The Writing Network hosting The Writing Revolution’s Co-CEOs Toni-Ann Vroom & Dina Zoleo

Writing Network
Written By Think Forward Educators

Network Connect session Term 2

Featuring The Writing Revolution's Toni-Ann Vroom & Dina Zoleo

We are thrilled to welcome The Writing Revolution's Toni-Ann Vroom & Dina Zoleo at our second Network event for 2023. Come one! Come all!

Recording

About our guest presenters

Dr. Toni-Ann Vroom is the Co-Executive Director and founding member of The Writing Revolution. Previously, she was a lead social studies teacher and school-wide writing coordinator at New Dorp High School in Staten Island, New York. At New Dorp, she was responsible for supporting the implementation of the Hochman Method across all content areas. Dr. Vroom received a Ph.D. in Literacy from St. John’s University.

Dr. Dina Zoleo is the Co-Executive Director and founding member of The Writing Revolution. Previously, she was the Assistant Principal of Social Studies at New Dorp High School in Staten Island, NY, where she co-led the effort to bring the Hochman Writing Method to New Dorp by seeding and developing it in her department, and then supporting its adoption school-wide. Dr. Zoleo received a Ph.D. in Literacy from St. John’s University.

 

Drs. Vroom and Zoleo have developed content for textbooks and materials for The Writing Revolution and have presented at The Aspen Institute, South by Southwest, and The College Board Foundation, as well as many other venues, on the topic of writing. 

Other resources


JOIN THE DISCUSSION NOW

Read the blog posts from convenor Jeanette Breen and continue the discussion after the session!

Featured
Writing Assessment is Hard! How should we report assessments to parents?
Writing Assessment is Hard! How should we report assessments to parents?

What is the best way of reporting assessment information to students & parents? This is a question I hear all the time, and it isn’t easy to answer. What we all want is an assessment system that is (a) accurate, (b) easy to understand, (c) not too time-consuming for staff, and (d) motivating for students. But these principles are all in conflict with each other.

The difference between a sentence that’s well-written and a sentence that’s, well, written.
The difference between a sentence that’s well-written and a sentence that’s, well, written.

Do you accept that correct sentence structure is the building block of quality writing? Then you possibly have entered into a journey with grammar that feels like a road map of rules, terms, symbols and arrangements that are blasting cognitive load. While we know to teach grammar in context, we have to also understand that parts of grammar are sequential. We advocate for taking the time in your writing scope and sequence to focus on small aspects of grammar, cement it in working memory, practice it, retrieve it and then drop in opportunities for reference or application among all the other moments when students are writing. Read more and come along to writing network discussion! 

Curiosities from writing practitioners: What works best from whole school to classroom?
Curiosities from writing practitioners: What works best from whole school to classroom?
Providing explicit feedback on Writing – What could this look like?
Providing explicit feedback on Writing – What could this look like?
A Question of Genre
A Question of Genre

One of the questions we have had from members of the TFE Writing Network has been related to genre teaching. Teaching writing in the context of genres is a common practice in Australia particularly due to our curriculum progressions that specify across several year levels: an expectation that students will be able to produce ‘imaginative, informative and persuasive’ texts. In Victoria this is first mentioned in Year 1.

This was highlighted when a friend recently called me during one of our lockdowns, frustrated at watching her Year 2 daughter cry during an online writing lesson where she was required to come up with a problem, solution and list of characters. Why was this so hard for her and why was I not surprised having seen this many times in an early years classroom? An understanding of genres is important. We know it makes a difference and students need to be able to write about different topics and create specific compositions. So perhaps the problem lies in the way we teach it.

From “Assigning” to Teaching — How research can reshape writing instruction
From “Assigning” to Teaching — How research can reshape writing instruction

I once had a student who loved rhinos. After all, what's not to love? During ‘free choice’ writing sessions (the opportunity for students to engage and communicate across genres of their choice), this student continued to write about rhinos in several formats. There was the narrative on rhinos, the persuasive, the poem – both Acrostic and Haiku.

His writing was engaging, passionate, showed an awareness of purpose and audience, but what niggled at me was that I wasn’t teaching him anything.

Actually, what I found was that my competent writers avoided authorial risks. They wrote texts where the topic was the focus, while writers who found writing challenging, continued to find it so. The struggle to engage was confronting.

Next time, join us for another Network Connect Session

In this free, dynamic Professional Learning and Networking opportunity we delved into the big ideas in writing as well as the incremental small steps that you can use in your classroom every day to make a difference to your students.

Let’s share expertise, discuss best practice, learn from each other!

Think Forward Educators
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