Teaching the five paragraph essay is a dilemma. One one hand, it is useful because it teaches students structure and organization, but on the other, it is too formulaic and in the real world writers do not even write this way. Imagine Malcolm Gladwell trying to write one of his famous writing pieces in a five paragraph essay. It just wouldn't work. So, as teachers, we do it because the states force us to teach it for standardized tests, but really, are we preparing our students to write well or are we just creating monotonous writers?
Click the image below for an excellent article on the five paragraph essay
A few years back, while I was surfing the internet, I came across something called Ted Talks or to be more precise Ted.com. As many people know by now, it is a site that invites personalities from different fields to speak on different issues such as education, technology, and others. That day, I viewed a video by Benjamin Zander, a famous orchestra conductor, and I became enthralled by his presentation. (Watch his performance) I have become a loyal follower ever since, and I not only watch the Ted videos for entertainment purposes, but I have also used them in the classroom. The great thing about Ted is the way that its videos can generate classroom conversation. A student in the Ted Blog wrote, recently, about how Ted videos can be good resources for class discussion. (Read his post)
Top twenty Ted Talks:
Click Image below
