To see the full story, go to the link below:

http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/region_northern_kentucky/cold_spring/cold-spring-school-trying-new-initiative-

http://writingfix.com/classroom_tools/picture_prompts.htm

This tale of two boys, and of the millions of kids just like them, embodies the most stunning finding to come out of education research in the past decade: more than any other variable in education—more than schools or curriculum—teachers matter. Put concretely, if Mr. Taylor’s student continued to learn at the same level for a few more years, his test scores would be no different from those of his more affluent peers in Northwest D.C. And if these two boys were to keep their respective teachers for three years, their lives would likely diverge forever. By high school, the compounded effects of the strong teacher—or the weak one—would become too great.

Parents have always worried about where to send their children to school; but the school, statistically speaking, does not matter as much as which adult stands in front of their children. Teacher quality tends to vary more within schools—even supposedly good schools—than among schools.

It’s a very interesting article.

Business people use jargon, thinking they’re showing off their intelligence or trying to win respect from their peers, even if it doesn’t work that way, said Michael Sebastian, a Web editor at Ragan Communications, a Chicago-based publishing and training company. Others turn to jargon to avoid offending people or appearing politically incorrect, said Chelsea Hardaway, the co-author of “Why Business People Speak Like Idiots.”

There are, of course, few fields more given to jargon than education. If you want your writing to reach a broader audience than just teachers, you need to excise jargon from your writing the way you’d swat cockroaches on a kitchen counter: with horror-fueled determination.

November is national novel writing month! Who knew? After sharing this site with my students this morning, I got super excited. I have several kids who are interested and I think we are going to pursue it. Our current plan is to meet once a week during lunch and recess to share what we have and how we are doing on our goal. Even if you are not interested in participating, check out the teacher’s lounge section. They have some great lesson plans and the work book they have created i is full of awesome writing tools.
Wish us luck!
Jenna

… people in the 21st century are writing more than ever before for personal, professional, and civic purposes…the social nature of writing invites people of every age, profession, and walk of life to create meaning through composing…more and more people in every occupation deem writing as essential and influential in their work…writers continue to learn how to write for different purposes, audiences, and occasions throughout their lifetimes…

On October 20, the National Gallery of Writing will be unveiled. The gallery is a searchable collection of all kinds of writing from all kinds of people. Schools can set up their own sub-sites within the gallery to feature student writing.

I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.

Lunsford said this after reviewing data from the Stanford Study of Writing, a research project that surveyed the writing of almost 15,000 incoming university students over five years.  She found that today’s students write more than any students to come before them. The reason: online communication is text dependent, and much social activity carries on over the Internet. The survey revealed that 38% of students’ writing comes outside of the classroom, most of it online.

Clive Thompson of Wired magazine puts this into perspective:

It’s almost hard to remember how big a paradigm shift this is. Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they’d leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.

Is the endless stream of tweets, blog updates and text messages of any value, intellectual or literary? Lunsford’s research indicates it is:

Lunsford’s team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.

What do u think?