crafting meaning
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Time for Meaning brings a bold curriculum to the writing workshop, a curriculum that honors literary thinking and the study of literature. Randy Bomer speaks eloquently and honestly about his own experiences in the classroom: his successive stages of revision, his growth from a good to a better teacher. He encourages inquiry into more reflective practice, inviting you to examine your ways of thinking, your relationship to the “subject of English,” your standards for good teaching, your place in the professional community, and most significant, your attitude toward time.
Time for Meaning is both thoughtful and practical. It confronts the realities of today’s classrooms: overcrowded curriculums, unfriendly colleagues, choppy schedules, and resistant learners. Bomer suggests ways to transform these obstacles into opportunities to rethink the true purpose, meaning, and design of literacy education. He offers guidelines for:
helping students choose topics that are important to them- so important that they’ll have the energy to work through the writing process prompting initial responses to literature and moving toward polished pieces of writing using writing as a tool for thinking and inquiring―an essential habit of mind for students to developunderstanding what makes for poor student research writing and how to improve it planning curriculums that focus on story in fiction and memoir. Since time is so often the crucial issue in teaching, Bomer asks you to examine your attitudes toward time and the way you use it. He writes, “What we do with time is what we do with our lives. When we are ‘unable’ to spend time on what we most value, it is because we have not found a clarity of purpose. We have lost our maps, lost our rudder, and we drift aimlessly, as if time were not passing, as if this teaching life were not ours to live.”
Bomer is specific and persuasive without being prescriptive. Time for Meaning is a snapshot of his current thinking, a report on work that has already benefited many teachers. It speaks as powerfully to experienced reading/writing process teachers as it does to newcomers.
Publisher ‏ : ‎ HEINEMANN; 1st edition (July 3, 1995)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 234 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780435088491
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0435088491
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 11 – 17 years
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 6 – 12
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.4 x 0.52 x 9.2 inches
$45.33 - $15.83
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Time for Meaning brings a bold curriculum to the writing workshop, a curriculum that honors literary thinking and the study of literature. Randy Bomer speaks eloquently and honestly about his own experiences in the classroom: his successive stages of revision, his growth from a good to a better teacher. He encourages inquiry into more reflective practice, inviting you to examine your ways of thinking, your relationship to the “subject of English,” your standards for good teaching, your place in the professional community, and most significant, your attitude toward time.
Time for Meaning is both thoughtful and practical. It confronts the realities of today’s classrooms: overcrowded curriculums, unfriendly colleagues, choppy schedules, and resistant learners. Bomer suggests ways to transform these obstacles into opportunities to rethink the true purpose, meaning, and design of literacy education. He offers guidelines for:
helping students choose topics that are important to them- so important that they’ll have the energy to work through the writing process prompting initial responses to literature and moving toward polished pieces of writing using writing as a tool for thinking and inquiring―an essential habit of mind for students to developunderstanding what makes for poor student research writing and how to improve it planning curriculums that focus on story in fiction and memoir. Since time is so often the crucial issue in teaching, Bomer asks you to examine your attitudes toward time and the way you use it. He writes, “What we do with time is what we do with our lives. When we are ‘unable’ to spend time on what we most value, it is because we have not found a clarity of purpose. We have lost our maps, lost our rudder, and we drift aimlessly, as if time were not passing, as if this teaching life were not ours to live.”
Bomer is specific and persuasive without being prescriptive. Time for Meaning is a snapshot of his current thinking, a report on work that has already benefited many teachers. It speaks as powerfully to experienced reading/writing process teachers as it does to newcomers.
Publisher ‏ : ‎ HEINEMANN; 1st edition (July 3, 1995)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 234 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780435088491
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0435088491
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 11 – 17 years
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 6 – 12
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.4 x 0.52 x 9.2 inches
Reviewer: K. L. Smith-Carrington
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Must read Bomer book!
Review: I truly enjoy Mr. Bomer’s writing style. His passion for the craft of writing is clear. Reading this book is like sitting with a patient friend who’s an expert in teaching writing and is generous enough to sow his knowledge into you. I can’t wait to use the strategies he includes for units of study!
Reviewer: Happy Cali Wife
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: ELA Go-To Book for Teachers
Review: This is one of many of my go-to books for ELA instruction. Great analogies and observations.
Reviewer: Michele
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: An Amazing Guide to Teaching Writing
Review: This book’s subtitle is “Crafting Literate Lives in Middle & High School” and the book is the perfect guide for precisely that. Randy Bomer’s years of teaching writing shine through, yet he makes it clear that through following his advice, it is possible for any of us, whether a new teacher or old, to be a successful writing teacher. The book thoroughly covers the experience of teaching writing and creating a writing workshop; it covers building a successful writing environment, using writers’ notebooks as a key tool in the classroom, working with different genres, learning to be a skilled teacher, and managing your interactions with people other than students. There is a chapter for almost every concern a teacher might have about their students. However, the book does not overwhelm the reader: each chapter is concise and plainly written, and there is a helpful and informative table of contents that even has chapter summaries to help out readers looking for specific subjects.Someone hoping to learn to be a better writing teacher needs to look no farther than Randy Bomer. There is no doubt that Bomer has several years of experience teaching writing, considering the examples he uses, and no doubt that he is a great teacher. On every page, there are examples from his teaching career that illustrate his points. He states on page 164, “When students are looking for notebook entries that might be important in a memoir, I frequently ask them, ‘If you were to pick just one entry that really showed who you were, showed what your life is like, which one would it be?'” Then he goes into detail about a conversation he had with a student, Ellie, whom he asked that exact question. The conversation leads Ellie to figure out exactly what she wants to write for her memoir. Examples like this show his talent for teaching, while they also do a great job in teaching us, his reader. His example in his chapter “Fiction,” where he shares a conversation he had with his students as they collaborated to create a character in an exercise, was especially brilliant. He asked questions of his students such as, “So what? What’s important about that?” and “What is he [the character] afraid of?” It showed me exactly how to encourage students to look beyond a character’s physical attributes and plot situation to really create a well-rounded, full character. I could see myself, in the classroom, having a similar conversation with my students. Bomer makes it seem easy, but more than that, he makes it seem possible for anyone who has learned his concepts to follow his lead. I even truly believe I too learned about writing, just from reading his book.Another great aspect of the book is the many ideas for teaching process. My favorite ideas came from the chart on page 73 titled, “Some questions to ask in writing conferences during the move from notebooks to projects.” The chart has a column with possible situations teachers might encounter when conferencing with their students and a column with corresponding ideas for teacher responses to help the student transition beyond their writers’ notebooks. This is the sort of thing Bomer gives teachers that is invaluable. He does not just talk theory and product, he explains process and gives real-life examples of how to take his ideas and implement them.This book mostly focuses on the writing and teaching processes, but it does not forget that the teacher is a person, as well, who makes mistakes and struggles sometimes. The advice Bomer gives about not expecting to be a “magician” teacher was invaluable to me and really helped me feel like less of a failure because teaching doesn’t come magically naturally to me. His tips about dealing with parents, administration, and collegues, sprinkled throughout the book but found mostly in the final chapter, are also honest and intelligent. It is these extras, as well as Bomer’s intense use of personal examples, that really push this book beyond a simple instruction manual for teachers to an amazing guide for creating a writing classroom and being a writing teacher.
Reviewer: Nick
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A Warm, Personal, and Innovative Teaching Manual
Review: Randy Bomer’s Time for Meaning is an important resource for all middle and high school teachers, new teachers as well as experienced teachers, and English teachers as well as teachers of all other subjects.New teachers will find Bomer’s book at once comforting and informative. He not only gives teaching strategies, but he also understands, and writes eloquently, about how new teachers will feel, including a chapter called, “the extracurricular life of an English teacher,” in which he focuses on teacher’s fears and the need to balance a personal life with your teaching career. Bomer dedicates pages to explaining the nerves he felt on his first days of teaching, in such a way that it will not only comfort future teachers, but also help them to avoid making the same mistakes. In the very first line Bomer writes, “I lean against the chalk rail and watch [the students] come in. I know it’s a mistake to lean this way” (3), it is a mistake, of course, because he will be covered with chalk; being covered with chalk is a small problem, but this opening line is representative of how Bomer addresses all the problems in the classroom in a warm and personal way.For new teachers and experienced teachers alike Bomer offers interesting strategies to teach writing, including exercises to bend genre, and semester long projects, like a writer’s notebook. He also includes strategies to help students write stories and their own memoirs. Most importantly, as the title suggests, Bomer offers ways to give studentwriting meaning, through sharing and classroom publication, which is perhaps the most important way to help students make quality work.Although English teachers will find much to work with, this book is not only for English teachers. Time for Meaning works as a manual for new teachers of writing, and there is information here that can be useful to teachers of every subject. Teachers of all subjects are finding that they must help students write better in their field, and many of these teachers have never been asked to teach writing. The chapter on more formal writing, “A Place in the Conversation,” can be useful for history teachers, or the chapter titled, “Making Sense of Non-Fiction” can be useful for science or math teachers. Time for Meaning can help the teacher who has had no experience teaching writing.As a future teacher I found this book to be informative, clear, comforting, and rich with innovative ideas. This is one book I will not be selling back to the bookstore come summer.
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