Planning Patterns of Power for High School: Starting with Semicolons (Part 1)

Welcome to the first part of our high school planning series! In this episode, I'm joined by Holly Durham, my co-author on the high school Patterns of Power book, as we tackle a lesson that might surprise you - semicolons. Before you think we've lost our minds, let me explain why this seemingly advanced punctuation mark actually provides one of the best entry points for high school students.

Dive into the full conversation's transcript here

Travis: Alright. Welcome everybody to another episode of PoPCast Reboot. I am Travis and I'm joined with a very special guest today.

Holly: Yes, very special.

Travis: Yeah, you are. You're very special.

Holly: I'm super special. I'm Holly Durham. I'm one of the writers of the high school book. Travis and I worked on that book together. It was super fun.

Travis: In this episode, if you have not joined us for any of the other planning episodes, just a quick rundown of what we're going to do. Holly and I are connecting as if we are a we're a PLC team. We're gonna plan through Patterns of Power lesson from scratch and we are [00:01:00] going to, when it makes sense, think about what support might already exist in a Patterns of Power book that we might be able to extract some things to make to make this instruction more flexible for our entire PLC, and also make sure that we're hitting on the same page with our goals throughout this process.

So we'll talk through it. Holly's gonna lead the show and we will work you through a whole complete lesson that if you are taking a look at the show notes, you're gonna notice that there's a link to this slideshow. You're welcome to take it, make a copy, follow along as we plan and get some clarity, but all ultimately it's yours to use in the classroom as well.

Holly: And today we're really gonna talk through high school and really approaching PoP at high school. For those of you that use the books, a lot of the high school book you'll notice is, relatively broad. We have a lot of lessons that are designed to [00:02:00] deal with a broad span of abilities 'cause everybody knows that high school, you have kids from elementary level to college level in one classroom.

When we work with my teams, we usually go over data. And a lot of what we find kids struggle with is com combining sentences. They really struggle with complex sentences. They definitely consider they struggle with just sentence sense. And we see a lot of run-ons and fragments and that sort of stuff.

So where we start a lot of the times is just having students practice sentences, creating sentences and recognizing what constitutes a sentence. The lesson we're really we'll talk about today is actually semicolons. My teachers do not normally want to start with semicolons. They like to hop into sentence combining, and [00:03:00] they want to look at common conjunctions. They wanna start with FANBOYS. They wanna hop to complex sentences because a lot of times that's what the, data shows is they really struggle with complex sentences.

But logically, if they don't really know what constitutes a sentence, they can't get to complex sentences. One of the places where we start is with a semicolon. What the semicolon does is you can basically look at comma you use either a period or you use a semicolon.

A lot of it is it, forces the conversation around what constitutes a sentence and how do these sentences connect to one another, like what's their relationship? And so that's one of the places where we start. Did you wanna add anything, Travis?

Travis: I think as we think about it in terms of maybe writing and craft, it's easy to take a look at a semicolon and think of it as a more advanced [00:04:00] craft move. But I think how we're, how you're introducing it right now and framing this idea that it's the maybe easiest for a student if they understand where a period could fit, that we could have some conversations around one small change, and being able to talk about the effect of that.

Holly: Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen here. And we will start talking through this. So one of the things, at least if you notice on our first slide, usually we do not write connecting sentences or semicolons. We will just write week two or week three. And sometimes we'll code it quarter one, week three, so that we keep them in order.

A lot of times we, don't do that because at a high school, you do have kids who will yell out what a semicolon is. And they'll go ahead and they'll argue over the rules. [00:05:00] So, since you have, in a lot of cases more sophisticated kids, you want to go ahead and, hold that back. So a lot of times, we'll even think about our slide: they don't know what's coming. And so that allows for a little bit richer of a conversation.

As you're planning, the first thing we really need to think through is what is our focus phrase going to be? The focus phrase really needs to work around the purpose that we want kids to come out of it with. Either of these will work. The idea of, "I use a semicolon to connect closely related sentences," that's very easy. One of the things is inherent in that phrase is I have to understand what a sentence is, and I have to understand the relationship between those sentences. How do they connect? And I use the semicolon to connect sentences I want considered together. That's a nice craft move because then they're thinking and I like that idea of, I want [00:06:00] because then they have to think about is that a good option or not? It really gives the student the power as they're going through. We'll haggle a lot over the focus phrase, and a lot of times in PLC we'll look at our data, we'll look at what we want to do, what we are doing.

In this case, we are actually looking at persuasion. This coincides with a unit where we're looking at nonfiction and we're thinking about persuasive techniques. So if I'm thinking about this and I'm thinking about my final product, if my final product is for them to analyze rhetoric, I would probably choose the first focus phrase, because using a semicolon to connect closely related sentences, that would shift right to "The author, uses a semicolon to connect closely related sentences because..." right, if I'm thinking and my lessons around writing persuasion, then I'm [00:07:00] gonna pick that second focus phrase because that's going to then help me use rhetorical devices in what I'm writing. And so I'm actually gonna toggle back and forth between. Both of those ideas, because we do them both. And so that would be something that the teachers talk about.

We do sometimes decide where we think the kids are and which we think might be the best place to start. Of course at high school, kids have written persuasion before. Kids have probably written more persuasion than actually analyzed persuasion. So many times we'll start with what they're least familiar with, but you can argue either way, of course. Sure. Start with what they're more familiar with.

So, really, as you think about that focus phrase that would be that conversation in the PLC; that's what we'd have to haggle. What is our end product and which of these will get us there?

Travis: A commonality that I think is worth elevating [00:08:00] is that both of these are purpose driven. Yes. They both give clarity for the students as they're thinking about that target for application, that we have these written in purpose-driven format, so that you have access to that kind of, that touchpoint for students. They can point to it as they're thinking, or and they can have some richer discussions using these, almost as like a stem for their thinking, a starting point.

Holly: Absolutely. And these can shift right to stems. It's a good point. And, I think that's, what the whole process is about, is why am I using this thing? I think that's a lot of what's missing at high school. Even if you think about they vaguely remember a semicolon and they'll be like I know that's a thing. But half the time kids will call it the winky face or something like that, which is a little painful, but that's okay. At least you recognize what it is.

Travis: But they we're in [00:09:00] the right ballpark, right?

Holly: Thinking through the focus phrase, that's one of the main things. The next thing that we always do is we really think about visually what does this look like for kids? We'll make a decision and we'll talk through visually what are we going to show kids and what do we want kids to know? And so for this, we are assuming kids know what a sentence is. We might find after this lesson, we need to go back and teach subject, verb, and the rest of the sentence, but we're gonna start here assuming kids have a basic understanding of a sentence. For a lot of my teachers, they don't wanna do that. They want, they say our data is low. And I wanna start with something super granular. The problem with starting easy and starting super simple is there's nowhere to go with it, and there's not much to talk [00:10:00] about.

By giving kids something a little more complex, especially when you know you have such a huge span of abilities in your classroom, you have to give them something to talk about. If the sentence is so simple, there's very little to understand. So we usually start with a bit of a broader lens and then we'll pull back if we need to. Sometimes just doing small lessons with small groups where the rest of the group moves ahead.

Here, the biggest thing we want kids to know is that there are two ways to connect sentences. One is just your regular sentence period sentence, and the word, the second sentence is starts with a capital letter; your basic structure. But then if there's a semicolon, your first word is lowercase. So that's the structural thing that we need kids to know. And c and here it's very obvious.

We want this visual to be on the wall the whole time. And a lot of times what I do is this [00:11:00] slide right here is printed and they literally have it on their desk all the time. So as we go through these, they can pull these out and literally see the visual.

The other thing that we we add here is like a little bit of text here. And so this text may be on something that we share with kids, or it might be something that we try to allow them to discover. But here you it just says it can act exactly as a period. You're going to have two sentences, and you're going to decide how closely related they are. If they are closely related, you would decide, do I switch that period for a semicolon? And that would be the whole process. So that's very concrete and that's very doable for students. So that's really where we wanna start.

Travis: As we're thinking about like clearly creating a visual support piece that's a also a great gives me maybe some great [00:12:00] hints of things to think about if I'm thinking about nudging students toward some conversation in the invitation to notice. I think you just touched on a really important part where I might not necessarily say, Hey, did you see that the second part to the right of the semicolon isn't capitalized? Instead it's gonna help me think about nudging toward, "Hey, what do you notice about the, on either side of the semicolon?"

That's gonna open the conversation to numerous possibilities. But one of those might be hey, this is a complete sentence. Why is it, why is there not a capital letter there? So students can get to it more. That self exploration versus here's a rule, here's something to remember that they can get there with our help.

Holly: So once we get this visual and we get a sense of, the purpose that we want kids to have, we go to our text. What we were teaching is a Leonard Pitts Jr article [00:13:00] called "Capture This: It's Wrong to Play Pokemon at Auschwitz." Prior to starting, we've had kids look at some terminology, and we've not given the article yet, but we had them look at terminology and we had them predict what they thought an article with these ideas would be about. And it's a little off because one of the concepts is Pokemon, one of the concepts is Auschwitz. And we, garner some interest that way.

The kids are interested in what the article's going to be about and they have a lot of feelings about it. And of course they also break into Pokemon's stupid versus Pokemon's. Really cool. And so we'll have a little back and forth about big factions Yes. About that as well. Which I thought it was dead, but apparently it isn't. Apparently it is not.

So this is our text excerpt [00:14:00] and one of the things that was nice about this is it does actually have quite a few semicolons in it, so he does use this convention, and he uses it purposefully. So one of the pieces that a lot of times teachers will come in and they're like, "oh, we've got this short story, we've got this thing. And it uses semicolons or common conjunctions," but they're not really purposeful. When we're trying to connect it to a passage, we really need to make sure it's used in a way that's interesting. And if we're really looking at rhetorical analysis or even replicating something in our own persuasive writing, we want to make sure that it's something interesting. Because if I'm gonna replicate it, it should be something that actually is interesting. Not just, I'm just sticking the semicolon instead of a period 'cause you told me to.

Here's, a text excerpt and as we look through, the main thing is [00:15:00] to pick something that is intriguing to students 'cause already we've got them a little interested because of our vocab and now we're switching to looking at the convention within it. So the text works the next thing we do. And you see the little code there if you wanna look at the whole article.

Travis: We'll have it, we'll have the article link in the show notes as well. So yeah, it's, this is one an incredibly intriguing read. It's a, Leonard Pitts is a great writer, period. But also, yes, this is a great one. If you want to take a look at it beforehand, just so that you're on the same page with us, you're welcome to pause this and do that. It'll be in the notes.

Holly: Absolutely. Another thing that we do in PLC is we come up with questions to ask students in case when you say, "What do you notice?" They all stare at you. And one of the things we always start with is just "What's [00:16:00] happening in the text and how do you know?" So what are these sentences about? That's all I need you to tell me is just, what's it about?

We allow the kids to talk about what the sentence we allow them to talk about topics. So they may see, oh, it's about someone named Angie. Okay. I'm gonna write that down. It's about Angie. How do you know it's about Angie? It says Angie. Okay, what else does it say about Angie? Do we learn anything about Angie?

So, we come up with those questions so that we can get them talking. That first one, just what's happening? That is always my first question. Just what's it about? The other one that's always, "What do you notice about the punctuation in this sentence?" "Do you notice anything?" And they may say, oh, I see a comma, or, what's that little winky face thing?

Or whatever. But you're getting the conversation going. And you can move to what's the purpose of the semicolon? And they may [00:17:00] say, I'm not sure. Okay, we'll talk for a couple minutes and tell me what might it be. Let's just come up with some things we might think.

The other thing a lot of times I'll do is if I do this, does it change it? If I do this, what does it, how does it impact it? So one of the things is just if I change the semicolon to a period, does it change anything at all? And that's when they start thinking no. Or does it, and a lot of times they'll say "What is that rule?"

Which of course, if they ask you about a grammar rule, hosannas praises. Love it love this grammar conversation. You guys are amazing. Yeah. So that's your goal here. But since we brainstorm these questions and we literally put them on the PowerPoint so that the teacher can just print it off if they want. Or if they're projecting it, they may be able to look at this on their screen, but it's not on the projected [00:18:00] slide. I also think we have conversations about it, and so everybody's a lot more comfortable having that conversation. 'cause truly, if the noticing goes wrong, so many teachers just struggle. You know what I mean? It just, if you start out limping a little it's hard to finish the race.

The other thing that we really do think about is what's the purpose of a semicolon? Then the physical craft. Purpose: to show ideas are related to show that you're combining ideas, things continue. Ideas are of the same importance. And you'll see ideas are of the same importance with a question mark 'cause when we were talking about it, we were like is it or is it not? And so that was a, maybe that's something we'll think about while we move forward. 'cause of course if you teach parallel structure, those are definitely of the same importance. We kept a little question mark in, in my PLC when we talked through [00:19:00] it.

If you think about the craft, and a lot of times the craft questions or thinking about the craft is you just do it. They're connected, so you just do it. But the idea is I have to consider and decide if the ideas actually warrant the use. I have to decide there's a semicolon where the period would be, so I have to know there's a period that goes there. So if you really think about the craft, it would be, I'm not choosing to use a coordinating conjunction, and I'm not choosing to use a period because... and so a part of the craft is really thinking about what do you physically do?

If you're thinking about a, sentence boundaries, a lot of teachers teach subject and predicate that is not the craft of a sentence because a predicate is everything, right? The subject is usually a, noun: person, place or thing, or some concept. The verb [00:20:00] is what it's doing or what it is. But then you have all these other pieces and you might have words that connect to the subject. You might have words that describe the subject. You might have preposition phrases that tell you where they are. So really, when you think about a sentence, you have to think about a lot more than just a subject and a predicate.

That's where those craft questions and the PLC really go, and a lot of times we are a little stumped. Like we have to take a minute and we really have to think about what it, what goes into it. But when you think about kids who are getting older, they have habits, they have a lot of assumptions about their abilities and they really haven't broken down what does it take to make a sentence? The first thing you need is an idea and it needs to be a complete idea, right? So when you break it down to that sort of basic foundational [00:21:00] understanding, that helps kids a lot of times see why I would ever do this and what do I think about before I produce it?

Travis: And before we move on, just to sit in this with this idea for a moment, this is a really important, this can be a super efficient, you don't have to spend a ton of time in this and PLC planning, but really before you're getting into a lesson set, spending even five minutes with this. And I, think we both strongly suggest using any resources and technology you have at your fingertips.

If you're not sure, this is a great place to look to get some clarity. We could look at style guides, we could look at Google. A.I. There are a lot of ways that you can gather information to then have your colleagues next to you to be able to process that information and make some decisions based on that. This is a great step in getting some clarity and lessening the anxiety, so that this doesn't feel like such a intense thing.

[00:22:00] So I, really wanted to just like neon sign let's take some time. Yeah. Let's remember to take some time to look at the purpose and the craft and have some ideas that we can gather to be able to share.

Holly: That's, good. And, honestly, a lot of times everybody will do a search, and we'll all share what we came up with and what, ai pulled together. And we'll use that to start our conversation. Because a lot of PLCs, I know, like we have some that meet every day and we have some that meet once a week. Yeah. So there's really there's a huge difference in what you have the capacity to do. By all means you don't have to know all this.

I tell people all the time when Travis and Jeff and I were writing the book, we argued about grammar all the time. Yes. And of course we'd go to Jeff and he would sometimes tell us we were stupid, but that's okay. Lovingly. Very nicely. Very nicely. Yeah. Yeah. But, again [00:23:00] we, haggled and, all three of us would be like I think it's this. I think to, go in assuming all of this I don't see that there's a reason to do that. No, not everybody knows everything. Yeah, that's a very easy way and that's a great use of AI to, look.

Travis: If you're thinking about ai, if you can ask it the right question and think about it as a collaborative partner in that process, so to be able to put a sentence up with a semicolon use and say, what is the purpose of the semicolon in this example? What is it doing? For a reader. I think based on that level of questioning that you might give it, you could get out some some interest yielding, some interesting results that might support your thinking.

If you're a PLC of one, because I know that I've been in that space before as well, where it's just I'm the grade level for this specific grade level, or I'm this separate subsection of this grade level that I'm only I [00:24:00] might meet with my broader grade level, but not for things like this, because we all have different levels, different focal points. That could be another way that you have at least a collaborative partner to start some conversation with.

Holly: It's super good point, Travis; it really depends on what you ask. And so that's why a lot of times having all of us ask something we get better results.

Alright, so invitation to notice. We just pick a good sentence. And so this is one that is of interest to kids. And again, we're getting them interested in this article. We're doing some teasers there. And so here: "My dad turned 37 in 1963; I cannot for the life of me picture him twirling a hula hoop at Arlington."

Travis: We're getting to the end of part one of our planning episode for this high school pop lesson. So here's a quick episode recap. Holly and I worked through the [00:25:00] collaborative planning process that happens when professional learning communities or grade level teams designed a pop lesson from the ground up.

We focused on semicolons, which we acknowledged isn't typically where educators want to begin. Most teachers gravitate toward sentence combining, uh, coordinating conjunctions first. But we discussed why semicolons actually provide a strategic entry point for addressing sentence boundaries and helping students understand what constitutes a complete sentence.

We spent considerable time working through our focus phrase selection, and this is really where your PLC conversations become essential. The choice between I use a semicolon to connect closely related sentences. And I use semicolons to connect sentences I want considered together depends entirely on your instructional goals.

If you're building toward rhetorical analysis, one phrase serves you better, and if you're preparing students for persuasive [00:26:00] writing, the other becomes more valuable. We also examine the visual support component, creating that permanent reference tool that students can access throughout the learning process.

For our tech selection, we chose Leonard Pitts Jr's. Capture this. It's wrong to play Pokemon at Auschwitz. That title alone generates student interest, but more importantly, Pitts uses semicolons with clear rhetorical purpose throughout the piece. We also developed those essential backup questions for the invitation to notice, because when you ask, what do you notice?

Receive blank stares. It's helpful to have strategic scaffolds ready. This preparation work prevents that instructional momentum from stalling. So looking ahead to part two, we'll walk through the creation of each invitation in this lesson set, notice, compare, and contrast, [00:27:00] imitate, celebrate application, and the editing conversation.

So join us soon for part two. Sending positive summer vibes your way!

The High School Challenge: Wide-Ranging Abilities

Holly opened our planning session by addressing something every high school teacher knows all too well:

"Everybody knows that high school, you have kids from elementary level to college level in one classroom. When we work with my teams, we usually go over data. And a lot of what we find kids struggle with is combining sentences. They really struggle with complex sentences... we see a lot of run-ons and fragments."

This reality helps shape how we approach Patterns of Power at the high school level. The lessons in our book are intentionally broad to accommodate this span of abilities, but that also means we need to be strategic about where we start.

Why Semicolons? The Strategic Entry Point

Most teachers want to jump straight into sentence combining with FANBOYS (coordinating conjunctions) or complex sentences. But here's the thing: if students don't really understand what constitutes a sentence, they can't effectively combine them.

The beauty of starting with semicolons is that it forces the conversation around:

• What constitutes a complete sentence

• How sentences connect to one another

• What relationships exist between ideas

Rather than being an advanced craft move, semicolons become a bridge to understanding sentence boundaries, which some of our high school students need.

Focus Phrase Selection: Your PLC's Most Important Decision

We spent considerable time on focus phrase options, and this is where your team's instructional goals become crucial:

• "I use a semicolon to connect closely related sentences" - Works well if you're building toward rhetorical analysis

• "I use semicolons to connect sentences I want considered together" - Better choice if you're preparing for persuasive writing

Holly's insight here was key: "If my final product is for them to analyze rhetoric, I would probably choose the first focus phrase... if my lessons around writing persuasion, then I'm gonna pick that second focus phrase."

Both phrases are purpose-driven, which gives students a clear target for application and creates natural conversation stems for deeper thinking.

Visual Support That Stays

We designed a visual that shows two ways to connect sentences:

1. Sentence. Sentence (with capital letter)

2. Sentence; sentence (with lowercase letter)

The key insight: "We want this visual to be on the wall the whole time. And a lot of times what I do is this slide right here is printed and they literally have it on their desk all the time."

This permanent reference tool includes the essential concept: semicolons can act exactly as periods when you have two sentences and need to show they're closely related.

Text Selection: Leonard Pitts Jr. Delivers

For our mentor text, we chose Leonard Pitts Jr.'s article "Capture This: It's Wrong to Play Pokemon at Auschwitz." This title alone generates student interest, but more importantly, Pitts uses semicolons with clear rhetorical purpose throughout the piece.

Holly emphasized the importance of purposeful usage: "When we're trying to connect it to a passage, we really need to make sure it's used in a way that's interesting... Because if I'm gonna replicate it, it should be something that actually is interesting. Not just, I'm just sticking the semicolon instead of a period 'cause you told me to."

Essential Backup Questions for Notice

We developed strategic questions for when "What do you notice?" receives blank stares:

• "What's happening in the text and how do you know?"

• "What do you notice about the punctuation in this sentence?"

• "If I change the semicolon to a period, does it change anything at all?"

As Holly noted: "If you start out limping a little it's hard to finish the race." Having these scaffolds ready prevents instructional momentum from stalling.

Purpose and Craft: The PLC Conversation

We spent time clarifying both the purpose and craft of semicolons:

Purpose:

• To show ideas are related

• To show you're combining ideas

• To indicate ideas continue

• To suggest ideas are of equal importance (we kept a question mark on this one for further discussion)

Craft:

• I have to decide if the ideas warrant semicolon use

• I need to know where a period would go

• I'm choosing not to use a coordinating conjunction

• I'm choosing not to use a period because...

Using AI as a Collaborative Partner

One practical tip we discussed: don't feel like you need to know everything about grammar rules before teaching. As Holly shared: "When Travis and Jeff and I were writing the book, we argued about grammar all the time."

We recommend using AI strategically by asking specific questions like: "What is the purpose of the semicolon in this example? What is it doing for a reader?" This approach gives you collaborative support, especially if you're a PLC of one.

What's Coming in Part Two?

In our next episode, Holly and I will complete the planning process for this high school semicolon lesson. We'll walk through creating each invitation:

• Notice - Guiding students to discover semicolon patterns

• Compare and Contrast - Comparative analysis of two sentences

• Imitate - Supporting students in creating their own examples

• Celebrate - Sharing and celebrating student work

• Apply - Connecting to authentic writing tasks

• Editing - Refining understanding through purposeful changes to the original model

This approach ensures students not only understand the mechanics of semicolons but can use them purposefully in their own writing.

Stay tuned for part two, where we'll bring all these planning elements together into a complete, classroom-ready lesson!