Presenters: Susan Radley Brown, Lisa Peterson, Matt Wayne, Denise Leograndis
This year, San Juan Unified School District set teachers in Cohort 1 on a course to provide a rich writing workshop in their classrooms. To support this endeavor, A.L.L. has developed a summer institute to draw together teachers and administrators. Participants will spend half a day focusing on a Craft/Revision Unit of Study. For the other half of the day, they will refine the process of Mini-Lesson design.
Mini-Lesson Design
This strand will help participants decide, plan and write Mini-Lessons that are part of a unit of study. We'll look at how demonstration, explaining and sharing an example and guided practice make our teaching points explicit. In addition, the participants will delve into thinking about ways that ongoing rigorous assessment inform instruction. We will analyze student work as a means to determine instructional moves that give new direction to our Mini lessons.
Craft/Revision
In this strand, we will explore how to teach writer's craft and revision to improve the quality of student writing. Using suggested Mentor Texts from A.L.L. units of study, participants will learn ways to help students make the many decisions all writers make between an initial idea and the published product. We will explore how to nourish and develop our own writing style in order to become better teachers of writing.