As a teacher, it seems like there are no guarantees for the kind of day you'll have. We can plan the best lesson, but it can completely flop for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, we fail to implement it correctly, sometimes our students are in a different country (figuratively speaking, of course), and other times it just plain fails.
I've been open about the fact that teaching structured writing is difficult for me. I often feel torn between creative expression and the need to give a formula to students. Balance. So teaching students how to craft the perfect paragraph has been my Achilles Heel. I always botch it in some way.It's a struggle to teach something that comes so naturally to me, and this summer I had to have a come to Jesus meeting with myself. I couldn't continue to do something bad just because it wasn't easy. Feel free to insert a corny saying. I decided to scaffold every piece of the 8-sentence paragraph. Scaffolding is a whole other blog in itself, but I can proudly say that I've owned scaffolding of the 8-sentence paragraph for the past month. It hasn't always been easy, and there were days I wondered if it was working.
I've been getting some pretty strong evidence that it is. Is it perfect? Far from it. But we're making progress, and I'm learning a lot, and that's half the battle. Writing is an essential skill to possess, and I want to make sure that my students are prepared. No excuses.
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