Literacy Speaks Volumes

Students need to be engaged in personal writing on a daily basis. As teachers we need to help students focus on writing about themselves and what is important to them. Personal writing is writing that you do for yourself~like a conversation with your best friend.  Personal writing can include entries made in a private journal, notes kept in a school journal, and letters or postcards written to relatives or friends. Some personal writing is meant for the writer alone. Often, private writing later becomes a story, poem, or other form of writing. I always begin my day with personal writing, and I end my day with personal writing. Think of it as a "writing sandwich."  As a writer, you need to ask yourself, "What is important to me?" Everyone's answer will be different because each of us is different. Whatever you choose to write, it needs to be important to you. Personal writing is a great way to explore your thoughts and feelings. When some...

After all these years of teaching middle school English, I wish that I could say that I have the answer to rid your classroom of all bad attitudes. Unfortunately, I can't because it comes with the territory. A bad attitude in a middle schooler is usually the sign of a lack of self-confidence. I know, it doesn't seem that way, but I've dealt with enough to know that a bad attitude is not about me. It's just the way that the kid is projecting him or herself.  I've tried several different ways to deal with it, and very few are effective all of the time. Like most things in teaching, you just have to go with it and see what works for that kid at that moment. At the beginning of last school year, I had a student who refused to write anything (not even his name) on a piece of paper. I tried threats and punishments. I moved him away from the group that he was trying to impress. I turned his name into the administration--he spent three days in in-school suspens...

Sir Francis Bacon wrote, "Reading maketh a full man, conversation a ready man, and writing an exact man." As teachers, we want our students to be full, ready, and exact. But how do we do it without poking our eyeballs out with our red pen? Writing is not like other subjects where there is one correct answer. Writing requires that students look inside themselves for the answer, which most students are reluctant to do. Writing is both abstract and concrete; it is subjective and up to interpretation. So how do we as teachers instill a culture of writing in our classrooms? First, we must be writers ourselves. We need to know what it feels like to "have nothing to say." We should be able to describe our own process of sitting before a blank page and composing essays and stories from words. Students need to understand our passion and true belief that the pen is mightier than the sword. Teachers should regularly share their writing with students. Parents expect the...

Well, I'm trying to stay busy, but it is so hard sometimes. Sometimes I think that I really would like to be a stay-at-home mom and work from my computer, but I'm not sure that I would stay focused. Summertime should be a time when I could get a gazillion educational and art projects completed, but I can't seem to stay focused or on task. Summertime calls me. I try to have a schedule; I make a to-do list; I have a list of Bright Ideas that I want to get accomplished, but I seem to run out of time before I actually get them finished. I'm not doing horribly, but it does make me wonder if I spend too much time doing meaningless chores. What do you do to stay motivated in the summertime? Melissa Reese Etheridge

Last summer I began my small business Literacy Speaks Volumes. It began as a blog (the one you're reading now) and a Facebook page . My original idea was to do the research, which I was already doing for my job as a 7th grade English Language Arts teacher, and share ideas with teachers. Why? Because that's the sort of thing that I loved myself.  As I researched ideas, I came across this site called Teachers pay Teachers  that was chock full of free resources and many more resources that were inexpensive. Ta-da...the lightbulb went off! Why couldn't I sell my resources also? I was already creating them for my classroom and sharing them with others. So, my first store was launched. But it didn't just end there...one blog became three and then of course there was the obligatory Twitter account.  Now, I've opened another store on Teachers Notebook  and one on Etsy . I also developed a website to go along with this business. Now after one year, I need t...

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...

Approach of Winter by William Carlos Williams The half-stripped trees struck by a wind together, bending all, the leaves flutter dryly, and refuse to let go or driven like hail stream bitterly out to one side and fall where the salvias, hard carmine-- like no leaf that ever was-- edge the bare garden. I am a consummate consumer of the written word~poem or prose, fiction or nonfiction. I'm like Sherlock Holmes~constantly noticing those unusual sound combinations and odd spellings that make for an interesting gem of a word. Besides the overall feeling of this poem, I'm impressed with the word "half-stripped"; it implies tenacity (another great word)~the tree seems to know that winter is on its way bringing with it the harsh reality that all will soon be lost.  As a lesson, I would first ask students to tell me how they know that this is a poem~I'll probably get answers like "it looks like a poem" or "it's shaped like a poem....

The first two weeks of the school year is called "The Honeymoon"~during this time you and those boisterous students attempt to develop some sort of relationship with each other. While the English teacher in me wants to jump right in to the curriculum and start teaching my subject, the teacher in me knows it's important to establish ground rules, develop routines, and pre-assess my students. Here is a poetry lesson that can be taught during the first few days of school that will serve the purpose of teaching curriculum and developing a relationship because you will get to know something about your students. This mini-lesson is called "From List to Poem". First you need to do a quick informal assessment, so you ask the students "What do you know about poems?" Give your students the time to discuss this either with a partner, a small group, or large group. You could even have the students write their responses on a "dinner plate" graphic...