So we looked at a pretty interesting video today.  Titled Are You Pouring On Fat, it is a part of a New York State Health Department effort to get people to stop drinking sugar filled sodas and juices. 

While the healthy living angle in the video was interesting, we looked at it specifically as an example of how good "writers" use strong emotions to craft memorable messages.  With your students writing opinion pieces in Language Arts now -- and persuasive pieces later -- that lesson is really pretty important. 

Here's the video -- if you're brave enough to watch it!

 

So we looked at a pretty interesting video today.  Titled Are You Pouring On Fat, it is a part of a New York State Health Department effort to get people to stop drinking sugar filled sodas and juices. 

While the healthy living angle in the video was interesting, we looked at it specifically as an example of how good "writers" use strong emotions to craft memorable messages.  With your students writing opinion pieces in Language Arts now -- and persuasive pieces later -- that lesson is really pretty important. 

Here's the video -- if you're brave enough to watch it!

 

Dear Parents,

First, many apologies for being slow to respond and out of touch for the past few days.  My daughter and I are both under the weather, so that's meant a ton of sleeping and schedule juggling in my house!

Second, I wanted to make you aware of a short story contest that your children might be interested in entering.  It's for students between the ages of 8-12 and it is being run by the authors of a book for kids on how to be a better writer.

Here's the contest details:

http://www.spillinginkthebook.com/contests/

If your child is a motivated writer -- and I know a lot of them are -- you might want to encourage them to enter!

Hope this helps,
Bill Ferriter

Dear Parents,

I wanted to take a minute to point you to a New York Times resource that I really think has potential to spark some interesting conversations in your house.  It's called the Student Opinion blog, and it can be found online here:

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/category/student-opinion/

What happens on this blog is a New York Times staffer quickly summarizes a provocative current event and then asks students to respond to an interesting question connected to that event.  Some of the recent questions include:

• Would you mind if your parents blogged about you?
• How do you define 'family?'
• Have you ever lost (or found) something valuable?
• Do you write in your books?

Now, in order to post comments on the site, students have to be 13 or older----so that means our kids will be too young to post their responses directly to the site.  But the way I see it, reading through the questions and the comments together each day could be a great daily activity for parents and students to engage in.  Instead of saying, "How was school today?" and getting the typical, "Fine" response, consider saying, "Let's go see what the New York Times opinion question is and think our way through it."

Give it a whirl and let us know how it works!

Hope this helps,
Bill Ferriter