Screen Shot 2013-10-02 at 7.13.24 PMToday we kicked off a third year of writing study with the Hudson Valley Writing Project. This year the teachers are working on a focused two – four week project. The intent is to create a learning scaffold by using multi-genre writing strategies that leads to a digital essay as the culminating event. In his book, Crafting Digital Writing (2013), Troy Hicks, writes about the composition of non-linear text and “the use of hyperlinks, embedded media, and other features that make web-based texts dynamic” (p. 35).

Mid-morning the teachers got a glimpse of crafting a digital essay. Kristen Magyar modeled the process using Google Docs. Then the teachers wrote their own personal essays with hyperlinks to webpages, blogs, videos and music.  During the afternoon the teachers began to plan their project. Bonnie Kaplan provided the teachers with a list of multi-genre strategies (based on the work of Tom Romano , Fearless Writing: Multigenre to Motivate and Inspire (2013), and Stephanie Harvey, Nonfiction Matters: Reading, Writing , and Research in Grades 3 – 8 (1998)):

Illustration

Ad/Commercial

Collages

Cartoons/comics

PSA

News story

Journal Entry

Blog Post

Email

Tweet

Status Update

Obituary

Sketches

Editorial Cartoons

Poster

Photos/Caption

Graph/Chart

Travel Poster

Wanted Poster

Speech

Essay

Digital Essay

Folk Tale

Fairy Tale

Memo

Eyewitness Account

Editorial

Letter

Interview

Commentary

Contract

Lab Report

Written debate

Poem

Play(Scene)

Monologue

Song Story

TV/Radio Script

A day in the life

Grocery list

Recipe

Menu

Artistic Genres

Working with Kristen Magyar (Instructional Technology Coach) and Sheri McNair (Library Media Specialist), the teachers identified a topic and talked about the strategies and the resources that they will need to execute the project. Our next meeting is October 28, where we will examine student work and talk about the best assessment practices for learning products like the digital essay.