There are many books about the value of writing in the classroom – regardless of content area. We know that students make better, deeper connections to material when they commit pen (ant thoughts) to paper, and their overall understanding usually benefits greatly from writing.

I have discovered that my students benefit in yet another way when they write in my history classes – I get to know them better. And they get to know me better. I know I am not the only teacher who has realized this, but it is something that the experts never mentioned to me in my Master’s program.

I have found that using a personal writing prompt that connects a student to an emotion can be a very powerful form of communication. On September 11 of this past year, I assigned a nice, short writing assignment when the students came in. Read The Full Story…

One practice I have found works in my classroom is the use of classroom-wide goals in their writing.

After grading the second set of essays for my class this year I realized that the same mistakes were showing up in most of the papers. Though I had explained what these errors were and warned the students to edit for them, they still were not catching them. I decided to go back to a method of classroom management I learned in graduate school to solve this problem.

Giving the students the control over the rules/penalties greatly increased their performance. I wrote down the most common mistakes in that set of essays, which meant that they showed up in more than 40% of the time.

The next day I wrote them on the board at the beginning of first period. Then I handed over my expo marker and let the students take over. I told them to reorganize them by the severity of the errors. I then asked them to organize them in three groups by percentage that I should take off for the mistakes in each category. The class came up with categories for 10%, 5%, and 2%. (See the picture for the list.) Read The Full Story…

Since most of our students have used/are using social networking sites to reveal a little about their characters, why not enourage them to do the same with characters in the literature they read. I recently had the idea of trying this with Gatsby, but this could obviously work with any piece whether your students have experience with these sites or not.

I would suggest asking one of your students to jot down all of the categories of his/her page to give you an up-to-date list of topics. Create a worksheet that requires the task of creating a profile for one or multiple characters. To make this work pedagogically, students must be able to back their answers. You may even decide to require textual examples.

ASSESSMENT OF CHARACTER

You can assess students’ knowledge of how well they understand the characters themselves by asking them to fill the profile with contemporary movies/music/literature. That way you know if the students are thoroughly understanding the characters.

CULTURAL/SETTING ASSESSMENT

For this method you can ask students to write the profile using their knowledge of the character’s cultural/historical background. This would require research, but would be great for introducing students to frontloading materials. Perhaps a webquest would be a good idea at this point.

ADAPTATION FOR MATH/LANGUAGE Read The Full Story…

(This is reposted from Kevin’s Meandering Mind)

I thank Bud the Teacher for this one.

I am a co-editor on a book (which will be published sometime in the future by Teachers College Press in partnership with the National Writing Project) on how technology is changing teaching practice in the writing classroom, and how teachers are assessing such work in light of national and state curriculum standards. It’s been very interesting to read the chapters as they filter in (mine is about a digital picture book project).

The NCTE is also looking for stories of how technology is impacting our teaching practice and what it means. Here is what they write on their website:

We’re interested in how your teaching has changed—in how you have altered, adjusted, or shifted your habits and expectations—since the time you began teaching. For example, what has changed in your approaches to reading? Writing? Evaluation of students? Use of technology? Confidence level? Rapport with parents? Balance of personal and professional life?

Whether you are a 30-year classroom veteran or a new teacher, you have a story, and we’d like to hear it! Email us 150 words or less describing changes you have made in your teaching and your teaching life. Please include your full name, school name, years of teaching, and a preferred email address or phone number in case we need to contact you. Send stories to chronicle@ncte.org.

You might want to consider writing up a piece about your classroom. I, for one, am thinking of something along the lines of podcasting.

Peace (in reflection),
Kevin

I recently signed up for a project called Word Count Journal. As I was writing my daily journal entry this morning, I started thinking about how great this would be in the classroom. Here’s how it works:

Sometimes a little bit really does go a long way. In Word Count Journal, by gradually building up your writing stamina and discipline, you will see just how easy it is to get a whole lot done. By simply writing a set number of words each day, every day, you will write a whopping 66,795 words at the end of one calendar year. Little by little, through the power of series, the total of your written words will add up to more words than contained in the average novel.

It is hard to believe but 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 … + 364 + 365 = 66,795. Just like the Confucian saying that the longest trip begins with the first step, your journal journey begins with the first word.

So, imagine having your students log on everyday to do their daily journal. I think they would find the format less intimidating that a regular notebook journal, where a big blank page is staring up at them, waiting to be filled. A lot of pressure! I remember that well from school, and even now, in my own notebook journal. With Word Count Journal, it’s easy to feel a sense of accomplishment since the daily goals are so manageable and I’m willing to be that many students would end up writing a lot more than the alloted daily word count.

In terms of privacy, teachers could create private groups and instruct their students to keep their journals private, so that only classmates can read it, or maybe just the teacher. Teachers could choose whether to use the commenting feature and have students comment on each other’s journals. If any of you teachers have tried it, leave a comment with your thoughts or contribute a blog post about it!

In a previous post, Ben asked us to consider how we use figurative language techniques in the classrooms. As luck would have it, I am right in the midst of a unit around figurative language with my sixth graders. I often begin with hyperbole, as my students are naturally prone to some exaggeration in their stories anyway.

We begin by talking about American Tall Tales and the way they use hyperbole to entice the reader and excite the narrative. I remind them that many tall tales were first based on real people. I talk about this equation:

Hyperbole + Legend= Tall Tale

We then listen to the story of Davey Crocket and I conduct a listening quiz. They love this story of this bizarre man who was born when a comet hit the top of a mountain, wrestled with the biggest panther of the forest and tamed it, took on Mike Fink in an animal-sound duel on the Mississippi River, and then headed off to the Alamo (where, unfortunately, he met his end that began his journey into American folklore).

Using this concept, I have my students write short tall stories about some real life event that happened to them. I provide an example of a tall tale story in which my entire classroom of students turns into penguins one day. They get a chuckle out of that one and are eager to write.

This year, we blogged our tall tale stories at The Electronic Pencil and then I collected some of the better stories and used Google Page Creator (a free website tool from the Google Suite) to make a website of tall tales.

Here are a couple of student tall tales:

Read The Full Story…

I would like to hear some metaphors/analogies/similies that you all use! You can either submit them as an article or post them as comments.

I recently began reading Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff, in which he explains how vital metaphors are to our communication. As I labored, metaphorically speaking, through the book, I found myself reflecting on figurative language I use while teaching writing. I thought about how I cannot help but to use figurative language for difficult aspects of writing like transitions. Just because a student adds in transition words doesn’t mean they have learned the skill of using them. Writing is sculpting, welding, dovetailing, gluing, binding, nailing, riveting, tying words and thoughts together, but how do we convey the artistry of writing to students? How do we get the importance of writing instead of just being grammatical?

I have a colleague who uses metaphors in grammar. Another one uses them in teaching Math. Therefore, I conclude that all content areas use them. I would like to hear some metaphors/analogies/similes that you all use!

Here is just an explanation I tell my students as to why perfect introductions are important:

Read The Full Story…