Learning, Laughter, and Love in Middle School English

When students are asked to write, they often want to "get it done" and turn it in as quickly as possible.  I often ask them to look over their writing and look for places they can improve. Sometimes I even have them read each other's work and provide feedback.  Yet, even after I do these things I receive papers riddled with errors and flat out bad writing.  For years I have provided students with feedback (I try to offer as much positive feedback as I can).  I tell them, "Good verb choice. Great imagery. Fantastic argument. Wonderful hook."  However, I am frequently frustrated that  I am also continuously making comments like  "Sentence fragment.  Run-on.  Verbs aren't consistent."  You get the idea!  What's even more frustrating is that even though I make these comments telling students what they did incorrectly, the make the same errors on future assignments! So, two weekends ago, I dedicated some time to researching add-ons available on Go

In my last blog, I promised an update on the lesson I was going to teach, and I finally had a few minutes, so here it is! It was a hit! I loved it, and they loved it even more. I won't bore you with the details, but I will say that I am SO glad that I had two examples that I already written ahead of time. I won't even share those because my students' examples are even better! After the assignment, I gave them a few days to work on revising, focusing on figurative language, specific nouns, and powerful verbs. Then they published the work to our blog and read and commented on each others. Finally, I created a Google Form to provide feedback on the assignment. One suggestion was that I ask them to find a longer passage from their book. Other than that, they loved the opportunity to be creative. Here are a few of the questions and answers: Did Mrs. Karney explain the assignment clearly? Give suggestions or compliments.  * Yes, the sentence seeds assi