Dena Harrison's "Write in the Middle" Website: Homepage

Welcome to my Website: Write in the Middle
I encourage fellow teacher leaders to post their original "best practice" resources somewhere on-line for other teachers to discover.

July 2010: Making Big Revisions to my Website! Check them out!

What's going on this month at Write in the Middle?

Ah, my summer hiatus. I try to spend equal time during the summer months doing something useful with half of my time, and doing something completely mindless with the other half. In addition to tending to my garden, re-decorating a few rooms in our house, and working on this website, I am spending a shameless amount of time playing video games with my husband and just hanging out with my dogs, who love having us home.

I enjoy my time away from school almost as much as my middle schoolers do!

Please take some time to check out my new buttons on the left-hand side. I've decided to revise my webpage's features so that it speaks to my students as well as to teachers; many of my kids found my site last year, and they liked talking to me about the things I had posted there. So...I've been scanning, editing, and formatting new things for them to discover next year when with their natural curiosity about their teacher kicks in. I've tried really hard to make my pages interesting to them but also challenging in what the page asks my students to think about.

I hope other teachers will find these changes as useful as I hope them to be next year.

Who am I? What is this Website I Keep On-Line?

Middle School Writing Teacher Maintains her own Website: Hello, my name is Dena Harrison, and this website contains many of my original lessons and trait-inspired classroom resources that I have developed since beginning my career as an educator way back in 1992. I love teaching middle school. My favorite subject to teach my students: writing.

Lessons Learned as a State Writing Test Head Reader: For many years, I worked alongside the powers that be and helped coordinate our state writing test here in Nevada. In that job, I was able to watch teachers preparing for the state writing exam in a variety of ways. I discovered what I already knew: there are both authentic and non-authentic ways of preparing a student to do well on his or her state writing exam, and its the authentic techniques that build the longterm writing skills. I believe when you teach writing well, your state exam scores will take care of themselves. My kids do remarkably well on their state writing exams, and I never drill-or-kill them, and I never teach them to use what I can "quick fix gimmicks," like starting the writing with a question to establish an introduction. In my classroom, writing is an authentic skill we use every day, and it also happens to be something they'll be tested on eventually.

The Most Important Thing I Do as a Writing Teacher: I make time for writing daily because, more than anything else, I want to build a writers workshop for my students to participate in. In my workshop, my students understand their role in taking their thoughts and ideas started in class through the writing process. My first goal every year is teacing my students to act as a community as they learn (or re-learn) the steps of the writing process. Once my students have created a functioning workshop community, I can begin teaching them the real skill I want them to learn from writing: critical thinking. In my classroom, writing is seen as a lifeskill, because that's what critical thinking is.

Quick Access to Some Projects I am Working On...

	Coming soon!