NCTE INBOX

October 19, 2004

...ideas

Free access to journal articles mentioned in this Inbox is provided for 21 days. After this free access period expires, articles are available to journal subscribers only. Initials in annotations indicate academic level of the resource (E=Elementary, M=Middle, S=Secondary, C=College, G=General).

Student Publishing
Inspired by the Melisa McCain's Write Start project outlined in Indianapolis Star article linked above? These resources will you publish student work in your classroom. "Success Is in the Details: Publishing to Validate Elementary Authors" (E), from Language Arts, describes a school-based publishing program built on the efforts of teachers, parents, students, and a succession of supportive school principals.

In "Prior to Publishing: Word Work" (M) from Voices from the Middle, Tom Romano shares stories, strategies, favorite leads and more as he shepherds student writing through to publication. The English Journal article "Publishing with a Purpose: Caring for Our Community" (S) outlines lessons and units that allow the author's high school English students to make important connections with members of their community, publish their efforts, and thus bridge the gap between young adults and their communities.

To Boldly Go . . . : Launching a Campus Literary Magazine on the Internet, from the September 2003 issue of Teaching English in the Two-Year College, explores how one college began publishing student work online.

To read more strategies, check out the NCTE Title Go Public! Encouraging Student Writers to Publish (M-S) by Susanne Rubenstein. For more classroom-ready ideas, see the ReadWriteThink collection of lesson plans using the Printing Press Student Interactive (E-M-S).

What Counts As Error and Who Decides
Although there's much emphasis on standards, testing, and student ability in the news, the more important issue may be what counts as error and who decides. Read "Resisting Occupation, Resisting Reading" (E), from Language Arts, for details on how rigorous standards affect our classrooms and how we can respond. Check out "Achieving Standards without Sacrificing My Own" (M) from Voices from the Middle for ways that we can best prepare students to meet the demands of test standards without sacrificing what we know to be effective teaching.

Learn more about the way that private interests affect the beliefs and practices underlying process instruction in the Hopkins Award-winning "Automated Scoring Technologies and the Rising Influence of Error" (S), from the March 2004 issue of English Journal.

"Ethos and Error: How Business People React to Errors" (C), from College Composition and Communication, asks us to think about what it means to be 'bothered' by errors. The answer can help us transform the study of error in our classrooms from mere textual issues to larger rhetorical matters of constructing meaning.

To read more, try the NCTE Select title A Teacher's Guide to Standardized Reading Tests: Knowledge Is Power (E-M) by Lucy Calkins, Kate Montgomery, and Donna Santman, with Beverly Falk.