ELA in Color

Jumping into the role of a writing coach was a bit unnerving, considering how little experience I had (outside of peer/friend reviews) critiquing others' writing. Over the years, I have come to associate the revising and critiquing stage of writing more like "dotting your i's and crossing your t's" and was worried that this would end up becoming my major focus as I read through my student's submissions. I wondered if I would be able to separate the stereotypical "English teacher tendency" of finding grammatical errors from the heart of a writing coach's job, which is working alongside our tutees to hone in on and evaluate parts of their writing such as thesis, structure/organization, development, and tone/voice. These, as McAndrew and Regstad categorize as Higher Order Concerns, "are important in the tutorial because they are central to the piece of writing...improvements in these areas can dramatically change a piece" (42). This may se...

I can't say that I have a ton of experience with digital multimodal composition, but my interest is definitely piqued. I remember using some of the more "basic" programs such as PowerPoint, Prezi, and Canva throughout middle school and high school, but I am eager to find ways to implement more than just images and text into how I communicate and express my literacy skills online. Things like PowerPoint presentations and Canva infographics set the foundation for students to explore the visual aspect of literacy and storytelling, but there are also factors such as sound, video, space, and movement that encapsulate the full potential of digital multimodal storytelling. Two genres I believe encourage this and have the potential to meaningfully engage my future ELA students are digital storytelling and book trailers .  Digital storytelling asks its creators to think beyond how just words alone tell a story and invites them to consider what sounds, images, videos, and transiti...

 As I have previously shared, writing hasn't always been an easy, carefree process for me. I take a lot of pride and ownership in what I write, regardless of whether it is a Facebook post or an English essay. In both of these activities, I am technically engaging in Flower and Haye's three identifiable writing stages- planning, composing, and revising- but I think it's fair to say that much "more" goes into writing an essay, especially when it comes to the planning process. When I am writing something like an essay or response, I must gather my thoughts and begin to organize/prioritize them through something like an outline. This outline doesn't always look the same, however; sometimes it's a "traditional" worksheet-like document that is neatly separated and my ideas are hierarchically divided, and other times it is a messy jot-down of ideas that I collect throughout the days in my notebook. However, it is important to understand that these outl...