Topics/ Activities:

Monday

Monday 12 February 2007 (speed) ASW work on writing skills

1. Work stations in the nuDen (during the hour you must get to two of the four stations)

1. Peer conversations about draft of one of the portfolio pieces
2. Tutorial about Joyce’s The Dead (packet 35-50)
3. Student teacher conferences about writing and critical reading
4. Independent work on poem and prose analyses, research project, or portfolio pieces

1. By the end of the block, one of the children will stamp your first draft of your portfolio piece.
2. Process and dismissal

Tuesday

Wednesday

Students gone for WorkKeys testing

Thursday

Friday

1. Objective. The learner will use multiple forms of written response to evaluate literature and explore their own writing. The learner will begin to make connections between critical analysis and their personal life. The learner will engage in peer analysis while learning the value and purpose of writing for a specific audience.

2. Standards. The focus of these reading assignments is to get students used to responding to a piece of literature. They are not graded on the “completeness” of the assignment – they are graded on the method of response and their effectiveness in doing so. They are learning to draft, to output a high quantity of work. The quality of the work will be the focus of the final two weeks, when they polish one drafted piece into a publishable work.

3. Anticipatory Set. For Winterscape specifically, I plan to talk to students about linear vs. non-linear thinking. How do they tend to think? How do they tend to give, receive, and process information? Pop culture reference: Pulp Fiction. I plan to talk about attention to detail and the ability to foreshadow within the story.

4. Input. Due to the length of the story, we will be reading at least the first half of it out loud in class. If it appears as though many students are enjoying the experience, we will read the whole thing out loud. Winterscape is neatly divided into specific sections, and after each section, it will be an ideal time to talk about why Desai chooses to write about the things she does. While the story is beautiful, the focus of the lesson is on the author, specifically the thought process of crafting a story. I assume there will be a fair amount of plot summary during this time, but the focus is on the why, not the what. I expect that the reading of Winterscape and the intermittent discussion will take the majority of the hour.

5. Modeling. After being merely encouraged to respond creatively for the last two weeks, students will now be expected to respond to Winterscape in two different ways. This will force them to broaden their method of response, as many students have chosen one form to respond with for the first two stories. Hopefully, students will respond in one way that is familiar to them, and really have to push their brains to find a secondary way. This will also give them the opportunity to see a little more of me, as I will give two examples of what I would do, instead of one: I will mention writing a short story mimicking Desai’s style, and also writing a mini-biography with the stories-within-stories model of Winterscape.

6. Guided practice. Students will be allowed to get into groups of their choosing. By the end of the hour, they will be expected to turn in half-sheets of paper – one sentence for each of two ideas for a response, and two sentences for each idea about why they thought the idea was a good one. It is expected that students will either be discussing this, or will get to work independent practice.

7. Independent practice. Students will be expected to write two different forms of response to the story Winterscape. These are drafts – they do not need to be formatted in a specific way, or have a specific length. I will be looking for completeness – each idea should be thorough. These two assignments will be due the following Friday. They are to view the previous two weeks as practice or as a formative activity, whereas Winterscape is a first opportunity to really “dig in.”