More Fun at the P20 Educator Conference 2017

This afternoon I get to present Choose Your Own Adventure: Writing and Publishing Narratives Using Digital Technology at the P20 Educator Conference in Twin Falls. It's always fun to hear other teachers share strategies for teaching writing while we learn to hyperlink and create alternate-path stories. Narrative writing is such an adventure!

Want the slideshow? It's yours! Go to https://goo.gl/c49wS5.

For more encouragement today, one of my favorite conference-related posts is Avoid Burnout and Get the Most Out of an Education Conference. At the P20 conference, I don't expect to feel burnt out. It's only two days, and the sessions have been awesome! Hope you get as much out of your conference as I already have! Share in the comments some of your take-aways. I'd love to hear them!

See you at the Idaho Super Conference: Learning Across All Dimensions

School is going full steam ahead, with new faces, new adventures, and new blessings at every turn. I'm so thankful to have an enthusiastic freshman class this year. It's also been a blessing to see my youngest child enter Kindergarten and make new friends. My high school field trip to see Shakespeare's First Folio has been approved, and my advanced literature students and I are loving reading Fahrenheit 451!

One more blessing to add to my overflowing cup this fall is finding out that my two session proposals for the Idaho Super Conference have been accepted. That means I'll have a roomy ninety-minute presentation on Faith and the Public School Teacher, and I'll be giving my Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-inspired narrative writing presentation to a wider audience.

Join some 1500 teachers at Timberline High School and White Pine Elementary in Boise on Oct. 6 and 7 (state teacher in-service days). Registration closes Sept. 14, so be sure to sign up now. Professional development credit is available from Boise State University.

Writing and Publishing Narratives Using Digital Technology
Description:  In this session, teachers will learn to apply choose­-your-­own­-story structure to narrative fiction or nonfiction writing. Using Google Drive, teachers will learn to link story pages to form narratives with alternate endings.

Faith and the Public School Teacher
Description:  Can your faith coexist with your professional life? New legislation and news headlines may shake things up, but by identifying your stance on faith in the classroom, you will face the turbulence of our changing world with more confidence. In this session, teachers will learn what the law allows and expects of teachers who hold to a religious faith; take a look at teachers whose actions have come under scrutiny; and share appropriate ways to live out faith in the public school environment.

Planning to attend? Let me know in the comments! And join me on Facebook to chat with me and other teachers who'll be there.

Goodies in the Mail

When I checked the mail today, I was thrilled to find two books waiting for me.

The first was my own personal copy of River Rest, my mom's new inspirational historical novel. If you haven't had a chance to read last week's interview with Susan Page Davis, do check it out and pass it on.

The second book in my mailbox was Dalene Vickery Parker's Christian Teachers in Public Schools: 13 Essentials for the Classroom. Dalene has guest blogged here, and she was kind enough to send along a copy of her book to give as a door prize at my Faith and the Public School Teacher presentation in July. Thanks, Dalene!




I'll also be presenting Choose Your Own Adventure: Writing and Publishing Narratives Using Digital Technology. In this session, teachers will learn to apply choose-your-own-story structure to narrative fiction or nonfiction writing. Using Google Drive, teachers will learn to link story pages to form narratives with alternate endings.

Hope to see you in Twin Falls at the College of Southern Idaho on July 12!

New Ideas for Alternate-Ending Story Activities

Had a wonderful time today with my fellow Idaho Core Coach Network teachers and guests at our spring conference. My presentation on Choose Your Own Adventure narratives drew a small but enthusiastic group. They suggested strategies and applications I hadn't thought of (turns out Google Slides works pretty well for linking to new pages; a rubric would be helpful) and dove into the writing part with zest. Thanks for a fun session!

Choose Your Own Adventure: Writing and Publishing Narratives Using Digital Technology

Test driving my presentation on Choose Your Own Adventure: Writing and Publishing Narratives Using Digital Technology May 4 at the Idaho Core Coach Network regional meeting/spring conference in Twin Falls. You can access the handout here. Hoping to bring the session to a larger audience in October. In the meantime, visit my post on using Choose Your Own Adventure theory in the classroom here.

Learning Through Writing: Choose Your Own Adventure

When I was a kid, I loved to read books from the Choose Your Own Adventure series. On each page was a choice, something like this. "If you decide to risk the mountain lions and explore the cave, turn to page 23. If you decide to look for a stream to replenish your water supply, turn to page 71." If you were killed by mountain lions on page twenty-three, you could always go back and see where the other choice led. In fact, you often died. No problem. Just go back to page one, or wherever you left a bookmark last.

Similarly, video games often include a story with many choices for the player to make. The decisions you make alter the course of the game. When your character dies, you play again.

I like to assign a choose-your-own story to my high school students. It's digital, with hyperlinks to different documents in a Google Drive folder for the pages. The first page sets up the scenario ("You are Sir Lancelot. The castle at Camelot is under attack") and the viewpoint character. Second person present works best for the point of view. At the bottom of the page is the first set of choices. Instead of using "turn to page 5," use "click here" or "click to page 5." Then, link to the new page. Be sure to put the page number at the top of each page, and save each document as the same number. Keep the story to twelve pages or so for beginners, and keep a running list of how each page turns out if you are concerned about the ratio of positive outcomes to negative outcomes.

There are several Web sites students can use to help them write choose-your-own stories, but I like the challenge of creating my own story, format and links. The students are up for the challenge, too.

What should they write about? This assignment works well for fiction or nonfiction. My daughter wrote one in which the reader is a trout. It required her to research the life cycle of a trout and what the trout's natural predators are. I'm researching Antoine Lavoisier, a chemist who was guillotined during the French Revolution. Turning Lavoisier's life into a choose-your-own story has been challenging, since I am working to understand the science part and then to make the concepts easy for my students or other young readers to understand.

To get a better feel for how it all works, see if your library has the classic Choose Your Own Adventure books, or pick up similar versions by R.L. Stein or other authors. Then, create your own story to share with your students. They'll be raring to write!