Did that get your attention?  We hope so!  Follow this blog by email, before Friday, August 30 and we will add you to a drawing for this book. If you already own it, we'll find a different book for you...equally as full of great ideas for writing.

  

This summer, my niece Addie(Angie speaking), when asked, "What's the magic word?" would answer "Abba Dabba!"  The first time she said it, it was more like "Abba Dabba??", but we all laughed so hard she has continued to use it for our attention (mainly her Grampy's).  The point of this story is that we were working hard with 3 year old Addie to get her to say "Please" and we were doing it with a specific expectation and oral rehersal.

With the new Idaho Core standards, Jayna and I are becoming more and more convinced of the importance of taking kids from oral rehersals of ideas and evidence to the written.  Launching them into the written too soon causes frustration and a lot of wasted "writing" time.  By working to meet the speaking and listening standards of the Idaho Core, we are really scaffolding kids into writing in a very research proven way.

But, much like Addie, kids don't always have the words.  They need rehersal and prompting for having discussions!  Their models of 'good' argument might be few.  So we want to advocate helping give kids the words through Discussion Stems.  That takes us to the 2nd Give Away.  Jackie Miller shared a great list of stems with the participants in her session last week.  Here's that list plus a few.  We'll be adding more and updating the list throughout the year.

Happy Back to School!

Angie and Jayna