English

=CAHS English: Ideas for Classes= > bgfay - December 23, 2007 [|Writerly]

General

 * Have students listen to (Scott) Simon Says each week to hear what a good essay is like. (Do this in 11th grade?)
 * Send weekly reminders of WNBs and Samples

Writer's Notebooks
//Somehow I need to find a way to increase the amount of writing that we're doing in these. I feel as though we are just going through the motions and that we move to fast in class without getting much done. I want to get them into the pattern of writing and then to see some of them writing in them at home. We are just finished with our sixteenth week of school. At least half of them should be up to page 96. I don't think that many of them are. How do I get them going?//


 * Have them paste a song lyric or poem to their WNBs
 * Send a weekly reminder about WNBs (send it on Sunday so that everyone has it Monday morning)
 * "Ask me a question when you hand in your WNB. I'll ask one back."
 * Email ideas for writing in the WNBs

Samples
//A good first goal for these is to get more people turning them in. One way to do this is to get them back to them faster. Another way might be to make them more public, to get them reading each other's samples. The conversation should be with more than just me. A second goal would be to get them to revise them.//
 * Send a weekly reminder about Samples (send this Sunday too--combine with the WNB reminder)
 * How about a sample about a song they like or about a poem that I give them. (It wouldn't be the end of the world if, once in a blue moon, they wrote about something specific. Then again, have them write about something specific but let them choose what sample to do.)

Reading

 * Bring a bookmark from your library
 * Give Chris Merchant some short stories to read his way into reading.
 * Photocopy/collage of their library cards for posting