Where I am From poetry activity

One of my student teachers, Kristen, did a fabulous job using this poem by George Ella Lyon as an introduction to House on Mango Street.

Yet Another Discovery

I previously wrote about poetry or essay cafe because I was pleasantly surprised at how much harder students worked on their writing pieces when they knew they would be reading to the class. This past Friday, I discovered another reason to have essay read-alouds. It is an amazing tool for teaching editing.

I had several students that stumbled over sentences, words or phrases or even did a stand-up-editing-comedy-routine.
I usually edit their work and students must return their polished copy for a final grade. This time, I gave papers back with instructions to edit their own work--they already knew where changes had to be made from reading out loud.