Program Design

Creating Multimedia Persuasive Commentaries: Adaptable Resources from Let’s Talk About Election 2020

Summary: This resource contains materials and discussions originally created for the KQED Let’s Talk About Election 2020 campaign, but would be useful to anyone who is looking to give students an opportunity to engage in topics, issues, and/or controversies that are relevant to their lives and their communities. The lessons...

New Teachers in Urban Contexts: Creating Bridges with Teach For America Teachers

Authors: Dina Portnoy and Tanya Maloney Summary: This article examines how the Philadelphia Writing Project partnered with the University of Pennsylvania and Teach for America (TFA) to provide new TFA teachers with an additional week of focused training before they entered the classroom for the start of the school year....

#StayinTeaching: Pathways to Writing Project Leadership for Early-Career Teachers

Authors: Vicki Collet, Amanda Coughlin, Jean Hill, Katie Hill, Tyler McBride, & Kristina Packard Summary: Written as part of the Building New Pathways to Leadership initiative, this narrative and accompanying resources tell one site’s story of building a pathway to teacher leadership for early career teachers. Site leaders interested in...

Sustaining Work with New Teachers

Summary: Teacher leaders interested in supporting early career teachers may find this resource useful as it describes how several National Writing Project sites developed programs for teachers new to the profession.  Originally supported by NWP New Teacher Initiative grants, new teacher programs were integrated into the ongoing work of the site....

Sustainable Practices through Purposeful Partnering at Shoreline

Author: Steve Pearse Summary: This article describes the successful, longterm partnership between the Puget Sound Writing Project and the Shoreline School District that focused on improving student achievement in writing. Following a model of a year-long, embedded invitational institute, P-12 teachers engaged in writing, working in writing groups, and conducting...

Enabling Communities and Collaborative Responses to Teaching Demonstrations

Author: Janet A. Swenson, Diana Mitchell Summary: This monograph explains a useful protocol developed by Red Cedar Writing Project for responding to demonstrations in the Summer Institute, called the Collaborative Responses to Teaching Demonstrations (CRTD). This response takes the form of a letter to the person offering the demonstration, thus...

Planning a Cohesive, Year-long Program with a Partner School: The Arc of Professional Development

Authors: Jane Frick, Tom Pankiewcz, and Terri McAvoy Summary: In this NWP webinar, teacher leaders from the Prairie Lands Writing Project share specific examples of the steps they followed to develop and implement a yearlong intensive professional development partnership. The webinar begins with a discussion of how site leaders approached...

Reading, Writing and Revising in Digital Spaces: Oakland Writing Project’s Literacy Webinar Series

Summary: In partnership with the Oakland School District, the Oakland (MI) Writing Project developed and hosted an online webinar series focused on revision. Links to all of the webinars, resources, and related readings for the 2015-16 series (Revision: the Heart of Writing) and 2014-15 (Reading and Writing in Digital Spaces)...

Joined at the Hip: The Joys and Travails of Teaching “Linked” Courses

Author: Matthew Teorey Summary: This article features one university’s program offering “Freshman Learning Communities” in which two instructors from different disciplines work together developing curriculum by coordinating two sets of complementary readings and assignments. In this cross-disciplinary approach, a community environment helps the students succeed in their freshman year. The...

Building LRNG Badges: Beyond Graphics

Author: Paul Allison Summary: This resource offers access to two in-depth discussions about LRNG playlists and corresponding online assignments/tasks leading to badges that youth receive for their career-based digital work. Teachers in the New York City Writing Project talk through the Badge Builder on LRNG in the first video. In...