At the end of the school year, I am constantly trying to develop new ideas to keep both students’ (and my!) attention away from the fact that summer break is right around the corner. To that end, one of my favorite activities is having students develop a public service announcement (PSA) at the end of a YA group reading assignment. 

For me, contemporary, reality-based YA literature within the classroom gives students a chance to focus on modern issues that relate to who they are and who they want to be within their lived experiences. Furthermore, contemporary, reality-based YA creates a catalyst for discussions about community-based change within schools. Some of my favorite books I’ve included for book club choices and this PSA assessment are Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu, Dear Martin by Nic Stone, The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives by Dashka Slater, The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez, The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toten, Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley, Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, Love, Hate, and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed, and We Are Not From Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez. The list could go on, honestly, and it does here. 

As I’ve reworked this PSA assignment throughout the years, I’ve maintained a focus on how students can enact change within their own communities. In creating these PSAs, I ask them to consider the ways that the issues presented in their books are also represented within the walls of their own communities, specifically their school community. 

Outline of PSA Unit

After students finish their books, I introduce the PSA. My goal is to have them consider their school communities and how the issues in their books relate to the social aspects of their own lives. By communities, I don’t just mean the whole of the school community, although students can certainly take that broad view; I also mean their school social groups and friend communities in which they engage. I let them know that change can start with small steps, affecting the self first, then small groups, and finally a wider community. Students consider some essential questions, which they discuss first in small groups and then in whole-group discussion. These are questions to which the students and I return throughout the PSA assignment.

The next day, I review the PSA assignment. It’s a lot, and it’s easy for students to become overwhelmed. I let them know that we’ll take it day by day, and I ask them to reflect on their book and the assignments that they have already done during the book club meetings. They review these documents to find an issue within the book that relates to the lived experiences within their school communities. As they discuss and share their topics, I ask questions as I walk around the room to steer them to a final topic.

Once they have their topics, I have them work through two aspects of research. First, they research their specific issue in ProQuest SIRS Issues Researcher, or other online sources that I think might help them, and then collect the articles or videos in a graphic organizer. Next, the groups research what an effective PSA is and break down the multimodal, rhetorical choices that PSAs creators make. Both of these research tasks are essential in adding to their knowledge of their chosen issue and PSAs. 

Before the students begin filming, I have them fill out a storyboard as a draft for their PSA. This is where we discuss how to edit clips and pull together their final video. It’s here that I usually mine the students for information on how to edit videos. While some of the students will have these skills, not all of them do, so having a conversation about how those students edit the videos can support collaborative learning. 

When I’ve done these assignments in the past, one group member usually films the content on their phone and then edits it with the team, often using whatever app they currently have on their phone. However, I also go over a few sites, such as Canva, iMovie, and Screencast-o-Matic. On the same day they create their storyboards, I always talk to the groups individually about their plans for filming and editing the PSA together. 

The filming and editing process may take several days, depending on how much guidance students need. During the filming day, I facilitate in any way I can, which often includes writing passes to certain locations or checking to make sure everything is going smoothly. On the editing days, it often feels like I’m moving from group to group as quickly as possible. As I make suggestions on their work and offer advice on their editing process, students work together to pull all their clips together effectively for final publication.

Finally, we have a gallery walk so that each group can see each other’s work, and the groups complete a feedback form for each PSA. This feedback form gets a conversation started about the changes the PSAs can create within their school communities. 

Although I usually tie this assignment to a YA book, I think that this PSA assignment can be adapted for any text or texts that have been read throughout the year. Further, teachers can also adapt this PSA assignment as a reflective tool for students to consider all the works they have read throughout the year. By doing this, students have an opportunity to springboard into the PSA assignment and reconsider the former texts through a new lens.

Regardless of how it’s implemented, I am always blown away by the creativity the students display, the way they solve problems throughout the process, and the conversations they have about each other’s PSAs. It is always my favorite assignment because students drive the learning, all while allowing them to see the composition process through a digital medium. Plus, it helps them consider their school community and take steps toward seeing school community problems as solutions that they, as change agents, can help solve!

About the Author
Holly Sheppard Riesco is currently a doctoral student at the University of Arkansas in the Curriculum and Instruction program in English Education. Prior to entering the doctoral program, she taught secondary ELA for 15 years. Her research interest centers on the valuation of students’ lived literacies through young adult literature, rhetoric, and composition. She has co-authored the book Adolescent Realities: Engaging Students in SEL through Young Adult Literature (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), and her most current article “Small Steps, Big Gains: Critical Consciousness Modeled in YA Lit” can be read in the Winter 2022 issue of The ALAN Review. 




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The ever elusive always relevant argumentative writing unit. Choose the right topic and students dive right in; choose the wrong topic and you’re pulling teeth for the rest of the semester. For our argument unit this year, we leaned into a topic that is all over the media and especially relevant in our home state of Tennessee, banning books. In the words of our students, “I think that not only books are being banned but topics that make people feel uncomfortable, the problem though, is that history itself is very uncomfortable. They think they are protecting children, but I disagree, they are only protecting themselves from feeling uncomfortable.” Our school is a Pre-AP school so in order to make sure this unit is aligned with the Pre-AP scope and sequence, we adapted the texts but kept the skills more or less the same. 
 
Our essential question for the unit is to what extent should personal opinions on political and social matters impact what is taught at school. To explore this idea, this unit consists of student choice novels, often seen on challenged or banned book lists. Students had the choices of four novels to choose from: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Dear Martin by Nic Stone. Students also read opinion articles about why books are banned and whether or not they should be banned. They use their book club novels and the articles to form their own conclusions about banned books that they discuss multiple times through the unit and culminate in a socratic seminar. At the conclusion of the unit, students choose one of the articles to write a rhetorical analysis analyzing how authors appeal to their audiences to sway personal opinions and how that impacts readers. The two final unit tasks are for students to write an analytical essay determining the author’s main argument and analyze how they use rhetoric to persuade their audience (adapted from Pre-AP) and creating their own argument appealing to ethos, pathos, and logos.  
 
Throughout the unit, students meet with their book groups to complete literature circle tasks. We present multiple literature circle tasks and instruct book groups to have at least one task represented in their group. For larger groups, multiple students can complete the same task independently. The purpose of the literature circle tasks are for students to dive into their choice banned book as well as develop deeper connections between their novel and the controversies that surround those novels. Below are specific literature circle tasks that students have assigned themselves:
 

• Evidence Finder: Find at least three quotes and/or evidence from your novel to support your group’s discussion
• Questioner: Create one discussion question for your group. Your question should not be able to be answered in one word
• Researcher: Using at least one outside source, find at least one piece of evidence that connects to the topics discussed in your group discussion 
• Task Manager: How much time does your group have? What is something that went well in your discussion? What is something your group can do better next time?
• Summarizer: Write the page numbers your group read. Answer who/what/when/where/why

 
The following are back pocket discussion questions that we assigned to either the whole class or individual book groups:
 

• What is the political/social issue of your novel and why might it be controversial? 
• How does society (past, present, future) handle the political social issue in your book?
•  How does your main character handle the political/social issue of your novel?
•  How does the conflict impact your main character?
•  How does it impact other characters?
•  How would you handle the  conflict if you were your character?
•  To what extent should personal opinions on political and social matters impact  what is taught at school?​ 

One of our most successful extension activities was a jigsaw activity. This activity can be done mid and post-reading. In this activity, we grouped students and assigned each group a different article to read and annotate. Each article revolved around the topic of censorship and/or book banning. In this first grouping, the students were instructed to identify the main argument of their article, describe examples of rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, logos), and ask clarifying questions. In their groups, students discussed why their article and/or topic is considered controversial. Next, students were instructed to relocate to their second group rotation. We prepared new groups with at least one article represented in each new group. In the second rotation, students were responsible for summarizing their article as well as identifying the main argument and as examples of rhetorical appeals. After students presented their article information, they synthesized all represented articles into the following discussion questions: Describe how these topics affect our society, Compare and contrast your concepts with your group members’. What similarities and differences do you see, What are potential solutions to solve these controversies?

This is an extremely adaptable lesson that can be scaffolded for any level. For the jigsaw, teachers can choose texts based on a different theme, different types of text (songs, images, poetry, images) all about the same theme, or have different groups find their own sources. The questions can also be adapted to fit the current unit and skill. Teachers can provide detailed graphic organizers for texts or use broader questions to ask students to analyze. They can also assign different tasks to each group and each group could have the same text (ex: one group summarizes, one group creates questions, one group finds related outside sources…). 

Another successful activity was a chalk talk. Students completed this activity post reading an article with their groups. This specific lesson was focused on opinion articles related to the recent banning of Maus by Art Spiegelman. While seated in groups, students were given a poster with the following question: Looking at your group’s texts, what is truly being banned? Include evidence to support why. Students had their own markers and were expected to discuss and write their thoughts to this question on their poster paper. Once the time was up for students to discuss and write their thoughts in their groups, the teacher had the students rotate the posters clockwise. While the new posters in front of students had the same discussion question, there were unique responses from the previous group. In this rotation, students discussed and responded to the ideas recorded on the poster through writing and discussion. Students could either add their own thoughts or respond by agreeing or disagreeing with an idea from the previous group. Through the chalk talk, the posters could be rotated as many times as class time would allow. 

Chalk talk is also adaptable and easily scaffolded. You can include sentence stems or key words for students to use. You can make this a silent discussion activity or allow students to discuss as they write as we did. You can allow images to be drawn on the posters or emojis for agreeing and disagreeing. Teachers can also leave their own comments to turn students' attention to particularly interesting answers or comments. 

This is a jam packed and rigorous unit that our students (and us!) overall were extremely happy with. Having so much voice and choice between their book club group, their rotating tasks, article choices, and multiple class discussions through different mediums, we believe had a great impact on our students. Students were able to take ownership and really dive deep into the subject in a self directed way that led to genuine learning and engagement!
Additional Resources 

Tinker Vs. Des Moines
Censorship
History of Banning Books
Reasons Books Are Challenged
Banned Books Infographics
To Kill a Mockingbird Banned
Thirteen Reasons Why Banning
Dav Pilkey What It’s Like to Ban Books
Danger of Banning Books (Maus)
Art Spiegelman Maus Banning
 
Thanks to today's authors: 
Channing Porter is a Vanderbilt Peabody alumni and a veteran English teacher .This year, Channing teaches 9th grade English in Metro Nashville Public Schools but has previously taught 10th, 11th, and 12th grade English courses in Nashville. Additionally, Channing serves as the Co-Literacy Lead in her building through coaching and curriculum development. A student has described Channing as “a straight up teacher respectful and always sees things through”.  

Alex Novak is a veteran English teacher and serves as the Co-Literacy Lead focusing on coaching and curriculum development. A student has described Alex as “a cool chill teacher that pushes you towards your dreams and is always there for you when you need her!”

​We are (Sylvia), a children’s literature professor, and (Janet) a children’s poet; in our work these past few decades, we have devoted our energy to promoting poetry for young people. Our aim is to make it easy to share poetry that is diverse, inclusive, current, and accessible to all.
 
We all are busier than ever and feeling the stress of our hectic schedules; and because of this, poetry has become increasingly popular in the classroom. It’s easy to incorporate poetry into your day, whenever it’s convenient for you, even if you have only a minute to spare.
 
Let’s explore some of the different ways that we can share a poem:
 
—Plain text
—Illustrated text
—Audio
—Video
 
And how about a combination of some of the above? Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb,” found in the book The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country, is a model text for exploring this topic.
 
Most of us were introduced to this poem via live television or video. We heard the poem before we saw the text, and we became entranced as much by the poet herself as by her words. If we saw Amanda Gorman perform this poem, it was impossible then to listen to the audio file or read the words without picturing her expressive hand gestures. But hearing the poem again or reading it later with our eyes, if we did that, gave us greater awareness of the internal rhyme, assonance, consonance, and alliteration in the poem, along with its meaning, too.
 
Try this with your students:
 
(1) Play an audio clip from “The Hill We Climb.” You can buy the audiobook from Audible or other sources; or you can simply play a short excerpt from a video found online. See this Google doc for multiple sources and resources.
 
(2) Show a video clip of the same passage.
 
(3) Show the plain written text of your chosen excerpt on a screen. You can find the text online or show an excerpt from the book.
 
(4) Show that excerpt as a “digital postcard” created quickly by you, using images found online at news outlets or at a site with royalty-free images, such as Pixabay.com.
 
(5) Talk for a few minutes about what your students notice or remember.
 
(6) And then make a “waterfall chat poem” together using the chat function of Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or another online meeting tool.
The prompt for this chat poem could be something like this:
 
Using the “We _________ , we __________ “ structure of Amanda Gorman’s phrase “Even as we grieved, we grew,” type a short phrase of your own into the chat; then wait; then let’s all press enter/return at the same time to create a “waterfall” of words.
 
On January 31, 2022, the two of us hosted an NCTE Winter Book Discussion focused on Amanda Gorman’s books The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem and also Change Sings. The “waterfall chat poem” exercise that we describe above created a joyful poetry moment. It was thrilling to see our list poem appear instantly in the chat feed. It allowed everyone to join in, but it was no problem if they didn’t participate. Janet read the poem aloud very quickly, and then we moved on.
 
Here’s an excerpt of that poem, with the names of the participants hidden:

​We imagine that you have students who claim not to enjoy poetry—but who would enjoy listening to a poem or illustrating it or putting words into the chat during a Zoom session. Let’s help our students discover (or re-discover) the joy of poetry, one busy minute at a time.