Mantle Conference Logo
Today I am giving a workshop at the annual MANTLE conference here in Newcastle. This is the second year I have presented at the conference and the third time I have worked with teachers and librarians in the Hunter region of NSW during the last couple of years.

Erica McWilliam in full flight at the Mantle 2015 Conference
Erica McWilliam in full flight at the Mantle Conference 2015

Erica McWilliam is the Keynote Speaker and she is truly an astonishing speaker and author. I thoroughly recommend that you purchase her book The Creative Workforce: How to Launch Young People into High-Flying Futures.

The workshop focuses upon publishing by students with an emphasis on writing. There will also be references to formative assessment, storytelling and curriculum integration. A review of appropriate publishing tops will be shared with the participants.

Today’s Presentation

Presentation document (pptx 16.6mbyte)

Lesson or topic ideas

Please note that many, if not all, of the suggestions below could be consist of students working in pairs or small teams. Collaboration is always a positive adjunct to any learning endeavour.

  • Creative Writing ~ I Was There When…
  • Full throttle writing ~ writing as the clock ticks by
  • Historical diary ~ The Dead Dude Diaries
  • Journaling on the ideas that they learned that week
  • Science lab reports
  • Field reports on the science or humanities research project
  • Process diary for a creative arts project
  • Journal describing evolution and development of a Design and Technology Project
  • Written elaboration describing the thought processes involved in solving a Mathematics problem
  • A report on the discovery and history of as scientific principle

Links

Curriculum Suggestions and Support

BOSTES: Engaging students through literacy and numeracy: Learning through reading and writing

Blogging and Students

Students and writing

Publishing Tools

  • Edublogs ~ the best publishing platform for educators and students ~ built on the WordPress platform ~ preparing all students for the world of online publishing.
  • WordPress ~ WordPress.com now features advertisements ~ a most disappointing development. As a result your school or institution might like to download the WordPress code from WordPress.org and host on your own server. Your tech support team will need to help you.
  • Weebly ~ fast, easy and includes an excellent feature set.

Guides and How-To Documents