ReadWriteThink: Letters to the Editor (and a Bonus Floral Surprise)

Finished writing and published Persuading an Audience: Writing Effective Letters to the Editor, a basic 9-12 lesson plan. It links to the 18th List of Ten: Ten Persuasive Prompts: Persuasive-Descriptive.

I’m creating an alternate version that has students adopt a persona from a book they’ve read and write a letter to the editor from that character’s point of view.

Mom sent me flowers for Valentine’s Day, with a little stuffed dog and a heart-shaped box of chocolates. :) It was a nice surprise when I arrived at work. Especially today.

ReadWriteThink: In the News

The sidebar on the Edutopia article “Tech Teaches” points to ReadWriteThink as a “cool link for online learning.”

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.

ReadWriteThink: Dystopia and The Matrix lesson plan

Late to work again. I seem to be stuck in my own dystopia while I work on the dystopia lesson plan. Fortunately, I finally finished the lesson so maybe the dystoppia will end. Decoding The Matrix: Exploring Dystopian Characteristics through Film is now live. That makes 33 lessons and a nice content report turned in today.

ReadWriteThink: March Calendar and Other To-Do Items

Apparently watching Wonderland before going to bed last night was a really bad idea. I couldn’t go to sleep for thoughts of someone breaking in and crashing my head in with a tire iron. Not good. As if I don’t have enough insane thoughts in my head.

I finished editing the March entries on the ReadWriteThink calendar. I moved our files from the old fileserver to the new server and set up some preliminary permissions. We’ll do testing and change things as needed.

Worked through a pile of little to-dos: updated the 100s chart with the latest lessons. We’re up to 32 now. I turn in a content report on the 1st, and I hope to get some more completed before then. I fixed some errors in printouts for the Story Map Interactive, and updated the list of Inbox topics to date, which I mainly use internally to figure out what I wrote in the past. Did some work on a dystopia lesson plan this evening. That and laundry.

ReadWriteThink: Political Cartoons and Raymond Carver Lessons

I finished and posted the lesson on Hopper and Carver: Outside In: Finding A Character’s Heart Through Art. It has a whole series of interactives, because of the way that the tools work. I had to create one for each painting. Otherwise, students would be printing out tons of irrelevant stuff when they worked.

I also finished my political cartoons lesson plan: Analyzing the Stylistic Choices of Political Cartoonists. It uses the same Comic Vocabulary Interactive. I also created a little interactive just for this lesson, Analyzing a Political Cartoon: “Settin’ on a Rail,” which walks through some of the analysis of an historical cartoon to help students understand the process.

Other than getting those lesson plans finished, I didn’t really get much else done. Watched Wonderland on TiVo, a somewhat disturbing movie.

My MCI contact got the server up and running about 10 minutes after I went to bed last night. I called him today, and he walked me through what he does when this happens. Maybe next time, I can fix this problem myself. I hope so.

Called and postponed the appointment with the hand surgeon. My doctor said that I could last week, but I wanted to wait till the last minute. My hands seem reasonably okay. I’m always afraid that I’m going to have a relapse. I moved the appointment several weeks down, to the 20th. If my hands are still okay, I’ll just go ahead and cancel it.

On some sound bite this morning, I heard some government person (Gonzales?) say that something was “inconsistent with the facts.” Guess saying that it was a lie was too clear and direct.

We had a lot of coming and going in the office today. Sharon was home with sick kids, but everyone else seemed to be in the building, and at some point in our office.

I did finish the Comic Vocabulary Interactive and posted the related lesson plan, The Comic Book Show and Tell. It’s a 9-12 lesson plan that focuses on descriptive writing by having students write comic scripts that another student uses to create illustrations. Students quickly see that if they fail to include enough details in their scripts, the illustrator will not have the information necessary to create the comic. There are PDFs of the vocabulary from the interactive, so the lesson can be completed even if the teacher does not have computers in the classroom.

ReadWriteThink: Digital Literacy

Today felt much better once Lisa and I decided to take tomorrow off. I even came home and did some minor tidying. Even ran that Swiffer Carpet Flicker thing over the rugs, which were ripe with dirty little whatzits.

Sadly, Sharon was out sick today, with some sort of stomach upset that seems to be going around the building. And the really worrisome part of this is that Sharon fixed lunch yesterday for Lisa and I. It seemed like a good thing when she shared her leftovers. I may have to rethink that if we both end up sick in the next few days.

I finally finished writing a new lesson plan, Defining Literacy in the Digital World. It’s similar to lessons that we have at 3-5 and 6-8, which ask students to create a “living definition of reading.” I tried to move things more toward an explicitly multimodal notion of literacy. I think it would be a nice series of activities to complete before students embark on writing technology autobiographies, but it could also be used at the beginning of any term as a touchstone for all the activities that students complete during the course.

Today’s problem is that the Service Engine Soon light came on in the car this morning. I have no idea what the problem is. Something pricey, I’m sure. I wish I could afford a new car. I love my little car, but it’s just gotten too hard on my back and knees. I need a car where my butt is higher than my knees, rather than one where I feel like I’m getting up off the floor every time I try to get out of it. I did some pricing of the car that I want online tonight. In theory, maybe I could afford it. I need to get the roof paid for though. And then there are my other debts. Still, I may be looking for something new as soon as tomorrow, depending upon what the magic light means.

11/17 ReadWriteThink Content Update

I added one more lesson plan before sending off the mid-month content report. It’s a fairly general and traditional lesson—Draft Letters: Improving Student Writing through Critical Thinking. The lesson has students write reflective letters to the teacher, identifying their own thoughts on the piece that the teacher is about to read. The useful piece is that the lesson includes some models for students to read and discuss before they try the strategy themselves. Lots of extensions and alternatives included as well.

In addition, there were calendar updates. We’re adding 30 entries to the RWT calendar over the course of the next year. The first five are now live. Others will be added over the next few months. Here the new additions are:

• Mar 22: Randolph Caldecott’s birthday
• Mar 25: Kate DiCamillo’s birthday
• Apr 3: Orbis Pictus Award for Best Nonfiction Book announced
• Nov 1: National Family Literacy Day
• Nov 14: Children’s Book Week

Tags: English language arts | K12 instruction | lesson plans |
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