Teaching Non-fiction literacy skills is a challenge for many teachers. Here is a blog post for middle school students including great resources for teachers. Please note thisi s written by a science teacher. This is the type of teaching the Common Core invisons. Enjoy - courtesy of ASCD SmartBrief. s

4 lessons on teaching nonfiction literacy skills
Teaching students how to read nonfiction material -- from understanding an expert's bias to learning how to be active readers -- is an important component of Common Core State Standards, educator Bill Ferriter writes in this blog post. Ferriter shares four assignments and includes links to the handouts he uses to teach nonfiction writing skills to his sixth-grade science class. Center for Teaching Quality/Tempered Radical blog (5/20)



 

As the end of the year approaches, many of you are already thinking about next year. Below you will find a link to the Wiritng lesson of the Month Network. I encourage all of you to take a look and see what you might use for next year. Enjoy - courtesy of Corbett and Dena Harrison.

Visit Writing Lesson of the Month Network at: http://writinglesson.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

Here are some great resources on Nonfiction writing instruction and nonfiction mentor texts. With the new focus on nonfiction in the CCSS, these are valuable. Enjoy:} Courtesy of Choice Literacy.

 

 

 

Here are two features from the Choice Literacy archives to hone your skills in nonfiction writing instruction.

 

Ann Marie Corgill lets her writing curriculum do double duty, building social and literacy skills in Learning to Write Engaging Nonfiction: A Middle School Partner Writing Study:

 

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=1147

 

 

Franki Sibberson finds literary nonfiction provides rich and varied writing models for elementary students. She shares some of her favorite mentor texts:

 

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=342

 

If you're looking for new nonfiction text models, you might want to explore Choice Literacy's Pinterest board Great Nonfiction for Kids. We add to it weekly, and it currently includes more than five dozen annotated children's books:

 

http://pinterest.com/choiceliteracy/great-nonfiction-for-kids/

 

 

We've posted Part 2 of our favorite digital reading and writing tools round-up with contributions from Maria Caplin, Michelle Kelly, Mandy Robek, Katherine Sokolowski, and Brian Sepe:

 

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=1570

Teachers First is a great FREE resource for all teachers. I have provided you with a link to their featured sites. Take a few minutes and browse their sites. You will find many that lend themselves to writing. Enjoy!

Featured Sites
This week in our Featured Sites, find practical review and individual support:

• Extensive IWB resources
• A clever writing tool, now improved
• Math help and a math "word processor"
• Amazing nature video and audio
• Daily infographics
• Two amazing tools
• A place to collect your thoughts and words
• A no-membership-required mind map tool
• Slave stories
• ELL and grammar help

And MORE. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are reading this May 5 or later, the link above will take you to the Featured Sites for the current week. Find the archived April 28 Features here, and don't miss our many additional recent additions from the link at the bottom of the Featured sites page.

May your least successful student(s) discover an accomplishment to be proud of as the month of May begins.

Another message from Corbett and Dena Harrison. Enjoy:}

Last Friday (our last day before Spring Break began this week), school administration interrupted my Travels with Charley quiz to bring our whole team down to the activity room, where it was announced that a nice award had been given to me.  Our International Reading Association, based on all the lessons I've post and help other teachers post freely, are giving me a nice something-to-hang-on-my-wall in a few weeks, and they wanted to make sure they said nice things about me in front of my students, who won't be able to attend their banquet.  Anyway, it was an honor, and it--of course--fueled me up to spend my whole Spring Break preparing and planning new materials for the next school year.  I thought I'd share the following plans with those of you who follow my work:

1.  My September vocabulary lesson (A Classroom of Logophiles) goes down--according to me--as being my best new lesson of the year.  I will be awarding five special, notebook-friendly ribbons to my five students who have maintained the best vocabulary collections this school year in May.  If you haven't checked out all the teacher-submitted vocabulary collection cover pages that teachers from around the country posted, you should:  http://writinglesson.ning.com/group/publishingstudentwriting/forum/topics/publish-vocabulary-cover-pages-here  Anyway, as you know, Dena and I both create a new for-sale product each summer to add to our online collection; I have adapted so many ideas and collected so many student samples all year long from my vocabulary collectors, that I will be publishing a brand new "Turning Your Kids into Vocabulary Collectors" PDF packet this July.  The "Classroom of Logophiles" will remain online as a free-to-use lesson, but the new packet of supplementary materials will become available this summer.

2.  Dena--who has grown tired of reading chapter summaries and taking (blech!) AR Tests to prove students are reading, is designing a new product this summer called "Reading Notebook Bingo Cards," which will be completely separate though a nice complement to our "Writer's Notebook Bingo Cards."  She has been designing engaging and writer's notebook friendly prompts that will have students respond creatively and at high levels of Bloom's taxonomy to the reading they have done in the past week.  Hopefully, she will be cable to convince her school to be a little less dependent on AR Points, and more dependent on meaningful writing based on students' chosen books.  Dena will be rolling out her new Reader's Notebook Bingo Cards in July too.

3.  I'm still looking for a good book to feature as this next year's "Mentor Text of the Year."  My district and the Common Core Standards are demanding more essays from my writer's workshop, so I'm leaning towards Gretchen Bernabei's Reviving the Essay, but if anyone has a good mentor text that really would help make essay writing fun, I'd love to know the title.  Please feel free to send it to me.

Well, off to get the puppy his final round of shots.  Hope I didn't leave any typos in this quickly-written summary of my Spring Break planning.  Enjoy your weekend, everyone.

--Corbett (and Dena) Harrison (http://corbettharrison.com)

Visit Writing Lesson of the Month Network at: http://writinglesson.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

 

Corbett Harrisson posts his April Fool's 6 + 1 Traits April Lesson. Enjoy:}

Crazy day of April Fool's pranks from my kiddos.  You?  At one point, I went next door to pick up a print-out and came back to find all my desks upside-down and the kids giggling.  Gotta love 12-year-old humor once a year, I guess. I just posted the Writing Lesson of the Month and the Writer's Notebook Prompt of the Month at my website.  I hope you enjoy them. Lesson of the Month:  Song Parodies  My kids love to write new lyrics to familiar tunes.  Here is my complete lesson on that idea! Writer's Notebook Prompt of the Month:  Inventing Collecting Nouns  This is actually a game my wife and I play in the car that became a page in my writer's notebook.  Enjoy! Remember, all past lessons (seven years' worth!) can be accessed any time at the archive at my website! Thanks for all your kind words about our completed set of PowerPoint Sacred Writing Time Slides.  It's an honor to send a monthly lesson out to all of you wonderful educators out there. --Corbett & Dena Harrison (http://corbettharrrison.com)

Visit Writing Lesson of the Month Network at: http://writinglesson.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network