all around, and creeping

self righteous, let’s say it, fascism,

how else to say, border

—Dionne Brand, from “Inventory”

Introduction

I believe that being aware of and valuing my own story is placed critically at the heart of my teaching–as argued by Nieto (2003) we must first consider our own heritages, experiences, and family histories if we are to focus directly on our students. Nieto perhaps most aptly describes this approach through reference to a quote from another bilingual educator, Laura Gibson–“Teaching is an encounter with the self” (25). Thus, my unit content is informed not only through my students’ respective identities and my chosen seminar–Children’s Literature and the Immigrant Experience–but also through my own identity, and my abridged teacher autobiography that thus informs the background of my inquiry.

Story of the Question

This is my second year as a learning support teacher at Science Leadership Academy high school, and my fifth year teaching students. I grew up in California, where transient movement is less covert; in 2023, government statistics (Gramlich, 2024) noted a record high of 250,000 “migrant crossings” at the lines legally separating the United States and Mexico. I thus grew up with many friends from Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, and the cultures of the Americas were much more explicitly enmeshed in my everyday life. In 2017, inspired by my interest in Spanish language and multilingualism, I moved to Spain. My time in Córdoba was punctuated by slower moments of self-reflection and ethereal strolls through mosques disguised as cathedrals, where I could observe where the north and south met to dance–occasionally a Flamenco, but with practiced diligence, I could make out a Shikat. I was thus drawn to the Spain-Morocco relationship, and noted many parities with the California-Mexico one.

Upon my return to UC Berkeley, I took a class on Islam, and my newfound appreciation for ideas around othering and belonging in connection with this class coupled with the current political landscape would go on to influence my teaching pedagogy and practices. The venn diagram, it seemed, extended across cultures and bodies of water; the linguistic and cultural pluralism of Morocco was echoed in my native California, where the majority of my students spoke Spanish at home, translanguaging and code-switching as soon as they stepped through one doorway, returning through another. I would go on to be the point person for these families, realizing what a privilege it was to have pursued my education in my first language, and reworking my own definition of education. Education, I decided, was deeply intertwined with community. I began to ensure that I was uplifting students’ interests and centering their respective identities, by surveying my students and families on their interests and passions, and would embed said responses within the curriculum.

These students–meaning, culturally and linguistically diverse students–are oft viewed as deficient when they do not fit neatly into the standards that make up the American educational system–that is, white people and their beliefs, experiences, outcomes, histories, and epistemologies are viewed as the norm to which all others are compared. This grew my curiosity of these transient spaces of being, in tandem with what it would look like to center my multilingual and multicultural students within the US schooling context such that their identities and cultures are given equal precedence. When I came to Penn’s Urban Teaching Apprenticeship Program, I was able to build my pedagogy around the latter. My students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds differed heavily from my students in California, and I thus began to rework my practice around these new identities. For my thesis, I focused on centering students at the intersection of culturally responsive pedagogy, socioemotional learning, and student-centered learning by conducting research within my classroom, the implications of which built the foundation of my student-centered praxis. My next goal is to explore the former: that is, how can my multicultural and multilingual students’ ways of being be explicitly uplifted as cultural capital to upset typical power dynamics such that they are the teachers?

In 2022, I began my current teaching position at Science Leadership Academy, learning the ropes alongside what is our current sophomore class. According to my colleagues, this year saw a large shift in our freshman class: we were encountering behaviors left and right, students cared much more about their social well-being than they did what teachers named as learning, and they most certainly did not bother with school work that they were not interested in. I saw this as a major turning point in a post-COVID world, with students noting discrepancies in academia and school more generally as compared to their goals, interests, and future job prospects. Thus, many students turned (and are turning) to social over academic capital, spending time outside of class, not attending school, and exiting the learning environment to spend time with novel found friends.

Many students, particularly those not on a four-year college track, feel disconnected from traditional curricula, questioning its relevance to their futures. Moreover, recent discussion among my students has highlighted the need for inclusive dialogue spaces and discussions of current social issues within the curriculum. In my position at Science Leadership Academy, I often have the privilege of working with students one-on-one. I am thus able to interview my students individually, to establish a baseline of students’ self-perceptions in school, to gauge student interest and disinterest in curricular practices, to assess students’ perceptions of teacher care, and to solicit student input. I thus began planning my unit through interviews of my students that are immigrants, second generation, or otherwise historically minoritized, to assess students’ perceptions of their self-representation in the curriculum, and their experiences with social interactions within the context of their schooling history, based on this piece of their identity. It must be noted that these interviews spanned all of their schooling experiences. I asked simple questions that prompted students to self-reflect, and the gambit of responses had spectacular range, from experiences of interpersonal microaggressions perpetuated by students–

“Why don’t you go back to your country? –“No, I was just joking!”

to overall curricular design–

“No teacher has ever asked me anything like that.”

“We never spoke about Latinos…”

“It’s not spoken about because of biased opinions.”

“If I could go back and know more about it in school, I would definitely like that.”

“Alot of people won’t put in the effort to learn about each other’s cultures.”

Many students felt there was no space for the enmeshing of cultures within school at all–

“But I did that at my old school.” [in reference to experiences at bilingual middle school that forefronted cultural exchange].

Overwhelmingly, my multilingual and multicultural students did not feel validated in their experiences, did not feel that they had space to share their stories and cultures, and thus did not feel in community such that they could be fully themselves. In response, my unit aims to center my students that feel unseen, occupying the transient spaces between cultures.

Foundations 

This unit is grounded in the belief that I am as much a teacher as I am a student of students. Teachers cannot teach what they do not know. I have spent a great deal of my life studying in various schools–nineteen years in eight schools, to be exact–and I have studied a great deal of theory. Yet, there is a clear discrepancy in what I have learned inside the classroom, and what I have witnessed outside of it, in what students have needed, and what I have been told to teach. Lytle (2006) argues that to reconceptualize the literacies of our adolescents, we must involve outside communities and build spaces of discourse about said communities; we must center the local.

My creative writing course thus endeavors to center not only my students’ stories, but their overall communities, and their sense of place. Students must be able to situate themselves within the world around them to be strong writers–what really matters to you, and who do you want to be in this world? Writer, know thyself. Thus, it is important that this unit is placed critically within the school year. This unit will take place in the second quarter of my creative writing course. The first unit, which provides necessary set-up, is centered around the theme of “Finding Voice”; students will build their confidence through daily check-ins and freewriting exercises; they will write daily in response to various cultural artifacts and prompts and read their work aloud; they will check their positionality while engaging with others; they will engage in place-based education. The latter is particularly important to detail; the others are expanded within teaching strategies.

Place-based education, in this sense, centers the local community as a rich site for inquiry, centering students and community members as resources and experts in their own right (Case, 2017). A critical place-based pedagogy, in addition to teaching the local, must listen through attention to students’ interests, and, “by examining texts, artifacts, and performances of local cultural production”, empower the local “by legitimating local cultural production as literature and art” (Ball & Lai, 2006, p. 262). Teachers must thus work to redefine the notion of what counts as art and literature; not only must they utilize the local community and environment as capital, but they must also work within the community to redefine the meaning of what is considered of value in the arts to begin with. Teachers might craft categories in conversation with students–as offered by Ball and Lai, designating conventional categories such as “national literature” and “national art” allow for distinctions amongst the local, regional, and national, “without implying that only one of them is the real thing” (2006, p. 280-281).

Critical place-based educators embrace nonconventional artifacts; place-based art educators embrace the work of “people who make things”, including “outsider, folk, naïve, and vernacular artists”, “artifacts of visual culture”, and “yard art” (Ball & Lai, 2006, p. 274). Critical place-based writing educators support students in exploring local histories, and participating in local opportunities including “ongoing community events, institutions, and issues through ‘neighbors’ stories,’ T-shirts, museum exhibitions, homeless shelters, garage sales, yard art, local parades, war memorials, and bulletin boards” (Ball & Lai, 2006, p. 274). These teachers, in addition to including written literature, include localized stories that stem from a sense of everyday life, such as in “local coffee shops, at family gatherings, and after church”, or in more traditional performance settings, pulling from “songs people sing at local coffee shops, hip-hop performances at local nightclubs, stories and poems that circulate in regionally published books, public performances of local church groups and other community organizations, yard art, traditional stories told by community elders, and other local, everyday creative practices” (Ball & Lai, 2006, p. 274-279). In this primary unit a variety of cultural artifacts are included, with no singular type privileged over another.

Conclusively, the goal of this unit is to help my students discover their own voices, but it is through a personal rendering of what constitutes high culture–is it the elite and strange that we must attempt to equate ourselves with, or might we recognize a broader definition of aesthetics and creativity that is far more inclusive and diverse? By centering the local not only are students more predisposed to form meaningful and authoritative connections with the various forms of art around them, but a greater conversation is initiated between the local [our students] and the larger politics of culture. Which cultural artifacts have warranted preservation, and which have been lost or forgotten? Which are exhibited, and at what cost, and to whom? Who decides, and who tells their stories?

Our students, our writers, must “feel ‘located’ in a particular community and must feel that their writing contributes” in order to write well and to strive for improvement, and should “look closely at the role writing plays in how we perceive places, at how places affect our writing, and at how our writing affects those places” (Ball & Lai, 2006, p. 283)–it is through a dialogic approach that we move forward towards change in any form. Ultimately, the goal of this creative writing course is to invest in one another as complex individuals, to cultivate a community where we all function as teachers and learners, recognizing the value of collaborative learning and cultural knowledge bases. June Jordan perhaps puts it best, “At last, I had become a part of an academic community where you could love school because school did not have to be something apart from, or in denial of, your own life and the multifarious new lives of your heterogeneous students! School could become, in fact, a place where students learned about the world and then resolved, collectively and creatively, to change it!” (Leon, 2016, para. 3).

Rationale 

This unit is centered on the topic of boundaries, borders, and sliding glass doors for a multiplicity of reasons. Boundaries function as an important topic in terms of personal boundaries, classroom expectations, and norms. Borders function as real or artificial lines that separate us from spaces, cultures, and community, or segment us therewithin, which many of our students experience on a daily basis. Sliding glass doors, as pioneered by Bishop’s (1990) “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors”, invite the reader to step through a doorway and into a world that has the capability to change them. I aim to complicate this definition through the scholarship of Freire and Rosenblatt as proposed by Johnson, Koss, and Martinez (2018). Rosenblatt focuses on transaction with text, not only in terms of intellect, but also in terms of emotional investment, and the emotional investment that is thus required for a reader to move through that door (2018). Particularly, she believed that students must be provided opportunity to think critically and thoughtfully to craft their own meaning based on their particular experiences and prior knowledge bases. Freire (1970) defined praxis as “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” and stated that when people consider the world critically, they are readily positioned to “intervene actively in reality…[and] are carried along in the wake of the change”. Thus, Johnson, Koss, and Martinez (2018) argue that moving through sliding glass doors changes readers, and often empowers them to take action. For the sake of this unit, sliding glass doors should thus be defined as such.

This unit aims to push boundaries not only through included materials and topics, but by design–this unit is centered on creative writing, often a contentious topic for teachers and students alike. It is worth noting that while the detailed lessons forefront children’s literature and poetry, all creative writing topics in this course center around students, and thus have the propensity to change in topic dependent on a given class’ interests. This seminar–that is, Children’s Literature and the Immigrant Experience–has placed great emphasis on curriculum as “metaphor for the lives we want to lead, and the people we want to be”. This informed my unit through what I designed, and how I designed it. I have always circumvented forms that I have less confidence in when it has come to creative writing (i.e., poetry). Additionally, in my own classroom I am a detailed planner; while the curricula I design are responsive to students’ interests and respective identities, I have not endeavored to design a unit based exclusively around student choice. Additionally, as a beginning career teacher, I have encountered difficulties when it comes to negotiating student-centered curricula with standardization. In many ways this has hampered my students’ creativity and my own ambitions, for how can imagination be fully realized when “current educational discourses seek to standardize the experience of students from diverse geographical and cultural places so that they may compete in the global economy” over social betterment of the local community (Ball & Lai, 2006, p. 273)? How can we push our students to be creative thinkers and boundary breaking writers, if foci is traditional academic writing, and largely external?

Dr Campano opened our first class by providing serial testimony of his experiences as a first grade teacher. He shared that during intensive academic testing meant to track, one of his students wet their pants and began breaking down, a prime example of symbolic violence and of the internalization of the nonconformity to American educational standards as failure, at the mere age of six. Standardized testing does not capture deep or creative thinking, to the detriment of our students, and it enforces a one size fits all approach to education, reinforcing to our students that there is always a singular correct answer and way of being. Nor do standardized tests measure exploration, experimentation, and discovery, and thus, in short form, “Students are rewarded for conformity, and punished for any deviation from it” (Cummings, 2017, p. 211). A re-incorporation of the arts, imagination, and creativity within English Language Arts instruction is necessary to nurture students as critical beings that will be well prepared for shaping their (and our) futures in life beyond school, and it is critical to an understanding of self. For the purposes of my unit, I have defined imagination and creativity as separate entities; that is, imagination is the power of thinking or dreaming up in a place of play; it is the source of our creativity and allows us to step out of the present. Imagination may take place internally, and might have no impact on the world at all. Contrarily, actualized imagination has tangible outcomes, and can be defined as creativity. Ken Robinson, a global authority on education in the arts and creative ways of being, names this as “imaginative processes with outcomes that are original and of value”–that is, “to be creative, you need to be original and do things that are of value in your culture” (Cummings, 2017, p. 211).

My unit aims to establish all of my students as writers and readers that stand in their power, and to crystallize that reading and writing are full of possibility–that there is no one right or correct answer, and that we are all already experts working together to make meaning. This unit is proposed for the second quarter of the school year. It is proposed for a high school English Language Arts or Creative Writing classroom.

Content Objectives

Within this course, by the end of the year every student will feel more established as a confident and creative writer; as a teacher and learner within our classroom; as a member of our classroom community and culture that is supportive, rigorous, and communal; as an attentive and interested listener and speaker with others; as a critical and more worldly reader; and as a thoughtful editor and reflector. Students will gain insight into the historical and cultural contexts of local issues; they will also appreciate the profound impact of culture on identity formation, recognizing the ongoing struggle of biculturalism and the influence of popular culture on individual perspectives. Students will explore the unique languages and storytelling traditions of different cultures, developing an understanding of the complexity and evolution of language and culture over time. Through this unit and course, students will come to understand that anyone can be a writer, regardless of background or experience. They will recognize writing as a powerful medium for storytelling and will understand that storytelling is a powerful vehicle for resisting injustice.

Within this unit, by the end of the quarter every student will feel more established a critical reader of both familiar and previously unseen oral, written and visual texts and artifacts; students will contribute to communally create a living archive of multicultural texts that best inform their individual project(s); they will read for craft and then collectively define elements (voice, imagery, characterization, and arrangement).

Ecology of the Creative Classroom

In this context, I reference the ecology of the creative classroom in terms of how students physically relate to one another on a daily basis. Chavez (2021) argues that body language can significantly impact the dynamics of a workshop, often reflecting power imbalances and reinforcing systemic biases. An inclusive writing space begins in how we position ourselves physically. Teachers must thus build communal norms within the classroom community from the beginning of the school year.

Kay (2018) notes that to cultivate a safe space within a given classroom, considerable focus must be given to students who are not speaking: “First, hands should not be raised while someone is still talking. When a teacher calls on one student to speak, the rest of the hands in the room have to go down. Any student who does otherwise is communicating to everyone in the room that they don’t care about the person who is still talking. That raised (and sometimes waving) arm is saying, “I wish you would shut up! I have my own thing to say!” This behavior sparks an unnecessary rush for respondents…” (Kay, 2018, p. 18). He secondly proffers that the speaker should never be interrupted, for no matter the reason, the effect is drawing focus from the speaker. Beyond these foundational expectations, body language can be negotiated based on a given class and its respective students’ opinions. At the beginning of the year, these expectations should be established through discussion that continues throughout the school year: what makes you feel deeply listened to?

Ecology of the Urban Community

Place-based writing is employed within this course and further expanded upon in the Foundations section of this unit plan.

Incorporation of Children’s Literature

As discussed by Dr. Campano and visiting scholars of our course, there are many forms of literacy; while we view pictures as a stage to writing and literacy in terms of human development, they are already literacy in of themselves. As discussed by Sipe (1998, p. 68), “In a picturebook, the words of the text and the sequence of illustrations contribute equally to opportunities they provide to make meaning.” }|This unit will thus begin with an incorporation of children’s literature, through the usage of The Arrival by Shaun Tan. As discussed in our seminar course, The Arrival by Shaun Tan essentializes the immigrant experience to be more broadly applicable, and calls the reader in to identify with the immigrant protagonist. This text underscores the continual negotiation of life in uncertainty; the protagonist must negotiate potential opportunities, critical challenges, and the crossing of borders–linguistically, relationally, culturally, and nationally.

Writing Workshop

My course utilizes a decolonial framework of writer’s workshop, as proposed by Chavez (2021). Chavez aims to complicate the traditional workshop model to center the sidelined narratives of people of color, women, queer, differently abled, and gender-nonconforming artists. My students will dictate our required course readings based on their personal interests and writing goals; as stated by Chavez, “The living archive does not exist until my students’ create it–every workshop participant contributes to our course of study, selecting one art object to share: audio, image, text, or something in between…” (Chavez, 2021, p. 104). Chavez’s approach prioritizes attentive engagement with diverse voices and perspectives, fostering an environment where students feel empowered to explore and share their identities and experiences through writing, ultimately producing work that resonates with vitality and authenticity.

Chavez additionally forefronts craft over content–students are invited to define craft concepts collectively. This allows for students to build a deep understanding of craft prior to formal writing workshops later in the year, such that students are well-prepared to understand their peers’ input when listening to others speak about their work. This engages students as individuals, exercises skills of criticality, and allows for collaborative construction of communal knowledge. The goal here, then, becomes to center options and not directions when providing workshop feedback. Students’ work will not be defined as “good” or “bad”, but rather, students will read their peers’ work to elucidate their emotional response and to understand what the text is teaching them. This focus on craft will “guide their reading of one another’s texts, inform their workshop critique, and direct their self-evaluations–this is, in practice, an unprecedented act of acceptance: they belong, for real” (Chavez, 2021, p. 119).

Finally, Chavez utilized a discovery-based model of assessment in order to reallocate typical power dynamics within the classroom. Writing assessment is individualized and fluid, allowing students to foster “a critical awareness of one’s ever-changing self over the course of the term” (Chavez, 2021). To build students’ self-assessment skills, frequent opportunities for practice must be provided. At the end of each quarter, students will complete a reflective mini-portfolio of their work and noticings from the respective time frame.

Social Emotional Learning

This unit aims to forefront social emotional learning in order to appropriately respond to adolescent students’ needs such that students are able to self-regulate and develop positive relationships with their peers and teachers. It also aims to address the traumas that students bring with them to school on a daily basis.

Boundaries and norms function to support all students, but particularly those impacted by trauma. As discussed in our seminar, trauma plays a substantial role in immigration studies, particularly when it comes to what is passed down to our students physiologically. Simultaneously, many of our non-immigrant students come to school with trauma on a daily basis, due to adverse childhood experiences. Thus, this course begins by asking students to consider their personal boundaries. This will lead to a collaborative design of classroom expectations and norms. This unit in particular is set up to begin to build appropriate assessment norms for writing workshop which will take place in the following quarter; thus, in many ways this quarter functions as a lower stakes space of practice in writing assessment when analyzing depersonalized work prior to the higher stakes sharing during formal writing workshop.

Mindfulness is a key tenant of social emotional learning, and related breathing techniques can be uplifted to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression (Komariah et al., 2022) and to bring attentiveness to one’s needs. Mindfulness has also been uplifted to increase prosocial behaviors within the classroom, such as kindness and empathy. Other benefits include increased capacity for self-compassion, improved self-esteem, and alertness (González & Frumkin, 2021). Mindfulness, as defined by Jon Kabat-Zinn, encompasses “paying attention, intentionally, in the present moment, and non-judgment” (González & Frumkin, 2021, p. 63). For the purposes of this unit, mindfulness will be utilized through guided meditations, deep breathing techniques, body scans, brief movement breaks, and use of a tibetan singing bowl.

This unit additionally utilizes children’s literature for social emotional learning. Children’s literature is discussed in greater detail in the Incorporation of Children’s Literature section above. Children’s literature can be employed to help children “communicate and begin to explore the effects of trauma in a non-threatening manner” as it provides the means to “inform, comfort, and provide models of coping strategies” (González & Frumkin, 2021, p. 67). Children’s literature texts that discuss realistic situations and feelings allow students to relate and build empathy. Children should be introduced to content prior such that hard topics do not elicit a trauma response. Additionally, chosen texts should be responsive to students’ respective identities, and activities should be cognizant of any potential stress responses that students might have. As discussed by González & Frumkin (2021), some trauma-responsive activities include reading response discussions and journal writing on feelings.

Freewriting

Freewriting is a writing technique that involves writing continuously for a set period without worrying about grammar, spelling, punctuation, or coherence. The goal is to allow thoughts to flow freely onto the page. Pat Schneider (2003) emphasizes the importance of uninhibited expression in writing. She defines freewriting as writing that involves writing continuously for a set period without worrying about grammar, spelling, or topic coherence. This practice is grounded in the idea that allowing thoughts to flow freely onto the page can help writers access their authentic voice and generate creative ideas. Schneider’s approach encourages writers to embrace their unique experiences and identities, such as ability, culture, gender, race, age, and class. By reflecting these aspects in their writing, authors can produce work that is deeply personal and genuine. Schneider also promotes a supportive writing community where sharing freewriting without fear of criticism fosters creativity and mutual respect.

Peter Elbow, also a strong advocate for freewriting, highlights the role of freewriting in overcoming writer’s block and building writing fluency. Elbow (1998) suggests that the process of writing without self-censorship allows writers to discover new ideas and insights that might not emerge through more structured writing methods. He believes that regular freewriting can help writers develop a natural and confident writing style.

Combining the approaches of Schneider (2003) and Elbow (1998), freewriting in the classroom not only enhances individual expression and creativity but also builds a supportive community where students feel safe to share their work and receive constructive feedback. This holistic approach helps students develop both their writing skills and their sense of identity as writers. In my unit, students will freewrite almost daily, reinforcing these benefits and fostering a consistent practice of self-expression and skill development.

Collaborative Student Learning

This unit largely centers project-based learning through collaboration. Thus, it is critical that students are presented with authentic roles, and that they are placed in equitable groups. Simultaneously, students must be presented with group-worthy tasks that warrant groups in the first place. These tasks must forefront multiple abilities, which should be reaffirmed by discussion around everyone having something to contribute. This might be as small as an announcement to disrupt classical classroom expectations, such as “This task provides opportunities for multiple abilities. You will do a much better job if everyone contributes!” Group-worthy tasks must thus be structured for equitable participation: every student must have a job of equal value. As discussed by Lotan (2003), group-worth tasks must be open-ended and require complex problem solving, they must provide students with multiple entry points and multiple opportunities to show intellectual competence, deal with discipline-based, intellectually important content, require positive interdependence as well as individual accountability, and include clear criteria for the evaluation of the group’s product.

Reader Response

Louise Rosenblatt’s reader response theory (Davis, 1992) is grounded in the idea that the reader’s (or a given audience’s) experience of a literary work should be broken down to create textual meaning. Each reader’s response will be different, grounded in their unique life experiences and intersectional identities, such as ability, culture, gender, race, age, class, and so on. Rosenblatt emphasized that the act of reading is a transactional process, wherein meaning is created through the interaction between the reader and the text. This transactional theory posits that neither the text nor the reader exists in isolation; instead, meaning emerges from the relationship between the two.

Rosenblatt introduced “efferent” and “aesthetic” reading stances. Efferent reading focuses on extracting information, while aesthetic reading engages readers on a personal and emotional level. In aesthetic reading, readers immerse themselves in the narrative, experiencing it as an event and connecting it to their own lives and feelings; this is the stance that will be used in large part in this unit. For example, when students read a poem, an efferent approach might involve identifying literary devices or summarizing the content, while an aesthetic approach would encourage them to reflect on how the poem makes them feel and how it resonates with their own lives. In a classroom setting, teachers can facilitate this by prompting discussions that encourage students to share their personal responses to the text and connect it to their own experiences.

Read-Alouds

The interactive read aloud (Roberts, 2018) typically involves a teacher reading a text aloud while students follow along with their own copies of the reading. The teacher will generally choose this text in advance, to prepare appropriate pause points in which they model think-alouds or other beneficial teaching strategies. During these pause points, the teacher may also ask questions, solicit input, or prompt student talk or reflection (turn and talk, quick write, stop and jot, and so on). Interactive read-alouds serve not only as a model for effective reading strategies but also foster teacher-student and student-student interaction, stimulating critical thinking. The interactive read aloud allows for a focus on dialogic discourse as authority is shared with students, fostering reciprocal exchanges which support students in building new perspectives. Reading aloud while following along enables students with auditory and reading challenges to participate equally, reinforcing their skills. A key aspect of successful interactive read-alouds is establishing clear objectives beforehand, guiding students to apply specific strategies discussed prior to reading, thus avoiding reliance on basic comprehension checks. While planning is important for the interactive read aloud, text rendering should not be overplanned, as teachers should respond to students in the moment and relinquish plans as needed in response to students’ given interactions with the text and classroom community (Kesler et al., 2020). While the interactive read aloud will be employed at various points throughout the unit depending on students’ text choices.

Think-Alouds

In that same vein, think-alouds model thinking while reading a text. Think-alouds are a teaching strategy wherein a teacher verbalizes their thought process as they read a text aloud. This helps students develop their own reading skills by demonstrating strategies such as predicting and reflecting. In my unit focusing on poetry, think-alouds will function to enhance students’ ability to analyze and appreciate poetic texts, cultivating their proficiency in interpreting and engaging with poetry independently. Particularly useful where interpretation is subjective, think-alouds can be used to guide students in navigating complex imagery and themes, fostering a deeper understanding of craft techniques and overall meaning.

Provided is a daily overview for a quarter long Creative Writing elective unit for a twice weekly 10th, 11th, and 12th grade mixed-level English with 65-minute periods. This unit will span sixteen meeting days. All activities may be modified for extensions or to provide additional supports. Additionally, three daily lesson plans are included. Please note that the lessons are largely not in order: while The Arrival by Shaun Tan will function as the text of the primary lesson in this unit, Los Zapatos will be staggered in the unit to function as an enjoyable break from a typical day but also as a grounding example for analyzing various elements of craft, with a specific focus depending on students’ respective submissions. In quarter one, students will be prompted to complete an addition to the living archive by the end of the quarter such that all artifacts are in order for quarter two. Students are expected to provide a link or hard copy of their artifact, and to add a slide to a collaborative slideshow denoting their chosen artifact, author, and author’s background.

After students have submitted their artifacts, I will organize the quarter based on craft categories; Chavez (2021) utilizes the categories of voice, imagery, characterization, and arrangement (what students name “flow”), but categories should be tailored or expanded based on students’ submitted works. In the first half of the unit, artifacts will be analyzed based on the most overt craft element, and as the quarter progresses and students build their confidence, skills, and criticality, students will balance their analyses of multiple craft elements at once.

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This unit fulfills Pennsylvania/National Common Core standards in multiple domains.

Reading Literature:

Craft and Structure

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.6 Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature.

Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.10 By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 9-10 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of the grades 9-10 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

Writing:

Text Types and Purpose

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3.A Engage and orient the reader by setting out a problem, situation, or observation, establishing one or multiple point(s) of view, and introducing a narrator and/or characters; create a smooth progression of experiences or events.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3.B Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, reflection, and multiple plot lines, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3.C Use a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3.D Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid picture of the experiences, events, setting, and/or characters.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3.E Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on what is experienced, observed, or resolved over the course of the narrative.

Production and Distribution of Writing: 

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1-3 above.)

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.5 Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of Language standards 1-3 up to and including grades 9-10 here.)

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.

Range of Writing:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.10 Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Speaking and Listening:

Comprehension and Collaboration:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.1 Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9-10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.1.B Work with peers to set rules for collegial discussions and decision-making (e.g., informal consensus, taking votes on key issues, presentation of alternate views), clear goals and deadlines, and individual roles as needed.

Language:

Conventions of Standard English:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.1.B Use various types of phrases (noun, verb, adjectival, adverbial, participial, prepositional, absolute) and clauses (independent, dependent; noun, relative, adverbial) to convey specific meanings and add variety and interest to writing or presentations.

Knowledge of Language:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.3 Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.3.A Write and edit work so that it conforms to the guidelines in a style manual (e.g., MLA Handbook, Turabian’s Manual for Writers) appropriate for the discipline and writing type.

Vocabulary Acquisition and Use:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.4 Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grades 9-10 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.4.A Use context (e.g., the overall meaning of a sentence, paragraph, or text; a word’s position or function in a sentence) as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.4.C Consult general and specialized reference materials (e.g., dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses), both print and digital, to find the pronunciation of a word or determine or clarify its precise meaning, its part of speech, or its etymology.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.4.D Verify the preliminary determination of the meaning of a word or phrase (e.g., by checking the inferred meaning in context or in a dictionary).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.5 Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.