Teaching (and learning) to Write

Week Twelve. Reflection on the reality of teaching middle school students. Our lesson plan was, in (very) brief: read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs sitting around like a children’s classroom, have students brainstorm popular stories that can be told from a different perspective, play with “retelling” some of the stories, then have students write their own pieces from new perspectives. Andie (see his thoughts on this particular adventure  here ) and I have both taught before and we knew to plan for things not to go quite as planned. We had made a lesson plan with significant flexibility and with the specific class in mind. Consequently, we didn’t encounter anything too wild. However, I do think that my tone should have been a little more serious (maybe even a teeny bit stern, or at least more focused on classroom expectations) so that we would have better kept the class moving and on task for the group portions. Even with this momentary chaos, it was super exci...

Week Eleven. Challenge Writing Tasks. I. A revision of my  Reflection on a teaching placement A few moments’ drive, walking distance really, from over-priced coffee shops and an expensive grocery store and nestled inexplicably between apartments and restaurants is   ______ Middle School. You won’t see these kids or their families at that coffee shop and if they dared to venture into the aisles of over-priced organic produce, they would certainly look out of place. This isn’t for them. No, these kids are of buildings, of a school, where absent ceiling tiles reveal leaking roofs and many of the ceiling tiles that have resolutely stood their ground have scars and smells and discolorations to show for it. More often than not, the walls and the floors match. These are the kids of parents who enter the school screaming, stomping in with a bewildered baby on their hip as they howl at their child. The mom paying too much for organic fruit just a few minu...

Week Ten.  Challenge Writing Tasks. I. In the tradition of  Ten of Jimmy Fallon's Funniest 'Thank You Notes' , my own thank you notes. Thank you, "Let's get coffee," for being a polite way of never talking to someone again. Thank you, UGA campus, for actually being uphill both ways. Thank you, 100 Calorie Packs, for allowing me to pretend I'm being healthy. Thank you, email notifications, for letting me feel popular, if only for a moment. Thank you, fashion magazine, for helping me unintentionally match my grandmother. Thank you, group project, for helping me to appreciate working alone. Thank you, 20 page paper, for making five page papers seem okay. Thank you, Bing, for taking me to Google. Thank you, phone, for using the last of your battery to keep telling me your battery was low. Thank you, smoke detector, for letting me know my breakfast is ready. Thank you, car door lock, for making it so easy to lock ...

Week Nine. Mentor Text. I’m taking a page out of Scott McCloud’s book here (literally).  What I particularly love about McCloud is that not only does he write about his ideas, he shows them. He explains by doing. Pictured here is page 35 of his Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. (His entire book is brilliant, but this particular page is an easily isolated and wonderfully brief example of his brilliance, making it an excellent mentor text.) But why do I think it can be a mentor text in the first place? Well, it passes my test (more on that later) and, probably more importantly, it passes Marchetti’s and O’Dell’s test for mentor texts. Is it engaging? It’s comics and wickedly self-referential- what kid can pass up a comic in place of pages of picture-less words and what cool kid isn’t intrigued by the meta? Does it pass the highlighter test? Okay, this one is a little harder to address, I’ll give you that. It does, however, give the students an idea and ...

Week Nine. Challenge Writing Tasks. Some drafty drafts above, and some less drafty drafts below. I. Using Mari Andrew's  Grief Club Membership Card  as a mentor text, my Catholic Club Membership Card is above. II.  With Michael Salinger's  Well Defined: Vocabulary in Rhyme   as a mentor text, here are two of my own creative vocabulary poems. Jejune doesn't catch your interest slides right by you. Say it: disinterest. Say it until your face is blue. If the ball is significance or your attention, it's a swing and a miss. Jejune remains in a state of insignificance not to mention, to ignore jejune is easy- bliss. Hyperbole is a mountain when it should be a molehill. If it was just a fountain, expect a geyser, anything but still. Hyperbole is the expansion of a shack to a mansion. III. A reflection on my own mentor text pedagogy. Mentor texts support students in a way that fills the gaps of my teaching and supports them...