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| They love collaborating! |
Yesterday I asked one of my classes, "Do you think we do enough writing in here?" All 33 of them responded with a resounding, "YES!" I was thrilled. You see, over the summer I read several books by Kelly Gallagher which encouraged me to reevaluate the way I had been teaching writing and inspired me to think of new ways to teach writing. Just a FEW of the things I learned and decided to try:
- Give students more choice about what they write. Give them several topics to choose from.
- Provide students with mentor sentences and texts. SHOW them good writing. Ask them to emulate what they see!
- Don't correct every little error. For each essay, pick TWO sentences for the students to correct.
- Do most writing in class. Give students feedback DURING the writing process, not after.
So far, I have nothing but positive things to say about implementing each of these strategies. So far, my students have written an essay in which they read two articles and had to synthesize their findings, a personal narrative, a character analysis , an analysis of symbolism in a short story, a six word memoir, and six Article of the Week responses (summary and personal response). Would you believe that my students haven't complained yet? Well, at least not to my face!
I am so excited about the rest of the year with my students. I feel as though I am on my way to accomplishing my mission of making more students more passionate and better writers!
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