Teach Writing Right

For those of you using our Writer's Notebook Bingo Cards, you know our "center square lesson of the month" for October was our "Life is a Recipe" metaphors.  My students each created a two-page spread in their notebooks; on the left-hand side, they created a personal recipe metaphor; on the right-hand side, they created--in my class--a science-related metaphor.  As of November 1st, I began checking my students' notebooks for these two recipes, and I am astounded at the quality of thought many of my students gave me while competing this project.

Here, by the way, is my teacher example from my own notebook that I shared with them throughout this month-long writing process.

Since beginning this assignment, I even have a few students who have begun creating recipe metaphors beyond the two required recipes my assignment asked for.  I look forward to seeing how these students' extra recipe metaphors will guide them to creating rough drafts for future assignments during upcoming writer's workshop time.

Below is 8th-grader, Alex's, two-page "recipe metaphor" spread; click on it to see it with more detail.  If you click here, you can see several more great examples from my classroom of amazing students, as well as the whole assignment that inspired these samples!

I hope this inspires you to think of "recipe metaphors" that you can share with your own amazing student writers.

--Corbett

It's Friday!  Spent the last week not only enjoying some time in the garden but also revising on two more of my writer's notebook lessons that will promote Writing Across the Curriculum in my new classroom next year.  As always, my inspiration came from building teacher-models of the lessons I'll be asking my students to participate in. 


The Common Core State Standards--rolling out K-8 next year here in Northern Nevada--have a Writing Across the Curriculum Element that I have been taking very seriously.  I hear teachers de-cry that the CCSS will take away our teachers' ability to be creative, but I disagree.  I worked very hard to make these two new lessons all about my creativity, and I hope they inspire you to be even more creative next year.

The first  lesson I revised on this week was "Rhyming Couplets Across the Curriculum" lesson, which has students creating rhyming lines about newly learned content.  Here's my new teacher-model for this revised lesson:

Click here to access this writer's notebook lesson on-line at my website!

My second lesson this week was "Extending Metaphors across the Curriculum."  It has students establish and extend on content-based metaphors.  Here is the new teacher-model I added to this revised lesson:

Click here to access this writer's notebook lesson on-line at my website:

 These are newly revised lessons!  As always I welcome feedback before these lessons become finalized this September.  I hope your summers continue to be marvelous.  More W.A.C. lessons coming next week!

--Corbett

Wow!  I have been put on an amazing middle school team next year; come late August, I'll be teaching language arts (6th-8th grade), while the three other teachers of my team will be teaching the science, math, and history to the same group.  We will have these kids for three years, which I think is an amazing way to teach, especially when I think of the high-quality teaching that I know will come from the classrooms of  Kelly, Holly, and Sue--my three brand new colleagues next year.  I seriously am in a "dream teaching situation" next year.

One of our team's goals is for our students to maintain separate notebooks/learning logs for all four of their core classes.  With all the writer's notebook materials that I've been developing over the past three years, my kids and I will be set with this requirement in English class, but I know content-based notebooks (kept in the style and spirit of Ralph Fletcher) will be a fairly new concept for my teaching teammates.

In science, math, and social studies, you want students' notebooks to be a place where they can a) summarize content-based learning in their own words (no regurgitation!) and b) reflect on that content morally, ethically, and/or creatively--through a combination of visuals and words.

I am, therefore, working on some brand new writing across the curriculum challenges that I can establish/teach in language arts class so that my teaching teammates--once I've given the kids the format--can then start requiring the same students to use the same format with their different content.

Just finished a new one!  "16-word poems" inspired by William Carlos Williams' famous poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow."  You can read my whole lesson (still kind of in draft form) on-line here: http://corbettharrison.com/lessons/so-much-depends-upon.htm

What I'm doing differently now, knowing that I have these three amazing colleagues, is I am making sure I have teacher models of notebook pages that reflect all four core areas.  This way, my students--in Language Arts--will have already tried my writing challenges with the content of my colleagues' classes before leaving my class.

Here is the "Writing Across the Curriculum"-inspired teacher model that goes with my 16-word poem assignment.  This is a new concept for me to plan for.  I am actually having a great time thinking/planning this way!

Click here for the whole lesson write-up.

It probably sounds sick to say this, being that it's July 15th: I can hardly wait for the new school year to start!

--Corbett