Schoolwide Blog

FUNctional Writing Lesson: Notes & Cards for Valentine’s Day (2/11/10)

What are you teaching for Valentine’s Day? In this week’s lesson and video, Schoolwide Educational Director Rory Cohen shows us how functional writing can be incorporated into notes and cards such as valentines to create practical, real-world compositions.

Learn how to:

• Create a fun exercise while integrating practical writing techniques;
• Explore how a writer communicates with different forms of functional writing; and
• Elicit a list for a chart of occasions for writing cards, including Valentine’s Day.
  
  CLICK HERE FOR THE LESSON OF THE WEEK.
  

 

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Are you forwarding the Lesson of the Week? Pass It On The Lesson of the Week is not only a great individual professional development tool but also something you can use with your colleagues for discussion school wide. We’d love it if you’d forward the LOTW to your coworkers, staff, or administrators, or sign them up at www.schoolwidenetwork.com/lotw.

Thanks so much for your participation. Read. Learn. Enjoy! 

New Ideas For Writing Workshop Elisa Waingort Feb. 5, 2010

 

Teaching writing is one of my passions.  I love to roll up my sleeves in order to get eye-level with my students to talk about their writing.  I love seeing the spark in their eyes and hearing the emotion in their voices as they talk about the piece of writing they’re working on or what they’re planning to write next.  And, then there are those times when it seems that I can’t find an entry point into a student’s writing or none of my suggestions are well received.  Instead, I aim at moving targets trying to find an angle that will get my students to extend their writing or to write pieces that are meaningful to them.  Recently, I’ve decided to be more proactive after reading a book that I will be reviewing for an online journal, soon.  More...

Schoolwide's Lesson of the Week: Drafting Using Mentor Texts (1/22/10)

Dear Community,

Subject: Schoolwide's Lesson of the Week: Drafting Using Mentor Texts (1/22/10)

How do your students structure their writing? What form works best for expressing unique ideas? A poem? A picture book? A list book? In this week's lesson, Schoolwide Educational Director Rory Cohen uses Valorie Fisher's My Big Brother to help teach organization and how to structure writing ideas.

Learn how to:

• Use a list book to help students organize their writing;
• Help students introduce their subjects in engaging ways; and
• Give students concrete methods for making an outline to help structure their ideas.
  
  CLICK HERE FOR THE LESSON OF THE WEEK.
  

To contact Rory Cohen about a professional development workshop for your school or district, please e-mail us at pd@schoolwide.com.

 

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Highlights

Lesson Title: Using a List Structure to Organize a Personal Narrative

Subject: Writing Workshop / Drafting (Organization)

Audience: Grades K-1

Description: Writers often use lists to structure their writing. Rory Cohen discusses what she looks for in mentor texts to help students organize their thoughts and ideas early on in the writing process and how to present them to their readers.

Share: Create a common tool for your entire school or school district by sharing the Lesson of the Week and using it to provide consistency. Please contact me at ldavies@schoolwide.com and I will be glad to assist you with this process.


Thanks so much for your participation. Read. Learn. Enjoy!

Schoolwide's Lesson of the Week: Reading Patricia Polacco (1/14/10)

 

Schoolwide Presents a Free Lesson of the Week

Dear Community,

Subject: Schoolwide's Lesson of the Week: Reading Patricia Polacco (1/14/10)

Do you read aloud to your students? How do you use dialogue or conversation to conjure lifelike memories in memoir study? In this week's lesson, literacy consultant Sarah Cordova uses an interactive read-aloud of Patricia Polacco's My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother to drive home the importance of conversation and reading like a writer.

Learn how to:

• Use family conversation to develop good writing;
• Help students "read like a writer" and understand how dialogue makes writing more memorable and lifelike; and
• Engage students in storytelling with the voices from their own lives.
  
  CLICK HERE FOR THE LESSON OF THE WEEK.
  
  

 

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Highlights

Lesson Title: Interactive Read-Aloud of My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco

Subject: Writing Workshop / Reading Like a Writer - Interactive Read-Aloud

Audience: Grades 2-6

Description: Writers use conversation/dialogue to conjure concrete memories of people and places. Sarah Cordova explains how teaching students to "read like a writer" offers several teaching points, from punctuation choices to how to evoke mood and emotion.

Share: Create a common tool for your entire school or school district by sharing the Lesson of the Week and using it to provide consistency. Please contact me at ldavies@schoolwide.com and I will be glad to assist you with this process.


Thanks so much for your participation. Read. Learn. Enjoy!


Sincerely,
Ladi Davies
VP of Educational Solutions
Schoolwide, Inc.

JACQUELINE JULES: Teach Your Students To Think About The Reader

 

After years of participating in critique writing groups, I have learned to spot problem areas my critique friends would question. “That part is confusing.” “This part is too wordy.” “The story doesn’t peak my interest until the fourth paragraph.” And when I miss something, I am grateful when my critique friends point it out. As an author who hopes to impress editors, I want mistakes corrected before I submit.
 
But students just learning the joy of putting a story down on paper can be reluctant to make changes. Many students think editing should be limited to the correction of spelling and grammar mistakes. Asking a student to re-write a story that does not make sense can be a painful experience. How does a teacher encourage a student to fix confusing or nonsensical passages without squashing creativity?


 

In my work with young writers, I encourage them to think of their readers. We compare writing to playing an instrument or performing in a play or dance concert. Students readily agree that they want audiences to have a good time when they perform. Using this logic, it is easier to accept why a paragraph should be changed to make a story more enjoyable. Some details distract the reader from what an author is really trying to say. Run-on sentences can be confusing. Cryptic asides can puzzle readers. And sometimes all the little things we explain at the beginning are not needed. Ask your students if they know someone who takes too long to get to the point. For instance, a woman who talks for ten minutes about what she ate for breakfast, when she is trying to tell you how she cut her finger. Most students will smile, remembering such a person in their lives, and understand why they don’t want to keep their readers from the most interesting part of a story. Thinking about the reader helps all writers do their best work.

Jacqueline Jules—author, poet, teacher, librarian                         
http://www.jacquelinejules.com/

Angela Johnson: Everyone Has a Story to Tell / Schoolwide's Lesson of the Week (1/8/10)

 

Dear Community,

Subject: Angela Johnson: Everyone Has a Story to Tell / Schoolwide's Lesson of the Week (1/8/10)

What stories can your students tell? How do you help them take their own or their families' stories and turn them into evocative writing? In this week's lesson, famed children's author Angela Johnson tells us how she brings these stories to life.

Learn how to:

• Take family stories and make them powerful;
• Help students discover compelling facts about their own community; and
• Build students' confidence in their writing skills by demonstrating how everyone is good at something.
  
  CLICK HERE FOR THE LESSON OF THE WEEK.
  
  

 

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Highlights

Lesson Title: Everyone Has a Story to Tell

Subject: Writing Workshop / Generating Ideas

Audience: Grades 4-8

Description: Stories are all around us, and many are passed down through each generation. Angela Johnson explains how the people in our lives are sources of intriguing stories to tell and write about.

Share: Create a common tool for your entire school or school district by sharing the Lesson of the Week and using it to provide consistency. Please contact me at ldavies@schoolwide.com and I will be glad to assist you with this process.


Thanks so much for your participation. Read. Learn, Enjoy! 

Schoolwide’s Holiday Lesson: Inspire With Writing (12/16/09)

What makes your students special? How do you help them use their special talents to inspire others through writing? In our final lesson of 2009, literacy consultant Ilene Cohn tells us how to transform talent into evocative writing that inspires happiness.

Explore the spirit of sharing the holiday season by learning how to:

• Use Amy Hest’s book Jamaica Louise James to illustrate the power of emotive writing;
• Help students “share from the heart” to create compelling narratives; and
• Build students’ confidence in their writing skills by demonstrating how “everyone is good at something.”

Look for a new lesson the first week of January 2010.

Happy Holidays and a Joyous New Year from the entire Schoolwide Team.

CLICK HERE FOR THE LESSON OF THE WEEK.

More...

Schoolwide Blog Entry by Elisa Waingort

 

    Now that student-led conferences are over and the reporting period is a distant memory I will be helping my students develop a plan to meet one of the several goals they set for themselves.  I find that if this step is not attended to it makes the process of declaring goals a waste of time.  Blogging about this is my attempt to write my way to meaning so that I don't let this step slip through the cracks.   More...

Lesson of the Week 12/9/09

Dear Community,

Subject: How do you revise and re-imagine? Free Lesson of The Week with Amy Hest (12/09/09)

How do you help students get their readers excited about their writing? How do you help them revise their drafts for vividness and clarity? This week author Amy Hest tells you how she breathes new life into her writing by adding creative details.

Learn how to:

• Recreate people and places in the minds of readers;
• Revise with an eye for detail and clarity; and
• Use the revision stage of the writing process to help a good piece of writing get even better and more interesting.

CLICK HERE FOR THE LESSON OF THE WEEK.

 

More...

Yetta Goodman On Testing Pressures & Professional Motivations

 

 

I think that what I was saying {in earlier posts} link here about the teacher who knows a lot about reading and learning and who has a strong belief system also goes for teachers who have other motivations like:

"I need to stay in this classroom because this is my job and I have to work so I'm going to do what I'm told to do. I'm not going to question very much.  If somebody gives me a text book and tells me that somebody at the university of Oregon wrote it, I'm going to assume that it's a good textbook and I'm going to use it."

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