CSMP

Workshop at SJSU: Super Saturday 3-3-12 Grade Levels 4-7

 Writing with a Sense of Wonder   How can teachers frame classes and create writing opportunities that allow students to spend time with topics that deserve better than the ubiquitous 5-paragraph analysis?  Can a product review of the incandescent light bulb or other scientific invention encourage student writers to explore a science unit with more purpose and higher order thinking?  Or persuasive writing in an advertisement for Gutenberg’s printing press? Perhaps composing epigrams (that forerunner of the modern bumper sticker) to capture a deeper meaning of issues facing the newly formed United States?  Make the writing standards work for you with assignments that create deeper and more sustained understanding in literature and nonfiction.  Take a page (literally) from the Age of Romanticism and blend science and exposition, math and persuasion, social studies and narration for writing that comes from that good reader strategy “I wonder?” (4-7)   Suzanne Murphy, St. Martin of Tours School, Diocese of San Jose