The funniest thing happened to me today! As I was driving to work, I was thinking about this blog and what I should add as a comment tonight. I was thinking about focused studies and, in particular, how I could go about adding the topic of focused studies to the blog. (This past summer I presented a workshop on effective writing instruction with Kelly Winney. We took the participants through a persuasive writing study. Since then, I’ve been gathering more information on persuasive writing and I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to work with a teacher/group of teachers on such a unit. So focused studies have been on my mind a lot lately.)
At school (Prince Edward) I sat down with the principal to go over the school’s Strategic Learning Plan. Lo and behold, one of the school’s goals is to focus on a school wide genre study, using non-fiction narratives!! (Early Years are focusing on recounts, Primary on personal narratives, and Junior and Intermediate on memoirs.) Small world! I am so excited! My opportunity to work with teachers on a focused study has arrived!!
So, the purpose of this section of my Blog will be to share stories and ideas related to focused studies. I encourage readers to respond, ask questions, or share ideas. Below are links that I found for the Prince Edward staff:
http://www.schoolwide.com/pages/memoir.htm
http://teacher.scholastic.com/writeit/memoir/teacher/easing.htm
http://msit.gsu.edu/Readingconsortium/The_Literacy_Lens/Articles/1_2_/memior.pdf
http://www.middleweb.com/ReadWrkshp/RWdownld/CurrCalendar2.pdf
