Skip to main content

Home/ Diigo In Education/ Group items tagged writing teaching

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Has Slone

Always Write: Cobett's "7 Elements of a Differentiated Writing Lesson" Resources - 10 views

    • Has Slone
       
      This is a neat way to start a writing class with the creating plot ideas....
  • One of the goals I ask teachers to set after my training is to find new ways to push students to analyze and evaluate as they learn to write.
  • As part of my teacher workshop on the writing process, we investigate multiple uses of student samples. One of my favorite techniques involves having student compare and contrast finished pieces of writing. During both pre-writing and and revision, this push for deeper student thinking both educates and inspires your students.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • The handout has student writers analyze two fifth graders' published writing with a compare and contrast Venn diagram.
  • Revision is hard, and most teachers recognize it as an area of deficiency; the truth is, a lot of really great writing teachers I know still freely admit that revision is where they struggle the most.
  • revision shouldn't be the first of the seven elements to work on
  • When students like what they've written in rough draft form, they're ready to move to revision. My other six elements aim at helping students increase their pre-writing time so they both like and see more potential in their rough drafts
  • I believe in the power of collaboration and study teams,
  • Professional development research clearly cites the study team model as the most effective way to have learners not only understand new ideas but also implement them enough times so they become regular tools in a teacher's classroom.
  • Below, find three examples created by study teams during past workshops. I use them as models/exemplars when I set the study teams off to work.
  • My students learn to appreciate the act of writing, and they see it as a valuable life-skill.
  • In a perfect world, following my workshop,
  • follow-up tools.
  • I also use variations of these Post-its during my Critical Thinking Using the Writing Traits Workshop.
  • By far, the best success I've ever had while teaching revision was the one I experienced with the revision Post-its I created for my students
  • During my teacher workshop on the writing process, we practice with tools like the Revision Sprint (at right), which I designed to push students to use analysis and evaluation skills as they looked at their own drafts
  • I used to throw my kids into writing response groups way too fast. They weren't ready to provide critical thought for one another
  • The most important trick learned was this: be a writer too. During my first five years of teaching, I had assigned a lot of writing but never once had I written something I intended to show my students.
  • I have the following interactive plot element generator (which can be replicated with three coffee cans and index cards) to help my students feel in control of their options:
  • If you want to hear my take on graphic organizers in detail, you're going to have to hire me to come to present to you. If you can't do that, then I'll throw you a challenge that was thrown once at me, and completing the challenge helped me become a smarter designer of graphic organizers. The challenge came in two parts: 1) learn how to use tables and text boxes in Microsoft Word; 2) for practice, design a graphic organizer that would help students be successfully with the following trait-based skills:
  • "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, etc," which is an interesting structure that students can borrow from to write about other topics, be they fiction or non-fiction.
  • Asking students to create daily journals from the perspective of other animals or even inanimate objects is a great way to borrow this book's idea.
  • it challenges students to analyze the author's word choice & voice skills: specifically his use of verbs, subtle alliteration, and dialogue.
  • Mentor Text Resource Page here at my website, because this topic has become such a big piece of learning to me. It deserved its own webpage.
  • Here are seven skills I can easily list for the organization trait. Organization is: 1) using a strong lead or hook, 2) using a variety of transition words correctly, 3) paragraphing correctly, 4) pacing the writing, 5) sequencing events/ideas logically, 6) concluding the writing in a satisfying way, 7) titling the writing interestingly and so that the title stands for the whole idea. Over the years, I have developed or found and adapted mini-lessons that have students practice these skills during my "Organization Month."
  • Now, let's talk differentiation:
  • The problem with focusing students on a product--instead of the writing process--is that the majority of the instructional time is spent teaching students to adhere to a formula.
  • the goal of writing instruction absolutely should be the helping students practice the three Bloom's levels above apply: analyze, evaluate, and create.
  • Click here to access the PowerPoint I use during the goal-setting portion of my workshop.
  • Improving one's ability to teach writing to all students is a long-term professional development goal; sticking with it requires diligence, and it requires having a more specific goal than "I want to improve writing
  • "Trying to get better at all seven elements at once doesn't work;
  • strive to make my workshops more about "make and take,
  • Robert Marzano's research convinced me years ago of the importance of having learners set personal goals as they learn to take responsibility for their own learning.
Florence Dujardin

Embedding academic writing instruction into subject teaching: A case study - 0 views

  •  
    The benefits of embedding the teaching of writing into the curriculum have been advocated by educators and researchers. However, there is currently little evidence of embedded writing instruction in the UK's higher education context. In this article, we present a case study in which we report the design, implementation and evaluation of an academic writing intervention with first-year undergraduate students in an applied linguistics programme. Our objectives were to try a combination of embedded instructional methods and provide an example that can be followed by lecturers across disciplines and institutions. Through the integration of in-class and online writing tasks and assessment feedback in a first-term module, we supported students' writing development throughout the first term. We evaluated the effects of the intervention through the analysis of notes on classroom interaction, a student questionnaire and interviews, and a text analysis of students' writing and the feedback comments over time. The evaluation findings provide insights into the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach. The embedded writing instruction was perceived as useful by both students and teachers. The assessment feedback, whilst being the most work-intensive method for the teachers, was valued most by the students and led to substantial improvements in the writing of some. These findings suggest that embedded writing instruction could be usefully applied in other higher education contexts.
Kathleen N

Personal Technology Learning and the Teaching of Writing | Digital Writing, Digital Tea... - 1 views

  •  
    Understanding and applying technologies to the teaching of writing - as well as understanding concepts associated with them such as copyright and fair use - has become the professionally responsible way to teach writing . Professional organizations such as NCTE NWP IRA ISTE the Center for Media Literacy and others have moved quickly and clearly in the past few years to show that integrating technology across content areas, including the teaching of writing, is critical for creating students who are literate in a variety of ways.
Cammy Torgenrud

Tech Learning TL Advisor Blog and Ed Tech Ticker Blogs from TL Blog Staff - TechLearnin... - 41 views

  • Email writingFacebook updates and commentsTweeting and replying Discussion Boards - Replying and initiating topicsCommenting on blogsWriting a guest post on a blogCommenting in newspapers or magazines about subjects of interestWriting an article for a newspaper or magazine about a subject of interestWriting to persuade someone / some place to do something you want them to doWriting to teach others how to do something and knowing how to reach those who care
  •  
    "# Email writing # Facebook updates and comments # Tweeting and replying # Discussion Boards - Replying and initiating topics # Commenting on blogs # Writing a guest post on a blog # Commenting in newspapers or magazines about subjects of interest # Writing an article for a newspaper or magazine about a subject of interest # Writing to persuade someone / some place to do something you want them to do # Writing to teach others how to do something and knowing how to reach those who care"
Josh Flores

Annotating the Model Content Frameworks for ELA/Literacy by PARCC - 9 views

    • Josh Flores
       
      Quarterly Modules - but could be adjusted for your school's purposes.
    • Josh Flores
       
      Ingredients!
  • shape the content within the modules in any way that suit their desired purposes
  • ...54 more annotations...
  • re-order
  • order in which the four modules may be used is not critical
  • ocus and emphasis on the types of texts
  • What changes
  • is the
  • analytic reading
  • examining its meaning
  • read and reread deliberately.
  • understand the central ideas
  • supporting details
  • entails the careful gathering of observations
  • overall understanding and judgment
  • omparison and synthesis of ideas
  • drawing on relevant prior knowledge
  • suggests that educators select a minimum number of grade-level-appropriate short texts
  • as well as one extended text
  • in lower grades, chosen texts should include content from across the disciplines.
  • upper grades, content-area teachers are encouraged to consider how best to implement informational reading across the disciplines
    • Josh Flores
       
      The Nonfiction Split
    • Josh Flores
       
      Elementary and Secodnary
    • Josh Flores
       
      Selecting Multiple Texts
  • present their analyses in writing and speaking
    • Josh Flores
       
      Listening and Speaking Tip: Class presentations with a rubric; allow class to complete rubric of their peers too and use video or text-to-speech based web 2.0 animation programs for shy students
  • all students need access to a wide range of materials on a variety of topics and genres
    • Josh Flores
       
      INTERNETS: Open Resource Revolution!
  • students improve both their reading comprehension and their writing skills when writing in response to texts.
    • Josh Flores
       
      I knew it!
  • notes, summaries, learning logs, writing to learn tasks, or even a response to a short text selection or an open-ended question.[9]
    • Josh Flores
       
      Examples of Writing Practices
  • hese responses can vary in length based on the questions asked and tasks performed, from answering brief questions to crafting multiparagraph responses in upper grades.
  • narrative story and narrative description
    • Josh Flores
       
      TWO TYPES OF NARRATIVE Writing
  • creative fiction, as well as memoirs, anecdotes, biographies, and autobiographies
  • include writing under time constraints
  • writing over multiple drafts
  • generate writing pieces in response to teacher-provided prompts and to their own prompts
    • Josh Flores
       
      LEVEL Qs: Teach students to generate Academic Questions to explore
  • For reading and writing in each module
    • Josh Flores
       
      Essential READING & WRITING Skills
    • Josh Flores
       
      for ELA/Literacy
  • Understand and apply grammar:
  • Cite evidence and analyze content
  • Understand and apply vocabulary
  • Conduct discussions and report findings:
  • grades 3-5
  • two standards progression charts for each grade level
  • Writing
  • peaking and Listening
  • Graham, S., and M. A. Hebert. 2010. Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading. A Carnegie Corporation Time to Act Report. Washington, D.C.: Alliance for Excellent Education.
  • suggests both the number and types
  • Students
  • offer one way of organizing the standards
  • quarterly modules
  • reflects the integrated nature
  • four sections
  • to express an opinion/make an argument or to inform/explain
  • write
  • citing evidence
  • analyzing
  • grammar
  • vocabulary
  • discussions
  • reporting
Lisa C. Hurst

Inside the School Silicon Valley Thinks Will Save Education | WIRED - 9 views

  •  
    "AUTHOR: ISSIE LAPOWSKY. ISSIE LAPOWSKY DATE OF PUBLICATION: 05.04.15. 05.04.15 TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM. 7:00 AM INSIDE THE SCHOOL SILICON VALLEY THINKS WILL SAVE EDUCATION Click to Open Overlay Gallery Students in the youngest class at the Fort Mason AltSchool help their teacher, Jennifer Aguilar, compile a list of what they know and what they want to know about butterflies. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/WIRED SO YOU'RE A parent, thinking about sending your 7-year-old to this rogue startup of a school you heard about from your friend's neighbor's sister. It's prospective parent information day, and you make the trek to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. You walk up to the second floor of the school, file into a glass-walled conference room overlooking a classroom, and take a seat alongside dozens of other parents who, like you, feel that public schools-with their endless bubble-filled tests, 38-kid classrooms, and antiquated approach to learning-just aren't cutting it. At the same time, you're thinking: this school is kind of weird. On one side of the glass is a cheery little scene, with two teachers leading two different middle school lessons on opposite ends of the room. But on the other side is something altogether unusual: an airy and open office with vaulted ceilings, sunlight streaming onto low-slung couches, and rows of hoodie-wearing employees typing away on their computers while munching on free snacks from the kitchen. And while you can't quite be sure, you think that might be a robot on wheels roaming about. Then there's the guy who's standing at the front of the conference room, the school's founder. Dressed in the San Francisco standard issue t-shirt and jeans, he's unlike any school administrator you've ever met. But the more he talks about how this school uses technology to enhance and individualize education, the more you start to like what he has to say. And so, if you are truly fed up with the school stat
Glenn Hervieux

After 12 Years of Teaching Writing…an Epiphany! | Catlin Tucker, Honors Engli... - 66 views

  •  
    "I've been teaching students how to write for 12 years, but this week I had a realization that made me question the purpose of writing in school." Catlin Tucker brings up some important points to consider in the writing process and her own process as a teacher.
Margaret FalerSweany

Educational Leadership:Writing: A Core Skill:Teach Critical Thinking to Teach Writing - 48 views

  • critical thinking doesn't come easily for anyone
  • writing does not necessarily teach critical thinkin
  • the best way to help students learn critical thinking may be to actually teach it
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • although writing and thinking may be linked, students don't learn to think just by learning to write; rather, to learn to write, they need to learn to think.
  •  
    An excellent article on the challenges we all face in become better at thinking critically and writing well. I have found that most students do better presenting arguments in written form when they have engaged in in-depth discussion, as then questioning and peer responses can prompt deeper thinking and make real the need to both cite and explain evidence. The Shared Inquiry method used in Great Books programs provides a focus on open, interpretive questions that require students to make an defend claims about the meaning of complex texts. The model lessons suggest a sequence of activities that supports multiple close readings, collaborative discussions, and writing throughout the process.
Patrick Higgins

Why Undergrads Aren't Writing Enough - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 49 views

  • When it comes to writing-heavy courses, students don’t want to take them and teachers don’t want to teach them. When it comes to writing assignments in non-writing-oriented courses, students don’t like them to run too long and neither do teachers. Writing is just too much work for both sides. For every upper-division class in the humanities, 25 pages of finished out-of-class writing is a proper minimum. But for most students, that sounds like a daunting total—and an unjust one. For teachers handling three or more classes with 25 or more students, grading all those pages conscientiously (which means giving substantive feedback) keeps them up all night three weeks every semester. For those lucky teachers on a 2-2 load with 25 students or less per course, they feel the publish-or-perish mandate and all those pages of student prose turn into a road block.
    • Patrick Higgins
       
      This is an interesting section.  My feeling is that there has to be a way to increase what's viewed as "writing."  Does writing have to live solely in the 20+ page paper?  Can not the cumulative total of writing be considered?  
  • When it comes to writing-heavy courses, students don’t want to take them and teachers don’t want to teach them.
Randolph Hollingsworth

EReading Pilot Project - The iPad and Reading and Writing Practices | Center for Instru... - 83 views

  • writing happens across long lengths of time, in little pockets of thinking, and that the little notes and ideas one may jot down at random times throughout a day are just as significant as those moments of longer, sustained writing. In a way, then, the iPad encouraged me as a writer to capture my thoughts in a succinct way and let them percolate for a while until I had time to expand, abandon, or adapt them later at my computer.
  •  
    Denise Comer, Writing Program, with Kenneth Rogerson, Public Policy, and Rebecca Vidra, Environment, examined the pedagogies of integrating ereading technologies into writing intensive courses - preliminary findings are that scholarly reading is easier (notetaking easy) but extensive writing is not convenient... posits that we may be defining "writing" too rigidly
Christine Schlitt

Lesson Plans: Name & Word Wall Activities, Building Blocks (Kindergarten, Building Blocks) - 32 views

  • Word Walls and The Name Game Each day we have one person who is our helper and we focus onher name. When everyone has had a turn, we start another round.I find it easiest to go in alphabetical order by first names. I write the students names on sentence strips, using one colorfor boys, and another for girls.First round: We reveal one name each day, beginning with a cheer:?Gimme a B (B), Gimme an i (i), Gimme an l (l), Gimme another l(l), Gimme a y (y). What?s that spell? (Billy). One more time!(Billy). Then I ask if anyone ?notices? anything about Billy?s name andwe look for letters in common with other names, or count lettersand look for other names with the same number of letters. Thenwe take a good look at the student, discussing colors ofclothing, so each child can draw a picture of the helper. Iwrite the helper?s name on the board and encourage everyone totry to write that person?s name and then draw a picture of thehelper. The helper gets to take home the pictures drawn byothers, his is put up on the bulletin board with the name cardI?ve made. 2nd Round: The self-portraits are put into a class book and thename cards are transferred to an alphabet word wall. Each day weread the alphabet and names, then take the helper?s name off tocheer and ?notice? letters about this name and others. We formthe helper?s name in magnetic letters, scramble them up and taketurns putting them in the right order. 3rd Round: When we read the alphabet, we say the sounds inaddition to the letters and names. This time we cheer, writethe letters in the helper?s name on the board and then count howmany of those letters are in the names on the word wall. Thenwe talk about which letter has the most, least, etc. We havealso added another name cheer: ?Bryan, Bryan, that?s his name.It starts with B, it ends with n, hooray, Bryan! We stillscramble the name with magnetic letters. At some point we begin to add sight words to the names on thewall, usually starting with go and we. In December, or after wecome back from Christmas, we take the names off the word walland put them in a pocket chart for the kids to use duringcenters. We continue to add sight words the rest of the year,reading the alphabet, and saying the sounds and words each day. Here are additional name ideas; some I?ve tried, some I haven?t.*Count the syllables.*Write the names like a rainbow.*Name poems from the website Korky?s Kool rhyme machine (http://www.literacyhour.co.uk/learning_activities/rhyme/rhyme.html)*Think of words that begin the same as the name.*Make up tongue twisters.*Fill out an interview sheet.*Mystery person (hangman type game where you draw blanks for theletters and the kids guess letters until they know the name.* Use the letters in the name and look for smaller words. *Cut up name puzzles to keep in a literacy center.*Change the initial consonant and play with the word (Sue, Bue,Lue, etc.).*Another name cheer: No matter what I do or say,My name will always be the same,It starts with_____It ends with ____Now count to 3 and say my name,1,2,3,_______.
    • Christine Schlitt
       
      Name Game Ideas for Kindergarten
  •  
    "Word Walls and The Name Game Each day we have one person who is our helper and we focus on her name. When everyone has had a turn, we start another round. I find it easiest to go in alphabetical order by first names. I write the students names on sentence strips, using one color for boys, and another for girls. First round: We reveal one name each day, beginning with a cheer: ?Gimme a B (B), Gimme an i (i), Gimme an l (l), Gimme another l (l), Gimme a y (y). What?s that spell? (Billy). One more time! (Billy). Then I ask if anyone ?notices? anything about Billy?s name and we look for letters in common with other names, or count letters and look for other names with the same number of letters. Then we take a good look at the student, discussing colors of clothing, so each child can draw a picture of the helper. I write the helper?s name on the board and encourage everyone to try to write that person?s name and then draw a picture of the helper. The helper gets to take home the pictures drawn by others, his is put up on the bulletin board with the name card I?ve made. 2nd Round: The self-portraits are put into a class book and the name cards are transferred to an alphabet word wall. Each day we read the alphabet and names, then take the helper?s name off to cheer and ?notice? letters about this name and others. We form the helper?s name in magnetic letters, scramble them up and take turns putting them in the right order. 3rd Round: When we read the alphabet, we say the sounds in addition to the letters and names. This time we cheer, write the letters in the helper?s name on the board and then count how many of those letters are in the names on the word wall. Then we talk about which letter has the most, least, etc. We"
Kate Pok

Modeling | University Writing Center - 46 views

  • When you come across an example of student writing that is particularly well-written, you can share it with other students. However, avoid using negative examples, as most students will hesitate to give permission if they know you plan to use student writing to exemplify poor writing–and not telling them of your intent would be unfair. Furthermore, students will learn as much from positive as from negative analysis. No piece of writing, your own included, is so perfect that constructive criticism cannot be aimed at it. It’s best to ask all students to sign a release form at the beginning of the semester granting permission to use their work for teaching purposes. Note that if you wish to quote their work in an article on teaching, you’ll need specific permission.
  • It’s not enough simply to show models. Students need to work with models and discuss them to be able to transfer their abstract understanding of the model’s features into their own writing. While you can lecture on the qualities you endorse or admire, it is far more effective to engage students actively in evaluation and analysis through class discussion and peer response groups.
  • If you do decide to use a student’s paper as a model, you should have him or her sign a Student Contract.
Jess Hazlewood

"Where's the Writer" TETYC March 2014 - 43 views

  • “Responders Are Taught, Not Born”
  • We contend that student writers will see greater value in peer response if they develop tools that allow them to participate more actively in the feedback process. With teaching suggestions like those above, writers can learn how to re-flect on their experiences with peer response. They can also learn to identify their needs as writers and how to ask questions that will solicit the feedback they need.
  • We like to limit each mock session to no more than seven minutes of back and forth between respondent and writer.
  • ...33 more annotations...
  • class suggests that the writer’s question
  • This becomes a teachable moment. When the respondent asks for assistance from the class, this break in the session becomes an opportunity for the class to assist the writer and the respondent. The writer appears stuck, not knowing what to ask. And the respondent appears perplexed, too.
  • we follow Carl Anderson’s suggestion to teach students how to ask questions about their writing through role-playing.
  • dynamic list that students freely update throughout the semester on the class classro
  • organize the questions within categories such as tone, content, evidence-based support, style, and logistics
  • The end result is a robust list of questions for writers to ask of their respondents.
  • in-class discussion about effective and less effective questions for writers
  • raft three to five questions they have about the assignment to ask of their peers as they prepare to write or revise their assignment. When appropriate, we can direct our students to the course text, where there are
  • : pointing, summarizing, and reflecting
  • Students’ comments often point to their struggle to position themselves in peer response.
  • “What would it take for you to be in-vested as writers in peer response?” Students’ typical responses include the following:>“I need to know what to ask.” >“I don’t know what to ask about my writing, except for things like punctua-tion and grammar.”>“Does the person reading my work really know what the assignment is? Bet-ter than I do?”>“I’m not really sure if I’m supposed to talk or ask questions when someone is giving me feedback about my work, so I don’t really do anything. They write stuff on my paper. Sometimes I read it if I can, but I don’t really know what to do with it.”
  • it is important to offer activities to ensure that both respondents and writers are able to articulate a clear purpose of what they are trying to accomplish. These activities, guided by the pedagogies used to prepare writing center consultants
  • devote more attention to the respondent than to the writer, we may unwit-tingly be encouraging writers to be bystanders, rather than active participants, in the response process.
  • , “Feedback: What Works for You and How Do You Get It?”
  • highlight the value of both giving and getting feedback:In 56 pages near the end of this book, we’ve explained all the good methods we know for getting feedback from classmates on your writing. . . . The ability to give responses to your classmates’ writing and to get their responses to your own writing may be the most important thing you learn from this book. (B
  • we question whether textbooks provide emergent writers with enough tools or explicit models to engage actively in peer response conversations.
  • While such questions are helpful to emerging writers, who depend on modeling, they lack explanation about what makes them “helpful” questions. As a result, emerging writers may perceive them as a prescriptive set of questions that must be answered (or worse, a set of questions to be “given over” to a respondent), rather than what they are intended to be: questions that could advance the writer’s thoughts and agenda.
  • this information is limited to the instructor’s manual
  • llustrates the difference be-tween vague and helpful questions, pointing out that helpful questions
  • You will need to train students to ask good questions, which will help reviewers target their attention.Questions like “How can I make this draft better?” “What grade do you think this will get?” and “What did you think?” are not helpful, as they are vague and don’t reflect anything about the writer’s own thoughts. Questions like “Am I getting off topic in the introduction when I talk about walking my sister to the corner on her first day of school?” or “Does my tone on page 3 seem harsh? I’m trying to be fair to the people who disagree with the decision I’m describing” help readers understand the writer’s purpose and will set up good conversations. (Harrington 14, emphasis added
  • uestions” when soliciting feedback (like the advice we found in many textbooks), she also provides explicit examples for doing so
  • he most explicit advice for writers about ask-ing questions and, in effect, setting up good conversations is buried in an instruc-tor’s manual for The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing. In thi
  • “Getting Response” chapter later in the book, they will benefit from the textbook authors’ instructions that they should in fact use questions that will help them solicit their feedback
  • dependent on what parts of the textbook they choose to read
  • point writers to a specific set of questions that they should ask of their respondents. Such instructions take a notable step toward shifting the locus of control from the respondent to helping writers engage their peers in conversation.
  • there is no mention that writers might use them for purposes of soliciting feedback.
  • we see an opportunity for modeling that is not fully realized.
  • we argue that Faigley offers respondents specific examples that empower them to actively engage the process and give feedback. We contend that emergent writers need a similar level of instruction if they are to be agents in response.
  • textbook authors offer few examples for how to get specific feedback
  • Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff ’s first edition of A Community of Writers published in 1995, in which eleven “Sharing and Responding” techniques, d
  • we worked to understand how textbooks highlight the writer’s role in peer response.
  • We wanted to know what books tell writers about asking questions
  • lthough we do not discount the importance of teaching respondents how to give feedback, we argue that writers must also be taught how to request the feedback they desire.
  •  
    Writer's role in soliciting feedback during peer edit. Suggestions for modeling and training.
Jon Orech

Clive Thompson on the New Literacy - 3 views

  • The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it's over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn't serve any purpose other than to get them a grade.
    • Ed Webb
       
      Quite so. This is one reason I have students blog where practicable.
  • The brevity of texting and status updating teaches young people to deploy haiku-like concision.
    • Ed Webb
       
      Twitter to haiku, Not such a leap, after all: Hone your brevity
  • When Lunsford examined the work of first-year students, she didn't find a single example of texting speak in an academic paper.
    • tom campbell
       
      Stanford 1st year students - check the applicant profile - http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/basics/selection/profile.html These are among the top tiered students in the country.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • know is that knowing who you're writing for and why you're writing might be the most crucial factor of all.
  • young people today write far more than any generation before them
  • (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good
  • kids today can't write—and technology is to blame.
  • "I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization," she says. For Lunsford, technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold new directions
  • Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn't a school assignment
  • Lunsford's team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across.
  • students today almost always write for an audience
  • (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good
Nigel Coutts

The art of modern writing - The Learner's Way - 53 views

  •  
    Learning to write is one of the fundamental skills we gain from our time at school. Writing is one of the cornerstones of learning and we devote significant time and energy towards its mastery. Skilled writing is a mark of an educated individual and a skill required for academic success. But in the modern world what makes a skilled writer? What has changed about writing and what literary skills should we focus our attention on. 
Kate Pok

Writing in College - 1. Some crucial differences between high school and college writing - 55 views

  • you will be asked to analyze the reading, to make a worthwhile claim about it that is not obvious (state a thesis means almost the same thing), to support your claim with good reasons, all in four or five pages that are organized to present an argument .
  • They expect to see a claim that would encourage them to say, "That's interesting. I'd like to know more."
  • They expect to see evidence, reasons for your claim, evidence that would encourage them to agree with your claim, or at least to think it plausible.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • They expect to see that you've thought about limits and objections to your claim.
  • This kind of argument is less like disagreeable wrangling, more like an amiable and lively conversation with someone whom you respect and who respects you; someone who is interested in what you have to say, but will not agree with your claims just because you state them; someone who wants to hear your reasons for believing your claims and also wants to hear answers to their questions.
  • We also know that whatever it is we think, it is never the entire truth. Our conclusions are partial, incomplete, and always subject to challenge. So we write in a way that allows others to test our reasoning: we present our best thinking as a series of claims, reasons, and responses to imagined challenges, so that readers can see not only what we think, but whether they ought to agree.
  • And that's all an argument is--not wrangling, but a serious and focused conversation among people who are intensely interested in getting to the bottom of things cooperatively.
  • So your first step in writing an assigned paper occurs well before you begin writing: You must know what your instructor expects.
  • Start by looking carefully at the words of the assignment.
  • When most of your instructors ask what the point of your paper is, they have in mind something different. By "point" or "claim" (the words are virtually synonymous with thesis), they will more often mean the most important sentence that you wrote in your essay, a sentence that appears on the page, in black in white; words that you can point to, underline, send on a postcard; a sentence that sums up the most important thing you want to say as a result of your reading, thinking, research, and writing. In that sense, you might state the point of your paper as "Well, I want to show/prove/claim/argue/demonstrate (any of those words will serve to introduce the point) that "Though Falstaff seems to play the role of Hal's father, he is, in fact, acting more like a younger brother who . . . ."" If you include in your paper what appears after I want to prove that, then that's the point of your paper, its main claim that the rest of your paper supports.
  • A good point or claim typically has several key characteristics: it says something significant about what you have read, something that helps you and your readers understand it better; it says something that is not obvious, something that your reader didn't already know; it is at least mildly contestable, something that no one would agree with just by reading it; it asserts something that you can plausibly support in five pages, not something that would require a book.
  •  
    great guide to college writing- print out and give out to students.
Ed Webb

Times Higher Education - Dummies' guides to teaching insult our intelligence - 0 views

  • if you encourage discussion in class, you have to be prepared for your students to arrive at conclusions that are unpalatable to you.
  • When I started, largely out of exasperation, to investigate the educational research literature for myself, I was pleasantly surprised to find there was some genuinely useful and scholarly work out there, which recognised the demands of different subjects and even admitted that university lecturers aren't all workshy and stupid... It's a shame that this better stuff doesn't seem to have fed through into the generic courses that most institutions offer. My personal advice to anyone starting out as a university teacher: find a few colleagues who take their teaching seriously (there are almost certain to be some in the department) and ask them for advice; sit in on their classes if possible; remember you'll never teach perfectly but you can always teach better; and close your ears to well-meaning interference from anybody who's never actually spent time at the chalkface!
  • Magueijo's could acknowledge that some people teaching these courses are genuinely concerned about improving teaching, and they need academics' help in designing better courses that do so. Sotto's side should acknowldge that however much they talk about how important teaching is (as if they discovered this, and academics did not know), they are not listening to the people attending their courses if those people feel utterly patronised and frustrated at the waste of their time. If academics treated their students like educationalists treat their student academics they'd be appalling teachers. A simple course allowing us to learn from a video of our own lectures would be immensely useful. Instead whole empires of education have developed that need to justify themselves and grow, so they subject us to educational jargon and make us write essays on the educationalist's pet theory.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • I would have preferred that David Pritchard had written it; his comments above are perfect.
  • Most colleagues with excellent teaching reputations seem not to oppose training per se, but bad training.
Martin Burrett

5 things learnt in 5 years of teaching by @Mr_Gillett - 13 views

  •  
    "Maybe it is something to do with starting something new, but when I started thinking about my new role as Head of Science, I thought I should write a blog. This led me to re-discover the blog I had wanted to start before starting teaching. Unsurprisingly, I failed to keep going with the blog during the first chaotic years of teaching, but now I think it will be really useful and so I am going to stick with it this time! Since the previous post was 5 years ago, I thought I would start with a very general blog about five of the big lessons I have learnt since starting teaching."
Sarah Scholl

Activity 4: Writing comments - What you need to know | Edublogs Teacher Challenges - 88 views

  • Teaching quality commenting skills
  • If commenting skills are not taught and constantly reinforced, students will limit their comments to things like “I like your blog!” or “2KM is cool!”. While enthusiasm is high with these sorts of comments, students are not developing their literacy skills or having meaningful interactions with other members of the blogging community. Conversations in the comment section of a blog are such rich and meaningful learning experiences for students. Conversations begin with high quality comments.
  • Check out improvements in student literacy skills through commenting here.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • How to teach quality commenting Kathleen teaches commenting skills through: Modelling and composing comments together with students on the interactive whiteboard. Teaching students about the “letter” format and editing process during writing lessons. Giving examples of a poor/high quality comments and having students vote whether the comment should be accepted or rejected. Example of a Sorting blog comments activity devised for our students here. Having students read and comment on a post on our blog as part of a literacy rotation on the computer each week. Taking students to the ICT room once a week to work on composing a quality comment with a partner. Emailing parents and encouraging them to write comments on the blog with their child.
  • Activities for developing student commenting skills
  • own or facilitate a collaborative discussion with students to create together (you could include this video as part of the process). Develop a quality comment evaluation guide.  Refer to Linda Yollis’s Learning how to comment. Write a blog post about commenting and what you define as a quality comment. Have your students practise leaving a “quality” comment on the post.
  • Create a commenting guideline poster (see poster example below) – develop your
  • “quality” comment on the post.
  • Create a commenting guideline for your blog.  Here’s an example.
  •  
    some good tips on helping students learn how to make appropriate comments on blogs
Ed Webb

Please Sir, how do you re-tweet? - Twitter to be taught in UK primary schools - 2 views

  • The British government is proposing that Twitter is to be taught in primary (elementary) schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK’s education system. And that’s not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science.
  • Traditional education in areas like phonics, the chronology of history and mental arithmetic remain but modern media and web-based skills and environmental education now feature.
  • The skills that let kids use Internet technologies effectively also work in the real world: being able to evaluate resources critically, communicating well, being careful with strangers and your personal information, conducting yourself in a manner appropriate to your environment. Those things are, and should be, taught in schools. It’s also a good idea to teach kids how to use computers, including web browsers etc, and how those real-world skills translate online.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • I think teaching kids HOW TO use Wikipedia is a step forward from ordering them NOT TO use it, as they presently do in many North American classrooms.
  • Open Source software is the future and therefore we need to concentrate on the wheels and not the vehicle!
  • Core skills is very important. Anyone and everyone can learn Photoshop & Word Processing at any stage of their life, but if core skills are missed from an early age, then evidence has shown that there has always been less chance that the missing knowledge could be learnt at a later stage in life.
  • Schools shouldn’t be about teaching content, but about learning to learn, getting the kind of critical skills that can be used in all kinds of contexts, and generating motivation for lifelong learning. Finnish schools are rated the best in the world according to the OECD/PISA ratings, and they have totally de-emphasised the role of content in the curriculum. Twitter could indeed help in the process as it helps children to learn to write in a precise, concise style - absolutely nothing wrong with that from a pedagogical point of view. Encouraging children to write is never a bad thing, no matter what the platform.
  • Front end stuff shouldn’t be taught. If anything it should be the back end gubbins that should be taught, databases and coding.
  • So what’s more important, to me at least, is not to know all kinds of useless facts, but to know the general info and to know how to think and how to search for information. In other words, I think children should get lessons in thinking and in information retrieval. Yes, they should still be taught about history, etc. Yes, it’s important they learn stuff that they could need ‘on the spot’ - like calculating skills. However, we can go a little bit easier on drilling the information in - by the time they’re 25, augmented reality will be a fact and not even a luxury.
  • Schools should focus more on teaching kids on how to think creatively so they can create innovative products like twitter rather then teaching on how to use it….
  • Schools should focus more on teaching kids on how to think creatively so they can create innovative products like twitter rather then teaching on how to use it….
  •  
    The British government is proposing that Twitter is to be taught in primary (elementary) schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK's education system. And that's not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science.
1 - 20 of 254 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page