Maintain Focus

THIS is what I want to remember right now at the beginning of the school year--the heart-wrenching good-byes at the end. I want to remember that I WILL get to know the kids, that I WILL fall in love with each and every one of them, and that they WILL learn.

Writing Recommendations for Students

How Writers Work by Ralph Fletcher
This book is a must-read for budding writers and writing teachers alike. Fletcher's premise is that everybody needs a writing process that works for them.
He walks us through a number of processes for where to write, finding ideas, brainstorming, getting started - going from idea in the head to idea on the paper, revising, editing, and publishing.
I find two chapters particularly useful: the one on rereading your work and revision as radical surgery. We often forget that students need to be explicitly taught how and when to reread their work.
I am going to pick up more copies of this book and use it as a guided reading book for my students who love to write. I also plan to strip mine the book for mini-lesson ideas as I move toward a more open writing workshop next year.

Writing Across the Curriculum

Writing to Learn by William Zinsser
I literally could not put this book down until I'd finished it. I carried it upstairs and downstairs at my brother-in-law's house--taking my life in my hands as I read while ascending and descending. It's chock full of writing models in all academic disciplines.
"Maybe, in fact, it's time to redefine the 3 R's --they should be reading, 'riting and reasoning. Together they add up to learning. It's by writing about a subject we're trying to learn that we reason our way to what it means. Reasoning is a lost skill of the children of the TV generation, with their famously short attention span. Writing can help them get it back.
Writing "can't be taught in a vacuum. We must say to students in every area of knowledge: 'This is how other people have written about this subject. Read it; study it; think about it. You can do it too."

"One of my principles is that there is no typical anybody; every reader is different. I edit for myself and I write for myself."

p. 29 - rhythm is suggested as a theme for interdisciplinary study.

"Writing teachers are lucky if 10 percent of what they said in class is remembered and applied. The bad habits are just too habitual. They can be cured only by that most painful of surgical procedures: operating on what the writer has actually written."

One reason I believe in writing-across-the curriculum programs is that they encourage students to write about subjects that interest them, thus bringing them the surprising news that writing can be useful in their lives. . . . Motivation clears the head faster than nasal spray."

Suggestion for test writing: correct answers don't receive credit until they're written in good English. Students have one week to rewrite answers. Incorrect answers do not have second chance, just the writing portion does.