Literacy in the Content Areas: Writing in Mathematics

Writing is a crucial component of learning mathematics. As an adjunct professor teaching literacy courses to graduate students earning their teaching certificates, our classes examine ways to incorporate reading, writing, communication, and critical thinking across disciplines for student success. This blog post is part of a series and I am first going to focus on writing in mathematics classes. It is not only important for students to understand the concepts in math, but also to communicate their understanding to others. Writing in math class can help students develop their mathematical thinking, problem-solving skills, and communication skills. In this blog post, we will explore six specific examples of how writing can be used effectively in math class.

1. Math Journaling: Math journaling involves asking students to reflect on what they have learned in math class. This can include writing about the steps they took to solve a problem, the strategies they used, and the challenges they faced. By reflecting on their learning, students can identify areas where they need more practice and gain a deeper understanding of the concepts they are learning.
2. Problem-Solving: Writing can also be used as a tool for problem-solving. When students are presented with a math problem, they can write out their thought process, including any assumptions they are making, the strategies they are using, and the steps they are taking to arrive at a solution. This helps students to organize their thinking and identify any errors or misconceptions they may have.
3. Explanations: Writing can be used to explain mathematical concepts to others. Students can be asked to write about a particular concept or problem, explaining it in their own words. This not only helps them to solidify their own understanding, but also helps to develop their communication skills.
4. Reflection: Reflection is an important part of the learning process. Writing can be used to help students reflect on their own learning. For example, students can be asked to write about what they found challenging in a particular lesson, what they learned, and how they can apply that learning in other contexts.
5. Vocabulary: Mathematics has a unique vocabulary, and it can be challenging for students to learn and remember all of the terms. Writing can be used to reinforce the vocabulary by asking students to write about the meaning of particular terms or to use them in a sentence. This helps students to internalize the vocabulary and become more confident in their understanding of the concepts.
6. Research: Mathematics is a dynamic field, and there are always new discoveries and advancements being made. Writing can be used to encourage students to research a particular topic or concept, and to share their findings with the class. This not only helps to deepen their own understanding of the topic, but also exposes them to new ideas and perspectives. In fact, back when I was in middle school I was assigned to read and write a report about women in mathematics. In the Literacy in Content Areas course I share the first chapter from Ian Stewart’s Letters to A Young Mathematician where he writes how math is in everything in our lives. What if students had to uncover the mathematics behind coding or engineering. Their research can make visible how math is all around us. Students can present their research in a formal writing assignment or even a video.
7. Creative Writing: Mathematics can often be seen as a dry, technical subject. However, creative writing can be used to bring a sense of fun and creativity to math class. For example, students can be asked to write a short story or poem (try an ode to your favorite number) that involves mathematical concepts. This could include a story about a group of friends who use their knowledge of fractions to divide a pizza, or a poem that explores the beauty of geometry. By engaging in creative writing, students can approach math from a different angle and develop a deeper appreciation for the subject. Additionally, it allows students to express their creativity and individuality, making math class a more enjoyable and inclusive experience for all. There are great stories in include with the creative writing from reading aloud the picture book Numbers in Motion about Sophie Kowalevski’s journey as the first woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics, which required original research, holding a university chair in mathematics, and becoming the editor of a major scientific journal. Additionally, Kathryn Otoshi’s picture books Zero, One and Two all personify the numbers and tell memorable stories about feelings, friendships, and counting.

Writing is an essential tool for learning mathematics. It can help students to reflect on their learning, develop their problem-solving skills, and communicate their understanding to others. By incorporating writing into math class, educators can help students to develop a deeper understanding of the concepts they are learning and prepare them for success in future mathematical endeavors.

Traveling Through The Twilight Zone with 3 Writing and Viewing Assignments

“You’re travelling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead – your next stop, the Twilight Zone!”

Te Twilight Zone was a television series that first aired in 1959 for five seasons and has had three revivals since then, including this year on CBS. Created by Rod Serling, the original series addressed topics of science fiction, suspense, horror, and fantasy. The original series is currently available on Netflix.

This classic series is a great text to analyze with students and use as a creative writing model. Through the science fiction, fantasy, horror, and suspense, Sterling (who wrote two thirds of episodes) was able to include his own social commentary timely themes  from the anxieties of nuclear threat to the broken promises of suburbia, warning against anti-intellectualism and condemning virulent racism and bigotry — themes that all sound uncannily familiar today. 

Two episodes to watch with students are the 1963 episode, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and the 2019 remake, “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet.”  These two episodes are worth viewing for a compare and contrast assignment. I have provided the graphic organizer I created for my students below.

Each episode of the initial Twilight Zone opened with a monologue from Serling where he would introduce the theme in his own, hypnotizing way. Sometimes abstract, sometimes, direct, each monologue served to draw the viewer into a story that might challenge long-held beliefs or put them in a world they never could’ve imagined. Each of these monologues ended with Serling inviting the viewer to enter a story that took place in “The Twilight Zone.”   

Similarly, the Twilight Zone closing monologues offered commentary and persuasion. Check out the closing monologue from “Eye of the Beholder.”

Now the questions that come to mind: where is this place and when is it, what kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm? You want an answer? The answer is, it doesn’t make any difference. Because the old saying happens to be true. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this year or a hundred years hence, on this planet or wherever there is human life, perhaps out amongst the stars. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Lesson to be learned in the Twilight Zone (1960).

What does Ron Sterling state in his closing statement? What is he trying to persuade his audience to think about? Examining the openings and closings requires students to study  craft and structure. Viewing and studying openings and closings are opportunities for students to flex their own writing muscles and voice to provide their audience with synthesis, analysis, and substance. Once students look at various models and mentors, they can write their own concise social commentaries or monologues about fear, identity, or stereotypes.

Ultimately, having students create their own compelling Twilight Zone episode or updating a classic Twilight Zone episode allows students to be creative and innovative communicators. Storyboards and graphic organizers are scaffolding tools to help students create and execute an engaging episode.

Want more about the Twilight Zone formula and storytelling techniques, check out this video essay deconstructing the cinematic techniques and formula for Twilight Zone episodes.

 

 

 

Descriptive Writing: Building a Setting for Fiction Writing

My students have embarked on a creative writing unit, specifically murder mystery creative fiction. Last week’s blog post I wrote about the quest and the three laps students partake in to flex their creative writing muscles. This blog post dives deep in the first lap, descriptive writing and narrative of a place.

The setting is extremely important to a story. It can have immense effects on the plot and the characters. It can also establish the atmosphere, or mood, of a story or a specific scene. The setting establishing this mood allows the reader to relate to the characters within a story.

Let’s look at an example in literature. 

Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him. With his inky fingers and his bitten nails, his manner cynical and nervous, anybody could tell he didn’t belong – belong to the early summer sun, the cool Whitsun wind off the sea, the holiday crowd. They came in by train from Victoria every five minutes, rocked down Queen’s Road standing on the tops of the little local trams, stepped off in bewildered multitudes into fresh and glittering air: the new silver paint sparkled on the piers, the cream houses ran away into the west like a pale Victorian water-colour; a race in miniature motors, a band playing, flower gardens in bloom below the front, an aeroplane advertising something for the health in pale vanishing clouds across the sky.

— Brighton Rock (Graham Greene)

Note the vivid imagery used to describe the setting. How does the author encompass all of our senses to bring us into the place this novel is set? 

In my classroom I would give my students this excerpt and ask them to mark up the text noticing how place, time, landscape, weather, and atmosphere are described to establish the setting. Then, students would sketch out a visual of the setting described in the passage.

We look at examples for models in descriptive writing about setting for our own writing to stretch our writing, take risks, and try something new. In mystery writing setting helps to propel the mystery and can be the best place to leave clues for readers.

Setting is important in any fictional story. Setting doesn’t just concern nice descriptive passages about houses, woodlands, mountains, roads and so on. Setting doesn’t mean merely ‘scenery’. Careful choice of setting:

• Directs the reader’s attention to significant details of character or action. Setting can be used almost symbolically. It can stand for a mood, a state of mind, an emotion.
• Plays off character against the environments in which they live and act. Characters (and their motivations, desires, hopes) may be juxtaposed against the settings in which they appear. They may occupy the setting comfortably, or be uncomfortable in the settings in which they’re placed.
• Enhances the suspense and mystery (establishing mood and tone) in a piece of writing.

To help students build the setting in their own murder mystery, we looked at examples in film. Think about the opening scenes of your favorite movies and the opening shots that establish the setting. On one creative writing website, it states “Careful control of setting can be somewhat equivalent to directing a film camera. Many films begin with a long shot (distance), then a middle shot, then a close up. This threefold use of the camera is called the ‘establishing shot’ and is a commonplace of screenwriting. Beginning with a distance/wide angle ‘shot’ and then moving in to ever-closer details is also widely used as an orientation technique in fiction writing.”

To help my students write with depth and lots of description about their setting, they storyboarded the setting. This involved drawing out the setting and writing additional details to help stretch the setting details and give readers a clear sense of place.  

 

Murder Mystery Quest

This month I have dusted off classroom copies of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and added Maureen Johnson’s Truly Devious to this reading and creative writing unit sending my students into this dark and chilly subsection where everyone is a suspect, red herrings are all around us, and reading is a game of “who done it.”

I thought why not bring some creative fiction writing into the mix in lieu of an essay based on our reading. Hence, students are writing their own murder mystery short stories. I set up three “laps” around this genre to support my student learners.

#1 – Description of a Place

Show the setting of your creative murder mystery fiction through the effective use of sensory details (see, taste, smell, hear, feel) to help readers imagine and live inside this setting.

Write a minimum ONE page (double spaced, 12 point Alegreya Font) description of the place and setting of your murder mystery. Use word choice to create a believable, consistent narrator’s voice. Choose a tone for your story that matches your intent; use literary devices such as metaphor and simile to expertly craft words and sentences. Emphasize words or phrases that are most important; how do you want us to feel about this place?

Check out this example from one of my students:

Ronnie had heard stories about the mansion before, not good ones, but it was honestly much more chilling in person. The gate at the entrance was made of black matte barbed wire, shaped and crafted with jagged swirls and it went up about 12 feet. The mansion itself was something out of a horror story. The window were cracked, the bricks a faded mauve, and the front entrance had two large knockers, gargoyles, with huge black empty eyes.

#2 – Story Map

Utilizing a graphic organizer created by the teacher or designing your own story map, plot out the key elements of your murder mystery short story. Be sure to include: detective, the crime, the victim(s), the suspects, rising action, clues, climax, capture, solution, and resolution.

#3 – Murder Mystery Short Story

Create your own short story based around a crime or a mystery. Your story must be AT LEAST one page, but NO MORE THAN four pages. You MUST be sure to include all the parts of the story we have discussed (characters, setting, clues, red herrings, clues).

Possible Story Starters

1. It was a strange night, there seemed to be a chill in the air…

2. As soon as I arrived, I could sense that something was out of place…

3. One night, as I looked out the window, I saw the neighbor…

4. I was watching TV when I looked up. There in the window I saw…

5. I decided to go for an evening stroll.  I walked about three blocks when I felt it…

6. They would have been fine if they hadn’t stopped for the stranger…

7. Everyone avoided the big old mansion. It was believed to have…

8. They said she was able to utter a few words before she died…

9. Something is drastically wrong! Every time I pick up the telephone…

10. Sometimes I think my friend has strange powers. Every time he’s around…

11. All of a sudden I was trapped!

12. “DID YOU HEAR THAT?” I screamed…

13. As I walked through the door, all I could focus on was the blood that covered the floor…

Since we have started the unit students are immersed in murder mystery and crime fiction. I introduced my students to some addition books and podcasts to help them learn as much as they can about this genre as models, mentors, and writing seed ideas. Here are a few of my favorites:

Lethal Lit: A Tig Torres Mystery (Podcast)

A six-part scripted podcast series. Teen detective Tig Torres investigates the twisted mystery of the infamous Lit Killer murders. But as she gets closer to the truth, the killings, each based on murder scenes from classic literature, begin all over again…with her as the final target.

Serial: Season One (Podcast)

It’s Baltimore, 1999. Hae Min Lee, a popular high-school senior, disappears after school one day. Six weeks later detectives arrest her classmate and ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, for her murder.

The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith

Yes, this is the Cormoran Strike series that J.K. Rowling writes under a pen name.

One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus

This book is basically The Breakfast Club meets Gossip Girl. Five students walk into detention, but only four walk out alive. The murder victim is Simon, the creator of Bayview High’s very own gossip app, and all four suspects have a motive.

All these Wonders: Teaching Storytelling with The Moth

Today I had the privilege of attending a storytelling workshop presented by NCTE and The Moth, at Penguin Random House Books in New York City. The Moth Radio Hour, produced by Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media and presented by PRX, highlights personal narratives and storytelling of ordinary people. In addition to listening to the Moth Radio Hour, there is a Podcast and published collections of the stories told.

Today’s workshop, lead by The Moth Education Program, provides a framework for eliciting stories and personal narrative with students. There was a lot of talking and interacting before we even started to write. The first hour was spent meeting people and developing possible seed ideas where stories might be hiding. The first introduction required participants to complete the sentence, “I’m the kind of person who . . .”

There was lots of oral drafting before we ever put pen to paper, and this might be a great entry way for the reluctant writer/student who is more willing to try adding to or subtracting from their stories than when they physically write a draft. As teacher Tara Zinger and moth curriculum partner states, “Hearing a laugh or a gasp from a peer can be just what a student needs to know they are on the right track, and that just doesn’t happen as easily with a more traditional writing process.”

Presenter and The Moth Storyteller, Micaela Blei shares five techniques of storytelling and what makes a story compelling?

Change – Change is what separated a story from an anecdote. From the beginning to the end of the story, you’re somehow a different person, even if in a small way.

Stakes – We like to define stakes as what you have to win or lose in the story. Or, alternatively, what MATTERED to you?

Themes – Choosing a theme can help a storyteller decide how to shape this particular story. Deciding what thread or theme you want to draw out for this particular 5-minute version can help you make critical choices of details that pertain.

Show Us vs. Tell – A story is most effective when you have at least one really vivid scene: with sensory details, action, dialogue, and inter thoughts/feelings.

Be Honest/Be Real – There’s no one right way to tell a story. Be yourself.

The Moth stories online and in the published books are great for studying author’s craft and the craft of storytelling. This helps to meet the standards for Craft and Structure:

CCSS ELA Literacy. RL. 11-12.4 – Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful. (Include Shakespeare as well as other authors.)

CCSS ELA Literacy.RL.11-12.5 – Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.

After analyzing the stories, students can use these same stories as models and mentors for their own personal narrative writing and storytelling. To get started, try out one of these Moth-style story prompts:

A time you did something you never thought you would do.

A time your relationship with someone your love changed – a little or a lot.

A time that you took a risk – or decided NOT to take the risk.

A time you tried to be something your weren’t.

The Need To Tell: Monologue Writing in English & Social Studies

Diane Arbus Photograph

Look at the person in the photograph.

Who is this person?
What is her/his name?
What is special about her/him?
Where is she/he?
How does she/he feel about being there? Why?
What does this character want, need, or dream about?
What’s stopping her/him from getting it?
What does she/he need to tell?
Who is she/he telling?
Why is this day different from any other day?

Objective:
1. To create an individual character and establish a foundation for characterization.
2. To write a monologue based on a photograph used to create a character.

This activity was first presented to when during a playwriting workshop for teachers presented by Young Playwrights, Inc. This activity can work as a creating writing assignment or role playing in response to a story or specific period in history. For example, I use photographs of Japanese Internment and students choose a person in one of the photographs to write about experiences during internment. Integrating tools of creative drama and theater tools – like pantomime, movement, improvisation, scripted drama, oral interpretation, debating, storytelling, readers theater – creatively communicates ideas to others and requires students to become the people they read about and study.

Procedures:

1. Post a photograph on the SMARTBoard. This will be used for a whole class brainstorm.

Tell the group that there are no right or wrong answers, as you will all be making this up as you go along. Ask the following questions:

Who is this person? – Get a specific answer. You may have to vote between 2 or 3 names.

What is her/his name? – Have writers begin to define the age, occupation, and general biographical information based on what they see in the photograph. Make a group decision who this person is.

What is special about her/him? – Have writers think about the way he or she talks, dresses, walks. We are looking for specific character traits.

Where is she/he? – Get writers to be as specific as possible.

How does she/he feel about being there? Why? Happy? Sad? Worried? Angry? What does the expression in the photography tell you?

What does this character want, need, or dream about? – We are moving away from what can be seen to inferring emotions and thoughts based on visual cues.

What’s stopping her/him from getting it?

2. Inform the group they will now have the opportunity to allow her or his 􏰂􏰋􏰆􏰃􏰆􏰂􏰅􏰌􏰃􏰁 􏰅􏰉􏰁character to speak. to begin writing a monologue or speech Instruct writers 􏰎􏰈􏰌􏰆􏰣􏰜􏰁(written in first person) bearing in mind what the character Needs To Tell. Add three new questions writers should answer individually:

What does she or he need to tell?

Who is she or he telling?

􏰖􏰁Why does this need to be told today?

The character doesn’t need to answer these questions in the monologue, but the answers should be what drives her or his words.

3. Expand the Activity – After students share out ideas based on the class character brainstorm, I have them choose their own photograph (I have a class set for students to choose from around seven or eight different photographs based on the theme we are studying) and complete the assignment on their own. It is often fascinating for writers to see how many different and distinct stories and characterizations can emerge from a single photo.

Digital Writing Tools For Reluctant Writers

So, your students tell you they hate writing or they profess they are not good writers. Why beat them over the head with writing essays? Here are ten digital writing tools to help build writing endurance and have students create authentic and creative writing pieces.

1. Blog It – This year my students are blogging about their Genius Hour projects. Each of their blogs detail and record their passion project research and findings. Students can create blogs about anything and everything so don’t only have them write on lined paper for your eyes only. Let students write for a global audience and write about topics that are meaningful to them.
2. Collaborative Writing with Google Docs – Whether students are working collaboratively compiling research for a debate or working together to write a screenplay or story, why do it alone? So many authors today are collaborating and students should be able to work together too.
3. Digital Inspirations – My friend and colleague, Carol Varsalona creates these amazing pictures and inspirational words on her blog Beyond LiteracyLink and has all different writers, teachers, and artists contribute their own digital inspirations. Have your students take their own photographs and write inspirational words, poems, ideas to go along with the images produced.

4. Podcasts are a great way to get students writing, speaking, and collaborating. I am a huge fan of NPR’s RadioLab podcasts and have used them in my classroom as a mentor text. Students can script their podcasts before recording them and make their own radio shows on all different issues and topics.

5. Prezi Picture Books in lieu of a traditional picture book, students can create their own digital picture books using Prezi or Google Slides and then screencast an audio file reading aloud the picture book created.

6. Twitter Poems and 140 Character Memoirs

7. Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books in the 1980s? Have students create their own Choose Your Own Adventure story or research inquiry using YouTube, Thinglink, or SymbalooEDU. Students do all the writing and research and allow the viewers to choose the direction of the story or inquiry.

8. Create Your Own Textbook on Wikispaces. What if you had students create the course textbook for the students next year? Let students curate the materials, and design the texts that are essential to classroom learning and content knowledge.

9. StoryWars is a website that was recently shared with me because it is a collaborative story telling website where people can upload their own stories or contribute a chapter to an existing story. Participants can read a story, write a chapter, or vote on a story’s path.

10. Make it a graphic novel using ToonDoo or Bitstrips blending dialogue and cartoon images together.

Delight, Wisdom, and Illumination: Poetry Activities for All Ages

“The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That is what poetry does.”

— Allen Ginsberg

Poetry is a multifaceted tool that can provide students opportunities to reflect on literature, content area subjects, or their own feelings, while increasing their understanding of the material being covered within classroom instruction. Poetry supports  language and reading development. Poetry brings aesthetic connections to topics and provides a personal relationship with content material. Robert Frost once wrote, “a poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” (1973)  Sharing poetry with our students offers both delight and insight of the power of words.

Here are a few different types of poems that fit into any content area classroom for reading and writing.

An ODE is a poem in praise of the ordinary things in life. The ode was originally a Greek form of dramatic poetry. Some odes follow a specific rhyme scheme and stanza pattern, but it is not necessary. Think about having your students write an ode for a specific time or event in history, a scientific concept, or an ode to celebrate a famous mathematician.

A BIOPOEM or a histopoem provides students with the opportunity to create a biographical or historical summary about a topic or person. Each line of a biopoem or histopoem has a prescribed focus which guides students to summarize the information from a variety of perspectives. Biopoem and histopoems are great to use in social studies, science, and with literature.

Students can write HAIKU based on visual images for a unit on the environment or create haiku about something they are studying in your content area. Haiku are 17 syllable poems that are usually about nature and don’t rhyme. Haiku are three lines that follow 5-7-5 form.

Poet and educator, Georgia Heard, writes “Anger is a tremendous source of creativity.” In social studies class students can examine the poetry written about the past wars. Sidney Keyes, a British poet, wrote about WWII. Both Wilfrid Gibson and Siegfried Sassoon fought in the front lines during WWI and later wrote poems about the war.

Without using any words, only sounds create a musical poem or SOUND POEM. Have students write a sound poem about their mother. Then, go around the room and have people read aloud their sound poem

A FOUND POEM is shaped from a collection of words or phrases found in one text. A found poem may be created by students after a test has been read, in part or in whole. To create a found poem, readers select and combined memorable words and phrases from a text to create or “find” a poem. Annie Dilliard’s Mornings Like This is a collection of found poems to share with others. Whether students use a textbook, article, or a piece of literature, a found poem helps to understand the text deeply and make meaning.

SAY IT BUT DON’T REALLY SAY IT POEM In Eve Merriam’s poem New Love she expresses love without ever using the word love. How then do we know that she is talking about love? Have you students write a love poem (or a poem about anything) without saying or using the word it’s about.

New Love
by Eve Merriam

I am telling my hands
not to blossom into roses

I am telling my feet
not to turn into birds
and fly over rooftops

and I am putting a hat on my head
so the flaming meteors
in my hair
will hardly show.

RESPONDING TO POETRY As students listen to a poem being read aloud, have students make a list of the things that “snap, crackle, and pop in their ears . . . words, sounds, rhythms, and phrases. Students can draw a picture (realistic or abstract) of whatever the poem is saying. Maybe the poem reminds you of a song or the sound of a specific musical instrument. Students can describe the sounds and songs. Describe a memory or person the poem might evoke. Does the poem remind you of something? Make a connection. Or just respond to the poem in any way you wish.

Dolls, Vases, Fringes — Memoir Writing & Historical Artifacts

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.

Dinner is a casual affair.

Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,

Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good.

Two who have lived their day,

But keep on putting on their clothes

And putting things away.

And remembering . . .

Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,

As they lean over the beans in their rented back

room

that is full of beads and receipts and dolls

and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

— Gwendolyn Brooks

We began class by reading aloud Gwendolyn Brook’s poem. Students were put into small groups and given an object from the cigar box pictured above. Students were to pretend that the object in their possession belonged to the couple described in the poem they just read. Students were to write a history of that object in the couple’s lives. Where did they get it? Why have they kept it? Where do they keep it in their rooms? What does it mean to them?

Students could write the collaborative piece in either the first person . . .”I remember when we got this . . .” or in third person . . .”The couple in the poem got this on the day they . . .” Be as specific as possible. Tell lots of details about the couple’s lives. Students were in effect, creating their memories. Making them as vivid and as interesting as possible.

After ten minutes we came together to share our histories as a whole class. Students also wrote down two or three possible titles for the poem.

The poem’s title is “The Bean Eaters” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)

This activity was designed by my classmate while at Syracuse University working on our teaching degrees. It is an activity that I use with both my middle school students as a text pairing with the short story “A Summer Tragedy” by Arna Bontemps. In addition, I use it with my graduate students to address the role of artifacts in our classroom to teach historical literacy and creative writing.

Get Them Writing!

I am currently in the middle of reading Kelly Sassi and Anne Ruggles Gere’s Writing on Demand for the Common Core State Standards Assessments (2014, Heinemann). My personal teaching goal this year is to focus on close writing with my students the way that I have focused on close reading. I plan to increase the amount of writing my students do to meet the demands of the Common Core Standards and improve their writing. I have always been told that in order to build better readers and writers, students need to read and write everyday in the classroom.

In Sassi and Gere’s text, three levels of writing are described:

Level 1 = writing is personal, informal, and ungraded

Level 2 = is for an audience, more formal, and graded

Level 3 = writing is public, formal, and high stakes

The authors state, “Writing skills are best developed at Level 1 and Level 2.” For every text my students read, they are writing Level 3 assessments. I am planning on bringing more Level 1 and 2 to engage my students in writing opportunities that engage  students. Below is a compilation of ten different writing opportunities I have compiled over the years that allow students opportunities to write for themselves and for pleasure.

1. Five Truths and One Lie – You probably know this ice breaker activity, students write down five true things about themselves and one lie. Their peers have to decipher the lie. Have students take one of the truths and tell a story.

2. Things that Irritate Me – Make a list of all the things that irritate you. Then choose one and write about it for five minutes, as a free write.

3. Writing Territories – I believe this writing activity comes from Nancie Atwell. Students brainstorm possible seed ideas and share out possible writing ideas. Students can take pieces and extend ideas or even write from a different point of view.

4. Write off One Line – Give your students a sentence starter to free write off of: “One thing about me that would surprise you…”

5. Talk to the Hand – Have students trace their hands and write in the hand interesting stories. Brainstorm all the things your hand has done today.

6. What I Wonder – Based on the book Ever Wonder Why, students generate a list of ten things they wonder about and then find the answer to write about. Students can compiled their own class set of Ever Wonder Why.

7. I am An Expert – Students generate a list of all their expertise and then write about what they know about these topics.

8. Worst Case Scenarios – Students write about a worst case scenario they fear the most.

9. The Most Boring Thing – What would be the most boring thing you can imagine. Write about it.

10. Write the Small Moments – Ralph Fletcher describes this strategy of giving students a visual photo to write about. Students pick a small moment from the photo and write about it. What is happening in the photo? Create the dialogue if there are people in the photo, what do they need to tell?

Students need to know that writing is important. Kelly Gallagher writes in Teaching Adolescent Writers, writing is hard, but hard is rewarding, writing makes you a better reader, and writing prepares you for the world of work.