writing right

Have I ever mentioned to you that I aspire to be a writer? It is in my wildest dreams. Me - an author - sounds like so much fun. Growing up I had pen pals. My aunt and I wrote back and forth. If I was mad at my mom I would slip a note under her bathroom door. I wrote a ton of notes to my friends, boyfriends and even my enemies. I have always loved to write and am a big fan of using correct spelling. Words that are not spelled correctly drive me crazy. Once in Crandall, I made my friends stop at the marquis to change peice to piece. I could finally drive past that sign and not get fired up. I am a very kinesthetic learner - I need to write it to remember it. I doodle whenever I am listening and can still grasp the sermon, the faculty meeting bullets or the ideas being presented. Anyone that has ever sat by me has seen my doodling in action.

This week I have presented a challenge to my students. I don't teach writing but after these past couple of days, I think I would love to. Only thing is, the grading would be horrid. Anyway, we are studying biomes in Science and I thought that writing a research paper would be a great way to end the unit and will count as their test grade. Yesterday I taught them how to make an outline - you know, the old-fashioned way to organize facts and thoughts. (Sidenote: There was a question that I saw on a released Science TAKS that mentioned an outline and the students had no idea what this was.) So, we got the roman numeral I with our subject and then headed to the lettered subtopics. Some got a little roman numeral crazy and I had to tell them that for this particular assignment we would not need any other roman numerals, everything would fall under the "I. Land biomes" topic. We moved onto our first biome, tropical rain forest, and added the five important facts. Then, I allowed the students to get with a partner to research and add information for the other five biomes. I was amazed at how quickly they picked this up. I hope to do this more often. (Maybe they'll think of me as they get older and need to write papers.) Yesterday and part of today was outline completion. Then, we started the research paper. I helped them with the introduction and the first paragraph. I did not get any of the normal sighs or huffs. I think they might be catching my "I love to write" vibe. The students took over on the second paragraph and it was completely silent in the room. I told them how much writing meant to me and how I enjoyed it. They had lots of questions about if I took a class in college and so forth. I hope that this turns out to be a great learning experience for them and maybe even a life lesson. I'll let you know how they turn out.