Thoughts On Teaching » short-writing

Facebook Questions

Todd — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:59:43 +0000

Facebook is getting a Questions app together. What interests me here is the focus on eloquent writing and reference to other sources. It’s nice to have a company like Facebook on record as valuing those elements of writing.

I like that Facebook is asking for someone to be able to write with passion and expertise about something. Asking for a link to a third-party reference is simply another way of asking for a quotation. There’s room for writer choice in selecting the question for the response. All of these represent pieces of nearly any good writing assignment and I need to remember that.

Facebook even provides an annotated sample, describing what each section of the example response does and therefore providing a framework for what you should do, too: “a single sentence that summarizes the answer,” “a thorough response that answers the question in detail,” and “a summary of the major different opinions” (wording from Facebook’s sample response). That could make any sample writing students look at more useful, something I will look at adding to future writing models I provide.

This could be the first writing assignment of the year. Have students submit questions for answering and we create something like Yahoo! Answers for the classroom. Keep them in a binder at the front of the room and/or online somewhere available to all. Each response needs to be… say… one-hundred words?Similar Posts:

Something New(ish)

Todd — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:13:11 +0000

My school doesn’t start for another ten days; students arrive in eleven. Some teachers were just told earlier this week what they will be teaching next year. I’m willing to bet that other teachers still don’t know. There is a possibility that teaching schedules could change between now and the 25th. It’s slight, but still a possibility. This all worries me, but I’m sure it’ll work out.

English 3 and Speech are classes I’ve taught several times in the past. Curriculum still needs tightening and arranging, but it will fall in line and I have some ideas. These are classes I have fun experimenting with.

English 2 is something I haven’t taught in about six years. I had a three year run with that course, but that’s not long enough to really get any strong plans under my belt, combined with the fact that those three years were at the beginning of my career. I have good friends who teach that level, so I’m sure I’ll have plans handed over as I ask for them, but I still feel like I need to carve my path. That will be my focus over the next week and during this school year. I hope to post some ideas in the next few days just in case you’re right there with me.

Are you teaching anything new? Are you teaching anything old that you plan to revitalize? How are you going to do it? What are your plans? Have you started?

Coming soon: Day One, 2009!Similar Posts:

Three Flavors

Todd — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:07:05 +0000

A small thing I did last year that I think could have had a big impact if I’d played my cards right:

Do Firsts came in three flavors: Quotation, Question, Writing Challenge;
Enrichment Reading blogs also came in three flavors: Quotation, Question, Writing Challenge.

This may seem a small thing, but it reflects a fair amount of thought on my part for how I can bring my entire curriculum around a common focus all year long, something bigger than a central question, something that defines why any of us do what we do, something that provides the structure for how we respond to anything. I’m still thinking it through, but this is closer than I’ve ever been to that kind of organization.

Responding to an idea in the text (Quotation), an issue you want to answer (Question), or a desire to push your abilities (Writing Challenge) accounts for most of the reasons to write and talk. What we do in class three days a week, Do Firsts, and out of class once a week, Enrichment Reading blogs, uses those response styles. I want to extend those styles to the major writing assignments this year. If I can make it so that everything is in one of those three flavors, it all becomes linked. While it might be artificial, it’s a link and that almost always makes things easier for students. It gives us a way to look at why we bother to do any of this stuff. It keeps me focused and the students aware of what to do. We respond because there’s an idea the author proposes, a problem we want to puzzle out, or a way to improve ourselves.

Right? Do you see other essential flavors? Help me improve my thinking here.Similar Posts:

An Unsolved Problem

Todd — Mon, 25 May 2009 01:19:11 +0000

Out for a run yesterday, I listened to Act One of a deeply disturbing episode of This American Life. In New York, there’s apparently a place called the Rubber Room. Essentially, teachers report there when the board decides that they shouldn’t be in the classroom. Instead of firing teachers or even accusing them of anything, they are removed from the classroom and told to show up for their regular work hours to sit in a room. This happens to hundreds of teachers. The room is very loud. They are paid for their time. They wait for nothing.

Some teachers are there for months, others for years.

Of the teachers covered in the piece on This American Life, two stay in my mind. One threw a chair across the room and it accidentally hit a kid (listen at 12:19). That teacher should be let go. Another’s principal leveled an abuse charge because he let a swear word fly in a conversation with another teacher as he walked past an open eighth-grade classroom (listen at 14:30). That teacher should be brought back.

If the teacher really did abuse a kid, they wait. If the teacher didn’t do anything wrong, they wait. In either case, the actual issues that brought the teacher to the Rubber Room are not dealt with. So even though there is clearly a problem, it’s ignored.

Rubber Rooms are simply a way to avoid the difficulty of saying, “You should no longer be a teacher. Good-bye.” There’s an admission of a problem by the creation of Rubber Rooms, but there’s no solution provided by putting these people into a system that is basically a prison. I’m horrified at what Rubber Rooms suggest about the way my profession works.Similar Posts:

Tuesday’s Inauguration

Todd — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:14:41 +0000

It’s an important event. I want to watch it. I can’t think of a reason to show it to my students, though. Barack Obama’s inauguration happens on Tuesday (interesting that a Google of “obama” returns an image of Bush as the first result today).

As it ends up, I don’t have a class during that time, so I couldn’t show it to my students even if I had a good idea. Thing is, I don’t think I would show it to my students. What’s the relevance to my curriculum? There are lots of other things I think are important. Should I show those, too? How do I get students to by into it? What’s to keep them from simply wasting the time? Why should they care? Where do we go with it? These exact same questions should be asked of anything I do, but I can think of answers to them if we’re doing something interactive and that builds up to something. Beyond Tuesday, what will you do with the inauguration in your classroom?

This all gets at the problem I have with ever showing TV shows or films in class: there’s plenty of value, but it’s much easier to space out and much harder for me to correct it. Even showing Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest relates to what we’ll do tomorrow and where we were yesterday. I just have a really hard time fitting such things in because of these conflicts. Is my thinking too limited here?

Are you planning to show Obama’s inauguration? What are you planning to do with it? How do you hope to answer the likely legion “so what” stares you’ll get at the end of the hour? Do you use handouts or anything tangible?Similar Posts: