L2P 2.0 Ideas & Resources for Writing Projects

Crowdsourced by WP colleagues, Spring 2016

What is Letters to the Next President 2.0?

Letters to the Next President 2.0​ (L2P 2.0) is a large­ scale youth civic engagement project, hosted by NWP and KQED, that aims to support thousands of young people, ages 13 ­-18, as they use text and media to publish a letter during the campaign season about the issues that matter most to them.

It builds on the successful NWP sponsored campaign in 2008 in partnership with Google. In August, we will launch the youth publishing site. Right now the website, letters2president.org, is a place to find resources and opportunities for educators.

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Why is it important to Writing Projects?

• L2P 2.0 is an opportunity to connect and support youth across the country in writing, reading and making by engaging them in issues and topics of importance to them.
• L2P 2.0 allows educators to support connected learning and teaching in the classroom driven by youth-interest and writing.
• L2P 2.0 allows the NWP to further build bridges between inside and outside of schools while networking us with an amazing set of partners committed to supporting and amplifying youth voice and interests.

How did we gather these ideas & resources?

We worked together at the 2016 NWP Spring Meeting and over a series of open conference calls to think and design ways that we can put network values into action during this election cycle, such as:

• The power of writing … for the writer and the community
• The power of participation … broad and inclusive, everyone a writer, thinker, contributor
• The power of process … the iterative, reflective, hard work of thinking and doing

STEM Resources

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• STEM Resources G+ Collection from the ASTC and Koshland Museum
• Using Primary Sources for Youth Learning in Science from the Library of Congress

Amplifying Student Voice

• Youth Voices Mission for Letters to the Next President 2.0
• Notes from a discussion of classroom strategies and resources for developing logical arguments for a global audience.
• Working with colleagues from the Center for Inspired Teaching, a suggested prompt for L2P 2.0 was developed: What is your American Dream?

Responding-to-quotes activity to support thinking about the question: �What is your American Dream?

(Quotes and discussion inspired by Coate’s Between the World and Me)

Amplifying Student Voice

• Students can do “power analyses” in order to determine who is actually the best audience for their letters.
• Students can work together to choose an important issue in their school or community, and then make a plan and carry out actions to get it addressed. (Recommendation for more: From Inquiry to Action)

• Creating parties/events for displaying letters.

Multimodal Storytelling

• Some examples of using images to address issues and topics of interest:
• 6-word stories (inspired by 6-word memoir) to go with a photo; 3-, 4-, 5-Image Stories; Learning walks; Walk My World; Making a movie—Abby’s congressional visit videos for students (2014, 2015)
• Here is a resource from KQED about Making your own Political Art in 5 easy steps
• And from Youth Radio: DIY Toolkit How to Make an Infographic

Experimenting with making with images and sharing via social media

News Literacy

• Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting: Resources for NWP’s Letters to the Next President 2.0 (note this is remixable if you login)
• Hack the News with Mozilla’s X-Ray Goggles (and/or scissors and tape)
• PBS Newshour: Student Reporting Labs Curriculum … plus a few examples -->

• Sobering stories of drug addiction in West Virginia
• The Presidency and Me
• #SRL on Ferguson

Hacking the news, analog-style

Media & Web Literacy

• 21st Century Annotation: Social Reading and Writing
• Web Literacy Basics
• Public Voice and Civic Action in the Classroom: KQED’s Do Now

Doing a #DoNow

Leveraging L2P 2.0 in WP programming

• Use to build state-wide connections; leveraging project across sites.
• Use L2P to support local professional leaders who may or may not be WP TCs, especially content area teachers who are passionate about writing and literacy in their content area but don’t have a way to do this authentically.
• Create Wednesday Workshops in the summer/fall focused on L2P to discuss the power of inquiry as an entrance into argument writing
• “Get back to writing at our site and remind us of the power of letters.”

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Leveraging L2P 2.0 in WP programming

• Host an Open Institute this summer which will focus on bringing L2P into teachers’ practice in the fall.
• Highlight specific resources and opportunities on local Facebook page to encourage sharing and discussion.
• Online or face-to-face meet-ups; e.g. get TCs together during the a presidential debate in their area or tap into opportunities such as group annotation opportunities
• Use L2P 2.0 to learn alongside youth by connecting Youth Writing Camps with a Summer Invitational.

Leveraging L2P 2.0 in WP programming

• Use College-Ready Writers Project resources re: supporting argument writing and publishing in the classroom (e.g. units on writing Op-Eds).
• Have teachers during the Summer Institute write their own letters!
• Create Writing Fridays for kids to write L2P with teachers as coaches and mentors (building on work done to support Scholastic Art and Writing Awards work in the past).
• Here is an open document where site leaders are sharing ideas and connections.
• Here is an activity with the civically engaged writing analysis continuum.

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Leveraging L2P 2.0 in Partnerships

• Think through with your local library.
• Share the resources with local district leaders and offer a workshop.
• Brainstorm exhibits for a local museum … Display some of these projects.
• Reach out to a range of local community groups who do youth writing/making: after-school writing programs, art centers, maker spaces, YOUmedia Learning Labs, and the like; leverage this opportunity as a way to connect with them
• Invite local politicians to event/parties where letters are shared.

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Connect to more!

• Check out more & upcoming Opportunities (regularly updated)
• Find many helpful Resources (more coming soon: mini-units from CRWP, Literacy Design Collaborative Modules, and PBS Election Teaching the Debates curriculum, PBS Newshour Student Reporting Lesson Plans)
• Connect to committed Partners (joining soon is Mikva Challenge, PBS Education and Join the Debates, LDC)

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Next steps?

Sign up at Letters to the Next President 2.0 and encourage your colleagues who work with youth 13-18 to do the same. Subscribers will receive monthly bulletins and be the first to hear about the youth publishing site going live in August.

Share any related work, interesting resources, or conversation starters at #2nextprez

Questions? Suggestions? Concerns? Email nextprez@nwp.org. Thank you!

More ideas?!

• Add anything you’d like to share via comments here and we can update this resource as we go.