30 Ideas for Teaching Writing

The National Writing Project's 30 Ideas for Teaching Writing offers successful strategies contributed by experienced writing project teachers.
 Source: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/922  

1. Use the shared events of students' lives to inspire writing.
2. Establish an email dialogue between students from different schools who are reading the same book.
3. Use writing to improve relations among students.
4. Help student writers draw rich chunks of writing from endless sprawl.
5. Work with words relevant to students' lives to help them build vocabulary.
6. Help students analyze text by asking them to imagine dialogue between authors.
7. Spotlight language and use group brainstorming to help students create poetry.
8. Ask students to reflect on and write about their writing.
9. Ease into writing workshops by presenting yourself as a model.
10. Get students to focus on their writing by holding off on grading.
11. Use casual talk about students' lives to generate writing.
12. Give students a chance to write to an audience for real purpose.
13. Practice and play with revision techniques.
14. Pair students with adult reading/writing buddies.
15. Teach "tension" to move students beyond fluency.
16. Encourage descriptive writing by focusing on the sounds of words.
17. Require written response to peers' writing.
18. Make writing reflection tangible.
19. Make grammar instruction dynamic.
20. Ask students to experiment with sentence length.
21. Help students ask questions about their writing.
22. Challenge students to find active verbs.
23. Require students to make a persuasive written argument in support of a final grade.
24. Ground writing in social issues important to students.
25. Encourage the "framing device" as an aid to cohesion in writing.
26. Use real world examples to reinforce writing conventions.
27. Think like a football coach.
28. Allow classroom writing to take a page from yearbook writing.
29. Use home language on the road to Standard English.
30. Introduce multi-genre writing in the context of community service.

WORLD BOOK DAY - LOSE YOURSELF IN A BOOK!

World Book Day is a celebration! It’s a celebration of authors, illustrators, books and (most importantly) it’s a celebration of reading. In fact, it’s the biggest celebration of its kind, designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and marked in over 100 countries all over the world.

World Book Day will help to put libraries at centre stage, through offering a range of exciting activities and positive PR about libraries. 

Go to  http://www.worldbookday.com/resources/schools/secondary-schools/ 

LDP SESSION on ACTION RESEARCH in EDUCATION

I presented a professional development training session at my own school for Forms 3 - 6 teachers on Action Research in Education.

Date: 4 April 2012

Time: 2.00 pm

Venue: Cempaka Room, SMKBSP

Reflections on Lesson Study

“Improving something as complex and culturally embedded as teaching
requires the efforts of all the players, including students, parents, and
politicians. But teachers must be the primary driving force behind
change. They are best positioned to understand the problems that
students face and to generate possible solutions.”
-James Stigler and James Hiebert

In the lesson study cycle teachers work together to:
• Formulate goals for student learning and long-term development.
• Collaboratively plan a “research lesson” designed to bring life to these goals.
• Conduct the research lesson, with one team member teaching and others gathering
evidence on student learning and development.
• Discuss the evidence gathered during the lesson, using it to improve the lesson, the
unit, and instruction more generally.

The lesson study cycle provides the opportunity for teachers to:
• Think carefully about the goals of a particular lesson, unit, and subject area.
• Think deeply about long-term goals for students. What is the gap between who
students are now and who we hope they will become?
• Study and improve the best available lessons.
• Deepen their own subject-matter knowledge, by considering questions like: what
knowledge and understanding are important?; how is it developed?; what are the
gaps in student understanding and knowledge?
• Collaboratively plan lessons.
• Anticipate student thinking.
• Carefully study student learning and behavior.
• Build powerful instructional strategies – for example, develop questioning strategies
that stimulate student interest and learning.

MORE ON LESSON STUDY

Stage 4: One member of the group teaches the lesson, and other group members attend the class to observe and collect evidence of student learning, thinking and engagement.
In preparation for teaching the lesson, teams think about how to collect data that will help them determine the extent to which the learning goal is achieved.
Teams develop an observation protocol based on their predictions of student responses and decide what types of evidence will be collected from students.
Before the actual class period, inform students about the Research Lesson and the observers that will be in the classroom.
Prior to the lesson, introduce the observers to the class and indicate what they will be doing. If you are doing Lesson Study as a formal research project, remind students of informed consent.
Traditional classroom observations tend to focus on what the teacher does during the class period. Observations of Research Lessons focus on students and what they do in response to instruction. Observers should have a copy of the lesson plan and student handouts used in the lesson. Also provide observers with specific questions to focus their attention during the lesson.
To get richer information, you might invite outside observers to attend the lesson.


Stage 5: The analysis phase addresses three questions. In what ways did students accomplish the lesson goals? How could the lesson be improved? What did we learn from this experience?
After the lesson is taught, while it is still fresh in everybody's minds, the group--and any invited observers--meet to discuss and analyze it.
Participants offer their observations, interpretations and comments on the lesson. The purpose is to analyze and evaluate the lesson thoroughly in terms of student learning, thinking and engagement.
To prepare for this post-lesson session, it helps to identify someone to take careful notes during this session and to collect the additional data from lesson observers. Bring copies of important material such as observers’ notes and other documentation.
Japanese teachers refer to the post-lesson session as a “colloquium” during which the lesson study teacher, group members and outside observers discuss the Research Lesson. The person who taught the lesson is given the opportunity to speak first followed by lesson study group members and other observers. The discussion should focus on the lesson (not the teacher) and on analyzing what, how and why students learned or did not learn from the experience.

* To be continued. 

WHAT I DISCOVERED ABOUT LESSON STUDIES

A Lesson Study group usually consists of several teachers (3-6) who are interested in working together to improve their teaching and student learning.
To ensure multiple perspectives, a lesson study group should involve no fewer than three teachers. Having more than six may make arranging meetings and finding common ground difficult.
Typically, participants are from the same discipline. Include anyone who is interested, even if a person does not teach the course for which the lesson is being developed.

The learning goal is the backbone of a lesson and provides the “reason” for teaching and observing it.
Teams usually begin by selecting a subject, concept, theme, or topic in the course they want to study. Many are drawn to topics that are particularly difficult for students to learn or for teachers to teach. Others select a topic that comes later in the term so they have enough time to plan and design the lesson. Still others focus on topics that are new to the curriculum or that are especially important in their fields.
Learning goals should be stated in terms of what students will understand and what they will be able to do as a result of the lesson. Goals specify desired forms of student learning, thinking, engagement, and behavior. Whatever the instructors decide to do in the class will be considered in light of the goals.
 Example: Students can revise their drafts by identifying and evaluating main ideas and entering into critical conversations with peers.

In the planning stage, team members usually begin by sharing how they have taught or would teach the lesson, discussing and debating the merits of different types of class activities, assignments, exercises and so forth. To keep the focus on student learning, though, teachers also pool their knowledge of how students in the past have learned or struggled to learn the topic at hand. Once past experiences and personal approaches are on the table, the team can begin to design a Research Lesson that will help students achieve the chosen learning goal.

* to be continued as I dwell deeper. 

WORKSHOP ON MODULE BUILDING FOR ENGLISH 1119/CW

I have been working the past month on a SPM English module for Continuous Writing with Lim Teik Gin, Koh Mooi Hoong & Indrani. I must admit that it has been a great learning experience working with these gorgeous & brilliant ladies. I have enjoyed writing some of the sample essays and working on concept maps. We truly hope it turns out well. ;-)

TALKING ABOUT ... LESSON STUDY

Lesson study is a professional development process that Japanese teachers engage in to systematically examine and improve their practice. In this process, teachers work collaboratively to plan, teach, observe and critique a small number of study lessons. To provide focus and direction to this work, teachers select an overarching goal and related research question that they want to explore. This research question guides their work on all the study lessons. Teachers then jointly draw up a detailed plan for the lesson that one of the teachers delivers to students in a real classroom. Other group members observe the lesson. The group then meets to discuss their observations. Often, the group revises the lesson, and another teacher delivers it in a second classroom, while group members again look on. The group then meets again to discuss the observed instruction. Finally, the teachers produce a report of what their study lessons have taught them, particularly with respect to their research question.

PUBLIC SPEAKING

There are three things to remember when making a speech:

Be brief,

be brilliant,

and be gone.

WRITING PROMPTS

I got this exciting idea from http://writingprompts.tumblr.com/page/2
Writing prompts are basically ways to get started on writing. Try it.

HOW TO USE INTERACTIVE NOTEBOOKS

INTERACTIVE NOTEBOOKS