How can we use our language so that our students become more metacognitive and reflective?
Others’ questions:
Is peer editing actually useful for students or only for teachers?
How would our teaching practice change if we were to consider all of our students as gifted?
Iquiry works for all students, no matter the level of giftedness.
Naming things makes writing more powerful (specificity is potent).
Food
Japon Spicy Tuna handrolls at the happy hour price.
My wife’s savved second breakfast of Lucky Charms.
Ordering Dairy Queen Blizzards with chocolate ice cream.
People/Pets
My wife as she picks at her stretch marks.
Charlie when he sees his red leash.
Places
The fear of never breathing again after the SCUBA gear fell out of my mouth.
Objects
My Quick-Write on the Naming:
Kara goes into the kitchin, stepping on the slightly-off new tile floor. She sets herself up for her first breakfast. Try number one at filling her stomach. Out come the rice chex and the two percent milk. Out comes a big spoon to get it all down quickly. She scarfs in front of a tivo’d family feud, sitting on the couch that she sinks into and hates because of it. She waits. She hopes. She knows. It is is all in vain as she heads for the toilet that she knows too well…
Intentionally use one craft that we discussed and that is present in the “professional writing” and use it in your writing piece.
Make your writer’s notebook special. Give students cool tools to do the mundane things.
All writing is personal. We need to make this fact more apparent.
Teaching sentence fluency through the use of commentary (Rick Reily, Leonard Pitts)?
We should be looking at professional writing and student writing side by side. Quick-Writes and imitations of short pieces can be great for this.
We can look at a genre, not by definition but by inquiry.
What is the author doing in this piece?
Are these elements of this particular genre?
Example:
Memoir Crafts (Murphy the Dog):
Short/Long sentences fluency
frames setting first
aides-voice
personal/universal
Writing workshop:
Getting ready to write
Writing
Making a little bit better
Celebration/Publication (making writing public).
Either you will share your writing in my classroom, or I will share you writing anonymously. I will never embarrass you or call you out on your writing, but we will share our writing in this class, otherwise we will never progress as writers.
Research:
Grammar in context.
Guided writing is more effective than free writing.
Modeling good writing of your own, published writing, and student writing is important.
Sentence Combining works.
Use scales for success in writing.
What is the target for your writing?
Inquiry in writing is powerful.
Asking questions as an author or a reader of authors is a virtue.
All writing choices are based upon data.
Resources:
Shakespeare Set Free (Writing prompts for each chapter of Shakespeare’s plays).
When kids are in a writing group there needs to be a good process for talking about writing.
Mark Overmeyer will be e-mailing us his classroom process.
He is married to his favorite person, and loves his three children quite a little bit (aged 10, 15 and 17). He is passionate about authentic learning, technology with purpose, and creating at least one new thing every day. In short, he teaches, and learns. A lot.
