Posted by Marsha on February 15, 2012
They are not a federal program; nor did the stem from a government initiative like NCLB. They are the result of governors from across the country and groups of corporate leaders who were concerned about the alarming numbers of high school students graduating from public school unprepared for college or a career path. http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards
They were [...]
Posted by Marsha on January 4, 2012
Read alouds are not just beneficial for teaching reading; they are perfect for teaching writing, too. Quality literature, be it picture books or novels, are perfect for modeling craft and target skills we want our students to include in their writing. For example, with similes and metaphors like- “The trees stood still as giant statues. [...]
Posted by Marsha on December 17, 2011
Too often the only time we assess writing is when it is time for a school, district or state writing assessment. These assessments have their place, but the lessons learned from them don’t always lead to immediate instructional changes. It is important that writing teachers learn how to monitor students’ writing progress daily.
In order to [...]
Posted by Marsha on November 2, 2011
Teachers, please-work smarter, not harder.
As a writing coach and trainer, I visit many classrooms and see a reoccurring event… students watching teachers doing all the work. I see teachers doing a better job thinking aloud and modeling, but they are not giving students adequate time to practice the skill. Instead, they assign another whole writing [...]
Posted by Marsha on October 12, 2011
Cognitively speaking, writing is a very complex task. It requires the brain to process different tasks and information tidbits simultaneously. For instructional purposes, we tend to break writing instruction down into parts such as steps in a process, target skills, qualities of good writing, and target skills. Even many of these parts are too complicated [...]
Posted by Marsha on April 27, 2011
Teaching students to write tight is difficult. We want them to elaborate, but we don’t want unnecessarily long sentences with strings of empty adjectives and adverbs, vague nouns and wimpy verbs. We want the detail via vivid word choices! Less active sentences, to be verbs and articles, more concise vocabulary. We want them to get [...]
10 Things A Teacher Should Know About Common Core State Standards
