I think the biggest take away I had was about the complexities of writing and balancing creativity and originality vs formulaically.  As someone who enjoys writing and constantly tries to polish my communication skills, I think sometimes the curriculum does not help our students learn to develop original ideas or share them accordingly. Amplify seems to have a lot of prescribed formulas that may increase our test scores, but dampens creativity in our students' narrative writing. Fortunately for Briar, we have the best teachers leading our kids in reading and writing.

This is so true. Every student does have a story to tell. By reading their stories, they become more than just our students. I love learning more about each individual child and their character. This is a great way to start the school year. One of the activities I really enjoyed looking at was when the students sketched an outline of their bodies and mapped in their scars. Also, I noticed that they used a lot of poetry to start their narrative writing. For example, when reading the poem "Hands", they would have the students sketch a hand and fill it with things that they have touched and meant something to them. After reading this chapter, I see the importance of narrative writing. We don't always emphasize the importance of narratives because state tests look more at informational and persuasive. But, narratives should be used in the classroom because they are great ways to see our student's creative sides and help them become better writers.

 The author's message conveyed throughout this reading was to draw students in by relating their interest and technology to their writing assignment. They reference their writing process through LAPS. LAPS are to create interest in a topic and then segue into a final product.  

LAP 1  draws their attention to writing by summarizing infographics allowing students to briefly highlight what they learned and also dive into misrepresentations or misconstrued information. These infographs are chosen carefully to help frame the critical question but a wide variety of sources are used. 

From the info Infographs the students have now developed an art for quick writing and move into Lap 2: Writing a Review. Still focusing on student points of interest, students pick their desired topic.  Once their pieces were written, they created the piece into a headline article. 

LAP 3 (Digital project)

 We've adapted to one- on-one computers, but this has always been a piece many of us have missed. Through time restraints, pushing standards, curriculum, state testing format, different platforms, and/or inexperience with technology have missed out on the opportunity to showcase our students in their own digital language.  

Last comment that struck me "Improvement comes from doing poorly first"(P. 182). As a coach and teacher I see this all the time. We are not experts on day one. I get such a burst of energy when I see improvement in kids, especially ones that struggled first and didn't give up.

The authors also do a nice job of explaining the difference between persuasive and argumentative skills. The two terms (persuasion and argument) are often used interchangeably. They stress that propaganda and lies are more associated with persuasion while facts and logic are the key components of argument. This is a helpful perspective in differentiating between the two. As students work with argumentative writing, the authors pointed out how they need to use deeper reading skills to be effective. Instead of simply looking at "What does the text say?", they need to question things like "What does the text not say? How is it said? and What influence does this have on the reader?" (page 193). This form of thinking when reading will obviously pay dividends in other areas, specifically enhanced comprehension.

Another cool idea that came from this chapter was one of their strategies for finding solid argumentative topics. The use of "The Ethicist" column from The New York Times was an interesting way to put some thought-provoking topics in front of their students. It may be a good idea for the American Institute of Research (AIR) to give this a try (enough Dust Bowl already).

A final point that resonated from this reading was how the authors commented that argumentative writing helped their students' voice emerge as writers (page 197). We can agree with this statement. Discussion about debates and tough issues usually brings out a lot more engagement from students, and we begin to hear how they really feel. Some of the expression problems they may usually have, seem to dissolve in these instances.