I've been doing a lot of thinking about our conversation at last week's FAMS meeting about student engagement and celebrating student success. I have come across three blog entries from Edutopia that could be the basis for more extended discussions: . Also, check out .
Here are some ways to celebrate student work:
http://www.studentpublishing.com/demo.php
Wondering what your students should do with their best writing? Jennifer Jacobson, author of No More “I’m Done!” has a couple of great ideas for classroom publishing that don’t take up a lot of time, but make students proud and motivated to write!
Believe it or not, there was a time when primary schools established central “publishing houses.” Students who had done an exceptionally fine job on a piece would be greeted by parent volunteers who typed up the stories and then carefully bound them into books. The books often had sturdy cardboard covers decorated with wallpaper samples, and pages carefully sewn with durable dental floss. The proud students would return to the classroom where they illustrated their books, which were later celebrated. Many books would find their way into the school library for the remainder of the year.
Very few schools still offer this model of publishing. Somewhere along the line, “publishing” came to mean “copying over your work without any mistakes.” All students publish at the same time, removing the motivation to publish one’s finest writing. Instead, students publish nearly identical teacher-directed products.
Here, I am going to suggest a publishing program that falls somewhere in the middle of these two models. Consider setting up an area in your room where you (or better yet, a parent or high school volunteer) can work with individual students. The volunteer sits at the computer, and the child sits next to the volunteer and reads his or her work. Volunteers (who you have trained) type the work using all of the proper conventions: punctuation, spelling, capitalization, proper grammar—keeping the child’s original language whenever possible. If while reading, the student says, “Oh, I should have said . . .” The volunteer types what the child wished he or she had written, thus reinforcing revision right up to the end.
What do you do with the typed work? Here is a list of ideas: 1. Place in a class anthology (The “Big Book”; see page 23) 2. Mount on a bulletin board 3. Read over the intercom 4. Include in school or class newsletters 5. Post on a Web site 6. Have child read in a podcast 7. Record (audio or video) a class radio show 8. Perform as a skit 9. Read at an authors’ tea 10. Compile a class book around a single theme (poems, funny stories, holiday stories, etc.) 11. Include in a class yearbook 12. Include in the school literary magazine 13. Submit to a student market or contest 14. Give as a gift
I do not recommend that primary students copy over their work. If we regularly ask student to rewrite, we are teaching them two things: write short and don’t take risks. We also take away one of our best motivating tools. Being able to say something reinforcing such as, “Kara! You added so many quality details to this writing. Would you like to publish it?” goes a long way in motivating our students to be thoughtful, independent writers.
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WRITING CONTESTS:
http://www.katyisd.org/students/Pages/Studentwriting.aspx
http://www.poeticpower.com/
http://thisibelieve.org/
TEACHERS WRITING:
http://www.octela.org/OJELA.html
http://www.octela.org/OTW.html
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ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago, we did children's books where the student first did a rough draft. When students were ready, they typed their pages adding pictures they drew. I think 8th grade may still do something like this, but 7th grade doesn't do it anymore because it really didn't align with our standards. However, on Web Wednesday, Sadie Steffan and Chuck Green told about using Fakebook and Pages. They took the students articles and put them together in a magazine- like book. It was really great to see students' work published. We are getting ready to do a research project, and I would love to publish my students' work using Fakebook or something similar. Chris McAndrew also likes Issus, which is another way to publish student work. Students love to see their work published; they have a sense of pride looking at their work in a book of some type.
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