Friday, September 2, 2011

Interesting Discussion ... and Best Wishes for a Happy Long Weekend!

Today, the ninth graders demonstrated to me that they remember the discussion protocols established last year.  Students talked frankly about education and the need to balance the individual needs of students (freedom to express creativity chief among them) with the realities of standardized testing.

This is an interesting approach to discussing an informational piece, so I'm sharing it with you.
1.  Topic-based Quickwrite
2.  Short formal whole-class discussion
3.  Read the text
4.  Text-related writing assignment
5.  Follow-up discussion
6.  Written reflection of the topic and the protocol.

While we didn't get a chance to finish, I was incredibly impressed with the depth students reached with their discussion as well as their collective ability to articulate.

They have definitely earned their four-day weekend :-)

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