Nov 06
tengrrlBedford Bits, composition, Literature
Here’s the round-up of posts from last week on teaching composition and rhetoric from Bedford Bits, on teaching English language arts at the secondary level in High School Bits, and on teaching literature and creative writing from Bedford Lit Bits. I hope you find something you can use in the classroom or your research!
A Few Extra Links
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Cross-posted as a
Note on Bedford/St. Martin’s page on Facebook.
Sep 20
tengrrlMy Writing
You may have noticed that I’ve been away for a while. There have been no @newsfromtengrrl updates since early this month, no blog posts on Bedford Bits, and none of the usual updates for ReadWriteThink or Bedford. There’s not even an inappropriate greeting card around.
So much for that streak I had going with daily posts. Being sick seems to ruin things like that, and essentially I’ve been sick since Labor Day weekend.
It turns out I had a bit of a skin infection (cellulitis), and some clogged pores in the same area turned into a mightily infected abscess. I went to the doctor’s office Thursday the 8th, when I realized it wasn’t getting better on its own (and at that point, I didn’t know what it was). The doctor sent me directly to the hospital ER. I ended up spending a week in the hospital, with surgery to drain the abscess on Saturday evening (the 10th). In the process of all the testing, they have me on medicine for my high blood pressure, and they found that I have Type 2 Diabetes.
Obviously I’m sparing you images of all that, and instead, giving you an image of the lovely flowers that ReadWriteThink sent me. There are beautiful daisies hiding away in there among the yellow lilies and other flowers.
I’m still recovering, but trying to get back on track with all the news updates and work for ReadWriteThink and Bedford Bits. I’m taking lots of meds now, and they seem to make me quite drowsy. The whole eating with diabetes thing is causing trouble as well. I hope to be back to normal soon. In the meantime, please be patient with me. Thanks everyone.
Aug 09
tengrrlclassroom activity, ReadWriteThink, social media, technology whiteboard
Interactive whiteboard redefine hands-on activity in the classroom, as students manipulate information on a giant digital display. They also bring teachers a new challenge: what activities can you use to make the most of this new technology?
Teachers on the Thinkfinity Community have been busy collecting answers. Theresa Gibbon suggests trying ReadWriteThink’s interactive Word Mover for “I Have a Dream” and Word Mover for Holes and asking students to rearrange the words on the whiteboard as a class experience. Find dozens of additional ideas on the Thinkfinity Community discussion board.
This post is the introduction from “August 10 to 16 on ReadWriteThink.” Read the rest of the post in the Thinkfinity Community site.
Jul 31
tengrrlBedford Bits, composition, Literature Bulwer-Lytton
One day, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton sat down and wrote what have become one of the most infamous opening lines of his novel Paul Clifford (1830): “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Bulwer-Lytton wrote other memorable lines. He penned “the pen is mightier than the sword” too, but chances are that if you know his name, it’s because of “It was a dark and stormy night.” Part of that sentence’s familiarity is thanks to Snoopy, who works so hard on that first sentence of his novels. If you’ve never quite understood the problem with that sentence, it’s likely that you’ve never read the full thing:
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
Quite the sentence, isn’t it? Since 1983, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has honored that epic sentence with a competition to write an equally spectacular sentence. This year’s winner, Sue Fondrie, teaches at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. The Guardian has more details, including the award-winning sentence which compares memories to wind turbines and sparrows and a groaner of a winner from the Fantasy category.
This post is the introduction from the Bits Flashback for July 31. Read the rest of the post on Facebook.
[Photo: Stormy night by Andrew J. Sutherland, on Flickr]
Jul 31
tengrrljournal, My Writing work, workflow, writing
If you show up somewhere with your shirt on backwards, someone usually lets you know. People realize right away that the picture is on the back, the buttons aren’t where they belong, and the shirt just isn’t right. A friend or kind-hearted passer-by whispers in your ear, or perhaps you catch a look at yourself in a mirror. You excuse yourself to the bathroom and turn things around.
If only everything worked that way. Earlier this week, I was behind on my work. For months now, I’ve been behind on my work. Every day, I do the same thing:
- Find and post articles to @newsfromtengrrl.
- Answer any pending email messages.
- Write the blog posts that are due.
- Set up outgoing social networking posts for @RWTnow and @BedfordBits.
Intersperse spot checking email, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, and you have a pretty good picture of my day.
The problem was that by the time I got through finding the articles I post to @newsfromtengrrl, I usually have to stop and go take care of family duties. When I got back to my work later in the evening, I felt anxious and stressed. The “real” work that I needed to do, the blog posts and social networking updates, only got done when I was in panic mode (and often tired). Many times, I found myself in the wee hours of morning sleepily wondering if I could just push a few things off till the next day.
One afternoon this week, I found my stress levels rising. I hadn’t finished finding posts for @newsfromtengrrl, yet I only had about 30 minutes left before I had to clean the kitchen and cook dinner. The inner dialogue started:
Why can’t I ever get enough done? The afternoon is gone, and I still haven’t gotten to the real work. Damn it. I never get to what I need to because of the stupid news posts. But I have to finish the news posts before 6:45 so that the blog post goes up by midnight.
Out of some corner of my mind, a quieter, calmer voice said, “You could change the settings for the blog post, you know. You made this problem when you decided the post needed to go up at midnight.”
It wasn’t just a lightbulb moment.
There were rainbows. And unicorns. And glitter.
For nearly a year, I have been doing my work backwards, but no one had kindly leaned over and whispered in my ear until now! So a couple of days ago, I flipped my work flow. The news articles are the last thing I look for. Writing blog posts and status updates come first. I reset the WordPress plug-in so that my blog posts go up at noon instead of midnight.
It’s made all the difference. Look, here I am actually writing a blog post and the dinner fixings aren’t even out of the refrigerator!
[Photo: IMG_6433 by abbybatchelder, on Flickr]
Jul 03
tengrrlBedford Bits, classroom activity, composition collaboration, community, google docs, microsoft word, teamwork
This week in Inside Higher Ed, Joshua Kim asserts, “The world is divided into two types of people: those who prefer Track Changes in Word and those who prefer to write collaboratively in Google Docs.” Kim’s explanation of the two ways of working with text sparked conversation on the TechRhet discussion list. Some spoke to Kim’s explicit question: “Which one are you?” while others extended the focus to consider different ways to write HTML texts.
Naturally, there’s no correct answer to Kim’s question, and the situation is not as binary as it is presented in his article. That ambiguous quality makes the article and its overarching question perfect for a class discussion of collaboration and teamwork. Students can share their own alignment, and then move on to talk about how Kim’s article is defining writing and collaboration. They can widen the discussion of writing and collaboration to include more tools and kinds of composing. With that groundwork in place, they can then talk about their own teamwork in class. Focus their conversation on how different kinds of collaboration suit different projects and ask them to brainstorm strategies for working together when you have different preferences.
Kim’s article is short, but it touches on how software, teamwork, and how people collaborate—all valuable topics for the classroom.
This post is the introduction from the Bits Flashback for July 3. Read the rest of the post on Facebook.
[Photo: Google Docs by BobChao, on Flickr]
Jun 26
tengrrlBedford Bits, classroom activity, composition, Literature assignments, food writing
Alyssa Rosenberg wrote about Food in Fiction and How Cooking Brings You Closer to Characters this week in The Atlantic. The article asks readers to think about how cooking and eating the same foods as fictional characters strengthens the connection between reader and the text.
Rosenberg describes some lemon cakes she made as a connection to Sansa, a character the books by George R.R. Martin that are the basis of HBO’s Game of Throne:
The cakes weren’t anything like I’d imagined from reading about them in the book—they were spongier and less sweet, and hard to imagine as a dreamed-of delicacy. But they were delicious, a powerful visceral connection to the people on screen and the world in which they live.
Such connections between reader and text reminded me of the potential writing about food has in the composition classroom. Jay Dolmage has written two entries this year that include assignments and discussion ideas. Take a look back at Writing About Food and Food Rules for ways you can connect with students just as Rosenberg connects with those fictional characters.
This post is the introduction from the Bits Flashback for June 26. Read the rest of the post on Facebook.
[Photo: Lemon Cake by Charles Haynes, on Flickr]
Jun 20
tengrrlBedford Bits, composition, social media collaboration, digital writing, poetry, QR codes, transmedia
Just published last week, Troy Hicks’ collection on Reading and Writing Transmedia on the National Writing Project’s Digital Is site explores how digital writing is evolving.
The collection of texts “primarily authored by Laura Fleming represents one educator’s vision of what transmedia is, and what it can be, for teachers and students learning to read and write in a digital age.” You’ll find an explanation and history of transmedia as well as example texts and pedagogical reflections.
Also out last week are these posts from Bedford Bits posts:
A Few Extra Links
For regular updates from Bedford Bits, be sure to like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Have a great week!
—Traci Gardner
[Photo: Gunter Somerfeld, Transmedia Development & The New World Model by Gulltaggen, on Flickr]
Jun 05
tengrrlassessment, Bedford Bits, composition, social media assessment, Facebook, grading, plagiarism, reading, response, social networking, technology
It’s that time when many of us size up the list of texts we’ve been thinking of all year and choose the few that we’ll try to get through during the all-too-short summer months.
If you’re struggling a bit with your choices, take a look at Lifehacker’s How to Create an Awesome Summer Reading List for some tips on where to find books, ways to track your progress, and recommendations from other bookworms.
While you’re looking for great texts to read, be sure you’ve read the great ideas for the classroom or professional development in these Bedford Bits posts from last week:
A Few Extra Links
For regular updates from Bedford Bits, be sure to like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Have a great week!
[Photo: Summer reading list by soundfromwayout, on Flickr]
Jun 05
tengrrlgrammar, My Writing, NCTE Inbox spelling
As stories of the National Spelling Bee flood the news, I wanted to repost a personal spelling story that originally appeared in the NCTE Inbox blog. It’s a story I carry with me as I respond to the writing of others.
When I was nearly 13, my parents gave me a pad of light blue paper with delicate yellow and peach flowers in the upper left corner, their stems stretching down the left margin. I delighted in the pad of stationery and the matching box of envelopes they gave me as a reward for watching for my younger sisters and brother while they did their grocery shopping.
I stared at the paper a few times everyday. Occasionally I ran my hand across the smooth surface. It felt like a perfect silk, almost too precious to even write upon. After about a week, I broke down and decided it was time to write a letter. I found the best pen in the house and carefully wrote a message to my grandparents, describing our recent trips to the public library, the Dolley Madison biographies I had been reading, and our trips to Wrightsville and Fort Fisher beaches.
When I finished writing, I sealed the letter in the envelope and carefully added my grandparents’ address. After adding a stamp, I carried the letter outside, placed it in the mailbox, and raised the red flag that would tell the letter carrier to start my letter on its journey from North Carolina to Pennsylvania. Anyone watching this series of events would have thought I was participating in a formal religious rite. I paid no attention to my youngest sister and brother as they wove their tricycles around me. I had serious business to do. I was sending my words forth on that beautiful paper.
A week or so later, I found a small white envelope in the mailbox with my name on it, the looping letters telling me immediately that my grandmother had addressed this letter. I carried it inside the house and sliced the envelope open with my mother’s letter opener. Inside, I found a letter written by my grandfather. He told me how tall the corn was and about the latest Louis L’Amour novel he’d been reading.
I sat up taller at the kitchen table and crossed my ankles under my chair, like the ladies I’d seen on my mother’s soap operas. My brother and sister were across the room, playing with a Fisher-Price bus and a circus train. Such babies compared to me. I had sent out a letter and received a message in reply. Me. My perfect light blue stationery was powerful. It transformed me from clumsy pre-teen to young adult. I mused on how I would continue this exchange, sending letters back and forth just like Dolley Madison, writing letters to family and friends, and saving my letters for future historians to revisit so they could learn about my life. In short, I was euphoric, absolutely smitten with the power of writing.
I turned over the page to read the paragraph on the back:
You spelled their and a lot wrong. You need to spell right to do well in school.
Love,
Grandpa
I couldn’t look at anyone in the room. They’d all see what a faker I had been. I slid off the chair as silently as possible and went down the hall to my room. I folded the letter and put it back in the envelope, which I tossed on my desk amid piles of books and old notebooks. I never read it again. I probably threw it away, but I have no memory of where it went. I put the beautiful blue paper at the bottom of a dresser drawer, where it stayed for months.
My spelling had betrayed me. I wasn’t really a letter writer. No historian would care about my letters in the centuries to come. It would be months before I wrote my grandparents another letter. A thank you note for a Christmas present, it included only the basic information. I neither expected nor received a reply. My mother said to write, and I did. I assume she mailed it with similar letters written by my sisters and brother. I didn’t save the details.
Whenever I begin to circle a spelling error on a student paper, I try to remember this story. Spelling matters, of course. But there are times when what matters most isn’t that spelling conforms to standard written English. The story. Sentence structure. Supporting details. The writer’s engagement and enthusiasm. Sorry, Grandpa, but sometimes thier and alot just don’t matter. There are more important things to talk about.
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