One of the things I most enjoy about professional development sessions or visiting other teachers’ classrooms is walking away with ideas about things I can do differently in my own little world.

NCTE 2017 was an experience to savor, so I am choosing to write reflections about it over time, allowing me to dive back into my notes and re-discover the ideas I had during that week in November.  Those jam-packed days helped me walk away with inspiration about my class environment and with practical ideas I could apply the very next day I saw my students’ faces.

Five of my top takeaways:

  • Tone is a hard concept for secondary students to truly grasp. Two outstanding suggestions I heard for helping establish a strong foundation of not only what tone is but also using shades of meaning in the words to describe it are high on my to-do list when we return at semester.  The first was to use picture books to address this concept.  There are so many ways in which this can be done!  First, the pictures themselves speak volumes- thus their appeal.  Using just the pictures, students can infer what the character’s attitude is toward whatever is going on in the text.  Alternately, the assignment might be a scavenger hunt in which students are tasked with finding characters who exhibit particular attitudes.  Another idea in this vein was one that is certain to appeal to middle and high schoolers, and that was to do the same basic thing but instead use emojis.  It lends itself readily to a study of word choice and shades of meaning!
  • I knew before NCTE that people who are not on Twitter are missing out on some great professional chats, but I learned at NCTE that folks might also be missing some great instructional material.  As educated adults, particularly as English teachers, we know that one word can make a world of difference! One of the sessions I attended mentioned @NYT_diff, which is a Twitter feed that shows changes in New York Times headlines.  To say it’s pretty cool is an understatement!  There is rich material there available to discuss.
  • Laurie Halse Anderson is a genius.  (Okay, so that’s not news.)  But in one of the sessions I attended, she said something that resonated with me.   A summary– Storytelling is natural, but so is revision.  She told us a story about her daughter’s broken arm, and how she watched her re-tell and revise the story of how it happened, emphasizing the parts that garnered the most response from her audience. With multiple re-tellings, the story transformed, zooming in on some details, omitting others. We need to allow this to happen more in authentic writing.  Students can revise and know how. We must allow for it in our process rather than force it in contrived ways.
  • Another idea I loved and intend to incorporate with students as a part of our next process-writing assignment is to make multiple drafts of a document.  Each time it goes through a revision, make a copy and label it. Then when it’s submitted, have students make a film (using Screencastify or a similar tool) and explain their revisions.  They have think and speak like an author, truly evaluating how they improved the piece.  I wish I remember which presenter said this so I could give the credit that is due for this idea, because it’s just so darn smart!
  • I was also very excited to find a way to enhance something I already do.  I often give my students the job of identifying lines they love in their independent reading. They look for great figurative expression, passages that resonate with them personally, vivid imagery, and thought-provoking phrases.  It’s always been one of my favorite things to discuss with my students, but I’ve never been truly satisfied with the method students have used for submitting and sharing their word treasures.  One of the speakers suggested having students record their great lines on sentence strips and then have them work in groups to make found poetry from them or to find thematic connections.  Brilliant!

Professional development is my passion, and #NCTE17 was an especially rejuvenating experience!  I can hardly wait to try out some of the new things I learned while there, but just like I’m trying to pace myself in talking about it here, I am also trying to prioritize implementation so I can give my students what they need, when they need it.

That’s what #NCTE17 was for me– exactly what I needed at precisely the right time!