Teach Writing Right

I have to give credit for next week's metaphor of the week to one of my blog followers--KCH--who shared some of her classroom metaphors.  I totally "stole" the "Each day is a blank sheet of paper" metaphor as I go in to my fifth week of weekly metaphors.  Below, you can find the sketch I made during my last period of the day today; my students (who were engrossed in their writer's workshop rough drafts) were fascinated with my process as I sketched and prepared the next week's metaphor.  Several students stayed after class to explain how the metaphor-of-next-week was challenging their thinking already.  WHAT A GREAT METAPHOR!!!

Learning to create/sketch the upcoming week's metaphors during my last class on Fridays AND learning to remember my digital camera so I can post it to my blog (and to my Edmodo site).

This upcoming week we will have "Life is a Road and you are a Traveler" as our metaphor...

We'll, of course, discuss Frost's "The Road Not Taken," and Jim Croce's song, "I Gotta Name."  Both fit the metaphor nicely.  I'm looking for a short piece of prose (could even be an excerpt) that fits the theme too.  Anyone got an idea for me? 


My kids are so into Mr. Stick now--even in their History, Science, and Math Classes!

Hope this inspires you!

Forgot to bring my camera to school on Friday, so I am just now posting the "Metaphor of the Week" that we started using today.

Just an FYI about why this was my chosen metaphor: This week, our district's wisdom has dictated that all our students must be tested on a new on-line assessment tool in order to establish a baseline for several future testing days; the two tests (reading and math) students must take this week will take them between one and three hours to complete.  Our school's computer lab is a slow-running, low-bandwidth nightmare.  We lost almost an entire instructional day to test what turned out to be only a few kids who could actually end up being on the computers at the same time. During the last period of the day, my poor sixth graders were taking the test in a lab that had reached 85-90 degrees.  Sigh....Knowing all this was going down last Friday, I thought "Life is a Multiple Choice Test" would be a perfect metaphor for the week, and that is why I posted it.  One of my sixth graders read the metaphor off the board when she finally finished her test just before the final bell and remarked, "Oh man, I hope that's not really true!"

So...here is my metaphor of the week!  Let's hope next week feels like I actually get to teach again.

Have a great week, everyone!

--Corbett

Highly recommended!

In addition to buying over 75 titles myself, I asked for donations of used books (appropriate for my 6th-8th graders) at the beginning of the year in a letter to my new parents...amazingly, I now have two book-carts full of novelsthat my students can directly check out from the back of my classroom.  They can also put holds on books that I have limited copies of.  I thought--for sure--The Hunger Games would be the most sought after title on the hold lists, but it has become Neil Shusterman's Unwind; perhaps the fact that I have been talking about it almost daily in most of my classes, telling my students what a great summer read it was for me (to provide a model of how you talk about a book if trying to persuade others) probably helped.  I am determined to host a "Community of Readers" among my students this year, teaching them how to convince each other to read books they've really enjoyed.

Two weeks in to the new school year, and I have been establishing regular routines that will contribute to my writer's and reader's workshop.  I am pretty close to being ready to explain how these two types of workshops will work to my students and their parents.  I never like to announce how our in-class workshops work too early in the year--not before I've established and we've practiced some of the foundational practices.

I humbly think I am an old-pro at the Writer's Workshop.  The Reading Workshop is new to me this year.  I have officially decided that Accelerated Reader is not a program I can support anymore; dangling points in front of students as incentive to read no longer fits my project-based teaching style.

I am going to be expecting my students to find an independent novel they like once a month and have it read in three weeks.  During the fourth week of each month, they will be expected to complete a project that does two things:

1. Prove to me they've read the book (without taking an AR quiz);
2. Convince another student to read the book through an effort they take related to the book.

By the end of the year, I want to have 20-30 project options available to my students; at present, I have created six ideas that I really like.  I like them because they are all designed to be seen by a larger audience than just me--their teacher--and most push persuasive writing skills.

Here are my first six project ideas: 

• Persuasive book review: (not a book report--I hate reading those!) type a 300-word, thoughtful write-up that shares both the strengths and any criticisms of the novel without giving away the book’s entire plot to someone who hasn't read it yet.   The goal of a review is to convince another student to read (or not read) the book.  Students who do A-work on this task may also submit these reviews to their writing portfolios, provided they are willing to conference with their teacher about it and create one more revision of the review based on their teacher’s feedback.
• Compose a thoughtful letter to the author: research how to contact a living author of the book you’ve read and write a polished, one-page letter to him/her, both praising the work and asking an intelligent question about the author’s writing process.  Any student who receives an actual letter back from the author (not the publisher or an agent) will be excused from one future reading workshop project provided they allow Mr. Harrison to publish both correspondences at his website.  (This one is inspired by this page at my wife's website.
• Create/post a webpage-tribute to the book or to its main character:  contribute to our class’s online collection of tributes to books we have read during reading workshop with a thoughtful webpage.  These online tributes can be story-based, setting-based, or based on a main character (like a fictional character’s imaginary Facebook page).  Because these tributes will potentially be seen by thousands of educators and students, final products must be thoughtful and error-free. 
• Novel-inspired board game: design board game or strategy game based on the novel’s plot; if another student were to play this game, they would completely understand the premise of the novel and be interested in actually reading it.  All of the game’s required “pieces” will be designed by the student, and how-to-instructions for playing the game must accompany this project.  Students will be required to supervise 2-4 other students as they play the game during lunchtime or after school in Mr. Harrison’s classroom.
• Pamphlet campaign: obtain permission from a librarian/teacher (not Mr. Harrison) to begin a “You-should-really-check-out-this-book” campaign.  After designing a tri-fold pamphlet, students will publish 25+ copies of it and design a distribution method that puts their pamphlet into the hands of students genuinely interested in reading the book they have chosen.  Sending the pamphlet to the author/publisher and receiving a favorable response will excuse the student from a future Reading Workshop Project.
• Create/Cast/Market a live or video performance inspired by the novel:  write play or other type of performance that would inspire fellow students to check out the book after watching it.  The performance will be scheduled in Mr. Harrison’s classroom at lunchtime or after school, and students must “market” their performance successfully so that 10+ fellow students come and watch it.   This project can be completed together by 2-5 students who have all recently read the same novel.

I am working on a teacher model now for each project suggestion; I will post my teacher models as soon as they are completed.  If you have any feedback or ideas for additional projects, I'd love to hear from you! 

--Corbett

I'm going to make it my personal  "Friday Practice" to always sketch and photograph the next week's (Mr. Stick-inspired) Metaphor of the Week before I leave for the weekend.

We've spent the first week of school pre-writing and planning our writers' notebooks introductory pages.  My sixth graders are working on a page dedicated to their personal treasures; my seventh and eighth graders are creating showing riddles, inspired by WritingFix's Lesson of the Month for September.  Can't even begin to tell you how much easier it is to inspire my kids because I can show them my teacher-model of a writer's notebook page before I send them into the pre-writing process.

I've decided next week's Metaphor of the Week will be : "A Writer's Notebook is a Personal Treasure Chest."  Next week, we'll be reading the forward to Ralph Fletcher's A Writer's Notebook: Unlocking the Writer in You, and it will mesh nicely with this metaphor.

Here is the display my students will see as they file in after their Labor Day weekend.  Click on the image to see it in larger form.

Again, if you have ideas for good metaphors about learning, life, and tools of learning, I hope you'll share them with me.

I've decided to add a new feature in my classroom: The Metaphor of the Week.  I want to really push my students to think metaphorically this school year, so I will be providing a weekly example.  Eventually, I will have students assigned to create upcoming weeks' metaphors for the whole class, as well as individual metaphors for their writer's notebooks.

I--who will also be teaching my students to draw Mr. Stick (our writer's notebook "mascot")--will be illustrating each week's metaphor with an original Mr. Stick by me.  I will be challenging my students to create their own (different) Mr. Stick drawings based on the week's metaphor.

In my new classroom, I've got two half-sized white boards on either side of my Interactive SmartBoard. I've decided one of these half-boards will hold my "Mr. Stick's Metaphor of the Week."  Here is the metaphor/drawing I created for our first week of school.  Click on it to see it larger:

I want the metaphors to all be about life, dreams, and education...so if anyone has any suggestions for upcoming weeks, please let me know what they are!

Here's to a fabulous first week of school with a brand new set of kiddos!

--Corbett

My third and final bulletin board in my new classroom has become a "Published Students" display.  It is going to be used to motivate my students to write hard and and revise well this school year.  With a promise of "fame" and a beyond-the-classroom audience, students do work harder during a writer's workshop.  I believe this, and I will use this belief to energize my students.

I believe one of the most motivating things one can do as a teacher is promise to publish your three or four of your hardest-working writers' final drafts in a public place.  A bulletin board is a low-tech way to do this.  A classroom blog ups the ante by increasing the audience possibility.  You can up the ante even more if you're using WritingFix lessons!

One thing I love about WritingFix is that most lessons come with a link to an online page where students' final drafts (up to three!) can be posted by their teacher; with WritingFix receiving over four million hits a year these days, this can be incredibly motivating (if not slightly intimidating) to your students.  To publish your students at WritingFix, you do need to be a member of the "Online Student Publishing" Group.

I challenge you to motivate your students this year by creating a new way to publicly publish your top three writers/revisers with each assignment.  I'm putting up both a bulletin board and I'm publishing at WritingFix.

You know, I've been in classrooms where--upon a student's writing having been published online--the teacher shows the entire class the final draft by projecting it on the wall.  I've seen the student who's been published beam.  I've heard the other students ask, "Will you choose someone else and put them online with the next writing assignment?"

Once I was invited to an assembly where the entire school sat and watched a published classmate's writing be "unveiled" on a huge screen that showed the page from the Internet.  That entire school of students pledged to work hard on their next writing assignment so that they might become the next featured writer from their school online.

This third bulletin board in my classroom features ten students who are not on my current class-list; I found these samples online at WritingFix, and they will slowly be replaced this Fall as my new students' writing is selected (by me) to be featured online.  If you click on the picture of the bulletin board, you can zoom in on the green sign that should pique my writers' interest in being the students who replace the ten samples I currently display here.

I hope you'll consider joining me this year in publishing your own writers at WritingFix!

--Corbett