ReadWriteThink: Audience/Purpose and a Graphic Organizer

Spent most of today working on the Inbox draft for tomorrow’s issue. Otherwise, just little things. There’s a new LinkScan report, so I have a new list of broken links to deal with (though I only looked through the report and didn’t fix anything yet).

While looking for the resources for Inbox I found a couple of useful articles. “Putting Writing to Work” from December 1998 Teaching English in the Two-Year College talks about the benefits of authentic audience and purpose for students’ writing. The author asserts that when reading and writing are “performed solely as an academic exercise, the composing process becomes an endurance test of any writer’s self-discipline, time-management, and motivation” (168).

“The Value of Idea Grids” from August 2002 Classroom Notes Plus outlines ideas for using a three-column graphic organizer. It’s fairly basic, but it may be something I could develop into a simple interactive. I’m going to ask about it tomorrow in our team meeting.