Ben Slavic

No Desks This Year

No desks this year. Three big blue armchairs, real comfortable ones, form a kind of dominant triad almost like in a living room, around my instructional space. No one gets a chair right away, because they are reserved. All the students have to sit in the plastic chairs that are between the armchairs and behind them.

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Free Write Options

Free Writes/Fluency Writes are evolving from the days when we just counted words. We are starting to define writing in terms of standards. Last week we posted Bob Patrick’s writing plan, a real winner, and now we have another concrete idea from Lance, which might make it easier for us to talk to parents about

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Bread and Butter

Those in the PLC who are familiar with the terms and who are experienced, do CWB to finish classes. Start with stories. Be sure to assign jobs: Story Writer Quiz Writer Artist 3 PQA Counters Professor 2 Timer Why? Because assigning these jobs and getting the kids working in those capacities completely changes the feel

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Question for the Group

In 2009-2010 Annick Chen at Lincoln High School was asked by her administrative team, along with every teacher in the building, to make writing the focal point for that year. Ever dutiful, but knowing full well how people acquire languages, Annick boosted the amount of writing her students did significantly. Their writing scores went down

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