Maybe you have some ideas to share with me about what you do with reading and writing in the class everyday. What do you do to create reading routines in class? What about setting up writing routines? How do you put things in place that make strong reading and writing matters of habit, things that students work on and improve each day?

Already Doing

Reading for ten minutes every day for the first six weeks is something I did last year and I’ll do again this year. We’ll have Do Firsts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but that kind of writing is no big deal. Mondays will be response to a visual, Wednesdays response to a quotation, and Fridays response to some kind of writing challenge. Whenever there is a writing assignment lingering, students will have ten minutes each day to write. We’ll continue with the reading journals that have been in place for about the last eleven years. Having a wide selection of books in the room is also important. My latest trips to Powell’s and Book Warehouse reflect that I’m still working on that.

Thinking About

Kelly Gallagher’s Article of the Week sounds promising, especially with a bit of Jim Burke’s Weekly Reader and my 2008 thought about delicious.com thrown in. Making sure that I am doing as much reading and writing as I ask of my students is also a key part of talking to the class about those processes. In talking about what I’m reading and writing, I want to make it obvious that this is a part of my life but not the only part. It needs to be clear that we are not one-dimensional people with only our subject area in mind.

Help me with what I’m missing. What are your great ideas for how to encourage reading and writing everyday in your class?Similar Posts:

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Times And Handouts

Working through the war poems takes about three days total. Give yourself a day to get the students through each poem, a day to work them through a comparison of

• War Poetry (PDF) (Word) Full disclosure: I believe I took the idea of using these poems from someone along the way, but I don’t remember who
• Comparison Chart (PDF) (Word)
• TTTC Writing (PDF) (Word)

Milestones

Before you even hand out the book, start with the poems. Those are more manageable chunks to get students used to reading and rereading (though I had difficulty even getting students to reread a short poem). Poems are also usually more obvious with the use of repetition, typically a key ingredient to a text’s message. Since I wanted students to think not only about theme but writing style, these poems work well because the styles are all very different.

Pick two poems to take the students through a sample comparison. We worked with the first two, “Camouflaging the Chimera” and “War Is Kind.” On the document camera, but this would work just as well on the board, we stepped through the comparison chart. First we tackled what’s happening on the surface of these poems and then dove under to decide what it all means. After that, we dissected the language to figure out how the poet communicated that message.

Similarities and differences noted on our chart, the students then worked on this with a partner, choosing two other poems. Students took notes and groups presented their comparisons. Before you knew it, we were already of the mind to pay attention to similarities and differences.Similar Posts:

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There’s really only one thing you can do: act like it never even happened.

When tomorrow rolls around, pretend it’s the first day you met. Nothing from yesterday will impact that smile on your face and your willingness to help. As you move up and down the rows checking work, act surprised when he doesn’t have it even though he has never had the homework. Disappointment should cross your face if she exhibits any of those behaviors that drive you mad. Hit reset every single day. Show your shock when that student does anything less than perfect work.

Because anything else you do will be predictable. Get angry and that’s the desired reaction. Turn in a referral and the kid goes back through the system. Counsel him and you sound like adults do to Charlie Brown and the gang. She’s seen that response before. He earned that reaction less than an hour ago. All other behaviors will be some variety of what the student wants or expects from you. Starting over every day, that’s just odd.

It’s hard to give that many chances to start over. To offer that cookie over and over, only to be refused, sometimes violently, that’s a rough gig. Swallow your pride, pick up the cookie, and offer it again. Do it with a smile on your face for that kid who beat the cookie down yesterday. Treat that kid just like your favorite student. Do that and you give what the student has not had in the past. Do that and you make it obvious what the right path is. Do that often enough and from the beginning of the year and you make it hard for students to choose any other road.

That’s all you can do. It never even happened. This is the first day.Similar Posts:

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Whitman – “America”

Levi’s commercial

Poem

Whitman audio clip

Whitman – “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”

Levi’s commercial

Poem

Smithsonian audio clip

Thomas – “Under Milk Wood”

VW commercial

Text

Even though I hate the commercialism of it, preferring to make the classroom as free of advertising as possible, what if you set students loose with a small snippet of a poem and had them create an ad campaign using it? They’d have to understand the poem enough to see how it would relate to a product. Have them set images to it and there’s a whole other layer of interpretation. Use this as prewriting to some larger analysis of the poem and this could be gold. You could give them copies of poems that are game for this project along with a list of products they could choose to advertise. That would certainly help those students who struggle with too much freedom in these matters.

Team up with an Economics teacher. Most Econ teachers I’ve talked to have a project where students create their own businesses. As part of that project, they also pick a poem to use as ad copy for their ad campaign.

Do you know of any other commercials that use poems? Have any ideas what to do with all this in the classroom? Do tell!Similar Posts:

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Students read for ten minutes every day throughout the month of September. It’s rough to commit to the chunk of time each day and I must admit that I haven’t been able to do it every single day, but my average is good. Most of the time I’m reading during those ten minutes, too. This is terribly important, especially at the beginning. As a result, I’m seeing more students getting into what they are reading, more students bringing books with them, more investigation into what books I have on the shelves, and more curiosity about the new ones I’m putting up.

I also took some time over the summer to cut out an entire bookcase and the bottom shelf of each of the remaining three cases. Those books aren’t being read no matter how good they are because they are out of sight. This is a “less is more” situation for sure. I’ve gotten rid of a lot of books students never read, packed in easily another thirty titles, and increased the chances of a student picking a book at random that ends up being even moderately cool.

And students are interested and reading the entire time. This means good things in the future.Similar Posts:

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