Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Getting Ready

It's time to get started.  The second week of school rushes on and I am running, trying to catch up.  The kids jump into any task given them which makes me so very excited.  Writing samples look good, lots of readers, oh my job is going to be so much easier this year. 

We haven't done any revisions yet, but they will come soon.  My 7th grade students will be writing a short character analysis this week.  I will us my writing to model a reader/response group, select the groups for this first response, and see what happens.  Throughout the year, as writing progresses, so will the response groups.  I plan on observing three types of groups: teacher-selected, student-selected, and random selected. 

Peer-selected groups could go in one of three ways:  peers will offer sincere comments and questions about each other's work; peers will socialize more than work; or peers will like the writing just the way it is and not offer any suggestions.  And so we shall see.

I've never used randomly-selected groups, thinking I knew how the groups should be formed to best fit the needs of my students (Ha!); I never got the results from all groups that I had planned.  I am going to spend more time on protocol and questioning strategies this year before I turn them loose.  Should be interesting.

No comments:

Post a Comment