Thing 5b

Writing Lesson Plans... That Don't Rush the Writing by Debra Karr

Ok, this may not be a new idea, but I liked the different criteria she has listed here. I know my students don't always take group activities seriously, so the more structure (checklists) they have, the better. The more presenting/discussing, the better. I liked the enforced time limit idea. I don't understand why someone wouldn't want to take the time to make sure their friend's work doesn't have silly mistakes, but most of the time I see they're not really motivated. This makes me wonder about the people they call "friends." :) "Sure, man, I can look at your paper... for a whole 10 seconds... " When I taught English in Gwinnett, we had copies of Anchor papers. I'm not sure if Barrow uses these (or even calls them by the same name), but they're example papers that have comments and a score level (A, B, C, F) on them. I could see adapting that idea to French and working with Debra Karr's ideas in the hope that this next group of students will do better. Usually I don't ask my kids to do more than proofread, but I liked how they need to justify why they think this one is a good work sample, etc.