Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

Adapted from Atwell, N.,  Lessons That Change Writers , Portsmouth, NH, 2002   A student works on a draft of her essay during writer's workshop Guidelines for Writer's Workshop Expectations for Writer's Workshop Find topics and purposes for your writing that matter to you, your life, who you are, and who you might become. Create and maintain plans of your territories as a writer: the ideas, topics, purposes, genres, forms, and techniques that you’d like to experience and explore. Make your own decisions about what’s working and what needs more work in pieces of your writing. Be your own first responder. Ready yourself with a critical, literary eye and ear 4.  Listen to, ask questions about, and comment on others’ writing in ways that help them move their writing forward, toward literature. 5.  Maintain a record of the pieces of writing you finish. File finished writing in your writing portfolio. 6.  Attempt professional publication. 7.  Recogn

This unit, "Seeing/Ways to "See" Literature" has been preparing you for reading a work of fiction and applying a critical lens of your choice as you read and as you analyze the selection in writing AFTER you have read.  Your Task: (CHOOSE ONE) A. Read and annotate (in your learning log) one longer article or two short articles on "The Yellow Wallpaper" from JSTOR, available  here .  Use your reading to inform your essay Now that you have had a brief review of literary analysis and now that you have had an introduction to different approaches to critical analyses, it is time to show off your writing skills.  Pick EITHER one (1) of the essay topics below   and write one (1) five (5) paragraph essay, complete with an introduction and conclusion OR pick five (5) prompts to respond to, writing one (1) paragraph for each one.  These paragraphs should each have an introduction sentence and a concluding sentence.  These essays will prepare

Summary of Fitzgerald’s “English-as-a-Second Language Learner’s Cognitive Reading Processes: A Review of the Research in the United States”             In this article, Jill Fitzgerald reviews the research on English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) learners in the United States to date (1995) [1] .   She notes that ethnic and racial diversity continues to increase in our country; thus educators’ concerns about ESL students and their instruction continues to rise.   Out of necessity, there has been a growth in ESL research, research that explores various aspects of the ESL learner and instruction.   This article is mainly concerned with characterizing and making sense of research pertaining to ESL learners and their cognitive processes during reading.             In this research review, Fitzgerald uses the federal definition of ‘limited English proficient’ as given in public law 100-297 (146).   To be categorized as such, a person needs to meet the following criteria:   a.) not born in

A Teacher's Reflection:  How My Post Masters Classes in Reading Informed My Practice ELL students clap for a fellow classmate after a presentation My Classroom (in 2009)            The teaching context is high school English language arts (ELA) and English language learners (ELLs).   My students are in grades 9-12.   I teach in a large, diverse school of approximately 2300 students located in Burke County.   I typically have between five to fourteen students in any given ELL class and between twenty to thirty-two students in an ELA class.   This past year, I taught an ELL course for novices just starting to acquire conversational English.   I also taught a reading class aimed at providing students with strategies to survive in their content courses like world history and biology.   I taught a communication skills course that focused on all the domains of language usage:   reading, writing, listening, and speaking.   All of my students were native Spanish speakers from Guat