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Scooped by
Jim Lerman
June 22, 2017 1:52 AM
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There are many different types of writing: but I've found it's just plain easier to write when I have a clear, manageable objective, no matter what stage of the writing process I'm at. So I thought I'd share some exercises I've collected over the years that can provide jump starts and inject energy into material you've already generated, leading you to those unexpected places that make fiction worthwhile. Feel free to mix and match. Jim Lerman's insight: Some very high potential suggestions offered here for writing exercises.
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Rescooped by
Jim Lerman
from Into the Driver's Seat
June 22, 2017 1:48 AM
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Often while looking at the scenes a new writer creates, I take a look and think, Well, that’s pretty lame. So how do you avoid writing lame scenes? First, you need to brainstorm every scene. There …
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Rescooped by
Jim Lerman
from Daily Magazine
June 17, 2017 11:04 AM
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Scooped by
Jim Lerman
June 16, 2017 6:07 PM
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via The Scout Report "K-12 English and social studies instructors will find a variety of resources for teaching indigenous literature, culture, and history on this website. This online resource was created in 2015 as part of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute for educators, headed by Native American Studies scholar Kathryn W. Shanley and Curriculum and Instruction scholar Phyllis Bo-yuen Ngai. During the Summer Institute, participating K-12 educators had the opportunity to hear from a number of experts in Native American studies before using their own expertise in K-12 instruction to craft a number of unit plans and other classroom resources. Visitors to this site will find these lesson plans via the Teacher Authors section on the right panel of the homepage. Each resource is accompanied by a short biography of the teacher who created it as well as their current classroom. In addition, educators can check out a list of all resources used into this institute via the Institute Materials section."
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Scooped by
Jim Lerman
June 16, 2017 12:46 PM
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Poetry is a great way to inspire your learners to be creative and imaginative with a topic. Writing poetry can be difficult for students, but the engaging apps below will help your students create and learn with poems. For more ideas and activities, see the slide presentation, Learning with Poetry, and the bookmarks below for more ideas and resources.
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Scooped by
Jim Lerman
June 14, 2017 10:59 AM
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Elementary teachers, looking for a fun way to get kids to write? Try this emoji writing prompt generator. Your students will love it!
I have been around long enough to see many crazy fads: pet rocks, Care Bears, Smurfs, and Angry Birds. Do you know the current fad in pop culture? Think. Think hard. You know it, (I know you do) because THESE are everywhere. Picture walking down the aisles of Walmart, CVS, Target, or your local grocery store, and what do you spy?
Emojis. Yes, you read that correctly, Emojis. These small images that represent emotions have been transformed into tattoos, pillows, slippers, Halloween costumes, and Pez dispensers. So why not use them in an elementary writing class?
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Rescooped by
Jim Lerman
from Into the Driver's Seat
June 12, 2017 9:19 AM
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"Have Students Explain Their Thinking "Math students may not be used to writing in math but in the real world there is no “math day” and you have to explain what your math means. Filling out worksheets of math problems for no purpose is not really a thing for most adults.
"Allison Childers (@mrschilders314 who blogs at shootforthemoonmath.wordpress.com) shared this brainstorm list of journal topics for math with me.
"Check out her types of questions she has students journal. They are not “Find the answer” or “Show your steps.” This is a great way to increase the depth of knowledge and help students get to understand math rather than just do math."
Why Do We Write? Language merely reflects our way of trying to make sense of the world. - Frank Smith Frank Smith (1982) says 'writing touches every part of our lives'. One of the first reasons we write is because it is a tool for communication in culture. It gives us the ability to share…
Via Ana Cristina Pratas, massimo facchinetti
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Rescooped by
Jim Lerman
from Cultivating Creativity
June 9, 2017 10:57 AM
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"We are now approximately one-sixth of the way through the 21st century, and thousands of movies have already been released. Which means that it’s high time for the sorting – and the fighting – to start. As the chief film critics of The Times, we decided to rank, with some help from cinema savants on Facebook, the top 25 movies that are destined to be the classics of the future. While we’re sure almost everyone will agree with our choices, we’re equally sure that those of you who don’t will let us know." Jim Lerman's insight: I included this article just because it's a good list and I like movies.
Via Jim Lerman
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Rescooped by
Jim Lerman
from Into the Driver's Seat
June 2, 2017 12:27 PM
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PenPal Schools is a global, online learning community where students age 8 and up can connect with others to collaborate on online projects. PenPal Schools connects over 100,000 students in 170 countries to learn together, discovering cultures and exploring lessons on the environment, science, math, and more. Students do all the work through the PenPal Schools site and begin projects at the same time as their pen pals, so teachers will need to check out upcoming course schedules and plan accordingly. Students write to each other while exploring the learning material and collaborating on assignments. The units range from one to six weeks and come with a schedule and course materials. The lessons are typically 30 minutes long, and a useful teacher dashboard allows teachers to provide feedback and see what students are writing to their pen pals." via Common Sense Education
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Rescooped by
Jim Lerman
from Into the Driver's Seat
June 2, 2017 9:09 AM
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Teachers tell us they use these prompts to inspire student writing — whether in their journals, as a timed opportunity or to practice inferring meaning “without worrying about getting the right or wrong answer.”
They also use them with a variety of learners, from high school to middle or elementary school students to English Language Learners of all ages. As one teacher put it, she uses them “for helping teenagers to start talking to each other.”
Below, we’ve categorized the 160+ prompts we published during the 2016-17 school year based on the type of writing they primarily encourage students to do. All are still open for comment. Plus, we have a lesson plan on how to teach with Picture Prompts, along with other Times images, in case you’re looking for more inspiration. Jim Lerman's insight: Great collection of photos with suggestions for their use.
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Rescooped by
Jim Lerman
from Tools for Teachers & Learners
June 1, 2017 11:58 PM
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Writing Navigator goes beyond surfacing details: this is right; that is wrong. It prompts students to make creative decisions, to discover what they want to say, to reach for the best words in the best order.
Via Nik Peachey
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Rescooped by
Jim Lerman
from Serious Play
May 30, 2017 11:05 PM
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This is a list of creative writing and self-publishing tools, apps and websites + a few extra that I thought would help! Online Writing Environments 750words – a simple site to keep up a private diary or daily writing practice. You can earn badges and get some neat metrics after you complete your writing. Google Docs – I wrote…
Via Ariana Amorim
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Scooped by
Jim Lerman
June 22, 2017 1:49 AM
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“I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
A few weeks ago I was thinking about how Junot Diaz often comments on the fact he’s almost never asked to speak about craft, and instead always is asked to talk about race, identity, and the immigrant experience. And it’s true — when I think about all the books on writing craft I’ve read or heard about over the years I’m struck by how few POC-authored books on writing I’ve seen. Are they really that rare? Or are the books and essays out there, but we don’t know where to find them?
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Scooped by
Jim Lerman
June 17, 2017 1:45 PM
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If you want people to actually read what you’ve written, you must master the art of ferociously self-editing your book.
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Rescooped by
Jim Lerman
from Into the Driver's Seat
June 17, 2017 1:34 AM
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For eight years, we have asked a fresh Student Opinion question every weekday. Each June, just as we do with lesson plans, we round them all up and post them in one place.
Below are the 179 questions we’ve asked between September 2016 and June 2017, all still open to comment by any student 13 or older. Each question is based on — and linked to — articles, videos and images from The New York Times, and each Times article is accessible without a digital subscription. This list is also available by PDF, here.
Students can use these questions to practice writing persuasively or creatively, or as inspiration for our contests. Teachers might use these prompts as jumping-off points for class discussions, as part of their lesson plans, or as encouragement for their students to engage with what’s happening in the world.
At the end of this post we feature our Civil Conversation Challenge lessons, a special student forum and contest held this school year to encourage respectful discourse about some of the biggest issues dividing Americans today, including immigration, guns, climate control, and race, gender and identity.
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Rescooped by
Jim Lerman
from Into the Driver's Seat
June 16, 2017 1:03 PM
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On June 11, 2009 I taught my demo lesson at Ossining High School. That first lesson focused on creating six word stories, and was the start of my full time teaching career. And eight years later, I ended the school year with the very same lesson--I’ve come full circle.
Back then, we read a few stories together, examined the literary tradition, and created our own. Students wrote them on sentence strips, decorated them, and presented them to the class to publish. I even tracked down my original lesson plan in my files--a screenshot is below. As the legend has it, Ernest Hemingway was asked to write a story in six words. His response: “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” Jim Lerman's insight: Quite a thorough description of how Adam Schoenbart does this; very informative.
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Rescooped by
Jim Lerman
from Into the Driver's Seat
June 16, 2017 12:21 PM
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This past weekend I had the chance to share tips, strategies and lesson ideas for educators looking to empower their students with creation tools. At the Tomorrow’s Classrooms Today Conference in New Jersey I led a session with ways to use the totally free, BYOD-friendly Adobe Spark creation tools. I first started using the Spark creation tools when looking for a way for students to publish their creations on an iPad, Chromebook, or any device with a web-browser.
If you haven’t checked out these three tools before, Spark Post is perfect for making graphics, Spark Video lets students make their own movies, and Spark Page is a powerful and easy tool for creating a website. Click here to access all three free tools or for links to download the iOS apps. In the list below I share five ways to use Spark creation tools to empower students across in any subject area! Jim Lerman's insight: If you haven't encountered Adobe's Spark Tools previously, Monica Burns provides an excellent starting point. The Spark Tools are very powerful, easy to use, and also FREE.
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Rescooped by
Jim Lerman
from Cultivating Creativity
June 12, 2017 12:45 PM
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Michela, my daughter, presented her latest show at Joe's Pub in NYC's East Village last evening (6/11/17). See the whole production by clicking on the headline or image above. Of course, I thought it was magnificent. I hope you like it too. The show starts about 2:30 into the recording.
Via Jim Lerman
8 writing lessons marketers can learn from Ann Handley's book, Everybody Writes.
Via massimo facchinetti
Bad business writing costs $396B every year in lost productivity. Don't be part of it - try these easy ways to improve your business writing skills.
Via Trumans, massimo facchinetti
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Rescooped by
Jim Lerman
from eLanguages
June 7, 2017 6:17 PM
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Such a class can provide a model for constructive, fact-based public discourse and stand as a model of principled resistance in a “fake news” era, argues John Duffy.
Via AgileBelma
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Scooped by
Jim Lerman
June 2, 2017 9:22 AM
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After combing through four years of images from our popular What’s Going On in This Picture? feature, we selected 40 photographs to highlight in this slide show. Many of these are our most commented-on images — some attracting nearly a thousand student comments. Others are simply our favorites.
We invite teachers and students to use this bank of 40 intriguing images, all stripped of their captions or context, to practice visual thinking and close reading skills by holding a “What’s Going On in This Picture?” discussion or writing activity.
Or, use any of the ideas we suggest in this lesson plan on using our new Picture Prompt feature and other Times images to get students writing, thinking, speaking and listening.
Good writing is about well-chosen nouns and powerful verbs, not adjectives and adverbs. What constitutes a tired verb? Here’s what to look for:
Via Penelope, Ivon Prefontaine, PhD
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Scooped by
Jim Lerman
May 30, 2017 11:13 PM
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SAS Writing Reviser is a terrific free Google Doc tool for helping students identify writing issues and improve their written work. Available as a Google Docs Add-On, SAS Writing Reviser analyzes a document for potential grammatical and syntax issues, highlights or lists the issues it finds, and provides information for resolving them. Once installed, SAS Writing Reviser is available for use in any Google Doc. Simply open the Add-On in Google Docs and it appears to the side of a Doc.
SAS Writing Reviser contains 5 major sections: Sentence Economy, Sentence Variety, Sentence Power, Sentence Clarity, and Support Tools. Sentence Economy is designed to make your writing more economical, while Sentence Variety aims to make your sentences more interesting, Sentence Power prompts you to incorporate forceful verbs, and Sentence Clarity prompts you to use words carefully to make your meaning clearer. Finally, Support Tools offers statistical highlights of your essay and identifies prepositional phrases, passive voice, and vague words. Each of the five sections contains subsections with related content. Jim Lerman's insight: This appears to be an excellent tool for writing improvement at nearly any level.
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