August 7, 2007

Research Report

This past week, you were asked to search the internet and find writing resources that could be used in conjunction with your teaching. As a community of learners, it is important to share with others what we have learned. Please post an overview of a source you think is worthwhile. Explain some of its features and its usefulness to the writing process. Include the web address starting with www, not http, so that readers can copy and paste it into their address bars.

13 comments:

Brad said...

After spending countless hours using the internet to find materials, I often feel overwhelmed and frustrated. It can be difficult to know what is valid and worthwhile, or what is useless and a waste of my time. I was introduced to the Greece NY site by a fellow professional. This site provides a an incredible number of reading and writing tools as well as ways to structure an entire year around a specific theme. Most of the material can be modified for various grade levels. You can copy and paste the URL below into your address bar.

www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/6-12/Essential%20Questions/Index.htm

Mary said...

I found a great writing site for teachers. It was started a few years ago by a group of teachers who wanted to get better at teaching writing. It is well organized and includes information on setting up writers' workshop, mini lessons, assessments, ideas, and research. Try it! Read some of the info before you decide what to download.
www.ttms.org

Karen Murawski said...

Karen Murawski said...
I am not like Brad. I don't spend countless hours on the internet, since I do become OVERWHELMED. If I want resources on reading and/or writing, I go to www.heinemann.com. I find that Heinemann has top-notch resources and publishes top-notch writers such as Katie Wood Ray, Ralph Fletcher and Lucy Calkins. I would recommend any book by Carl Anderson especially HOW'S IT GOING?. Anderson is an excellent resource for conferencing with students. Also www.read/write/think.org is a very valuable site with lesson plans and resources from teachers.
Karen

August 8, 2007 10:20 AM

Unknown said...

A good resource site is www.ncte.org. This is the site of the National Council of Teachers of English. This site has policy statements, professional books and resources, announcements of professional meetings, etc.

Jim Vopat

Sherri said...

"Do you have a minute? That's how long it will take to improve students' ... skills." That introduction speaks directly to the teacher with more intent than time. Jim Burke is a well known National Writing Project teacher/writer/presenter. Both these books have short description of important elements of good literacy instruction. On the website, you will be able to look at the Table of Contents and a sample. Check out the chapter entitled "Support Struggling Writers" in Writing Reminders. The other book is the companion Reading Reminders. Intended for grades 7-12, but valuable information for us all!

Writing Reminders:
books.heinemann.com/products/0521.aspx
Reading Reminders:
books.heinemann.com/products/0500.aspx

Katy O'Sullivan said...

Brad stated, "It can be difficult to know what is valid and worthwhile, or what is useless and a waste of my time." I couldn't agree more. I believe that teachers have so many tasks on their plate and it takes so much time and energy to locate valid sites to use EFFECTIVELY in teaching. However, I have discovered a great site that you can use during a writing lesson with your students. It is the Let's Write a Newspaper project and if you click on the teacher tab, you are able to download the entire lesson. Enjoy!

www.jhuapl.edu/education/elementary/newspapercourse/index.htm

Lou Ann said...

TheWritingSite.org seems like a helpful resource with on-line exemplars for students to assess and brief, well-constructed pages containing all the information you need to conduct a mini lesson on various writing topics.

Ms. Sibbernsen said...

50 Essays
Samual Cohen is the editor. The book is a good resource for high school students and teachers seeking readings that offer good writing models and spark controversy about social issues. The essays are organized by genre and theme. Most of the writing is contemporary and explores issues of race, language, stereotypes, and popular culture. There are great examples of how professional writers break the rules to create lively, relevant reading and commentary on the world around us. The anthology includes favorites like Joan Didion’s “On Keeping a Notebook,” Martin Luther King Junior’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and George Orwell’s “How to Shoot an Elephant”.

http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/newcatalog.aspx?disc=English&course=Composition&isbn=0312433476

konez said...

I found a number of interesting sites that seemed to apply. Upon revisiting the list, I realized it was way too big. I whittled it down and put the most interesting below with brief descriptions.

library.thinkquest.org/2626/?tqskip=1 - neat site where students can add stories to pictures, add pictures to stories, or add both.

www.teachersfirst.com/index.cfm - a good site for lots of writing resources at all grade levels.

lmc.foxbay.k12.wi.us/bayside/lmc/ww/ - student work samples for use as teaching tools.

deborah said...

I found a great site for teachers in grades K-5 which supports the science and literacy connection. It assists teachers to scaffold teaching and learning science lessons. These lessons tie in teaching relevant vocabulary, definitions and help students to think more deeply about observations. It also promotes scienc and expository writing. I will use these lessons to support the teachers at my school. The site is books.heinemann.com/categories/32aspx

Unknown said...

Thank you, Karen! I don't spend much time on the internet, either, although I'm always gled to hear of new resources I can go to quickly and easily.

I did browse through some of the new books on the Heinemann site.I have not read Don't Forget to Share: The Curcial Last Step in the Writing Workshop, but the idea of the book is intriguing to me. As we discussed briefly in class, the sharing step seems to often be the step that gets left out when we run out of time. The book takes an in-depth look at sharing in writing workshop so as to improve kids' writing in content, craft, process and progress. It focuses on the elementary classroom.

Mrs. Schmidt said...

Being new to middle school, I have really turned to Nancie Atwell as a source of knowledge in how to work with adolescents, especially in writing. I was intrigued by her book "Coming to Know." It is a book about writing across the curriculum. It is written by TEACHERS of grades 3-6 and it focuses on using writing as a process to discover meaning.

One thing it touches on is how to apply the techniques of writing workshop in science, social studies, and reading classes. It seems to be a series of essays/short descriptions by many teachers, so it is field tested! I've included the table of contents below:

Researching and Reporting
1. Beginning Researchers, Donna Maxim
2. Bridging the Gap, Patricia J. Collins
The Power of Learning Logs
3. Thinking and Writing in Learning Logs, Anne Thompson
4. Learning Logs in the Upper Elementary Grades, Marcia Blake
5. How Learning Logs Change Teaching, Nancy Chard
6. Knitting Writing: The Double-Entry Journal, Charlene Loughlin Vaughan
7. In the Schema of Things, Laura Farnsworth
8. Letters to a Math Teacher, Anne Thompson
Reading and Writing
9. Writing Informally About Reading, Janine Pierpont
10. Whether You Eat the Vegetables or Not, Jo Anne Lee
11. A Love of Books, Donna Maxim
Teaching and Learning
12. Showing the Way: Using Journal Writing to Develop Learning and Teaching Strategies, Nancy S. Wheeler
13. A Puffin Is a Bird, I Think, Jo Haney
14. Taking Charge of Curriculum, Cindy Greenleaf
Appendices
A. Genres for Report Writing
B. Prompts for Learning Log Entries
C. Bury Yourself in Books: Children's Literature for Content-Area Study, Donna Maxim
D. Resources for Writing and Reading to Learn

lauranicole said...

www.writingfix.com

While this site is not as scholarly as NCTE or some of the others posted here, I found that this was something my students could use, as well as myself. In fact, that's what I liked best: that my students and I could go there and work together off the site. The students would feel more connected, I think, to see that I also gain from the site I send them to.

The interactive writing prompts allow everything from the ordinary to the absurd to jump start the writing juices. If absent, students can hop online (if they have access to internet, of course) and still participate in the next day's writing circle without missing "the assignment." The site also provides them pre-writing and drafting help through templates, as well as a wealth of pre-written prompts under various headings for when the brain gets "stuck."

Of course, it also provides resources for teachers for items such as Writing Across the Curriculum -- a huge building initiative for us this year -- so that also helps in its appeal for me. Probably most important is that it is another group of teachers (The Northern Nevada Writing Project) publishing what they've found to work for FREE in the spirit of passing on to others what works for them. The true spirit of collaboration!