Learning Log Entry 10

While reading through the more recent blog posts, I noticed that both Kaitlin and Stephanie wrote about persuasive writing and its difficulty in teaching it to younger students.  Well, I suppose Stephanie was actually "blessing" or "addressing" Kaitlin... but I would like to "press" them both. 

As a student, I had a very positve learning experience with persuasive writing.  To this day, my fourth grade teacher remains as one of my most favorite teachers in my whole education.  Mrs. Emelson was actually my third and fourth grade teacher because Wheatland was going through this phase where they "looped" kids (kept them in the same class with the same teacher for two years) at every chance they got.  I liked it well enough, but that's beside the point.  Anyhow.  The more I think about Mrs Emelson in terms of my own education as a teacher, the more I realize that she must have been a super teacher.  We did these huge inquirt units in science where we got cups of different powders and had to reason out what they could be (sugar, cement...etc).  She gave us notebooks to record daily writings in - from what we did over the weekend to grammar lessons to poetry units.  I adored her and sobbed my eyeballs out when I had to go on to fifth grade.  And we had two turtles that we got to take care of.  Sweet.

I remember Mrs Emelson most for introducing me to science and encourging me to explore and ask my questions.  I was forever asking questions about everything, and she was one of the only people who not just encouraged me but made it the standard of my education.  And for helping me with my spelling because I was (am!) a wretched speller.  She would have me circle the words I knew weren't spelled correctly but had tried my hardest and then she would tell me how to spell them and I would practice them until I got them right.  She undestood that I hated using dictionaries (which was the mode of choice for every other teacher, and parent) because you can't look through an entire dictionary to find a word - and if you don't know how to spell it then that's your only option.  I was crazy literal and logical even then, and Mrs Emelson let me be.  AWESOME.

Anyhow anyhow anyhow.  Mrs Emelson applies here because she taught me how to write persuasively in the third or fourth grade, using facts that I could relate to, and taking a strong stand.  I remember that unit:  First she had a writing prompt on the board for our journals - we had to choose if we thought zoos were good or bad.  And we had to support it.  And when we gathered on the floor to share and I tried to sit in the middle (we had to sit on the for or against side) she made me pick a side and think through why I wanted to sit where I did.  We talked about stance and choosing sides and having all the facts before we starting telling people our opinions.  After all of that, we had to write essays on something we wanted to persuade someone to do.  Mostly we wrote to our parents asking them to let us do something.  Melissa wanted to buy a grand piano.  Peter wanted to go to Disney World over the summer.  I wanted to grow my hair out super long.  I never did, by the way.  But my mom was convinced enough to let me if I wanted to.

She gave us choice.  She related the genre to our lives.  She gave us an assignment that used all of the elements that Kaitlin describes in her post - it was just tuned toward things that she knew that we knew.  We had to have supporting details, and look at the cons to our point (Mom, I know that you will say that I always complain when my hair gets long, but I think that if it was really long I could do cool things with it and wouldn't complain).  I think that what made it successful was that Mrs Emelson took the elements of persuasive writing and tweaked it to fit with younger students.

My press for Stephanie and Kaitlin: What do you think about Mrs Emelson, super teacher, and her lesson as I remember it?  Do you think you could come up with something similar for your students?