Junior High English Teacher

Aha! It's All about Executive Function

2009-11-25T17:08:52Z

Yesterday, in my 3rd block 7th grade class, a boy who has been tortured by the intricacies of sentence diagramming, stood up and shouted, "I get it!" and added, "Mrs. Behnke, it's like 'I ate spaghetti. Ate what? Spaghetti.'" And with that, he...

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5-Paragraph-o-phobia Continued

2009-11-25T14:48:48Z

I've been reflecting on why the idea of teaching a 5 paragraph essay unit would bother me so much that I would run off to the National Writing Project archives for research against the practice. In laying out my unit calendar and pulling together...

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5-Paragraph-o-phobia

2009-11-16T03:05:25Z

Let me begin by admitting that I am not a fan of “the 5 paragraph essay.” In fact, I might even call myself evangelical in my pursuit to eradicate the pedagogy of “the 5 paragraph essay” from teaching. I‘ve told my high school students that they...

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"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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