Teacher Leadership in Action
About halfway through this year, I identified that our 4th-8th grade teachers are not teaching enough writing. We used to have a separate writing class at our school years ago, but we got rid of it due to budget and scheduling.
Now that our school population has grown and our schedules have changed, I approached the leadership team this year with a solution to our "writing problem". Next year, because of our school growth, we would need to change our Electives schedule anyway, so I designed a new Electives schedule that allows middle school students to attend a writing class twice per week, taught by their English Language Arts and Social Studies teachers. Our leadership team approved the schedule change, and we will have a writing class next year!
The next step our leadership team asked me to put together is to help design/select a writing program and curriculum. With their approval, I researched and selected Lucy Calkins' A Common Core Workshop Curriculum: Units of Study in Argument, Information, and Narrative Writing, Grades 6-8. My next step is to create a scope and sequence for this curriculum.
Now that our school population has grown and our schedules have changed, I approached the leadership team this year with a solution to our "writing problem". Next year, because of our school growth, we would need to change our Electives schedule anyway, so I designed a new Electives schedule that allows middle school students to attend a writing class twice per week, taught by their English Language Arts and Social Studies teachers. Our leadership team approved the schedule change, and we will have a writing class next year!
The next step our leadership team asked me to put together is to help design/select a writing program and curriculum. With their approval, I researched and selected Lucy Calkins' A Common Core Workshop Curriculum: Units of Study in Argument, Information, and Narrative Writing, Grades 6-8. My next step is to create a scope and sequence for this curriculum.