I tried Rebekah O’Dell’s Flash Revision and loved the results. Later in the unit, one of my students asked, “Why don’t you help me with a timer while proofreading too? It’s harder than revision.”
Category: Aishwarya
Preparing for the End at the Beginning of the Year
One of my greatest frustrations in teaching is waiting for – what feels like hours – as my students wade through their bags and files to find the draft or handout they’re looking for. The ticking of the clock slowly comes into my awareness and with every second, it gets louder and louder as I gather my wits together and desperately try to hold onto them while every part of me wants to scream.
Why Mentor Text Work Is Hard for ELLs
I heard Dance Monkey for the first time after watching the NYT analysis. My response was limited to “catchy and cool”. All my mentor texts are new to my ELLs and they read them for the first time when I bring them to class. Their response is similarly limited to “nice and good”.
Back to Basics: Capitalization
A guaranteed speed breaker when I enter a new school year, and meet a new batch of students with renewed enthusiasm is old errors. Do it enough over the years, and you might begin to realize that part of an old-timer’s stoicism in the face of annoying errors lies in foreseeing obstacles and being ready for them as opposed to being taken by surprise.
Identifying Genres: Science Fiction vs. Dystopia
More importantly, however, the book blurbs and the discussions that followed served as excellent book talks. After each lesson, I saw students quietly picking up many of the books on the slides. I pretended not to look, of course.
Identifying Genres: Fantasy vs. Science Fiction
I didn’t give them the definitions in the beginning this time. This allowed them to use the learning from the last two lessons and hypothesise what the differences ought to be. The book blurbs on the slides, much like last time, were our opportunities to discuss, argue, ask questions and share our confusion. Towards the end, when clarity was just within reach, I provided the definitions.
Identifying Genres: Realistic Fiction vs. Fantasy vs. Historical Fiction
My main aim in this lesson is to get students comfortable with identifying boundary conditions of a genre in the face of ambiguity.
Identifying Genres: A Lesson Series
In this series, I share one such set of 5 lessons that help students identify genres more accurately. The lessons are:
L1: Prior Knowledge Check
L2: Genre – Meaning and Types
L3: Realistic Fiction vs. Fantasy vs. Historical Fiction
L4: Fantasy vs. Science Fiction
L5: Science Fiction vs. Dystopia.
A Lesson on Beginnings Before Teaching Narrative Leads
When students do not think through the point of entry into their story, they pick the first thing that occurs to them, and this almost always means that the memoir gets narrated chronologically; any potential for flashbacks or other transitions in time is unexplored.
Knowing vs. Discovering Theme: A Lesson in Topic Choice
Nancie Atwell calls theme “the chilliest mind Popsicle” of all the writing lessons that young writers need to learn, and I couldn’t agree more. (Atwell, 2015, 101) Theme is one of the toughest lessons I have had to learn to teach in both reading and writing and by the time I did, I not only […]
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