August 29, 2012

Teaching the Neglected "R": Rethinking Writing Instruction in Secondary Classrooms by Thomas Newkirk
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In this text it was arranged in six topics that surround writing. There were between four to five chapters on each topic. I feel as though even though the title of the book discusses secondary instruction teachers at other levels can get a lot out of this text and adapt it to their teaching situations. As I was reading this text I had to stop several times and make notes in the margin, ask myself questions, make happy faces about things I want to try with my Title I students. Many of the authors in this text stated that writing is about thinking. Two quotes that really stuck with me were

*Everybody is talented, original, and has something important to say.

*Kids are digital immigrants to when it comes to purposeful and powerful uses of emergent technologies as readers and writers.

The second quote made me think about how teachers use technology in their classrooms and that it needs to be tied into authentic learning not just learning a technology tool for the purposes of learning that tool. I feel I have done this with the blog I have created as part of the Southern Maine Writing Project. I want to share my knowledge of level text with all teachers and have a forum where parents can communicate with me about books for their children. Also one last plug for this book is page 276 where there is a wealth of models to teach children to respond in writing.

As a sidenote, I have been reading this book on and off all summer. It is not a book to just read through you really need to break it up over time and find the areas of interest that you have in your own practice.
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  Today was the first teacher workshop day in Sanford and I enjoyed talking with colleagues about what they did over the summer.  It made me also think about the last teacher book that I just finished reading as part of the Southern Maine Writing Project.