Comments on: Teaching Writing Tip #2: Where's the Beef?

By: Creating Lifelong Learners » Blog Archive » 10 Myths of Writer’s Workshop: Part 3 of 4

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:00:43 +0000

[...] written about this before as well. Focusing on structure before starting to write can lead to bland, generic paragraphs and reduce [...]

By: Carnival of Education at The Core Knowledge Blog

Carnival of Education at The Core Knowledge Blog — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:51:33 +0000

[...] you have seen the hamburger model of writing?” asks Mathew Needleman in Teaching Writing Tip #2: Where’s the Beef? at Open Court Resources.com Blog. ”Try to imagine Dostoyevsky using a hamburger drawing to [...]

By: Steven Kimmi

Steven Kimmi — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:52:52 +0000

I have had that talk, writing is important for the development of reading (especially with persuasive text). The only thing I can say is that there will hopefully be a shift within our school/district soon, to alter the idea that our job as educators is to teach the (tested) indicators, instead teaching what our kids still need.

But who knows…it’s funny, how to be a great educator these days, there has to be a level of shadiness…

By: Mathew

Mathew — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:15:22 +0000

@Kimberley,
Let me know how it works.

@Steven,
Obviously, I think it does students a real disservice to allow them only ten minutes of writing time since I think that pretty much eliminates the ability of the teacher to model the writing process. I would argue to whoever will listen that writing relates directly to reading comprehension test scores and see how far you get on that.

By: Steven Kimmi

Steven Kimmi — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:23:46 +0000

Who has time to write? My district/school, in preperation for the State test, have reduced writing time to the LAST fifteen minutes of the day. Because we are a school with a large bussing population, that means 2/3rds of my class only get 10 minutes.

Sorry for the rant. Great ideas here, creation is messy work, to organize it from the get-go seems counterproductive.

So…how to teach writing in a (chaotic) 10 min. block?

By: Kimberly Vance

Kimberly Vance — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:12:55 +0000

Mathew,

That actually makes a lot of sense. Every time I introduce some kind of advance organizer, the quality of writing goes down. But since so many of my students struggle with organization, I have continued to try different methods. I think on our next project I am going to try this ‘backwards’ approach.