Friday, December 18, 2020

January 2021

Fresh Starts, Re-Starts, Renewing Purpose

Teachers, students, educational leaders, everyone, may see 2021 as a fresh start, a re-start or a chance to renew the purpose in our work. I've gathered some tools for just that.

The Renewing Purpose Activity from the NSRF Critical Friends Group is a brand new protocol designed for virtual use. This protocol is to be done with a group to remind ourselves of purposes and our connection to them, to help us see if we are on track toward a specific goal, and to reinvigorate ourselves at a time when our spirits may be lagging. If you'd like a facilitator for this, please reach out to me at mbrooksyip@washtenawisd.org

One Little Word is a less intimidating way to set a New Year's Resolution and purpose!
Educational Bloggers Margaret Simon and Annie Campbell explain how they use "One Little Word" to help students set intention for the year- who they are and who they want to be. By examining what's important to them- goals they want to fill, strengths they want to grow, and wishes they have- each student, and the teacher, settle on one word. The teachers find this helps students connect to their identity, while also building a stronger classroom community.
If you decide to try this in 2021, please let me know!

Upcoming Literacy Professional Learning

January 7th & February 4th

Free and open to all. Register here

February & March

For Washtenaw County Educators- register here

Free and open to all. Register here

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

December

Reading and Writing Resources-

for Now and Always

#DISRUPTEXTS exists to "develop and aid teachers committed to anti-racist/anti-bias teaching pedagogy and practices."

Core principles are:

1. Continuously interrogate our own biases and how they inform our thinking;

2. Center Black, Indigenous, and voices of color in literature;

3. Apply a critical literacy lens to our teaching practices;

4. Work in community with other anti-racist educators, especially Black, Indigenous, and other educators of color.

See the #DISRUPTTEXTS Learning Guides for resources on teaching with eight texts that align to these principles.

Also see #DISRUPTTEXTS in Michigan for a personal teaching story from a teacher at Carman-Ainsworth in Flint on disrupting texts in her classroom.

20 Types of Learning Journals that Help Students Think

TeachThought offers these journal ideas to promote writing for learning with students. These journals are done for the purpose of learning, not to demonstrate learning.

A few options for journals and prompts with a focus on writing to learn include:

Question- for a focus on inquiry

Metacognitive- for a focus on thinking about thinking

Change-for connecting learning for personal and social change

Read the entire article for details on these and more journals and remember, some writers prefer to use hardcopy notebooks and pencils or pens (especially when doodling to learn), and some prefer to type. Here's a digital writing notebook template you can make a copy of and share for those choosing to go digital.

Upcoming Virtual Professional Learning

December

Washtenaw County Registration

Out of County Registration- $20

January- February

Free and open to all. Register here

February & March

For Washtenaw County Educators- register here

Free and open to all. Register here

Friday, October 30, 2020

November

Election Day Resources

"What will you do on Wednesday?" Teaching Tolerance provides these resources for educators to support students no matter the result on election day. There are strategies here for fostering an inclusive classroom, identities, positionality and feelings.

The Dialogue Deck from UMMA is a conversation exercise for political reflection. Take a look for images selected by UMMA and Gingsberg Center staff that evoke culture, politics and history of the US. Along with the images are question prompts, and a printable PDF version.

Cultivating Genius by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad

I'm well into reading this book for the fourth time and still learning how to live into the Culturally and Historically Relevant Literacy Framework as an educator. Dr. Muhammad is returning to visit us on November 5th, and book studies continue. Here are your links to keep the conversation going in Washtenaw County and beyond:

Pre-registration for the Winter 2021 Cultivating Genius Book Study
A folder of resources including interviews, podcasts, and lesson plan examples from Dr. Muhammad.
Want to Lead Your Own Book Study? - contact me at mbrooksyip@washtenawisd.org - let's talk!
Join us:

E-mail for link

Friday, September 25, 2020

October

Getting Rid of the "Classics" in the Classroom? Check Out the Diverse Lending Library at WISD!

The "A Year of Reading Blog" showcases how two teachers learned more about #DisruptTexts, and how this challenged them to think about the book choices in their classrooms, the books they read aloud to students, as well as books they recommend. Following leaders such as Dr. Laura Jimenez who visited us twice in past #wisdrti sessions, these teachers thought about how to "challenge the traditional cannon to in order to create a more inclusive, representative and equitable" curriculum.

You can read the whole article for more resources and links, but also remember The Diverse Lending Library at WISD is still available to you. Check out our inventory and then contact me at mbrooksyip@washtenawisd.org for pick-up if you are an educator in Washtenaw County.

Student Collaboration and Support in Virtual Classrooms

Check out 10 Ideas for Using Virtual Breakout Rooms During Distance Learning for ideas on how to utilize the breakout room feature to foster collaboration for Book Buddies, small groups, debates, peer editing, literature circles and more in virtual classroom time.

Also check out Calendly to schedule 1-1 student conferences- another way to use the breakout room feature to support individual students.

Upcoming Professional Learning and Connections

Monday, August 24, 2020

September

Building A Classroom Community-

Virtually or F2F

Teaching Tolerance offers Resources for Back to School 2020 to help discuss racism, police violence, and self-care.

In Remote Learning for Our Youngest Students, Jen Schwanke details ways primary teachers are reaching out to students across barriers in age, language, ability and engagement.

In How Do We Create a Community of Learners in a Virtual or Hybrid Model? Clare Landrigan writes about creating familiar and predictable systems and structures for online communities.

How to Build Relationships Virtually, by The Albert Team gives the why, challenges, and how to build relationships in virtual teaching and learning spaces.

Registration is Live for Fall & Winter Virtual Professional Learning!

E-mail with questions

Literacy Support in Our Community

YpsiWrites offers tutoring and programming for youth writers across Washtenaw County. We encourage teachers who are looking for extra support for their student writers to check out these programs.

- YpsiWrites Virtual: Offers both synchronous and asynchronous writing consults with trained YpsiWrites volunteers.

- Using Writing to Make Your Voice Heard - Writing matters! Join this virtual workshop (via Zoom) to learn how to make our voices heard--and make a difference in our communities, lives, and world--through writing. (Saturday, Oct. 17, 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.) Register here

Washtenaw County Writing Center forSecondary Students

TheWCWC is designed to be a youth-led, youth-driven space that provides peer-to-peer online literacy and writing support for all students in Washtenaw County, engages students in using writing for advocacy and activism, and amplifies student writing in all forms. We’re in the beginning stages of this work and seek input from teachers and especially students. If you’re interested in learning more or if you have a student to nominate for the Advisory Board, let us know through this form.

Friday, July 31, 2020

August

Literacy, Equity and Engagement Tools

While I am feeling inundated by a plethora of resources coming through all social media and e-mail, there are a few that catch my eye as they relate to literacy, equity and building community in classrooms- virtual or face-to-face:

All Students Need Anti-Racism Education

Online Teaching Can Be Culturally Responsive

First Week of School Stations

EduTopia Learning Stations to Kick off The Year

How to Make a Digital Bookshelf in Google Slides

We know articles and activities certainly don’t solve the multiple challenges we are facing right now, my hope is that they may allow some reflection and help in planning at some point in the near future.

WISD Professional Learning in August

August 10, 13, 18, 20, 21 Cultivating Genius Book Study

August 13th Essential Instructional Practices in Literacy Grades 4-5

August 14th Essential Instructional Practices in Literacy Grades K-3

August 19th Back to School EdCamp

August 20th Socially Just Assessment and Grading

*Register for all in the WISD ABC System

*Please contact Melissa Brooks-Yip for Literacy topics and Amy Olmstead Brayton for Assessment

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Summer Literacy Learning in our Community

AADL Summer Game

Northfield Township Area Library Summer Reading Club

Dexter Library Summer Reading Family Events

Saline District Library Imagine Your Story

Chelsea Library Summer Reading Program

Manchester Library Youth Summer Reading Registration

Ypsilanti Library Summer Challenge

Milan Public Library

Monday, July 13, 2020

July

Professional Learning for Educators

From book studies, assessment literacy webinars, EdCamps, Literacy Essential Overviews to informal educator meet-ups, the instruction and assessment team has many wonderful opportunities for Washtenaw County Educators to learn together this summer.

Summer Literacy Learning in our Community

AADL Summer Game

Northfield Township Area Library Summer Reading Club

Dexter Library Summer Reading Family Events

Saline District Library Imagine Your Story

Chelsea Library Summer Reading Program

Manchester Library Youth Summer Reading Registration

Ypsilanti Library Summer Challenge

Milan Public Library

https://www.emich.edu/ccw/writing-project/wrtgcamps.php

https://www.826michigan.org/our-programs/workshops/

Monday, June 1, 2020

June

Text Resources on Race &

Anti-Racism

Thank you to Dr. Jay Marks of Oakland Schools for sharing this organized list.

Educators:

Students:

Parents:

Teaching Lessons Learned

On May 19th, both the SOEL & IDLL networks came together via Zoom for one last meeting of the year. Over the 2019-2020 year, our face-to-face meetings included a guest teaching artist from UMS, researchers from UM, visits to Washtenaw County schools, the UMMA and EMU C2W. When we shifted to distance teaching and learning, we wanted to reflect on where we were and where we are going.

A theme we noticed from our discussions in May was engagement in literacy. Here:

a SOEL teacher highlights one way she engaged 3rd graders in a shared text,
an IDLL English teacher highlights a way she engaged high school students in storytelling,
and an ELL SOEL teacher shares how her teacher research and book study turned into professional learning for her colleagues.

The Use of an Interactive Storyboard Engaged Third-grade Students in an Asynchronous Read Aloud of Grace Lin’s Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

by SOEL teacher Stephanie Burnstein

As students embarked on this epic journey with the main character, Minli, through nightly read alouds posted to Seesaw, they posted comments identifying any newly introduced story elements. Their challenge was to make predictions about and connections between characters, symbolic objects, setting changes, and story arcs within the frame story and the embedded folk tales. These would then be added to an oversized storyboard that was organized by chapter and comprised of color-coordinated Post-it notes. Red string was used to show the interwoven connections students identified, and the storyboard eventually included a kite with red strings that led to the Old Man of the Moon perched atop a mountain in the clouds.

As the journey progressed, students realized that the storyboard’s red strings, or borrowed lines, represented the “strings of destiny” from the novel’s “Book of Fortune” and that many of the symbolic objects and characters showed up again and again in slightly different forms, thus tying together all of the embedded stories into one intricately woven tale.

Using Flipgrid to Storytell

by IDLL Teacher Shelly Venema

Keeping students engaged in remote learning is challenging. In fact, teaching the way we used to has pointed out what should and should not be done. So, one successful way I taught writing and telling stories involved an authentic experience, Google docs, Flipgrid, and peer critiques. This is a project I would repeat!

Raising Expectations and Instructional Rigor For English Learners Through Effective Instructional Practice

by SOEL Teacher Rhoshawda Miller

For my TESOL program at Eastern Michigan University I created a proposal and powerpoint based on the book No More Low Expectations For English Learners that I read for my for my Teacher Action Research. The materials focus on the topic: Raising Expectations and Instructional Rigor For English Learners Through Effective Instructional Practice, to help classroom teachers best meet the needs of English learners in their classrooms. The powerpoint is for a professional development for teachers and with the Empowering Diverse Voices for the 2020 MITESOL conference in mind.