Literacy Speaks Volumes

Hooray! I just completed my latest product: Common Core State Standards for  7th Grade English Language Arts Visit my website for links to all of my products and blogs. Melissa Reese Etheridge

Yesterday I completed two products (yea for me!): Grammar Unit Two presentation and Digital Papers. That's a first for me; I don't usually complete and upload two products on the same day, but I seemed to have a burst of energy at the end of the day. I hope the same happens today as I've not been very productive today~or at least not as productive as I wanted to be.  I'm working on a 7th Grade English Language Arts Common Core State Standards (that's a mouthful) presentation~I'd say I'm almost halfway finished. My plan is to share it with the students on a daily basis so that they can monitor their own learning.  I created a cool chalkboard template using Corel Paint and PicMonkey that I'm using. After I finish the presentation, I'm going to spruce it up some and add different colors and sell as a blank presentation template. I've realized that if I think something is cool other people probably do also.  I also found these cool l...

The newest set of writing rubric posters that I'm working on for next year. I'm still counting the days down...one more day with students and then two more days next week to finish things up. This is not another sappy blog about endings really being beginnings. This is about teaching writing and using the new Common Core writing rubric. As of right now, my state of Tennessee will only test 5th, 8th, and 11th graders next year. But beginning with the 2014 school year, students in 3rd through 11th grade will take a comprehensive writing assessment as part of their standardized testing. When I first began teaching, students in the 7th grade regularly took a writing assessment as part of their annual standardized testing routine, so I'm no stranger to the experience of teaching timed writing. However, the new testing will be different in a few ways from the way that we've done it up to now. The new writing stimulus will involve the reading of two passages. Th...

The Phrase L.7.1c. Place phrases and clauses within a sentence, recognizing and correcting misplaced and dangling modifiers. Writing sentences with phrases~prepositional, infinitive, and gerund~is a higher-order thinking and writing skill. For a seventh-grader to consistently write with a variety of sentence structures is something that just doesn't happen often. In my Language class, the students are learning to identify phrases and to use phrases in their own writing. If I give them a multiple choice assessment in which they have to identify the phrase, they do pretty well~the last assessment had a class average of over 75%. But, if I ask them to read a sentence and write the phrase, they don't do as well. It is even more difficult for them to write a sentence using phrases creatively~especially at the beginning of the sentence. I'm finding that I need to go slowly and break the skill into small steps~constant review at the beginning of class helps also. ...

I went to my classroom today to begin to get ready for the new school year~even after twenty years I still feel a tingle of excitement as each year begins. It's like I'm getting a fresh start~a chance to "do it better" this time. I like the whole ritual of moving desks and bookcases, then filling those bookcases up in anticipation of a new group of students reading them. As I left the classroom, I turned for one last look~proud of my handy work.  When teachers decorate and arrange their classrooms at the beginning of the school year, they're creating a mood for the students. You want your students' (along with their parents) impression of your classroom to be one where learning is taken seriously, but it's okay to be a seventh grader. One teacher described her classroom as a "safe haven"~I like that idea. When teaching mood in literature, there are three basic learning targets that you (and your students) need to keep in mind: (1) ...

How do you make a good impression? In the short story "Seventh Grade" by Gary Soto, Victor and Michael enter seventh grade a little anxiously~maybe with a little trepidation. Their conversation steers itself toward making a good impression on the girls~for Victor there is one girl in particular whom he wants to impress: Theresa.  Michael and Victor each have different ideas on how to impress girls. Like seventh graders everywhere, Victor and Michael are trying to fit in like everyone else. For this lesson I will focus on the Common Core Standard RL (Reading Literature) 7.6 Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text. This story lends itself well to this particular standard because it will be easier for the students to compare and contrast the characters' actions and their development. This lesson will take anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes to teach allowing time for silent reading and writing. Before th...

I've just spent the last three days at the Rutherford County Literacy Academy in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. On Monday,  Carmen Agra Deedy  regaled the group of K-12 public school teachers with both personal stories and traditional folk tales. On Tuesday,  Dr. Keith Polette  shared literacy strategies with wit and cleverness. I can't think of a more enjoyable and intelligent way to spend a portion of my summer holiday. We began the academy in the usual way~those good old tried and true ice-breakers . Now, if you're not familiar with ice-breakers then you have never attended a teacher in-service. After getting to know a few of the other teachers attending the Literacy Academy (other than the other teachers from my own school), we settled in groups to participate in some cooperative learning strategies. The first activity involved matching Newberry titles to their first lines. The next activity was called "Dinner Plate" where the group members had to first list all...