Teaching Middle School ELA
Welcome to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast, where we are dedicated to helping English Language Arts teachers create dynamic and engaging lessons for their students, while also managing the day-to-day responsibilities that come with being a Middle School ELA teacher.
As educators ourselves, we understand the challenges of finding a work-life balance that allows us to pursue our passion for teaching while also enjoying our personal lives. That's why each Tuesday, hosts Caitlin Mitchell and Jessica Cannata share practical and innovative solutions for managing your workload and staying inspired in your teaching practice.
Whether you are looking for fresh ideas to inspire your students, strategies for improving your writing instruction, or tips for managing your time more effectively, this podcast is designed to provide you with the tools you need to thrive as a Middle School ELA teacher.
Join us each week for curriculum and lesson ideas, classroom stories, and interviews with fellow educators who are experts in the field. We believe that with the right support and resources, you can create a classroom environment that encourages students to become strong and passionate learners.
If you teach reading and writing to middle schoolers and want to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in ELA education, then this is the podcast for you! Tune in every week and let us help you make a difference in the lives of your students and in your own teaching career.
Teaching Middle School ELA
Episode 309: What Does Taylor Swift Have to Do with Student Projects (Interview with Trevor Aleo)
I’d love to hear from you! Send me a text!
In this special episode of The Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast, Megan interviews Trevor Aleo, a high school language arts teacher and co-author of Learning That Transfers: Designing Curriculum for a Changing World. Trevor talks about the strategies he used to help his 8th graders engage in multimodal composing projects, as you can read about in his English Journal article “‘What Would Other Swifties Think?’: Multimodal Composing with Communities in Mind.” Tune in to learn how you can help your students tap into their communities and write for a real-world audience.
Check out the #HackYourStack Database that Trevor shares on the show: https://reminiscent-attention-b9e.notion.site/HackYourStack-Database-e00377a9816045ed8dfbbe026b9ff9e8
Visit his website: https://www.trevoraleo.com/
And if you'd like to read the article after listening, you can find it here! “What Would Other Swifties Think?”: Multimodal Composing with Communities in Mind | ncte.org (publicationsncte.org)
This week's podcast is one episode that you are not going to want to miss. One of our co-hosts, megan, had the pleasure of interviewing Trevor Leo, who is a high school language arts teacher and co-author of Learning that Transfers Designing Curriculum for a Changing World. In this episode, trevor discusses his experiences helping eighth graders engage in multimodal composing projects, and this is what he wrote about in his English journal article titled what would other Swifties think Multimodal composing with communities in mind. When we found that English journal article, we were like we have to get Trevor on the podcast. You know that some of us are Swifties over here at Team EB and this is a really fun and informative interview that's going to offer practical ideas to help your students write with a purpose and for a real world audience.
Speaker 1:All right, let's go ahead and dive into today's episode.
Speaker 1:Hi there, ela teachers, caitlin here, ceo and co-founder of EB Academics, I'm so excited you're choosing to tune into the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast.
Speaker 1:Our mission here is simple to help middle school ELA teachers take back their time outside of the classroom by providing them with engaging lessons, planning frameworks and genuine support so that they can become the best version of themselves both inside and outside of the classroom, and we do this every single day inside the EB Teachers ELA portal. This is a special place we've developed uniquely for ELA teachers to access every single piece of our engaging, fun and rigorous curriculum, so that they have everything they need to batch plan their lessons using our EB Teacher Digital Planner that's built right into the app. Over the years, we've watched as thousands of teachers from around the world have found success in and out of the classroom after using EB academics programs, and we're determined to help thousands more. If you're interested in learning more, simply click the link in the podcast description and in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast every single week. And in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast every single week.
Speaker 2:Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. It's Megan here with you all today, and today we would actually like to welcome a very special guest to the podcast, trevor Alejo. Trevor is a high school language arts teacher who also creates professional development for other teachers, and he is the co-author of Learning that Transfers Designing Curriculum for a Changing World. He is also a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, urbana-champaign, and we actually invited him on the show to talk about the experiences he describes in an article from the English Journal, and that article is called what Would Other Swifties Think Multimodal Composing with Communities in Mind, and that article is co-written by Sarah Jarasa and Bradley L Nash, and so the article really discusses Trevor's experiences helping eighth graders reach specific audiences with a special project, and that project is what we're going to talk about today. So welcome, trevor. Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to dive in this article. I had a lot of fun teaching it and writing it and can't wait to talk about it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, the article was fantastic and we'll put a link to it in the show notes and I think a lot of people, probably from even just the title it caught their attention. But first, I'd love I gave a little introduction. But I'd love if you could just tell our listeners just a little bit more about yourself, kind of what you teach and what you study.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, as you mentioned, I am both a doctoral student and a high school English teacher. I very much see myself in having my feet in both of those worlds, both the research and the practice world. I'm very interested in finding ways of taking some of the best research that is in the kind of English language arts literacy space and bring it to practitioners and being able to implement things that I research right about myself in the classroom. So it's a huge kind of benefit. Similar to that, I'm a big fan of creating intersections between popular culture and more like academic literary bodies of knowledge. I think that you know, my classroom is a space where one day we might be reading cyclonic theory and the next day we might be, you know, talking about Taylor Swift's latest album. So I really believe in creating those sort of hybrid communities where students' life, worlds and interests are just as important as, you know, the canonical works of literature we read or the literary theorists who we engage with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. We're very much all about that at EB bringing like the real world to the classroom, making it engaging and, to your point, we can still be reading those great classics and make it relevant for today, which is really, really cool. So we actually discovered you because our curriculum writer, pat, saw this article in the English Journal. Can you just tell us a little bit about what that title means, and I'll repeat it for our listeners what would other Swifties think Multi-modal composing with communities in mind, and just tell us specifically what that multi-modal composing with communities in mind really means too?
Speaker 3:For sure. I think that every English teacher has had an experience, particularly if you work with students in communities that are very high achieving or academically oriented, where they say is this good, did I do this right? Is this what you want me to do? Is this what you want me to produce? So the kind of opening coda of the title is kind of me repositioning who their writing is for. So what would a Swift? What would a Swifty say? What would a Swifty think? Is me inviting my students to think less about quote unquote being right? Right, or saying the thing that they think I want them to say, and focusing more on their audience, right?
Speaker 3:And the multimodal composing piece is this idea that you know. Obviously, the written word is a really important part of, you know, literary studies as a discipline, english language arts as a field. However, we live in an increasingly multimodal world where students and scholars and professionals aren't just communicating with words but with images, with sound, with space, with gesture, with space, with gesture. So multimodal composing is providing opportunities for students to not just write but to design texts that employ multiple modes of communication. And the Taylor Swift intersects with that, because I wanted my students to pick a community of practice or a fandom that they are a participant in, and we'll unpack those terms, I'm sure in a minute, and create some sort of text that isn't focused on, you know, impressing the teacher, but it's focused on effectively communicating with whatever audience they've selected.
Speaker 2:Very cool, yeah, and I mean it's just so relevant to what they're going to be doing later in life, because it's like we're only their teacher for a short time. You know so what I care about what they do, is it only matters for a short time? Of course I matter or care about what they do. But to your point, this communities of practice, of practice that you talk about with your students. Tell us a little bit about what these communities of practice are and why they are so important for writers to think about.
Speaker 3:For sure. So the exact definition of communities of practice they're just groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. So I begin the year by doing a community building activity where I explain to the students all of us together in this classroom are a community of practice. All of us are working together, having conversations and dialogue and teaching each other ways that we can be better readers and writers and composers. So just because our one community of practice is one that's really important doesn't mean that there aren't other communities of practice that are out there. So, for example, in the article I talk about how literary scholars are an example of a community of practice, All of them have a shared domain of interest reading literary works.
Speaker 3:They have practices that they use, which are ways of interpreting and communicating about literary texts, and then there is a community of people who, you know, identify themselves as literary scholars.
Speaker 3:The same is true for Swifties. So Swifties have a domain of interest Taylor Swift's, you know wonderful body of work. There are practices, right, so ways that Swifties interpret and discuss and, you know, create in relation to the music that Taylor Swift produces. And then there is the community, which are people who self-identify as Swifties. So the idea of introducing my students to communities of practice is a way to kind of say, hey, like as a class we're a community, but I don't want you to imagine us as this, like sealed bubble right, where we're just doing things for the sake of doing them in our classroom to prepare for some eventual real world that you will enter into. Right, You're in the real world right now and you can write and produce and communicate in ways that reflect how actual communities engage with the world. So I introduced that concept of communities of practice as a way to get my students to begin to think about audience in a little bit more nuanced way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 2:And I fall into that trap too where I often tell kids you know, when you get into the real world it's like but you're right they are in the real world, you know, and they have very relevant experiences and they can communicate and they do communicate and I think to your point, it's it's cool to to help them realize that they are communicating in in different ways every single day and that's important and it matters, so that's, that's awesome. Can you briefly just describe the multimodal composition project that your students did in your class and it's kind of outlined in your article, but we'd love to just hear more about that, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So you know, that's kind of the very beginning of what I do is introducing students to that idea of communities of practice. So over the course of the year we kind of select different communities and we look at the types of genres that they use to create and compose in. So, for instance, instead of just writing a persuasive research paper, we are positioning ourselves as nonprofit grant writers and we are thinking about how we can make some sort of position paper as a genre to stake a claim and make an argument about a particular topic. Or we are student journalists who are going to create a class paper. So each unit and this is when I was teaching our writing workshop course each unit centered around a particular community and the genres that they use to communicate and create in. And you know, this multimodal project unit was at the very end. So it was like, okay, you know class, we've now been exposed to these different communities, the way that they create and communicate their ideas. And now I want you to find and think of a community that you are a member or participant in and consider what types of texts and genres they create in. And you are going to create whatever texts that you would like.
Speaker 3:So you know, some of those students took up those more traditional genres that you know. They we experienced and explored over the course of the year. But some of them were, like you know, I'm really into D&D, so, like the genre that I'm going to choose and the discourse that I'm familiar with is Dungeons and Dragons, so I'm going to make a campaign manual and I was like that's awesome. Other students did like YouTube video essays. Other students, like the ones who I focused in on this article, created podcasts and we had played with some of these other means of representation earlier in the year where we would do some sort of multimodal remix.
Speaker 3:So after we did that position paper, which was very academic, thinking about that scholarly community, they remixed it and then made a TikTok or a short form media is what I called it where they were thinking about a new audience, right, but taking the same content and repurposing and remixing it. So over the course of the year we kind of scaffolded and built that up. So by the time they got to that project, they were able to pick any community that they were interested in. They were able to pick a range of genres and mediums and modes to communicate in and they had to create three different texts. So that Swifty group also wrote a blog and they also designed a website. So those are like the three different mediums that they communicated in. After doing research, asking themselves, well, what are the different ways that Swifties communicate, what are the different genres and mediums that they use to engage in conversation and to create content around Taylor Swift's music?
Speaker 2:Very, very cool, and it just comes to me that you're assessing them in different ways, which just helps some of our students who aren't always the best writers, or writing isn't their thing, but you're giving them a chance to still communicate in different ways, which is so, so awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, that's totally true, and there's one student in particular who comes to mind who struggled to produce much writing and we did so many things to try to support her and get her to be composing, and I think that we moved the needle. Video that the student made was incredible and it was very clear that it was like the thing that she got to. She's like I got this, this is what.
Speaker 3:I do and it was amazing. You know that's not to discount the importance of helping move the needle with their, with their composing of print, but you could tell that that student felt really empowered in that unit and they got oh wait, wait, I can do this thing, I can write. I just need to kind of flip the script in terms of what I think about composing to be so that can be a really powerful way to boost students' confidence and begin to understand they are already effective communicators and composers. We just need to think about how they can, you know, apply those skills to other modes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you hit the words out of my mouth Like that confidence piece is so important for students, especially if they've gone through school and haven't felt that, so that's, that's really, really exciting. So in your article you talk a little bit about design analysis framework. Can you just kind of explain this framework and then how did you use it to help students with with this project?
Speaker 3:For sure. So it is actually based off of some research that my doctoral advisors, dr Bill Cope and Dr Mary Clancy, have done. And what I love about their work is these kind of six questions that I pose to my students are actually come into massive books so they like go deep for the folks who are ready to go deep and then, you know, for my eighth graders, I'm like let's just take these five questions that they pose and the kind of conceit of these questions and that what I kind of loved about them is they are questions that can be asked of any text. So every single text and I'm thinking I'm talking about text in the broadest of senses.
Speaker 3:A text is a TikTok, a text is a Shakespearean sonnet, anything that has meaning, that can be read and interpreted. And these questions are ways for us to begin to think about the way that they are designed. So it's looking at the content, so like what are the meanings that are present within a text? It's looking at structure, which is how is a text organized, sequenced or laid out. It's looking at design elements, so like what are the semiotic choices made by a text creator? So it could be like, you know, using certain punctuation in a sentence or like a jump cut in a video that a student is making, and those are what I kind of call like a textual lens.
Speaker 3:So you're just looking at the text. What are the choices that appear within the text itself? Then, if we want to think rhetorically, we can kind of look outside of the text a little bit and consider context, so the time or place in which a text is situated. Purpose, which is the reason for a text production, and then agency, so who are the producers, consumers or communities engaging with the text. So, again, you could apply this design analysis framework to a, you know, a classical canonical novel, or you could apply it to, you know, a YouTube video that your students like. And these questions are a jumping off point or a point of departure to begin to understand the meanings that that exists within it. And it's a really cool moment for students to begin to see oh wait, I can use this framework for anything that I come across right, whether it's academic in nature or more from my life world.
Speaker 2:And I can imagine, and I'm sure you probably did this throughout the year, but like if you started the beginning of the year giving them this framework to kind of work, from then, the more you use it, the more they get it, the more they just start using those questions automatically in their work.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly, and what that does. Going to our point earlier about students who maybe struggle in those more traditional academic genres, it gets them to understand that, like they're designing texts every day. I'm like, you know, when you are DMing your friend on Snapchat, you are asking yourself you know what am I going to say? What's the content? Right, structure, how am I going to organize whatever it is? I say Design elements. You know what emoji am I going to use? Right, apparently, the cry emoji.
Speaker 2:Not cool anymore, as a millennial and I use it every day.
Speaker 3:Sorry, and the context of that would be well, because we're Gen Z students, we don't use that anymore, right? So it's that time and place and the purpose is like why are you DMing that person? What are you hoping to get out of that dialogue? And then agency, you know who is involved in that conversation. Is it your group chat, right? Or is it you and one other person, right? So we can take that same way about something that they understand very intimately, just their daily conversation on social media, and use that to analyze. You know, like I said, like a Shakespearean sonnet or something you know, modernist poetry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's amazing, very, very cool. So it sounds like your project was kind of an end of the year project, which you mentioned, and your students had been working on all these relevant skills kind of all year. So what did your students have to learn before they were ready to kind of create this multimodal project with a community in mind?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question and I think it goes back to this idea of giving them a lot of different opportunities to use this framework.
Speaker 3:So every time I introduced a new genre to my students they would find three mentor texts, or I would curate three mentor texts. I really love Alison Marchetti and Rebecca Odell's Teaching with Mentor Textbooks. I highly recommend that and essentially what I did was take those same kind of ideas that they had and just pour it to sort of a multimodal world. So students would then read whatever mentor text that we were doing in that genre. They would look at the content, structure, design elements, context, purpose and agency. There's a Google Doc that's hyperlinked in the article if folks are interested and the students just fill that out. And over the course of the year you know we read five or six different genres of text that the students eventually wrote in. So by the you know they had had almost 20 iterations of using this framework and you know in the short term for each unit it helped them understand well what you know what is journalistic writing or what is a position paper, and we would kind of develop a understanding of how genres operate based on using this design analysis framework. So once students kind of have that understanding, you know, it helps them understand individually those different genres and how they work and function. But over the course of the year it begins to help them kind of understand. Oh wait, there are these different patterns and conventions that exist across all genres. And again for my student who was really into D&D, they're like there are patterns and conventions that exist across you know Dungeon Master manuals that I can leverage when I am writing and composing. So it's really kind of empowering for them to kind of see that. So I think that that is part of it. The other part of it is exposure to multiple tools that they can use to communicate and express their ideas.
Speaker 3:I think that one of the more pernicious, if well-intentioned kind of myths that exist in a lot of teacher education spaces is the whole like digital native idea that, you know, just because students are on technology means that they know how to make a podcast or to produce a video essay or, to, you know, use tech in ways that we are employing it in our classroom. So by giving opportunities for students to use as other like modes of expression and scaffolding those skills, students are then able to really use them, you know, in a flexible, dynamic ways at the end of the year. So that's something that I've learned a lot about.
Speaker 3:Where, you know, I'm really into podcasts myself, so I've been having my students podcast for quite a while and some of the early mistakes that I made were just assuming, like you guys are Gen Z youths, you know how to make the podcast, and they're like, actually no.
Speaker 3:So you know what they would do now is, when we introduce podcasting as a genre, they would listen to three podcasts, analyze their content, structure, design elements, context, purpose, agency and begin to understand what are the moves available to me as a podcaster, right? Or what are the moves available to me as a student journalist? And that's kind of the power of that framework is giving them this repertoire of ways that they can communicate and understand in different modes and in different genres. And by the time you get to the end of the year, I didn't really have any students who were like I don't know what to do or like I don't know how to do this, because we had scaffolded that work for the whole year and they were really able to kind of choose their own adventure, but to do so in an informed way.
Speaker 2:Sure, you gave them a bank from which to choose from, which is kind of amazing, and I love that you brought this point up because I have made that mistake. I'm sure many teachers listening have made that mistake that it's just like yes, of course Gen Z knows what podcasts are.
Speaker 2:Of course they know how to make a YouTube, but they don't always. And you might want to and they might find that type of product really engaging, but we also have to give them the tools to be able to do that. So that's a really awesome point you made there Great. So your article also points out the creative, subjective and situated nature of the student's end product. What was kind of your method for assessing work, both fairly and then also effectively?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, this is the eternal question for all things, creative and multimodal, and I will provide my best.
Speaker 3:You know here's how I'm doing it.
Speaker 3:But this certainly is not a definitive answer and I think this is an ongoing thing, both in the research and in the classrooms that I am in and that I consult with.
Speaker 3:So what I kind of want to focus and emphasize and discuss in the article is focusing less on analyzing students' creativity or their products themselves, like the fact that they are creative and situated means that, like our ability to recognize, as teachers, who might not be embedded within that community or fandom, the choices that they make can kind of be limited. Right, they might do something that, as a teacher, I'm like oh, this was a, you know, a poor design choice, but for them to like no, no, no, like in the food talk community, this is what they do. Right and creative comes down to the fact that, like, what we deem as being good or effective is kind of subjective, right, but that can kind of turn into what I, you know, have oftentimes myself doing, which is, well, it was cool and creative. So, like, here's an A, and if it was so I'm like maybe a B plus. I don't know it could have been more creative, but how are we qualifying what that means, right?
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 3:What I do instead is focus on intentionality, right, because my goal isn't necessarily for my students to become amazing podcasters or video essayists or, you know, magazine creators right, that's not really within my purview. But what I am really concerned with and what I do really care about is do students understand how to enter into a situation, ask themselves, how can I communicate effectively, what design choices are available to me and can I make those choices with intention? So I do what's called a what, why and how reflection. So students have to select what design element or choice that they made. So, for instance, this student would be like I did a music fade in. Right, that is what I, the choice that I made. And then how? Okay, how did it work and function within your episode? Right, it transitioned from the introduction to the episode starting. And then, why? What is the reason for your doing that? You know I wanted to prompt my audience that this was a new chunk of the episode that I was recording, and what I am really assessing is the level of intention behind their choices. So I do this for every single creative project that I do. My students last year did a short film that they recorded, and they did that for the camera angles that they used, or they did it for their costuming, like you know. What design choice did you make? How did it look in your actual text? And then, why did you make it so? By assessing the level of intention behind their choices. What I'm focusing less on is, you know, subjectively grading their creativity, and what I'm more focusing on is do you understand the choices available to you? Can you make choices with intention? And even if the artistic product at the end isn't amazing or beautiful, you're demonstrating to me you understand the affordances or like the choices that are available to you in different modes and genres, and that you can use them based off of your audience. Right, and that brings it back to the composing with communities in mind, right.
Speaker 3:What we might deem ineffective as a communicative technique, as teachers who are not in the know of whatever fandom or discourse our students are in, might be really effective.
Speaker 3:And just as a quick example, at my school we have this thing called intersession, which is between our fall and our spring semester, and we kind of co-create courses with students, and I did one with one of my colleagues on pizza, and one of the products that the students made was a food TikTok and I was talking to my colleague and she's like I found it really distracting that they were kind of doing this voiceover of them, like not talking about the fact that they were making the food, and I didn't really think it made sense.
Speaker 3:And we talked to that student and she pulled up food TikTok and she's like no, no, no, this is what we do. This is like a genre convention of talking about something unrelated to the food that we are making and we were kind of like oh, okay, right, and that shows again, my goal is not for students to be great. You know, video composer TikTokers, my goal is, like you have this audience in mind, you're seeing the design conventions that are used and you're taking them up yourself and you can explain why you did that and why that was rhetorically effective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and it kind of takes me back I love that you're making them give you the why, because it's like all of our standards are like site evidence, site evidence, and so you're basically having them do that, but from within themselves, which is really really cool. It's great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I mean, and that why is huge.
Speaker 3:And I think that one of the problems historically with the way that just general writing instruction is done in English language arts spaces is the why is because the teacher told me and that is, those are the rules of quote, unquote, good writing right.
Speaker 3:And I and we kind of like bury the lead when it comes to like well, you know why make that choice? And that's the importance of foregrounding audience right, because effective writing right, nevermind effective communication is about understanding who your audience is and what the conventions are right. Somind, effective communication is about understanding who your audience is and what the conventions are right. So we just tell our students, you know this is what good writing is, because historically, these are the types of papers and conventions that have existed in academic writing. And you know, the issue is that is, students don't really have a flexible understanding. So, like, when you ask them, why a new paragraph break here, why are you citing evidence there? And they're like I don't know, I want an A and that's what you told me to do. Right, instead of like no, this is a convention, right, or a pattern that are used by, you know, literary scholars.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, very, very cool, I love it. So some of our listeners are probably thinking you know, this is an awesome project, I would love to do this. But they also feel like they can't fit a large scale project like this into their school year anywhere. Do you have any ideas for teachers on how they could kind of adapt the approach into smaller projects or units?
Speaker 3:100%. So if you are in a you know a school district where you have a more traditional curriculum and you're like there's a novel that we're going to teach and then there's a paper that we're going to write, you can still use the design analysis framework as a way to have students look at mentor texts. So find examples of what you regard as high quality writing, and they could be student samples from previous years. I've actually had my students do this with real pieces of literary criticism you know as a high school teacher and they analyze the content right. What is being said in this essay, the structure, how is this essay organized? Instead of design elements, we just call it craft, right. So what are the craft choices made by the author? And then, so context, purpose and agency gets a little trickier if you're pulling from, like, your student samples. But if you're using a piece of like literary criticism or you're using like, maybe an article from the New Yorker or something like that, it also becomes a way for them to be thinking about those kind of rhetorical choices. The core way is giving students the ability to do that kind of reading of mentor texts. So, the same way that doing that with podcasts, help them understand the repertoire of choices available to them as a podcaster. Now, it's, what are the repertoire of choices available to you as somebody writing an analytical essay?
Speaker 3:And as far as the communities part, one of the other things that I do in my courses as a high school teacher is I talk to my students about you're going to be little proto literary scholars and the community of practice that we are operating from within is one of literary scholars. So the choices that we make aren't because these are the rules of writing handed down from on high, right, that is, those are the conventions of our community, right? Here are the tools that literary scholars use, that you will use in your analytical work. And, again, going back to that, why it helps students feel like these aren't rules that are being, you know, imposed on them arbitrarily, but it's like no, if you want to join this community, you want to have a dialogue with it.
Speaker 3:A literary scholar would and I have my kids like blog and cite each other and all kinds of stuff. It's positioning them as you know, humans who are doing authentic intellectual work, even if it's obviously not the same quality of a literary scholar. Right, it's positioning them in that authentic way. So you know, my students, after we have a more traditional novel that extends into essay unit, we actually compile their writing into like a little literary journal and I have them like write abstract. So we have, like you know, mr Alios, we call it like the tiger's eye because my school mascot is the tigers right.
Speaker 3:So, it feels like it is a little bit more extra work, but even if you are again having a traditional curriculum, you're still positioning students as being part of a community and you still have them produce an authentic text that looks like something that exists in the real world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean you're just totally like reframing it for them and I love that and I, you know I mentioned the very we're going to get the podcast. That EB is like all about engagement and I think when we, when we take these types of ideas and we reframe learning for kids, it does just produce more engagement, which then we can just fit more in. When students are engaged, you can just fit more in.
Speaker 3:Totally totally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I love it. That's awesome. So for teachers who may kind of have to be careful about what content they allow their students to access in school, do you have any suggestions for how to help students kind of explore topics and genres without giving them unrestricted access to the internet? Are there kind of any resources or maybe approaches you might recommend?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So one of the ways to do that is to curate some articles yourself. I know that can be kind of time intensive. I know that there are some resources out there that have curated lists of different types of texts in different genres. I'll share the link with you to put in the show notes. But I've actually been working with some other researchers on coming up with a huge list of mentor texts for different digital and electronic genres. We call it Hack your Stack, so we're kind of riffing on NCTE's Build your Stack, so I'll share that link with you. And then we have links to podcasts, web comics, video essays, hip hop and a few other genres. So that's something that we're actively working on because I think that is the challenge right.
Speaker 3:And I'm having my students do kind of a similar project right now and I'm having that same question of how can I make sure that you know, even if it's like less, I'm okay with them having access to a bunch of stuff. Question of how can I make sure that you know, even if it's like less, I'm okay with them having access to a bunch of stuff, but how can I help have some guardrails up for quality, right? Cause one of my students was like Mr Elliot, is this a good source? And I was like this looks like something from like a college essay paper mill that you can like pay $9.99 for like a really mid-tier essay. So probably not Right. So I don't have like a perfect answer for that.
Speaker 3:But, it's a good question. I think that the answer is curation, and one of the things that I'm actively working on is curating things to share with teachers so they don't have to do that work themselves, because I think it's the most valuable but also the most labor and time intensive part of writing and multimodal composition is giving kids mentor texts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, we will love that link and thank you for doing that work, because I think you're right, it's very needed and we appreciate that, so awesome. Well, we're kind of wrapping up our time together, but I just wonder if you kind of have one idea or one action step that our teachers might take if they want to try a project, a multimodal composition project like this, with their students.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know I've been harping on it a lot already, but I think that just giving kids that design analysis framework template is a really good starting point. It could take like one class period if you curate examples and you just have them fill out that Google Doc and once you've done that, I actually come back together with the students. There's like three sections at the bottom where you have students share all the different variety of mentor texts that they've read and it's like okay, looking across this whole genre of you know text, what are examples of things that people write about content wise, what are examples of ways that people begin, organize in the middle and end whatever genre or mode they're communicating in, and then what are all the design choices available? So, again, that could be done for a more traditional kind of writing unit or if you are doing something multimodal, it's a really good way to help students have a repertoire of choices and understand all the different ways that they can communicate in a different mode or genre that otherwise they wouldn't be aware of. So I think that that is probably the key thing.
Speaker 3:I also think introducing communities of practice, just in general, is a good practice, just giving them a definition of what communities of practice are. I share some communities of practice that I'm in and I ask them to consider communities of practice that they are in, and through that conversation, students actually catch on pretty quick. It's pretty intuitive Once you begin to share a bunch of different examples. I'm like, oh yeah, like I'm in the Taylor Swift fandom. Or I'm like I'm like in the Bills Mafia a bunch of kids that are like really into football right, so they're like they get it because these are the things that they do every day. And by really foregrounding, that is the way we're going to think about audience in this class, and then using the design analysis framework as a way to set up, here's how we're going to talk and think about text, communication and composition in this class. Those two tools really are at the heart, I think, of this article and of this sort of more situated multimodal approach to writing and composing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fantastic. I will just say, just during our time together and reading your article, I was an eighth grade ELA teacher and I just like go back and I'm like there's so many ways I could have used that framework and communities of practice and it just makes me want to go back to the classroom. So I know our teachers are just going to find this so, so valuable. So thank you so much for that Again, everybody, we'll link the article in the show notes and we'll link your hacker stack. Is that what it is?
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, yes.
Speaker 2:Hacker stack as well. Yeah, Because I think that'll be super helpful for everybody. So awesome. Well, Trevor, thank you again so much for being on with us. We really really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Thanks. I really enjoyed it and feel free to reach out if anyone has any questions or wants to discuss.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you so much and we'll see everybody next week on the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. Bye for now, everybody.