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This article gives excellent advise on how to step-by-step teach non-fiction writing to ELLs. It gives tips on do's and don't's and reasons why things work and don't work when teaching students new to the country that are especially helpful for grades 3 and up. I believe strongly that reading and writing need to be linked to have meaning for students. As we teach reading in our content areas, we also need to teach writing skills to go with those reading skills.

The article says that most ELL students who had schooling in their former country will try to write in their own language and then translate into English and this becomes problematic, because the formats of sentence structure do not match in most languages. I don't really have this problem, but understand how this could become a problem. I do have the problem of sentence structure with the way my students speak, therefore when they write, the sentence structure is not proper. The article gives a step-by-step guide starting with organizers to teach non-fiction writing. I really liked the fact that it said to use sentences in the organizers. I have been using organizers with my class and trying to teach them to write fragments and then write the sentences later and found that problematic. I thought that I was trying to teach them to get their ideas on paper quicker, but after reading the article believe that it would be easier to teach them to write the proper sentence in the organizer and then transfer it to paper.

I do love it when I find something that contradicts what I've previously done or known. Gives me pause to think. It will be interesting to see if this change in your thinking produces results in your students' writing. Keep us posted!

Fascinating!

Carnegie report follow-up to Writing Next. This report provides evidence answering the following three questions: 1. Does Writing about material students read enhance their reading comprehension? 2. Does teaching Writing strengthen students' reading skills? 3. Does increasing how much students write improve how well they read?

This is an article about an elementary school reading specialist who works with teachers to help improve literacy in her school. In the article she gives 12 "lit tips" to help students with reading and writing. Most are geared towards elementary students, but they are very practical and some could also have applications in a secondary classroom. I especially like the "CUPS" tip for proofreading writing, check Capitalization, Understanding, Punctuation and then Spelling to ensure good writing. Very easy to remember!

Journal Writing Every Day: Teachers Say It Really Works! This article lists benefits for journal Writing with special education students.

"WritingFix is a teacher resource website that contains lessons and ideas for any educator to freely use in their K-12 classrooms....The site is sponsored by the Northern Nevada Writing Project, a not-for-profit professional development organization that is located on the University of Nevada-Reno Campus." An absolutely amazing goldmine collection of Writing ideas: mentor texts, 6 traits, revision, genres, and MORE!

I realize the focus of our class is reading. This resource is too good not to bring to your attention.

Though it does not focus on reading, I have found that WritingFix absolutely saved me in my first year teaching ELA. Even if it is simply "saved for later" this is something all teachers should review.

"Teachers succeed as teachers only when their students succeed as learners" This website is intended to assist middle to high school students with nonfiction writing. This website has resources and strategies for teaching nonfiction to teens and adults. 'You Can Teach writing' consists of blogs, writing topics, teacher services, student services, books, and events. If you teach older students this is great for some ideas :)

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I love peer response to writing in classrooms, especially in secondary education classrooms. It build relationships in the classroom, gets the students focused on more than just the teacher's opinion of writing, and allows for students to strengthen their editing. This article points out an important component of peer editing, which is making students comfortable in the classroom. This means allowing them to sit on the floor, go out in the hall, etc. If we expect students to share something personal, like their writing, then we should allow them to be as comfortable (physically and mentally), as possible.

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For teachers who are looking for new activities to get students more involved in reading and writing at home, here are a handful of suggestions.

2003 report of the National Writing Commission

This is a 25 minute video about how helping tutor students helps the community. Please take a few minutes and see what people are doing to help school age children read and write, hopefully you'll be as inspired as I was about spreading this message. 18 March 2008 Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to engage with their local school. With spellbinding eagerness, he talks about how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around the world to open their own volunteer-driven, wildly creative writing labs.

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This site lists a lot of resources for special education teachers ... for help with reading and writing and more.

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This offers everything you need to teach students feature article writing and informational reading. It even includes lesson plans.

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This is an activity to help with writing skills for middle schoolers. It's a great way to have fun while learning. It can be used in the classroom or at home.

Literacy

I know that this isn't *exactly* about reading and learning.  However, this article was so revealing of our culture and mindsets.  I read it with a reading comprehension group I lead at school.  Basically, we (society) spend almost all of our time consuming and, consequently, judging information from all sorts of electronic screens.  We create very little and are so afraid that what we are capable of creating will be judged as "not good enough" because of our judgments of the creations of others.  So, it encourages the reader to go out and create something - write, draw, dance, and learn what makes him or her tick. 

Actually, I think this article has a lot to do with reading and learning. Based on what you read, what would you apply in your teaching practice? (And what did your comprehension group have to say?)

We make a LOT of things in my Spanish classes. Creativity is stretched and encouraged. As far as my comprehension group, they all said, "this is boring... Is it almost over...??" except for one student who loved it and said, "So, we just need to do things that make us happy! It doesn't matter what other people think!" So, I am not sure how much they got out of it...

Found this website during our TEMS314 class. It is a great site that students can use to help them create persuasive websites. They log in using a specific teacher code, and their work is saved on the site, allowing the teacher to check it as the students work. It seems pretty neat, and I'd love to try it someday in my own classroom.

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Christine Cziko, a former high school English teacher, writes about a year-long undertaking that she was a part of that sought to transform students into capable readers.  Her desire to do something about the lack of reading ability that her students exhibited came out of her concern about her students' apparent inability to read independently or to understand what they read.   I was greatly impacted by this whole idea.  I would LOVE to do something like this at my school.  I have taught high school English at a private school where many common issues don't exist and I still had students not doing the reading or not understanding what they read.  However, once we read CS Lewis' The Great Divorce (which is written at a very high level) they were engaged and devoured the difficult text.  We would then come together and ask questions, discuss, and analyze the text.  I didn't have to beg my students to read it, they WANTED to.  One of the big differences was that I talked it up and let them know that it was going to be very difficult but that people would be impressed to know that they had read it in high school.  They were so proud to have read, analyzed, and understood this difficult text. 

This year my students read "The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin. They absolutely loved the book and I had to beg them not to go ahead because doing so would spoil the ending. Teaching reading (or any subject matter) is so much more fun when the students are engaged. I wish we had these same experiences in everything we taught!