Video-computer based games emerged as consumer products in the 1970s and now surpass movies, television, and music in terms of worldwide profits. Many of the original text-based games, such as Zork and Deadline had a genre based literary quality to them, and 50 years later we still see literary storytelling in this medium, with both major corporations and independent developers delivering significant texts using varying levels of technology and sophistication.
At the lower level of this, developers often produce low cost material that effectively deals with social and personal issues our students are interested in. Papers Please is a multi-platform game that examines issues around immigration and documentation. One Night, Hot Springs looks at the experience of being trans at a hot spring, while This War of Mine allow us to be a civilian in an urban combat zone (and is a text in Polish history classes). New and exciting games come out frequently, and this is a rich area for texts, which are sophisticated and meet students “where they live.”
We have successfully used video games in the writing classroom, and we are proposing a workshop that presents a number of short low-cost (or free) games to the audience, along with a variety of ways of using them in the classroom. As part of the experience, we would like to engage the participants in an actual lesson in relation to one of the games being presented.
In today’s educational landscape, it is essential for students to have meaningful opportunities to engage in humanizing and antiracist pedagogy. Art can serve as both an entryway and an escape route to help students understand and challenge oppression. As texts, art can reveal our reality, highlight the difficulties of marginalized groups, and provide a space for antiracist discourse and action. In our classrooms, the examination and creation of art as story and justice allows students to confront the realities of racism and other oppressive forces in our everyday lives and challenge themselves and others to think critically about the ways in which it manifests in our society. Art can act as an entryway to ignite dialogue, inspire voice, build community and foster collective action. Additionally, it can also be used as an escape route to explore and express the complexities of racism and its implications, as well as a means to escape oppressive structures. . In this session ELA teachers will learn how to use art in ten ways in our antiracist ELA classrooms.
In an attempt to bolster enrollment and lower stress for both students and teachers, we have designed an AP Language and Composition class using a writing workshop model empowering students to explore topics that matter to them. Our AP Language and Composition pass rate exceeds 95%, and our enrollment in the course continues to grow each year. The course is designed to help students analyze everything from social media posts to peer-reviewed academic journals in an authentic, yet rigorous manner. Students complete nearly all work within the class period which helps to minimize student stress while maximizing time for in-class conferencing with the teacher. This session will focus on sharing ideas and strategies to help high achieving students who are often extremely busy and stressed find joy in researching, analyzing, and writing about issues they care about.
As English teachers, we’re used to teaching texts in isolation. This presentation will demonstrate how the presenters have experimented with book clubs as a way to weave more varied voices into classrooms. This session will showcase an American Literature Book Club Unit, which provides a framework for students to helps our students see the larger America beyond their own experiences and those captured in canonical literature. Presenters’ sophomore teaching team reads recently published American fiction, searching for well-written literature from varied perspectives to expose students to characters facing complex issues. The novels include relatable teenage narrators whose experiences move students beyond their comfort zones. The unit revolves around student choice, beginning with book selection and extending through student-led book group discussions. In the course of the unit, student groups research related real-world issues like Native American land rights, groundwater contamination in low-income areas, and effects of immigration policies. For a final project, students create movie book trailers using Canva to advertise novels’ themes and motifs.
Presenters will also share novel titles, videos of book groups in action, and project examples.
This workshop is designed to help you and students find all the large and small ways writing can help not only change your life but your students’ lives along with some DOs and DON’Ts on how to properly engage students of color.
From rural Wisconsin to wherever you are, we can choose authentic texts that offer both a mirror and a window to our students and their experiences of place. In the resort town of Elkhart Lake, teachers read A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid and connected the tourism industry there to students’ experiences. Attendees will explore resources and ideas to create a similar unit or lesson for their classes.
As choice reading continues to ensure that students of all abilities find enjoyment in reading, teachers incorporating choice reading into their curricula may seek ways to encourage student voice in discussions. This presentation will offer an idea to be applied for ongoing book club units or end-of-semester assessment. Students reading choice books trace their personal reactions to their reading to determine theme or genre-based connections with peer readers. They then apply podcast knowledge gained through class listening experiences to construct and record discussions of their reading journeys using the podcasting app Anchor.
Traditionally, students have demonstrated their understanding and analysis of a text or topic through tests and essays. However, have you seen other teachers’ social media posts about One Pagers or Hexagons and weren’t sure how to introduce them to students? Hexagons and One Pagers can be used for single texts, to connect multiple texts. to explore themes, and across the curriculum. This presentation will share the basics of each activity and then give participants time to practice each one.
Get every student in your class writing and talking about complex, creative, personal and debatable topics. How? Transition from engaging journal prompts to various discourse strategies. Observe the positive difference these activities make in your classroom community and in their extended writing projects. Learn and practice these ideas in an interactive workshop and be inspired!
How can you help your students write a good story from scratch? You offer them the basics of storytelling, one step at a time. With each step, you prompt them to build a story that is uniquely theirs. This workshop combines narrative theory with practical writing advice to help teachers help their students write an entertaining and emotionally resonant story.
