Literacy Speaks Volumes

Today was the first day back after our winter holidays. It wasn't too taxing~while I had developed lesson plans for these two days back, we didn't get to them. I spent part of each class period reviewing some old/new policies and rules. Don't we all seem to forget so soon what we have to do or what we shouldn't do? After the review, we had our annual Spelling Bee. After twenty-two years with seventh-graders, I'm still amazed at the spelling skills (or lack thereof) of thirteen-year-olds. The ones who can barely keep their grades in the black are some of the ones who can spell the best. Why is that? Spelling is a skill that does take knowledge of our language~so why doesn't that transfer into other areas of my curriculum? Speaking of curriculum~count down to standardized testing (sort of). I've been looking at the performance indicators and trying to determine which ones need to be taught in depth and which ones can be barely brushed upon. The stude...

This week's learning is identifying infinitive and gerund phrases and identifying mood, imagery, and style in a piece of literature. Lovely lessons that will herald in the holiday with festive language. I absolutely love, love, love practicing writing sentences that begin with phrases. A sentence that begins with a phrase is just so much more interesting than other sentence structures. Keith Polette does an amazing job with his "Ten Different Ways to Begin a Sentence." Here is my adaptation of his strategy using participles, infinitives, and gerunds (and their respective phrases).   Hanging on small pegs, the stockings lent an air of festivity to the otherwise drab fireplace.  Melissa wanted to hang the stockings in order to create a sense of anticipation. Hanging the stockings is my favorite part of decorating for the holidays. Have your students create their own holiday sentences using phrases and clauses.  Another Polette strategy is having your st...

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. ...