Summary Post C4T#1

My assignment was to an excellent blog called Learning is Life by Russ Goerend. Mr. Goerend is a 6th grade Language arts teacher in Iowa; you can find the link to his blog here.

Kelly Gallagher's Pillars of Writing Success
The first post I read from Mr. Goerend was about an exert from Kelly Gallagher's book Teaching Adolescent Writers. In the post he lists Gallagher's six student needs that must be met in order for effective teenage writers to emerge. These were:
1. Students need a lot more writing practice.
2. Students need teachers who model good writing.
3. Students need the opportunity to read and study other writers.
4. Students need choice when it comes to writing topics.
5. Students need to write for authentic purposes and for authentic audiences.
6. Students need meaningful feedback from both the teacher and their peers.
Goerend goes on to evaluate his own strengths and weaknesses regarding these six needs. He gives an honest account of what he is doing in his classroom and what he needs to do to create effective writers.
My response to this post was positive, as a high school student I never really enjoyed writing, so it's always nice to see an educator excited and dedicated to learning more about their profession. I also commented about how I feel feedback from their teacher is very important to foster students' hunger for writing.

Defend Yourself Fridays
In another post from Mr. Goerend's blog he shares a fun and creative idea for getting students excited about writing. The idea is that every Friday the students would have a Defend Yourself Friday writing assignment. The students were given a topic for which they would spend 5 minutes defending, arguing, and supporting a topic. After their time is up the students have two minutes to look over what they had written and summarize it in one sentence.
After seeing the excitement this created Mr. Goerend decided to give the topic out a week early and provide links relevant to the topic on the class blog. He did this to try and fuel the students interest in the topics and so they could come up with firm opinions on them.
I love Mr. Goerend's DYF idea and believe it is such a creative way to get students writing. After reading the comments one reader suggested that he keep the suprise element regarding the topics and in response Mr. Goerend said maybe they would have a suprise topic once a month. I also think it would be a good idea to throw in a debate after the assignment is completed. This would give students more motivation into researching the topic, would allow them to strengthen their public speaking skills, and would cause them to look at different points of view regarding the topic.