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ELA Brave and True: A Blog by Marilyn Yung

Teaching ideas and resources | Writing contests specifically for middle schoolers | Essays on education

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Recent Posts

Contest #11 That Works for My Students: Stossel in the Classroom Argument Contest August 13, 2018
Save time. Always be planning. August 9, 2018
Three Points I Pull from “They Say I Say” in My 7th & 8th Grade ELA Classes August 8, 2018
It never hurts to ask August 7, 2018
My students “swept” a national poetry writing contest! August 6, 2018

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Marilyn

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Full disclosure: This is a contest I have NOT tried with my students... yet. I’m a member of NCTE and for some reason, I just found out about the group’s Promising Young Writers contest a few days ago while surfing their website. Here’s a consolidation of what this contest is all about, prompt, deadline, and other details. Age Range: 8th graders only. That’s interesting, isn’t it?! I think if I market this contest to my students as a “rite of passage” contest, as in “The younger middle schooler don’t get to do this contest, just the 8th graders...” then it might add some cache to the competition. My 8th-graders know that their final year in my class is a doozy with our human rights dissertation, but that project ends in the spring. The fall semester could use a similar premium project just for 8th-graders, and this could be it. | See link in bio for the rest of this post from my blog. Find out more about whether this contest could work for your students. • • • • • #writing #writingcontest #words #students #teacher #teachersofinstagram #english #ncte #iteachela #reading #teach #languagearts #authorsofinstagram #authors

Here’s a photo of the summer to-do list that maintenance staff at my school taped to my classroom door at the beginning of summer. When I visited midway through break to get something from my classroom, I decided to add a couple of things to the list. Last week when I went back to school, I noticed those didn’t get checked off. Oh well. It never hurts to ask. Maybe next year. • • • • • #iteachela #teaching #teachersofinstagram #teacher #teacherlife #teacherlife🍎 #english #languagearts #middleschool #middleschoolteacher #education #worthashot

Three Points I Pull from They Say I Say in My 7th & 8th Grade ELA Classes | I came across this book when my son’s college English composition instructor required it for his freshman-level course. I thumbed through it, read a few chapters, and found some very concise passages written to help students solve probably the number one problem that I see in their academic writing: a lack of idea development. While this is a college-level text, I use three points from it with my middle school students because of how easily accessible the explanations are. I’ll be honest. It’s hard for me to explain how to interpret a quote, how to elaborate, etc. These are really skills learned with practice. Still, kids need an introduction to these before they can practice. This text puts into words these difficult concepts and how to practice them. I usually use a combination of reading aloud from copies of the text and an all-class discussion during and after reading. Here are the three areas that I have pulled from this book and use with my 7th and 8th graders to teach them 1) how to quote sources, 2) how to write a counter-argument, and 3) how to make their writing flow. See link in bio for the rest of this post on my blog. Even though this is a college text, don’t think it’s totally beyond middle schoolers. It’s too good not to use. • • • • • #educator #education #writing #argument #middleschool #theysayisay #juniorhigh #teachersofinstagram #teachersofig #words #confidence #teacher

Save time. Always be planning. | At the end of the school year last May, my 7th-graders started our Triangle Fire unit, a study of the 1911 tragedy in NYC that killed 146 young, mostly female immigrants. The fire had unknown origins, but rickety fire escapes, locked doors, and empty water buckets resulted in the worst workplace disaster by fire in our nation’s history until 9/11. I began planning this bulletin board during class last May. For once, I really had my act together! As students were one-word summarizing a documentary they were watching, I jotted their words down and the idea for this fall bulletin board (which used photos and posters I already owned) was born last May. I packed away all my needed materials, so I could easily find them yesterday. The board came together quickly. All I had to buy for it was the $6 subway poster in the middle. See link in bio for more of this post in my blog. It’s nice to plan ahead and save some time during the hectic days just before school starts. • • • • • #educator #education #middleschool #middleschoolteacher #teachersofinstagram #teachersofinsta #trianglefire #fire #rural #teaching #students #reading #iteachela

I stumbled upon this cursive contest online a few days ago sponsored by Campaign for Cursive (C4C). This organization is a committee of the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation (AHAF) and is an all-volunteer non-profit that began in 2012 in the Southern California chapter of the AHAF. Its goal is to “bring public recognition and awareness to the importance of teaching cursive writing to all kids, and even adults,” according to its website. In the spring, C4C hosts a cursive writing contest called “Cursive is Cool” for students in grades 1-6. Visit this page to see the winning entries. The contest is offered in three versions: American English, Canadian English, and Canadian French. To enter, students use this form and write five sentences that answer one of three questions. See link in bio to find out more about this contest on my teaching blog. The blog post has all the links. Search keyword Cursive Contest. • • • • • #education #teachersofig #teachers #teachersofinstagram #teaching #handwriting #calligraphy #cursive #penmanship #middleschoolteacher #languagearts #english #basics #students

Avoid Scientology’s free human rights education materials for classrooms offered by its front organization, Youth for Human Rights International. | Two years ago, I scanned the first page of a glossy teacher’s guide, part of a free educator’s kit sent to me (at my request) from Youth for Human Rights International, an organization I had discovered in an online search for some teaching materials on human rights for my classes. On that first page was a list of well-known human rights leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, and L. Ron Hubbard. My eyes rested on that last name. I asked myself, why is the founder of the Church of Scientology included on a list of human rights leaders? Nelson Mandela and the others I could understand, but L. Ron Hubbard? I questioned Hubbard’s name because I knew a little about the Church of Scientology. I had read The Apostate by Hollywood director, screenwriter and former Scientologist Paul Haggis in The New Yorker. I had read former Scientologist Amy Scobee’s Scientology: Abuse at the Top. Read the rest of this post, which basically explains how I’ve had to remove those human rights teaching materials from my room that I now know are produced by a Scientology front group. See link in bio for my blog and search keyword Scientology. Photo: Wikimedia Commons • • • • • #churchofscientology #scientology #itsacult #humanrightseducation #humanrights #education #teaching #teacher #students #unitednations #teachersofinstagram #teachersfollowteachers #teach #leahremini

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N A N O W R I M O !November 1st, 2018

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