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Free webinar with Nicholas Kristof on Oct. 10. Will be archived after the live session. "How can writing change people’s understanding of the world? How can it influence public opinion? How can it lead to meaningful action?
In this post, which accompanies our Oct. 10 webinar, Write to Change the World: Crafting Persuasive Pieces With Help from Nicholas Kristof and the Times Op-Ed Page, we round up the best pieces we’ve published over the years about how to use the riches of The Times’s Opinion section to teach and learn.
We’ve sorted the ideas — many of them from teachers — into two sections. The first helps students do close-readings of editorials and Op-Eds, as well as Times Op-Docs, Op-Art and editorial cartoons. The second suggests ways for students to discover their own voices on the issues they care about. We believe they, too, can “write to change the world.”
Join our webinar (live on Oct. 10 or on-demand after) to learn more, and let us know in the comments how you teach these important skills."
Via Jim Lerman
Jennifer Gonzalez writes: "In an educational setting, curation has a ton of potential as an academic task. Sure, we’re used to assigning research projects, where students have to gather resources, pull out information, and synthesize that information into a cohesive piece of informational or argumentative writing. This kind of work is challenging and important, and it should remain as a core assignment throughout school, but how often do we make the collection of resources itself a stand-alone assignment?"
We'd like to share this critical thinking skills cheatsheet for you to use with your students. Get them asking questions on any topic!
Images with writing prompts from The New York Times.
A short promotion of titles in our library that would provide informational text to supplement literature units.
Check out Jen Roberts amazing blog of yes, classroom charts! She has generously shared her work here, so if you use anything, it would be lovely to let her know! She's on Twitter: @JenRoberts1
Abi Frost writes: "Most teachers I know have a deep interest in words and academic language. That’s probably why many of us became teachers— so we could expand and deepen students’ vocabularies and in turn make them stronger readers, writers, speakers and thinkers. Right? Unfortunately, most teenagers are not inherently 'word nerds' like we are."
Shannon McClintock Miller writes: "One of my all time favorite books is The Day The Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. It is the cutest little story about a box of Crayons....and the illustrations by Drew Daywalt make them all come to life. "
Sylvia Vardell writes: "It’s been 50 years since the signing of the Civil Rights Act, in 1964, when discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin became against the law. It may be difficult for children today to imagine a world in which such discrimination was a common practice, but it is important that we recognize the ongoing effects of such prejudice and pause to celebrate the progress the U.S. has made as a nation. That’s where literature can be especially powerful in capturing the pain of the past, the ongoing fight for justice, and our hopes for the future."
"The late twentieth century marked a resurgence of Shakespeare on film. Directors and actors with styles as diverse as Kenneth Branagh, Baz Luhrmann and Mel Gibson strove to popularize "Hamlet" on the big screen, and students became used to seeing adaptations of Shakespeare arrive at their local Cineplex. The tradition in teaching has been to review the play by showing the entire movie. Viewing clips of the same Shakespeare scene in different film versions offers students the opportunity to engage in close critical analysis and to compare interpretations and visual styles. This technique also inspires students to value and create their own interpretations of Shakespeare. Though this lesson deals specifically with Hamlet and its themes, many of the strategies and approaches here may be used with most any of Shakespeare's plays that have been adapted to film."
Amanda Ronan writes: "The Common Core State Standards do not have to mean the death of creative work produced by your students. If anything, the emphasis on textual analysis gives you more reason to explore interesting and creative ways for students to engage with texts. "
Annie Murphy Paul writes:
“A man who traveled from Liberia to visit family members in Texas tested positive for Ebola on Tuesday, marking the outbreak’s first diagnosis outside of Africa, health officials said.” That’s a pretty standard lead-in for a news story, pitched at the level of a newspaper-reading adult. But it’s a long, rather complex sentence, and a younger reader would likely find it easier to digest if it were broken into two parts. The lead would then start off: “A man who traveled from Liberia to visit family members in Texas tested positive for Ebola on Tuesday.”
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Donalyn Miller writes: "I have no issue with assessing students' reading levels and identifying text complexity. As a teacher, I find such information helpful when determining my students' reading ability and what books might fit them. What concerns me is that in many situations, Lexile measures become the sole factor in book selection and recommendation. While identifying readability can be useful when evaluating textbooks, guided reading texts, or other teaching materials, selecting books for classroom instruction and recommending books for independent reading are two different processes."
Connie Malamed writes: "In visual art and graphic design, a composition is the arrangement of visual elements into one cohesive whole. In eLearning and presentation design, every slide can be seen as a composition. The way that you combine text and image (including shapes) in a slide affects the message you convey and the visual appeal of the material."
Katrina Schwartz writes: " Students are doing more reading on digital devices than they ever have before. Not only are many teachers using tablets and computers for classroom instruction, but many state tests are now administered on computers, adding incentive for teachers to teach digital reading strategies. But casual digital reading on the internet has instilled bad habits in many students, making it difficult for them to engage deeply with digital text in the same way they do when reading materials printed on paper."
If you love the movies and inquiry-based learning, why not stack them together? Explore using these inquiry lesson ideas for learning students will love!
Meaghan Hanrahan Dobson, an English teacher at an alternative high school, says schools do a disservice to struggling students by denying them opportunities for authentic reading experiences.
In this unit plan, an eighth-grade English teacher pushes her students to think deeply about what makes a good argument through an analysis of logos, pathos and ethos before conducting their own research and constructing their own editorial position.
John Spencer writes: " We are naturally inclined to find information fascinating -- to the point that we have to share it out to the world. Nobody on Facebook is getting a grade for it. They're sharing an article because they found it relevant. As a classroom teacher, I want to see that same level of excitement as students engage with informational texts.
COMMONLIT is a collection of poems, short stories, news articles, historical documents, and literature for classrooms.- 1 Choose a theme
- 2 Choose a discussion question
- 3 Choose a text
- Ready for Tomorrow!
Catlin Tucker writes: "I’m always on the look out for great resources to support reading. While leading a training in Alaska this weekend, a participant mentioned The Smithsonian Tween (& Teen) Tribune. This free resource is a great place to grab informational and nonfiction texts written at various Lexile levels to support a wide range of reading abilities."
Abi Frost writes: "With the shift to Common Core State Standards, there has been lots of talk of “close reading.” As a reading specialist, my responsibility is to help my students reach toward grade level with their reading skills, which most certainly involves having them read texts closely. But, what does close reading look like? And how do you get a reluctant and struggling adolescent reader to read the same text more than once and pay close attention to the details? It is quite a challenge, but these go-to strategies have helped me enable my students, across grades 7-12, uncover the multiple meanings of text."
Dave gives a great explanation of how to use Kelly Gallagher's Article of the Week assignment. This is an area where librarians can support teachers--help find articles, recommend Newsela, etc. Key features I liked from Dave's approach:
~Mark your confusion. Showing students that figuring out what they don't know or understand is key to eventual comprehension. It helps to model this, too:)
~ Annotate. Here's your proof of close reading. And annotate means commenting, not smily faces or excl...
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There's so much here for teachers to explore!