Group items tagged

"The Story Map interactive includes a set of graphic organizers designed to assist teachers and students in prewriting and postreading activities. The organizers are intended to focus on the key elements of character, setting, conflict, and resolution development. Students can develop multiple characters, for example, in preparation for writing their own fiction, or they may reflect on and further develop characters from stories they have read. After completing individual sections or the entire organizer, students have the ability to print out their final versions for feedback and assessment. The versatility of this tool allows it to be used in multiple contexts."

Introduce the power and the purpose of persuasion; develop student knowledge of strategies/techniques associated with persuasion; develop student ability to identify authors' purpose, arguments, and supporting evidence; develop students' abilities to conduct research in order to support a perspective with supporting evidence.

""Sustained Silent Reading" Helps Develop Independent Readers (and Writers) Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) -- or DEAR (Drop Everything And Read), as some people call it -- can be one more tool for developing lifelong readers."

"10 Ways to Develop Expository Writing Skills With The New York Times"

Writing Benchmark 1.2 Developing Ideas

Info-text writing unit of study: Google charts are an easy way to add charts, tables, infographics, and even customizable maps into informational texts

Boxes and Bullets Graphic Organizer

Personal Essay Unit

"Memoir vs. Personal Narrative " Staff Developer, Linda Bausch explains the difference between the personal narrative genre and the memoir genre.

The difference between a memoir and personal narrative

"What do successful teachers do to help their students become confident and proficient writers? Write in the Middle: A Workshop for Middle School Teachers addresses that question in an eight-part professional development workshop."

Targeting Text A Guided Writing Project Targeting Text was a collaborative project undertaken by teachers from a cluster of three schools in the Bowen District - Lindisfarne Primary, Lindisfarne North Primary and Cambridge Primary. The purpose of the project was to focus on the place of guided writing in a balanced writing program. Inspired and supported by Dr Jan Turbill of the University of Wollongong, the teachers were able to develop and share their own skills in using guided writing as a key teaching strategy.

Exploring poetry through film This activity is designed to enable students who have some understanding of film-technique to use this to develop and share interpretations of poetry.

Through the use of dramatic reading and the exploration of Internet resources, sixth- through eighth-grade students build a greater understanding of poetry and the poet's voice. Further, the experience requires students to analyze and develop their own interpretation of a poem's meaning and representation through performance. Extension activities involve students giving an oral poetry performance of their own poetry writing.

POETRY UNIT

The Bedouins of ancient Arabia and Persia made poetry a conversational art form. Several poetic forms developed from the participatory nature of tribal poetry. Today in most Arabic cultures, you may still experience public storytelling and spontaneous poetry challenges in the streets. The art of turning a rhyme into sly verbal sparring is considered a mark of intelligence and a badge of honor.

When best-selling author James Patterson noticed a few years ago that his 10-year-old son was losing interest in reading, he decided to do something about it. First he started writing books for young readers. Just recently, he launched a new website, ReadKiddoRead.com devoted to helping youngsters develop a love of reading.

Bring poetry to life in your school! These pages are specially designed to help you and your students to get the most out of the Poetry Archive. There are lesson plans and activities for all key stages and for the inclusive classroom. Poetry can enrich other areas of the curriculum too; there are ideas here for History teachers, and we will be adding material for other subject areas in the coming months. This is a growing, developing resource, so come back and visit regularly to see what's new. Our plans include a forum for teachers to discuss their experiences, as well as a space where you will be able to create your own teaching materials and share them with colleagues.

Introducing Poems This is a set of strategies to help students of all ages get to know and appreciate individual poems. As well as assisting students to make meaning from poems, the strategies help to develop an understanding of style. They also offer support for students' own poetry writing. Many of the strategies originally appeared in Approaches to Poetry, published by The Department of Education and TATE.

Students compose found and parallel poems based on a descriptive passage they have chosen from a piece of literature they are reading. They pick out words, phrases and lines from the prose passage then arrange and format the excerpts to compose their own poems. This process of recasting the text they are reading in a different genre helps students become more insightful readers and develop creativity in thinking and writing.

Writing assessment: Developed in close collaboration with our member schools and Measurement, Inc., the WrAP stands apart from nearly every other available writing assessment. Unlike other instruments that provide only holistic scoring indices, the WrAP is scored analytically. Using a six-trait, six-point rubric, information is provided that can help target instruction in writing.

A unique aspect of children's memoir writing is that their collection of memories, wisdom and value is limited. That is not to say these memories do not exist. Children should be given the opportunity to develop an understanding of who they are and where they come from, and how this is connected to the past & future, the near & far away. A memoir study focusing on location as a theme can provide this opportunity.

These sites have tips and examples for writing strong leads for paragraphs and structuring personal narrative writing. Students can learn how to capture and hold their readers' attention. There are classroom activities, online quizzes and exercises, and ideas to help writers develop their skills. Includes links to eThemes on grammar and interactive writing activities.