February Update

Interview Project, 5-Minute PIES Project, The Outsiders, Vocab Videos, "How To . . ." Articles, 50-Book Challenge, and More

Good morning everyone,

It’s been a long, cold month for many of us. Hope you’re staying warm and finding joy where you can. I’m excited to share what we’ve been up to in our eighth-grade classroom and what we have planned over the next couple of months (The Outsiders, our Interview and PIES Projects, Vocabulary Videos, and much more). As always, please let me know if I can support you and your students in any way.

1. Annual Interview Project: By this weekend, all students will have conducted a 20-30 minute (if not longer) interview with one person (a family member, family friend, neighbor, coach, teacher, community member, etc.). As a reminder, here is the Interview Project Proposal, the first step in the process. Over the next two weeks, students will complete their transcript and reflection before creating an interactive slideshow (due Friday 2/13, right before our mini-break) that includes an “intro” and “outro” (which they’ll write and record) along with 8-10 “body” slides, which will include the best answers/responses from their interviewee (each slide will include an audio clip, text — either the entire answer or an excerpt, and a quality visual). Happy to answer any questions you may have!

2. We’re also rolling out our 5-Minute PIES project, which I created and launched last year. Here’s the “pitch”:

   1. This project has nothing – and everything – to do with pies. You see, I needed a name for this project, and so I took out a notebook and started brainstorming. The winter here in New Jersey can be long, so I want to give every person in our classroom a chance to share something they’re passionate about. Maybe you’re going to teach us how to play an instrument or how to do the dougie (okay, I just aged myself there). Maybe you’re going to share how to start a small business or how to make the perfect __________ (omelet? PB & J? paper airplane?). Maybe you’re going to show off your incredible card collection or an original video game you designed. Maybe you’re going to explain how to do a backflip or how to solve a Rubix Cube (I’ve always wanted to learn this). When you’re ready – we’ll dedicate class time over the next few weeks to research, prep, and practice – each student will get five minutes to share their PIES. (No, not real pies – unless, of course, you’re a baker. I hope we have a baker in our midst – or should I say mitts? Okay, I’ll see myself out now. . . ) A passion or interest of yours. An area of expertise or a skill. (See what I did there?) Or, if we want to go with a verb-centered acronym, you will present to the class (you can also record a five-minute video if that’s more your jam.) Some will choose to inform while others will opt to explain (or more likely, a combination of the two). And by sharing our gifts with one another, the hope is that we all become a little smarter, a little cooler, and a little more connected to one another.

   2. Students submitted their proposals last week and will begin to work on their presentations over the next few weeks (which works great because students will finish their interview projects at different points), culminating with a community-wide celebration on Pi Day (technically, March 13 this year since 3/14 falls on a Saturday).

3. We’re also loving our whole-class read: S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. Shout out to our wonderful school librarian for helping us plan a trip to Broadway in a few weeks. In Just Read It (use the code RAVEN25 for 25% off + free shipping), I write about how I balance whole-class novels with self-selected independent reading, but please reach out if you have any questions! Ultimately, I come back to this: let’s try to provide our students with as many positive literacy experiences as possible. I’m also pulling many of our Outsiders tasks (particularly our culminating project) from this document (which, of course, comes from Just Read It).

4. Speaking of The Outsiders, I highly recommend selecting Articles of the Week (or AoWs) to pair with your whole-class reads. If you recall, we did throughout our first unit, which featured Fahrenheit 451 as the core text. In this unit, we recently read “The Surprising Health Benefits of Swearing.” (The greasers would approve.)

   

5. And last week, I put together a slightly different AoW to help us kick of our PIES Project and “How To . . .” mini-unit. Students selected three of 30 possible “How To . . .” texts to read and analyze (all but the first one are from the NYT, either from their professional writer or student contest winners). Highly recommend!

6. We recently had a quiz on set #5 (mono through ped/pod) of our Greek and Latin morphemes. Here’s our list of 100+ Greek & Latin morphemes. Up next is set #6 (poly through sent/sens). Scroll down to page #9 in the linked doc to see how we typically approach each set. For example, we just had students make 15-second videos (inspired by the NYT contest) and they had an absolute blast. Perfect community-building activity, too. For example, each class filmed a few videos together (us forming Pangaea was a hit) before breaking into groups to record a few of their own. I’ll see if any of them will give me permission to share here — again, reach out with any question!

7. I know some of this may feel overwhelming (it certainly does as I type it out), and I imagine some of you may be wondering, how do you have time for all of this? The truth, however, is that for me, planning, prepping, teaching, etc. has never felt more manageable, sustainable, and joyful. Everything we do is intentional. Heading into each week, students and I know what to expect — right now, we’re focusing on The Outsiders, vocabulary (a little grammar is coming shortly), our two long-term projects (Interview Project and PIES), and an AoW (which is connected to either our novel or our project). Which leads to my next item:

8. REMINDERS: I’d love your help adding to the “core four” (Read and WRAP, AoW, poetry, grammar & vocabulary) documents that serve as the foundational pieces of my classroom. I created this Google form where you can submit your own WRAP prompts, AoW suggestions, and poems.

   1. Here’s a weekly WRAP sequence for the 25-26 school year. I went through my book, Just Read It (use the code RAVEN25 for 25% off + free shipping), and attempted to “place” or sequence the WRAP prompts intentionally — one per week for an entire school year. Take a look through the document and let me know if you have any questions, ideas, suggestions, etc. When you get to page 11, you will also find 30+ prompts that students can respond to on a sticky note/index card and that serve as excellent conversation starters. And when you get to page 13, you’ll see that I’m beginning to develop more prompts that combine grammar skills/concepts and literature analysis (two birds, one stone). Please reach out if you’d like to collaborate on this endeavor! For example, shout out to Carriann for setting up this incredible Padlet.

   2. Again, here’s a potential Article of Week “sequence” for the 25-26 school year, which includes thematic text sets/mini-units (pages 1-2) along with standalone articles and debate topics (page 3). You will also see my “year at-a-glance” on page 4 (more on this shortly). Again, complete this form if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, potential texts and topics, etc.

   3. Here’s a beautiful collection of poems (more than 200!) that we can read and celebrate (and perhaps analyze) with middle and high school students throughout every “season” of a school year. Complete this form with any poems that we should add to the collection.

   4. I’m also updating how I approach grammar (here’s my tentative sequence) and vocabulary (here’s our list of 100+ Greek & Latin morphemes).

9. ONE MORE BIG ASK that I almost forgot to include here! As I mentioned in a fall update, I’m hoping to bring back Project LIT in a big way for the 2026-27 school year. It’s crazy that our first ever Project LIT Book Club, celebrating Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover, took place exactly nine years ago. So much has changed in that time, my goodness. Both in the world and in my own life. But in many ways the work remains the same: to promote a love of reading, a love of literacy, in our classrooms, libraries, schools, and communities. More information to come soon (book lists, book clubs, Project LIT events and conferences, etc.) but in the meantime, I’d love your help with something that I’m hoping to roll out at my own middle school. What are the 50 books everyone should read by the time they graduate from middle school? And what are the 50 books everyone should read by the time they graduate from high school? NOMINATE BOOKS here! Thanks in advance for your help on this project! Think it’d be a powerful graphic and “challenge.”

   

10. Finally, please let me know if your school, district, or organization is planning a JUST READ IT book study or would like for me to deliver a keynote address and/or lead a workshop/PD session in 2026 or 2027. Feel free to share this letter with your school and/or district leaders. You can also contact Authors Unbound (requests@authorsunbound.com) to arrange a speaking engagement and view my speaking profile here. I love connecting with fellow educators and supporting/strengthening your team’s literacy efforts, and it’d be an honor to collaborate.

Wishing all of you a wonderful February and sincerely hoping that the little groundhog does not see his shadow tomorrow . . .

Jarred