Thursday, April 26, 2012

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.

Monday, April 23, 2012

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/ 

Sunday, April 15, 2012

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.