Hello,

We hope you enjoyed your experience writing and responding to colleagues nationally through the E-Anthology this summer. There are more opportunities to extend the excitement of writing online and reaching a larger audience for your students and yourselves. Below are a few examples that we are familiar with that you might want to consider. Why not take a few minutes before the school year starts in earnest to explore them to see if they fit into your curriculum?

Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future
http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/doc/nwpsites/writing_our_future.csp

For high school teachers and mentors who would like to capitalize on young people’s interest in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Google and the National Writing Project have teamed up to create Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future. You will be receiving a special bulletin shortly with full details on participating in this timely project.

Writing Matters: What’s Your Story?
http://www.writingmatters.org/

Writing Matters offers online writing instruction for middle schools. It features genre studies, animations, lessons, publishing tools and professional development. The Writing Matters portal is set up to provide teachers access to lessons plans, classroom visual and an online location to collect, evaluate and publish student work.

Click! Photography Changes Everything
http://click.si.edu/

NWP teacher-consultants and summer institute participants are invited to contribute writing about the impact of photography in their lives to a new project of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative: Click! Photography Changes Everything. This project provides an opportunity to reflect on the history, spread, practice, and power of photography by inviting written reflections on photography to be submitted through its participatory website.

The National Conversation on Writing
http://comppile.tamucc.edu/NCoW/index.htm

What do people write and read every day? What makes people feel they are writers (or not)? Through online video, audio, and print texts The National Conversation on Writing hopes to encourage a discussion on these questions.

Have a magnificent school year!!!

The E-Team

You can view a bigger version here or download a flier to pass around your school.

You can view the Claymation Camp Blog to view some of the projects.

Two of the teachers — Tina and Maria — also were new to stop-motion animation but that didn’t stop them from trying their hand at moviemaking.

Here is their debut movie:

This week, the WMWP Executive Board adopted the new mission statement for our organization and the board believes that the statement not only documents the role that we play in the Pioneer Valley and beyond, but also maps out a vision for the future of the organization.

Here is the new WMWP Mission Statement:

“The mission of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, a local site of the National Writing Project, is to create a professional community where teachers and other educators feel welcomed to come together to deepen individual and collective experiences as writers and our understanding of teaching and learning in order to challenge and transform our practice. Our aim is to improve learning in our schools — urban, rural and suburban.

Professional development provided by the Western Massachusetts Writing Project values reflection and inquiry and is built on teacher knowledge, expertise and leadership.

Central to our mission is the development of programs and opportunities that are accessible and relevant to teachers, students and their families from diverse backgrounds, paying attention to issues of race, gender, language, class and culture and how these are linked to teaching and learning.”

Using a site called Wordle, which transforms text into word clouds, Technology Liaison Kevin Hodgson created this image of our mission statement. Notice how learning and writing are so prominent in the mix.

What do you think of the mission statement? Does it reflect your values and your vision of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project? We invite you to leave comments and thoughts here at this blog post. To do so, just click on the link for comments just above this post.

Professional Writing Retreat

August 5-7, 2008, Stump Sprouts Guest Lodge, West Hawley, MA.

This three day writing retreat will give participants the opportunity to work on writing projects for publication, in such venues as professional journals, newsletters, newspapers, and on-line venues. Come to write, share work in progress, and receive feedback. The coaches are to former WMWP site directors, Charlie Moran and Bruce Penniman. Enrollment is limited to 16 people. Registration fee of $160 includes meals and lodging. A copy of the brochure is attached with more information and application instructions. Note that applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis so early application is advisable. Final decisions about participation will be made in early June.

Professional Writing Retreat

(Read about last year’s retreat)

The event featured workshops on social networking, podcasting and digital storytelling, and the featured speaker was Mike Flynn, the Massachusetts Teacher of the year. Mike talked about video production in the lower elementary classroom.

If you missed the event, or just want to re-live it, there are three podcasts that you can listen to or download into your computer or MP3 player:

• Kevin Hodgson’s introduction and Mike Flynn’s Keynote speech
• Reflections on using Digital Storytelling in the Classroom
• A Day in a Sentence Activity from the Audiocasting in the Classroom workshop
• Final Wrap-up by Kevin

Finally, here are two comics created by participants in the Digital Storytelling workshop:

If you could not attend the conference, you can still access our Technology Across the Curriculum Weblog, where all the workshop links and activities are located.

– The WMWP Tech Team

By: Mary Farrin

Diana begins her piece by asking:

“In this age of high stakes testing, some wonder if a place exists in middle school English education for creative writing. After all, students are held accountable for reading in all genres and for writing in response to literature or to an essay prompt, but is there time for a skill that is not tested?“

Republican photo by DAVE ROBACK From left, Diana Roy, a teacher at the Paul R. Baird Middle School in Ludlow, works with students Nicole E. Moore and Sophia J. Fernandes.

Head here to read the entire story.

You can get all the registration information and download the conference brochure at the Massachusetts Writing Project website.