My fellow teachers/writers,
What a nutty end of the
school year here! I learned that I will be switching school sites this
upcoming Fall, and saying good-bye is always hard--both to my current
students and my current team of teachers. Physically packing up and
moving is always hard too, and I realize that I am a quite behind in
posting my monthly lessons here at the ning, but that will all be
rectified as soon as I have safely and completely moved my materials
from the old site to my new one. Over the summer, I will be posting
numerous lessons that I hope will inspire you to consider trying
something new during your next school year. My best school years in the
past have always been those years when I returned in the Fall
determined to try new things and to do them well. I have been
collecting/developing/revising some great new lesson ideas this past
spring, and I am excited to share them with you slowly throughout the
summer. Look out for my occasional e-mails that will catch me up so we
can get the promised "first of the month" lessons back on track. Thanks
again for your patience during this transition for me.
THE BEST WORK I DID THIS PAST SCHOOL YEAR?
Without a doubt, without any hesitation, I will say my continued work
in developing writing skills while teaching my students to simply stop
and appreciate vocabulary words they don't recognize in their reading
has been the new teaching skill I continue to do my best work with.
Last year, Dena and I published the first eight of ten lessons that promoted Common Core-friendly writing skills through vocabulary-based exercises.
Early this year, we finalized all ten writing lessons, and my
students' Vocabulary Final Projects just proved to me how significant
this work has been to developing them further as skilled writers. I am
sharing with you some images from their final exam projects which, I
believe, showcase what powerful writing/thinking skills they have
developed over this past year with me. If you're interested in seeing
some powerful student writing, please visit the next paragraph!
Today, I posted a pretty detailed explanation of my "Vocabulary Final Exam Project" here at the ning at this blog post: http://writinglesson.ning.com/profiles/blogs/my-vocabulary-warriors-show-off-their-skills-please-enjoy-these-s Please
note there are photos below the post that showcase some of my students'
best "overall vocabulary collections." Right in the middle of the
lengthy post (sorry if it's wordy!), there is a download link to a
15-slide PowerPoint (or a PDF file, if you don't have PowerPoint) that
showcases my "top writers" (as nominated by their classroom peers) who
used the ten unique vocabulary-inspired writing activities I have been
requiring of my students the whole year. I am really proud of the
differentiated nature these ten writing activities attempt to appeal to,
and I can confidently say that I will never teach vocabulary words in
the future without first integrating several (if not all) of these ten
writing activities we have been designing.
If for no other reason than to celebrate some smart kids' thinking that uses hard vocabulary words, I hope you will visit the blog post in the last paragraph and celebrate my students' writing along with me. It's pretty impressive; it truly is.
Teachers, look forward to
some fresh and interesting, Common Core-friendly ideas involving
writing assignments over the summer from me through this blog to you.
If you have the summer off though, make sure you take plenty of extra
time to simply be away from school and its rigid expectations. We all
need to deflate a bit over the summer....so deflate! Deflate!
Have a great June!
--Corbett & Dena Harrison (http://corbettharrison.com)
Visit Writing Lesson of the Month Network at: http://writinglesson.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network
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