Writing and Teaching

My essay, called “The Witch Trick”, was published in The Pressures of Teaching by Kaplan. If you go to Amazon’s page for the book and click on the “Click to Look Inside” button above the graphic of the cover, you can read the first several pages of the essay. Take a look! And if you like it, buy a copy for your favorite teachers!

One writing tool I’ve used quite succesfully this year is the wiki. If you’re not familiar with wikis, they are web sites that are created collaboratively by members (think Wikipedia).

The great advantage of wikis is that they allow anyone to edit the pages. As a teacher, you can create a wiki and assign a page to each of your students. There they can write whatever you have assigned to them in draft form, and other students can go in and peer edit.

Two great advantages of wikis:
1. Students love anything internet related. Even when it comes to editing, they prefer to do it online.
2. Whatever changes are made can be easily undone by the author of the page.

There are a number of good sites that can host your wiki. I use Wikispaces. Educators can apply for a free wiki free from advertising. If you’d like to see what one looks like, you can go to mine by clicking here. There isn’t much to see there right now because it’s summer, but it may help you get the idea if your a novice to all this stuff.

I have a new essay on teaching coming out in a book by Kaplan called “The Pressures of Teaching”. The book contains the viewpoints of a number of teacher/writers who explore ways to cope with the increased pressures of teaching in today’s schools. It’s a great book, and anyone interested can pre-order it on Amazon.

There’s an interesting contest brewing for authors of middle grade and young adult novels. Click here for all the details. Kidlit Contest

My three new graphic novels are out! Go to the main page, www.timclifford.com, if you’d like to see them. There’s a new Graphic Novels page where you can see some of the illustrations.

I’ve started using Facebook, which is kind of cool, even if it is an enormous time sink. If you’re a teacher or writer and want to add me, feel free. Graphic novel enthusiasts can add me as well. Just click here.

If you’re one of my students, I’m afraid I’m going to have to say no. I’ve had a number of requests from students and I don’t think it’s appropriate that we ‘socialize’ outside of school. Once you’re out of high school you can add me, assuming you still remember me by then!

If anyone has interesting experiences in doing author studies, I’d love to hear. I’m working on my next book, which will look at a new type of author study.

I’ve written three graphic novels that will be published this August. In a strange way, this led to a Graphic Novel unit on Heroes at my school. It’s been a truly worthwhile venture so far. My students are learning a lot about the editing and revision processes.

There’s nothing–and I mean nothing–like modeling your own writing for students. I’m fortunate to have these books coming out, but I frequently model whatever type of writing we are doing for my students. As they watch me struggle with word choice, sentence variety, leads, closings, and everything in between, they come to realize that writing is a process for everyone, including teachers and professional writers.

Sometimes I use exemplary student writing that I’ve saved from previous years as a model, but I still try to do my own spur-of-the-moment modeling at each stage of the process.

Generally, I like to write my own writing rubrics to reflect the work recently done in class. However, this can be quite time consuming. That’s why I included rubrics for each of the five major writing pieces in my book The Middle School Writing Toolkit, and for opinion and persuasive papers in Crafting Opinion and Persuasive Papers.

If you need a rubric in a hurry, a great resource is Rubistar. The site automates the process of writing rubrics. While it doesn’t replace the personal touch, the site does allow you to edit the rubric yourself before you print it. Give it a try and save yourself some time.

It seems as if there is always a new project on the horizon, which is something no writer should ever complain about. I have three graphic novels coming out this year which I am very excited about. I’m also working on a rewrite of a YA novel I wrote, which came close to getting agented but in the end still needed work. I’m engaged in that rewrite now.

I’m also still plugging away at my education books. I am currently working on a book on author studies, which is coming along well but slowly. The problem is that I have to “field test” each lesson to make sure it works, then tweak it afterwards to reflect what I have learned. I think it will be a great and useful resource when it is finished. If any teachers out there have any good ideas for author studies, please comment. I’d love to hear.