Day 1 - Pupil Free Day

Today, I joined my host teacher for a Pupil Free Day (Staff Development Day in NY). We attended several workshops at a local university. One particularly interesting workshop was called "Seven Steps to Writing Success" and it opened my eyes to a great deal of strategies that I imagine will be very effective in my future classroom. Step 1 is titled Plan For Success. It implores students to examine the typical trajectory of a story line. (See attached picture) One major tip is to make sure that students know the ending to their story before beginning to write. Some teachers also find it valuable to scaffold the students writing in the beginning by giving them an ending to start with to see how students are able to develop a story. Step 2 is titled Sizzling Starts. This step helps students remember to start when the action starts. Most students start their stories at the beginning of the day (i.e. I woke up and ate breakfast.) but an easy fix to change this into a sizzling start is skipping all the mundane details and begin with the first details that are important to the story (i.e. if it's a story about going to dinner the student should start with the main character entering the restaurant). Step 3 is titled Tightening Tension. This is the step where students must make the reader believe that the main character will fail. During this step, sense words become very important and sentences become shorter to instill a sense of urgency in the tone of the story. Step 4 is titled Dynamic Dialogue. This step is vital to the story in accomplishing three things. Dialogue can make scenes dramatic, it moves the plot, and it also reveals the character's personality. Step 5 is titled Show, Don't Tell. This step is important because it prevents the reader from having to think about the details because they can visualize them without any effort. A helpful tip for students is to remind them to avoid the past tense. Step 6 is titled Ban the Boring Bits. It suggests that students should avoid the "boring 'b' words" such as bed, breakfast and bus trips. The students are reminded that in movies the hero is never seen traveling, they always simply arrive and the action begins. Step 7 is titled Exciting Ends. This was discussed in the planning phase but it's extremely important to double check and ensure that the ending is as exciting as possible.

Today was a great day to start my experience here in the Australian education system. I know that our system in America has its flaws and I'm hoping that this blog can serve as the beginning of a longer discussion into the strategies and methodologies that can be shared between our two systems.