“In
Fifty Words or Less” (Chapter 5) has helped refine my own thought process while
writing, though my students may not be able to master as complex a skill until
key vocabulary in readings can be identified, opinions can be defended with
textual evidence or prior knowledge, and grammatically correct connector words
are established.
In
using the skills presented in this chapter, a next step for the strategy skill
I demonstrated in our last class may be to have students write questions for
given answers, allowing students to write key terms and connector words on
their own first, and then later, try to identify similarities in their question
creations as compared to the actual question designed for the answer choices.
Many of my students have trouble writing
out full sentences; so at this stage, introducing short statement writing may
actually cause them to put less of their ideas onto paper, or to miss key
ideas. I fear students will remove
information density from their writing in order to shorten the overall text.
However, I think noting punctuation (colon, semicolon, comma) use in text and
Regents questions will help students’ overall reading comprehension. I plan to
implement a reading activity next week for my students to identify how
punctuation works in an argumentative essay, as this type of writing was
included in their most recent project assignment.
If I gave my students a task of creating a high density paragraph, I don't think it would turn out very well. Like you, my students struggle just to write out full sentences. This would be a great skill for them to acquire, but seems a bit of a stretch at this point. Maybe they could work on creating one high density sentence about a topic they are learning?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I'm very interested to hear more about the reading activity you have planned for your class.
Here's a cool idea. Explain to students that words have different weights. Some words pack a stronger punch than others- they have more real estate 'value' in the sentence. Write a sentence on the overhead projector. Together go through the sentence. Discuss and then eliminate words that do not have enough "value" in the sentence. It may sound tedious, but if you do it together and model it effectively and give students a chance to practice it-- It CAN work! :)
ReplyDelete(After doing it on the board, divide students into groups of 3. Give a sentence on a large piece of paper to each group and have them repeat the exercise.)