CMS DEMO TASK

You will be doing the following activities in a Word Document, so then you will print it and turn in next week.

YOU WILL CREATE YOUR OWN NEWSPAPER OPINION ARTICLE!

Assignment: 

You will write an opinion piece on either an assigned topic.The article will be published in an actual newspaper.

Skills that will be challenged: writing, research, critical thinking, layout and design.

There needs to be elements of critical thinking in the argument:

1. Identification of basic premise and conclusions. A student is likely already to have an opinion, so they should break their opinion down into statements for evaluation and verification.
2. Clarification of arguments. Students then should evaluate their own arguments and opinions, looking for weaknesses, vagueness, and contradictions.
3. Establishment of facts. Students should gather more information to help clarify their arguments.
4. Evaluation of logic. Students will then evaluate if their opinion can be true based on the facts and logical direction those facts take them. This is where opinions may change somewhat.
5. Final evaluation – or expressed opinion based on their research.

ACTIVITY:

• Choose a topic and read the article that belongs to it:

1. Ban plastic shopping
• bags. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/opinion/kenya-plastic-bags.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FPlastic%20Bags&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection
2. Ban violent video games
• http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/opinion/sunday/03video.html
3. Junk food in schools
• http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/opinion/l-junk-food-in-schools-936570.html

You must take your topic and do more research needed to understand both sides of the issue. 

• Pick a side of your choice and explain why you believe it to be superior. 
• Your article will need to include both sides of the issue in some form, the pros and cons of each, but then explain why you believe in one or the other.
• Build your newspaper opinion article such as the one I did.
• Print it and turn in on next week. We will share and gather up all the opinion pieces and build a complete newspaper with all your opinions.

FOR MY 9TH GRADERS

THE OPINION NEWSPAPER

Hi 9th graders! Are you enjoying the different ways through which we've been learning English this year? 

Thank you very much for visiting my blog!

Take a cuple of minutes to read what you'll find below.

In class, we had a little discussion about 3 different topics: 

• Ban plastic shopping
• bags. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/opinion/kenya-plastic-bags.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FPlastic%20Bags&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection

• Ban violent video games
• http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/opinion/sunday/03video.html

• Junk food in schools
• http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/opinion/l-junk-food-in-schools-936570.html

I chose to read an article about "Ban Plastic Shopping" I found in the following link: bags. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/opinion/kenya-plastic-bags.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FPlastic%20Bags&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection

Based on the information I read and after doing a little more of reasearch, I wrote an article that will be published in "Prensa Libre" next week. I'm explaining here what do I believe, my arguments about the advantages and disadvantages and which is the side I'm inclined to.

I added a picture, the title and subtitles needed. Take a look!

NOW IS YOUR TURN!Please go to the other section of my blog, named: "CMS DEMO TASK", you will find the activities you will be working on.

Activity Ideas for teaching Writing

1. Ask students to be inspired by real-life situations.
2. Ask students to create an email dialogue about the book they are reading.
3. Students may write between each other.
4. Students can draw rich chunks from different types of writing.
5. Find significative words related to student’s lives to construct a vocabulary.
6. Let students ask questions about their own writing.
7. Help students analyze text by asking them to imagine dialogue between authors.
8. Use brainstorming to help students get inspired by specific topics.
9. Ask students to reflect on and write about their writing.
10. Use casual discussion about students’ lives to generate writing.
11. Give students a chance to write to an audience for real purpose.
12. Practice and play with revision techniques.
13. Make grammar instruction dynamic.
14. Ask students to experiment with sentence length.
15. Asks students to make a written argument for the grade they think they should receive.
16.  Basic writing about social issues or real world situations that are important to students.
17.  Make student’s writing something important for the school, like allow classroom writing to take a page from yearbook writing.

Why should we teach Writing?

      To teach effective writing, we must be effective writers. I've found that it can be useful to start a blog, writing articles, or developing short stories - all terrific ways to engage the mind and keep your skills sharp.

When it comes to writing, having a nice imagination, finding a topic and starting to write is very complicated for writers/learners.

We should teach Writing because it's important to prepare learners to improve their writing skills, so their confidence and fluency will be increased when writing and they'll know that the main goal of writing is communication and expression.

Besides, sharing our written work might be useful for us to get feedback, even with students.

I do really believe that the best motivation for students is to have a teacher who enjoys writing and that writes and shares written work with them, in order to become kind of a writer model for them.

Writing is so important because it expresses what a person is, anticipates the reader’s needs. Writing ideas helps to reflect, to get feedback and evaluate the adequacy of each argument. Writing is helpful to problem solving, integration of process, content and skills, to recolect, evaluate, compare and contrast information, having perspectives, making decisión, exploration of ideas and confident imagination.

Teaching Writing

In my case, it is very hard to follow the writing techniques, specially because I have never learnt them all. Connecting all the ideas and finding the right words is very complicated for me. Even I enjoy writing and expressing or communicating my ideas, I do not usually know how to start when I have no ideas. Once I start writing, finding characters and solving problems become easy.

I have not taught writing as a class itself, my students are too young to be able to write a composition. With them, I have only started with basic sentences, main ideas and 2 or 3 detail sentences. I usually try to apply some techniques when they have no idea of what to write about and how to organize their ideas. I’m still working on that because they usually do not use complete sentences when writing. So I hope next year I can work on their writing techniques in a better way.

You will find some activity ideas and the importance of writing in my blog!