My biggest weakness as a teacher, I admit, is teaching writing. Sometimes I feel like I am dragging my fingernails down a chalk board trying to pull little creative muses, kicking and screaming, out of my unwilling participants. Ok...that might be a little dramatic. But writing class has always been a little painful for me because I am OCD and want their writing to be perfect. I am demanding as a writing teacher and I knew this year that needed to change. Thankfully we had a wonderful teacher this summer who came to us on a short term team and led us in a writing workshop. Armed with my new knowledge and a great tool...Writer's Notebooks....I set off to enjoy writing class instead of tackling it like a dragon that needed to be slain.
I'm in process, but the results have been amazing. Are my kids perfect writers? No. They still forget their apostrophes and use the wrong "to." But they do because they are too busy pouring their ideas onto the page and that is what a successful writing class should look like.
We spent the first two weeks of class composing our "Seed Thoughts," a section of our Writing Notebook devoted just to ideas.
Now, our writing lesson begins with a five minute mini lesson...direct instruction in grammar, structure, or organization that I am seeing weaknesses in. After that we write, write, write. The kids find a comfy spot and pour it out. There isn't usually a set length though I give them a topic to focus on. We drew floor plans of our house and wrote a memory from one of the rooms. We've drawn a graphic and written a 5-7 sentence caption. And this past week we worked on persuasion.
After reading "So You Want to Be President," and with the elections in full force...literally...we thought we would tackle our own campaigns. Usually I conference with my students and we tweak just one or two focused areas. For this assignment we worked toward a polished piece our parents could see at Open House.
Wow! Just wow! At first I was tempted to analyze their supporting details. But then I realized, hey, this is what they feel makes a good president. So if they could defend it AND prove how as president they would in actuality do it, it was fair game.
I love that some of them tackled hard-core issues like abortion, while others felt it was important for there to be free wifi. In discussion all of them agreed that choosing wise Supreme Court Justices and being honest was important. (Out of the mouths of babes...) It was humbling to see their perspective too. Living as foreigners in a different country, but blessed by the existence of our school where they can continue in English while learning culture and the Spanish they will need in this country, one of my students had a powerful argument for having schools for foreigners. How awesome their world view is.
So if you are unsure about the ballot this year....I have a few Write-Ins you may want to consider:)
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