[LIT] Homework?

[queenbova at comcast.net]

I am ready to join your class. Unfortunately, our district has a rigid calendar that has all but obliterated any choiuce on the part of the student and to a great extent, to me. I would like to try the  password-ptotected blog thingie. 


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Ivey" <bivey01370 at gmail.com> 
To: "A list for improving literacy with focus on middle grades." <lit at literacyworkshop.org> 
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 7:04:40 PM GMT -05:00 Columbia 
Subject: Re: [LIT] Homework? 

Hi! 

We have a password-protected blog site (through literacyworkshop.org!) 
where the kids blog about their independent reading books weekly, and 
sometimes comment on each other's blogs as well. I write responses to 
each entry - it's sort of like the "Readers Reponse Journal" Nancie 
Atwell mentioned in the first edition of "In the Middle," if I 
remember correctly. 

Homework in my class has five components. 
1. the above-mentioned RRJ blogs 
2. independently-generated vocabulary lists and weekly quizzes 
3. independent writing 
4. project work on student-designed units 
5. group novel reading for student-designed unit 
It all adds up to about 30 minutes a night out of class, with some 
in-class "choice time" given every day for me to touch base with them 
as they do various bits of homework. When they get behind, I send them 
reminders, send them reminders with copies to their advisors, send 
them reminders with copies to their parents (if this has been 
pre-arranged), talk to them, sit them down and make them write, etc. 
My sister-in-law keeps kids after school on Thursdays, when the late 
bus can take them home, if they have some certain cutoff percentage of 
work they owe her. 

Take care, 
Bill Ivey 
Stoneleigh-Burnham School 

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