This second lesson demo builds on the spirit of the first by inviting students to explore the stories that shape who they are. Colin Kirk’s presentation on reading and writing memoirs highlights the power of personal narrative as a tool for reflection, connection, and growth. Through mentor texts, thoughtful prewriting strategies, and opportunities for authentic writing, students are encouraged to uncover meaningful moments in their lives and transform them into compelling memoirs. It’s a wonderful reminder that every student has a story worth telling—and that memoir writing can help foster both strong writers and a supportive classroom community.
Colin Kirk currently teaches 6th grade ELA at Charles F. Patton Middle School in the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District. He earned his B.S.Ed, M.Ed, Reading Specialist Certification, and Educational Technology Certificate through West Chester University of Pennsylvania.
As we count down the final weeks of summer and prepare for a new school year, I’m excited to share a series of lesson demonstrations created by participants in the West Chester Writing Project Summer Institute. Over the next three weeks, I’ll feature one lesson each week that showcases engaging, classroom-ready strategies developed and presented by teacher participants.
The West Chester Writing Project Summer Institute is a three-week professional learning experience focused on the teaching of writing. Participants earn six graduate credits through West Chester University while collaborating with experienced educators to examine classroom practices, explore current research, and strengthen their teaching through the Project’s teachers-teaching-teachers model. Teachers who complete the Institute are also eligible to participate in WCWP’s youth programs and provide professional development opportunities in local schools.
Our first featured lesson, Teaching with Primary Sources by Subarna Basu, demonstrates how primary sources can be used to promote inquiry, critical thinking, and writing. The lesson introduces strategies such as guided questions, the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), and the Zoom-In strategy to help students closely observe, question, and reflect on what they see. We hope these lessons inspire ideas you can bring into your own classroom this school year.
Subarna is an aspiring scholar and an Adjunct Professor in Early Childhood Education. She recently graduated with her Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from West Chester University. Her research examines kindergarten teachers’ perceptions on implementing purposeful play for children’s academic and developmental learning. Subarna also earned her M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education from West Chester University. She has been a preschool and pre-K teacher and an ECE lecturer in the UK and the US. She has also been a Graduate Assistant for the West Chester Writing Project for 3 years and a co-investigator for the Library of Congress Grant on Teaching with Primary Sources. Subarna loves traveling, crafting, and cooking and lives with her husband Raj and their son Tim.
In our writing workshop class, grammar doesn’t live on worksheets—it lives inside stories, poems, conversations, and the students themselves. When we review parts of speech, for example, the goal isn’t just for students to identify them, but to use them intentionally in their own writing. For my English language learners especially, that connection between language rules and meaningful writing is essential.
We start our parts of speech review with nouns. Instead of defining them right away, students first notice nouns in a poetic excerpt from Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse. Together, we look closely at the objects Hesse includes and talk about what those items reveal about the speaker. What matters to her? What kind of life does she live? Students quickly see that nouns do more than name things—they reveal character.
Using those observations, students craft their own personal list poems. They choose specific items from their own lives and begin to see how selecting certain nouns can tell a reader who they are and what’s important to them. This is where the grammar and the writing start to click.
Once we have that foundation, we expand our understanding of nouns by sorting them into types: proper and common, concrete and abstract, singular and plural. Because my students are English language learners, we also pause to notice the language rules that come along with these nouns—capitalizing proper nouns, adding -s to make plurals, and naming the exceptions as we discover them.
To get students moving (and collaborating), we take our learning on the road with a nouns scavenger hunt around the school building. Students work in pairs to complete tasks like introducing themselves to an adult and writing a sentence about who they met, finding the name of our high school and explaining where they are, sitting on something concrete and naming it, or making a facial expression and identifying the emotion they’re showing. It’s active, social, and full of real-world language practice—and it’s always a favorite.
As a culminating project, students create a “noun heart” for someone important to them—a family member, friend, teacher, or mentor. Around the outside of the heart, they brainstorm meaningful nouns connected to that person, thinking again about the different types: people and places, concrete objects, abstract ideas. On the inside, they use that brainstorm to write five or more sentences directly to that person. Sentence frames like You are my ____. I enjoy going to ___ and ___ with you. Thank you for giving me ____. You make me feel ____. support students while still allowing for authentic voice.
Because this project happens the week before Valentine’s Day, I encourage students to color their hearts and give them to their people as a valentine. It’s a simple addition that adds motivation and joy—providing an authentic audience always enhances any writing task.
In the end, this work solidifies the fact that grammar is not a set of rules to memorize, but a living part of language. When students use grammar to express their identity, relationships, and gratitude, it becomes meaningful and human. Students aren’t practicing grammar in isolation – they’re using it to communicate ideas that matter to them. In this way, it lives in their reading, their writing, and their lives beyond the classroom.
Kelly Virgin is a WCWP teacher leader who teaches high school English for the Kennett Consolidated School District.
On December 6th, area teachers were invited to slow down, explore, and learn together at the Hagley Museum. The day centered on two interconnected strands: using primary sources to deepen classroom instruction and engaging in place-based writing inspired by Hagley’s historic landscapes. Through guided learning, independent exploration of the museum and grounds, and shared writing time, participants experienced strategies they can adapt directly for their own students. Made possible by a Library of Congress grant, this session marks the first in a series of free, place-based professional development days for local teachers. Each session is designed by a West Chester Writing Project teacher leader to foster collaboration, reflection, and meaningful connections between history, place, and writing. The slides from our first day are included below as a resource for continued learning and reflection.
How do you get high schoolers to open up and share something real? If your students are anything like mine, they tend to deflect, joke, or suddenly become very interested in the ceiling when it’s time to make personal connections to literature.
So earlier this week, I tricked them—gently—into opening up with a “color conversation.”
The setup was simple: a pile of sticky notes and a handful of colored Sharpies. Before showing the prompts, I told students to grab one marker. Then I revealed the color-coded questions:
Green = Goodbyes: Who is someone you’ve had to say goodbye to?
Red = Bravery: When have you had to be brave?
Purple = Fear: When have you felt afraid?
Orange = Hope: What are some of your hopes for the future?
These emotions connect to the memoir we’re reading together, and because my students are English language learners, I also provided sentence stems to support fluency. I set a 7-minute timer and told them to create and post as many sticky notes as they could. For a bit of motivation, the table with the most notes earned a trip to the class snack bucket.
When the timer dinged, we took a silent gallery walk. Of course, silence didn’t last long. A few whispers broke through: “Wait—whose house caught on fire?” or “Hey, who’s from Ciudad?” While I reminded them there was no pressure to identify their notes, most students did. They wanted to.
The best part? This activity works for any pre- or post-reading moment where students might hesitate to go deeper. And I’m saving the sticky notes. When it’s time for them to write their own memoirs and someone inevitably says, “I don’t have anything to write about,” I’ll point to their own words on the wall—a whole collage of lived experiences waiting to become stories.
Kelly Virgin is a WCWP teacher leader who teaches high school English for the Kennett Consolidated School District.
Throughout in the school year, I like to give students chances to learn beyond the four walls of the classroom. Early on, one of my favorite ways to do this is by turning them into “experts” on their own school building.
This week, for example, students started class by studying building maps. They drew routes to different resources around the school, then teamed up to practice their English by writing out step-by-step directions to those spots. After that, they got to put their directions to the test—walking the routes, talking through them, and even creating a second set of directions to a new location.
It’s a simple activity, but one that’s engaging and collaborative. The maps, conversation, and exploration help students build both confidence with language and comfort in their surroundings.
Later on, this activity will grow into a larger project. Students will each choose one school resource to research in greater depth in order to create a student-friendly guidebook that explains what the location has to offer. Their written directions will be just one small part of the final product—alongside a Q&A with the resource expert, plus the key facts and supporting details they uncover along the way.
This project not only strengthens their language skills, but also helps them see the school as a place full of people, spaces, and opportunities ready to support them.
Kelly Virgin is a WCWP teacher leader who teaches high school English for the Kennett Consolidated School District.
