Travis Leech: All right. So today I am joined by two amazing educators, and I'm going to start by handing the mic over to the two of you to introduce yourselves to the audience. Tell us and our, the listeners, what you're What we need to know about who you are and, uh, where are you coming from?
Kate Devlin: Wonderful. My name is Kate Devlin.
I'm originally from North Carolina. I thought I was going to have a three to five year stint in Washington, DC and move back home, but I've really grown to love this city. And honestly, that really involves the school, the people who I get to work with. I met my husband at the school. Um, we have a two year old now, so DC is more our home, but I am a teacher turned administrator, who still teaches.
I teach fifth grade language arts currently. Um, but I was one of those people who always wanted to be a teacher or a veterinarian when I grew [00:01:00] up. My own high school English teachers really sealed the deal though, and led me to where I am today.
Travis Leech: Wonderful.
Beth Hoffmann: Well, my name is Beth Hoffman, and I
Have now spent seven years in K 12 education, five years in 7th and 8th grade ELA classrooms, and two years in instructional support as a literacy coach. Working with grades four through eight. So, yeah, working in middle school, really passionate about grammar and writing instruction.
Travis Leech: Well, I am glad that you are there supporting teachers and students with that. Beth and Kate, it's so great to have you here on the podcast. , I wanted to start by getting a sense of your Patterns of Power origin story.
So what brought you to this process, um, and the idea of it making sense to start using in your classroom practice or on your campus? [00:02:00]
Kate Devlin: I feel like Beth should take the lead because my origin story is that she introduced it to me and went through the process.
Beth Hoffmann: When I first started teaching seventh and eighth grade, I tried different curricula and really hit walls. That was very formative for me. I tried some traditional grammar curricula, but I found them to varying degrees to be overly technical, or difficult to cover effectively in a school year, and yet for all that work, having little immediate impact on approving my students' writing.
And it didn't appear to be sticking from year to year either. I always felt like I was starting over from scratch with my 7th and 8th graders. And that was frustrating. After my first year of teaching, I went to Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia to train in the Writer's Workshop, and I had a really positive first impression, except for the hand waving around grammar instruction.
I knew just how tough grammar instruction was and [00:03:00] how much time it needs if you actually want to teach it, or at least that had been my experience, and I had no idea how to make something like the whole handbook or voyages in English, how that version of grammar work within the writer's workshop. And so, though I love the writer's workshop, being told to make my grammar responsive to my students' needs was just, it was really difficult to hear.
I didn't have my sea legs yet. I was looking at the standards and they would say things like, you know, students will be able to use punctuation correctly. And I was like, that's like telling a math teacher That, you know, your students will compute operations correctly. It's like, okay, I'll go get on that, you know.
Um, where do you start? And Teachers College recommended a certain Jeff Anderson's Mechanically Inclined to support grammar instruction. And I have come to love that book. But it wasn't the tool I needed at that point in my career. I gave sentence diagramming a try. And I loved that, except [00:04:00] there are drawbacks.
But I liked that it was an approach to the whole sentence, and that you got a lot of reps in to make your approach fluent, and I like that about it. And then, as I was experimenting with these different grammar curricula, I did my due diligence.
Beth Hoffmann: So I tried a bunch of approaches, did a bunch of research. And then I transitioned from classroom teaching into working in instructional support. And I was trained in Orton Gillingham methods and it taught me how important syntax is to reading comprehension and how students need to become more familiar with more complex syntactical constructions to become more fluent readers as they progress into the upper grades.
and I also saw close up just how miserable traditional grammar and language usage can be for students with dyslexia. At the same time I saw how much those students need explicit support in structuring their sentence level writing. And I knew I wasn't the only one who was concerned about this. I don't know, maybe you've come across these too. There are lots of like [00:05:00] panic articles being written these days about professors at Ivy Um, and I've seen a lot of like schools who say like, Oh, my students can't pick out a subject and a verb, you know? People are concerned about it. People are thinking about it, and not quite sure what to do about it, and I even looked at the Stanford Writing Center and I was like, well, what do they say? Like, here are the common mistakes that they see students at Stanford continuing to make.
And I was like, well, what do my students need to know in order to avoid those mistakes? And that helped me prioritize. And I decided to go try to find I was going to recommend to our school a better grammar curriculum and I did it with some trepidation because I knew from prior experience that the options are limited, but I made a spreadsheet because that's my favorite thing to do.
And I tracked the key traits of grammar curriculum that I wanted. And, I don't know, do you want to, uh, do you want to hear some of the questions I was asking? Or, like, Yes. Yeah. Yeah, okay. [00:06:00] Absolutely. Well, so here, yeah, this was like my sense. That's what I wanted. I wanted a consistent method for sentence analysis, whether color coding or manipulatives or diagramming. I wanted daily or weekly cumulative review.
I wanted to avoid a core method of hunt and peck. I like to call it hunt and peck grammar, where you're just picking, you know, parts of speech out. I don't want to hunt and peck. I don't want to test and forget. Right?
Travis Leech: Yes.
Beth Hoffmann: Does it build explicit connections to composition activities? Do you learn by doing, or are you only, or primarily analyzing someone else's sentences? Does it explicitly foster rhetorical awareness, the effects, you know, that sentences have? And are, how long are the units and is the lesson length and frequency doable given our class periods? And then how much additional building, like creating slide decks, conducting PD, does it, you know, take? And that was like the core of what I was asking.
And I got dangerously [00:07:00] close to despair, but then I came across a New York Times article that profiled two teachers using an adapted version of Patterns of Power, and I swear the minute I read the description of what those teachers were doing, my heart nearly stopped. It was like I had struck gold. I still had a ton of questions at that point, but in my gut, I knew that if we had the courage to implement this as a team, it could be revolutionary for our students.
And I wasn't really thinking about, like, standardized test scores or that sort of thing, and, um, that's never been a part of the conversation here, which I think is really incredible. It's a gift. But my thought was that this could make grammar meaningful, could make grammar instruction do what it's supposed to do, which is to empower readers and writers.
So I found everything I could about Patterns of Power. I forwarded it to Kate, and she was receptive, which is also a gift.
Kate Devlin: Well, hearing you, it's been over a year since you've gone through those [00:08:00] questions with me, and now it's amazing to be on the other side thinking like, oh, so many of those questions have been implemented in real life. My heart was just happy hearing you read through those.
Beth Hoffmann: I know! It's so, it's, it's been such a joy. I've really enjoyed this process.
Travis Leech: Yeah, why don't you share for listeners some, maybe the highlights of the implementation plan that you set out in place and the realistic implementation of this process throughout the year, or some of the things that you have observed that you've experienced.
Kate Devlin: I can speak to a few of them, but I think one of the big things was that we support the teachers. It's a big undertaking, no matter what subject you're approaching, and so, that's where we reached out because we wanted to make sure that we had support from the experts themselves, and you were a big part of that, Travis.
Introducing Even it was a virtual professional development for our teachers at the very start of the [00:09:00] summer before they had really had the full time to wrap their minds around it, but just an introduction, I think, was so helpful and then to make sure that also you were going to be coming back in August and then in the middle of this school year, because I think that support. We don't want to just say, just take it and go. We want teachers who will take it and go, but we also want to make sure that support is consistently there.
So I think that was really a priority to make sure, even as Beth was going through those questions and searching , to make sure that we also were going to be able to support our teachers on a different level as well. And with your help, I, I think we were able to do that, but I know there were other elements of the implementation to like Beth, can you speak to thinking through the sequencing and the student notebooks a bit more.
Beth Hoffmann: Oh, yeah. Now, Kate and I think was the best by the way like she's our ELA coordinator.
I'm not sure you said that out loud, right? Like, because you said you're in. So we made a plan, like a multi-step plan. [00:10:00] So we, first we got the books and we, and some supplemental materials, like we, the, the podcast, and we gave them to the teachers for summer reading and listening.
And then over the summer, we made our own sequence and curriculum map for grades four through eight, and we made a plan for student notebooks. We created reference resources for the student notebooks to support the planned lessons in the sequence, and we made like a couple model editing checklists for different grade levels. We selected a shared reference resource for all teachers in the building to use if any of the concepts in Patterns of Power were undefined or unclear, and we chose, is it Mignon Fogarty? Mignon Fogarty's Grammar Girl Presents, The Ultimate Writing Guide for Students. That was our chosen reference.
Then we designed/located some resources for diagnostics review and extra practice. Although those resources were really provisional and there's, we have a lot more work to do on that front. [00:11:00] And we designed a conceptual template for an assessment, what question types, uh, or tasks should include, how long should it be, and then we created a model.
And we established a shared central Google Drive location as a hub for the sharing of digital resources. And we scheduled those beginning of year and mid year visits from you, Travis, to model routines, which was I can't emphasize enough how really helpful that was. And then as the school year got started, some grade levels wanted more autonomy while some welcome more structured support.
So several grade levels agreed to have bi-weekly team meetings to check in on progress and troubleshoot. And we made the commitment to put that time into our schedules.
Kate Devlin: And I think with that time, too, I will say, when teachers did come forward and say, Hey, I would love slides and model sentences from the literary selections that we're reading, then Beth was amazing about helping create those resources for our teachers and lighten the load there to make sure that the implementation continued through. And then [00:12:00] hopefully we'll be able to reuse some of them next year, right? To continue to lighten the load across the board.
Travis Leech: Can I, uh, just kind of go back a minute. You had talked about the creation of student notebooks and I know what you're talking about. I know you know what you're talking about, but if you want to maybe just highlight what went into those student notebooks just briefly so that listeners can get a sense of what that looks like.
So maybe they can wrap their head around if they are thinking about organizing how students interact with this process. What your experience was, and maybe if you had any suggestions, did the notebook work, are there tweaks that you're thinking about making in the future? Any of that would be helpful just for clarity sake, talk to us.
Beth Hoffmann: Kate, you want to give that, uh, you want to?
Kate Devlin: I think you were much more involved for the 7th and 8th grade. For the 4th through 6th grade, I can speak to that. We ordered the standard kind of work blank workbooks that you all provide [00:13:00] online. But I will say for 6th grade, we took a nice sticker and put it on top of the 5th grade ones, for the students.
But I think we're looking at making changes for next year according to student teacher feedback. And we had already made Some changes, which Beth, I'm hoping you could speak to better because I'm admittedly not as familiar with the seventh and eighth grade. Yeah, compilation.
Beth Hoffmann: Well, we just, I mean, we, we've gotten some advice from Travis about this actually. So what we did is we just designed the notebook pages that looked very much like the ones in the purchasable notebooks for grade five. Cause it's just about like having designated spaces for students to write down their thinking and like as they move through the routine, the kinds of reflections and the kinds of things that the teachers want them to be able to carry forward.
And we decided for our notebooks for next year. We need more spaces just for free note taking [00:14:00] definitions of terms because we're big, we still keep a lot of the meta language you know, the grammar jargon. We keep that around a lot in our school. And we want spaces for those kinds of definitions and maybe some other examples.
We wanted a little bit more space for the focus phrase. I think the teachers decided we didn't need the space for the celebration notes, and we decided to give it to the application space instead. We made reference materials, like just your, the kinds of things, actually, there are a lot of great reference materials in mechanically inclined, there's a lot of great reference materials in the patterns of power books, and then some that we had just, we had of our own definitions of parts of speech, examples of all the different sentence types, all the different phrase types, lists of prepositions, lists of transition words, you know, just stuff that could be references in support of the lessons as they go, we do want to make that a little bit more user friendly.
I feel like it's a middle school thing [00:15:00] to, to sometimes have trouble making use of those resources. And, uh, we're looking into sticky tabs to help keep marking those. Also, I think slim binders are the way to go. I think middle school kids don't want to carry around another binder. So if like, the more you can make that book appealing to the kids to have in their hand, I think the better. They don't seem to love the boring old binders.
Travis Leech: It seems like the closer it is to them, the more they're likely they're going to actually reference it, right?
Kate Devlin: And even on that, I think different grades have different preferences. I loved the workbook form, and so even a half inch binder seems too much for me. So I think back and forth, but being able to tailor make that material inside is great.
Beth Hoffmann: Yeah, we're actually looking in ways that we can get like a soft cover printout of our version of the notebook. Kate's a ninja at finding those kinds of things. So
Travis Leech: Wonderful. Okay. So you have [00:16:00] a unique experience on your campus with implementing this. I think starting in either lens makes sense to me, but what I would love to hear from you is highlighting some of the successes that you've seen or that you've experienced in the classroom this year. And also maybe really being honest about some of the struggles or challenges either as you got started at the beginning of the year or things that are maybe still ongoing, those questions or things that you still want to work on.
We'd love to hear both sides of that. So some of the successes, some of the struggles, and whatever order you want to present it, I would love to hear.
Beth Hoffmann: Well, let's start with the good, Kate. How about that?
Kate Devlin: Sounds good to me. Two things come to mind when I think of the good from the beginning to end. I loved love loved the invitation to notice.
I didn't love it in the beginning, I will say that when I was getting that there are 12 "a's" and how many syllables and how many words. [00:17:00] Because I teach fifth grade and I think, yes, we know this, I could go to kindergarten and first grade and also get these same noticings, but to gradually see the transformation of my students for the kind of material that they're noticing and pulling back explicit lessons that we had taught, and for them to just make observations, make connections.
That was so drastically different from August and September was so powerful to me, and I think really spoke to the power behind this curriculum. They were able to notice these patterns, and they were able to also notice different connections and sentences. just that they hadn't, and that's a true transformation and a tribute to Patterns of Power, and hopefully all that they learned this year.
But the invitation to notice, I think, was really a highlight in that regard. When Beth and I were [00:18:00] brainstorming highlights together, I loved it because my next one we both thought of as a highlight, so I'm going to steal this one from her. , but I actually sent her a picture of it because we were, um, We have our standardized map testing in our school, and a student called me over and teachers aren't supposed to help, and he wasn't asking for help, he was excitingly pointing out that he saw an em dash, which had been in a model sentence that we had just learned, and he got so excited and knew exactly what it was and just wanted to share that joy, and you don't see excitement over grammar a lot.
So that was a really big deal. But I think being able to see that excitement and see that fun, I. It kind of leads me to one of the struggles, because I think, overarching, but also on a personal note, the struggle to assess, I, I don't think we are ready to fully let go of that formal assessment, um, in [00:19:00] regards to grammar, and I think that Beth and I worked together together.
to come up with an assessment that we thought was reflective of the heart of Patterns of Power and what we really want the students to learn from it. But also, I didn't want my students studying for these assessments because I thought, let's get an authentic way to see what they're really obtaining in class.
And so I thought it was pretty witty that I'd always say it was a pop quiz for Patterns of Power because we talked about it as pop a lot. Um, so it was a pop quiz in multiple ways. Fun with grammar in general and fun with 5th graders are going to groan no matter which way you cut it when it comes to let's have this grammar lesson, but if they can groan with a smile on their face as I say you have a pop quiz, I'd say it's a win overall for a group of 5th graders.
Beth Hoffmann: But we were looking for more ways to like get the assessment in their actual writing, right? Like we're looking for ways to, to [00:20:00] make that happen. And that's hard.
Kate Devlin: It is hard. And I think that's something that I'm looking forward to next year with students. And it was helpful to brainstorm with others, especially the fifth and sixth grade language arts teachers at the end of the year of how different teachers use patterns of power to still incorporate.
This knowledge that they're learning, but into their writing and then assess that writing, whether it's one of our peer teachers, incorporated into the rubric and was able to assess for actually, how did they use that focus phrase or that application in their writing or another idea that I loved, but never used was the invitation to edit.
Was actually an exit ticket and then it was assessed on the way out the door, which seems so easy and so accessible, but I think that brainstorming of ideas happened literally 10 days ago. We are a year through it, but it shows there is still so much work and so much growth on our end to do [00:21:00] as well, which I definitely think is going to be the case.
But it is still a success in my mind. I think that. We have a group of educators who want to continue pushing the boundaries and bettering ourselves and our students. So, consider it a win.
Travis Leech: Changing practice takes time, and you're seeing some of the benefit of the change that's happening and the fact that you still want to move forward through some of these challenges and work them out as you go. Really empowering. Love to hear it.
Beth Hoffmann: For me, I had really high hopes so that meant I also had really high expectations. I wanted it to make a difference, but I, I thought, I just thought this year went incredibly well by almost every metric.
I was, I was just blown away by what the teachers in our building were able to make happen. And I loved being in classrooms for lessons and hearing the things that the students would notice about the model sentences. I love the kinds of questions the students were asking, the kind of thinking that the lessons enabled, because I hadn't seen it [00:22:00] before, not in my own classes and not in my one on one work.
I hadn't seen them thinking about the effects in the same way of the choices. , I loved, really loved reading the imitation sentences that the students would write. And I love sentence level work in general. I really love reading student sentences. They, they're just a low bar ask, right? And what that means is they can really craft, they can really polish them.
I find that work really compelling and I love reading their sentences. , I loved pulling up an assignment for a student. in preparation for an instructional support session and seeing that the writing prompts or the rubric, you know, had, um, included having the students write sentences with a specific pattern and then seeing that the students could do it.
The teachers just really made it work. It was just incredible. I should, just as Kate did, in the interest of, in the interest of transparency, I should confess that even the students who seem to really enjoy the lessons and have wonderful things to say and write would still groan when they were queued to get out their notebooks.[00:23:00]
So, I don't know, I guess middle schoolers need something to grumble about and they love to grumble about copying down the sentences, but I don't know, be prepared for that, but I would say it's fine, they'll survive.
Kate Devlin: Travis heard it plenty when he came to visit for feedback. You would have thought we were asking for an arm and a leg for them to write two sentences.
Travis Leech: But they did it and then they had some really rich discussion after. It was great.
Beth Hoffmann: Yeah. There was a student in Kate's classroom, actually, who one day when I was in there, he just cocked his head to one side in class and said in an approving tone. He's like, “We're learning grammar. But it's like, a grammar lesson and a writing lesson rolled into one.”
And I was like, yep, you got it.I go into the fourth grade classroom, the fourth grade teacher just went gangbusters on this and like there were student sentences all over the walls. I mean, she seemed to really embrace it and I loved going into that classroom just to see the [00:24:00] student work there. And just hearing the teachers at the end of the year who had taught here in previous years in seventh and eighth grade and say, I think this worked better.
I think the students were really getting it. Now. Having said that, I will say that the method didn't click with every teacher in the building, but I think that's totally fair. I think that's to be expected with any new method during implementation. I think for some, it seemed to just take a while to wrap their heads around what this process wanted from them. But then they seemed to get there after a while, but not every single teacher is the biggest fan and I respect that. You know, at least not yet. There's a room.
Kate Devlin: Power of yet.
Beth Hoffmann: Yeah. I do. I'm sorry, go ahead.
Kate Devlin: I was gonna say, on that note, I think that in preparation for teaching this, I think is way more difficult to wrap your head around where if you do two to three units with fidelity, the day in, day out, that's where I think it clicked more, [00:25:00] because I think the way that we're all taught in the way that so many of us have taught for the past several years.
It's so different, right? And that's the beauty of it, but I understand that definitely has to be part of the struggle a bit, too, for teachers adopting it.
Beth Hoffmann: You know, what's really interesting is, like, I, I'm currently reading, a book written by linguists for students on grammar. And they love to dunk on K 12 grammar instruction. Linguists love to do it. They love to be like, this is, you know, this is literally a straight up quote from this book, is that, you know, the way that we define nouns and verbs and parts of speech and whatever is quote unquote time worn nonsense. So, when we're doing all this technical stuff, it's like we're not, we're not preparing them to be linguists clearly.
But like, if it's then you know so if it's not helping the writing it's, you know, but I sometimes wonder if it's just a question of. Like, we just don't know how to measure the time with grammar instruction. Like sometimes things have really long [00:26:00] term payoffs. I'm really not sure. This is why I think that we just, we need more research in this area to really understand how metalanguage and conscious grammar knowledge does or does not actually influence our ability to read and write effectively.
But I will say that linguists. You know, they, they talk about what they, the, the corpus, right, the, the body of sentences out in the world, and then they, they take a look at that, and they just, they're curious about how sentences work, and then they try to come up with a schema that can describe what's happening in sentences, and that's what they think of as a grammar, and to me, that's what we're asking these kids to do.
We're building that habit. Of looking around them. And I think we can still do more of that with our students. I think, you know, we were learning the routine, we were learning the imitation and, you know, those parts of the process matter too, but I would love to have them looking even more in their books at how sentences work and just starting to notice and collect more, to think [00:27:00] about, , what are other people doing that I can try?
What does it mean? What is the effect there? Like, how does this work? And just having that curiosity, right? I
Kate Devlin: I think that I saw that curiosity more this year too, and it was a struggle sometimes saying, Oh, we're not going to really dig into that until seventh and eighth grade. But I did see the curiosity, which was great. More so this year than ever.
Beth Hoffmann: So here was another struggle, was finding truly excellent mentor sentences pulled from authentic classroom text that can be challenging and time consuming. And the reason is, They, they don't, they're not always perfect for the concept you want to teach, right?
Like, they might include some things that are like, like Kate said, that are more, that are for 7th and 8th grade grammar, right? And I don't want to, like, overwhelm the kids or make it, you know, too difficult for them to notice what's going on in it, But apparently, linguists will do this too. They choose to, they'll take, they'll pull sentences from the corpus.
And then if they want to put it in [00:28:00] a textbook, they will modify it slightly to remove what they call distractors that might be unnecessarily confusing when trying to master the concept at hand. So now linguists, you know, writing a textbook are masters of their subject area. So I think we mere mortal classroom teachers want to use restraint when deciding what's a distractor and what is not. I mean, we want to keep them as authentic as possible. But I was wondering, I was thinking a lot recently, like maybe you could flag the sentence as inspired by the author rather than written by the author to establish a concept and then do a compare and contrast later on in the, in the unit.
With the sentence in its original state to reflect on what made the original kind of more grammatically kind of funky, but so they've got a clear example to look at up front. I don't know.
Travis Leech: That's a great thought. If we want to highlight kind of the, the foundational grammatical structure, the pattern that we want to study and then look at how the author takes that to the heart of that, really turn [00:29:00] it into this piece of magic that is.
Their final draft. I love that. Yeah opportunity for sure
Beth Hoffmann: Okay, I want to be really clear about, I feel like there are some other struggles I wanted to mention. Oh, the sequence, because we did have a planned sequence for the whole school and for each grade, and some teachers want to adjust that, but I see that as a good thing, because I think that signals that the teachers are just really committed to making the learning experience for the students the very best it can be.
But If you are going if you want to do that for your school right what I would suggest is that you bracket out the time to talk through the sequence with each grade level to explain how things are meant to build because I think that would just, you know, reduce some confusion so like don't make a huge spreadsheet like I did.
And then just hand it to the teachers and be like, okay, here you go. And expect them to extrapolate your reasoning on [00:30:00] their own time. Like take, take the time to, to talk it out. So
Travis Leech: That's, that's very good advice. And I think if you're deciding on how to organize it, Knowing the why behind it.
Beth Hoffmann: Yeah.
Travis Leech: I could see that being incredibly helpful and empowering to teachers to know, well, this lesson here later on is going to really support some understanding with this lesson coming up.
Yeah. I love that. That was a great piece of advice. Would you like to offer any more advice that you might give to a campus or even a school district to a district leader who's thinking about, Hey, I, Just finding out about patterns of power. I think grammar instruction could be enhanced on my campus or in my district.
I'm thinking about getting started, but I don't even know how to dip my toe in the water. Now that you've had some experience, you have the wisdom of experience from this year. Do you have any [00:31:00] pieces of advice that you might give to someone just starting out with implementation or curious about implementing?
Kate Devlin: I think one of the most beneficial things we did this year was, , our alternating weekly team meetings with our ELA team. It was new last year, partially because we have newer teachers this year. And so it was a great time to be able to bring our brains together and help support. But also, I think it was fun.
Key with this implementation of the new curriculum to see because we have three different splits of the same grade level, see how much they were staying on track with each other. See great ideas of implementation. Here's a creative activity where I took the invitation to apply and made this twist.
Right? So the meeting of the minds was really helpful and that consistency. intentionally planned within the schedule. No one wants to give up their free period, I [00:32:00] understand, but I do think that intentional time was really important this year, and hopefully next year too. Yeah.
Travis Leech: And can you, can you just maybe highlight within that time, did you have a specific focus or some goals in mind with that time?
It sounded like you maybe shared some of the work that you had been doing. Were there any other focal points in conversation that you felt like were key to making that time? Worthwhile, especially as you said, teachers, they're giving up a free period, they probably want to make it feel like this is worth my time to come into it.
Kate Devlin: True. I will say it was much more open unstructured time though. And then the conversation was led by the lessons that they were about to teach and how we could help prepare. Beth was instrumental, I think, in helping prepare and gather a lot of resources, and then also the sharing, as I mentioned, of ideas of what had worked. But I think really the preparation and [00:33:00] planning was more of the intention, and hopefully, hopefully I think good did come from that, but with it being every two weeks for each grade level, it allowed that time and buffer to prepare as well.
Beth Hoffmann: Yeah, I would say that I would say one of the biggest things it helped with was pacing. So like, because it was just a check in time to see, okay, how long is this stuff taking? , what was the focus going to be? Are we meeting that focus? Like, do we need to pivot? , we would check in about the sequence and say, are we ready for another lesson set yet?
Do you need more time? Do we want to actually skip this one, maybe to get to the next one? Because again, when we made that sequence, Yes. I made two lesson sets for December, which was kind of silly, honestly. And then I made a lesson set or I planned a lesson set for the second half of May for the eighth graders when I should have known better because they're graduating.
You know, like, no, like that was a little silly. So we had to make some calls about what to, [00:34:00] what to cut. And I think we used the time for that. And we just talked a lot about what was working and what, and what wasn't. I think it helped everybody also feel that they weren't kind of flailing in the dark, right?
Like, like if there were struggles that were shared, there were things that were working that were shared, and it just, everyone felt a little bit more, well, at least for me, they knew where they stood,
Kate Devlin: no, you've been coming in, I have the ELA planning hat on, in that meeting I should, but really I have my fifth grade ELA teacher hat on, so when they're complaining about their eighth graders whining about writing a sentence, I say, hey, fifth graders too, misery love company, here we are.
Travis Leech: I think that idea of having some specific time set aside for you to touch base with teachers. I think that's very powerful. Is there anything else that you think would be important to share?
Beth Hoffmann: Oh my gosh, I have so many things. So I'm going to try to pick the ones I think are the most important to share.
Yeah. Important. So I would, I actually highly recommend just [00:35:00] given the way that we had some teachers who there's, we have such brilliant teachers and they really want to understand the why behind things. And I think the best way to approach that, if you, if you want teacher buy-in, might be to just start a PLC about research and grammar instruction and then go out and just look at what grammar curricula out there can and can't do it.
You know, um, I really feel like we should try making the spreadsheet together. My experience was that it will become pretty clear that there aren't, you know that I think Patterns of Power is one of the best options out there. That aligns with the available research. But I think if everybody discovers that together, it's going to have more of an impact than if it comes from fiat, you know, a fiat from above.
But like, not everybody has the time for that, but it's just, it was a thought I had. And that, I do know that Patterns of Power is not and it's not meant to be a sort of turnkey, you know, solution to borrow the corporate speak. I think it's important to invest in the upfront [00:36:00] work of planning a scope and sequence that makes sense.
given what your goals are, what you hope your students are able to do and work, you know, working backwards from that. What do you define as success and be really clear with yourself and your team because that will help give some shape to the implementation process. You can set priorities and then when you're having those meetings and you need to pivot and something's got to go, that's going to help you figure out.
what you're okay with letting go of and what, what you need to keep, , and figure out where things need to align between classrooms and where teachers have the license to, to do what they need to do based on, because the sequences, people have different reactions to that, right? And I think Patterns of Power is designed for teachers to be really responsive to the student's writing.
Um, And it can be structured as a sequence, but it doesn't have to be so figuring out where the sequence is really important in terms of the skill building that you want to see happen versus when you want to give the teachers the authority to do what makes sense for them for the students in front of them.
Travis Leech: Yeah.
Beth Hoffmann: And then plan a [00:37:00] method to track progress on those goals. Right. And I really recommend using the authentic on demand writing like just a couple times a year so that the kids I would love the students to be able to reflect on their own sense like rather than me just giving them a grade like look, look what you can do look what you included in your writing at the end of the year right that I think that's going to be Another way to kind of get that sense of what were my priorities?
What were my goals? And are we, are we meeting them or are we not, you know, um, Ooh. And I think you're going to get the best bang for your buck in terms of just having people wrap their heads around what this can and can't do, it's just practice with the teachers choosing a mentor sentence from a literature selection and designing a lesson set together before the school year starts.
If possible, it's probably not possible, honestly.
Kate Devlin: I think that would have helped.
Beth Hoffmann: I think that's the best way for people to wrap their heads around the routine. And it also shows like, I mean, I, there, there are tons of [00:38:00] things that Patterns of Power does, but there are also things that it doesn't do.
And like, it's good for teachers to just know like what, what the goals are and what the priorities are, instead of kind of having to sit there and think about, but what about this other thing? What about this other thing? You know, we want to try to set these goals together and like to work toward that.
And, I think. Yes, and then, and then you've also practiced, like, finding a sentence together, and I think, having confidence on that front, in addition to getting a feel for the routine is really good.
Travis Leech: Well, I imagine to in a space where you're collaboratively building a lesson together, teachers are going to gain a lot of understanding around the nuance within each invitation,
Kate Devlin: Exactly.
Travis Leech: some flexibility that's involved and thinking through, you know, is this going to meet my students' needs?
Is this going to be the appropriate amount of challenge to also build their confidence? If not, how do I support that? What can I do to build them up? I could see that being very powerful. Yeah. No, we're just, we're just [00:39:00] talking through a space for, hey, if you've got the time, here is some advice for things that could work. So, I love that. Yeah.
Kate Devlin: Yeah.
Travis Leech: It's a possibility right now. We're just putting it out into the ether of the internet for people to take it and use it.
Beth Hoffmann: For that magic time when teachers are given more
Travis Leech: more time.
Beth Hoffmann: In the day.
Travis Leech: Yes. So, uh share with us , what's next for you and your campus or your classroom, what's the next thing? I know you'd maybe highlighted a few things, but just maybe to bring that back and reiterate or share anything new. What do you feel like is next for you as you move forward with continuing to implement this process for grammar instruction on your campus?
Kate Devlin: I hope that confidence will continue to grow, and that we will continue to encourage each other with fresh ideas and incorporate the framework, I think, into [00:40:00] larger projects. I did take your idea that you introduced, , in the last professional development of having the kids create their own Yes. pop unit. It was fun. I let them pick whichever focus phrase they thought that they understood the best, and then let them pick their own model sentence.
Kate Devlin: But just as Beth was referring to, if we had that practice and exercise to do with our fellow faculty, it was neat to see the kids. implemented as well.
Beth Hoffmann: They were adorable. I loved them.
Kate Devlin: It's fun to see what sentences they chose and some books that we had read as groups, but some were truly what they chose to read for enjoyment, which I think is one of the true benefits of this, right?
It's not just writing 10 sentences. It's pick any book you want and let's apply it. So that was pretty magical, but I think really across the board, incorporating into larger projects, larger like writing assessments, being able, which I know we've discussed, [00:41:00] but I didn't see much follow through, or I know in my classroom there wasn't, of highlighting the actual focus phrases and ideas that they had learned throughout the school year. I think those are tangible ways to assess their writing and what they're learning. Is really where I want to see growth the most. Great.
Beth Hoffmann: Yeah. Yeah, I think the same for me. The teacher seemed to think I was seeing the people in our building feeling really confident with the invitations to notice, compare and contrast and imitate and we want to keep building that confidence out like that's a great foundation and we want to build more confidence with the invitation to apply.
And, an assessment process, actually the eighth grade team decided that they would like to, because it's the eighth grade and it's the crowning year and we're expecting the kids now to have been doing this for quite some time, that the assessment will only be in authentic writing.
And I think that's great. They've got plenty of standardized test stuff to worry about anyway. So, incorporating patterns [00:42:00] into the writing rubrics, using focus phrases as an editing checklist. I think we were going to keep working on that for next year.
Beth Hoffmann: I do want to just say out loud that like, I think the compare and contrast instructional strategy is so useful with these sentences. I think that's a wonderful way to think about grammar. And so it's good that that's already working. We want to lean on that some more too. I think that's really important, like cognitive space.
Travis Leech: Yes, the power of comparative analysis. Yep. Love it. It's been a pleasure to work collaboratively together with the two of you and the other teachers on your campus. Not only fun, but just really so stimulating intellectually to be able to work through some of the challenges to see the successes, to really help highlight.
All the wonderful things about this process with your teacher. So, thank you.
Kate Devlin: Just signed a few autographs. My, my 5th graders wanted him to sign their workbooks when he came to [00:43:00] visit. I, they never cherished their workbooks more.
Travis Leech: That was one of the highlights, one of the sweetest moments of my educational career was getting that kind of love.
Yes. Okay, Beth and Kate, the final question that I like to present to people that come on this podcast, just so that we can bask in the shared joy of what's happening in your world is just this final question, Kate and Beth, what's something that that's bringing joy to you in your life right now.
Kate Devlin: I have a big trip to Spain that I am very excited about. And so that being on the horizon is bringing me a lot of joy. My family is going to come visit. My husband's family is going to come visit. Two of our really good friends. So to be able to escape to another land and just immerse in the culture. The idea of that is bringing me a lot of joy [00:44:00] right now.
Beth Hoffmann: That's a good one. I want to go to Spain. Yeah. So for me, I just started watching The Bear and I'm obsessed with it and I know I'm late to the party, but I love that show. It's amazing. And I even would describe it as beautiful.
And I love I'm obsessed and I love to be obsessed with powerful stories. Compelling art is just a gift. Right? And I'm really just happy that the show exists and I'm loving watching it.
Kate Devlin: It was a great one. I love that one. Have you seen it, Travis?
Travis Leech: Yes. Oh my word. Just so much. So much goodness is happening there.
Nobody: Yeah.
Travis Leech: Mmm, I can feel, I'm, I'm basking in the glow.
Kate Devlin: What's your joy? What is your joy currently?
Travis Leech: My joy currently? Something that I'm still holding on to is I just recently got to visit most of my family and [00:45:00] connect with most of my brothers. I have five brothers who I love dearly, and they are mostly in very far away geographic spaces.
So the fact that I got to connect with them. I'm going to get to connect with them again. So that's always, um, I, I love living in that kind of shared chaos that, you know, you can only enjoy with family, but yes, that's something that has brought me joy and is going to continue to do so.
It was such a pleasure to connect with you to hear about your experiences and for you to enlighten us with your wisdom. I'm so thankful that you made the time to connect and to chat. I wish you the best as you move forward and just know that I'm here to help you along in any way that I can as you continue this process.
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