Enrichment Menu for Writing

The Unquiet Librarian is at it again.  She is back with new and exciting ideas about writing.  She is a middle school librarian and writing teacher.  If you love getting new ideas for writing then you should definitely consider following her blog.

I found two topics on writing that I wanted to share.  One is the March Madness Enrichment Learning Menu and the other is Visual Thinking Strategies (should handwriting die?)  

The March Madness Enrichment program.  This is program is so top-notch.  She got to work on it because she was seeing that her students were struggling to stay focused and needed some inspiration.  Plus she has the common problem so many teachers have :  students with a wide range of abilities.  She decided to come up with 9 different enrichment stations some of which include: Vocabulary.com, NoRedInk.com, creative writing with Reader's Theatre Scripts, creative writing with Tableaux, revising and editing task cards+QR codes, revising with QR codes, persona poems, and two clubs (Women's History Club and a Evidence Detective Club).

Each choice was developed with learning styles in mind.  Some of the groups are individual, others are collaborative and some are purely creative.  The stations are meant only for enrichment and are to be done only after classwork has been finished.  She says that she taught the whole system to her classes and then put the choices on display in a hanging file folder system.  If kids forget what each is about or need it read to them again, they can scan the QR codes can be scanned to hear it repeated or see it as a slideshow.  Click befow for more info.

Enrichment menus for writing


The next article is on Visual Thinking Strategies.  She says that most of us think about showing pictures as prompts to get writers juiced up on a topic to write about, but this time she had an idea that took a different turn.  Her students had been writing about whether handwriting is useful or not. She got an idea to pull out personal notes, recipes and letters from her mother.  She told her students that reading her mother's handwriting makes her feel closer to her even though she isn't there.  (Her mother passed away) and for her her handwriting is a strong connect to her.



She projected her handwriting up on the wall to them and got them to look at her handwriting.  They talked about it and did 5-7 minute burst sessions of writing on what they saw, thought and wondered about.  Then they did a turn and talk with one another.  Their noticings were amazing and it gave them another perspective on "if handwriting should die."  Click below for more info.

Writers see, think and wonder