tengrrl’s thoughts & news on teaching writing, literacy, and literature
August 31, 2005
Mark your calendars. I’m making a prediction that the Republicans will use the current problems caused to the oil industry by Katrina to argue that we must open alaska to oil production immediately—and someone will say, at some point, that if we had already done so we would be in less of a mess right now.
August 31, 2005
This Idea generation methods site mentioned on 43 Folders looks like a great potential resource for a prewriting lesson plan.
August 30, 2005
The Ideas section from this week’s Inbox focuses on Building Teacher Support. A recent newspaper article from The Pantagraph discusses the challenges that new teachers face during the school year. Returning teachers also face many demands in the classroom. This collection of resources suggests ways that teachers can build a supporting community among their colleagues to help ensure a successful (and less stressful) school year.
Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
NCTE Inbox
August 29, 2005
Just finished writing and proofreading a new 9-12 lesson plan that asks students to explore the ways that audio texts play a role in their lives. Students keep a daily diary that records how and when they listen to audio texts, such as radio, streaming media, songs on MP3 players, and podcasts. Students then analyze the details and compare their results to published reports on American radio listeners. They conclude by reflecting on their findings and writing a final statement on their audio literacy practices and interests.
Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
ReadWriteThink
August 24, 2005
The Ideas section of this week’s Inbox discusses ways to establish classroom ownership from the start.
Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
NCTE Inbox
August 17, 2005
My actions and thought process are now the subject of a contest. Go ahead. Try to guess what I’ll choose :)
August 16, 2005
Another Tuesday, another Inbox. The Ideas section for this week’s Inbox focuses on the journals and notebooks that are such an important part of a writing class. The topic seemed like a useful back-to-school issue to consider. The ways that we introduce and structure writer’s notebooks or journals for students at the beginning of the term has repercussions that echo through the rest of the term or school year. The interesting thing about the resources this week is that many will work across grade levels. The ideas in the “Priming the Pump” article in the issue of School Talk that is included, for instance, could be used K to college. You’d just get different responses.
Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
NCTE Inbox
August 15, 2005
We turn in content reports for ReadWriteThink on the 1st and the 15th of each month, so today I did the last-minute work to get the report turned in. The report lists the lesson plans that were published since the 1st of the month and the never-ending pile of broken links. In addition, I finished editing the September calendar, and we added two sites to the Web Resources Gallery:
Revising Himself : Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/whitman-home.html
This Library of Congress exhibition traces this evolution of Leaves of Grass and Walt Whitman’s life, tapping a range of editions and drafts of the famous work. A wealth of interesting biographical material on Whitman, his friends and associates, his work as a teacher, tending the wounded during the Civil War, and for the federal government, also appears in the exhibit.Say it Plain: A Century of Great African American Speeches
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/sayitplain/index.html
This rich site includes a audio files and texts of speeches by Booker T. Washington, Dick Gregory, and Stokeley Carmichael. The site includes the only known recordings of Marcus Garvey as well as Barbara Jordan’s defense of the US Constitution during the impeachment hearings of President Richard Nixon.
Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
ReadWriteThink
August 13, 2005
So as of about 10:30 this morning, I have gone a week without my favorite beverage—diet brown soda. I think the headaches may be mostly over. I’m not having the constant horror that it was anyway.
I’m really tired of water though. I want something that tastes like something. I did get stuff to make decaf iced tea and some juice. The diet advice for acid reflux says no citris-based juices because they can increase the problem. So I went in for things like apple-cherry, grape, and strawberry-kiwi. Turns out juice wasn’t a good idea. It created a fire in my stomach. So I’ve poured all that down the drain. Then I did more research. Apparently white grape juice aids digestion. Okay, so it’s only been proven in babies and little kids, but I’m willing to give it a try. I used to be able to find white grape-peach and white grape-pear in Texas, but they didn’t have it in the grocery store that I usually go to. Maybe I’ll try another store—assuming I can drink it.
The iced tea seems okay, but I’m not sure. There were some rumblings, but I’m not sure if it was the tea or something else. I’m not really eating right. I’m sure of it. I’m so confused between what I want to eat and what I am supposed to eat. There’s all this info in my head about what’s “good” for me to eat, but it’s info about dieting to lose weight (which I also need to do as I am bigger than a mama panda). What might be okay to lose weight isn’t okay for acid reflux.
One of the benefits of all this is that I now realize that all the burping after I eat lettuce is part of this pattern. It’s another part of this complicated mess that is my life. Imagine being on a diet and not being able to have a salad. Go ahead. Think about that. Like what are the options for grabbing a quick lunch at a restaurant if you have to rule out salads. There’s not a drive-thru in the world that can help you.
I guess I should try to accomplish something today, not that I’m feeling inspired to write or clean or do the laundry. My, but I have a mixed up world.
