That's All Folks!

I learned that while I am quite the indolent writer; if I have set goals in place (with a reminder), it’s not really that hard to keep a blog updated. I also learned that I enjoy publishing an entry and I’d like to continue doing this personally. I learned that being a member of a digital writing community is an engaging way to share writings with one another. I know that I will integrate blogging into my classroom. I will choose a test class period to start with; in order to work out any bugs initially. Once they are off and running, I can will incorporate blogging in my other classes. This is an engaging method to get (even the most reluctant writer-me!) to write. I look forward to asking students for recommendations for post topics at the start of next year. My greatest challenge blogging was commenting on more than a couple of posts. It is easy to convince yourself that you will return to respond further; in spite of the fact, that you likely will not, I know didn’t.

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

― Walt Whitman

Teaching Argument Writing

I selected Teaching Argument Writing by George Hillocks, Jr. for my literature circle reading. I knew that this book was geared toward middle school students; however, it is the gold standard in argument strategies; I knew I had to read it. I have had many takeaways from this text. I have closely read the text and these are passages that gave me pause, inspired me, and you should ponder.

TEN QUOTES TO PONDER

1. “If kids are to be engaged in their writing, they have to write what they care about. Teachers can create interest… students do not have to be interested in the topic before one begins to teach it” (xi).

2. “When teachers talk, student experience is necessary limited to listening or daydreaming, or simply messing around” (6).

 3. “Csikszentmihalyi’s idea of flow experience is clearly related to far more experience than the passivity of listening to a teacher talk. The experience of optimum learning and flow must be active, most of the time” (6).

4. “Poorly conceptualized objectives undermine the entire process of teaching and lead to poor learning or nonlearning”(6).

5. “Small-group discussions make for powerful learning environments when they are carefully planned and monitored”(65).

6. “Socrates and the Stoic philosophers believed that all people have the capacity for practical reason but tend to lead somnolent lives accepting traditions, norms and beliefs learned from infancy without questions, without taking charge of their own thinking” (103).

7. “Common Core Standards state that students should ‘not simply adopt other points of view as their own but rather evaluate them critically and constructively’” (103).

8. “Units of instruction nearly always benefit by problematizing the concept with which they deal”  (143).

9. “Students who have learned to think through the criteria for making judgments are less likely to jump to conclusions; they consider their ideas more carefully” (172).

10. “In short, if we want to help students become strong inferential readers we must provide the knowledge, experience, and practice that will allow them to do so. And that knowledge and experience must be developed incrementally…” (179).

Wordless Wednesday