Teach grammar. It provides a metalanguage - a language to describe, use and craft our language. For many of our students Standard Australian English is a foreign dialect. Students need to hear and see correct models of language in use. Provide real reasons for students to speak and write formally. Provide daily opportunties to express complexity of thought, in all subject areas. Insist that the 'click and go' generation ask and respond to both oral and written questions in whole sentences.
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This page allows you to download documents for teaching reading and writing that members of the our list have agreed to share. File size for each document will be provided in download dialogue box.
"The Writing Workshop, similar to the Reading Workshop, is a method of teaching writing using a workshop method. Students are given opportunities to write in a variety of genres and helps foster a love of writing. The Writing Workshop allows teachers to meet the needs of their students by differentiating their instruction and gearing instruction based on information gathered throughout the workshop."
"While many discussions about learning a second language focus on teaching methodologies, little emphasis is given to the contextual factors -- individual, social, and societal -- that affect students' learning. These contextual factors can be considered from the perspective of the language, the learner, and the learning process. This digest discusses these perspectives as they relate to learning any second language, with a particular focus on how they affect adolescent learners of English as a second language."
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One initial lesson for writer's notebooks is to Read Ralph Fletcher's opening story in Keeping a Writer's Notebook. It's about digging a ditch and catching all kinds of critters. He compares writer's notebooks to that ditch -- a space we dig in our busy lives to catch stuff. After reading the story, my students and I brainstorm the different kinds of things we could catch in our writer's notebooks. Then I typed the chart in a format that made it easy for students to tape it to the inside cover of their notebooks. Here's what we came up with:
"This lesson helps students understand copyright, fair use, and plagiarism by focusing on why students should avoid plagiarism and exploring strategies that respect copyright and fair use. The lesson includes three parts, each framed by a KWL chart. In the first part, focusing on plagiarism, students discuss plagiarism and look at examples to determine whether the passages are plagiarized. Part two introduces copyright and fair use. Students use a Think-Pair-Share strategy to explore questions about fair use, then read several scenarios and determine if the uses described are fair use. In the third part, students develop paraphrasing skills through direct practice with paraphrasing text book passages using an online notetaking tool."