Microfiction Story "Broccoli" Published in Crack the Spine

Today my microfiction story "Broccoli" was published in Crack the Spine, an online literary magazine. Click "Read Issue 265" and navigate to my story. 

I wrote this very short piece during Creative Writing class last year, when my students were sending 50-word horror stories to a contest. At the time I didn't enter because I don't like competing against my students. Now my story has found a home elsewhere.

Meanwhile, my school has entered its second period of quarantine this fall, and all of us teachers are busily creating assignment packets for our students. It seems like every family I know has its burdens now. There's a lot to pray about! Thank you for lifting up and encouraging students, parents and guardians, teachers, and administrators during this school year.

All the best,

Amy

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Do You DARE To Revise?

Now that I'm halfway through the amazing book Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning by Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D., and Patrice M. Bain, Ed.S., I decided to try out some of the strategies I've been collecting for increasing student learning.

I knew my first Creative Writing unit needed to be revised, so that's where I decided to focus my efforts first. Since the unit includes targeted lessons on revision, I'll be practicing concepts I want to teach as I revise the unit. Way to make it gel!

Here are the steps to my revision attack plan.

1. The first step in revising a unit (or a piece of writing) is to gain some distance. You can't revise a piece you've just finished writing because you're too close to it. So, put the manuscript in a drawer and walk away. Take a two-week vacation. Then you can come back to it with fresh eyes. I've done this by finishing my unit draft and teaching from it last fall, then setting it aside for almost a whole year. Let's just say, my eyes are fresh.

2. The second step is to reread the unit or draft with an eye for revision. Specifically, look for elements that can be deleted, added, rearranged, or exchanged. Notice that these verbs form the acronym DARE. I'll be teaching my students this acronym, but I need to apply it to my unit plan as well.

• Delete: I deleted a few activities that did not support student thinking about the unit's essential questions. While the activities are fun and do promote creativity in writing, I wanted to zero in on my standards and EQs more precisely. So that meant some things had to go.
• Add: I added several opportunities for retrieval practice, a topic I'm learning about through Powerful Teaching. Low-stakes and no-stakes retrieval activities allow students to show what they know and get feedback without fear of losing points. Retrieval practice is a learning strategy, not an assessment strategy. Since I want students to remember concepts like the steps in the writing process for the long haul, I needed to add practice opportunities that reduce the need for cramming. I also added a unit assessment in Google Forms, including feedback for both incorrect and correct answers. Feedback is another of the "power tools" from Powerful Teaching, so I know I'm helping students learn and retain understandings.
• Rearrange: In my original unit draft, my lesson on individual revision practice came before my lesson that allowed the class to work together on a revision. Clearly, students would benefit if I placed the "we do" lesson before the "you do" lesson. I also shuffled some of the standards around, rearranging them to accurately reflect what students are learning in each lesson of the unit.
• Exchange: In some cases, my learning objectives were vague or did not clearly match expected outcomes. I spent some time honing each objective to exchange vague words for specific ones and to match the objective's verbage to its expected outcome in the lesson.

3. Ideally, the third step would be to seek peer feedback on the unit or draft. If you are the only teacher in your department because your school is so small (yeah), it might be more challenging to find a peer reviewer. This is where networking at teacher conferences and harnessing social media can help. Connect with friends, ask for help, and get another person's fresh eyes to read your revision. And if you're teaching throughout the revision, see how the revised unit works in the classroom. Seeing which lessons succeed and which lessons flop is valuable feedback. Put that feedback to work for you!

4. If you have the luxury, step four is to put that manuscript back in that drawer for another two weeks or a year and come back with fresh eyes for another round of revision. Okay, we're teachers. That would be ridiculous. But just as we tell our students, "You are never done." There is always something we can delete, add, rearrange, or exchange to help students learn.

I'm almost ready to tuck my unit away again and not look at it until fall. I'm much happier with the strategies and the structure, and I believe students will benefit from my efforts. All it took was a chunk of dedicated time and the daring to revise.

For more on revising a unit, check out this past post.

What are your favorite revision strategies? Share in the comments!

Enjoy this free download from my store, Brevity!

Visit Brevity on Teachers Pay Teachers for more free encouraging eCards.

My Story a Finalist in Elevator Fiction Contest

I'm excited to announce that a flash fiction story of mine is a finalist in a contest sponsored by the SF Bay Area chapter of the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW). Three finalists were chosen, and the winner will be announced in September. I'll be eagerly awaiting the decision!

Watch later this week for our new interview with author Dalene Parker, a friend of this blog and of Christian teachers in public schools. Her new book, Words to Live By, is available now. Dalene's giving away a copy, so don't miss your chance to enter the contest!

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!

Turnitin's Free, Virtual Conference on Writing Education

"Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!" Job 19:23

Writing is a skill that isn't going away just because the world is changing. I'm excited to tune in to Turnitin's virtual writing/tech conference, The Writing Mindset, next week. Sessions from previous years are posted on the site, including "The Future of Writing: I Wandered Lonely In The Cloud" by Anya Kamenetz, Lead Education Blogger at NPR, a session I listened to avidly this evening. What's coming at this year's conference? "How Writers Read," "Teaching the Writing Brain," "Mimicry and Plagiarism," and "What's the Story Behind Why We Write?" to name a few tempting-looking morsels.

These webcasts would make a great discussion starter for English departments, as well as a resource for new teachers and homeschool parents who aren't sure how to approach teaching writing. Just fill out a simple form and click to view.