The July issue of School Talk is a tribute to Donald H. Graves and includes articles by two former recipients of the NCTE Donald H. Graves Award, Ganna Maymind and Lisa Cleaveland.
Summer Activities to Keep Kids Learning
The Learning Beyond the Classroom website provides activities, resources and lessons for students young and old to use after school, during vacation, and throughout the summer break from school. Includes a growing collection of podcasts and videos!
Additional summer reading and learning ideas.
Writing Workshop
Writing workshop is an instructional framework utilized in many K-6 classrooms. The framework is designed to create conditions in classrooms that support students’ growth as writers over time. Writing workshop essential conditions include:
- Time. Students need to develop stamina for writing. Proficient writers are able to stay at the task of writing for long stretches of time, and are also able to return and continue working on the same projects until they are completed.
- Choice. Students need choices about how they go about their writing. Proficient writers go through a process every time they move from an idea to a finished piece of writing.
- Teaching. Most workshops make time for both whole class teaching and individual writing conferences.
- Student talk about writing. Talk is rehearsal for writing as students try out ideas. Talk helps students become articulate about their writing processes and provides an opportunity for students to learn from each other.
- An understanding of growth over time. During the year, students should create portfolios of finished writing in different genres. Reflective assessment about both the products and the processes of this writing are key to students and teachers understanding growth over time.
Writing workshop is an instructional framework, not a teaching style, and it is important to remember that while individual teaching styles vary, the conditions that support writers do not. The consistency of writing workshop essential conditions across diverse classrooms is testimony to this.
Check out these Writing Resources:
- This NCTE Policy Research Brief, Writing Now!
- The postion statement, NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing
- What we know about writing in the Early Grades, K-2 and Intermediate Grades, 3-5
- "Nurturing Our Very Youngest Writers," School Talk, January 2009
- "Looking Closely: Teaching Writing/Creating Writers," School Talk, October 2008
- "Writing Workshop," Language Arts, November 2004
- The Writing Workshop: Working Through the Hard Parts (And they’re all hard parts)
- The NCTE National Day on Writing, October 20, 2009
Literature Study
Literature study builds upon reader response to help readers understand why a text invites or directs them to respond in certain ways. Viewed in this manner, literature study can be described as an educated form of response to literature. Literature study has important benefits including:
- supporting and making learning meaningful across the curriculum,
- developing critical thinking and encouraging inquiry,
- promoting creative expression,
- creating and strengthening a sense of the classroom as a community across ability levels,
- fostering children’s ability to recognize and appreciate diverse perspectives,
- developing empathy and understanding of others both near and far,
- increasing children’s pleasure in reading and encouraging further reading.
Read more . . .
"Children's Literature in the 21st Century," Language Arts, January 2007.
"Bringing Children and Books Together," Language Arts, September 2005.
"Creating Readers: Talking about Books in Multilingual Classrooms," School Talk, January 2008.
"Literary Partnerships: Collaborating with Literature to Create Readers," School Talk, October 2007.
"Read Aloud," School Talk, April 2005.
Addressing the Needs of English Language Learners
English language instruction continues to be a hot topic in the news--from achievement gaps to funding and professional development for teachers. These resources focus on supporting students' cultural language and identity as they work to learn a second language.
For a rich description of a classroom and curriculum that supports English language learners, read the Language Arts article "'Seeing the Possibilities': Learning from, with, and about Multilingual Classroom Communities," which examines the lives of four multilingual students, their classmates, and teacher as they use a range of systems to learn from, with, and about one another and their surrounding social worlds.