Voices of NABE: Promoting Writing Fluency

[00:00:00] Justin: Hi everybody. Welcome to the ML Chat podcast. We had a chance to meet so many amazing members of the ML community at the 2023 NABE Convention in Portland. We asked them about many of the most pressing topics for multilingual educators, and we are excited to share their responses and the insights from those conversations with you. We hope you enjoy this episode and the following episodes as we dive into these conversations.

[00:00:32] Justin: We get to hear from Claudia Muni a teacher from Gadsden Independent School District down in New Mexico.

[00:00:37] Interview: to help ’em with their fluency when it comes to writing, I usually have them complete bell ringers at the beginning of the class, or also have free writes available for them as well as journal activities.

[00:00:50] Justin: Tim, what jumped out to you from what Claudia shared there as far as what she does to help building writing fluency with her students?

[00:00:57] Tim: Oh yeah. Yeah. Thanks Justin. It’s so great to hear from Claudia. Especially, you know, when you think about just the opportunity that. Claudia is providing for her students to practice writing in a low stakes environment. Um, Justin, are you familiar with the affective filter hypothesis?

[00:01:15] Justin: I’m a little familiar with it, but probably not as familiar as I should be.

[00:01:19] Tim: That’s what came to mind when I heard, Claudia share is, having an opportunity in a low stakes way, just to think. And write. And, by offering bell ringers and journal activities, there’s actually an opportunity to practice a multitude of genres, a multitude of different types of writing in a low stakes way.

[00:01:39] Tim: And for me there are three themes to unpack here. As firstly just the notion of practice getting students comfortable in writing, really exercising their endurance with writing, sitting with the discomfort of writing, persevering through that and coaching students through it.

[00:02:00] Tim: The second part of that is, related to the bell ringer. Routines in class are so important and, starting your school day or, the class period off with a structured routine really are, the foundations for, setting the tone in class.

[00:02:16] Tim: And so by having a bell ringer the students understanding what the expectations are you really frame and situate the rest of your lesson for success. And you know, it occurred to me, Justin, that. Much like we’ve discussed on prior podcasts, there’s a relationship here to the three moments, right?

[00:02:33] Tim: Three moment lesson design, bell ringers that kind of really lean into a student’s background knowledge that encourage students to dig in what they know and their life experiences. And to really bring into class the language they already have. That’s just a, wonderful formative assessment opportunity for teachers to see what students can know and do with minimal prompting.

[00:02:58] Tim: And so we’ve discussed, practice, low stakes practice. We’ve talked about, building schema, building background and then, thirdly and related to that prior point is. What does all this information provide for teachers? You know, As you circulate in the classroom and you see what students are doing, the strengths they bring into class, the language they bring into class.

[00:03:19] Tim: That is information that can directly inform the lesson that day. And, that’s information that I can use to make adjustments where necessary, or perhaps that’s information, that I’ll use to drive my subsequent lessons or even small group differentiation if I see an area that requires specific attention, say.

[00:03:39] Tim: A particular grammatical form or perhaps a misconception with a concept? Again, this is just, real time evidence. We talked about the formative assessment process. This is evidence that we can use either in the moment or after the fact to make instructional adjustments.

[00:03:56] Justin: I love that idea of kinda low stakes, right? Low stakes, giving students a chance to take some risk without, being too worried about. What might necessarily happen from it. That, that was, that’s definitely been something top of mind for us as we’ve been building Flashlight 360 is trying to, give students a chance to speak and write, with a low effective filter.

[00:04:16] Justin: Is that the right way of thinking about that and saying that,

[00:04:19] Tim: It is very much. Yep. That is the same concept, right.

[00:04:23] Justin: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:23] Justin: the other thing I love about, I mean you talk a little bit about routines here with the bell ringers. I also love how it’s like building momentum right out the gate of the classroom, right out the gate, students are producing language, right? They’re using their brains to create ideas and communicate and write things down, and that just feels like it sets the tone for the whole class period.

[00:04:43] Tim: Oh, it really does. Routines even in a high school class are so critical. I’m sure you’ve been in classrooms where routines are absent.

[00:04:55] Tim: So when you see the non-example, it’s oh yeah. Bell ringers, and depending on where you are in the country call them bell ringers. Or perhaps you’re like me and you’re from in the New York City area. We call them. Do nows. Do nows that always makes me chuckle.

[00:05:10] Justin: right now actually.

[00:05:11] Tim: do now.

[00:05:13] Tim: Yeah. like to do it with a schwarzenegger, like a Schwarzenegger accent. Do it now.

[00:05:19] Justin: that, that was amazing. Oh, I love that. Yes. That’s what they should be called from now on. Everybody has to announce it that way. Oh, will you say that one more time? Give it to us again, Tim.

[00:05:30] Tim: I do it now.

[00:05:32] Justin: Oh, I love it. I love it. Thank you so much. Oh my gosh. Okay. This is great.

[00:05:37] Justin: All right. Next we’re gonna go to McKinney i s d in Texas.

[00:05:42] Justin: We’re gonna speak with and hear from Nicole Alvarez. Nicole is an English learner Support elementary coordinator.

[00:05:49] Interview: The best bet is to use sentence stems, especially at the very beginning if you have newcomers. it’ll build confidence for them.

[00:05:56] Interview: Because they’ll have something to copy and then they can add their own afterward. And even once they become pretty fluent setting in stems are still very helpful to just increase the fluency in writing.

[00:06:06] Tim: Justin, did you hear Nicole? Sentence stems. And this came up in our last podcast , on, oral language fluency. It occurred to me as Nicole was sharing, is that we are all academic language learners. And, given the demands of our common Core standards or, our state learning standards, our students have to express themselves, in, different registers across myriad contexts.

[00:06:31] Tim: It really requires us as teachers to, understand and be very clear and explicit about. What those language forms actually are. And you know, it struck me that Nicole’s point about the sentence stems, it’s actually pretty related to yes. What we discussed last week. And there’s a connection to what Claudia had shared in the prior segment.

[00:06:53] Tim: And that is as students are like negotiating . New ideas and making meaning of texts. We don’t wanna constrain that too much with a sentence done. However, when we want to give our students the opportunity to actually practice a specific language form, we have to be explicit about that.

[00:07:12] Tim: And that’s where Nicole’s point is so important that we really need to offer our students targeted time to actually practice the academic language forms we want them to use in their writing. And there’s a, kind of an underlying principle here. Justin are you familiar with.

[00:07:29] Tim: Language performance in contrast to language proficiency?

[00:07:34] Justin: I don’t think I could necessarily differentiate between the two of ’em. I could definitely try, but no I not necessarily.

[00:07:40] Tim: Yeah, it’s the, it’s basically, language performances, practicing and learning new language forms. With the intention that over time with enough practice We appropriate those language forms. And this is all about the invitation, Justin.

[00:07:56] Tim: the chance to practice these language forms in context and that’s what I really appreciate about Nicole’s point.

[00:08:04] Justin: And so if I’m a teacher, Nicole talked about specifically, using it with newcomers to start and what a great tool it was. And then she said, but it can also work well, with students that are more fluent. I’m interested . Where am I gonna use sentence stems in the classroom?

[00:08:18] Justin: Am I using it as a part of my do it nows or am I like, where am I, the bell ringers, or am I, where am I using my sentence stems? As I’m building writing fluency with my English learners.

[00:08:31] Tim: Sure. Yeah, you can. Certainly use them in your do nows. You can use them in your bell ringers. But again, we want the sentence stem to be like a little bit of a headstart, that is, giving them a little language frame Sure.

[00:08:44] Tim: But then making sure that stem isn’t rigid.

[00:08:48] Justin: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:49] Tim: It removes the thinking. For instance, I’ve seen sentence stems that just feel like a fill in the blank instead of a little push. And it’s that little push that I like to offer to students as a way to just encourage their thinking into taking their thoughts and offering them just a little bit of language to get it started..

[00:09:10] Justin: And so the idea with, with the sentence stem is really just to reduce the cognitive load to get started. To reduce the amount of effort it takes to just get moving and using my language or kind of help nudge me in a direction Is that fair to say?

[00:09:23] Tim: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that’s certainly part of it. And I think ultimately though it’s helping students understand The grammatical, forms to express lots of different ideas, right? And so we can adjust our language we can adjust our word choice based on our audience, our task.

[00:09:43] Tim: And our purpose. And that’s really why our, irrespective of where you live in the country, our various English language proficiency standards really prioritize, the language function, language form and,, word choice. Being able to adjust to word choice based on register and context.

[00:10:03] Tim: And Nicole’s point is like, How aware of that are you as teacher? How aware are you of that across the school day? Because that’s dynamic based on the context and the sentence stems offer lots of targeted practice that students need in those various, it’s not static, it’s dynamic.

[00:10:23] Justin: And we wanna invite them to perform and use new vocabulary and try these different things so they can gain proficiency. I love it.

[00:10:30] Justin: Thank you Nicole for sharing that. teeing us up for such a neat conversation around sentence stems.

[00:10:36] Justin: All right. Next, let’s go here from Jacqueline Larios. She is a teacher in Deer Valley Unified District in Phoenix, Arizona.

[00:10:45] Interview: Like I said, I, with having eight different languages, it’s hard to know where to start, especially at different proficiency levels. So I start every day with 10 minutes of reading. They can read whatever they want, any language they want, and then we always do 10 minutes of writing and again, I say, as long as they’re answering the prompt to some degree.

[00:11:03] Interview: They just have to write for the 10 minutes and once we do that, we share a little bit and, turn to your partner and kind of talk more about the prompts and I pick silly ones or maybe something that’s happening in current events. Or like this week I had them complete a story like walked into the grocery store and blank and just had them finish.

[00:11:21] Interview: So I think just having something that’s very low stress helps because they’re able to have their own thoughts. And so that’s how I’ve tried to help build their confidence and hopefully to get them out of their shell.

[00:11:34] Justin: All right. Thank you Jacqueline. And we get to hear again about the importance of just having routines in the classroom. And Tell me, Tim what kind of jumps out to you when hear a process like that about students reading and then writing versus just, for example, earlier we talked about the do nows of sentence stems or bell ringers.

[00:11:52] Justin: What jumps out to you about this process about being a little bit different?

[00:11:55] Tim: Yeah, thanks Justin, and thank you, Jacqueline. A number of things that jumped out at me as firstly, Jacqueline, thanks so much for sharing the routines that you use. And then the prior segment we talked about the importance of having a predictable routine that students can, settle into in class.

[00:12:11] Tim: And so I could actually visualize it and I appreciated how Jacqueline anchored in that. And then, she also mentioned just the variety of different writing prompts. That’s also such a great idea to offer students. just a multitude of different opportunities to practice language across of, variety of genres, right?

[00:12:32] Tim: And for, a variety of uses. It struck me is that it’s, you know, again, returning to this point about having a low stakes way. to practice writing in a comfortable space. So again, we return to this point of having kind of a low affective filter, right?

[00:12:48] Tim: And an opportunity to build that endurance. And really the joy, right? like building some joy in writing because, For many students, it can be a real challenge, right? And again, by lowering the challenge, but lowering the effective filter and encouraging students to put their thoughts to paper.

[00:13:07] Justin: Well, And it, strikes me that after, students had read and had written and gone through this process, it would be easy to Open up the class for someone to share out what they wrote about or to read maybe something that they wrote or turn to your neighbor and share as well and continue the conversation and continue to use that language.

[00:13:26] Justin: There’s probably a variety of different ways, to kind continue the exercise to some degree.

[00:13:31] Tim: In Jacqueline sharing about the relationship between the reading and the writing. There’s an instructional strategy that, probably seems, like pretty intuitive, but called quick writes.

[00:13:43] Tim: And basically using that as a way for students just to think about a particular concept. To collect their thoughts as it makes sense to them with, little framing in terms of sentence frames, just to get your thoughts on the page so that then they can share their thinking and build on their thinking, through interaction with their, like elbow partner.

[00:14:05] Tim: I love using quick rights because it’s just a way to encourage some independent processing time. And then through that intentional moment to share thinking with a elbow partner, there’s an opportunity to get to second thoughts to extend your thinking by actively listening to your peer.

[00:14:23] Justin: Oh, I love that. I love that being able to go a little bit deeper, quick writes that’s fantastic, Tim. Thanks for sharing that.

[00:14:30] Tim: And there’s other like really cool activities that you can use to build on that. Using Quick Rights as a foundation, turn and talk with your partner. Go back to your quick right to add thinking onto your original quick write. To get to second thoughts and then go back and share your thinking.

[00:14:48] Tim: And you can use this as a sort of iterative loop basically to inform later you know, other forms of writing tasks. So you use that as your foundation, but then by the end of class, you have a product that has really added a lot of thought and connections to text.

[00:15:06] Justin: Gosh, what a fantastic process, right? To be able to work through and just help students go deeper with their language. I love that.

[00:15:14] Justin: We have heard from so many wonderful people here at nabe. Now we get to hear from Kimberly. Kimberly is from West Valley, Utah, my neck of the woods here in Utah.

[00:15:22] Justin: let’s hear what Kimberly has to share about building writing fluency.

[00:15:26] Interview: We practice writing like every day. Normally they have a journal where they write about what national holiday it is. And so what I do to help them with that is I put like a question up on the board and they answer it every morning.

[00:15:41] Interview: And sometimes specifically for students who speak just Spanish, I also allow them to write it in Spanish. And if. People have extra time. my sister have extra time, they normally trans language it, so they turn it into the opposite. If they wrote in Spanish, they write it in English. If they wrote it in English, they write it in Spanish.

[00:15:58] Interview: So I do a lot of that every day.

[00:16:01] Justin: Oh, that’s fantastic. I love hearing from Kimberly. Tim when it comes to translanguaging and students taking the time to write, in their heritage language and in English and translanguaging back and forth. What are some of the benefits of that in the class?

[00:16:16] Tim: Oh, that your home language is an asset. I absolutely loved this piece from Kimberly. And how by creating intentional space for it in class. Kimberly has created a culturally responsive space for students to use all of their language to respond to a prompt. first of all, I just to say I would love to be in Kimberly’s class. Um, and of course her response shares that, like having the routine of it. We practice writing every day. And I can’t emphasize the importance of that enough, and by deliberately creating that space in class, students get to practice all of their language in a variety of ways.

[00:16:55] Tim: And so when you think about it in terms of classroom environment, that is where a student gets to be their full self in the space. And then if you’re to think about it in language terms by creating that culture of, biliteracy students get to practice, language forms in both of their languages, making connections across.

[00:17:14] Tim: Both of their languages and that really just fortifies, the linguistic repertoire and really validates the linguistic repertoire of all of our students.

[00:17:23] Justin: That’s what came to my mind is from a validation standpoint or just like an identity standpoint, right? Is the valuing my, all of my language that I can bring into the classroom here. And not necessarily isolating one and putting the other on the back burner. I love that.

[00:17:38] Justin: I love that idea of being able to recognize all of the language that a student, brings with them. All right. Next we’re gonna go to Laura Raymond. Laura is from El Paso, Texas.

[00:17:50] Interview: I notice that my students uh, really have a hard time when I tell them, Let’s go ahead and write. They have a hard time, thinking, or they won’t go past a sentence or two. So what I do is I take pictures of the most memorable moments.

[00:18:03] Interview: In our classroom. For example, we did dance Los MUTOs. They were dressed up they painted their faces, and then I get the pictures and I give each student their picture, and then I tell them, okay, there’s a million things you can write about this picture. Go ahead and start writing. Mm-hmm. And this way they have plenty to look at.

[00:18:22] Interview: Yeah. And to write.

[00:18:23] Tim: Justin, I think I get to ask you the question this time because I think there’s a direct connection, I believe, to what we just heard and into Flashlight 360. And you know what I heard there is. A kind of a two-part comment. One schema matters, right? Having background knowledge, matters and familiarity, and we’ve talked about this in, prior segments that by offering students you know, rich stimuli that basically gives them the space to dig into their background, their, to their schema to show us what they already know and what they can do. And the other part is just the value of rich stimuli. And, it got me thinking about flashlight and I was hoping you could, speak to us Justin, about the way in which you’ve incorporated those two elements into kind of the design and flashlight.

[00:19:14] Justin: Yeah, no, definitely. As Laura was talking, I was thinking, oh yes, this is perfect. This is exactly like what we’ve done with flashlight. one of the biggest things for us is we wanted to give students something to talk about, right? Something that they could relate with that, was meaningful to them, that they had background in.

[00:19:29] Justin: And in flashlight 360, teachers can select an image that is from the classroom or from an environment or from the, whatever subject that they’re focused on right now in their classroom. Content, area teachers can go and grab whatever image that ties in with the unit that they’re covering at that moment, and, Really the goal is just to extend the conversation, give students something to talk about.

[00:19:52] Justin: We have them go through and they can use, all of their language to label what they see and prepare their mind to start talking about it. Cuz as Laura, mentioned, you can take it in any direction. There’s a million different things to talk about potentially.

[00:20:05] Justin: And really it comes down to what language does this student have. And what can they bring to this work? And in that moment, we wanna honor that, right? It’s not about what they don’t have, it’s about what they do have and about us understanding, what is this student capable of?

[00:20:21] Justin: So anyways, the image really does kinda create this inviting opportunity because it gives them something to talk about. They’re not having to just think of it out of their own mind, per se. so it makes it. Very approachable, I think, for kids.

[00:20:34] Tim: Yeah. An image that they can relate to. And again, that’s like inherently culturally responsive. It’s not just good, teaching practice for serving multilingual students. It’s validating teaching practice. And Laura, thanks so much for that comment. And Justin, thanks so much for sharing about the connection to flashlight.

[00:20:52] Justin: Oh, thanks for asking, Tim. What a pleasure for me.

[00:20:54] Justin: Wow, Tim, what amazing conversation we’ve been able to have today. So grateful for Nicole and Jacqueline and Lara and Claudia taking the time to kinda walk through, , their best practices of getting their students writing and getting them going. What has jumped out to you today, Tim?

[00:21:13] Tim: Yeah, Justin, I, I think, they were like three themes that really, came up for me as we listened to our colleagues. firstly you got to thinking about just the importance of having a really, quality stimulus. Right. Um, you know, something just to get the students, thinking, and to, provoke their writing.

[00:21:33] Tim: topics like relevance really comes up for me. and this is kind of related to the second takeaway, and that’s the connection to our students’ lived experience. And, um, actually we heard this from, Laura, in how she described, you know, taking, uh, photos of their classes shared memorable moments.

[00:21:53] Tim: Right. And what came up for me was just like, oh yes, like the value of our students, lived experiences by. Sharing photos, that are kind of like close, to our students, experience, they’re more readily able to access the associated language. So it was sort of like the, the beauty and the power of, schema, right, of accessing that schema and then practicing, writing or speaking task, but again, able to access that common shared vocabulary.

[00:22:23] Tim: the third point that occurred to me, is just the importance of having, daily dedicated time and space for writing. but the crucial point here is in a low stakes environment where, students have the low affective filter to, practice, their productive writing.

[00:22:40] Tim: And so there you have it. Justin, you know, for me, Three takeaways. the importance of having a quality stimulus. the value of student schema. Right. and thirdly, that daily dedicated time and space.

[00:22:53] Justin: I love it. Thanks for kind of unpacking that and kind of working through that. I’m excited to take each of these and chat about them a little bit more here. But one of the things that really sticks out to me is, you know, in building flashlight, our goal has always been to provide students with, images that can work as a prompt, right.

[00:23:09] Justin: And allow the students they go through and they label first on that image and, almost create their own scaffolding. And it’s been fun, to work with a lot of different districts. I mean, now we’re working with over 200 school districts across the nation and. We have a lot of them request something specific that maybe we don’t have an image yet in our image library, so we’ll go out and find it or create it, for that teacher.

[00:23:31] Justin: and it’s, been so fun to hear back from them just because, of exactly what you’re talking about here, of helping students access, their schema based on, this image that is related to either their culture or their experience or whatever that might be. And so it’s been really rewarding to see that.

[00:23:48] Justin: And, when you’re talking about, the quality stimulus, that’s what we’re thinking about. Like we have a world class artist that’s creating these, or we go and

[00:23:55] Justin: find amazing photos. And so it’s, it’s been fun to kind of work through that.

[00:24:00] Tim: Yeah. And when we reflect on what Jacqueline shared and certainly what Laura shared, You know, for me, there were real connections to what, flashlight offers. And, for instance, it was sort of a passing mention, but, uh, Jacquelyn shared that she has eight different languages, in her classroom with, of a variety of proficiencies and, a connection that I made, but actually the flashlight is like, yeah, like having a tool that offers each of those students, the space and the security to, to think, and write, with a, with a rich stimulus.

[00:24:33] Tim: So, you know, like what you’re doing there and the art that you’re developing is I think, really connected to that rich stimulus, right?

[00:24:41] Justin: Yeah. No, I love that. Thanks for making that connection. Yeah. It’s interesting to me to listen to these different, educators, our colleagues here and, and think about the different ways that they’re approaching it. But there was some similarities or there was a common thread through them to some degree, which was. You know, kind of what you’ve broken down, right? Having the quality stimulus matters, we have to be able to get students talking. You know, I think about when my kids get home from school and I’m like, Hey, how was school? That was good. What’d you do? Nothing. The quality of the question matters, right?

[00:25:14] Justin: Or the quality of the prompt. And, not to make this all about flashlight, but like, one of the things that we found interesting is in the earliest days, all we were doing was, you know, we had kind of a title and that teachers could put to that particular performance task.

[00:25:27] Justin: And a lot of teachers would put, questions in there or a prompt of some sort. And then we realized like, Hey, we can adjust this. So we built in a way for them to prompt for. Speaking and then maybe a different prompt for writing, or sometimes it’s the same. and as we look at, all the prompts all the work that students are doing across the nation with flashlight, it is amazing how much that quality of the prompt really does matter.

[00:25:50] Justin: And, to get students speaking, I mean, first and foremost, let’s just get kids talking as much as we can. Let’s give ’em a chance, give ’em a platform to do that. and then we can start optimizing by, you know, making those prompts just a little bit better. You know, when you’re thinking about prompting students, we talked a little bit about this already, but what are some of the things you can do to make sure that you do have a quality stimulus right.

[00:26:11] Tim: that’s such a thoughtful question. this did come up actually in the conversations, you know, with our colleagues, um, and. it, as far as like the quality of the prompt goes, I heard from our colleagues about the value of keeping it kind of like close and, close to the student’s lived experience right?

[00:26:30] Tim: Now, that’s not always going to be, like, universally you have the case, but if you’re looking for a writing routine to get students, they have thinking and, and making connections, it is, a valuable place to start. Right? writing as a, as a vehicle for thinking.

[00:26:47] Tim: that proximity to the students, that experience is really a kind of a crucial, place to start. something that, that occurred to me, was actually some, wisdom shared by a mentor of mine, and it’s the value of why and how questions, just to get students, pushing to, to greater depths of thinking that, linguistically, it’s a heavier lift, so to speak, to explain why and how, versus, what and when.

[00:27:15] Justin: and it’s funny to take this back to my kids again, but when I think about, the questions they ask me and they want to know why, and then why I’ve got a, my son Lincoln, just like, he loves asking that why question. And when he goes deeper and deeper and deeper, and sometimes like when you’re in the middle of that, you’re like, ah, I don’t really like, wanna explain all of that right now.

[00:27:34] Justin: I’m just trying to get this done. You know? because it is a cognitive love, like it takes more, right? You gotta go deeper

[00:27:40] Tim: But there’s a curiosity there too,

[00:27:42] Justin: Totally,

[00:27:43] Tim: Yeah. Like a natural curiosity. and I think that, again, going back to the question around prompts, it’s trying to harness some of that, right? yeah, again, like it’s also, underneath all of this is the value of routines.

[00:27:57] Tim: Justin, you know, like flashlight or not, you know, a flashlight can be a wonderful tool within a daily routine for speaking and, and writing, and, Even, without flashlight as a tool, like, you know, what we’ve heard from our colleagues is the value of having, a, a daily, routine.

[00:28:15] Tim: Like a predictable structure, for students to, build their writing proficiency in a safe space. So, what that looks like, either from the, from the bell ringer to independent writing time or, or journaling that really, depends to each of our colleagues for kind of establishing those routines.

[00:28:34] Tim: But, you know, from day one in class, it’s really building that muscle, through, predictable structures.

[00:28:41] Justin: it’s amazing how important those routines are, right? Like in the classroom and in life. I mean, if you have something that’s maybe a little bit hard to do, if you build it as a routine and something that you do consistently, it becomes easier. Right?

[00:28:54] Tim: no question. Oh yeah. I just had like this most amazing professional learning experience. Um, at the start of the summer, I got to attend a week long, quality teaching for English learners workshop with Aida walking. And everything was in I did, did not hear English during the school day all week.

[00:29:14] Tim: Right. And, apart from having a totally, like, wrapped around her finger, something that I noticed that Aida did was that her pedagogy was basically recursive. She used routines. in a cyclical way that throughout the day we were exercising, speaking, and writing really as a means for thinking.

[00:29:36] Tim: Right? She would use prompts just to pull us back into our texts, to pull us back into, to themes, to expand our thinking. and she used, predictable, speaking and writing routines, to get us doing that. So, starting with quick writes, independent quick writes to partner share to a four, um, uh, she called it.

[00:30:00] Tim: Uh, so it’s basically like a round robin, in a group of four. And then you come to Consensus and then everybody stands and each table shares their consensus around the room using, Talk routines, like novel ideas only. But again, what felt clunky on day one, by the end of day one, everybody had the routine

[00:30:20] Tim: and we used that throughout the week.

[00:30:22] Tim: But again, a connection I made to what our colleagues shared about the value of routines.

[00:30:27] Justin: I love that. I love that. You know, gosh, this has been so much fun kind of talking through this and, unpacking, these responses from nabe. what an awesome time being together. Tim, thank you so much for kinda working through this, thinking through this, and I cannot believe you got to have that experience.

[00:30:44] Tim: I feel very fortunate. Yeah.

[00:30:46] Justin: yeah. That is so cool, man. Well, maybe we should do an episode and just unpack that and talk through that and, we’ll find someone else to ask you questions and you can do it all in Spanish since,

[00:30:55] Tim: I have copious notes. It wasn’t really, um, Beautiful experience, but I think, in hindsight, has direct connections to what our colleagues at Nave shared. Again, like the quality prompts, and AIDA would probably add the value of quality texts as well. Right. that we’re talking about relevant topics.

[00:31:15] Tim: Right. Um, that inspire curiosity. just like Lincoln.

[00:31:18] Justin: That’s right. That’s right.

[00:31:20] Justin: Just like Lincoln,

[00:31:21] Tim: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:22] Justin: why and how Questions the value of that. Hey, well thank you everyone. Thanks for tuning in to the ML Chat podcast. Um, thank you to Nicole and Jacqueline and Laura and Claudia for contributing to this conversation and helping us unpack, how to really help drive writing and focus on writing in our classes and with our multilingual learners.

[00:31:43] Justin: we’ll look forward to, to our next one. I think we get to do another one of these where we unpack our interviews from our. Our NABE friends, so we’ll look forward to seeing you on the next one. Thanks everybody.