Team Writable recently traveled to Austin to team up with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in Texas at TCEA, and what a fun week of learning it was! From sessions galore, a Texas-sized party, to showing almost 500 of you how Writable and HMH’s Into Literature/Into Reading curriculum work together, TCEA was a blast and we can’t wait to go back!
If you weren’t able to make it to the show we’ve got you covered. Keep reading for a full rundown of the highlights and takeaways from #TCEA2020!
Best of Show Winner
First ISTE, and now TCEA, Tech & Learning has been spoiling Writable with praise! We’re honored to join the impressive Best of Show at TCEA 2020 list of winners. Click here if you want to check out the full list of winners!
Writable Sessions
Not only were you able to learn about Writable in our booth, but we had some amazing Writable educators sharing their wisdom and knowledge in sessions! If you couldn’t make it to the sessions, check them out now!
Getting Write to It: Leveraging Feedback to Develop Authentic Voices
Greg Garner, Designer & Instructional Coach (Formerly Eanes ISD)
We know that feedback is important, but why? Greg shared the research behind feedback, and how connecting it to writing to encourage thoughtful revision is the key to creating writing growth in students. This was a powerful session on using student voice and choice to engage and amplify instruction! Check out the slides here.
Fighting Fake News Through Peer Review
Greg Garner, Designer & Instructional Coach (Formerly Eanes ISD)
Greg also spent time in the Writable booth showing off how peer review can be used to fake news by identifying reliable sources, showing it in action inside a real Writable assignment! He used a timely subject, the current coronavirus outbreak, combined with a Texas STAAR rubric. Check out the assignment here (psst, you can copy it to your assignments to use it with your students).
Let’s Write It: Designing a District Turnaround in Writing Assessment & Instruction
Elizabeth Crooks, Curriculum Coordinator
Greg Garner, Designer & Instructional Coach (Formerly Eanes ISD)
Elizabeth knows exactly how districts can struggle to unify and organize writing instruction and assessment while focusing on both motivating students and increasing their growth. It’s an extremely difficult (albeit common) problem that she was tasked with solving. Elizabeth shared her story and approach to doing a mutli-year writing revamp using Writable, including her success in increasing district benchmark assessment scores by 30%! Check out the slides here.
Taking the Guesswork out of Writing Assessment
Elizabeth Crooks, Curriculum Coordinator
Elizabeth also stopped by the Writable booth to share her story on using Writable to increase assessment scores, speed up student writing growth, and increase student engagement, all while supporting teachers through a new PD program – it was quite the feat! Check out the slides here.
A Texas-Sized Party
With over 150 educators joining us, we continued the insightful conversations we were having on the show floor about Writable + Into Literature across the street at the Moonshine Grill! Fun was had by all, and it was delightful getting to know so many Texas educators on a more personal level. We wish we had the opportunity to share a beverage with all Writable Educators (psst, if you’re not part of our Educators group yet you can join here on Facebook for invites to upcoming events and more)
Learning from Texas Educators
We made almost 500 new friends at TCEA this year (plus getting to connect and work with the amazing HMH Texas team), showing each and every one of you how Writable can be customized to work for your classroom, your student population, and with your curriculum.
The hottest topic at TCEA was curriculum: what teachers were using or about to start using, and how to make the most out of it. This was exactly why we teamed up to have a booth with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt!
HMH’s Into Literature, Into Reading, and Collections curriculums are built right into Writable, which means you get the best of both programs. HMH has built powerful, world-class curriculums and Writable has over 600+ assignments, including things that traditionally in curriculums, like practice for the STAAR, AP, SAT, & ACT. Writable allows you to make your own assignments, or customize any aspect of an assignment. For instance, if you’d like to take an assignment from your HMH curriculum, but change the directions, use your own custom district rubric, and add in a video, it’s simple!
Speaking of assignments, we heard from so many of you about your struggles preparing for this current testing season. From finding assignments aligned to the most up to date version of the test or assessment to monitoring student achievement and identifying where students need support, many of you were at a loss. It was great to be able to show off how you can complete the whole cycle in Writable!
The success loop in Writable can look like this: finding or creating your perfect assignments for test preparation, then incorporating them into daily practice, which in turn builds data on student growth through guided feedback and revision. The data collected in Writable allows for on-demand interventions and differentiation, and then finally, you can even run your district benchmark assessments in Writable!
Finally, we also heard many oohs and ahhs when showing off the latest and greatest in saving teachers time. We heard from so many of you that you knew peer revision was deeply important to growing great writers, but running it successfully, as one of you said, caused “a lot of blood, sweat, and tears”. We know to grade and give teacher feedback alone can be overwhelming. It was so joyful to show educators that you can turn on a fully guided and anonymous peer review exercise with one simple click – and your grading becomes a time-saving virtual stack too!
Educators also really got a kick out of RevisionAid, our AI-powered feedback and revision tool (that works on every HMH assignment too). This isn’t your standard automatic scoring feature, because while it will show a teacher a score, the magic is in the on-demand revision recommendations it gives to students. They can incorporate the feedback, making live revisions to their writing, and then ask for additional feedback as often as they’d like. Because this is feedback on things like structure, supporting evidence, and content, by the time the final paper reaches the teacher it’s of a much higher caliber.
If you’re ready to check out Writable it’s easy to sign up! Teacher accounts are free and you can start saving time on prep and planning today. We can’t wait to hear how it works out for you!
Are you new to Writable curious to learn more? Create a free teacher account, check out our pricing, schedule a personalized demo, or Join our Writable Educators Facebook Community!
