The Writing Process: G2G and the District Writing Project

I just discovered yesterday that G2G teachers would have only fifteen minutes to conference with their student groups every other week, so I thought that since I'd created a blog for teachers, why not one where students could receive more extended feedback and even respond if they wished.  As of yet, I haven't decided if I'm going to make responding to my feedback compulsory--I think I'll wait to see how the process plays out before doing that.

Anyone who'd like help in creating a blog, please e-mail me.

Reading Strategies III: Using The New York Times Blog to Model and Teach Non-Fiction/Current Events

Previously, I had posted about using The New York Times Blog, but after thoroughly exploring it, I can really recommend it to anyone teaching current events and wishing to teach genres like autobiography, biography, journalism, op/ed pieces, or just getting to know the ins and outs of non-fiction.  According to recent studies, many students have trouble with non-fiction as many schools can't afford a school-wide (or often even a class-wide) newspaper subscription or choose to focus their budget funds on fiction texts.  The NYT Blog is a great way to circumvent this by incorporating your SmartBoards and the blog itself... 

If you look on the right hand pane in the image below, you'll see there are actual lesson plans for your use, quick quizzes for students and places for them to share their ideas, pretty of-and-in-the-moment ideas for essays, and even actual lesson plans for some of the most frequently taught Shakespeare plays.

 

Confluence of Rule of Blog and Debater Role (from Literature Responses)

The tack that I've chosen to pursue this year in everyone's classes is the following (in this order):

1. Question Types (with an especial emphasis on Open-Ended Questions)
2. Engaging students in blogging in-class using the Rule of Blog
3. Explicitly teaching them the Toulmin method of argumentation that I've streamlined into the Debater Role from my Literature Responses
4. Incorporating the Debater Role into brainstorming and pre-writing for persuasive essays

This doesn't include workshops for reading strategies, Guided Reading, Literature Circles, Literature Responses, and specific concerns for the students in your classes, but it is, after much deliberation on my part, a PD paradigm that will allow everyone to start addressing AMS's new SMART goal.

I can't overstate how important it is that everyone take a lock-step approach to the four strategies/activities that I have listed here.  Briefly stated, if students haven't mastered OEQ (Open-Ended Questions) then they won't have anything of substance to respond to for the Rule of Blog activity; if they haven't responded to teacher- or student-generated OEQ on the Rule of Blog activity then the Debate Role (Toulmin method of argumentation) will just seem pointless to them and, most likely, you; and if students haven't mastered the Debater Role, then their persuasive essays aren't going to be nearly as effective as they'll need to be come Spring of 2012.

For now, I wanted to proffer some student exemplars--fairly decent for first tries--of the Rule of Blog, one of which had an impromptu OEQ based on responses to previous student-generated OEQ, the second of which had been prepared ahead of time...