Red River Valley Writing Project Professional Book Club

March, 2009

2009-04-16T16:04:00.003-05:00

Study Driven: A Framework for Planning Units of Study in the Writing Workshop by Katie Wood Ray

February, 2009

2009-02-16T13:31:00.005-06:00

The Forest and the Trees by Emily Kissner

Review by Brandy Pihlgren, RRVWP Teacher Consultant and Book Club Facilitator

The Forest AND the Trees: Helping Readers Identify Important Details in Text & Tests contains useful information, including numerous reproducibles, for any content area teacher. Although the book targets 4th-8th graders, RRVWP teacher consultants found that most activities can be adapted to any grade level. Kissner thoroughly explains how we can use big and little details to increase student understanding. We especially liked the sections dealing with visualization, making inferences, flag words, using and/or increasing prior knowledge, genres, and attention to important details. One teacher successfully used the “Specific or Not Specific?” activity (p. 157) with her high school students, which prompted them to differentiate between specific and general ideas of a text. We give the book two thumbs up!

November, 2008

2009-01-23T16:26:00.002-06:00

Nonfiction Matters by Stephanie Harvey

October, 2008

2008-10-08T14:38:00.003-05:00

Summarizing, Paraphrasing and Retelling by Emily Kissner

September 2008

2008-09-09T13:39:00.005-05:00

A Teacher's Guide to the Multigenre Research Paper by Melinda Putz
Review written by Carm, RRVWP Teacher Consultant

I really enjoyed A Teacher's Guide to the Multigenre Research Project. Melinda Putz presents a "twist" on the research paper in her book. This isn't the first time I've heard of this kind of project. Melinda Putz doesn't claim to have "invented" the assignment. She has, however, explained it in a way that is very explicit and user friendly. She includes at the end of each chapter her actual handouts she provides for students. I found myself frequently flipping to these in order to make sense of her explanations. Putz includes student work to illustrate the explanations and goes a step further by including a companion CD with PDF and MS word files of each of her handouts for teacher use as well as one complete student multigenre project and many snippets from other students' work as well. Because much of the multigenre project is visual, the CD option really added my my understanding of the projects students produced.

It's impressive to consider all the ways a unit like this can impact students reading, researching, and writing. They must do a decent amount of higher level thinking, inferring, and synthesizing and I am always looking for ways to encourage that in students.

Finally, it's a project that --I-- want to do. Instantly I was running through possible topics in my mind and was trying to think of different genres I could use to depict the essential elements of those topics. It's easy to get excited about something so creative and I have a feeling that would be the same for students too. I am definitely going to try this with my students I just need to figure out how to adapt it to our school setting (block schedule) and at what grade level I want to begin.

For those curious about ways to engage students in research in creative ways this is a book I would highly recommend.

July 2008

2008-07-31T14:24:00.007-05:00

Collected articles on Digital Literacy

NCTE Position Statement Regarding Mulitmodal Literacies

CCC Position Statement on Digital Literacy

Article: Reading the Internet: The Link Between Literacy and Technology

Article: The New Literacy of the Digital Age

Article: Ten Ways to Take Charge of the Web: Easy Strategies for Internet Smarts

Lesson Plan for Helping Students Define Reading

Reading on the Internet Interactive

Examples of using technology to help students engage in literature. Check out the Harry Potter link and others…

June 2008

2008-06-30T14:19:00.001-05:00

Books and Beyond: New Ways to Reach Readers by Michael F. Optiz, Michael P. Ford with Matthew D. Zbaracki
Review written by Carm, RRVWP Teacher Consultant

Books and Beyond: New Ways to Reach Readers opens with a rationale for using a variety of texts with readers. For the remainder of the book, Optiz, Ford, and Zbaracki explore ten kinds of texts: magazines, poetry, multilevel texts, newspapers, series texts, humorous texts, dramatic texts, real-life texts, anthologies, and cyber texts. I already knew a lot of the content found in this book, but it works for me to use as a rationale for some of the choices I make in my regular English class and in my Title 1 Reading class. I thought it was pretty interesting and well written--fairly easy to whip through. Each chapter was dedicated to a different kind of text and each chapter was formated the same way including such features as "a brief description," "why use them," "how might they be used," "some sample titles" among other topics. At times it felt a bit repetitive but it was also useful in comparing the various genres. However, in the end it was not really all that cutting edge. No section on graphic novels and not too much about online texts. That fact led us to do a study of online texts using, what else, online texts for the following month.

April 2008

2008-04-30T14:23:00.002-05:00

"Is it Done Yet?" Teaching Adolescents the Art of Revision by Barry Gilmore
Review written by Carm, RRVWP Teacher Consultant

I started reading Gilmore's book at a time when our school district was having English meetings and trying to talk about a scope and sequence for teaching grammar and writing. This book addresses how to teach students revision beginning with content: improving a thesis, revising introductions, improving organization, incorporating evidence, revising conclusions etc. That's just part of the book. Many of his ideas made a lot of sense. Sadly some of his student examples that were his "bad" examples were better than I think I could write. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but if my students were writing that well, I'd hardly be complaining. Gilmore teaches AP students and this is very much a college prep level book. I am dealing with students working at a much lower level, yet, I think I could still, should still be trying to use some of these approaches and maybe I'd start to see some improvement. I would just need to find appropriate models that wouldn't leave the students overwhelmed.

The next biggest section of the book talked about revising style and this was also interesting. Here he talked about sentence combining, measuring the sentences and adding variety, scaling back words, adding clarity, using better verbs and adjectives and improving voice, among other things. Again there were gems all through this section, but there were also things that I thought were surprising. At one point he listed ten rhetorical devises kids will actually use. None of them, when listed in example form, seemed shocking or new to me, but here's a confession: I had never even HEARD of some of the descriptive labels of that rhetorical device. Where have I been? Here are the ten he suggests to give you an idea of what I mean: allusion (nothing wrong with that one, I teach it all the time), anadiplosis, anaphora, antithesis, asyndeton, chiasmus, ellipsis, metaphor, polysyndeton, tricolon. Obviously I understood ellipsis and metaphor as well, but the others were new "terms" even if the devices were familiar. Sheesh. Talk about humbling.

So, my assessment of this book is that it's worthwhile if you are truly wanting to rethink your approach to writing and revision in the classroom. It's best if you teach high school and even better if you teach AP or honors or freshmen in college. It is a little "pie in the sky" in some ways, but in others it's just humbling and I realize I'm not doing enough to support my students in their efforts at revision.

January 2008

2008-01-30T14:17:00.001-06:00

Getting it Right: Fresh Approaches to Teaching Grammar, Usage, and Correctness by Michael W. Smith and Jeffrey D. Wilhelm
Review written by Carm, RRVWP Teacher Consultant

While Getting It Right is far from being an in-depth look into how to teach grammar, I think it offers some interesting philosophies and perspectives that would be a great place for a group of educators to begin exploring their own theories and working together to come up with a plan for tackling the scope and sequence and method to the madness which is grammar in the secondary classroom.

Wilhelm and Smith are more known for writing about reading and yet their treatment of this subject works for me. They explore the different definitions of common terms tossed around in discussions on grammar and reveal how many of us are actually discussing different things and not realizing it. Wilhelm and Smith argue that errors matter but not all errors matter equally. In one section they include a hierarchy of errors and they also explore how to understand the causes of students' errors, and how to address those causes through authentic and engaging activities. I'd recommend this book for a professional book study group or for personal reading on the notion of how to approach grammar. It seems like a good springboard for discussion.

December 2007

2007-12-30T14:15:00.002-06:00

October 2007

2007-10-30T14:13:00.000-05:00

September 2007

2007-09-30T14:12:00.000-05:00

June, 2007

2007-06-30T13:48:00.000-05:00

May 2007

2007-05-30T14:10:00.000-05:00

April 2007

2007-04-30T14:09:00.000-05:00

January/February 2007

2007-02-27T14:08:00.000-06:00

December/November 2006

2006-12-30T14:04:00.000-06:00

RRVWP Professional Book Club

2006-11-30T17:11:00.000-06:00

At the end of the summer institute, teaching fellows become teacher consultants (TCs) and we brainstorm ways to keep the wonderful discussion and learning going. The Red River Valley Writing Project's Professional Book Club is just one way to keep up the momentum.

Perks of the professional study group include being able to suggest books that are of professional interest to you and your colleagues, a book that is yours to keep (as long as you read it and join the group discussion), taking part in a discussion about teaching that is professional in nature, and, as always, there seems to be plenty of food.

How does it work?!?!
Each month, TCs choose a professional book related to reading or writing, pick a date and place for the meeting, read the book, and finally, discuss it with other TCs. Members of the book club opt in or out of the book club each month based on individual interest in the book's subject and/or time committment. Throughout most of the 2006-07 school year we've met on Sunday afternoons in the conference room at Barnes and Noble.

A sampling of what we've read (Listed in no particular order)
Reading Don't Fix No Chevys: Literacy in the Lives of Young Men by Michael Smith & Jeffrey Wilhelm
Living and Teaching the Writing Workshop by Kristen Painter
Teaching with the Brain in Mind by Eric Jensen
7 Keys to Comprehension by Susan Zimmermann
When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do by Kylene Beers
Subjects Matter: Every Teacher's Guide to Content-Area Reading by Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman
Expletive Deleted: A Good Look at Bad Language by Ruth Wajnryb
Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Lives of Boys by Dan Kindlon & Michael Thompson