writing on writing

petit’s article on the semicolon being more of a choice than a rule was the best thing I have ever read about grammar, though i must admit that I have not read very much stuff on the subject. i frankly don’t give much thought to the subject, however, that may be out of ignorance. i know that it is important for us to exercise correct grammar use, but it is not something that is in the front of my mind when I am reading a paper, i seem to be more concerned with the “bigger picture.” although, I must admit that grammar errors can distract from an otherwise good paper. petit kept it light. speaking of light. in her short pdf dean laid out some seemingly easy and effective ways of keeping grammar slightly more fun than average. I think I will enlist the help of one of my colleagues for some grammar help, because I know I could use it and I’m sure my students would benefit from it as well.

link: englishplus.com/grammar. they have a thing called "the grammar slammer," need i say more?

nada mucho

i've already talked about spandel and williams, so i will turn my energy to wyngaard this week. while i did enjoy the wolf pdf on portfolios, i found myself drawn to wyngaard's idea about audience response stressing "an engaging opener; showing, not telling: and writing with focus." i think these are three important things that aren't overly daunting for a student to try to work on in their writing. i also think that it is great to expose students to memoir. add some romano in to the classroom and you've got yourself a good equation for multigenre writing. also, you must love writing workshops. i know i do. no big rants or long-winded nonsense this week.

resource o' the week: www.pbs.org/teachersource, some great things to implement in to our future classrooms

I Want to be a Little More Frank Costello

Right #5: The Right To Write Badly. You mean its ok to be human? Wow, why couldn’t some of my teachers understand that? I think this acts as a rule for life. It’s ok to do anything badly. It’s not just that “school became a place where it is not all right to fail—ever”(63), but in the REAL WORLD people seem to forget that we need to try things in order to advance ourselves and as a result we sometimes will fail. I also agree with Spandel that writing should not be viewed as an event. I feel like somewhere along the line, music was treated that same way. I think music used to be a part of everyday life, look at countries that have not been Americanified TM, and you will see that they play music all day. First, it was set aside as being done during certain times in the day and the next thing you know its an elective that is being terminated because of budget cuts. I swear our Capitalist system plans on sucking all creativity out of schools so that they can get right to the point and churn out our work force. Sorry to sound like a crazy who’s been locked up in a cabin for three years with no contact to the outside world, banging out all of his theories on a typewriter while wearing a tinfoil hat, but this is just something that I have been thinking about a lot lately. I also think that Right #6 is quite important. By being surrounded by people writing, including the teacher, it makes it seem that much more natural. Please keep this in mind if you are ever trying to instruct anyone to do anything. Would you really want to do something that someone was telling you to do if they weren't actually doing it with you? Here take this pill, but I won't take one with you.

Resource: http://www.paulofreireinstitute.org, this dude was so cool.

5 Paragraphs

debate! debate! debate! everyone has an opinion on this, including all of the people who wrote articles that we read for this week. we all know that five paragraph essays can be compared to so many things. you just have to know how to do them, but you shouldn't have to write that way all of the time. as future educators we should be aware of the fact that our students need to know how to write 5 paragraph essays as part of their cultural literacy, however, we need to make sure that they are well versed in other types of writing. multigenre in the house! make sure to keep it real with some romano style stuff so that no one gets too bored. i'll save the saucy stuff for the debate!

resource of the week: www.webenglishteacher.com/multigenre, a nice list of some resources for implementing multigenre writing in the classroom, just incase romano didn't give you enough to work with...

Williams is Wack, Romano Rules, and Spandel is So Right On

i know you all feel me with that title! i am confused. now that i finally have a copy of williams in my hands i can't decide if i really want to read it. i have to admit that he provides a few valid points on writing assignments in chapter 9, but any ground that he gains with me is instantly lost when he makes unsupported claims. i suppose that we need to be well versed on the left and right side of the academic think tanks. romano does a nice job of laying out multigenre writing by using a variety of writing. he gives the students credit and believes that they have purposeful things to say unlike some people. last is spandel. what a great book. the 9 rights of every writer, not rules, or guidelines, but rights! damn straight we should be able to choose personally important topics and so should our students. i know that i need to embrace my right to go beyond formula so that i will encourage my students to do so in the future. i feel well equipped with some great resources for creating writing assignments after this weeks reading, and i'm guessing that things will become even more clear as we progress in these texts. PARTY!

resource of the week: litkicks.com, a great place to get lost on the web. it may help you gather some info for a future lesson plan or two. i suggest you check out the beats page first!

Carney vs. Atwell

resource of the week is 4teachers.org. i know i will be using quizstar and rubistar in the future...if you don't know about it then you should check it out.

while i did enjoy atwell's long winded chapter on minilessons, i found carney's article a bit more appealing and to-the-point. while i thought both writer's were informative, i was simply drawn to the logical layout of carney's article on writing in the classroom. i can see myself going back to carney in the future and trying to implement these practices into my classroom.

this is really happening

from this day forward i am big glasses.