What Student Writing Teaches Us

I’m pleased to participate in the Blog Tour for Mark Overmeyer and his Stenhouse publication What Student Writing Teaches Us. This extremely practical yet highly informed book answers many of the questions I’veasked myself over the past 20 years, or heard from my colleagues in teacher workshops. For more information on this book (which you can read in full online at the Stenhouse site), visit my Teaching that Sticks blog.

Prior to Mark’s visit on June 29th at Teaching that Sticks, I encourage you to check out the full book online at the Stenhouse site. As you read, jot down your thoughts and questions for the author and then send them my way. We’ll pose these questions to Mark when he visits on June 29th. Don’t hold back! Don’t be shy! This is your chance to pick the brain of a guru who has spent countless hours in classroom, observing and interacting with teachers and students passionately engaged in the writing process.

Classics Online

There are hundreds of sites online that allow you to read public domain classics such as 1984 and Paradise Lost. If Google is any measure, the search phrase "Read Classic Literature Online" serves up 321 results, and "Read Classics Online" serves up 5,740.

If you're looking for the best site of its kind, I highly recommend ReadPrint. Unlike other literary classics sites, ReadPrint is incredibly lean and clean, with a modern interface with no annoying ads or upsells. Over 8,000 books by 3,500 authors available at your fingertips.

Like most other sites, you can search by either author, title, or writing type (essay, fiction, nonfiction, play, short story, poem). But what's really nice is that ReadPrint also provides you the author's biography and selected quotes. The quotes alone are worth the visit! I found myself reading through dozens of these, thinking how each could be used as a great thinking prompt at the start of class.

What happens so often as we get involved with new writers and new books is we forget how terrific the "old school stuff" really is. Take this character description from the opening page of Treasure Island as an example:

I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow--a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.

"This is a handy cove," says he at length; "and a pleasant sittyated grog-shop. Much company, mate?"

My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.

"Well, then," said he, "this is the berth for me. Here you, matey," he cried to the man who trundled the barrow; "bring up alongside and help up my chest. I'll stay here a bit," he continued. "I'm a plain man; rum and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I see what you're at-- there"; and he threw down three or four gold pieces on the threshold. "You can tell me when I've worked through that," says he, looking as fierce as a commander.

Arr, that be good writin.' And there's plenty more where that came from. Give ReadPrint a visit; it's sure to become your go-to site for classical inspiration.

Two Hot Resources

By sending you over to Literacy is Priceless, I'm hooking you up with two hot resources. First of all, that blog itself. Lots of web and tech resources for bringing literacy into the 21st Century.

Second is the topic of that post, which is the Shmoop website. Shmoop is a fabulous collection of resources in the areas of literature, history, and poetry. I love free stuff! But at this site I especially appreciate the section of each resource called "Why Should I Care?" Next to free stuff, I love relevance!

"Why should we care about this stuff?" is the grunted (yet valid) motto of every middle and high school student, and these well-written and funny selections answer that question (for example, check out the Why Should I Care? for 1984).

Plan to spend some time there.

Don't Know Much About Literature

This review of the upcoming Don't Know Much About Literature by Kenneth C. Davis and Jenny Davis (Summer 2009, Harper Collins) is somewhat biased.

First of all, I was a huge fan of Kenneth C. Davis' Don't Know Much About History. I found that book to be equal parts entertainment and enlightenment. I'm not even embarrassed to say that 50% of that book was news to me. I'd probably still be enjoying it even now, but it's one of those books that's too good to keep to yourself. (And apparently too good to give back to its owner...)

Secondly, as a teacher, I'm a big fan of his Don't Know Much About... series for students. It's profusely illustrated with just enough facts to get them interested in learning more. Don't Know Much About the Presidents is one of my favorites.

Thirdly, I love literature, although judging by my poor performance on this book's quizzes, I'm obviously not as well read as I should be!

Don't Know Much About Literature is a fun way to assess your knowledge of literature old and new, and to gain some tidbits to share in your middle or high school class (or your next backyard barbecue). Selections are typically one page long, with half a dozen questions about authors, novels, lines, film and theatre adaptations, and literary honors.

Here are a few random questions to test your literary IQ:

1. Which Toni Morrison novel received the Pulitzer Prize in 1988?

2. Which book was the basis of the Broadway hit The Man of La Mancha?

3. Who opened their poem with this famous line: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways"?

4. Identify this short story from its first line: "In walks three girls in nothing but bathing suits."

5. What was the first Agatha Christie novel to feature Miss Marple?

6. Who directed the 1980 version of The Shining?

7. In what novel does this first line appear? "You'd better not never tell nobody but God."

Do you even need to see the answers? C'mon, they were all easy, right? Well, just to check your spellings, if nothing else...

1. Beloved

2. Don Quixote

3. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnet 13)

4. A & P by John Updike

5. Murder at the Vicarage (1930)

6. Stanley Kubrick

7. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

If you scored 7 out of 7, I bow to your literary prowess! I missed the Miss Marple question and I'd be embarrassed to tell you my guess for #3.

So if you want a great gift for a teacher, a book of "stumpers" for your high school AP class, or just a fun read for yourself, you can preorder now and beat the rush!

Unpacking Passages

If you dug the idea of using Quote Analysis, or if you teach The Great Gatsby, you'll want to see the Unpacking Passages pages over at TeachEng.us.

What I like about Ben Davis' approach is that he created an acronym which would better help students remember the steps. Even this, however, needed some fine tuning and some scaffolding, which Ben describes in an earlier post.

Okay, if you still haven't clicked onto that blog, one more thing you'll dig is the presentation of the documents there, as facilitated by Issuu. If you're a blogger, or if you have a classroom site, you'll appreciate the cool format provided by this free application.

Interested in more ways to organize student note taking? Check out my recent post on Graphic Organizers over at Teaching that Sticks.