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I Keep a Writer's Notebook alongside my Students. Do you?

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. Most students tossed their journals in the trash on the last day of class in June; they could have cared less about the responses they'd scribbled in there, and I knew they didn't care about their journals, yet I continued to use this daily practice for those first five or so years of teaching. To be perfectly honest, journal-writing was ten or fifteen minutes of daily "busy work" that allowed me to take care of attendance and set up the classroom's lesson for the day while the kids were quiet. In the spring of 1998, thanks to my high school journalism students' hard work, I was awarded with a month-long, summer fellowship from I have to be doing something right.

30 Ideas for Teaching Writing Summary: Few sources available today offer writing teachers such succinct, practice-based help—which is one reason why 30 Ideas for Teaching Writing was the winner of the Association of Education Publishers 2005 Distinguished Achievement Award for Instructional Materials. The National Writing Project's 30 Ideas for Teaching Writing offers successful strategies contributed by experienced Writing Project teachers. Since NWP does not promote a single approach to teaching writing, readers will benefit from a variety of eclectic, classroom-tested techniques. These ideas originated as full-length articles in NWP publications (a link to the full article accompanies each idea below). Table of Contents: 30 Ideas for Teaching Writing 1. Debbie Rotkow, a co-director of the Coastal Georgia Writing Project, makes use of the real-life circumstances of her first grade students to help them compose writing that, in Frank Smith's words, is "natural and purposeful." ROTKOW, DEBBIE. 2003. Back to top 2. 3. 4.

4 Ways To Enhance Your Teaching With Mind Mapping The more efficient your teaching technique the better your students’ comprehension level. This is just one of the benefits of mind mapping and encouraging students to work together as they learn new things. The following techniques, can be easily integrated in your teaching activity: 1. This technique allows students to work either on their own or together with other people. The benefits of using this method are numerous and valuable for any educator who wants to present a new topic or concept, to test students’ retention of material, to encourage critical thinking, teamwork etc. In addition to this, students will directly benefit from this experience because they can: ● become active participants ● share their ideas and opinions ● understand different perspectives ● enhance their creative thinking ● identify key concepts In the image below you can see an example of brainstorming on a particular topic “Why learn a foreign language?” 2 . 3. ● better master the content they are presenting 4.

Descriptive Writing Prompts [Slideshow] About Descriptive Writing Prompts Descriptive writing prompts can be useful tools for overcoming writer's block or simply getting you in the habit of practicing writing on a daily basis. In descriptive writing, the goal is to make the reader feel as though he is part of the scene. Use the following selection of descriptive writing prompts to help you get started on your next writing project. Describing the Villian Imagine this person will be the villain in a short story that you are writing.

Bibliomancienne The Elements Of A Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment by Kimberly Tyson, Ph. D. of learningunlimitedllc.com Literacy-rich environments, as endorsed by the International Reading Association, have a significant impact on what goes on in the classroom and set the stage for interactions with a wide variety of genres. In the past several years, I’ve supported many teachers and administrators as they work toward creating literacy-rich classrooms across schools and districts that allow for increased interaction with print and literacy learning for students. Much attention is being spent preparing for the Common Core standards and the call for increasing the amount of nonfiction and informational text in classrooms. A literacy-rich environment is not only important for early literacy but supports content-specific learning as well. Unfortunately, many classrooms lack an environment that supports engagement with text in the form of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Classroom Library References: Gambrell, L.B.

ReadWriteThink Interactives Find content from Thinkfinity Partners using a visual bookmarking and sharing tool. More Your students can save their work with Student Interactives. More Home › Results from ReadWriteThink 1-10 of 21 Results from ReadWriteThink page | 1 2 3 Sort by: Classroom Resources | Grades K – 12 | Student Interactive | Organizing & Summarizing Alphabet Organizer Students use this online tool to create an alphabet chart or pages for an alphabet book. Right-brained Writing Prompts Writing Prompts: For the Right Brain inspiring students to be recklessly creative when beginning new writing In 2001, we launched the WritingFix website with twenty-one interactive prompts. Many of those original prompts became our "Right-brained Prompt Collection," which has always been housed on this page. WritingFix believes this: No one writes with just the right side of his/her brain. We do believe this too: Ideas that spark a writer's inspiration can start on the right-side of the brain. And don't neglect the left-side of your brain! During the 2011-12 school year, we will be revising all of the prompts on this page so that they all feature a mentor text as part of the learning process!

iPad and Guided Reading Many teachers have been using iPads to develop reading in the classroom. This post looks at how they can be integrated into guided reading, however the apps we recommend are versatile enough to be used across many teaching reading contexts. For grouped reading: Ideally the teacher and the iPads would be in different groups – iPads are brilliant for encouraging independent reading, and activities which allow the children to explore books, character, plot and so on by themselves. Producing at the end of the 20min / 30min session something which can be saved either to a webdav or dropbox or which can be shared to the rest of the class. It is important that texts chosen and activities selected are appropriate to the level of the children, and usually when reading something new the teacher should introduce an unfamiliar text to the children first. So, what are the apps that work really well in these sessions? Exploring Text Non-fiction reading. Billionaire Boy – What friend would you buy?

idrawdigital - Tutorials for Drawing Digital Comics Twenty Rules of Thumb for Creativity Twenty Rules of Thumb for Creativity 1. The best way to get great ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. If you have some other rules of thumb for creativity, Send them to me e-mail Return to Tools Page here.

Brothers Grimm On Preserving Fairy Tales (EXCERPT) From Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated from the German by Peter Wortsman. Reprinted courtesy of Archipelago Books / Peter Wortsman (c) 2013.Edited excerpt taken from the Foreword to the second edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1819) by the Brothers Grimm. Translated from the German by Peter Wortsman We take comfort in the fact that when a storm or some other mishap hurled by the heavens thrashes an entire crop to the ground, among the low-growing hedgerow, or the bushes lining the way, a small patch is invariably spared and a few ears of grain withstand the onslaught. When the sun once again shines down on them, they keep on growing, solitary and unnoticed – no sickle fells them for the silo. This is how it seemed to us, when we saw that of all that blossomed in former times nothing survived – even the memory thereof was almost erased– nothing, that is, but a few folk songs, a handful of books, some legends, and these innocent household tales. Kassel, July 3, 1819

How to Improve Your Drawing Skills | Curious.com Disappointed by your doodles, and wish you could draw better? Drawing well is about your hand being able to do what your brain tells it to do. And if your hand doesn’t have much practice at creating certain shapes or lines, the end result of your sketching may not look at all like it did in your mind’s eye. If you can hold a pencil or pen, you can expand your drawing skills by working on fun projects you'll enjoy!

How To Draw Learn to Draw Tutorials for Kids Print and enjoy our Learn to Draw Animals pages for kids of all ages. Kids can use our step by step... Here's a collection of our "learn to draw" activities for Spring. Children can follow... Kids can have fun with these printables with which they can learn to draw Autumn pictures such as... Kids can have fun with our learn to draw tutorials for winter pictures - a pretty snowflake and a... Kids can learn to draw favourite flowers with these printable step by step tutorials. Here's something fun for keeping the kids busy! Learn to draw the goddess Lakshmi and the elephant-headed Ganesha for Diwali using our simple step... Here's a fun activity for the kids this Halloween! Fun printable learn to draw tutorials for kids with a Thanksgiving theme! Learn to draw a selection of birds with our fun drawing tutorials, which teach kids with a simple... Just for fun, learn to draw your own Saint Andrew and Loch Ness Monster on St Andrew's Day! Here's an activity that will keep the kids busy!

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