Authors in Action: Jeff Anderson demonstrates an alternative to daily oral language
In this lively webcast, Jeff Anderson engages a group of teachers in an editing activity using a mentor sentence from Maya Angelou
Jeff Anderson
During his visits to classrooms around the country, Jeff Anderson often notices a shift in tone when teachers talk about editing and grammar. "I've been in classrooms where teachers are doing a lot of great things with writer's workshop and craft lessons and then they get to editing and they say, 'Okay, guys. We have to prepare for the test and so now we've got to do some editing.' It sounds like 'take your castor oil,'" says Anderson.
And the typical editing activity isn't much more inviting. In the classic daily oral language drill, a teacher puts up a sentence filled with errors and students shout out all the things that are wrong with it. Again, Anderson wonders about the messages that students are taking away: "The brain absorbs the patterns it sees all day; I don't think it's a good idea to look at bad patterns."
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About the webcast: When you start the webcast, it will launch in your internet browser. You won't need any special software, but make sure the sound is turned on on your computer. You will hear the audio from the presentation and you will see the slides Jeff presented during each part of the presentation. You will see controls for adjusting the volume and for pausing, rewinding, and fast-forwarding. You will also be able to navigate around the webcast by clicking on any of the slides. Note: This webcast was recorded during a live online discussion between Jeff and a group of teachers. The audio begins well before the first slide of Jeff's presentation is loaded on the screen; Jeff's first slides appear about two- and-a-half minutes into the presentation.
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Instead of leading students on a scavenger hunt for errors, Anderson posts a wonderful mentor sentence and invites students to notice its characteristics and then to imitate its structure. When students immediately start shouting out errors they see in the mentor sentence, Anderson slows them down. "Wait, wait. This year I'm going to put up sentences that I like, that I love, and let's see what we notice about them."
Anderson demonstrated the activity in a recent webcast with a group of a dozen teachers and staff developers from around the country. You can listen in to the 45-minute webcast and see Jeff's slides by clicking here.
In the activity, Anderson displays a mentor sentence from Maya Angelou and invites participants to submit their own imitations. The discussion of the mentor text and the sentences it inspires leads to an examination of everything from capitalization conventions to serial commas to word choice.
At the end of the presentation, Anderson answers questions from the teachers in the group on such topics as test preparation, writing workshops in high school, and sources for good mentor text.
Related Links:
Browse all of Jeff's books and videos
Submit your favorite mentor sentence to Notable Sentences
