Karly O'Brien: I'm super excited to welcome Ms. Jennifer Jump.
She is the sen senior academic officer at Teacher Created Materials.
She's a former classroom teacher, instructional coach, school administrator.
My favorite fun fact because I live in DC and worked in DC public schools myself.
She's a form the former literacy director at DC Public Schools, and you'll hear a little bit about her work, but she's also an author of several publications that bridge the Science of Reading with Practical Classroom Implication and Application.
And tonight we will talk all about that with writing.
So I'm super excited to.
Not take any more time and turn it over to Ms. Jennifer, and thank you so much for your time and sharing your expertise with our community tonight.
So thank you.
You
Jennifer Jump: Well, thank you so much for the opportunity.
I am so excited to just talk about the science and the joy behind writing instruction.
And I know what you're looking at right now is not what you want to be looking at, but we'll get there.
Don't you fret?
The joys of of.
The, of the work that we do on Zoom I wish that I could say I was a professional now, but I'm not.
I'm just, I'm still figuring it out day by day.
Well,
Karly O'Brien: It's funny you say this, Jen, because before you go I had notes in my intro to introduce you better, but my screen wasn't working, so I just wung that.
And so I feel your technical struggles.
So, all right,
Jennifer Jump: so we've all been there.
So yeah, we're talking about this.
The science and joy all about the writing process.
And before I get started, it makes the most sense for me to tell you a little bit about who I am and where I'm coming from.
So I do work with teacher creative materials and I'm imagining that not everybody in the room are watching this later and has heard of TCM Teacher Creative Materials is this amazing family owned supplemental curriculum resource company out of Huntington Beach, California started.
Just about 50 years ago now and our founder, Rochelle Carlo believed in this vision of creating a world in which children love to learn.
And now her two daughter children Kareen, our president on the right and Deanne on the left, continue to lead that charge.
And we support schools and districts across this nation, but also across the world, and we are just really honored to get to do that.
With that said, I'm Jen.
And I think she did a pretty good job telling you a little bit about me, but I'm also a mom.
I think that's an important thing to note.
I'm a mom to a teacher as well.
I try to tell people I'm 29 and then I have to admit that I have a daughter who's a teacher.
So that doesn't really pan itself out very well, but I try.
And yes, I've served as a literacy director in two different districts, and I'm truly passionate about this work of literacy.
And so I wanna start us off by asking, Hey.
What's the purpose of writing?
And you should have access to your chat feature.
I have a lot of made up answers in my head if you if we have a quiet group this evening, but what is the ultimate purpose of writing?
Like, why do we ask kids to write or why do we write?
What is the ultimate reason for writing?
I'll like watch that chat and see if anybody's brave enough to get us going.
But one of the things I hear almost every time I ask this question is to communicate.
And I'm like, it's writing is a form of communication.
It is one way that the wor the world.
Interacts and engages.
Oh yes.
Share your ideas.
Exactly.
That's another one just to share.
It's a form of communication.
Indeed, it is.
And that is exactly the ideas.
When we're talking about writing, we're talking about something that is in imperative.
It's not something that's a nice to have.
It is something that is truly part of who we are as humans.
It's the way we communicate it is one way that we share and communicate our ideas and our feelings.
Chantel.
Exactly.
Indeed.
And so it's interesting that when we started this movement around the science of reading, which now it's been about five, six years now, and we leaned back into.
Dr. Scarborough's reading rope from 2001, and we leaned in here big time and we looked at all of the different strands of the rope weaving together to make for a skilled reader.
But then I have to ask this question like wait a minute, but what about writing?
Is there logical crossover?
When you look just at this reading rope, do you see the logical crossover?
And the answer ought to be yes.
In fact, it should be a, a, like a very loud yes.
So if we start at the bottom and look at those bottom strands of the rope, we've got decoding, well decoding and the opposite.
Encoding creates for the ability to be the writer who puts pencil to paper.
Right.
So there is definitely a crossover with that writing.
If we look up at the top strands, we could pick any one of them.
I'm gonna choose vocabulary.
Well, precise vocabulary does make a difference in writing and being able to choose the right word for the right space at the right time in the right moment is all about what makes for a writer.
So there is, without a doubt, logical, crossover.
And yet, interestingly enough, we talk about this as the reading rope.
Now fun enough.
An amazing colleague out there in the educational universe has said, wait a minute.
We don't wanna just have a reading rope.
We want a writing rope.
And that's Joan Sida and her amazing work around the writing rope has really helped us structure that same type of thinking and has allowed for us to think about the implications for instruction for writing.
So the reading rope allowed us to think about the instructional implications for reading, but what about those for writing?
And if we look down the, down this this writing rope from Joan Sina, we find all of these things from critical thinking, which is that metacognitive piece.
Like what are we doing inside of our brains to the syntax?
Which is that sentence work, the structure of text, the craft of writing, which by the way would include that word choice that we just mentioned from a moment ago.
And transcription, which is all of the handwriting and spelling, and keep all of the that stuff.
So, wow, there's a lot of implications here for writing.
And so now we know, oh wait, there are some really good models for us to think and con converse about what's the research behind writing?
And quite frankly, writing matters.
And here's what we know.
Writing strengthens vocabulary syntax, comprehension, and builds knowledge.
So.
Oh, wait a minute.
Those are all things that everyone in this room is like.
We need those things, right?
We need our students to have stronger background knowledge and vocabulary.
We want them to have the structures of language the right way.
We want them to understand what they're reading and be able to write about it.
This is important work.
So important that Joan Adida said this, writing is not just a way to share what we know.
It's a way to grow what we know.
Huh?
What, so writing isn't just a method to communicate, but it's also a method to continue to grow and learn.
And so I, when I read that, and I guess in the back of my brain, I've always known that writing is one way we can continue to become smarter.
But I, when I read it in that quote, I was like, yes, because that's so true and so real.
And when we really look like, if we lay down everything we have and we are like, okay, what does the research say?
We ought to be looking towards really smart and strong places.
And one of those places for me is always the education practice guides from the What Works Clearinghouse or the IES Institute of Ed Science.
And this this particular one is teaching elementary school students to be effective writers.
Now, I know if you're like, I, but I teach middle school, or I teach adults.
That's okay.
It's all right.
These are structures for teaching writers.
So while it says elementary writers, elementary school, we're talking about writers, so beginning writers, and they have four recommendations and they are straightforward and very easy to read.
And we're gonna, I'm gonna share those four with you.
We're not talking about all four today.
We don't have time, but we are gonna hone in on a few here they are.
The first recommendation.
Super simple.
Provide time for kids to write every single day.
Number two, teach them to use, teach students to use the writing process for a wide range of purposes.
Three, teach students to become fluent with all of these things.
Handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, typing in word processing.
And recommendation four is to create an engaged community of writers.
So let's start with a recommendation.
Number four.
We have the distinct like requirement, ability, responsibility, that's probably the best word, responsibility to create spaces for our young people where they feel safe to be writers.
And I always joke and say, we accidentally, inadvertently not on purpose, kill young writers with the red pen.
And with the expectation that writing should be perfect.
Well, writing isn't perfect.
In fact, if you looked at my desk right now, I could tell 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 different pieces of paper that I could easily count that have writing all over them, and not a single one of them is publication worthy.
But I've written a lot because I'm an engaged.
Like I write all the time for all of the things.
So number four, we're not talking about it today because it's there.
Like we know that one.
And it is like, it is heavy on our shoulders as educators to always do that work.
Alright, we'll keep going and let's talk about number two.
Recommendation to you says this, teach students to use the writing process for a variety of purposes.
This is one, one view of the writing process, and we'll start in red at the top.
And we'll say pre-writing, to drafting, to revision, to editing, to publication.
And this is one of the ways we could call the writing process.
This is Donald Graves model.
But you know, we, instead of pre-writing, sometimes you might use the term brainstorming but you, but everyone has seen something like this, right?
And sometimes I like to say, let's keep it simple.
This is what it is.
Right.
It's write, rethink, rewrite, repeat, write, rethink, rewrite, repeat.
I thought that was such a fun way to look at it.
And in theory, we look at the writing cycle like this, read, rethink, rewrite, repeat over and over again.
Well.
Friends, ha.
We are gonna take some scenic doer detours when we write.
We're gonna avoid things like potholes and yet we're still gonna get to our destination.
Sometimes we've gotta drive through a tunnel.
It isn't always perfect.
It's nonlinear.
It is not a perfect cycle.
It looks a little bit more like this.
There isn't a process that is perfect.
Sometimes you're going to start with a pre-write and then do a draft, but then go immediately to publication because we're not going to spend the time, we're going to allow an imperfect piece to be published.
Maybe we never publish it at all.
Maybe we never edit it, but we do a lot of revising.
Maybe we start in a space where we've got the sentences and we start with the space where we revise first because we have the sentences we need.
There are so many ways we can get into this process and do this, and I, this graphic was my favorite graphic of the week because that's the process.
And so then if I look at the process to the writing rope, we can start to see the comparisons, right?
Like there is a lot of thinking involved in that pre-writing space, but if you look at things like in writing craft, that's where you're looking for word choice.
Well, word choice is gonna fit in right into revision.
Interesting.
I made those the same color.
That was an accident.
Not on purpose, but it worked out perfectly.
So let's talk a little bit more about the process of writing.
And so we're gonna start with that pre-writing piece.
We're gonna go through all of those different parts of writing and be thoughtful about what they look, feel, and act like when we think about both the science and the joy of this work.
But the science is important.
All the stuff that we've learned from the Institute of Ed Science or what work.
Clearinghouse we ought to be bringing to everyday's instruction.
So the first one is pre-writing.
And pre-writing is designed to generate ideas for writing.
It's around a topic or discovering a wide range of different topics.
And here's what I want you to know.
Not all pre-writing looks the same.
What pre-writing looks like this week might be different than next week, might be different than next week.
Then this is the one that I think we can rest our, like we can hang a coat up on it.
It's so important to me.
Not all pre-writing leads somewhere.
Sometimes the only thing you're going to do with your students is the pre-write.
And then instead of it being a cycle, it's a pre-write done.
Like we're done now.
Yes, we got some work done.
We showcased our learning.
We show, we, we were able to show what we know and how we get to move on.
Not all pre-writing works for every reader.
In fact, I'll tell you a funny story.
When I was in seventh grade, the thing our teacher wanted us to do all the time was to brainstorm lists.
I don't like lists.
Lists stress me out.
Lists make my heart palpitate.
They make my armpit sweaty.
I didn't wanna write lists.
Even in seventh grade, I didn't wanna write a list.
And finally I was like, excuse me, my teacher, who I adore with every ounce of my being, may I please not write a list.
May I please draw it in a web?
But I called it bubbles at the time.
Can I draw it in bubbles?
And she was like, sure.
Draw in bubbles.
And then all of a sudden I was able to get the work done.
But the reality is that pre-writing, one of the most important things the research indicates about pre-writing is that oral rehearsal improves quality.
So anytime we can get our students yaking talking about their writing, it's a good thing.
Any time we can get our kids talking about their writing, it's a good thing because we know the research is very clear.
Oral rehearsal improves quality.
So get kids talking.
So.
What are some pre-writing strategies that you've used?
Here's a few that I have, and if you wanna put some additional in the chat, that's awesome.
So the things like creating lists, group mapping what I know and what I wonder.
That beautiful beginnings of A-K-W-L-K-W-L chart, a talk first, write next.
Just the bubbles work or the my, my friend calls it the sad spider where students put their topic in the middle and then they branch it out with all of the information that they might want to write about.
But all of those are different pre-writing strategy.
So that very quick, simple pre-writing strategy is one of my favorites.
It's easy think, draw list.
It's so fast and so easy, and
You could even give them a list of ideas of places that they love.
There's lots of things you can do to scaffold this, but you've got it.
Okay.
Now we moved into the next step of that writing process, keeping in mind that it doesn't have to go in this perfect order every time.
And that's when we get into drafting.
Drafting is when we're going to move from these ideas to sentences.
But it doesn't have to be perfect.
There's no like, there's no, oh, it goes from a to.
Perfect.
Nope.
It doesn't have to be like that.
Drafting is the act of putting all of these ideas onto the page and being able to move from bullet points or notes from that, and two sentences into paragraphs.
And drafting can take different forms.
Drafting can be full paragraphs.
It can't.
It's messy.
We should embrace errors.
We should be excited about things and not be afraid for it to look different than our neighbor.
And mistakes, quite bluntly, should be part of the process.
In fact, they should just exist.
And so when we think about drafting, I love this slide.
This is just a myriad of different ways that we can draft.
Like if I were the, like, if I were the queen of the world, I would want all of these.
We should do all of these different things like an oral rehearsal, draft a picture, first draft, a comic script.
You know what I'm trying to say, right?
Draft dictation, paragraph frames, quick writes, sticking out sentences.
Think pair, write checklist sentences, micro writing, looping sentence, artist foursquare, graphic organizers, bullet to sentences.
But think about this as a drafting opportunity.
It is just one way to get students to write and without the like, pressure of having to create a perfect paragraph or to start sentences differently or we do is give students Some opportunity to become fluent in their sentence writing.
And I know one of the sessions that you're going to get to hear about is the power of sentence writing.
And quite honestly, that's in one of those four recommendations.
So we should be getting good at writing sentences.
So now we've got some sentences.
And so now we've drafted, we've done some drafting work.
So the next step in theory, if it was a perfectly cyclical process every time would be revising and editing.
And revision means we're refining the meaning or the structure and it's truly changing a draft at the structural level.
It's doing things like adding information, taking away information that's not pertinent, rearranging to help make things clear.
It's really about finding the meaning and refining the meaning.
Okay, so that's revision makes perfect sense to me.
So what on earth can we do to revise?
So revising isn't the red pen business.
And so here's what I love about revising is if we take a step back and remember for a moment, so here's a strategy for revising.
It's one that most people have heard of.
It's called Cares change, add rearrange, eliminate, standardize.
And here's what we could do.
We could say to kids, okay, do these things.
Go revise.
Go revise your work.
And then what happens is that the shoulders that were once up and solid and begin to slump, because what does that mean?
Go, revise, go change and add and rearrange and eliminate what does that mean exactly?
And do I start with change and then go to add and then rearrange?
Like is, do I follow this order and well.
Let's be real.
It's exactly like the process.
It's not perfect.
There isn't one place to start, and then you move on to the next and you move on to the next.
Let's be real.
Sometimes with cares, maybe the easiest thing is just to eliminate everything.
I'm teasing don't do that.
So instead of saying, oh, let's go revise and do everything let's like narrow it down.
What do we want to do?
You know what?
I'm looking over the shoulders of my class and I notice something.
I noticed that in this process of writing during our sentence Sprint, my friends wrote some very basic sentences, like most of their sentences began with, I like, or I am, I wanna go with a with add.
I want to use the revising strategy of add.
And so here's my sentence that we're going to use as the exemplar.
I found the sentence that was on one of my students' papers and I pulled it because I think we can use this to add, and when we think about adding to a sentence to make it stronger, we could add things like when, where, why, and a description.
We don't have to add all of those things, but we can certainly think about it.
So when I look at the sentence, you know what I think we need to know right away?
I think we need to know right away.
Where was this castle?
Now here's the funny part.
If you know me and you're gonna know right away that it's going to be I gen jump like the castle and where?
At Disney World.
So now look, I've just do done something very simple.
I've revised, and here's the best part.
This is sentence level work.
This is actually grammatical language, sentence level work.
This is good work for kids and if we use their work, it's even better.
So now I wanna keep building, I wanna keep showing that I can continue to add.
So let's add a description.
So how might I describe the castle?
Well, for me, the reason I like the one at Disney World more than the one at Disneyland is because it's more colorful and frankly it's just bigger.
But I, we could add this.
I like the colorful castle at Disney World.
And since we start so very clearly, like you can see how very simply this strategy of add for cares in that reactivity of revising makes a lot of sense and it's so very easy.
And we keep rolling through our process, that's not linear process, but we're gonna pretend it's linear for today.
We then move into editing.
Editing is the space where well, we're polishing for clarity and conventions.
This is where that it's preparing it to be read by other people.
It's making sure that we have all of the things like capitalization, punctuation, and spelling is correct.
It's like polishing up your glasses.
You're, you wanna be able to see it.
You don't want to have anything like anything.
Terribly wrong.
Any glaring errors, if you will.
The focus on editing is helping the readers to be able to understand it better, and the way that works, the only way that works is when a student really understands like what the purpose is.
So this is such a powerful thing.
In editing, I think I thought about like, oh, should we pray?
Try a strategy here.
And I was like no.
I want us to go back to this recommendation because if we don't ground our thinking about why this science and joy is so important for our kids, like we forget that we, there's research behind this.
And so recommendation three says this.
Teach students to become fluent, and these are the things, handwriting, spelling, sentence, construction typing, and word processing.
Now I'm about to sound like I'm standing on a soapbox, but newsflash, I'm sitting in my chair, so it's okay.
But the reality is this, when are young people are stuck in things like handwriting and spelling and sentence construction, and even just putting the words on the paper, it steals all of their time and space.
And this statement this right here was like the moment I realized how very important this work is.
So when handwriting is automatic, guess what?
There's more space for the, in the memory to compose, edit, and revise when spelling is.
Is automatic.
There's more space to do the work.
When capitalization and punctuation are automatic, there's more space to do the work.
When sentence construction is more automatic, hey, there's more space to do the work.
Now here's the most interesting part.
I've got a senior in high school kid.
My senior in high school kid is a writer and this kid writes and writes and has done really well, in fact their, the a CT score for writing was.
Like shockingly good.
I was like, okay, cool.
You are a writer.
But interestingly enough, handwriting, spelling, capitalization, and never came, automatic messiest, hand writer I've ever met.
And for a senior in high school and spelling is atrocious.
But here's what happened.
This human stopped caring and just became a writer.
And so all of their space is still there and they've learned how to backend and figure out how to like fix it at the end, but that's so hard.
Instead, what we have, the responsibility is to provide our kids with enough space to do these things.
We want to give our young people enough space to get good at handwriting, good at spelling, good at capitalization and punctuation, and good at sentence in instruction so that we don't have the dis, like we don't have that burden.
In fact, we can then focus on the fun part of being a writer.
And so I ask the silly question, like, what implications does this have into our editing instruction, not just our instruction in general, but specifically around editing, if we know this is true, that automaticity is more space.
So what do we know about editing Well.
What we learn is that the things that we should be editing for are the things that make the biggest difference.
So let's edit for spelling and capitalization and punctuation.
Let's host expectations that's the case.
When you get to learn about creating fluent sentence constructors, do that.
Find ways to allow for your students to become sentence constructors.
Give students multiple opportunities to put their pa pencil to paper so that they work on their handwriting.
Expect spelling so that students don't fret about it.
And the real reality here is this, when student.
S their writing skills are effortless.
They can focus on the work of writing.
It's a beautiful thing.
It's like shocking and real.
And so that's, I wanted just to make that really interesting point around editing specifically, is that we can look at editing as a door into being a successful writer, bigger picture.
Like we can give students access to being able to do the stuff, being able to hand write and be able to spell and be able to use good punctuation.
We want, if we can give students access to that, it becomes easier for them to be writers.
And then, if you will, if we were looking at this process, we are at the last piece, and that is publishing.
And publishing is designed to share with an authentic, real audience.
It's any time we're sharing, writing with any type of audience, and the reality is this is that humans need audience.
It's the red carpet moment.
Every writer, every human, every child deserves this.
Right.
Publication can take many different forms.
I mean, there isn't one form to publish work.
There are a myriad of ways to publish works and then sometimes people will say, but Jen, some kids don't find the way that kids love it.
And here's a listing of all of the different publishing strategies.
But I'm gonna, I'm gonna read these to you 'cause they're worth it, So there's an author's chair creating a class anthology.
Partners sharing audio recordings, hallway displays, portfolios, digital storybooks, a podcast.
I mean, there haven't been any famous ones of those lately.
Newspapers, community partnerships, library sharing.
I, Erin Bailey.
I am in love with a good class book too.
In fact, here's a funny story.
I remember the first time I created a class book and my students drew their pictures in clip art.
On like the oldest Macintosh computers on the planet.
And then we printed them out and it was ridiculous and I was so proud and it was so embarrassing.
I love a good class book and the author's chair can be so powerful, right?
Just to give kids that place.
One of the other things that I didn't even put on this list, now that I'm kind of mad at myself, is I wa was thinking about yes, a poetry slam, a spoken word event.
Why those aren't on my list.
Is just inviting a guest in and allowing students to share with a guest.
Our principal was always someone, and as a former literacy director, I got invited to classrooms all the time to go to be a panel of humans listening to different published pieces.
And I think the one last thing I wanna say about publishing specifically is that, wait a minute, remember, publishing doesn't have to mean perfection.
And this is where I wanna just like step back for a moment and say, I'm joking.
Like, yes, there is a structure to the process, but it's not perfect.
And sometimes we can allow for something to go on a wall in a hallway that isn't perfect, that showcases the hard work of the process.
And doesn't have to be the perfect writing.
In fact, you know, I've published a few books and I'm really proud of our editing team, but it went through multiple people before it got put in, you know, went to the printer.
We're not asking our young people to go through multiple editors before they put it to print.
We're asking them to put forth their greatest works and their greatest works will look different, and they'll look different from the beginning of the year to the mid of the year to the end of the year.
So I thought I'd do something fun and I wanted to see how it went, and I thought we could do a little bit of writing process inspiration, because here's the thing, writing is something that teachers say all the time, I don't have time for writing.
Yes, we do.
We have to make time for writing.
And when we realize that the process doesn't have to be perfect, we don't have to publish every piece.
We don't have to go through the whole process.
Every time we put pencil to paper, then we start to realize that writing is doable.
So I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna put mine in the chat feature first and the gifted person the gifted coach at our school used to say this to us all the time, write all day, every day, just write, just put, just write all day, every day.
And she said all the time, and it used to drive me bananas.
I was like, why are you saying that?
Why do you why do you insist on saying it over and over again?
And what I realized is that when that was the part that, when that was in my head, I was doing it more often on purpose.
And that was so powerful.
This is a quiet group and I'm okay with that.
I get it.
It's the end of the day.
I hear you.
And we'll keep going, but I do wanna remind you of something.
Really important.
That flexibility is the secret sauce that while, yes, this is an order, Donald Graves put this order together, but the reality is that this is going to be different, and we're going to use this as a toolkit, not a checklist.
So this writing process isn't a checklist.
It isn't pre-writing check, drafting, check, revision, check, editing, check, publishing, check.
Nope.
It is not a checklist.
It's a toolkit.
And we should have lots of different things in our toolkit.
And so when we talk about the writing process, we should have things in our toolbox for each of these spaces.
That's why we did a pre-writing strategy where we tried a drafting strategy.
All of those we've looked at those different pieces, and then I'll say this.
One of the most important things we can do is more writing and more often, and not because Jen Jump said so not because like, there's a, I have a thought out there of something, but the first recommendation is this provide daily time for students to write.
And I really wish it said, provide students time to write all day, every day.
Just give kids more time to write.
And so there's this reality that we have to give children lots.
Of things to write and lots of time, and so I say, Hey, let's do it more writing more often, more writing more often, more writing more often, and I say it all the time to teachers that I work with and how do we do that?
There are five things that I think we have to consider every time we're thinking about.
We want our students to engage in the process of writing more.
We have to do these things.
We have to schedule for it.
We have to provide students with routines so that it's very clear kids understand what they, what is expected.
We have to provide students opportunities for quick wins.
One of my favorite things that my colleague, Kim Carlton has taught me all along the last eight years we've worked together is that quick wins and writing are so important.
Provide quick wins, like be proud of the sentence that was written.
Be proud of the work that was done during sentence sprint or the work that was done during a pre-writing activity.
Allow for quick wins.
And number four, this one's gonna make you mad at me.
And I'm okay.
Slow down, baby.
Just slow down.
There's this reality that we think, okay, we have to get through the publishing process.
We've gotta get to publish, we gotta get to publish.
We gotta PI have to publish every week.
I have to publish a P.
No.
Slow down.
You don't have to publish every week.
You don't have to revise and edit every single piece of paper.
Sometimes you're going to start with a draft and finish with a draft.
It's okay.
The more students write, the better they are.
So let's provide them choices, give them chances to do things.
We want to build in ample opportunities for students to practice and practice.
Some of the little stuff that makes so much difference in the process of writing is by giving simple, silly choices.
Can it be a mechanical pencil?
Sure.
Can I write with a pen?
Okay.
Can I write this time on sticky notes?
Yes.
Can I have unlined paper?
Sure.
Those are choices.
Can I use the computer this time?
Can I use this type of graphic organizer?
Those are choices that we're giving students, and this is a powerful way to ensure that our students are writing more and writing often, and that the other thing we can do in that writing more and writing often is to ensure that we're integrating writing all throughout the day.
So we have opportunities to engage students with science lab writeups, or social studies, quick writes or math explanations.
And so I just like to give an example of what I what?
What really do you mean by that?
Well, here's an example.
And what students have to do then is use their writing skills to demonstrate their understanding of mathematics.
And so this can happen in mathematics, it could happen in science, it can happen in social studies.
And what this does is give students different ways to access their skills of writing, and they're going to be building their fluency while they're writing in mathematics and in science and in social studies.
And they're going to be building those skills that they need to be successful writers.
So how do we put it all together?
So now we know, okay, there's this writing process, but now you've told us, Jen, that it's not a perfect process.
It's like this.
Okay.
And you've also made sure we are very clear that we've got to make sure kids write more and write often, and we have to have a bulk of strategies to support their learning.
So how do we put it all together?
Well, here's the thing.
Putting it all together means that we have to ensure that our students have ample times to write throughout a day.
It is the beauty of writing throughout the day is that these little moments of writing opportunities are going to eventually create this ripple that create writers.
That was really our hope today is we were thinking about both Graves' process, but we were also thinking about Joan Adidas writing rope and the What Works, clearinghouse recommendations.
And quite honestly, all of these things tied together.
They weave together to make this beautiful tapestry, which will make for writers.
And what do we mean by that?
Well, we have to think about graves and that, that structure being the pattern, we've gotta have a pattern.
We gotta know something to follow.
Do we have to follow it perfectly?
No, because we're creative.
Writing is a process.
It's a creative process.
Sida is all of the threads.
We need all of those pieces in that writing rope to put it all together.
This tapestry doesn't happen without those threads.
Thank you, Joan Aida.
Right.
And then the IES, that's the directions.
They're saying, Hey, here are the things you have to do to be successful, period.
It's very clear.
And finally, the science of reading is the foundation.
It's like the loom, if you will.
Okay.
I don't really know what that means, but I think it's the thing that's like the frame thing, that you put the thing and then you sew the things.
It's the frame, it's the background, it's the reason.
And so when we bring it all together, we know we have all of these different things that we're bringing together to create for a space where children love writing.
And so as we kind of get to the end of our time together and open it up to make sure there aren't any questions or comments or conversations to be hosted.
for me, as I looked at this, I had some pretty, like, as I was bringing this, I thought back in the classroom, one of the things I know I needed to do was diversify the different ways I ask students to draft.
Usually drafting looked the same.
I handed out the same kind of drafting paper and it was like, now we're gonna do the draft of the piece we're going to write.
I didn't recognize that drafting could be so many different things for young people.
The sentence Sprint was not in my repertoire when I was in the classroom as a third grade teacher my first few years.
So that would be my first commitment.
I would first commit to giving my students different ways to access this.
So it would be silly for me not to say thank you so much, But I am excited for you to go write something wonderful and get your students engaged in writing as well.
So any questions can come to the chat feature.
Carly, have you seen any questions come in on the secret chat?
Karly O'Brien: I do actually.
I see you on the q and a feature.
There's a question that says what's the best approach if students struggle with spelling and get stuck?
Jennifer Jump: Oh, that's such a great question.
So there are it, first and foremost, it depends on a few things.
Number one, do they have the skillset to attack that word in the encoding world?
Is it a word that is, that they have the skillset to spell?
If so, we wanna give them the clues that make the most amount of sense if they're stuck, and it is going to prevent them from being a writer.
Do you want to know my honest thought?
Tell them the word.
Write it on a piece of paper and hand it to them.
Because if writing the word is going to stop the process, it's not worth it.
Now, when we're working on encoding and decoding and phonics practice, whole nother story, but that's what we're talking about.
We're talking about writing in the moment.
Kids are writing, they just did some work and they've learned all about plants, yay plants.
And now you've said, can you please draw and write about the plant life cycle?
And so they started to write and they're like, but I don't remember how to spell root.
Okay, here it is.
ROOT.
First of all, they may not have the skills to know that.
Double O in the middle.
Ooh, fine.
I'm just gonna tell because who at this moment, that's not the purpose I want 'em to write, so I'm gonna tell 'em.
And sometimes that makes people really mad at me.
But I'm okay with that because I want kids to write.
I don't want kids to cry.
So that's, that was a great question.
I'm so glad it was asked.
Karly O'Brien: I was, and honestly, I, it validates me back in the day 'cause that's what I used to do as a teacher.
'cause I taught fifth grade for the majority of my teaching.
And that is, as we all can imagine, the time when they're supposed to be expected to write a lot.
And I was teaching students who could not decode basic CVC words.
So.
I used to do the same thing and I was always afraid I'm not even gonna lie.
So that's super validating that you just shared that because even out of the classroom, I'm still learning things from these types of webinars.
So thanks for validating that.
Jennifer Jump: You bet.
I think it's an important spelling is a funny thing and spelling is under fire a little bit right now because we know about what good spelling instruction should look like.
So, and it should be related directly to phonics instruction.
So.
Just tell kids how to spell a word.
Don't let 'em get stuck when they're working in writing.
They're working on spelling, they gotta work on their spelling, but you know.
Karly O'Brien: Well, thank you.
Yeah.
What you said before, Jen, really quickly about your daughter being like loving writing and being a fabulous writer, but not such a good speller or sentence, like forming her sentences.
I thought that was really powerful and I actually texted Erin on the side and I was like.
I wish I had someone, like when I was in, in my childhood, 'cause I didn't like to read and I didn't like to write if I'm being honest, back when I was a kid.
So like I really wish that I would've had someone like that telling me those types of things.
'cause I think it would've just changed my perspective in learning.
'cause I, I would've, I was so scared all the time.
So it's really, you know, validating to hear that you have those thoughts and I'm sure other, hopefully others do too.
So.
Jennifer Jump: Harley.
One of the scariest things to me is that I always tell folks, like when we look at kindergartners who come into kindergarten, most of them are excited to be writers, most of
Karly O'Brien: them.
Jennifer Jump: And what happens by the time we send them to first grade is most of them are no longer excited to be writers.
Yeah.
And the only thing that has changed.
Us, we inserted ourselves into their lives.
And so we as educators have such a responsibility to continue the joy in writing.
And the way to do that is by finding the ways that kids like to write, which means it's not going to be the same every time.
And it's okay.
Sometimes it's okay to write an entire five sentences on an index card just because it's different.
It's okay.
Yeah, but it's hard.
And I like the reality is that we as educators are under so much pressure, of course.
And so we just, sometimes we find the little things to, to get excited about, but teachers and educators across the nation thank you for being here.
And like sticking with us this afternoon, evening.
It was truly an honor for me to be with you and I look forward to sending out a few books from my garage.
Karly O'Brien: I know I am really envious of the, I'm not gonna take it from anybody who's here, but good for those of you that are here live because you'll get the first opportunity to snag these books.
So thanks.
That's a really cool opportunity.
So thanks Jen, for offering that.
Matt's.
Lemme see.
Okay.
No, I think we're good.
So, yes, thank you Jen for everything.
This was, oh my honor, I really can't thank you enough.
And those of you that were on the call, thank you so much for your time and feel free to share the recording once you get your follow up email.
And.
I encourage you to share the resources as well.
And please sign up for our next webinar that is happening at the end of September.
So we're gonna be doing at least one a month, maybe even two for educators.
And then we're also gonna have some family webinars coming up.
So feel free to look for those too.
And thanks Jen for everything and we bet we'll definitely be in touch and thanks everyone for logging in.
Jennifer Jump: Thank you so
Karly O'Brien: much.
Have a great night everyone.
Bye.
Care everyone.
Jennifer Jump: Bye-bye.