Episode 382: The First Writing Routine You Should Teach After Break (It Makes Everything Easier)

Coming back from break can feel overwhelming—for you and your students. In today’s Teaching Middle School ELA podcast episode, we’re sharing the very first writing routine you should teach when you return, and why this one simple shift makes everything feel easier. If you’re looking for a calm, confidence-building way to reset your writing block and set the tone for the weeks ahead, this episode is for you. 🎧✨ 

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Well, hello teachers, and welcome back to another episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. Today we're talking about the first writing routine you should teach after break. It's gonna make everything easier. And interestingly enough, it doesn't include students actually writing anything. So I'm excited to share this idea with you and hope that you can implement it today if you're listening to this on your way to work or perhaps tomorrow and get it going in your classroom. Alright, let's dive into today's episode. Hi there, ELA teachers. Caitlin here, CEO and co-founder of EB Academics. I'm so excited you're choosing to tune in to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. 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. So before we dive in, I really should take a picture of the situation that I'm recording this podcast episode in right now because my son is asleep in his room. My dog is a puppy. He's three months old and he sleeps in a kennel in my room. And my office where I normally work is like right in between those two rooms. And my house is really not really tiny, but it's on the tinier side. It's small. Like we're all right next to each other. And I can't risk waking anybody up to record this episode because I'm recording it at night. And I'm sitting downstairs in my freezing cold basement next to my laundry room in a robe, sweats, like slippers. It's a on a on a little white chair with my computer on my lap and the mic on top of the computer. It's a whole situation. But we gotta get the episode up for you guys. So we make things happen. Okay, so the topic for this episode is I really wanted you guys to have something that you could easily take back to your classroom this week, especially after, you know, coming off of a long break, students forget a lot of things. And what I originally was gonna talk about was, and I still feel this way, how important it is to dive right back into the evidence-based writing approach or the EBW approach that we call here at EB, which is evidence-based writing. So we're talking about having students formulate claims, premises, find evidence from the text, and justify their reasoning. And normally I would suggest, or this what is what this episode was going to be about, was to do like a detective lesson as you head back. So if you're an EB teacher, um, you might be looking at things like the mystery of the missing gifts or the bountiful case or the mystery of the stolen pearls or whatever it might be, some sort of mystery activity that doesn't that makes it so students feel like they're not doing any writing, but they're practicing the skills of writing, if that makes sense. However, I wanted to give you something that was like super, super simple and actionable because we hosted our three-day writing workshop last week. And one of the things that I discussed in that workshop is how often we can actually provide feedback to our students in their writing when we're actually in class discussions or in the day-to-day of what students are doing in our class. And so what I want to give you this tip for is to have it just in your mind on a daily basis, if students are talking about what they are reading about in your class and they are forming any sort of opinion in any sort of discussion, whether that is a whole group discussion or a small group discussion, or maybe they're in little groups working on an activity that is based on the text, or they're doing silent discussions or whatever it might be. I want you to always keep in mind ensuring that students are providing a strong piece of evidence and then justifying their reasoning. And this is in their actual verbal responses, in their speaking responses to you. So they're not necessarily writing anything, but they are practicing the skills of finding strong evidence and justifying their position when they're just talking about the literature or the texts that they're reading. So, what this might look like in class for you is let's say that you head back this week and you decide like you're just gonna jump right into a novel unit or a short story unit or whatever it might be. Like time is of the essence, you gotta get things moving, and you can't do a week of evidence-based writing review. Fine, no problem, I get it. We have to do what's sustainable and is reasonable within our limits. But let's just say that you are reading any sort of text. It doesn't matter what it is. Literature, informational text doesn't matter. And you are going to talk about that, right? Like students aren't just reading it and then you don't talk about it as a class. You're gonna read an excerpt or you're gonna read a piece of text or whatever it might be. Students are gonna do some sort of activity that requires them to discuss the literature or the informational text. And what I want you to consider keeping at the forefront of your mind is providing students with the types of questions or types of activities that ask them to formulate a plan a position, which is their claim, that gives makes them give provide a reason for their position, which is their premise, and then find evidence from the text to justify their reasoning. And as students are discussing in any capacity in your class, doesn't matter, whole group, small group, whatever, silent debate doesn't matter. You are going to consistently ensure that students are choosing the strongest piece of evidence and that they are explaining why. And a lot of times what this simply looks like is so-and-so raises their hand, they share their idea, their concept, or whatever, and you can give them real-time feedback on their thinking by continuing to ask them why. Well, why do you feel that way? Can you explain how that piece of evidence supports your position? I don't quite totally understand. Can you maybe rephrase it in a different way? So when we're talking about students like struggling with justification, well, my question to you is, are you only giving them the option to practice justification when they're writing a full-blown essay in your class or when they're working on like a very specific writing assignment for you? Because if you are, I think you're missing a huge opportunity in giving students real-time, easy verbal feedback when they're simply discussing in your class. You know, a lot of times in my first couple of years teaching is I spent a lot of time trying to get them to go down the path to the answer that I wanted them to get to for the test that I was gonna give them. And granted, like I was 22 years old, I was doing the best that I could. But now I think about it from the perspective, and in my later years of teaching, it's like I really want to try to understand where my students are coming from. And they really need to be able to connect the dots between their piece of evidence that they chose and the position that they're taking. And that simply comes from you asking further questions and asking them to connect the dots right there in real time. And if a student struggles with it and they can't connect the dots, well, then maybe there's a hole in their reasoning or their thinking, or maybe they do struggle with justification, and that's where you can help guide them towards how maybe you would think about that. So if they totally miss the mark and describing why their piece of evidence supports their position, and you're asking them, you know, guided questions, well, can you explain this? Or how does this piece of evidence and not totally sure how maybe this is the best choice, you could give them, oh, you know what? I kind of see what you're thinking here. Is it perhaps like X, Y, and Z? And so you're modeling for them what strong justification looks like. And what I love about this is that you're not necessarily like explicitly teaching anything. It's simply just in the way in which you are asking follow-up questions of them and um gosh, what's the word I'm looking for? Clarifying questions of them so that they're given the opportunity to really practice explaining themselves. And so it's not a like routine that you're gonna do every single Monday or that like students are gonna write for the first five minutes of class. Like, no, that's not what I'm asking you to do. I'm asking you to do something that is so much simpler and easier for you to give real-time feedback to your students in the classroom on a daily basis, every single time they're discussing a piece of literature or informational text in your class. And that's it. It makes your life easier, it helps them become stronger writers, and it is just as long as you have intention and focus on this is my goal for today when we teach this class, when I teach this class, is for me to ask my students to clarify their reasoning and to continuously be asking why. Can you explain further? Can you connect the dots for me? I'm not totally following. Because it's gonna make such a difference for your students and it gives them literally daily practice and understanding how to justify their reasoning. So that's it. Simple tip, first quote unquote writing, not really writing, but first writing routine that I'm gonna invite you to begin to implement like today. All right, here's to a new year, you guys, and I'm excited to see you next week on the podcast. Reminder that Monday mindsets are airing every other Monday. We're gonna continue to air an episode every Tuesday focused on something to do with curriculum or classroom structure or whatever it might be. And then we will also be airing a bonus episode every month. So if you love the new format, please send me an email and let me know, or post in the e b teacher community if you are a part of our membership. And our email is hello at ebacademics.com. All right, you guys, have a wonderful rest of your day, and I will see you next week on the podcast.