Unity really stuck with me as an important thing to teach students this week. With unity, you can not only emphasize a logical argument, but you can also emphasize cohesiveness, audience, and a lot of other merits of good writing, like clarity, grammar and other polishing. I think it's easier to shout "Unity! Unity!" to students instead of listing off all these other substrands.
Pre-writing activities also stood out as a way to not only improve students' writing, but also make your life and your students' lives a lot better. During our Crosswinds unit, it was so hard to get students to write, but I believe it's because we included writing as an activity in itself instead of a an activity that will be built upon. I know I've written so many essays where I had no idea what I wanted to say and what did it always lead up to? An uninspired, incoherent essay that was boring for me to write and boring for my instructor to grade. Having students reflect on expository writing or other pre-writing activities proves to them that they have some inspiration for their writing, even if they were pretending to be interested in the topic.
Exciting Link of the Week: In a bind for a rubric? Did you backwards design a unit and not know how to score your summative project? Feeling lazy? Visit Rubistar! This website contains a plethora of rubrics in most subject areas (and sub-subject areas). These rubrics can be altered based upon the reality of your classroom. You can insert your own text into the rubrics or borrow text written by others. If you feel like being more creative and a much better teacher who does not rely on others to deem how students should be assessed, you can use the rubrics for inspiration or a formatting tool. Feeling like a democratic teacher? Have students make their own rubrics!
Brittany
ReplyDeleteI am also falling in love with Romano. I have already said probably too many times in class how I will be teaching creative writing in the fourth quarter and I feel like I have underlined and flagged so many pages of this text. Its just every page is me thinking "Oh that would be so cool to have students listen to 'In My Life' by The Beatles and then read the lyrics and have them right about a place they will always remember". All the while me floating around the room high on creativity fumes. Also I will most definitely be checking out your rubric website. I think of rubrics as something necessary that has to be done but find it hard to fit everything in to neat little boxes, much like the five paragraph essay. Ok then many thanks for the rubric site and see you soon!
Hi Brittany! The 2nd half of Romano, I found myself falling out of love. Sad face. But I had the same feeling that it is something I might find myself using somewhere down the road. Love some ideas, just not for my "right now". And YES! to your unity statements. Great point in the text but I think I can use the idea in a different context.
ReplyDeleteWhat else...? Rubistar! Thanks for the link! I love being able to have the format provided. To me, that's the most daunting part of rubric making. Lame? Maybe so...
I know that Rubistar is not ideal for all rubrics but I think that it's a great starting point for new teachers like me. I am often going back to Rubistar for ideas for categories and vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteOur current professors have encouraged us to create our own rubrics but I don't think that Rubistar isn't as evil and professors have made it out to be. You can edit any category and all of the content or create your own. Just like anything, use the resource wisely.
Remeber when I showed you Rubistar, Brittany? That was cool.