On Writing Reminders

Throughout the semester, I have been reading Jim Burke's Writing Reminders. Aside from Atwell's book, I think that this is probably one of the best books I have read for this class. I enjoyed that the book opened with a chapter on writing with your students. This semester has taught me that this is very important. Students need to see that you write as well. Besides the first few chapters, there were so many useful lesson ideas in this book. For Example on page 191-195 there is an entire lesson plan for writing portfolios. Burke is pretty much writing an entire lesson plan on this for English teachers use. He has even included a grading rubric that can be used. I also like that he provides recommended resources. If I wanted more information on a lesson, I could simply look at the resources provided.

One aspect of this book that I really enjoyed was the fact that Burke used student examples throughout. When he described a lesson idea, there was almost always student examples provided. For instance, there are student's graphic organizers filled out, examples of pre-writing, final drafts, peer-editing examples, etc. I liked this because it shows what you can expect from your students. I also think that I could use these in a class to model for students. Once students see a model of the particular assignment, they better grasp what their task is for the assignment.

Finally, another aspect of this book that I liked is that Burke provided creative writing lessons as well. There are plenty of writing lessons on expository writing and narrative writing, but he also provides lessons that involve creative writing. On page 329, Burke provides an entire lesson on writing poetry. I found numerous assignments I would like to do next semester in this section. One idea in particular is the letter poem. I would like to use this with The Diary of Anne Frank. I think it would be a good way to assess students comprehension of scenes from the play. I would have students take a scene and turn it into a letter poem from Anne to her diary. For me, I think that creative assessments are much better than the traditional test. I think that my students would get a lot more out of writing a poem then they would out of taking a test.

Overall, I liked this book immensely. I have found numerous ideas that I plan to use next semester with my classes. My cooperating teacher recently gave me another book by him, Reading Reminders, that I plan to read over break. I am sure I will find even more helpful ideas in this book!