Today's zinger (Compliments don't get much better than this one): "Mrs. Kratzer, you can TEACH. I freakin' learn, yo!"
When I have writing instruction in my lesson plans, I wake up before my alarm and beat the custodian to school. More than literature, speaking, or any other strand of ELA, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to teach students how to write. A bonus is my passion for teaching teachers about writing instruction. There's nothing like seeing one of my peers light up in one of those Aha! moments. Here's my teacher tip for the day: When teaching students to support and elaborate, have them color code their work. Blue is for concrete details, factual information that can be documented or found in the text. Red is for topic sentences and elaboration. The job of elaboration is to connect the blue concrete detail to the debatable idea in the topic sentence. I'll dig out a color coding lesson plan and get that posted soon.
Here's a lesson plan on teaching tone, and I've used this lesson with every level of high school student:
Introduction to Tone
Here's a great PowerPoint for visualizing tone:
Using Images to Introduce Tone
I second that zinger :) -- a 25 year old blessed to have been with Mrs. Kratzer two years in high school
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