StarTeaching Features for Teachers First March 2008 Newsletter

The top five myths about writing are:

Myth 1: Writing is easy for some people. Let me tell you that is just about the biggest myth going. I have been a professional writer for going on three decades now. I also know many other professional writers of various ages, experience, and income. I don't know a writer that will tell you that writing is easy. Writing is brutal, hard work and there are times when I think it would be easier to simply open a vein as Red Smith said. However experience and practice can make many writing tasks easier. There are some writing tasks that I can almost accomplish on autopilot because I have written that specific format and/or topic a lot.

Myth 2: Writing requires talent. I won't lie. Talent can certainly help and talent is what separates the great writers from the good writers. But the truth is that talent is not enough to make a writer great or even good and talent is not a necessary requirement to be a good writer. Writing is a skill that can be learned, developed and honed. If you practice your craft, if you read the writing of others to learn more about your craft, and if you seek and accept guidance and suggestions about your writing then you will improve and grow as a writer. Dedication harnessed with talent can create amazing results but if I had to pick just one then I would go with dedication. You can always increase your skill level through dedication.

Myth 3: Writing isn't a useful skill. I have made my living as a writer for my entire professional life but even if you don't intend to make your living with words you will need this crucial skill. There simply isn't a profession that does not involve writing. Perhaps the form will vary, but written communication is the cornerstone in every professional field. Your writing ability will often impact landing a job as well as advancing in your career. Today written communication is even more crucial in professional and personal relationships.

Myth 4: You can't make a living as a writer. I can remember when I told my father that I wanted to be an English major in college. He was very worried that I wouldn't be able to support myself. The truth is that I have never had trouble finding a job and today I own my own business because of this flexible and important skill. Not only can you make a living as a writer but writing is an essential tool for many other careers and professions.

Myth 5: Writers block is alive and torturing writers as you read this. I'm not dismissing the difficulties inherent in dealing with writers block but whenever I talk with writers purportedly suffering from it they fall within two general groups. The first group actually creates their own block by insisting on the perfect place, mood, or alignment of planets in order to write. This is beyond ridiculous. One of the many benefits I gained from years of newsroom experience is the ability to write in almost any condition or mood. Deadlines will teach anyone how to give writers block short shrift. The second group I have more sympathy for as their problem really is internal in nature. Usually the problem is that the particular story (whether fiction or nonfiction) they want to tell is not yet finished cooking in their brain. In this case, while the writing may be stalled I don't agree that it is blocked. The writer must listen to that inner voice and respond appropriately. Sometimes the idea needs more time to percolate and sometimes more research and/or planning is necessary. Once the proper adjustments are made the writing will begin to flow again.

Don't let your writing fall victim to these five myths about writing.

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The first thing to understand is that technology is a tool to teach curriculum. There are many tools we have available to us as teachers, and it is up to us to choose what is appropriate.

The next thought I have is that the students we are dealing with today aren't like us. They are not interested in being talked at and are very good at tuning us out. They would rather be a part of their learning.

The way we can reach these students is to use the learning pyramid as part of our teaching plan. Research has shown that only about 5% of a lecture is retained by students. Reading accomplishes only 10%. Audio visual provides 20%, demonstration 30%, discussion 50%, practicing by doing (hands-on) 75%, and finally when the student can teach others 90%.

These facts should help alter the way a person teaches. It certainly has changed the way I do things.

You may wonder what the pyramid has to do with the integration of technology into the the curriculum. I will begin to answer that in the coming articles. Just ponder what I've already said and reflect on what you're doing in your classroom. You can only make changes one step at a time.

Mark Benn earned his B.S. from Western Michigan University and his Elementary Certification from Northern Michigan University. He is a 20 year teaching veteran of 5th and 6th grade students at Inland Lakes Middle School in Indian River, MI. He is currently working on Masters of Integration of Technology from Walden University.

Prior to teaching, Mark spent 11 years as Department Manager for Sears, Roebuck and Co. dealing with emerging technologies. He has been married to his wife Bonnietta for 32 years with one daughter and two sons. In the summers, Mark works for Mackinac State Historic Parks in the as a historical interpreter.

StarTeaching Featured Writer

Mark Benn is a leading expert in using technology in the classroom.
You can feel free to contact him on email at mbenn@inlandlakes.org or at his blogsite: http://www.furtrader.blogspot.com/

A career refers to a profession, which we want to adopt for earning our livelihood, and planning means the proper flow to make proper decisions.

Pre-planning in our life plays a very important role in every aspect of life, to work in a proper flow, and pre-planning for our career, which we want to pursue in our future after acquiring certain level of education or a degree is also very necessary in today's competitive world.

According to the Thorndike dictionary, "A goal that you desire to achieve in a selected field or occupation with a well-thought out plan, to get you there is called Career Planning."

The world is now moving very fast, and the time has come when this meritocratic society will accept only those having the right qualifications and right skills. The old days are gone when just a degree would help an individual to attain a high profile job by giving a bribe or using some other means. Now it's high time, when the transparency in job recruitment has taken place. Challenges and competition are the part of today's society, and therefore, Career Planning is the only task, which can guide us to do what we want to do in our life, rather than just aimlessly changing jobs all the time in future. We have seen many Pakistanis, who after completing Intermediate Education, don't know where to go, what to do and we have also seen graduates, who aimlessly move through their education without any specialization. As a result, their earnings are just in 6-8 figures.

Career Planning is one of the broader aspects of learning in our existence. We all have some intentions and we all think to have stability in our future lives, and for that purpose, CAREER PLANNING serves as a key to success. Career Planning forces a person to think suitably about their positive and negative aspects as well as their interests, and their creativity becomes possible by properly analyzing ourselves.

Career Planning basically starts when a person finishes Secondary/ Higher Secondary level of education. After that level, a person could opt for that educational degree, which would help them out to have a good job opportunity according to their skills at the right time. Career Planning helps us to design and formulate our future smoothly. For example, if a person wants to be a banker, then he or she would choose to go for ACCA or CA or complete a MBA in finance after completing Intermediate Education in commerce and graduating with a degree in commerce/ business administration.. Otherwise, he/ she would go for CAT course or Masters in Commerce or even up to doctorate level.

This pre-planning would be effective and would give him/her benefits for achieving educational targets effectively. It also helps us to evaluate our own personality, which helps us to know that which kind of job would suit us according to our need and capabilities. In short, Career Planning is like mapping our future. Without proper planning, no one could think of getting a desired job in future. Think about what we want to do and then find out more about the kind of training, education, and skills we will need to achieve our career goal; this is the core objective of career planning. It helps us to know the nature of the jobs that interest us, such as educational requirements, salary, working conditions, fringe benefits, promotion chances, future prospectus, and it helps us focusing in the right dimension. Career planning directs us, motivates us, and helps us to accomplish what we want. A career goal is a specific vision such as an architect or a teacher or a career goal can be a particular field which we want to work in, such as Media, Education, Medicine, Engineering etc.

For those who will think about their future and career after completing their education without any long term desired goals are the ones whose attempts might end in smoke. There are some cases and situations which require a person to pre-plan in advance, such as family, family business status, lack of interest in studies or traditional job, low motivation, low financial status, etc, or some past educational traumas which caused a person to plan at a later time.

Career planning is a lifetime process; we are always learning and growing, and as we do, our interests and needs also change. Career planning is not just making plans to obtain our careers, but it also helps us to make many adjustments there will be along the ways we learn throughout our lives. Those who have successful careers like educators, business owners, managers, pilots, architects, bankers, doctors, etc. are the ones, who have made their ways through with proper guidance.

No doubt, our parents have some wishes and expectations from us, but we have our own too. Therefore, we should also consider others' opinions. For that we could take guidance from an educational counselor to get better guidance towards new dimensional fields as well. Teachers, professionals, career guidance websites, as well as head educational consultants can also guide us to have a better approach for our future.

We must have the freedom of speaking and the freedom of choosing our careers as we have to lead our lives which interest us. We must try to have an open mind in order to choose the right career at the right time. According to one renowned professor, "Few of us like to opt for those degree courses, which their family or friends have advised them to adopt and this inappropriate knowledge trapped them into a great mistake. In this way, they are unable to get good job opportunities according to their interests. Only Proper Career Guidance would help an individual to be on the right path beforehand. Few of us try to seek the right path and really take guidance from our family or our teachers to tell them what is good for them, which career is in demand and which career suits their interest."

The future is un-predictable; however, we could still make our place in this meritocratic world by making career goals and plans in advance for getting better opportunities in today's pluralistic and globalize world. We must pre-plan our goals under the supervision of professionals in a conscious state of mind, so that we could strategically maintain our goals and follow it towards the path of a successful future.

Munir Moosa Sewani is one of the most famous, prominent and creative names in the field of Education in the past 8 years. He is a Master Trainer In Special Education, Post Graduate, Teacher Educator and a Teacher. He is a Freelance Writer and Photographer, in addition to his role as a featured writer for StarTeaching's newsletter over the past six months. He is an author of the famous self-published storybook for children named as "The MORAL STORIES FOR CHILDREN" and has also written Biology course book for Secondary Classes. He has written almost more than 30 articles internationally on many websites and numerous newsletters dealing with social, health, educational and cultural issues, which are internationally recognized and published in most of the famous world wide websites, magazines and newspapers.

He is also a Social worker, private tutor, career counselor, musician, lyrics writer and have multi- dimensional talents.

His future plan is to write dozens of informative books and articles and to work for education and media also, in order to develop the sense of understanding many dimensions of life through his creativity.

You can contact Munir Moosa Sewani at: munirmoosa@yahoo.com

We've created another variation of the context sentences activity which we call 'Give-Me-Five'. It is similar in that you create a matrix of words, vocabulary, or terms from which your students will write unique, interesting, complete sentences. And students should be given the opportunity to share their unique sentence creations with the class.

The original context sentences activity had a matrix of nine total words, three across by three down. Students then created a sentence for each line across, down, and diagonal, writing a total of nine sentences. Give-Me-Five builds on this, but expands the matrix to five words across by five words down, twenty-five words in all.

Now the lines down, across, and diagonal will include five words that you have designated. That gives you and the students twelve different lines of word combinations to choose from. We like to have the students choose five (or more) such lines from this 5x5 matrix. The students then must fit all five words from their line into a sentence. The students are getting practice in spelling and using the words correctly, as well as writing complete sentences.

One of the great aspects of this activity is its durability. I like to create several matrices and type them out on an overhead sheet so I can use them over each hour and I can file them for year after year. We make up specific sets of words to match certain stories, lessons, or units, and we also use them with random words just to have fun.

Always give the students the opportunity to share their creations with the class. This reinforces the correct use of the vocab or terms, gives students practice reading and listening to properly written sentences, and creates an opportunity for students to present in front of their peers, a skill that always needs practice. This also makes a great lesson to leave for a substitute teacher, or to put in your emergency plans. Make sure you have fully explained this activity and your students have practiced it a few times under your guidance before leaving it as an activity for your sub.

This activity (as well as the context sentences activity) is great for utilizing vocabulary in foreign language classes, as it forces students to spell and use words properly while writing sentences. It is also good for any class or subject that has specific vocabulary students need to familiarize themselves with. This works well for social studies and science classes, and it makes an easy writing assignment for music, art, p.e, and other elective-type classes where the teacher may be required to add writing activities, even if he or she isn't highly trained in writing.

This is especially good for English teachers if you're covering compound or complex sentence structures, as you can specify particular types of sentences to have students write. Simply set up your matrix so there are two or more nouns or verbs in a line. You might even add a conjunction to the line!

Now of course you might want to adjust this activity to meet the needs and level of your students. This could include changing the number of lines you require students to make sentences out of. You might have students choose fewer lines and create different unique sentences from the same five words. You might have students choose two or three lines and take all ten or fifteen words and create a story paragraph. There are many possibilities you can develop. If you create any really interesting variations, let us know and we'll feature you in an upcoming issue of our newsletter.

Interested in FREE writing activities you can print out and use immediately in your classroom? Simply click the following link to our writing page: http://www.starteaching.com/writing.htm

Be sure to check out our website for the FREE teacher Who-I-Want-To- Be plan and other great Freebies for new teachers. Simply click the following link: http://www.starteaching.com/free.htm

		FEATURES FOR TEACHERS
Visit our Website at: www.starteaching.com		Ideas and Features For New Teachers and Veterans with Class						Volume 4, Issue 5 March 2008
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By Munir Moosa Sewani