Hey everybody, welcome back. I am so excited that I get to talk to Ryan about this amazing lesson that he shared. And I am just, really over the moon about getting to talk about this. So Ryan, before we get going too far, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Give us a little bit about who you are. Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me on Steve. This is so fun. My name is Ryan Bunney Thomasib. I'm the library director at a school called the Meadowbrook School in Weston, Massachusetts.
It's an independent K to eight school, pre K to eight school. And I've been here, I think for 13 years now, my first seven years here at this school were spent as an English teacher. And I transitioned, I went back to school, became licensed as a school librarian. I've been doing that for four or five years now. Nice, that was my route too. I was in the classroom up until very recently.
I'd love to do a little bit of a study and just see how many school librarians started out as English teachers, because I feel like it wouldn't be a small number. Totally. I think I tweeted about that a few years ago and I was like just curious about it. And there were so many, there's so many of us. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you love the books as much as you love the books, you know, what are you going to do? You gotta go where they go.
So what was your, maybe would you say your motivation for going into the library? I mean, besides the love of books, was there other stuff that brought you there? You know, I think I can trace it back to just being aware of how much school librarians were doing and how innovative they were being and the different literacies they were teaching.
Obviously as an English teacher teaching textual literacy pretty much exclusively and the idea of teaching some digital literacy, some news and information literacy, visual literacy. That was the part that was appealing to me. I loved teaching English. I still do. I mean, I, I had to fill in a few times for English teachers during, you know, extended absences and leaves and things like that. And I've enjoyed it.
I still love it, but I also felt just a little isolated, sometimes from other parts of the school. And so as a school librarian, I love, and I, I've seen others at the time, I saw others being able to do this, but visit other parts of the school, co-teach, and have other kinds of opportunities to see other groups of students. So like it. It was allowing me to do and try some new experiences, which I loved. Yeah, oh, I'm totally with you on that.
The ability to collaborate with your colleagues that you don't get to see as often, it's just such a great moment that you get to kind of see the school maybe a little bit of a different way or see the students sometimes too in a little bit of a different way. exactly, exactly. Yeah, and just to be able to see different grade levels. And that was eye-opening for me. I was really nervous going, I taught middle school English exclusively.
And so like teaching first graders for the first time, and this was before I had young children too. And so I was like absolutely terrified going into that, but it was such an eye-opening experience and I really loved it. Making that transition. there's so many things I got through school library, through my graduate programs for school librarianship that I just never really thought about as a teacher.
And it was so interesting to kind of start seeing education from a really different perspective than a lot of my classroom colleagues were seeing things. And that, like you're saying, that ability to kind of reach in and go different places, different grade levels, different classrooms, it's just such a different world. And... is. And it gives you such an appreciation for what's going on throughout the school. Like you really are in the know of what's happening in classrooms.
As somebody who works with all of the grade levels, it's great. You see patterns, you see themes. We're in the process of hoping, you know, we're trying to find somebody to be like a head of our curriculum in our school so that we can make more connections from grade to grade. And I feel like school librarians are a great voice in that. that kind of process, right?
Like being able to offer, like, this is what I'm seeing, these are the kinds of projects that are happening in fourth grade and fifth grade and sixth grade, and here's where maybe we can build some connective tissue. love it. And I mean, speaking of building some connective tissue and speaking of building into other areas. So this lesson that you're going to be sharing with us today is just so I think it's so clever. It really struck me.
And I was wondering if you could give us just maybe a little bit of the backstory of how did you come up with this lesson? Sure, yeah, it all started when I was teaching English and I read a professional development book by Tom Romano called Blending Genre Altering Style, I think is the title of it. And it's all about the multi-genre research paper.
And the idea of that research paper is that instead of writing kind of a traditional, you know, expository essay, on a particular topic after researching it, students would communicate the information they discover through research in a variety of different genres of writing. So whether that's like a top 10 list or a song that they wrote lyrics to and possibly recorded or a flash fiction story, communicating all of those facts within those fictional pieces, I found so fascinating.
And I remember I was teaching the Tempest to... Shakespeare is the tempest to eighth graders at the time. And which is my personal favorite, by the way, for Shakespeare fans. forgiven. anyway, yeah. So I remember doing that multi-genre research paper with those students and, know, anytime you try something new, you make tons of mistakes, you know, it's somewhat disorganized. but the kids really loved it.
I did my best to explain what it is, it is kind of amorphous what they're creating in some ways. And so it was, I remember it was definitely a learning process, but the kids loved it. They responded really well to it. And I saw some of most creative writing I had seen from them that year during that project. So it's something that I've sought to continue in other ways since. And that's, that's where this blending research and short stories kind of project came from. It's just such a great idea.
it's funny because when I saw your lesson, when somebody had shared it with me actually and said, this isn't a lesson, you have to talk to this person, I was like, absolutely, this is amazing. And it got me thinking about when I'm reading books and I find that story that kind of gets me thinking about, is that actually really the actual information? And I go out and I look it up and I get engaged and I start to become an inquiry learner because of what I saw in the fiction story.
And when the fiction ties into the actual real information in such a clever way, it's just, it sticks. It sticks in your mind and it's so engaging for the audience. I love that you're bringing the students to this. Yeah, it's so engaging for them to write and then it's so much more engaging for us to read as teachers too.
I always tell my students like if you are not enjoying what you're writing, there's a very good chance that your teacher and the other students who are going to be exposed to that writing are not going to enjoy it either. And so I encourage them, know, within reason and there are different ways to do this, but you know, giving them space to choose a topic, whether that's from a list that you've put together beforehand.
of approved topics that you know that they're going to be able to find age appropriate information for. Or you're giving them free rein and supporting them throughout that process, whatever, however you choose to approach that. When they have that choice from the get go, then they are automatically more engaged.
And then when they're on top of that, given the opportunity to be creative in the way that they communicate the information that they've discovered through their research, that's where the really good stuff comes for sure. That's awesome. And as you're laying it out, you very clearly are making it apparent that this is something that can be used with lots of different levels, lots of different areas.
That's so great because so often we kind of get locked into the library is English and that's it, or the library, you know, the grades you work with are, that's it. And this is a lesson that you can apply so widely. Wow. Yeah, think, yeah, it can be scaled up and down depending on the grade level. Like you can like limit the word count. You can limit the number of facts or increase the number of facts that they have to include in that creative piece.
And so that element of it makes it quite scalable, which is helpful for sure. I can even see this maybe being like a choice board sort of a thing where you could say, here's for those people who are stuck, here's like six different areas that you might go into either as a topic or as a style, as a genre, a writing genre, and they can kind of pick and choose. Exactly. And it works across subject areas too. Like it doesn't just have to be English or language arts.
It can also work really well in social studies. mean, like when you were talking a minute ago about like how cool it is to read a work of fiction and know that some of the places and things and experiences that the character, these fictional characters had actually happened. That's such a cool thing to know as a reader. I know I've experienced that reading things like historical fiction before. But it doesn't just work for language arts.
You can also work for, you know, like I was just saying, history or social studies. And I also think it worked really well in science too, even though I've never done gone that route, but you know, same thing, like doing some scientific research, discovering certain things throughout an experiment and then sharing the information, learn through a short, it doesn't have to be long.
It doesn't have to be like a, a full, you know, full length short story, but even like a short creative piece to communicate that information in a fun way can make things more interesting for everybody involved. Definitely. I think that's such a great way to reach out and collaborate and maybe a department that doesn't normally think about the importance of the writing skills.
But as a librarian and as a former English teacher, you've got some skills you can bring to say, we're going to use your content and we're going to use some of our other skills and we're going see if we can marry those things together in a way that's going to, like you said, be more interesting for everybody involved. Totally. Yeah. you're teaching cells today, Miss Science Teacher?
Let me just slide in and show you these databases that would work really well for finding some, maybe some additional information for students to discover. And then, yeah, let's write a short story where the cell is the star of the story, the protagonist, you know, it'll be really fun.
Absolutely. I mean, I could even see that maybe becoming a little bit of a pro-con sort of a story or like almost like a dealing with some topics in science and addressing them as a story of even like a dialogue between a couple of characters and filling in the factual information to try and prove one side or the other. Huh. totally. Yeah, I can also see like an interview too, like an interview between like one character and another. Like students love that kind of, that particular genre.
Like when I've done variations of this project in the past, like they love that particular genre, like creating this fictionalized interview. And it's often really fun to read. And you know, if you have the time and you want to take it to the next level, you can have them actually try to perform that in some way or record a video in which they actually, you know, bring that script. essentially that they've written to life.
I'm starting to see an amazing cross-disciplinary project that kind of brings all the subjects together. This is awesome. I'd even love to, I mean, now you've got me thinking about, we get math involved in this? And I'm like, you could absolutely have characters that have to like solve a problem and use some sort of mathematical steps. Wow. This is so rich. Hmm. yeah. It really is flexible. And it's like, there's a simplicity to it. Like, I think it can be applied to so many different contexts.
Like, the idea is simple, right? You're having students research a particular topic, how they get to that topic, you determine. But then they're just writing some kind of creative piece to communicate that information. And I think the really important thing too, just for clarity sake, is that...
The way that I've had students show in that whatever their final product is, whatever their final piece of writing is, the way I have students show what facts they've included in their story is just either bolding them in the text or highlighting them. think highlighting them is probably the easiest. It's the most visually easy to see.
it's fun to also, once they have those stories finished, have a reading if you have time, like have them read a few volunteers or you know make a party of it and have the whole class if you can read their whole thing or their parts of it excerpts and have the audience not only enjoy the story but also you know you if you have time again to like you know see if they can identify the facts that were in the story
as well the audience so that's that's another you know thing you fun thing you can do with it at the end.
I'm seeing this as such an appealing lesson for the students too because giving them the agency to... whether or not you kind of focus them in the research area, giving them some agency in the product that they're going to create could really bring some of those kids that maybe don't feel as strong in some of the language arts areas into a project that they really are engaged with and interested in because if they get to pick and choose, like, okay, it
doesn't have to be an essay, maybe you want to write a song. Maybe you wanna do it as a poem. Like it gives them, like you said, a story. It gives them so many different handles that they can put on this information. Yeah, I mean, I'm a writer, so I tend to go to stories first, but you're absolutely right. I mean, it could be, like we've scaled this up to a passion project for our fifth grade where the students essentially do a variation of this all year long.
They research a topic that they care a lot about or they're deeply curious about, and they spend the year putting together different genres that include different genres of writing or other multimedia that include all the facts that they've discovered through their research. And then share that out at the end of the year with families and other students and faculty and all of that.
But yeah, I think, you know, again, it can be scaled up to something like that and make for a really cool experience for everybody at the end of it. I love the concept of bringing it to multimedia too and not limiting to just writing because I can imagine the students who are really engaged by visual arts being able to really do some amazing stuff with taking the research they do and putting it into a visual format. Wow, that would be powerful. totally.
Yeah. And I think to your point from a moment ago, you can give them a list of ideas. And if they have other ideas they bring to the table, you know, they can ask, you maybe get your permission to, you know, try it different genre idea they have, but like giving them five or six, like a poem, a list, you know, like a top 10 list. That's another one that students that I've taught really enjoy. A story, a film, you know, script, you know, give them a list of like five to 10.
different genres they could try. chances are, each student will probably find one that they're connected to or excited about. Especially if you, of course, as with anything, if you have some models to share from previous years, after you've tried it the first time, that's another problem of doing something for the first time. You don't have those models or examples to share from previous years, which are so helpful whenever you repeat a lesson or an activity.
But yeah, having those is always helpful too. I wonder if you could even, as exemplars, find some materials that are already published. Like maybe I'm thinking about, I'm going to ruin his name, but John Siska has a series of like science poems and animal poems that might be a way to kind of talk about that. Or, I don't know, I'm just trying to brainstorm different ways, but.
Yeah. I've actually sent students to the faculty room before to pick up a copy of the newspaper because they were interested in doing a newspaper article as their genre where they're going to communicate their facts. And it's actually really hard to write a newspaper article. But the idea being like create a title that is very much like one you would read in a newspaper. Where does the byline go? What is a byline?
How are you know, what is the information included in the first paragraph in a newspaper article? And so stuff like that.
Yeah, absolutely sending them and being ready to share with them some examples like real-world examples of the genres that they find and with newspapers There are all sorts of like if they are excited to write a newspaper article There are all sorts of templates that exist online that you can use from various websites that like will make your newspaper article you've written actually look like, you It's on the front page of a newspaper, which is an added layer of coolness.
Absolutely and what a great chance to to bring in a little bit of media literacy Maybe to talk about why is the headline the way it is like what is the purpose of writing it in this particular way?
Wow I'm just seeing this all spider webbing out into this amazing like we're gonna cover everything in this one lesson So once the students I'm gonna try and see if I can put it together here so that the The students have a topic, they do the research, they create their product, which they can sort of choose among some different options.
And then in terms of the presentation, are there any particular ways that you, actually, let me back up one half a step and say, are they working individually on all of these? What sort of portions are the group work versus sort of individual work? sure. I've only done this with students working as individuals, but it absolutely could work and it might be a lot of fun for certain classes in certain contexts and for certain students to do it in small groups. Absolutely.
I think pairs would probably be, I would probably limit it to that personally. I wouldn't go try to have like three or four students working on one story together, but working in pairs could be a really fun exercise for sure. Yeah, hmm, wonder if you could even do like, you have maybe three or four students, but each one is creating their own separate thing on the same topic and you end up with almost like a mix tape or something that's, here's all these different ways of bringing information.
exactly. And that's actually kind of what Tom Romano gets out with his like that multi-genre research paper. That's kind of what that is. In that case, what you're talking about, you're talking about different students producing the different elements, which is different, but would be totally cool. And how cool to have that as a final product for other students and future students. to be able to read and enjoy, because they're entertaining.
Again, going back to what we were talking about kind of at the beginning, these creative pieces are often really fun to read and to be read aloud. And so I think having this product, this finished product of having something that was created by different groups of students, but is all thematically related by topic. could be such a cool thing to have, absolutely.
Yeah, so in my head I'm seeing lots of students on individual computers researching and writing or researching and creating their products. Is that pretty much what you're gonna see? Okay. Yeah. And I mean, again, it depends on how much time you have and how much time I guess you want to devote to it. But I mean, you can also like, I'm a big fan of the mini lesson. I try my best.
I don't always succeed in keeping a lesson at the beginning of the class short and then giving students, you know, an opportunity to get into the activity, start working independently or in groups, whatever, you know, whatever you're asking them to do. and so I feel like that's that's, you know, structuring it that way is helpful.
And are there any particular resources that you definitely want to use with this lesson or is it pretty much do you kind of mix and match to fit the group that you're going to be seeing? I'm sorry, can you ask that one more time? Absolutely. Are there any particular resources or materials that you use regularly with the lesson or do you kind of mix and match for the group you're gonna be seeing? honestly, I think I've only ever had to have students use laptops for this.
They're, you know, other than like bringing in some of those, making certain resources available, such as like a newspaper example I shared a moment ago, like as an example of a genre. Otherwise, I feel like it's, if they have laptops and internet connection and access to, a list of resources that you've curated, you've curated for them or. or a specific database that you're asking them to work within or a specific website, then I think they're all set.
So you kind of keep it pretty open, except for the items that you specifically curated for them to use as learning resources as they're going. Okay, okay, that's great. I mean, I love that idea of just, I love the idea of kids going and exploring and just finding what they can find. Because I think that is so important for their own agency and for them to be able to find what works for them, you know?
Yeah, like I'm thinking of earlier today, for example, there's a totally different project, but we're doing this project right now with our fourth graders on gratitude and practicing gratitude. And they're creating this visual at the end of it that's going to be shared at our Thanksgiving assembly. And I gave them a list of five resources, five websites that I had curated beforehand.
And even though I had curated those, I, you know, I, basically check them to make sure that they're all, you know, include again, age appropriate information, you know, something that they'd be able to read and appreciate. but I gave them the freedom within that to say, like maybe one of these is one that you want to dig into a lot. that's great. You can do that, but maybe, some of you want to pull a few facts from three of these. that's, that's great too. You can try that.
And I think they, you know, to your point, they respond really well to be given to being given that agency and freedom to explore. Yeah. Even within those confines, because I think especially for younger students, need those structures. They need those confines and it would be unfair to not give them some structure before kind of launching them off. Oh absolutely, mean certainly there's going to need be some scaffolding for them to build from.
But I can certainly see different ways of setting up that scaffolding to kind of match the skills and abilities of the students that you're working with. So how many times have you gone through this lesson? my goodness. I don't know exactly a bunch. Yeah, quite a few.
Well, I've done that passion project with our fifth grade that I told you about where it's again, it's basically this, but scaled all the way up to a whole year project because it's so wonderfully encapsulates so much of what we're trying to teach a school librarians like collaboration skills, curation skills, research, you know, all of those things. And so it's just a perfect way to teach that. so you can, I've done that. think.
I've done that passion project, I think five years, I think since I started as a school librarian actually, yeah. So I think I've done that. And then I've done these kind of smaller versions, which is more of what we're talking about today. Probably the same amount, like four or five years, but maybe once or, but two or three times a year because I'm doing variations of them with different grades, if that makes sense.
Yeah. So other than the example pieces to share the first time, were there any other things that you kind of as you went you were like, next time around, here's something I gotta change, rearrange.
Yeah, yeah, you know, one of the things that I found, like if you're going to have them write stories, which I think, you know, if you don't want to, you know, create a whole list of different genres for the kids to write in, if you just want them to write like a narrative, a fictional narrative, I do find it's helpful to have a mini lesson on like narrative structure, like how like, including plot, you don't have to get too much into characterization, for example, but just having an idea of
giving them again, going back to structure, giving them a structure to work with them so that they're not just like, so that you remember that, you know, ideally there's a satisfying ending and it's not always a good idea to write at the end or it's almost never a good idea to write at the very end. And it was all a dream, for example, you know, just like putting some parameters, you know, ask you not to do that. And, and, and giving them that narrative structure, which again, can be taught.
You can show them the plot arc. Remember, like you build, build, build, build, build, falling action, right, end. So just giving them a simple structure like that to work with them, I think is actually really helpful for most students. And that's something, yeah, sorry. That's something that I did not do the first time. And it was reminded, oh, right, I'm an English teacher. I can probably teach these skills. And I should. And so that's one thing.
Yeah. That's one of those things that you don't think of it at the time and then afterwards you're like, what was I thinking not thinking of that the first time through? Yep. they know things that they don't that I need to teach them exactly. Yep. So are there any particular supports that are sort of built in to help students that have any kind of special needs or that have language issues, anything like that? That's a great question.
think because I typically structure this with students working independently, I'm just bouncing around. It really does give you a chance to kind of go from student to student, see the progress that they're making during the class. And so I feel like that's where you can get the individualization is just kind of having basically mini conferences with kids as they're working.
Yeah, I can see this being really wonderful for differentiation because every kid does what every kid does and you just work with them one on one as they go. So you've been doing this with the students and collaborating with teachers. What would you say is the feedback that the students have been giving you and what's the feedback you've gotten from teachers? interesting. mean, teachers have said, this is fun. This is cool. And then students are just engaged.
I mean, you can just see it on their faces. can see it as it always goes when they're doing something where they have choice and they are allowed to be creative. You really basically on the front end squash most classroom management. problems, right?
Like when they're engaged automatically, when they're invested, intrinsically motivated, they tend to work with enthusiasm and you're not dealing with as much of the stuff that you might be dealing with otherwise when you're, you know, asking them to do things in a really top down way, which is what they get most of the time, right? So both whether at home or at school.
Yeah. think that's really one of the areas that I think school librarianship really excels in is giving the kids that ability to focus on their intrinsic motivation. And I love that this lesson kind of plays into that and brings in classroom work too. So what advice do you have for anybody who was going to try and do this lesson with their students? Anything particular they should be thinking about? Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, I would just say give it a try if you're interested.
mean, definitely plan it out, map it out for yourself. Like how many days do you have to devote to this? Like, you know your students, like how much time is it going to take them to, you know, accomplish each of these kind of various parts of the project? I think just giving it a try and knowing, kind of what I was saying earlier, that you're going to miss things. It's not going to be perfect the first time around and giving yourself some grace around that.
But also know that there's a very good chance that by giving your students this opportunity to be creative, that they're going to have fun with it and you're going to really enjoy what they create at the end of it. I love when everybody can enjoy the educational process. That's the sign of good learning when that's going on. So thank you so much for sharing all this. This has been amazing and I am just filled, my brain is just on overdrive thinking about all the possibilities here.
So before we sign off, how can listeners connect with you in the future? Yeah, sure. I'm on Twitter, at Ryan Thomas, my last name is spelled T H A S E B and, I have a website, Ryan Thomas, sub.com. And so, yeah, you can find me on Twitter or, you know, shoot me a message on the website. There's a contact me form there. Awesome, I have a feeling you're gonna be getting a lot of contacts. This is great. Well, thank you again so much. I'm so glad you could be here and share this lesson with us.
Thanks Steve, this was a lot of fun.