Craft & Draft

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching.

Today Pam and Jacob are joining to talk about—what they say is often overlooked in conversations around education—advocating for kids and yourself.

Sometimes, you have to take a stand on something. It could be for your own learning, the learning of your students, or maybe even a practice you want to try or bring into your classroom. Some teams are accepting of these moments, and others aren’t. Either way, we must push to do what’s right for us and the kids in our care.

Let’s discuss!

The post #93 Advocating for Kids and Yourself appeared first on Craft & Draft.

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. 

Jacob explains how an era is over and how his last day of school went saying goodbye to his students that helped him write his book, Writefully Empowered. Let’s just say that everyone left with tears in their eyes.

Jacob asks Pam why she had a successful year. She responds by explaining how her students read daily during her Reading Workshop. They built stamina, responded to their reading and concluded the year by thinking deeply about their reading. She also shares how she prepared the students for their test by treating it as a separate genre.

Jacob encourages teachers to train their students to read deeply and make connections with their reading. Teachers must provide tools for their students to become better readers.

Join Jacob and Pam while they look back at their success and what they learned from them.  Think about your success and build a plan for next year, too.

The post #92 Learning from Success appeared first on Craft & Draft.

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. 

In this episode, Jacob and Pam answer a listener’s questions:

How do you go about choosing what writing goes on the wall?  

Jacob is outstanding at celebrating his writers by covering his wall with their pieces throughout the year.  When teachers display their students’ work, especially their writing,  it demonstrates how much their work matters and how their teachers value the work.  Jacob shares his experiences when his teachers celebrated his work as went through school.

Advice regarding Looping:

Pam shared how she looped with students, but in different subjects.  She discusses how looping impacts students deeply and allows them to bond to each other as well as their teacher.  Jacob demonstrates how he and his students have moved beyond a community and became a family of learners. He is sad that his students are moving onward and they are too.  When students bond to their teachers and their learning communities, they work for their teacher.

Join Jacob and Pam while they discuss the writing on the wall and looping for success!

The post #91 The Writing on the Wall and Looping appeared first on Craft & Draft.

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. 

In this episode, Jacob and Pam answer a patron’s question: How do you say a proper goodbye?

Jacob will be saying goodbye to the students he has looped with from sixth-seventh grade during a tumultuous Covid season.  They bonded more than some of his other students in other years, so they are experiencing a difficult time. Therefore this question deeply resonated with him.  He shares how he is using reflection, and how he is leaning into their successes.

Pam shares how she is also leaning into the content to help the students to feel prepared for the next year.  She also shares some techniques she has used in years past.  She mentions what she is planning to do to help close the year.

Join Jacob and Pam while they discuss their own struggles and plans for giving their students a great send-off into the summer!  Maybe some of these ideas will help you send-off with success!

The post #90 Saying Goodbye appeared first on Craft & Draft.

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching.

In this episode, Pam throws off Jacob with an answer to a question he was NOT expecting. This gives way to a lengthy discussion about the value of stories, books, and what makes something “literature.”

Definitely a philosophical episode, but one that has real world and classroom repercussions.

Join Pam and Jacob as they think through the complex world of how classroom teaching, industry, and beliefs collide!

The post #89 What Makes a Book Literature? appeared first on Craft & Draft.

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. 

In this episode, Jacob and Pam realize this is a time for reflecting about the year. It has been a great year! 

Pam discusses how she is framing her lessons during this time.  Her students are reading whole class novels, self-selected books from her classroom, writing responses to their reading, and reviewing data driven test preparation. She explains in some details what she is doing each day in her workshop. She plans to have her students reflect on their growth after they complete the state standard.  

Jacob does not want to overkill test prep, so he wants the students to recognize how much they have grown as readers and writers. He explains how his students are working on a reflective project where the students reflect upon their writing and reading growth.  He wants his students to understand who they are and recognize how much they contribute.  He shares a quick-write activity that helps them determine how they connect to their world.

Join Jacob and Pam as they continue to balance their workshop with authentic reading and writing lessons with test preparation.  Remember when the stakes are high trust the writing and reading! 

The post #88 A Time for Reflection appeared first on Craft & Draft.

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. 

Jacob and Pam share a lesson that Pam completed in her Reading and Writing workshop using both the Craft and the Draft books.

They discuss the lesson and how Pam began by teaching a mini lesson about how to analyze an argumentative text.  She shows how she begins with the standard, teaches the lesson and how her students practice the craft of analyzing a text. 

Pam shares an example of students’ Draft book and shows how the student applies what they have learned from their reading analysis.  Jacob asks her questions regarding the lesson and how it would apply to younger students.

Join Jacob and Pam while they model the Craft and Draft system. May it help you implement the system for your readers and writers, too!

Catch the VIDEO of this lesson by supporting us on Patreon! 

The post #87 Lesson Walkthrough with Pam Ochoa appeared first on Craft & Draft.

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. 

NTCE published their position statement regarding multimodal literacy and its place in the ELAR curriculum. Jacob and Pam discuss the article and their thoughts about how to incorporate the multimodal approach into the writing workshop.

Jacob shares how he encourages students to write within a variety of genres. He shares how he uses a multimodal approach to move students into a way to create their own form of writing. Pam discusses how creativity helps students to grow.

Jacob enjoys supporting students to explore composing a variety of media forms; however, he questions how it should be implemented without decentralizing writing.

Join Jacob and Pam while they discuss the article and its implication for teaching literacy. Check out the NCTE article and let us know what you think!

The post #86 Discussing the Latest NCTE Position Statement Part 2 appeared first on Craft & Draft.

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching.

NCTE recently released a position statement on media in English Language Arts. For the unfamiliar, they often release statements like these. Essentially, detailing their beliefs about education, the research behind their stances, and what to do about it.

This most recent statement has created a stir in the English teacher circles, however, and has been a hot topic of discussion.

The statement discusses the need for access to tech and for English classrooms to focus on multimodal forms, but it also talks about “de-centering” books and other forms of print focused pedagogy.

What are our thoughts? Join us as we dive into a good chunk of the statement and discuss!

The post #85 Discussing the Latest NCTE Position Statement appeared first on Craft & Draft.

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. 

In order for students to infer and understand deeply what they are reading, they need background knowledge, such as vocabulary, literature, current events and experiences.

Jacob and Pam discuss why background knowledge is important to teach their students. In this episode, they discuss how each of them approaches how they include opportunities for their students to learn background information during their reading workshops.

Pam shares how she utilizes her Smart Board to enrich her students’ reading experience as they read The Outsiders. Jacob includes his thoughts on why access to a variety of genres is a way to ensure his students develop their understanding of a literary world which in turn develops stronger readers.

Join Jacob and Pam while they share why building background knowledge and using cross-text selections to develop strong readers and so much more!

The post #84 How to Build Background Knowledge appeared first on Craft & Draft.