Writing on Command

  Kill Two Birds With One Stone--Read then Write Ditch Your Study Guide & Do This Instead! By Sarah Stratton Writing on Command is primarily about writing, but writing about reading grows readers and is still writing. My daughter, Jessica, has taken the Quotes of Support Template and has run with it with her 10th grade students. She uses this instead of a study guide/study guide questions that follow reading assignments. (Any subject area could ditch the study guide and use this.) Study guides ensure that students review the important content in any subject area. The problem with study guides is this–they require very little cognitive effort, are not text-dependent, and do not grow readers. (I even doubt that they improve knowledge.) However, some sort of review is important. I created the Quotes of Support Alternate Study Guide when my 9th grade honors class at Drew Central was reading The Crucible . Because it was a play, I knew that some students would not be reading aloud...

  Why making your students reread portions of a text they’ve already read and think about what they’ve read THROUGH WRITING will move their reading scores forward more than just discussion What is Literacy? Literacy is the ability to both read and write. We tend to think of literacy as the ability to read; it isn’t though. It is the ability to READ & WRITE.  Reading equates to word knowledge. The more words students knows, the better they comprehend their texts. That is because students automatically gain words when they have read the words 8-10 or so times. Because gaining words is automatic through reading, it's easy to see why reading is the best way to improve reading. The number of times a students has to see a word to automatically acquire it is important. A curriculum must spend enough time on a topic that students do see the words enough times to gain them. Unfortunately, most literacy curriculums fall short in the writing aspect. They tend to depend less on writin...