Junior High English Teacher

"I Feel Like a Professional Writer"

2009-10-12T16:01:21Z

Two years ago, when I was on sabbatical (and this blog was dedicated to my learning and research), I read a lot about "agency." How can we make students the agents of their learning? How does our curriculum promote agency? Much of the research I...

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Junior High Academic Writing: To Narrative or Not to Narrative?

2009-10-02T19:45:15Z

A wise woman I know, a social worker of long experience, asked me once why I required my students to write about anything but themselves. The best stories, the ones with the most life and detail she believed, come out when teenagers write fr...

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Paintings from Poems

2009-06-02T13:13:44Z

The Kingdom by Fuad Rifka His kingdom is a n ancient lamp, a walking stick, a water bag. At the door of his dwelling the sun slants and the stars are resting. Fatality by Ruben Dario The tree is happy b...

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OCP Artists at Work

2009-04-27T16:12:27Z

See more at our Picassa slideshow. (I'm blogging during class so I don't have time to learn how to embed it!)

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Poetry: What Can We Make of It?

2009-04-14T14:10:52Z

In previous years, I've used visual art as an entry to both creative and academic writing, novels and poetry. Drawing offers a way to teach observation, even reading in a way that helps kids deprogram from previous poetry experiences that had th...

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Web 2.0 Workshop This Morning

2009-02-17T14:17:02Z

For about the past half hour, I've listened to Victoria Wilson, our high school Library Media Specialist highlight fun Web 2.0 tools. Some of her usable ideas: just hear !t: use this real time player for class room music...A few years ago a Min...

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Using Google Sites for Literacy Practice

2009-01-16T02:46:15Z

OCP Home Page Evolution I started second quarter with a test prep unit, assigning students to prepare for either the MCA/ GRAD in Reading or Composition, the GED, or the SAT. We studied a lot of usage and syntax, took practice tests, and almost...

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Graphic Storytelling as Composition/ Unit Overview

2008-11-14T15:50:42Z

After spending the opening few weeks on writing true, personal stories and the next few studying visual literacy, it seemed logically to put several graphic novels in front of my students to see what they could make of them. Their three favorite ...

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What an Alternative School Teacher Can't and Can Accomplish

2008-10-07T02:12:41Z

Someone at my MWP presentation last week asked me to post this slide: After my own presentation, I listened to Julie Landsman remind me about the racism inherent in low expectations and the need for white teachers to reclaim their authority in ...

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Considering Image as Composition

2008-10-07T01:31:13Z

I told my students in the middle of last week that we would be learning to "read" and "write" images, that written composition and image composition have more in common than they might think. It was a brash claim, and they wanted to argue. We'l...

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