INTRO Aviva Levin: Welcome to Lesson: Impossible, an exploration of educational innovation. I'm your host Aviva Levin. As always, I'm chatting with educators of all types who are on the forefront of pedagogy or making effective changes to old practices. Your lesson, should you choose to accept it, is to help students enjoy writing as they discover how to improve their written work.  The special agent assigned to help you with this task is author and teacher, Shannon Anderson, of Rensselaer, Indiana.

INTRO Aviva Levin: I’ve really enjoyed the last few weeks of episodes that were looking at some useful resources and grappling with some big philosophical questions about teaching: what is my teacher identity? How can I infuse meaning into my curriculum? Is there a way to prevent teacher burnout? However, today’s episode has us focusing again on something very concrete, but incredibly important: how can I teach writing?  As I, and you, my wonderful listeners, will soon discover, it’s easily done at any grade, if you have the right mindset and strategies.  Fortunately Shannon Anderson was willing to share some of her writing wisdom when we spoke at the end of April over zencastr.  I also want to let you know that transcripts are being included with the newer episodes, which you can find at lessonimpossible.com, and I highly encourage you to copy and pasting some of this episode’s transcript into a writing lesson plan if you want to give some of Shannon’s advice a try!

Aviva Levin: Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me today. I really appreciate it.

Shannon Anderson: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

Aviva Levin: So to start off, if you don't mind giving a little bit of an introduction of who you are, what you do, however you want to describe yourself.

Shannon Anderson: Ok, sure. So I have taught for twenty-five years. I started out in first grade for sixteen years and then I actually shifted over. I was asked to be a writing coach, so I was a writing coach for four years. Absolutely loved that. But I really missed having my own crew and having my own kids to bond with each year. So there happened to be a third grade opening. And I asked if I could have it so I could go back in the classroom. So I then taught third grade for five years. In the midst of all of that, I've also been the gifted coordinator. So with a high ability program and service models and all of that I handled for our kindergarten through fifth grade kids. And I'm also a children's book author. So I just had two books come out for teachers. So normally I write for children. I have a lot of children's books out. A lot of them are have to do with social and emotional themes like "Penelope Perfect" is obviously about a perfectionist little girl. "Coasting Casey" is kind of the opposite. It's about an underachiever who's very gifted in the creative arts and music, things like that, but not so much interested in the academics of school. So those types of projects are what I seem to be drawn to. But I did just publish two books for teachers through Pieces of Learning. One of them is called "Be An Amazing Writing Teacher", and one of them is called "Go the Extra Smile".

Aviva Levin: I was hoping that we could do kind of like a little bit of a coaching session. If I was a brand new teacher coming to elementary school and I didn't know, like I'd never had a method's course on how to teach writing. And to be fair, I'm a French and Social Studies teacher at the high school so I would probably know right now, you know, right now I know less than a first year elementary school teacher because at least they have their elementary methods courses. How would you coach me through approaching that and then putting a program into place for my students?

Shannon Anderson: Sure. So when I talk at conferences and present PDs at schools or for reading councils and things like that, some of my biggest pieces of advice kind of have to do with how you're delivering it. So not necessarily, I mean the craft of writing is obviously important, but how are you? How much are you giving them? Because just like with reading, our kids have to build up their endurance for not only how long they can read it, a sustained period of time, but also the level of complexity, of course, of the text. But it's the same way with writing. So I often, because I've run several marathons, I use this analogy, you know, you don't want when you're when you're training to run a twenty six point two mile race, you don't go out every day and run twenty six miles. That's it would kill you or me anyway. But when you're when you're training, you're building up that endurance over time and you're learning different things and tweaking different things, like, for example, maybe your nutrition or your hydration or maybe you're throwing in some speed work, maybe you're throwing in some different things, intervals, techniques that are going to help you. And I feel like we need to be that way with our writing as well. So sometimes I might have, like, my whole writing block. And I I'm really I love writing block, of course. And so I always make sure I have at least 40 minutes to do writing each day. And I know a lot of schools don't have that luxury, but I try to pack in things where I can so that I do have a nice chunk of time for writing. Making sure that it's not just OK on Monday, we're going to brainstorm an idea for a story or I'm going to give you a prompt and you're going to start the planning part. And then on Tuesday, we're gonna come up with the introduction. And then on Wednesday, we're going to, you know, do that mighty middle. And then on the next day, we're going to do an ending. And then the next day we're gonna revise and edit. In the last day, we're going to publish it. That is running a marathon in a week. And so if we're doing that week after week, it's going to burn out our kids. And so instead of trying to go through the whole writing process and continuing that loop, what I normally would say is it's better to do those very sporadically, like maybe four times a year, do an entire process of each genre. So like a narrative writing, I might go from draft to publication once. And same thing with, you know, when I'm gonna do my informative writing, in my opinion. Right. And I always do a compare and contrast writing as well. So I just like to teach the little pieces and then we put it all together, like I said, maybe once a quarter. Not to say that I would only focus on narrative writing for a whole quarter and then the finale as you write your big story, because I think it's really good to keep cycling through all of those genres and not just, you know, because then by the end of the year, if I've done that all first quarter, by the end of the year, they're gonna be rusty on all the narrative writing.

Aviva Levin: And you don't want to you don't want to train hills for a week straight either.

Shannon Anderson: Exactly. Yes. And so instead, I might do like four. I'll give you an example of a lesson. So for my beginnings lesson for narrative writing, because, of course, of beginnings lesson for opinion writing and informative writing is gonna be very different than narrative writing. So when I'm doing my beginning's lessons for narrative writing, I have a little role play and I even have like a little black and white clapper thing, you know, like take one take two. My kids know that way that it is a role play. And so I will all started out and I'll say, OK, so this is an example of someone coming over to my house for dinner and we'll do the clapper and I'll have a couple of students, you know, pretend like they're coming over to my house and I'll just, like, drag them in by the arm and sit them down. And I will literally have, you know, a plate with fake food on it and put a fork in their hand and say, eat. And it's just very abrupt. And of course, everyone's laughing because it's extreme. And, you know, and then we talk about how we wouldn't want to start a story that way. We wouldn't just abruptly throw our reader into the middle of a story. We would want to welcome them in. We want to introduce them to something. And so then I'll do the clapper again. I'll say now, this is a good example of a beginning for a narrative. And so then I have someone knock on the door again and I bring them in just to to the door itself and don't take them to the kitchen yet. And I ask them, you know, how is your day? And I introduce them to my family and I talk to them for a little bit. And then I finally get to the point where I say, OK, would you like a drink? Do you want to come on into the kitchen and hang out while I finish up those types of things? So I'm welcoming them in. And so by me introducing them to my family, that's kind of an analogy for in my story, I could introduce them to my characters or my setting. I mean, they're getting situated as they walk in my house with my setting. And so then my next step is and anytime I can and I know not every teacher is also an author, but anytime I can, I I pull in my real writing practices that I do. And so I talk to the kids about how my favorite thing to write is picture books. And so I'll have a stack of picture books and I'll have an anchor chart up that just says beginnings or story starters or whatever you want it to say. And then I'll open that first book. And so the first book, my I think I usually use Verde, the story about a snake, and it talks about, you know, deep in the steamy jungle he, you know, climbed through the tree or something. And so I'll talk to the kids about. OK, so what did this author do to introduce us to something as an intro to the story? And of course, they're going to say, oh, that's the setting. We know something about the setting now. Yeah. Good. So I'll write setting on the chart. And then I'll read a story where maybe it starts talking about like there's a story I showed in my book, "Vulture and Hummingbird". And I read the beginning and it's Vulture spent his days grumbling, you know, on a branch in a tree and hummingbird zipped around all day looking for things to add to his happy list. And so then I talk about, OK. So what did this author introduce you to? Well, the character. So we write down characters. And then I keep going. And each beginning, I'm only reading the first line of each story. And I tell my students that that's exactly what I do when I'm stuck, when I'm writing a picture book. I might know what's gonna happen in the beginning, middle and end. I might know exactly what the problem is, how it's gonna be solved, all these different things. But knowing those first lines, how important they are to hook my reader and bring them in and not be abrupt, I have to take my time and really think about that beginning and make it powerful. So that's what I do. I open up a lot of books. I look at just the beginning and it gets my brain thinking about just the beginnings of those books. So by the time I've gone through my stack of books, we have a whole chart full of different ways that we can introduce our readers to our story, some component of our story. And some of them aren't just introducing information. It could just be something creative, like starting with an onomatopoeia or some alliteration of some kind to show that it's something fun and it still hooks the reader because they think, oh, well, this is really fun to say or oh, that's interesting. So they want to keep reading.

Shannon Anderson: And then after I do that. So that's just the second part of the lesson. Then what I would do is have them go back to their seats. And of course, they always have a book at their seat that they're reading. And I have them check and see what type of beginning, their author tried. Well, they can't wait to go back to their seat because they can't remember they're halfway through the book, they don't remember how their authors started their book. And so they come on back and they are you know, I let them each share, you know, the beginning of their book. And we try to guess which thing off of the chart that author used. Well, then for the practice that day, the kids would actually get three pieces of paper. And I always model first. That is one of my biggest tips that I give teachers is any time I've ever seen a writing lesson flop or I feel like the kids just don't know what to do it's usually because I've skipped the modeling part. And so what I'll do at the very beginning of the year, I do a lot of things for generating ideas for stories. So I do a big Me Page where we write in all these different things about our lives and ourselves and things we think might be interesting stories sometime during the school year. So I get out my Me Page from the beginning of the year that I modeled when I was teaching that. And then I also have the chart of all the different ways that the authors began their stories in the books that we looked at. So then what we do is I have the kids tell me something from my Me Page. So, yes, it's completely putting me on the spot. And then I have them pick one of the ways to start a story. So I have to take that thing they gave me from my Me Page. So maybe it's a story about a race that I ran. Or maybe it's a story about the day I got my dog or whatever it is. And then I have to use the beginning they gave me. So maybe they pick onomatopoeia or maybe they pick start with a question or a setting. And so I have to, on the spot, demonstrate writing a great first line based on what they gave me. And then I'll do two more, just like I'm asking them to do. I would use the same topic that they picked, but then have to do a different beginning. So that way they're taking the same topic from their ME list and they have to try three different beginnings with that same topic. And that's all they're writing that day. And so I feel like that is so much better to do a lesson that is very focused. That's memorable. And that gives them true application. And then they remember that. And when they have to go to actually write a story sometime, then they can remember that process that they went through. They can remember all the different ways you could start a story. Then at the very end, of course, I save like five minutes that some of them can share. And we would save all of those in our writing folder and then someday down the road when we're working on something else I will ask them to pick one of those three beginnings. And that way the pump is already primed and they can go from there. So they'll pick one of those and then we'll work on the next thing. So in that way, in that lesson, all they did was essentially write three sentences. But think about how much they learned in thinking about those three sentences. So those are the types of lessons that I coach teachers to try. And they're excited to do it. You know, they're not excited when they're thinking that the way you teach writing is to try to get through a whole story or a whole prompt in one week.

Aviva Levin: I have two thoughts listening to that. One is in my imaginary classroom I now feel like 100 times more confident because at least I've got a lesson down and it's not as intimidating as my imaginary assignment that I gave myself. So thank you for that. My second thought is just how easily that can be scaled up. Like, I'm thinking of the way that I teach paragraph writing to my social studies students. And although I do chunk it, I very much do like what you said. I go and we run the whole marathon. And just how easily I could make it so that we're looking at a stack of different paragraphs or intros to books historical books or anything like that. So it's such a great method. Thank you for sharing it.

Shannon Anderson: You're welcome.

Aviva Levin: And in that vein, what would you say are some of the biggest mistakes that people make when they're teaching writing?

Shannon Anderson: Okay, so besides the trying to pack in too much and overwhelm, I often will see at the end when they finally do produce this piece, you know, we finally do this whole writing, making sure that you make the most of your opportunity for feedback to help them grow. So sometimes what I'll do, I will have like a Quick Write before we even start a session on a kind of writing and just kind of see how they do. Like today, all we're gonna do we're just gonna do a Quick Write of a story. And and I won't give any instruction with it except for, you know, try to have a beginning, middle and end and those types of things. But it's just especially I'll do something like this at the beginning of the year. And I might even I've done I've tried it. Different ways where I've done, like, all different four genres at the very beginning and have them do the Quick Writes. You know, just to get them out there. And then we're able to sit down together and have a little conference and set goals. So what I'll do is, for example, when we do a Quick Write of a narrative, I will sit one on one with the kids, which I. I have third grade. So we have a 30 minute block of time that they have self selected reading time. And so I kind of use that time during a week that we've done something like this to pull kids one on one, because that is the most, I feel like helpful and keeps the kids focused because you're just working with them. And what I'll do is I'll do a cold read of their writing. So I haven't read it before and I'll just read it in front of them so that they can hear exactly what they've written. And it's so different having someone else read back your writing then for you to read it yourself, because you know in your own mind what you meant to say and your brain will automatically insert things that you meant to have in there, even if they're not there. That's why so often when I'm working on a draft of something for publication, I'll have my daughters read it to me or my husband read it to me so that I can hear what it sounds like from a reader's voice. And I will read it exactly as they wrote it. So if they left out a period or a word, I'm going to read it just like they wrote it so they can notice. And it's important for them to notice it. So then as they're noticing those things, you'll see them go, Oh, woops, oh, I left that out or oh, you know. And then I'll just very kindly point out, you know, I do that all the time. It happens because our brain sometimes just, you know, move faster than our pencils move or our fingers when we're typing. So it's OK. And then what we'll do after I've read their whole piece to them is will together set a goal. So we'll look at and rubrics you know, I know everyone has different philosophy on rubrics. Some of the some schools have certain rubrics you have to use in your district and others you're able to create a rubric with your class, which I think is really super helpful for the kids, because then they know the expectations and they got to be a part of that so there's some ownership there. But in looking at whatever rubric you are using, going through each of those things and setting some goals. And you'd be surprised how honest the kids are, they really know what their weaknesses are. When you set that in front of them and you've read it to them, they'll say, oh, I realize that I didn't do this or I'll ask them the questions, like, for example, on word choice, I'll talk to them about, you know, do you feel like you just used the first words that came to your mind or do you feel like you really took some time to use some of the figurative language that we've learned or you've tried to use some of the vocabulary that would be maybe above third grade level or you tried to throw in, you know, a simile here to describe this instead of just describing it literally. So those kinds of conversations and when you ask the questions, will answer them pretty honestly and they'll say, oh, yeah, I think that might need to be a goal. I need to be working on picking stronger verbs or whatever it is. And of course, they'll always notice the conventions type of thing, especially when you're reading and you read it as the run on sentence that it is. They note it and then they're like, oh yeah, I need to work on my periods, you know, and things like that. So having that time is very well spent because then when you're writing and you're you've done all this instruction on different things and they finally have a prompt or have a project that they're writing something in full, then I give them the Post-it note that has all of their goals on it as a reminder as they're writing to try to incorporate those things. And then we'll have a conference again. And this time we're able to say, you know, like, OK. Do you feel like you met those goals? And, you know, sometimes I'll ask them before I even read it and they'll say, can I go back to my seat? I actually thought of something I could improve. And I'm like, Of course you can. You know, that's the goal. I want you to have it the best and polished, you know, product that you can. And so I feel like there are a lot of teachers, at least while I was coaching, you know, they would collect the writing after it was all done and they would spend hours and hours grading it and they would put down, you know, for each of the you know, we do six trait's writing. So, you know, the word choice organization, conventions, all of those things they would, you know, do a score for each of those things and set it aside in a folder. Sometimes the kids wouldn't even know what they got. Or if they did, it was handed back to them and they were able to look over it. But how much more powerful is it if you're sitting there with them and you're grading it with them and they're seeing the reason you gave them a five versus a two on word choice when you can talk them through it and they understand. So they really get a feel for their strengths and where they need to grow. And then we just set new goals for the next time they write. And so that is one thing that I feel like really is worth that investment in having one on one conferences with the kids when they finish something and it gives them the feedback that they need to grow as a writer, which is hopefully our goal.

Aviva Levin: Where are the opportunities where you find the biggest bumps in  growth in the students writing abilities. Like the first thing that comes to mind is the more students read and are introduced to a variety of different texts or text related to the activity they're doing, they're going to improve in their own production. Are there other ways where you get a big bump?

Shannon Anderson: Yeah, absolutely. I think you hit on one of the big ones is mentor text. One of the things that I tell my kids when I go to author visits and I talk to them about how to become a better writer, I give them four tips. And the number one tip is to read. That's what it is, because when you're reading what someone else has written and you're seeing a good example of that work. Going along with those four tips for writers, I always say reading is the biggest one because you want to know, you know, what it is that the expectations are. And the number two is obviously to do the writing. So if they never get time to practice what it is, then it's gonna be harder to get better at it. So most of the time when I'm doing an author visit, I'm in a gymnasium with 500 kids on the floor. And so I'll point up to the basketball hoop and I'll tell them, you know, when when you want to make a basket, if you want to be on the basketball team, you cannot just show up for the games. You have to go to all the practices. So it's just that way with writing. I'm going to get better as I practice. And as I try something and then realize, oh, wait, that didn't work or wait this is a better way I could do this than you're going to improve. My third tip that I always give writers is to learn from others. So whether it is, if you take the basketball example, whether it's learning from a coach, someone that knows the sport, or if you're learning an instrument like how to play piano, you need to learn from someone that knows how to play piano. Well, I always tell the kids they're really lucky that their teachers are all writers and that they can learn from their teachers. And so I show them a bunch of pictures of the people that I've been fortunate enough. I was the regional adviser for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators for four years. So I was fortunate enough to get to go to a lot of the New York and L.A. conferences and meet a lot of famous authors and get pictures with them. So I'll show them some of the pictures and I'll talk to them about, you know, if I want to be good at writing, then I have to find someone that's really good at writing to learn from. And I tell them about, you know, when I go, there's always this optional extra amount that you can pay to get a critique. And I pay it every time because I want someone to tell me the places that don't sound right to them maybe are confusing or that maybe aren't creative enough, or maybe it's not a good enough hook at the beginning. So I'm paying someone to tell me what's wrong with my writing, but it's because I want to have the best story that I can have. So I want to have that feedback and that help. And I tell the kids they’re lucky, their teachers will do that for free for them.

Aviva Levin: I love that idea of reframing assessment and evaluation and feedback, because I think often it's either used in a punitive way or as the carrot and the stick of you know, you need to learn this so that you can get an A. But this idea of it's just part of the natural cycle of improvement takes away not only some of the anxiety, but takes away the feeling that you're only as good as the critique in that moment.

Shannon Anderson: Right. Yes. And that brings me to the fourth tip, which is never give up. So not giving up, having that growth mindset. And I always talk to the kids about growth mindset. And that is essentially you're learning for the sake of learning and you feel you believe that you have the ability learn with enough practice and without giving up.

Aviva Levin: How can people find out more about what you do or get a copy of your books or book you as a speaker?

Shannon Anderson: Yeah they can go to Shannon is teaching dot com is my Web site. And on there I have all kinds of resources. I have recently added on the very last tab there's a tab called Kids Corner, and I've recently added over 20 videos of me teaching just fun stuff for kids because there's been a lot of parents that have reached out and said, do you have any, like, fun little activity videos or whatever? And. But there's also a contact me tab there. So if they're interested in setting up a PD for their school or an author visit or whatever. As far as the books, all of the books are on the Web site. Yeah, I'm trying to think if there's anything else. I'm on Twitter. There's going to be. It's kind of exciting right now. If you look on my Twitter, it's @shannonteaches my pinned tweet is from last year. This this big publishing process that I do with my students every year, it's a big culminating project where I have the kids write their own book and I send it off to Student Treasures, get it made into a hardcover book for them so that they are published authors. But then I also send off their illustration of their main character to a company called Budsies, and it makes them into a stuffed animal. And they are amazing. They look just like their illustration. And so every year that's like my culminating project. And they all came in yesterday. Well, we're distance learning right now and can't go to school. So I am delivering all of the Budsies. They're all in a bag and I'm going to keep my six feet distance and I'm going to deliver to every student's house this Saturday. And so far, the Budsies company has gotten a hold of me and said the Today Show is going to be calling to interview me and wants a copy of my video and the Indianapolis news also. So it's gonna be pretty cool. The reaction video of my students is going to be out there. So if you go onto my Twitter, you'll be able to see the newest reaction video or on Facebook. I'm pretty much on all of the social media media channels. Connect there.

Aviva Levin: I'm looking at the Budsie, and that is just the cutest thing that I've ever seen.

Shannon Anderson: It is so amazing. Yes. And you do have to do some grant writing. They're expensive, but they are so worth it. And such a memorable thing. I've been teaching long enough that I've been to some of my students graduation open houses. And when you see their books sitting out on their graduation table that they wrote in like some of them from when I taught first grade. It's pretty special to know that they they treasure that.

Aviva Levin: Oh, that's lovely. Well, thank you so much again for speaking with me today. I think this is going to be really helpful for teachers trying to think about teaching writing. And I know it helped to me and I don't ever intend to set foot in an elementary school classroom.

Shannon Anderson: Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

OUTRO Aviva Levin: So there you have it, Shannon Anderson on teaching writing like you’re training for a marathon, giving useful and timely feedback, and publishing student work for posterity. If you want to find out more about what innovative educators are doing around the world, go to Lesson: Impossible dot com. And if you like the podcast, please consider forwarding it to your colleagues and rating and reviewing it on iTunes. This has been Lesson: Impossible and I was your host Aviva Levin.