Saturday, August 24, 2013

Beginnings

Welcome, All. This blog is one way I'm thinking of organizing my work with middle school language study this year. The idea at this point is to have two related but separate strands - one on morphology/vocabulary/spelling, which might be most relevant for the younger students (so the classrooms of Deidre and Dave P), and another on grammar/syntax/connections to writing, which might target the classrooms of Beth and David S. I'm trying to determine if this blog is a good way for us to collaborate and converse, along with updated lessons posted to http://teachling.wwu.edu/. So, for example, there are some ideas for lessons on verbs, subject, and clauses, which may be of use to some of you posted here: http://teachling.wwu.edu/node/1430. Then rather than posting comments on TeachLing, we could discuss here how those went, how you modified them, how you extended them, etc. Or if this becomes a chore, we can simply talk one-on-one about the lessons, and then I can summarize here when it seems relevant for others. We'll be playing it by ear. I want the collaboration to benefit all of us, so I'll strive to make it structured enough to be productive, but not so rigid that we can't shift directions or focus as needed.