1. Voices Literature and Writing Overview:
July 30, 2013
Voices Literature and Writing Overview:
Six Transformative Skills
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2. 7/28/13
Contents
What are the most powerful way to help children improve their lives?
The Voices Core Skills
The Voices Themes
The Voices Instructional Strands
The VLW Goals and Outcomes
VLW and Eight CCSS Shifts
Review the workshop agenda. Explain to teachers that this workshop is based on Ch.12 in Voices: Integrated Social Development, Language, and Literacy Instruction. Ideally teachers will have a PDF version of the chapter ed to them or provided in hard copy. The organization of Workshop 12 parallels the organization of Chapter 12. Depending on time, you may need to show the videos at another time and/or you may need to do the implementation plans at another time.
Workshop 12: Identity Awareness

3. What Are the Goals of This Workshop?
7/28/13
What Are the Goals of This Workshop?
To understand the transformative potential of the Voices Core Skills
To understand how these core skills are integrated into language and literacy instruction
To understand the Voice Goals and Outcomes
To understand how VLW supports the CCSS
Ask teachers to sit with other teachers in their grade level and depending on the number of teachers ask them to sit next to a partner with whom they will be working through this workshop.
Review the goals for the workshop with the teachers.
Check with the principal ahead of time to determine if you should add or revise these goals in any way.
Ask teachers if they have additional goals or requests.
Workshop 12: Identity Awareness

4. July 30, 2013
1. What are the most powerful ways to help children improve their lives?
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5. July 30, 2013
Voices teaches six core skills that can help students to improve their lives…
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6. July 30, 2013
The Voices Core Skills
The Voices Core Skills integrate the learning of important social development, language, and literacy competencies:
Tell Personal Stories
Stand in the Other Person’s Shoes
Resolve Interpersonal Conflicts
Attain Personal Goals
Resolve Inter-group Conflicts
Advocate Solutions to Social Problems
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7. Voices Core Skill #1: Tell Personal Stories
July 30, 2013
Voices Core Skill #1: Tell Personal Stories
Students learn to develop and share personal stories about important events in their lives and how these events have influenced their identities.
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8. Teacher and Partner Sharing of Personal Stories
Prompt: Tell about an event in your life that brought you closer to your family.
Hernandez School, Boston
Anna, 4th Grade

9. most important events in your life?
What is one of the
most important events in your life?
Introduce yourself to the person next to you. Share an important event in your life that brought your family closer together.

10. Voices Core Skill #2: Stand in Your Shoes
July 30, 2013
Voices Core Skill #2: Stand in Your Shoes
Students learn to stand in the shoes of the characters in the stories they are reading or in the shoes of their partners and express their thoughts and feelings.
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12. Voices Core Skill #3: Resolve Interpersonal Conflicts
July 30, 2013
Voices Core Skill #3: Resolve Interpersonal Conflicts
Students role-play/improvise a resolution to an interpersonal conflict in a story they have read with their partners in front of the class. They then learn to apply these conflict resolutions skills and strategies to real life situations.
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13. ABC Problem Solving Method
A: Ask what’s the problem
B: Brainstorm different strategies for solving the problem
C: Choose the best one

14. Voices Core Skill #4: Attain Personal Goals
July 30, 2013
Voices Core Skill #4: Attain Personal Goals
Students develop Personal Freedom Plans in which they establish a personal goal and a series of steps for achieving it. They also brainstorm ways they can help each other achieve their goals.
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15. Personal Freedom Plans
In Theme 4, students develop a “Personal Freedom Plan” that can include the following components:
Goal
Obstacles
Steps
Values and Skills
Helpers
For this activity, students first develop personal freedom plans. They then use these plans to write essays about the goals they chose and the plans they have developed for achieving them.
Stress that the last part of the plan is how others can help them.
Students will be meeting with their partners to brainstorm ways they can help each other achieve their goals.
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16. Voices Core Skill #5: Resolve Inter-group Conflicts
July 30, 2013
Voices Core Skill #5: Resolve Inter-group Conflicts
Students work in groups to brainstorm and then role-play/improvise solutions to inter-group conflicts in the stories they are reading. They then learn to work together to solve social or inter-group problems in real life situations.
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17. Voices Core Skill #6: Advocate Solutions to Social Problems
July 30, 2013
Voices Core Skill #6: Advocate Solutions to Social Problems
Students develop Democracy Plans in which they advocate solutions to social problems they care deeply about. Based on these Democracy Plans, students develop and deliver speeches in which they try to persuade people to participate in solving a social problem.
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18. Democracy Plans
In Theme 6, students develop a “Democracy Plan” that can include the following components:
Social Problem or Issue
Causes
Solution
What I Can Do
What We Can Do
You may want to refer teachers to the generic graphic organizers at the back of their packets to get a better idea of these Helping Plans and Democracy Plans.
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19. 2nd Grade Democracy Speech
Longfellow Elementary School, Mission District, San Francisco
Best 2nd Grade Democracy Speech by Candy

20. What is an important social problem that you care deeply about?
Share with the person next to you.

21. Voices Core Social Skills
Tell Personal Stories
Stand in Other People’s Shoes
Resolve Interpersonal Conflicts
Attain Personal Goals
Resolve Inter-group Conflicts
Advocate Solutions to Social Problems

22. Six Transformative Skills
July 30, 2013
Six Transformative Skills
The Voices Core Skills and related activities have been designed to help students develop the core social, language, and literacy competencies that can help them improve their lives and contribute to a more just and fair society.
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23. Voices
The Voices Themes
Each of these core skills provide an experiential focus for the six Voices Themes:
Identity Awareness
Perspective Taking
Conflict Resolution
Family, Friends and Community
Social Awareness
Democracy
Let’s examine how these themes build to promote social emotional learning.
Identity Awareness starts with me- this is where most students start- looking at what makes them unique
Perspective Taking is about you and I- this is looking at issues, needs, and concerns through another person’s lens
Conflict Resolution is about us and how we resolve conflicts
Family, Friends, and Community – takes our perspective outside of just us to include those around us that influence and impact our world
Social Awareness – is looking at our role in society and how our decisions can have an impact far beyond our immediate environment- global issues
Democracy – this theme examines our role as a responsible citizen – with freedom comes responsibility
These themes take us from self to our self- conscious role in society.

24. Theme 1: Identity Awareness

25. Theme #1: Identity Awareness
Voices begins each year by helping student to learn more about their identities and the identities of others.

26. Theme 2: Perspective Taking

27. Theme 2: Perspective Taking: Related Emotional Skills
July 30, 2013
Theme 2: Perspective Taking: Related Emotional Skills
Building on the identity awareness focus of Theme 1, this theme challenges students to broaden and deepen their understanding of the thoughts and feelings of others by standing in their shoes.
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28. Theme 3: Conflict Resolution

29. Theme 3: Conflict Resolution
July 30, 2013
Theme 3: Conflict Resolution
In order to resolve conflicts, students first need to be able to express themselves and take the points of view of others. They then need to know how conflicts escalate and be able to select the right conflict resolution strategy to solve the problem. In Theme 3, the focus is on learning to resolve inter-personal conflicts. In Theme 5, they learn to solve inter-group conflicts.
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30. Theme 4: Family, Friends, and Community

31. Theme #4: Family, Friends, and Community
July 30, 2013
Theme #4: Family, Friends, and Community
Two of the most important social skills that help students maintain balanced relationships are the ability to attain important personal goals with support from friends and family members and the ability to help them in turn attain important goals in their lives.
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32. Theme 5: Social Awareness

33. Theme 5: Social Awareness
July 30, 2013
Theme 5: Social Awareness
In this theme, students learn about the values that unite us as a society and how to overcome the obstacles that divide us.
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34. Theme #6: Democracy

35. July 30, 2013
Theme 6: Democracy
In Theme 5, students analyze the causes of a problem that they care deeply about. In this final theme, they develop proposed solutions to these problems and deliver persuasive speeches advocating how these problems can be solved.
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36. Voices Core Social Skills
Voices Themes
Voices Core Social Skills
Identity Awareness
Tell Personal Stories
Perspective Taking
Stand in Other People’s Shoes
Conflict Resolution
Resolve Interpersonal Conflicts
Family, Friends, and Community
Attain Personal Goals
Social Awareness
Resolve Inter-group Conflicts
Democracy
Advocate Solutions to Social Problems

37. The Voices Themes: More Sophisticated Each Year
Identity Awareness
Perspective Taking
Conflict Resolution
Family, Friends, and Community
Social Awareness
Democracy
Kindergarten
Theme:
We Are Special
My Feelings
Getting Along
My Family
Kindness
Caring for Others
Grade 1
Who We Are
Our Feelings
Solving Problems
Friendship
Respecting Others
Good Neighbors
Grade 2
Alike and Different
Giving
Resolving Conflicts
Our Goals
Equality
America’s Promise
Grade 3
Our Favorite Places
We Care
My Problems, My Solutions
Making a Difference
Pursuing Our Dreams
Rights and Responsibilities
Grade 4
Where We Come From
Understanding
Cultures
Solving Community Problems
Building Strong Bonds
Meeting Challenges
Making Ourselves Heard
Grade 5
Our Stories
The Meaning
of Freedom
Making Choices
Overcoming Obstacles
Building a Better World
Keeping Freedom Alive
Grade 6
Our Dreams and Goals
Making Sense of Feelings
Dealing With Bullies
Forever Hopeful
Our World, Our Future
Knowledge and Freedom

38. The Voices Instructional Strands
Woven into each of these themes are five instructional strands:
Social Development
Oral Language
Listening Comprehension
Reading Comprehension
Writing

39. Integrated Social Development, Language, and Literacy Instruction
Voices integrates these five instructional strands into each of the Voices Themes and Voices Core Activities.

40. Voices Themes and Core Skills
7/28/13
Voices Themes and Core Skills
Oral Language
Social Development
Reading Comprehension
Listening Comprehension
Writing
This is a visual representation of how the five Voices Instructional Strands are integrated with the Voices Theme and the Voices Core Activity. Each theme has this overall type of integrated instruction.
Workshop 12: Identity Awareness

41. The Voices Goals and Outcomes
Authentic Voice
Increased classroom discussion and debate
Deep Comprehension
Improved listening and reading comprehension
Critical Writing
Improved narrative, explanatory, and argumentative writing
Democratic Character
Improved pro-social behavior

43. VLW and the CCSS 8 Shifts VLW Provides: For close listening of texts
Provides text-dependent questions
Practice in writing from sources
Instruction in academic vocabulary and language
Provides stretch text complexity with the read aloud stories and texts
Theme-related stories and texts build disciplinary knowledge
Provides a wide range of realistic fiction, historical fiction, and informational texts that help students to explore the themes
Provides mentor texts for narrative, explanatory, and argumentative writing

44. VLW and VLL: Close Listening and Close Reading
In VLW, students practice close listening to the text using the Check Comprehension and Deepen Comprehension questions.
In VLL, students build on close listening skills and practice close reading of the text using the similar Check Comprehension and Deepen Comprehension questions.

45. Voices Begins… With modeling the Voices Core Skills in your classrooms
With Integrating the Voices themes into your classrooms and school
With establishing close and trusting relationships with your students
With inspiring your students with good literature and meaningful instructional activities
With facilitating discussion and debate of important and relevant topics