Tips To Have Students Ask Better Questions. Subtext – Engage Readers and Deepen Understanding. The next session I am attending is about Subtext, a tool I have been wanting to learn and explore.
Check out their presentation materials here. “Subtext is a free iPad app that allows classroom groups to exchange ideas in the pages of digital texts. You can also layer in enrichment materials, assignments and quizzes—opening up almost limitless opportunities to engage students and foster analysis and writing skills.” Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article. As children walk over the threshold into the school each morning, they are greeted by Jason with a smile.
Next to him is a dry erase board and easel. There is a new handwritten message on it from Jason, cataloging simple things like the day of the week, an upcoming event, or a reason for the school community to celebrate. Just as important, students are invited to start the day reflecting on their literacy with a question or prompt at the end of the board, with space to write about it so that their ideas can be read by other children as they enter the school. "It took awhile for students to become comfortable writing in that blank space on the message board, especially since the question changes every day," Jason explained to me later.
Teaching Students To Think And Analyze. Relief for Reluctant Writers - Coach G's Teaching Tips. Online - Fifty Writing Tools. At times, it helps to think of writing as carpentry.
That way, writers and editors can work from a plan and use tools stored on their workbench. You can borrow a writing tool at any time. And here's a secret: Unlike hammers, chisels, and rakes, writing tools never have to be returned. They can be cleaned, sharpened, and passed on. Each week, for the next 50, I will describe a writing tool that has been useful to me. I have described most of these tools in earlier lists, first of 20 and then 30.
As you study and discuss these, please remember: These are tools and not rules. My friend Tom French, who won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, told me he liked my tool list because it covered writing from the "sub-atomic to the metaphysical level. " With that as both introduction and promise, let us begin. {*style:<a href=' #1:{*style:</a>*} Begin sentences with subjects and verbs, letting subordinate elements branch off to the right. The 2 Sisters. Joan and Gail modeling The Daily 5™ Do you love teaching but feel exhausted from the energy you expend cajoling, disciplining and directing students on a daily basis?
Are you questioning the value of busy work but afraid that ceasing from such activities will lead to chaos in the classroom? TheDailyCafe.com. Writer's Workshop Resources and Ideas. The majority of time of Writing Workshop is devoted to independent writing.
During this time, students are prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing their pieces. Depending on the age and abilities of your students, independent writing can be as short as 15 minutes or as long as 45-60 minutes. It helps to build stamina with your class, beginning with a short amount of time and building that time until they can work for up 30 minutes or more. Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article. A Teenager on How Writing Helps Makes Sense of His Loss. Youth CommunicationShateek Palmer Occasionally we collaborate with an organization called Youth Communication to feature true stories by young people that help add a new voice or angle to a topic we’re covering on this blog.
Last year, for instance, teenagers from the organization wrote about Trayvon Martin and college debt. Below, an essay by Shateek Palmer, a student at Central Park East High School. It originally ran in Represent, a Youth Communication magazine by and for young people in foster care in New York City. Shateek explains how writing has helped him express his emotions and feel less “alone in the world” since he was 9 years old. Explaining My Life: Writing Makes Sense of My Losses By Shateek Palmer The first time I ever wrote about my feelings was when my grandmother was placed in the hospital. Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article.
When I began teaching, Mark McGwire was breaking the home run record in major league baseball.
We sat in the stands and cheered homeruns 67 and 68, awed by the consistency of the record-breaking power hitter. A few months later I began my student teaching experience. I remember feeling frustrated because things didn’t always go as smoothly as I planned. My first few years of teaching I felt the same frustration. Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article. Last week Tammy joined a kindergarten teacher, Vicki Haley, for her writer's workshop.
As we all know, the reality of kindergarten is that even with the best-laid plans we can get off schedule. Focusing Moments for Writers. One of the most powerful ways to help struggling writers is to help them to focus their stories.
I have been reading many samples of student work over the last week from across several grades and there is no doubt that children love to tell stories. I have read many accounts of car rides on the way to vacation followed by play-by-play, day-by-day accounts of the entire trip. In some of the narratives, I've even gotten to read about the car ride home right up until the garage closes behind them. Teaching Authentic Writing in a Socially Mediated World. Email Share June 28, 2012 - by Susan Lucille Davis 122 Email Share I need to confess.
As an English/Language Arts teacher with nearly three decades of experience teaching writing in her professional backpack, I am supposed to know what I am doing. But the radical changes in the way we communicate in contemporary society have led me to dive deep into an existential crisis. Try Wikibrains for Brainstorming.