What Are You Doing This Summer? Strategizing Experiences

We’ve been having a lot of conversations in our district about ways to keep students learning throughout the summer. But what about teachers? What are some ways teachers can energize themselves for the upcoming year? What are the learning opportunities and how can we stoke the learning energy of educators? This week on Two Writing Teachers has an unplanned and organic through-line of energizing and learning opportunities for the summer.

Clear this year’s classroom

Last week, Stacey wrote a great post about simple and functional classroom design. As the 2023-2024 school year winds to a close, this is a great time to take inventory of the learning real estate and resources in your classrooms, thinking about how you can make every book, every nook, and every space be an opportunity for supporting students. That being said, if students are gong to tap into the power of the classroom resources, they have to know and understand what’s there. Therefore, your best bet is to clear walls, minimize clutter, and eliminate anything that isn’t in service of student learning. As the 2024-2025 school year, progresses, the classroom will become a shared, understood environment filled with support for students that they understand how to access.

Collect, Curate, and Annotate Some New Mentor Texts

New books are coming out all the time! Matt de la Pena has written several of my favorite picture books I use for inspiring young writers, and I’m excited to study his latest, A Perfect Place, and add it to my mentor text charts.

Some other books I’ll be on the lookout for in no particular order include:

• The Grand Canyon by Susan Lamb which looks like a nonfiction book with beautiful prose and text features about a topic that fourth-graders study in our district.
• Kerisa Green’s newly released I Am Both is on my TBR list as a book that adds to my AANHPI collection, identity unit, and mentor text set.
• What a Map Can Do by Gabrielle Balkan is another social studies supporting book that also looks like a great mentor text for playful younger information writers.

In addition to these, I’ll also be digging more deeply into Stacey’s recent Author Spotlight Series; there are always amazing titles in her series, as well as in her book, Craft Moves. Even though this book came out several years ago, it still has several books I don’t use as much as I should.

Join or Create a Summer Learning Experience or Group

There are a number of courses or experiences you could have of all sorts of commitment levels and costs. While this list is in no means complete– there are hundreds of opportunities– here are a few to get you started:

Free and Low-cost Opportunities

• The Educators Link is full of posts, resources, and reasonably-priced courses, including one I created about grammar and conventions.
• Many websites contain resources that are invaluable. Kate Roberts and Maggie Beattie Roberts have a growing content shop of both free and paid resources. No doubt you’ll find something to love on their site.

Free Opportunities

• Facebook has many learning groups that you can join for free. People are incredibly generous with both their time and the resources they’ve created. I’m planning a study group on NovoDia, a content creation platform– please reach out to me if you’re interested through this form.
• Long-time Slice of Life participant Sally Donnelly is running a summer book club, and she invites anyone to join and participate virtually.
• Along similar lines, co-author Lainie Levin is also hosting a summer book club digging into Jane Yolen’s book, Take Joy: The Writer’s Guide to Loving The Craft— which leads me straight into my final idea for summer learning…

Write

More than anything else I do, my own writing helps me become a better teacher of writing. I create resources that I need for both demonstration and practice opportunities, and I also spy on myself, taking notice of where and when the process is hard or feels different. I have authentic, varied, and personal writing that sends the powerful message to students that I am also a writer, and I understand and appreciate the challenges of getting ideas on paper. Think about joining Lainie’s group, join or start a non-virtual group, set goals for yourself for sitting down and writing —maybe even a genre that’s not one you’ve done much with before. My bet is that you’ll learn a lot by doing any of these ideas!