Microthemes

Of all the writing-to-learn activities, I like the microtheme idea the best. This will be one that I will definitely use and that I'll also share with other teachers to encourage writing in the content areas. Most of my colleagues in other disciplines do not like to do writing because they will have to grade the writing. The nice thing about the microtheme is it doesn't have to be graded.

I think my students will like microthemes because they are quite small and they will not feel overwhelmed with writing. It also takes away the evaluation factor so my students will feel some safety in their writing.

Writing to Learn--"Bizarro Don"

I think that my favorite writing to learn activity has to have been the justification of our inquiry question to "Bizarro Don". I think it was useful to get some experience in defending our work as authors. I like the idea of using letter writing in the classroom as well. It seems to take the focus off of the "ohmygod it's a paper" reaction and put it back into the focus of the assignment.

I think this activity helped me to focus my ideas and really figure out what I wanted to talk about and what I wanted to say about it. Now I can't figure out how I want to say what I want to say about what I want to talk about, but that's my blocking issue. Anyway, I can't wait to use it in my classroom.

Journal Activity

My favortite part of our time together as a group has been discussions and exchanging ideas. I plan on using the dialogue journal for most of my classes. I plan on purchasing many many notebooks to use with my various classes. I think it may take them a while to feel comfortable doing this activity, but the payoff should be great.

Thanks for all of the wonderful ideas everyone has shared.

Thanks for the kind words :)

Hi all,

Thanks for the kind words of praise following the teaching demo. Your haikus were really creative. I had fun.

Enjoy your weekend.

Thanks for the Writing Time :)

Sherrie, Don, and Talinn: Thanks for the time to write today--I think it has helped many of us focus on the inquiry paper.

Sorry I missed your demo

Hey Tad,

Sorry I missed your demo; from reading the blog it looked like it was very well received. I don't know if you've done any reading from Howard Gardiner and his work on the multiple intelligences, but I think you would really enjoy it. You seem to embrace the whole teaching to the multiple intelligences concept very well.

And I love Charlotte's Web; such a wonderful book!

Thanks for the Updates :)

Thanks everyone for the updates. It was just like being there. I really hated to miss yesterday because I was curious about what we would be doing with the scissors and our essays. I think this would be a great activity to do with students. It definitely takes the writer out of his/her comfort zone and makes us look at something differently. I think we often put a lot of ourselves in our essays and this task makes us stand back and look at the document objectively, much in the way a surgeon must look at a patient, cutting and sewing back together.