Posts Tagged ‘writing’
Keeping a Journal
From the desk of Carol C… I’ve thought a lot recently about students and journaling. At first my thoughts were all over the place. Then I began to narrow my focus by asking myself: What do I mean by the word “journal”? What would be the purpose of having students keep one? Possible purposes of…
Read MoreRead. Analyze. Emulate.
From the desk of Alice… In case you missed it, Kelly Gallagher was in town this week and did a workshop related to reading and writing. I love it when we are able to bring high quality educators and authors to the area so I can learn from them. Kelly had many useful tips for…
Read MoreSeize the Opportunity
From the desk of Carol C… You have the opportunity to go to Hawaii, and everything for you is free. Would you take it? What about Paris, London, Rome, or southern Germany free of charge? Pearl Harbor, the Louvre, Tower of London, or Bavaria. Of course you would. It would be the opportunity of a…
Read MoreAssessing Writing
From the desk of Carol C… Recently I’ve noticed in many classrooms where writing seems to have taken a back seat to reading and math. The reason, I think, is that school systems and the state have emphasized these two subjects more than any others. However, the performance tasks in the Common Core exemplars are…
Read MoreWriting Across the Curriculum
From the desk of Carol C… Writing across the curriculum…it’s a phrase we hear often these days. Any grade level can look through the exemplars and see the level of rigor expected in writing assignments in all areas, not just Language Arts. The first step in helping students attain these expected levels is to make…
Read MoreFinding Freedom in Poetry Writing
From the desk of Katie M… When people think of poetry they always think rhyme but that’s not always true. There are many different types of poems like free verse, cinquain, haiku, lyrical, concrete and so on. None of those besides lyric actually has to rhyme. This is important to tell your writers! I…
Read MorePublishing
From the desk of Carol C…. Publishing was hard for me for a long time, and I never had it down to a science. I think it had something to do with the way writing was taught when I first started teaching. Assign the topic, students write, students turn in their papers, teachers correct the…
Read MoreWriting Poetry
From the desk of Carol C… The Common Core doesn’t directly list writing poetry as one of its standards. So why teach it if it’s not in there? “How do I tell thee? Let me count the ways.” First of all teaching students how to write poetry requires that they understand what poetry is and…
Read MoreConstruct…Discover, Try Again
From the Desk of Tina… The little girl reread her sentence and erased the words again. “That … doesn’t … sound right,” she mumbled. She flipped her long brown hair over her shoulder in frustration. Her eyes moved from her paper to the board, back to the paper. She placed the paper on her desk…
Read MoreTackling the Writing Conference
From the desk of Carol C… Tackling the writing conference is one of the most rewarding and unrewarding parts of the writing workshop. It’s rewarding because you can see the fruits of your labor. You can see the progress that the writer has made. You can pat yourself on the back and say “job well…
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