Story Starters Story Starters During our daily Writer's Workshop, I encourage my kindergarten and first grade students to choose their own topics, so that their writing will be meaningful. Most of the time, kids do their best writing when they're writing about what interests them, when they're telling a story they want to tell. As children learn more about how print works, I begin to see a shift in their writing. Even the best writers get stuck sometimes. As an adult writer, I use Story Starters for what author and teacher Natalie Goldberg calls "Writing Practice." Other writing teachers call this type of exercise Quick Writes or Free Writes. No matter how your students choose their topic, I think one thing is vitally imporant: you need to sit down and write, too. Some days you'll write on the same topic as your students. This list was compiled by <PAULABRIANSTEDMAN@prodigy.net>, who graciously allowed me to post it here, with the following note: Start each phrase with "What if ..." Write about: ! and
I Keep a Writer's Notebook alongside my Students. Do you? I began requiring journal writing way back in 1990--my first year of teaching. I had taken a methods class at my university that stressed the importance of having students keep journals to record daily responses to topics. I said, "Why not?" and every student from day one maintained a spiral-bound "journal" for me. In the spring of 1998, thanks to my high school journalism students' hard work, I was awarded with a month-long, summer fellowship from C-SPAN in Washington, D.C., and the first thing the wonderful folks at C-SPAN asked me to do upon arrival was to keep a daily journal that documented my experience there. When I returned to my classroom in August of 1998, I showed and shared entries from my summer journal every day during that first month of school. Over the next dozen years that followed that trip to D.C., I slowly improved my ability to inspire my students with the daily writing expectations. I have to be doing something right.
Activity #4: Invent a World Like C.S. Lewis did, make a map. I suggest making an island. Now add some features. (By the way, islands don't have to be tropical islands. Here’s what I’ve added: Now decide who lives on the island. Finally, start your story by bringing to the island a main character or two. A boy has heard about the famed Well of Wishes, where any wish can come true. Writing Objectives Using Bloom's Taxonomy | Center for Teaching & Learning Various researchers have summarized how to use Bloom’s Taxonomy. Following are four interpretations that you can use as guides in helping to write objectives using Bloom’s Taxonomy. From: KC Metro [old link, no longer functioning?] Bloom’s Taxonomy divides the way people learn into three domains. One of these is the cognitive domain, which emphasizes intellectual outcomes. This domain is further divided into categories or levels. From: UMUC From: Stewards Task Oriented Question Construction Wheel Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy Task Oriented Question Construction Wheel Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy. ©2001 St. From: GA Tech According to Benjamin Bloom, and his colleagues, there are six levels of cognition: Ideally, each of these levels should be covered in each course and, thus, at least one objective should be written for each level. Below are examples of objectives written for each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy and activities and assessment tools based on those objectives.
Homeschool Articles: Teaching Ideas: The Problem With Creative Writing Creative writing assignments are often found to be vague, undefined or too open-ended. When asked about how to tackle a creative writing assignment, one fourth grader who generally enjoys writing responds, “you just keep on writing until you come to a good ending.” Another student, in the sixth grade, who does not get pleasure from writing, answers, “you write until you have enough words to make a paragraph. The importance of learning to write cannot be understated. With solid, consistent steps, one may learn to build paragraphs that easily combine into simple essays, expanded essays, or research reports. Start with a series of three “prompt pictures.” Begin with the setting paragraph. Paragraph two should encompass the conflict, or the problem in the story. The final paragraph will conclude the story. Janice P.
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. According to Katie Wood Ray (The Writing Workshop, 2001), students can also do other activities during their writing time, such as writing in their schema notebooks journal writing writing exercises to experiment with language and style conducting peer-conferences reading to support writing During independent writing time, the teacher confers with students about their writing. Teachers should keep conferences short. Websites on Conferring:
Tips for Teaching Parts of Speech Memorably | Homeschool | Home EDucators Resource Directory | HERD by Sarah Major, M.Ed Grammar, phonics, and parts of speech often struggle for first place at the very pinnacle of the student boredom scale. When I was growing up, spelling and arithmetic also jockeyed for room at the top. Because my boredom/failure scale was so top heavy as a young student, these days I spend a lot of “working” time looking for ways to teach these types of mind-numbing concepts, ways that are not only easy to learn but hard to forget. Personification really helps make abstract concepts memorable and helps to avoid the need for a child to just memorize and remember. It makes sense to me to start with nouns when teaching parts of speech because very young children are first occupied in acquiring naming words for all the “things” they see and touch in their environment. Mr. Have your child act out being a noun, strutting around wearing a red T shirt and saying “I am a thing…I am i-t IT!” Verbs are great to follow up with after learning some nouns. Next we meet Ms.
Show, Don't Tell: A Whiteboard Writing Lesson In this mini-lesson, whiteboard-ready writing samples help students spot the difference between telling or reporting information that holds the reader back and writing that involves the audience by showing what’s happening in stories. Exploring the question, "Does my writing show what's happening?," students view short paragraphs on the interactive whiteboard and pick out examples of where an author uses sounds, thoughts, and feelings, as well as examples of where the writing is straight reporting. Download These Files Show, Don’t Tell #1Show, Don’t Tell #2 Directions Display "Show, Don’t Tell" sample #1 on the interactive whiteboard. Read it aloud with expression, then ask: Do you understand what the author has written? Repeat this process, displaying sample #2 on the interactive whiteboard. Then, ask the class which of the two pieces has more “show.” Discussion Points If children cannot tell you why they think sample #1 is the stronger piece, display that sample again and ask: 1. 2. 3. 4.
DOGO News - Kids news articles! Kids current events; plus kids news on science, sports, and more! Guest Post: The Best Animated TV Shows of the 70s I'm proud to present, for the first time ever, a guest post on The Wonderful Wonderblog. See my comments at the bottom of this post. Often referred to as the decade of disco, the 1970s were a phenomenal and memorable set of years still widely referenced in today's culture. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Brittany Johnson is a writer for Guide to Online Schools. A great big thank you to Brittany Johnson for the guest post.