Writing Workshops

A mini-lesson (no more than 15 minutes) will take place at the beginning of each writing workshop.

Everyone in class must continue to write for the entire writing workshop time.

Students may work on any writing assignment or personal writing, as long as they are writing.

Writer conferences will take place with students on an individual basis.

Mini-Lesson for Wednesday’s Writing Workshop:

What is Prewriting (Brainstorming)?

Prewriting activities help you generate and refine paper-topic ideas.  Most writers begin with only a vague or superficial idea of what they want to write about.  Prewriting helps you develop your topic by reminding you of what you already know, clarifying what you have yet to learn, and discovering which dimensions of the subject have the greatest “emotional heat” for you.

There are a wide variety of prewriting activities that can help you move forward from your first-impulse writing ideas to a well-defined topic that addresses the requirements of the assignment, audience need, and appropriately assesses the scope of coverage.  The most common of these are Clustering, Cubing, Dialoguing, Dramatizing, Free-writing, Listing, Matrixing, Outlining, and Topical Invention.  These activities can be combined and customized to fit your personal working style and the needs of the assignment.

Today our mini-lesson focused on Free-writing:

Writers, especially struggling writers, are often discouraged about the quality of their writing even before they put anything on paper. This attitude keeps them from the fluid, almost unconscious act of putting words on paper that is so important to many writing tasks. Writers often write to find out what they think, not just to transcribe what they know they think. Because free-writing requires that students write without monitoring their thoughts, without doubting themselves, they are “free” to explore words, phrases, and ideas that they might never access in a more constrained context. Today we did three separate timed free-writing experiments.

• Students were shown an abstract picture and given 2 minutes to write any and everything that came into their minds.
• Students were given a word and given 2 minutes to write any and everything that came into their minds.
• Mrs. Scales told the story about wetting her pants in Paris, France. Students were then given 5 minutes to write about one of their most embarrassing moments.

After a lot of laughter and several surprising revelations, students went to work on some free-writing as a form of prewriting for their first large writing assignment. Each student will spend the next several weeks writing an entry for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. This means that each student can decide from the list of categories provided what type of writing they wish to do. Students who like poetry can use their writing workshop time to write poetry. Students who like telling stories can write short stories of flash fiction. Memoir writing is also an option. To see the full list of categories students were referred to this week’s lesson plans or the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards page on this blog.

 

Way to go English 9 students – Most of you did outstanding on your first literary circle test. Great job.

Anyone who needs to make up any vocabulary test must come by my room to get a pass for AL tomorrow (Wed.), because midterm progress reports come out on Friday.

Any missing assignments must also be turned in by the end of the day on Thur. to have those grades represented on Friday’s midterm progress reports.

 

Today we explored the difference in learning a group of words just long enough to take a test over them, and truly acquiring the expanded vocabulary. Mrs. Scales’ explained the five principals of real vocabulary acquisition:

1. Clear Definition or the denotation of the word
2. Context – Understanding how to use the word in an appropriate context, this may include the connotation of the word
3. Connection – making personal connections with the word, using what you know to help you learn an unknown word
4. Morphology – the structure of the word, look at the word parts (roots, suffixes, prefixes). This may also include the etymology or history of the word.
5. Schema Theory – The way the human brain remembers things. Storing the words for future use. The human brain does not have a junk draw, but rather files things in chunks based on structure or similarities. This is why our weekly vocabulary lists are words that can in some way be chunked together.

This week’s vocabulary words all use the root SCI – we looked at the list on the weekly vocabulary page and talked about using the tools Vocabulary.com and or Quizlet.com to study for the tests. Both are good tools but students should work with both and decide which helps them the most. The primary point of the lesson was to understand that simply studying to remember one exact word for word definition to match each word is not enough to learn and continue to use the vocabulary words.

Plot, Setting, and Character

After a short rap that had most students moving to the beat in their seats, we talked about the three first literary elements that they will be tested over on the first literary circle test. We reviewed what we had done a couple of weeks ago concerning the types and level of questions that will be asked on the first test. All of the questions on the first test will be literal or basic knowledge questions. The answer to every test question can be found directly (or literally) in the text.  Finally, we reviewed the study guides handed out on Friday so that any student who didn’t remember details from the reading could work with their group and go back into the text to find the answers. It was explained that for tomorrow’s test, every question came directly from the information on the study guide.

Students were reminded again to read the blog everyday.

 

It was a little stressful for some Eng. 9 students today as they learned that assignments due at the start of the class period have to be turned into the tray as they come into the classroom. Students still have to be in their seats when the bell rings. That means that students have to plan ahead. They can not come into class and then start printing off final copies of things due at the start of class. They can not start worrying about what order the assignments have to be in and where the stapler is.  Please review the class rules and procedures in the class syllabus you all signed. By the time the bell rings, everyone should be in their seat and ready to begin work.

Several students also showed up to class without an iPad. If a test is being given and your iPad has been taken by the technology department because it has a problem, I will provide a paper copy or alternative for taking the test. However, if you just didn’t bring your iPad to class, it isn’t charged, or you have any other excuse for not coming to class prepared, you will simply get a 0 for the test. If you make up the test within a reasonable amount of time, your score will be reduced for being late. You have to come to class prepared. Again, read the syllabus again if you do not understand this. We use our iPads everyday in English 9.

Students who did not turn in the vocabulary homework packet from last week, received a 0 out of 45 points. Students who turn the packet in but did not write the words received 20 out of 45 points and were give a new packet for next week. The overall vocabulary scores jumped tremendously this week. Home work packets for low vocabulary scores dropped to less than 10% of the entire class as a whole. This shows great improvement and is something to really be proud of.

Explanation of English 9 Homework Policy

I told all the students coming in this year that if they would give me the 47 minutes a day, each and every day that they are in my classroom, that I would do my best not to give them homework. When homework is required it is because they are having difficulty with something and need the extra time. That isn’t to say that some students won’t need to spend time studying or catching up on reading if they couldn’t finish it during class time. However, if homework is assigned (as in the case of any student still struggling with the vocabulary words each week) then it is to put them in a situation where they will study or practice the skills they individually need to practice. Homework is not a punishment, nor will I ever assign busy work. If a student is getting homework in English 9, it is because they need to focus on a skill set they are having difficulty with or not using their class time appropriately.

 

Toady’s primary in class activity was conducting our first literary circle meeting. For most classes it was a huge success.

Students explained the first literary book reading assignments to each other and had meaningful discussions about the connections they made. Role sheets were turned in for scoring and new roles were chosen for the next chunk of reading in our literary circle books.

We reviewed the correct answers to all of the crossword puzzles as a way to help study for tomorrow’s big vocabulary test, and students were reminded to bring earbuds or headphones for the spelling portion of the test. We also found an error on one of the crossword puzzles. While the word presumptuous was listed twice with two equally correct definitions, it was misspelled on one of the questions. Presumptuous is spelled p r e s u m t u o u s.

Students were given time after the literary circle meetings to study for the vocabulary test tomorrow or finish the final draft of their friendly letter assignment that is also due at the start of class tomorrow.  Students were reminded to turn in all three copies of the friendly letter assignment tomorrow. The final draft should be on top, the revised draft in the middle, and the rough draft on the bottom.

 

 

 

What a busy day in English 9.

We started the class out reviewing the five stages of the writing process:

Prewriting

Rough Draft

Revision

Editing

Publishing

Today’s writing workshop included an editing review of the revised copies of our second friendly letter assignment. Using the original Writing a Friendly Letter handout all of the following points were reviewed:

• Headings should be aligned in the center of the page and include three lines: street address, City, State Zip Code, and Date. Make sure you don’t forget the comma between the city and the state.
• Skip one line between the heading and the greeting.
• The greeting should be left aligned and have a comma after the name.
• Skip one line between the greeting and body.
• The body of your letter must include at least three indented paragraphs. A paragraph is normally three to eleven sentences and contains a complete thought. Due to the paragraphs being indented in a friendly letter, there should not be any extra lines (spaces) between paragraphs.
• The closing should be aligned in the center and match up with the alignment of the heading. There should also be a comma after the closing.
• Skip one line between the closing and the signature.
• The signature is your name written in cursive.
• Skip one line between the signature and the post script.
• The post script is left aligned and begins with the letters P.S. Every letter must include a post script or final thought.

Student then selected partners to proof read each other’s letters and look for punctuation, capitalization, spelling, or other convention or grammar errors that need to be corrected in the final draft.

Students were reminded that on Friday they will turn in a packet that includes their final draft on top, the revised draft in the middle, and the rough draft on the bottom.

We moved from the writing workshop to a quick review of where each group should be in the reading of the literary circle book they have been assigned for tomorrows first literary circle meeting. 

• All students reading To Kill a Mockingbird must have finished the first chapter.
• All students reading The Jungle Book must have finished the first story.
• All students reading Dracula must have finished the first four chapters.
• All students reading The Outsiders must have finished the first chapter.
• All students reading Of Mice and Men must have finished the first chapter.

Everyone must come to class tomorrow with their literary circle role sheet completed for the literary circle meeting that will take place in class. The role sheets will be turned in after the meetings. 

We concluded class with some very focused vocabulary review in preparation of Friday’s Week 1 – 3 Vocabulary Test.

• Crossword puzzles were provided as a study guide for Friday’s words. Students were instructed that there are four different versions of the puzzles and that they should use them as actually study guides not simpley try to get the boxes filled in. A hint was even dropped that the wording on the crossword puzzles matched the wording used on Friday’s test.
• A lively game of Kahoot was played as an in class review of the words as well.  This gave us a wonderful opportunity to not only show our competitive side, but to look at the small nuances that make one answer correct and the other three not correct. This has been especially important for those students having trouble differentiating between words that may have very similar denotative meanings, as well as being able to point out how the part of speech of the word can indicate that only one answer is correct. For example, while a braggart might very well be overbearing; proud; haughty the word braggart is a noun and therefore is not a correct answer. A person who is overbearing; proud; haughty and likes to brag about their own worth is a braggart, but overbearing; proud; haughty is the definition of the adjective arrogant. 
• The Kahoot used in class today can be found for further practice at Mrs. Scales’ Week 1 – 3 Review.

Students were also reminded to read the blog everyday for a review of the important issues covered everyday in class.

Another great day in English 9! Today the whole class was devoted to reading. Most students were able to get a good start on their Literacy Circle books. Other students spent the reading workshop time completing the Reading Inventory assessment. Everyone was reading for the whole 47 minute class period. What a joy to have such blocks of time set aside for the joy of reading?

Students were all reminded to review the lesson plans to know what is coming up for the next day. Tomorrow everyone needs the copy of their letters to their senior self so that we can continue the writing process. The vocabulary words were posted in the room and all students were reminded that this Friday is the big review vocabulary test. Everyone needs to be studying the words.

We began our third week of English 9 today. Students were reminded to read the lesson plans every week to know when assignments are due and what we will be doing each day in class. Students were also told to check their grades in power school to make sure that any missing grades from late assignments get posted.

We had our first Writing Workshop in English 9 today.  Writing workshops begin with a mini-lesson, today’s was on the revision stage of the writing process. Revising does not mean correcting errors in the rough draft. Revision means rewriting the first draft to expand it or make it better, to reorganize how things are said, to further develop the piece of writing. After the mini-lesson Writing Workshop is class time devoted to writing. The entire Writing Workshop is time devote to writing. If a student finishes an assignment and simply can not find any additional ways to improve their current writing assignment they are to go on and work on some other piece of writing. This can be writing poetry, short stories, or letters, but it must be writing of some kind.

While students were writing Mrs. Scales reviewed individual reading levels with students or gave any student who had not completed the SRI on Friday a pass for AL tomorrow Tuesday to get the SRI taken. Reading levels were determined by a combination of the current SRI and the recorded scores from student’s 7th and 8th grade Star Reading assessments. Letters were sent home with any student who is currently reading below basic grade level. Parents are being asked to help students advance their reading levels by setting a goal for their child to read for at least 20 minutes a day outside of school. It was also suggested that parents and students spend time every day looking through “nonbook” reading materials, such as websites, pieces of mail, advertisement, and food labels, to demonstrate how important a part of everyday life reading is.

Finally, a vocabulary homework packet was passed out to any student who did not pass last week’s vocabulary test. The homework packet is due on Friday at the start of class. All students were reminded that this is week 3 so the vocabulary test on this Friday will include the new words for this week and a review of the past two week’s words. Everyone needs to study all week for Friday’s vocabulary test.

English 9 began our first literary circles today! Now this is what English and Literature is all about; enjoying good books together.

Today in class we reviewed the power of working in small collaborative groups to better understand the books we are reading. We call these groups literary circles.

Welcome to English 9 Literary Circles

One of the most important steps in becoming a strong reader is understanding that learning must be student centered (Brooks & Brooks 1993).  You as students must be at the heart of the learning process, and must be active participants in your own learning, not passive recipients of information that will not embed itself in the right places of your mind to become useful later on.

What are Literature Circles?

“In literature circles, small groups of students gather together to discuss a piece of literature in depth. The discussion is guided by students’ response to what they have read. You may hear talk about events and characters in the book, the author’s craft, or personal experiences related to the story.”

What is its purpose?

“Literature circles provide a way for students to engage in critical thinking and reflection as they read, discuss, and respond to books. Collaboration is at the heart of this approach. Students reshape and add onto their understanding as they construct meaning with other readers. Finally, literature circles guide students to deeper understanding of what they read through structured discussion and extended written and artistic response.”

Literature Circles are a powerful process of bringing texts to life.  It is built on the notion of the power of conversation to engage, to dig deeper, to connect, to analyze, to synthesize, to create.

We also reviewed the roles that each student will preform within their literacy circle:

Discussion Director: Your job is to develop a list of questions that your group might want to discuss about this part of the book. Don’t worry about the small details; your task is to help people talk over the big ideas in the reading and share their reactions. Usually the best discussion questions come from your own thoughts, feelings, and concerns as you read. You can list them below during or after your reading. You may also use some of the general questions below to develop topics for your group.

Summarizer: Your job is to prepare a brief summary of today’s reading. Your group discussion will start with your 1-2 minute statement that covers the key point, main highlights, and general idea of today’s reading assignment

Connector: Your job is to find connections between the book your group is reading and the world outside. This means connecting the reading to your own life, happenings at school or in the community, similar events at other times and places, or other people or problems that this book brings to mind. You might also see connections between this book and other writings on the same topic or other writings by the same author. There are no right answers here. Whatever the reading connects you with is worth sharing!

Vocabulary Enricher: Your job is to be on the lookout for a few especially important words in today’s reading. If you find words that are puzzling or unfamiliar, mark them while you are reading and then later jot down their definition, either from a dictionary or from some other source. You may also run across familiar words that stand out somehow in the reading – words that are repeated a lot, are used in an unusual way, or provide a key to the meaning of the text. Mark these special words, and be ready to point them out to the group. When your circle meets, help members find and discuss these words.

Investigator: Your job is to dig up some background information on any topic related to your book. Choose one of the following.   Once one of the following investigations has been done by a group member, you must choose from the remaining investigations. Place a check by ones that have been done.

• the geography, weather, culture, or history of the book’s setting
• information about the author – her/his life and other works
• information about the time period portrayed in the book
• pictures, objects, or materials that illustrate elements of the book
• the history and derivation of words or names used in the book
• music that reflects the book or its time

This is not a formal research report. The idea is to find bits of information or material that helps your group better understand the book. Investigate something that really interests you – something that struck you as puzzling or curious while you were reading.

Travel Tracer: When you are reading a book in which characters move around often and the scene changes frequently, it is important for everyone in your group to know where things are happening and how the setting may have changed. So that’s your job: to track carefully where the action takes place during today’s reading. Describe each setting in detail, either in words or with an action map or diagram you can show to your group. You may use the back of this sheet or another sheet. Be sure to give the page locations where the scene is described.

Role sheets are provided in the resources section of your Canvas course. Everyone copied and pasted the research role sheet for the role they have been assigned for the first week of reading. Grades during the literacy circles will be earned from individual role sheets (that will be turned in at the end of each literary circle meeting) and book tests. Some of the book test questions will come directly from the role sheets turned in.

Our first literacy circle meeting will take place next Thursday in English class.

A portion of class today was also devoted to reminding all students of the following important items:

Week 2 Vocabulary Test is tomorrow.

• Come to class with a charged iPad
• Study the meanings of the words.
• Be able to explain in your own words the difference between the word diffuse and the word digress.
• Understand how to use the words in sentences.

SRI Assessment is also tomorrow.

• SRI stands for Scholastic Reading Inventory.
• This measures your reading level and should be taken seriously.
• Students not demonstrating a grade level appropriate reading level will continue with SRI throughout the school year.

Anytime left in class tomorrow will be used for SSR, which means Silent Sustained Reading. During SSR students are expected to read for the entire time allowed. Some students will have more time than others because of the amount of time they spend on the two assessments. Whether the individual student has 5 minutes or 25 minutes of class time remaining after taking both assessments they will read silently the entire time.

Today in class students continued to practice the reading strategies that Mrs. Scales demonstrated in class on Monday, They also learned about Bloom’s Taxonomy, the guide to levels of cognition. This was in support of our first Habit of Mind – Metacognition or Thinking about Thinking. Bloom’s Taxonomy identifies the kinds of thinking that you must do as students in class. Learning this taxonomy will help you become more aware of the levels of abstraction you are focusing on when reading text.

Because good readers ask questions of text all the time, we learned three classifications of questions associated with Bloom’s Taxonomy:

1. Literal – “right-there” questions
2. Interpretive – “pulling-it-together” questions
3. Evaluative – “author-to-me” or “on-my-own” question

Class time was given to complete the “Digging” questions. Most groups were able to get the first page completed, but needed more time to complete the second page. Therefore groups were told they would have time tomorrow to finish the packet before it is collected for grading.