I'm doing what we're going to learn about today is how to use the writing Revolution strategies we've been learning about for the last few months uh for the biology regions specifically for the writing portion and I made sure that they were familiar with the content beforehand so they had a lot to draw upon 1 of the things I'm seeing too I'm sure you see this in in uh Global 2 Michael is it really breaks them out of the habit of like underlining full sentences I know we've like all seen like when I want to take like underline a whole paragraph but how has it helped you okay so it's taking notes in the simple thing like it's save a lot of time so yeah and The annotation thing it makes you understand everything a lot better when you iron up to using that it also forces them to go past just like copying because our kids I find are generally pretty good at evidence but they're not good at paraphrasing right and it kind of forces them to look at that evidence be able to digest it into something else and then write it when they do the writing piece then they're not just copying text they're actually paraphrasing and using I think it really aligns with the vision of Dr White of Standards aligned instruction action um skill-based instruction to improve um outcomes for kids and just to see the teachers take it on and the administration taken on it's a big lift and they're in the middle of it but their work has been great so far um and uh I'm really seeing the impact with teachers and kids and I think that's key once kids can see that what I'm doing in science class I can also do possibly a math class in the history class and just for me to look at these samples you can clearly see that the kids understood what they were doing cuz you know you can never see evidence of the symptoms we used in every single 1 of them with a lot of the strategies they're using them when we tell them to and I'm trying to get them to do more of being like it don't just do it when we tell you this is something you should be doing all the time that's why I'm excited for us to do regions prep where we uh try to integrate the writing Revolution strategies with the Region's prep so when they're doing like written responses we're coaching them like during the Region's and then hopefully that will cancel for unreasonable day so that they're actually using it because it makes a lot easier and you say you want a revolution well you know I want to change tell me that well you know we all want to change the world

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Writing Revolution at the Academy for Young Writers

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