There is a lot packed into this third section of the book, comment on what was most relevant to you:)
ASSIGNMENT FIVE: WRITTEN REFLECTION-Section Three- The Essential Writing Day Chapters 7-10
Read Writing Essentials, Chapters 7-10 and reflect on some of the points below and provide any additional comments that you have after reading these chapters. Post your assignment to the course blog.
Chapter 7: Be Efficient and Integrate Basic Skills
• How might we integrate skill work into student writing rather than teaching it in isolation?
• Daily Oral Language exercises – THEY DON’T WORK!!!
• The importance of focusing on meaning and quality first
• All writing needs both a PURPOSE and an AUDIENCE
• How thinking aloud can make your teaching more explicit
• Teaching WRITING – not just the language of writing (process, process, process)
• What about writing standards? In your District and State?
• Key writing minilessons
• Revision – how to get students to care about it
• Letting kids in on the secret that – Yes! – Conventions do matter!
• How can we effectively use word walls?
In Chapter 7, suitably titled “Be Efficient and Integrate Basic Skills,” Regie gets to the heart of what so many teachers struggle with: “Fitting it all in!!!” Many of the elementary teachers that we work with are beginning to feel as though their personal motto is: “Jack of all trades; master of none.” We just don’t have the time to teach well what has to be taught. The only answer to this problem is to modify our instruction so it agrees with Regie’s stance that isolated skill work (such as Friday spelling tests, DOL, grammar worksheets…) will not help our students grow into writers (or readers.) On page 144, Regie shares four components for an integrated Writing Workshop:
1. Identify writing genres that would interest students (and meet district requirements)
2. Decide who the audience would be for each piece of writing.*
3. Model your own writing process and show students how you struggle.
4. Have students share writing regularly (for both celebration and great teaching moments.)
*This created the biggest change in my own class’s writing - once my students began to write with an audience in mind, the quality of writing shot right up!
Regie also gets to the heart of what writing with “voice” really is and addresses how to teach children to write with an honest voice in their own writing. She describes voice as “the writer’s unique personality on paper, his own melody in words, her ‘mark’ as an individual. To write with voice, the writer has to be interested in the writing.” We think that many teachers and students are unclear as to how to add true voice to their writing. Regie suggests, “Voice is in the details – but details that show the real person and story behind the words, not just details for the sake of adding more words…”
Integrating those isolated editing skills such as grammar, punctuation, and spelling into our writing will increase the efficiency of our instruction. Bottom line – if the students care about their writing, are writing for a specific audience, and understand that “the importance of editing (and spelling conventionally) is to make their message clear and easy to read for their audience – or reader, they take this job seriously and work hard at making their writing clear.”
Chapter 8: Organize for Daily Writing
• What is our definition of Writing Workshop? What does Regie say?
• How can we have student choice within a structure?
• The importance of writing talk (teachers and students)
• The ultimate nightmare for all of us…scheduling…finding the time to write everyday
• The importance of routines, organization and modeling expected behavior
• Genre study – why it’s important to have both school-wide and district-wide conversations
• The possibilities within genres
Figuring out a way to “fit it all in” is usually one of the most frustrating things many of us face. It starts at the beginning of the year as we first plan our daily schedule and continues throughout the remainder of the year. Considering how you will create your schedule to include a solid chunk of time for both reading and writing will probably be the most stressful piece to the start of your year.
Create a Comprehensive Literacy Framework: Play with your time and consider what changes you might make in your daily literacy framework for next year. Take a look at the samples that Regie provides on pages 185-187 for some possibilities. You do not have to post your schedule, but we believe this is a worthwhile activity to complete on your own.
Chapter 9: Conference with Students
• What is the purpose of a Writing Conference?
• What are the different types of Writing Conferences?
• How can Share be used effectively?
• How to conduct a productive conference
• What about management and routines?
We are so glad that this chapter talks about Share during Writer’s Workshop. Too often this component is skipped by teachers who feel there isn’t enough time in the day to “fit it all in.” However, it’s a vital piece of the workshop and beneficial to all the students. Share sessions are an additional time to teach. The teachers in my school are quite comfortable using Share as their mini-lesson if the need arises. Given the reality of daily schedules they were finding that they couldn’t have a mini-lesson, confer and share everyday. They then realized that their Shares sometimes were the minilessons. For more information about Share we recommend looking at Leah Mermelstein’s Don’t Forget To Share: The Crucial Last Step in the Writing Workshop. In this slim book, Leah explains in detail four types of Share: Content Share, Craft Share, Process Share and Progress Share.
The “Tips for Successful Whole-Class Shares and Conferences” on page 215 are excellent ones to keep in mind. The bottom line for Conferences and Shares is that students should feel successful and want to continue to write. Make sure what you say to the child encourages them to keep on writing. “The conference is secondary; the student as writer and confident learner is primary.”
Chapter 10: Make Assessment Count
• Understanding how rubrics work
• What about Test Prep? THE BEST TEST PREP IS EXCELLENT TEACHING!
• How can we collect reliable data on students’ writing throughout the day?
• Guidelines for grading and providing evidence for parents, administrators and the public
“There is lots of writing assessment going on these days, but little of it actually improves the quality of students’ writing.” As Regie continues she points out that this ‘assessment’ “is seldom used to improve daily instruction.” This chapter is about becoming more knowledgeable about assessments. Regie notes, that unless teachers know how to teach writing well, it can be a waste of time to examine students’ writing and place students on a writing continuum. She encourages you, as a staff to “write together, study together, converse together, gather school-wide data, analyze these data and set goals for improving writing instruction. There is no shortcut to helping students become effective writers and there is no program you can buy that will do it for you.”
Remember to use rubrics judiciously and not overdo it. They should be “used as an evaluation tool, not as the driving instructional force.” “Use professional common sense. It is not advisable to apply rubrics to ALL writing nor to score ALL writing. Just as our students need lots of practice reading many texts without the expectation that they will be assessed on everything they read, they need lots of practice writing without being assessed on everything they write.” (Page 243)
Have your students do a lot of writing! “Extensive writing across the curriculum as part of an excellent writing program is the best preparation for doing well on (standardized) tests. Readers have to read avidly to become readers and the same holds true for writers. Kids who write a lot develop higher-order thinking and understanding that translates to higher achievement on all types of tests.” Be sure to check out “Try It Apply It” on page 246 and throughout the chapter for ideas to incorporate into your program.
As Regie points out in this chapter, “The joy has gone out of writing.” We need to “concentrate on developing kids as learners rather than kids as test takers.”
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I thought that I would combine my responses to these chapters for the most part because in many ways, what Regie is arguing here is that the best way to teach writing is by having the students write as much as possible with purpose and a sense of relevance. Even though I am a high school social studies teacher, I fervently believe that the ability to write and enjoy doing so is much more important than the subject of a specific discipline. In Chapter 7 she really stressed that the purpose and audience is what matters and that while we do need to teach skills, this needs to be embedded in the process of writing more than taught in isolation. I can clearly picture my students’ faces on days when I have attempted (and largely failed) to teach “thesis sentences” or “use of evidence”. I still need to do these things, but they need to come after the students already have a piece of writing that they care about and feel is worth the effort of revising and re-thinking. This came through to me very clearly in this chapter. I know it from experience but have not thought as explicitly about structuring my teaching as a way to model the overall process: going from whole to part to whole as she says.
ReplyDeleteI have been very lucky to team teach with a great language arts teacher who makes it easier to run 3 hour writing workshops which we often combine with student conferencing. When we do this, usually the kids have a piece of writing that they are going to embark upon that is based on readings that we have done on some topic like child soldiers or globalization (just some examples). While they first start with some brainstorming, I tend to shy away from too many graphic organizers because I personally don’t find them useful (sounds like Regie and I would agree on this). I have them available for students and try to model my own brainstorming process but then I usually have the kids get right into pairs to think before they start writing. I have never taken the time to model the process of writing itself and now realize that this would actually save me time in the long run. I would be able to frontload the information for those students who won’t necessarily understand it on their own. I could go around and check in with them as everyone gets writing and have something to refer to as an example. This is definitely something that I will try. I can do similar things with my seniors. I give them lots of examples of what I am hoping for with their ethnographies (for anthropology). They love reading the papers that former students have written and I try to share a variety of writing styles and types so that they don’t feel they have to copy any one in particular. The papers are anonymous but have a great deal of voice. I’m not sure how this happens and it is important to reflect on this more so that maybe I can bring more of this to my 9th graders. Maybe it is because the students choose their own topics. They know that these papers will be used as the basis for a presentation in a conference that I set up and this gives a sense of purpose, I think. I don’t do enough peer review with my seniors though and definitely need to. They are ready for this kind of self-assessment and it takes more of the burden off of me to be the one reading and commenting on all the work. It fits with the optimal model well and I think that I will definitely incorporate more of this in the fall.
Assessment is a major topic of conversation at my school and in my department with the switch to proficiency. We have a comprehensive and “kid-friendly” rubric but I need to be more clear about teaching it to the kids so that it can actually help them. I agree with Regie that not all writing needs to be formally assessed. In fact, student conferences are a great way to incorporate alternative forms of assessment. I can ask that students show me what they know verbally to give them more feedback to then help with their writing. That way at least they have the mix of written and verbal feedback to feel supported in their work.
CHAPTER 7
ReplyDeleteOnce again, Routman reiterates the critical importance of children writing about something they care about for a reader who matters to them. I can’t recall a single time last year during Writing Workshop when I asked children to think about their audience! What an omission on my part! If this is the one thing I can take away from this book, it is to have children write for an audience—this automatically builds in engagement and pride in their work, and encourages students to reread and revise, and value spelling and conventions. Reflecting on this concept of writing for an audience made me realize that I don’t send writing home with children often enough. If children are taking home their finished stories, their audience is their family, and they will write with their mom or dad in mind. Publishing classroom texts also seems like such a beneficial way to have a built-in audience and built-in motivation for writing.
CHAPTER 8
Routman emphasizes the importance of not overdoing it with prewriting activities. I agree with this, and the extent of prewriting in my K/1 classroom is telling their partner their story, and starting with a picture, before writing. I think these two prewriting activities are critical for young writers and ELL writers, because the picture can hold the thinking and content while the child negotiates letter/sound correspondence.
There are several components that I would like to implement during Writing Workshop. Having scaffolded conversations with 1-2 writers in front of the class seems like such a powerful way to teach all students in a whole-group setting. Establishing criteria for writing, especially genre writing, after doing a demonstration in front of the group and asking students what they notice seems like a simple yet powerful way to give students guidance on a piece of writing. I was skeptical at first about doing this with K/1 writers, but I think this method of inquiry and response is empowering because it comes from the children.
More letter writing! Of course! A built-in audience! I always felt that my letter writing endeavors with my students were rather boring and obligatory, but reading the ways in which Routman does letter writing with her students convinced me how meaningful and powerful the writing can be, especially after reading the special moments Valentines.
CHAPTER 9
WOW! I am going to embark upon a new format for sharing student writing with the group: I would like to try what Routman calls the “Whole-Class Share.” I have tried so many things during the last 10 minutes of Writing Workshop, and nothing has felt right. The whole-class share builds in celebration and teaching in an efficient, intentional way. Children have the opportunity to learn from each other and teach each other. How empowering! And, if I can do 2-3 conferences during whole-class share, and 2-3 conferences during independent writing, I will be able to confer with every student every week.
CHAPTER 10
Because I teach K/1, my students do not have to do state-writing tests. (Thank goodness!) But, I think that excellent teaching of writers in the primary grades supports students when they reach the intermediate grades, and the state tests. As for assessment, conferring with each student each week, taking anecdotal notes regarding strengths and things to work on, and collecting unassisted writing samples each trimester to look for growth and improvement are critical in a K/1 classroom. I also want to achieve Routman’s suggestions for fluency and stamina: 20-30 minutes of daily silent, sustained writing, and at least 1 page of text during this time.
Joelle Beget
ReplyDeleteWeek 5
Chapter 7
Wow, this was a great chapter! I have to agree with Meghan and admit that I have never thought to help my students think about their audience before they write. Bummer—I think back to how I could have done so many things differently. Well, this fall! I appreciated this quote, “Skill instruction should intrude as little as possible upon students’ ongoing efforts at constructing meaning from text.” So true—isolated skills just don’t make sense! Writing is something that is real and kids need to see its value in a real world context. I am definitely going to be writing a lot in front of my students. I hope that they will be able to pick up my “voice” during those demonstrations. Regie also said something in this chapter that really resonated with me, “Don’t assume that because you have modeled writing, your students ‘got’ your demonstration. Good teaching is more difficult than that.” So, when things flop, I won’t be discouraged!
Chapter 8
I loved that Regie defined a writing workshop from her perspective. That helped me so much, because I just didn’t really entirely know what the term meant. I chatted with a fellow co-worker and was telling her about the class, and she expressed the same sentiments and frustrations with feeling like she didn’t learn how to teach writing well. The whole skills in isolation thing is so prominent—it is frustrating! I want to do more freewrites in my class. I like the idea of kids just writing. I will be focusing on having kids talk and discuss their writing before, during and after as well. This was another missing part that I just didn’t realize was so important. Like Regie says, “Do not underestimate the power of talk on writing quality.” My schedule is getting a once over, let me tell you!
Chapter 9
Just last year I started doing reading conferences with my students, but I have never done writing conferences. I am very excited to add this into my writing workshop as well. I liked the variety of conferences that Regie outlined. I definitely think that whole class shares will be something that I utilize often. I appreciate that it really celebrates the writer’s efforts. As well, I want to keep a notebook of anecdotal records of roving conferences as well as one-on-one conferences. They would be helpful for conferences and to be able to see each child’s progress from the start of the year. I love how this approach to teaching writing focuses on content first. It is so true that kids won’t really be proficient writers when they are just knowledgeable about grammar. One other aspect that I really gleaned from this chapter was how Regie really encourages us as educators to model exactly what we expect of students. So, they need to be taught how to effectively do peer conferences. I have often thought my students understood what I expected, and then an activity of lesson would go hay wire. Modeling is critical—the optimal learning model works!
Chapter 10
What I really love about Regie’s approach to teaching is she uses her assessment piece as a learning tool for students as well. As she states, “In my experience, assessment to improve instruction and learning are too often absent.” It is good to keep in mind that the end goal is to have young writers who love writing, and are equipped to do that well.
Michelle
ReplyDeleteWeek 5
Chapter 7
There were many great points in this chapter that I gave me a lot to think about. Regie discusses that writing should be taught from whole to part and then back to whole. This will make the writing easier and more meaningful for the writer. I thought a lot about how I currently teach writing. I try to stress the importance of the students’ ideas, but I think that I certainly can improve upon this. I think that there has been a lot of focus on the writing traits and that I need to talk about the writing as a whole first and then discuss the traits.
A few years back I gave up spelling tests and lists. I think that it was much harder on the parents then on anyone. Most parents seem to have some attachment to the scores and how well their child did on the weekly test. I have always felt that simply memorizing ten or twenty words each week will not make one better at spelling. I think that kids need to notice the words in context to help improve their spelling. Giving students opportunities to write, read, and talk about words, teaching common word patterns, onsets and rimes, high frequency words, and prefixes and suffixes will make them more aware and more independent in the writing.
Chapter 8
Regie states that choice within structure will lead to high-quality work if the topic is important to the student. I think that this is where a lot of my emphasis will be in the upcoming weeks. I want to structure our class writing time with meaningful and purpose filled writing. I think that this will be a very important part of the beginning of the school year. Establish expectations and routines will be key. I still am struggling with exactly how everything will work in the classroom. I certainly want to do more writing demonstrations. I just moved into a new classroom and I want to make sure that I set-up a great space for this to happen.
Chapter 9
When I first started reading about this I was a bit concerned about how the child would feel about having their work discussed in front of the class. I actually skipped ahead and watch the DVD to help me see how Regie did this so successfully. I think that I would want to practice this with a student I was a bit more familiar with at first. The benefits seem great, but I still feel that each teacher needs to be very generous with specific compliments and careful with any corrections. The whole class share is certainly efficient and many writers would benefit. Tips that Regie gave were to focus on what was done well, listen to the child read instead of looking at the paper, try not to write on the child’s paper, and be encouraging in your response.
Chapter 10
Being in a multi-age setting requires a teacher to look at a child’s progress individually. This seems to be an advantage in looking at writing. Watching how a student develops over time writing to a real audience is far more valid then how well they did on the state writing assessment.
Teaching kids to “pass” the state writing test certainly can make their writing simplified and homogenized as Regie states. Each year I get a bit more frustratedwith the whole process. Looking at my own student’s writing this year and how they were scored always amazes me. It was obvious to me that our assessors still look at handwriting (even though they are not supposed to) when scoring. They also would rather have a student write a five paragraph essay that had a simple introduction followed by first, next, then, and finally, then a writer that took a chance and was creative.
Reading this chapter got me so excited about teaching writing next year! Regie did a great job explaining her whole-to part-to whole writing approach and why skills in isolation do not work. I always used Daily Oral Language and skill worksheets and never questioned their effectiveness. In its place, I will now teach skills within the context of a whole piece of writing. I believe this will help the students understand the purpose of learning a specific skill and will help them apply it to their daily writing. I love how her philosophy on teaching writing focuses on making it authentic with a purpose and an audience.
ReplyDeleteThe most important ideas I got out of chapter 8 include giving students more choices in their writing by giving them a broad topic and then helping them find their interest within that topic, conferencing more with students, publishing student work for a real audience, and showing that I value writing instruction by making the necessary time for it. By showing students that I value writing, their writing will improve because they will value it more. I also liked Regie’s insight about prewriting, that it can be done orally or mentally. She made an excellent point about graphic organizers. I use lists to plan my writing, so it makes sense to allow my kids to do the same. I loved Regie’s suggestion to have o ne or two in-depth conversations with the whole class listening. One question that came up for me while I was reading is how to get kids away from conversational writing. Every year I get a few students who try to imitate real authors and books they’ve read by overusing conversational writing. For example, their writing will be filled with, “then I said…. and he said….. Any ideas about how to redirect them?
I have to admit that I always begin the school year with good intentions concerning writing conferences. I realize now that I made it harder on myself than it needed to be. As a result, I never followed through with my conferencing goals, and by the end of the year stopped having them all together. Regie’s insights into conferencing will totally change my writing program! I look forward to doing “whole class shares”. I love giving students the opportunity to learn from one another. One thing I always focused on way too much was editing. I’ll now take Regie’s advice to focus first on content during conferences. I think that will make conferences more enjoyable for the student and me! One of my favorite parts of this chapter is the “teacher talk” throughout the chapter. I plan on monitoring the language I use during conferences and referring back to these pages from time to time. I love the positive language that Regie uses. She has a way with words where she validates a child’s effort while giving constructive advice.
Since I teach first grade I don’t have to worry directly about state tests. I agree with Meghan that excellent teaching of writers in the primary grades supports students when they reach the intermediate grades, and the state tests. I know I need to do a better job of using my assessment to drive instruction. I tend to spend all this time assessing my students, but I don’t take the next (essential) step of using this assessment to drive my instruction. What a waste! I need to keep track of assessment results over time to look at growth and improvement over time. Another way in which I will improve the way I assess is to use alternative forms of assessment, particularly taking anecdotal records during conferences. Most importantly, I will adopt Regie’s approach to assessment with the big picture in mind. Instead of thinking of assessment as giving a grade to my students, I need to think about how my assessment can help my students become better, more confident writers.
Chapter 7
ReplyDeleteMs. Routman repeats sound advice "Our students are not likely to take work seriously...unless they understand and value its purpose." We need to be explicit and direct and repeat things. I liked, again, her idea to speak out loud about what we do as we (adults) write. Then ask, "What did you notice that I did?"
-Read your writing out loud
-Know when not to revise (diaries, letters...)
-Punctuation "directs you to red, in the same way musical notation directs a student to play."
Chapter 8
Ms. Routman is convincing, as she was with making time for reading, that there must be time made for writing and to focus first on the purposes of writing. I'm sold.
Chapter 9 – Conference with Students
• What is the purpose of a writing conference?
- To celebrate what the writer had done well and to support the writer in moving forward.
I liked the idea regarding group sharing to suggest to students that we just have time to "hear your favorite [most surprising, funniest, most exciting] part. Share that opening sentence you're proud of because it's a grabber."
We must be specific - "general statements are not helpful to the writer."
Give "editing responsibility back to the student."
Ms. Routman gives many options for how to conduct conferences - all, in combination, are effective.
Chapter 10
Key ideas I liked: "Try for 20-30 minutes of silent sustained writing.", "Help your students visualize the reader/scorer."
thanks for the great comments again! Annarose - you have my dream H.S. classroom...are you kidding?...writing conferences in a Social Studies class. How great that you co-teach with an LA teacher which allows you to have a larger block of time when necessary. I wish that I could send some of the HS teachers in ours (as well as others in the state), out to sit in and spend time in your classroom. Meghan and Joelle- I think it's so funny that the concept of "audience" was such an ah-ha moment for you both...the first time I read Regie's book, that was one of the most powerful concepts that I brought with me back into my classroom (I was teaching 4th at the time) and what a difference it made in the students' writing! Michelle - I completely agree with your statements about spelling...word study is the way to go...and YES!!!, it is somehow harder on the parents...although we have several resistant teachers in our building still. One of the best word study programs that I used (as a 4th grade teacher with 2 other colleagues who taught 2nd & 3rd) was Words Their Way. We did have "tests" 1 time at the end of our cycle, which could have been anywhere to 2-3 weeks. There were usually 6 words, 3 from word study, and 3 that came out of their own writing work. It really worked well for us. Sarah - it sounds like you got some great ideas to support you with your future writing conferences. I was always more comfortable with reading conferences as well, and Regie's ideas helped me to establish more effective writing conferences that really moved my writers forward!
ReplyDeleteThis section really made everyone reflect on their teaching and set some amazing goals for future instruction! Best of luck in achieving these goals with your students!!! :) Just remember that you can take small steps...otherwise you will get overwhelmed and may not find success!
One of the things that I have noticed does not work for my students is not setting a parameter on how much to write. They will write only one sentence and quickly say I’m done. I would say that I have to give more specifics such as I need to see a clear introduction and conclusion. Motivation for them to revise is something I really work on frequently. They complain about revising. They have done best when they are really excited about a topic and it is something they are all writing about at the same time. When we had a big wind storm towards the end of the year, they wanted to talk a lot about it so I suggested they write it down in a story. This actually worked well because they had a similar experience so key spelling words could be used for the whole group. They actually wrote quite a bit. It is hard though to find something that strikes them all as interesting as something they want to write about. I will try more modeling of revision next year to see if that helps.
ReplyDeleteWhen I do a writing workshop, it is easier in the sense that I only have a small group of students with at a time. I don’t do it all the time because I have found the Reasoning & Writing program works for my students. My students tend to need more structure and need more repetition with direct skills such as spelling paragraph development. I also will add some structure such as setting a timer to let students know they are expected to do something in ten or fifteen minute time frame this has worked for them. When we do a free write, my students do struggle with topics to write about. I think I do need to brainstorm with them lists of possible topics for them.
Conferencing is something I do frequently with students. I know that since they are in a small group I definitely have time to conference with them. They write in their journals and then we go over their work together. I do use post its for helping them extend their ideas or for fixing the sequence of events. With spelling, since they are supposed to skip lines, I do admit I pencil in the correct spelling above the misspelled word. I have tried to write spelling words on a post it. I however, found that they would write the word in the wrong place. This lets them know exactly where the word goes.
In regards to assessment, I did like the simple child friendly rubrics. This is something I would like to develop with my students. They do become overwhelmed with all the measures for the Oregon Guide for scoring writing. I also agree that everything should not be scored according to a rubric. One of the issues we have had in our school is that students aren’t prepared for the fourth grade writing assessment. They struggle with writing to a prompt that they may or may not like. They also are not used to prompt writing so I do think it is necessary to do some prompt writing for practice. It seems like they are not expected to write as much in 1st and 2nd grade and then all of the sudden in third grade they are supposed to prepare for a huge assessment in fourth grade. We in special education are going to start using the AIMS web assessment system. Students are given a prompt and are expected to write as much as they can in three minutes. I started using it with one of my groups last year and found that they did like seeing that could write more in three minutes after three weeks than they had before. Some of my students also wanted to finish what they had started writing which I let them do. I’ll have to see how it goes next year.
Chapter 7
ReplyDeleteOne of the most important things I took from this chapter was “developing a revision consciousness” with students. Most often when I explicitly taught writing for a purpose and/or reader it was a teacher driven assignment, narrow in scope, limited in content criteria; opposite of how Regis insists that we teach. The school principal, parents and the President of the United States seemed more important; those “dot your i’s and cross your t’s” audiences. Regis has shown me how I can always model writing with the reader in mind whether it’s for me or some other audience.
The second important learning moment for me was Regis’ writing process of placing editing after content. This makes more sense now, especially when you want kids to love writing. As a 3rd grade teacher, I focused more on editing right after some type of brainstorming and 1st draft with little emphasis on revising. Revision which equaled mostly paragraphing in my mind wasn’t a third grade skill. After the reading, I can see how to look at it differently and how to make revising a content focused process whereby young writers can really produce meaningful pieces. I loved all the teacher talk in chapters 7, 8, and 9. In order to practice this, I’m going to make a cheat sheet for myself of my favorite encouraging “Regis responses” and post this in my conference area and clipboard.
Chapter 8
I have always thought that student choice is one of the most important factors in getting a learner engaged. I do like Regis guidelines for how to help students choose worthwhile topics. Did anyone think that Regis’ freewriting could be called journal writing? (Freewriting was better defined in Chapter 10, as a tool for on-demand writing) The mini lessons on page 191 showing how a student tracks their own writing history are something I will definitely use with my 5th graders. It was nice to read that writing and publishing short pieces is fine for so many reasons.
Chapter 9
Wow, this chapter was an eye opener for me. I felt if I hadn’t had a formal one-on-one writing conference with every student I wasn’t doing my job as a good teacher. As we all know, this is a daunting task. Regis really shows us how flexible a writing conference can be. And the whole-class share, what a powerful teaching and learning strategy! I have used peer editing in third grade with a fair amount of success but I
I was happy to see Regis’ high expectation for students having more responsibility when it came to editing conferences. I know now the changes I need to make to have conferencing be a success.
Chapter 10
I remember when I first started teaching, less than 5 years ago, I was lost when it came to report card time. Taking my informal observations and pre and post assessments and giving them a mark (a letter grade or some symbol that represented a grade) was a maze to me. I had little clue let alone work sample training (how to design a quality work sample prompt to assessing a work sample that would benefit my instruction and the quality of my students’ writing.) As years have gone by, I have taken student work samples from the Oregon Department of Education and put them on the overhead for my students to look at and talk about criteria. I have had my 3rd graders help build rubrics with kid-friendly language and have seen a lot of improvement in their desire to produce a quality piece of writing. Teaching is always a work in progress.
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ReplyDeleteI deleted the first post since I hit "post" before I got to edit it... Oops.
ReplyDeleteI have improved at integrating basic skills into my teaching over the last few years. I find that doing reading and writing conferences with students helps me to notice trends in their writing errors. For example, I noticed that most of my class was struggling with their/there/they’re so I did a mini lesson on it and revisited it a few times that week. I noticed a big improvement after that mini lesson. I find that teaching what the students need is much more powerful than sticking to an “official” order of topics.
I completely agree that the quality of writing goes up when an audience and purpose are set. Students start to understand why editing and revising are important. I’ve found each year after the first meaningful writing project student writing improves drastically.
When looking at the sample 4th grade schedule, I realize that I would like to add a reflection time at the end of my literacy block. Also, I like the idea of having students read with a partner at the start of the day. When looking at my own classroom schedule for next year, I feel like it is well laid out with plenty of time for integrating not only reading and writing but all subjects. I can't wait to get back to school and get started!
Last summer I read Regie’s Reading Essentials (when I took the Essentials of Reading class). I learned a lot about conferencing and used it in my classroom this year. I started transferring the same skills and ideas into writing conferences and it went well. I feel much more confident conferencing with students about their reading and writing. I also enjoy taking the time to get to know my students better as readers, writers, and individuals.
On page 245 Regie includes comments from a 4th grade teacher, Kari Oosterveen. Reading what she had to say was exactly how I’ve been feeling. This was my first year teaching 4th grade and I felt just like she did that I had to teach to the test. I abandoned what I knew was just good writing teaching and focused on the test. What I noticed after the test was finished and I went back to my normal way of teaching writing was that my students’ writing had improved. I realized that I had changed my teaching. If I had just started out the year doing what I knew was good teaching I think their scores would have been much higher. This year I will stick with what I know works and I know I will see improvement. I need to relax about it so they can relax!
Chapter 7 - Being efficient
ReplyDeleteChapter 7 had a wealth of information on teaching writing. The most useful section was the "proven strategies for writers" list on page 169. I already use many of these ideas in my classroom but it is always good to have additional resources. ELD writing looks a little different because there is much more scaffolding prior to the writing in building vocabulary and focusing on a specific grammatical skill at a time. Also depending on the level of the student you cannot always expect them to correct themselves in the language usage, but give them specific choices on the correct editing options for phrasing and spelling. I try to develop independent spellers by showing them short cuts and patterns in spelling, or having them make a short list of words for a specific purpose, or a personal word wall, etc.Word choice is always a little tricky in both using new words vs. ones they already know and know how to spell and use because this adds confidence. Overall, it's a fine balance of being accepting and adding specific criticism at the right time.
Chapter 8 -Organize for daily writing
My classes are 30-45 min. long. I always start the week with a reading piece. We review new vocabulary discuss new ideas, and then slowly move into the writing piece throughout the week. We start with shared writing, or sentence strips, and progress into independent writing towards Friday. Usually we manage to produce a completed piece of writing per week. I always emphasize completion. Sometimes, longer pieces and larger projects take longer than one week. For older student we track specific skills we're working on throughout the year since the more advanced students have gaps in different skill sets. They can track their progress and see where they need more practice.
Chapter 9 - Conferencing
I am lucky in the sense that I have small groups and we get to conference often and focus on very specific skill sets. Students know what they're working on and we can make good progress on identified skills. We try to choose the skill sets that are important at the grade level, for example first graders are working on spaces between words, capitals, periods, and sight words. Second graders are working on extending ideas into two or more paragraphs, third graders are working on beginning, middle and end, fourth and fifth on 5 paragraph essays, and word usage, and so on. I collaborate with teachers in picking the skills they wish to work on for the month/year.
Chapter 10- Assessment
I've learned that students need an explicit explanation of the rubric/expectations of a lesson. I can always tell when I haven't been clear about my expectations because of the work that is produced. Then I need to regroup and reexplain, or if we've spent our time and it's past the point of no return we may just use it as a teaching moment for the teacher and the student for next time. But I try to be specific about expectations.
Thanks Tamara, Katharine, Krista, and Lily for sharing your comments about this section of the text. Tamara, I agree that there does need to be some time to “teach to the test”. Unfortunately that is the reality that we (most states) live with. We need to teach them how to transfer all of their writing and reading skills to the assessment. In the two districts I’ve worked in, we actually have a unit of study in both writing and reading, teaching them skills to do this. It’s usually about a 2/3 week study. Katharine, I think that journaling is a type of “freewriting”, and over the last couple of years, I’ve had my upper grade students only write short pieces. After my first year of teaching 4th grade (several years ago), I got tired of trying to support their writing and help them when they were trying to write epics (many of them were reading The Lord of the Ring trilogies and were trying to write the same way). We found lots more success once we started writing “smaller”! Krista, I love the idea of having a reflection time at the end of workshop (a share time), I think this is very valuable. I also like the idea of partner reading when the kids come in…try to include as much nonfiction reading in there as possible. Lily, it sounds like you do an outstanding job balancing literacy in your small block of time, I’m sure it’s both difficult and frustrating to try and fit it all in!
ReplyDeleteEfficiency
ReplyDeleteI am one of those teachers struggling with “fitting it all in!!!” and I really appreciate the very simply way Regie organizes writing workshop. Deciding who the audience would be was a major aha for me. I don’t often have an authentic audience and this point is repeatedly stressed throughout this chapter. Regie also models revision all of the time with students and rereading a passage multiple times. I think I showed students how I revise writing one time and then expected them to apply this skill in their writing every time they write. I also was teaching “skills” at a separate time and feel relieved to take that out since students never transfer the skill anyway. I hope to incorporate everything into my workshop.
Organize
Choice was an important element I took from this chapter. It was helpful to read the examples of different lessons that had choice within them. I often thought choice always meant kids could write about whatever they want all the time in workshop and I didn’t know how to get all of the requirements in. I like that using the standards I can map out the year by genre, but within each students will have choice about their audience and topic. I have heard over and over (especially working with ELL students) the importance of using graphic organizers to help kids understand text and plan their thinking. Then Regie tells me to limit the use of graphic organizers. I’m going to have to see how this one plays out in my classroom. I do like the emphasis on conversation about writing and all of the lessons plans in the back include time for kids to share with each other verbally before having to write.
Conference
The different “types” of conferences were new to me. I had always gone through my class list for conferencing regardless of where my students were at in their writing. I adapted the conference based on what they needed. My question about having kids sign up for conferences would be keeping track of kids that haven’t requested a conference or kids who want a conference every day. I really liked the whole-class shares. Having a conference in front of the entire class will essentially benefit the entire class. What a great idea!
Assessment
I love that the drive is still about making kids better writers and in turn they will perform well on assessments. I know the Oregon state writing test pretty well because I grade for the state and I find that understanding the rubric is key to helping kids understand what their audience is looking for. We also create our own rubric in a simple format that is in kid language. This seems to really help kids evaluate their work in the eyes of the “reader”.
Kim Fast
ReplyDeleteChapter 7:
-By having students write about what they care about, we are getting to see their best work rather than their “bored work.” Through conferencing with students, whole group, we can teach mini-lessons and point out skills that students need to know but in a meaningful way.
-I appreciated the comment that one teacher in the book made that DOL works but it just doesn’t transfer. Regie’s response was great to get us to reflect on our teaching to make sure that if the transfer isn’t made, it isn’t worth our time.
-Meaning and quality give value to the writer. When we give artificial prompts without student input, we can’t get their best work.
-By thinking aloud in my demonstrations, I am giving my students a window into what writer’s do and I am talking about it and labeling it so when I refer to it later, my students know what I’m talking about.
-When just the process of writing is solely taught, the love of writing can be lost.
-By having effective mini-lessons while I am teaching, I will cover the standards.
-I appreciated the list of common mini-lessons in the book.
-Students will care about revision if they care about their audience. By using the Optimal Learning Model and talking about what I’m doing while revising, my students can grow in their writing skills.
-Students need to be impressed with how distracting improper conventions can be to the meaning of their piece. To talk about this, I plan on bringing in a piece of professional writing that I have been reading that is full of misspelled words and then talk with the students about my thinking on the piece while reading it.
-I need to USE my word wall. I go through the process of putting the words up their but I don’t use it to teach from. I want to use it this year to teach word families, to refer students to for words they need to be accountable for and as a resource for students who just need to be seeing words to get ideas.
Chapter 8:
-My definition of Writer’s Workshop is a time when students learn from mini-lessons and conferences and go through the writing process. Regie’s definition has more details and I appreciate and want to incorporate in my classroom the celebration piece of Writer’s Workshop.
-We can give students choice within structure when we give them a broad topic with subtopics under them from which to choose or by giving them a menu of different writing options.
-When teachers and students talk about writing as a whole group, students quickly learn writing terminology. They can see through demonstration what different terms are (skills, traits, genres, etc.) and how to use them. Students can see how to conduct conferences with their peers and with the teacher. The students learn what the expectations are and there aren’t any surprises.
-I loved the idea of free-writes just to get students writing. I see the importance of trying to build up students’ writing endurance as well as giving them the practice of writing on demand. Also, as with all subject areas, when we integrate we make better use of time as well as help our students make connections.
-So many students learn better when they know what to expect and when to expect it. My modeling for students expectations about behavior, writing etc. we help them succeed. Also, writing those expectations on a chart helps for accountability as well as reaches students who are visual as well as audible learners.
-Knowing that time is always an issue, not having to touch lightly on many genres helps me to teach more in depth on the genres that my grade level is responsible for.
~Kim Fast
Kim Fast
ReplyDeleteChapter 9:
-The purpose of the writing conference is to encourage the student for what they’ve done and help guide them in the direction they need to go. Regie writes: listening, affirming, reinforcing, assessing, teaching, scaffolding, and setting goals with students’ input.
-There are: whole-class shares, quick-shares, roving, on-the-run conferences, one-on-one formal conferences and peer conferences.
-When students share, it is an opportunity to teaching active listening, model conferencing, give new ideas to students, teach mini-lessons, build the students up in front of their peers, etc.
-To make a conference productive: I need to listen to the student read their piece (without looking over their shoulder), then have him/her read it again, then give positive feedback about the overall meaning as well as specifics, then guide them in the direction they will want to go.
-I will want to make sure that I don’t try to “save time” by omitting share/celebration time. I will want to keep post-its with me for making notes for myself of who will be sharing that day as well as a chart with each student’s name where I and keep track of what that student is needing to work on to help with accountability and efficiency.
Chapter 10:
-I can totally relate to the comment Regie made about people going rubric crazy. I think that rubrics can offer good guidelines and accountability for both students and teachers but I think that they need to be used in moderation.
-As the pressure of test scores increases so does the pressure to do “test prep.” This will be my first year of teaching a grade level that takes the test so this will be an interesting experience for me. It will be a struggle to remind myself that “excellent teaching is the best test prep.”
-We can collect reliable data on students’ writing by keeping samples of their writing and by keeping anecdotal notes.
-I like holding onto pieces of student writing throughout the year to show that student’s growth. It becomes vital when it is a student who is below grade level becomes discouraged in the skills to show them how far they’ve come in just a short period of time. It helps to take the emphasis off of where everyone else is and puts it on where they’ve come from. These pieces that I keep can be used for evidence for parents, administrators, and the public.
~Kim
Chapter 7: Wow! I am so glad I read this chapter. Throughout it I just kept thinking of a meeting in June with other language arts teachers at LOJ. We were reassessing our writing curriculum and most of it was centering on skills. When I read the quote on page 142 about jigsaw puzzles, I found the analogy dead-on to what we were creating in that June meeting. Yikes! We even had the conversation about teaching isolated skills don’t transfer, but just like Regie said at the beginning of chapter 7, “we’ve made writing too complicated by breaking it up into bits and pieces. My colleagues and I were so involved with the “pieces” that we couldn’t see the “whole”.
ReplyDeleteLast year we tried focusing on skills by developing this gimmick called “Grammar Boot Camp.” We dressed up like military drill sergeants and played the part as we emphasized parts of speech and conventions. Sure the first day the kids enjoyed the change in routine and the play acting on part of the teachers, but none of it impacted their writing.
While we decided in June to not repeat “Grammar Boot Camp” this year, several of us were wondering if we needed to dreg up “Daily Oral Language.” Yes, it’s boring, but it focuses on specific skills and conventions and according to our test scores our students are weak in this area. I can’t wait to share parts of this chapter with my colleagues in order to avoid this pit fall. We weren’t excited about DOL to begin with but didn’t know a better way, now we do.
I also enjoyed the emphasis on voice. Steve Duin, who is a columnist with the Oregonian, routinely comes and talks to my Advance Writing students. His favorite writing topic is “voice”. He tells students whenever he approached a piece of writing in school, he made sure to convey a sense of who he was to his audience. Before listening to him talk to the students, I never heard anyone emphasize the importance of voice. As teachers we cover it, but since it is not counted in the overall state writing score, we make it of secondary importance. I don’t want to let that happen this year! Overall this chapter really resonated with me. It described some of the struggles I have felt when teaching revising and editing. The clarity it offered has left me feeling empowered.
Chapter 8: I appreciate this take on Writing Workshop because my past immersion was reading Nancy Atwell’s In the Middle during my student teaching. I remember falling in love with the philosophy and wanting to implement it in my classroom. Dutifully I followed all the procedures and organizational steps. I had records and folders and colored paper. But by the time I taught the students all the procedures and then incorporated the mini-lessons, we were exhausted. I didn’t have a clear enough understanding of the big picture I was trying to convey or the classroom experience to implement it. Regie’s approach sounds very grounded, down to earth and focused. The objective is clear: Writing with purpose and with an attended audience in mind.
ReplyDeleteI also greatly enjoyed her quote about finding time to write on page 176. I could actually picture specific staff members at my school posing this concern. Her response, “Yes, you do, if you value it; if you don’t have time, you’re valuing something else more (perhaps skills in isolation or phonics drills or worksheet)” really hit the nail on the head. Yet I can appreciate the teacher’s initial thoughts. We have spent so much time creating all these skill based lessons and activities and now you are saying we need to give students more time to write. Really what I hear Regie saying is we need to put the student writer first and use those skilled based lesson to enhance his or her writing. The writing comes first, and then the skills follow in a more natural and meaningful fashion.
Regie’s emphasis on “Teach it First, Label it Later” had an impact on me. When she wrote, “You can drive yourself crazy if you focus too much on lingo,” I had a flash back to last year when another colleague and I were spinning our wheels trying to define a specific writing genre. I needed the reminder to “Think less about teaching an “expository multiparagraph essay”… and more about teaching the student.” Again the clarity of her approach to writing is very refreshing.
I am still thinking about how to structure my class to provide “real” writing time for my students; however, I don’t see it as so much changing what I am teaching but how I am teaching it. Incorporating the ideas in Writing Essentials is more about reorienting your instructional philosophy then changing what you teach.
Chapter 9: In the past when I have had writing conferences with students, I have started with the best intentions and feel deflated at the end. The reasons for this are that I begin to feel overwhelmed at the number of conferences and begin to worry that I sounded like a broken record and wasn’t saying something meaningful to my students. After reading this chapter, I realized some of the pitfall that I had fell into. First, I never modeled or demonstrated what I wanted students to do. I also tried to handle content and editing in one fell swoop. Finally while I meant to be positive at the start of a conference, I know that I often began to focus on editing and not content.
After reading this chapter, I now know that conferences can take a variety of shapes and forms. I especially like the whole-class shares. This makes the process seem more manageable and reduces my stress level. One the big “Ah–Ahh” moments I had while reading this chapter was the concept of a content conferences and editing conference. It makes perfect sense and is so logical. Breaking conferences into these two different forms makes the process seem so much more meaningful for my students and me. I can’t wait to share this with my colleagues because we all know the importance of conferences but have shared similar frustrations at trying to carry them out.
Chapter 10: The clarification on reliability and validity helped me realign my perspective regarding rubrics and scoring guides. I also appreciated breaking the term rubric into content rubric and evaluation rubric. As I continue to read this book, I see a lot of good intentions in my own teaching and instructions that can have negative impacts due to my concern and stress over statewide assessments. Kari Oosterveen’s story on page 245 spoke volumes to me. This sentence I particularly valued, “I went into the new school year with a different strategy, which was to concentrate on developing kids as learners rater than kids as test takers.” So much of what I am reading in this book is reorienting my teaching philosophy. We always say we want our students to be life long learners, but then we forget to focus on that in our teaching. I don’t want my students to perform well on a state writing assessment, I want them to enjoy writing and feel confident about their writing. When did that disappear as a primary learning objective?
ReplyDeleteCh. 7
ReplyDeleteThis chapter was packed full of great tools I can add to my teaching. I loved her discussion about audience and voice. Her point about teaching explicitly and telling students why for everything made me reflect and assess my practices, which need to be refined. Another helpful teaching tip I got out of the reading was to not take student suggestions while I model writing. Checking in with students by asking them what good writers do and use their answers as an evaluation of my teaching is a great way to check in!
There were other important ideas I fully intend to add to my teaching, but her discussion on how to make the word wall a better resource for teaching really struck me. There is one in my room, and my students and I choose the words to put up there. What I got out of it was being firmer on holding them accountable, using it to highlight word features and patterns.
The artist of my art class told me to mix the colors, modeled it for me, and expected me to make my own colors, which was a new concept for me - mixing my paint after using paints on and off for twenty-five years! This is the same experience I had with Regie's point about making the word wall flexible. She gave me permission to do so much more with it than I ever imagined!
Ch. 8
Students need to see and hear me struggle in choosing my topic and demonstrating how I go about writing. I do not model my topic selection struggle and now I see the value in it, which will force me to be comfortable in what I deem as an uncomfortable situation. Be myself, tell the story orally, don't get distracted by questions, and keep it short were all great guidelines outlined by Regie. These are all indicators I can use to make sure I am on the right track in my modeling. She really lets me into her thinking by breaking it down, just like I'm supposed to do with my kids!
The discussion on the purposes of conversations was eye opening. I don't get close to bringing that much conversation in to my teaching, yet I realized it is so crucial once I read this section.
Other well driven points were to model the writing and THEN establish a simple criteria using the model, do not even consider skipping whole group share of writing, simplifying genre teaching, and focusing on the purpose of writing. As a learner I need these points made to me in order for me to start my thinking beyond what I already do in the classroom. My brain is extremely busy reorganizing what I know and what I am learning to make new meaning of what teaching writing really entails.
Also, I am guilty of not publishing as many of the shorter pieces we write beyond our poetry book. With the emphasis on increasing the handwriting expectations, it shouldn't be an issue to get that done since I won't have to organize and oversee them typing their writing on computers.
Ch. 9
Redefining writing conferences reduced my anxiety. Once I get on board of something I really try to meet all of the expectations and the ones described in this chapter really made conferences seem very doable along with everything else I try to do during my day. The sequence and use of the Optimal Learning Model contribute to me seeing how students can peer conference with more meaning and on a deeper level, which would be an improvement of the quality of how peer conferences have previously been conducted.
Ch. 10
Assessments and rubrics traditionally look at parts of the whole and we need to look at the whole first, just as Regie suggests. What endears me more to her is that she is realistic about what is expected of us with all of the high stakes assessments. I got my answer to my question and found that I have been doing what I need to do in these situations.
Another tool I plan to take with me is creating content rubrics and use those more than using evaluation rubrics. It just makes so much sense to me and adds more to the type of learning community I am continually reevaluating and adjusting as I learn and read more.
I just wanted to say to Michelle that I too have been wanting for two years now to get away from the spelling lists and tests. I just don't really know a great program and before it was a school-wide thing, but now out in Jewell, I have more control over what I can teach. Last year my students were pretty bad spellers, and I would like to improve that this year. I saw that Jackie and Mary, one of you two have used Words Their Way and said it worked pretty well. I would love to look into that further. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteKelly Rolwes
ReplyDeleteAssignment #5
Oh man do I agree with Daily Oral Language exercises not working. My old school made us do that every day with my second graders. It was torture. Main thing I learned in Chapter 7 is that I need to write more with my students. Not just start the writing like I have been doing, but to get my writing out and follow it all the way through with the students.
What surprised me was the shift the focus in teaching writing section. I am new to the 6 traits of writing, but so far have really liked this scoring guide. So I planned to focus on the structure of writing the first few months: ideas, organization, and conventions. Then more into improving voice, word choice, and sentence fluency. What I was really intrigued by was how that does not improve their overall writing. So I read further and saw again how teaching writing with subject matter that engages the students. I also read again how making criteria with the students for what is a good writer. I need to consolidate. I have good time management, but I need to go deeper into fewer things when it comes to writing.
I loved the useful mini-lesson page. I will be copying that!! I also just saw here in the reading that each day of writing should involve a whole class sharing part. That I think will grab my students’ attention and really enjoy the writing time. Going further in that, I read an example of how one teacher decides who shares. The class chart of all students and positive writing comments to encourage sharing is great. Also going around writing down notes to have a student share something, then asking them to share the writing is another good piece. Even having a students who shared the day before, but went and worked on something is a good way to show students the follow through.
I took a lot from the Expanding the prewriting. That is an area where I do little of in my writing. I would like to encourage students to find meaning in this and to pre-write more extensively.
I will try the idea of having more then one writing piece going on. I am not quite sure what the benefit is to that though. I thought focusing on one writing piece and seeing it through is the best, but I see how that is spending way too much time on one writing. Students would probably like having a choice of what writing to work on each day, but I hope this will not take away from the quality.
Okay, I am also so glad this book went into writing conferences. I can not wait to get that started this year. I do like being involved throughout my students writing, so I would like to schedule conferences before, during, and after their writing at the very least. I am traditional in the fact that I like formal one on one conferencing, but know I don’t have time for that. So I will be trying out the peer conferencing and more on the run conferencing.
Chapter 10 was encouragement that my use of rubrics and the 6 traits of writing are working and will continue to improve students’ scores in assessment. It did take awhile for my students to understand they were not getting one score in writing, but 6 scores in every piece of writing. For me it took more time in grading, but it was worth it by the end of the year.
ReplyDeleteChapter 7
ReplyDeleteI like Routman's comments on teaching "whole to part to whole". I'm so hung up making sure all the parts are addressed that I forget to show them what the quality final product should look like. I appreciate that she encourages us to focus on meaning and quality first and then let the conventions come later. At first I thought she wasn't going to give much credit to the value of solid conventions. I was excited to see that we can focus on it only after they can produce quality writing. I like the subtle way she gets kids to see the need for quality conventions for the reader...not just to get a good grade.
Developing a strong spelling consciousness was interesting too. We use the Sitton Spelling Program in our class. It's focus is the use of high frequency words supported by spelling concepts. I like it, but now I'm wondering how I can incorporate it into our writing in a way that seems natural.
I think the most valuable reminder and advice for me was the fact that we need to model and talk about our thinking as we write in front of the students. Why are we doing things like we are? They need to see that we have to interact with our own writing to make it better for us and for our reader. (Having an authentic audience gave me a lot to think about as well. I don't want to be their only audience.)
Finally, the proven strategies are so helpful. I think I'm going to make copies of these pages and include them in my planner as a reminder for me as I plan. I want to be Regie Routman when I grow up.
Chapter 8
ReplyDeleteHave more conversations about writing. I think this stands out for me as the crucial part of this chapter because I fall down on the job with this. Routmas says that a critical part of teaching writing is having students talk about their writing at all stages of the process. I'm pretty good about having the kids talk to each other, but have I set the stage for quality and effective conversation? I don't think so. I need to start and model the conversations and carry them through to an effective end. How can the kids "talk" to each other about their writing if they have no guidance? I appreciate that she stresses keeping the conversations simple and direct. I tend to clutter and try to include too much. I'm sure the students often feel overwhelmed by the amount of "stuff" I ask them to do and/or discuss. Less is more.
Some goals I have for this coming year I've decided on after reading this chapter, are to create a daily routine for writing. At my school I have so much freedom with my time. The other goal is to keep better records of the students writing. I have the kids keep a table of contents of the mini-lessons and shared practice in their writer's notebooks. But, the sections on "What Happened to It?" and "Genre" are vital as well. I think these would help keep the kids invested in their writing even after they turn it in, or not.
Again, Routman supplies us with amazing frameworks for study. Love the one for teaching writing genres. I tend to get stuck on focusing on narrative. This will help me guide my focus to the others. Expository gets neglected with me. She reminded me that kids really do love to investigate and write about topics that INTEREST them. I plan to take her advice and focus on more shorter pieces that we publish. Class books, a class newsletter, letters to people outside of the classroom. There are so many fun ways to accomplish this. Writing to perform acts of kindness will happen in my class this year.
#9
ReplyDeleteI get a bit nervous and defensive when I think about conferences because I am terrible about doing them regularly. I viewed conferencing with students as sitting down formally and talking to the student about what they could improve upon with their work. Isn't that terrible? How discouraging it must have been for my students to have to meet with me. Luckily for my students, I didn't find much time to budget in these meetings. There were always so many more things to do.
Conferencing is such a broad term as used in this chapter. I was happy to find that I do "conference" in a variety of ways. So, the guilt was lessened a bit. My students to the whole shares, quick shares, and I do rove around asking questions or making comments. Phew! I'm not a total conferencing loser.
Connecting back to Chapter 8, the use of short pieces really fits in well. I think this could be the answer to my time management problem. Short pieces, read by the student the first time, and a goal for what we are looking for will really help me stay focused. Routmans suggests frontloading and having a certain set of criteria for conferencing will help as well. I tend to want to "correct" the entire piece. Boy, that really helps then learn. If I want my students to stay focused, I have to as well. The students have a role in this as well. If I've done my job, the students will know that any piece they bring to me will meet the criteria and be done to the best of their ability. I liked her suggestions for not necessarily pointing out any errors in the writing specifically. They have to be able to find them.
LOVED the idea for creating a Roving List to take notes as I walk through the class. What a help for me to get a snapshot of progress in the assignment and in their writing in general.
This chapter helped me feel more confident in being able to incorporate and manage conferencing in my class. Baby steps
#10
ReplyDeleteThe best test prep is good teaching. I love that. It's too bad that many of us feel we have to teach to the test. Truly, the standards that students are required to meet are good standards to meet. I believe there is flexibilty in the Oregon State Standards and the Scoring Guide. They are not a prescription for how to teach, but really reasonable guidelines for what to teach. How we teach is the fun part. If we are doing it well, high-stakes tests should just be an annoyance and disruption to our schedule.
Routman tells us to keep our focus on effective writing. Yes! Do lots of writing. Yes! Let them know they have an audience. Yes! Don't threaten them with not meeting the standard. I know a lot of teachers that do this. Talk about increasing anxiety. If kids are writing well in the classroom, there is no reason they will not do well on the state assessments.
I will say that I'm not quite sure how to resolve the issue that kids have to write the a specific prompt. They may not feel a connection to any of them. I know I wouldn't. How do we help students perform well and invetst themselves into topics they don't care about. In my opinion, that is the major problem with the assessments test. But, I believe Routman would say that by helping students to see what type of writing they do best, imaginative, expository, narrative or persuasive, seeing a purpose for the writing and by reminding them that they do have an audience, kids can perform just as well on the assessment as on classroom work. Practice every once and a while with an on demand prompt would also be helpful.
Ultimately, it comes down to the confidence we've helped to instill in them as writers that will help them succeed on any asssignment or standardized test.
Chapter 7:
ReplyDeleteI agree with others who have mentioned needing to address with my students who their audience will be in their writing. I don’t think that I ever made a point to teach students this, but am excited to think about the difference it might make in their writing! It seems this will help students think about their writing differently if they are writing for that purpose of writing to someone. Another point that I am committed to improving on is celebrating more often! I often had writers that wanted to add more detail to make the story longer – thinking it was merely about the length of the story. The more sharing that I do with the students, celebrating, talking about the audience, hopefully will help writers add voice to their stories.
Editing is a tough thing to know what to do with. Teachers at my school seem to mostly feel that it is an important part of teaching – which I agree with. But, it was neat to read more about Regie’s theory of teaching editing and of holding high expectations so students should be expected to carry that through. I completely agree with holding high expectations and I think as I get into my third year of teaching I will have even higher expectations of things like editing in their writing.
Chapter 8:
There was a quote from Don Graves saying “that if we don’t teach writing at least four days a week for at least forty-five minutes, we shouldn’t bother to teach it at all.” I think this was a WOW for me as I thought about how writing was for me last year. I tried to do it first thing in the mornings in a 45 minute block, but it easily could have gotten pushed back as the morning came and went. After looking at the schedules in the book, I am anxious to block out my writing time and break it down to things like celebration!
Our 2nd grade team has a booklet made called Home Journals. In it we have lines put in the date, greeting, body, and closing. We typically do these in class at the end of the week and send them home to their parents. The parents then respond to their student’s letter on the next page. It seems like one more way to encourage letter writing as well as communication with the parent/student.
Chapter 9:
I now realize that part of not spending your main focus on the editing is that we are conferencing the writer, not the writing. Something that will be huge for me is to ask the child what they are writing about, which also helps me not look at any errors and hear more about the story itself. Whole-Class share I have never used before as a type of mini-lesson or conferencing. It seems like this is why it’s easy to not have time for the celebration, but if I could make this into one of my conferences and/or mini-lessons it would be more time efficient. I would also like to spend more time teaching and guiding students how to have peer conferences. Through whole-shares, mini-lessons, and breaking down the steps students will be able to use this efficiently.
Chapter 10:
Last year, I kept thinking that I needed more for the assessment part of writing. It’s important to know where our kids are in writing so we can keep guiding them in the right direction, but to remember that the main goal is to continue to keep their joy of writing. I now know that assessment includes things like conferences, whole-class share, etc. Keeping these records will show progress. I also set a goal with the kids about what we can work on and keep this in their writing folder. This coming year I would like to set the stamina for 20-30 minutes for sustained writing time.
Chapter 7:
ReplyDeleteLOVE this chapter...so nice to hear that getting rid of DOL is OK!!! I did get rid of it a few years back and have felt good about it but glad to hear from the "guru" that it was the right thing!!!
I really need to make better use of word wall...I really think that they are very beneficial even for 6th graders.
Regie also reminded me in this chapter to always let students know why we are doing something..."The reason we are doing this is...."
Regie also reminded me to work with students on always thinking about who the audience is...it is so important and can really help students to 'get' into their writing. And working with students on finding something that they really care about to write about.
And probably the most important thing to remember is that if we value writing we will make room for it. I teach social studies and I know I sometimes feel like I don't have time for it all. But I do...
Chapter 8:
After reading chapters 7 and 8 I have been thinking a lot about how to integrate more writing into social studies. Not just the typical 'report' on each ancient civilization but a variety of writing and writing that the kids will take a serious interest in and be motivated to write well for.
I have been thinking about having students write as an archeologists and take notes while we are discovering information and then doing journals from the point of view of an archeologist.
I also want students to be writing every night in a HW writing spiral and maybe some of the ideas of things that they could write could be about what we did in soc. studies that day. The other thing that I need to take time to do is to make sure that we take at least one piece of writing in each unit of social studies and publish it. I think that there are a lot of great class books that we could do that would be really helpful for future 6th graders.
Chapter 9:
Conferencing has not been something that I have done well in the past. It is something that I really want to work on and I am going to make a point this coming school year to make it happen. I know that I am really intimidated and when I have sat down in the past with students I really just want to edit the paper...yikes...that is not Ok. I think that I am going through the chapter and type up notes and keep them at my desk to reference while I am conferencing. Like how to ask students about their writing without saying what the heck does this mean!?!?!
But most importantly I need to establish conferencing as part of our routine and not put it off or let it drop.
Chapter 10:
I am definitely going to use the web site that the publisher has put some of Regies rubric on. I really think that will be helpful and I also think that having students keep a record in their journals would really be helpful too. I really like the idea of having students keep track of where they are at in the writing process with each of the pieces that they are working on.
I think that Regie continues to remind us that we should have extremely high expectations of all of our students...ELL, Sped, etc.. Labels should not matter...all of our students are writers and we should expect them to exceed in all that they do.
Wow! You guys (Christina, Kim, Kristin, Sarah and Kelley) really had a lot to say about this section. Christina, it sounds like you have some great ideas on how to “fit it all in”. And as you wrote, I think audience and choice are two of the biggest things you can include in your writing instruction that will make the most impact on your students’ writing. Kim Kelley and Kristin, you all commented on DOL and how in the book, it stated that learning just doesn’t transfer to their writing. This is definitely an area where I’d personally like to do some action research. I agree with this statement completely, but when I go to defend this statement to colleagues who swear by DOL, I find I just don’t have good enough evidence, or research to support my thinking…..something I definitely have to change in the near future. Kim, hold on to that thought that “excellent writing instruction” will translate to good writing test scores…you’ll need to repeat that over and over to yourself until the testing period. That doesn’t mean that you won’t need to teach a test prep unit prior to the assessment. Kristin, the quote you mentioned on pg. 176, about finding time for writing, would be a great one to sneak up into the staff lounge ….and good luck as you work on conferring with your students this coming year. Sarah, it definitely sounds like you came away from reading this section with some great ideas and goals. Your students are very lucky to have such a reflective teacher. Best of luck as you SLOWLY work on these ideas and goals this coming year. Kelley, I think it’s always a good idea to be open-minded when reading ideas from different authors….I love Regie’s ideas, but I also love teaching with the 6 Traits of writing, especially not being a great writer myself, these ideas and lessons really help beef up my minilessons at times. It sounds as though you do a great job of incorporating all of these ideas!
ReplyDeleteChapter 7—
ReplyDeleteAs a child I remember getting very frustrated in school because I felt that I had to keep going over things that I already knew. The idea of teaching whole to part is not only beneficial in showing students how skills are used before isolating them, but it also makes apparent to the teacher which skills need to be taught, and which ones students already know. A first draft should be treated as a pretest, a means of figuring out what the student doesn’t know, so that I, as a teacher, can focus on teaching, as opposed to repeating.
Also, while I agree that “voice can be emphasized and ‘taught’ without the teacher or students really knowing what it is”, I feel that it is our duty as educators to teach the “language” of writing simultaneously. While I may say “the writing sounds like him”, not all teachers will, and I want my student to connect that this means that he has “voice” in his writing.
Chapter 8—
Scheduling—Yuck! This is always such a struggle for me. I have a tendency to stretch the schedule out a bit each day until it is completely irrelevant. It is a major area of focus for me this coming school year, and I think I have found many ideas in this chapter that will help me stay on track.
I also thought that the student writing history form was fantastic! I am definitely finding that on the website for this coming year!
Chapter 9
I had never thought of roving or sharing as conferencing with a student, and felt that I was supposed to have 1-on-1 conferences with each of my students in a week—How daunting! The examples of whole-class share were encouraging. I think it would be quite important to be sure you are not always using the same style with each child (i.e. always 1-on-1 with Joe, never 1-on-1 with Suzie)
Regarding the 1-on-1 conferences, I was also encouraged to see the “language of helpful responses” on p. 227. Namely, the last section, where I saw that I can actually tell the student what needs fixed as opposed to waiting for him to figure it out on his own. In my previous conferences I spent most of the conference trying to get the student to see what needs to be fixed—no wonder my conferences took forever!
“Content is personal; editing is not”—I really appreciated this comment. It goes back to having high expectations of students.
Chapter 10
I LOVE the “Wanda WASL” story. What a wonderful way to encourage creativity and excellence in writing for tests! I will definitely have to come up with something like that for my class.
I think the idea of good teaching vs. test prep is, ideally, a good one. However, realistically, it is scary to think of a year without specific test prep blowing up in my face when scores are sent to my principal. I think the key is weaving testing skills into our teaching beginning day 1 so that it is not dumped on students 2-3 weeks before the test.
Assignment 5
ReplyDeleteI’m so glad to hear others that think that Daily Oral Language doesn’t work and is a waste of time! I’m hoping to convince my fellow teachers that we do not need to do it this year! I have seen that, like Routman, DOL does not transfer to students’ writing. I think that the hardest part this year will be identifying topics and audiences that interest the students. I’ve learned how important that is to keep kids engaged and trying their best. Giving the students choice in their writing will help with this, along with short, purposeful projects. I’m planning on tying writing into many curriculum areas to make it purposeful. I also liked how Routman is pretty straightforward with the students she works with- she tells them explicitly what do to and the purpose of it- why it is important. I’m hoping to do this more often this year- explain the importance so the students know the value of what they are doing/learning.
Revision has always been a struggle. I plan on making the revision process much more explicit this year (instead of vaguely telling students to look through their paper and make changes). I loved the list on page 159 and will model this in class and ask students to tell me what I did and post their list in the classroom. I hope that Routman is right in that when students are engaged and care about the reader, they will be more invested in the revision process. In the last couple years, I have basically lumped revision and editing together… two very different things- what was I thinking? Routman’s quote, “it matters little if my text is perfectly edited and spelled if what I have to say is trivial…” This is so true! Revision and editing are so different and each need to be modeled and students need to be taught both using scaffolding. Routman suggests being tough on editing, which has been a struggle for me in the past. I always struggled with what I do- should I give students some ‘free’ editing, return papers, etc. Now I have a good understanding of what to do from hearing Routman’s ideas. If students should know it (possibly from a previous conference, mini-lesson) then return the paper to fix with dots in the margin to refer back to when the student is finished. I will also use her idea about the child created word walls and her spelling chart on page 163 as a mini-lesson.
Assignment 5- continued
ReplyDeleteI agree that daily writing is so important! Writing fluency is one of the most important things we can teach students, so writing time is the most important part of writer’s workshop. Last year, I changed my schedule so that I had a full 2 hour literacy block for language arts. I think that it is so important to tie writing and reading together, as mentioned in a previous chapter. This chapter has showed me how to make a good use of my writing time for fluency. I agree that the mini-lessons need to be short- about 15 minutes, then writing time while I conference with some students, and whole class share. I have not done enough of this on a daily basis in the past. I occasionally asked students to share during writer’s workshop, but most of the time we waited until papers were published to share them in the large group. This is a mistake because students can learn so much from each other! Other ideas I picked up in the chapter: take time to model what workshop time looks/sounds like, behavior expectations-supplies, sharpening pencils, conferences, love the idea of the classroom good news book and starting to collect stationary for students to use.
The loved seeing the roving notes chart from this chapter. I have struggled with ways to record and keep information on students that I could do consistently. Sticky notes get lost, notebook are hard to carry around. I love the one sheet with room for notes on each student. I can use it for more than just conferences- possibly to record who shares, etc. This chapter brought up some ideas that I had not thought of before, such as the idea of expecting students to rehearse/prepare to share before whole class share. I also realized I need to be consistent about not allowing students to interrupt conferences- the behavior needs to be explicitly taught and reinforced by me.
I love the idea of two different kinds of conferences- content conferences and editing conferences! These should be separate things and I can’t wait to try this out this year. I have mostly been doing editing conferences. In the content conferences, I will have the chance to give students positive feedback first, but then they will expect to go away with something to work on as well.
I think that way too much emphasis is placed on the writing test. If students are given good writing teaching and can write fluently, most students will have nothing to worry about. I think that it is important to do a simulation of the test, so students will know what to expect and hopefully reduce any anxiety. The state website is a great resource for sample papers. I really like Routman’s idea of having a crate of examples in many different types of genres for students to look at and glean ideas from. Other ideas I’m planning on using: revising/re-writing writing pieces from a couple months before; self-evaluation; and creating an audience for the test.
Chapter #7
ReplyDeleteI agree with Regie that students will learn writing skills through conferences, discussions, and modeled examples from meaningful writing. Those writing skills will also transfer to students’ writing and make them better writers. However, I don’t completely agree with Regie’s stance that teaching skills in isolation. I believe that some of the skills they may learn from grammar worksheets and Daily Oral Language will help students with both editing and their mastery of grammar. I, like most teachers, want to make sure I teach all the skills I’m required to teach, but I have concerns that students may not achieve mastery of all the required skills if they don’t practice them enough. I may successfully be able to discuss each skill during a writing conference, share, or modeled example, but I’m concerned that students may not master some skills without additional practice. I will concede though, that some worksheets are not effective for struggling students. They can even be counter-productive by reinforcing the fact that the student struggling, which leads to greater discouragement. I believe that striking a good balanced between Regies’s approach and my own will better help me achieve my teaching goals.
Chapter #8
Much of the writing that takes place in my classroom is journaling. It could certainly be called a writing workshop though, since each day students choose their own topics, spend time writing, and finish with and there is usually a sharing time. Most of what we write doesn’t go beyond the first draft, but I agree with Regie that teachers should publish more short pieces. This upcoming school year, I plan to have students take more short writing pieces through the entire writing process.
One idea I really loved in chapter eight was the writing records. They keep track of the students’ assignments, the dates they were worked on, list the audience, and note if the writing was published. I plan to create a similar sheet to track students’ progress.
Chapter #9
The purpose of a writing conference is to provide students with feedback and encouragement about their writing. In the past, my definition of a writing conference was always one-on-one. However, I am now looking at writing conferences to also be used as a method for instruction. Public conferences are a great way to provide feedback to a student through a classroom discussion. This discussion could include skills we are working on, illicit feedback from other students, and also models how students can conduct peer conferences.
Chapter #10
Rubrics are a valuable tool for teachers, but they can be confusing and overwhelming if they contain too much information. I agree with Regie that rubrics should be simplified so students can use them easily. I also believe that good teaching is the best test preparation
Thanks Kelly R., Angela, Kelley, Megan M., Leslie, Kelly B., & Brad for your comments. These chapters were chock full of information to make us evaluate and reflect on our teaching. Each of you was extremely reflective on your own writing instruction and has established some great goals for the coming school year. Best of luck as you work through some changes in your writing instruction!
ReplyDeleteWhy do we continue to teach grammar and mechanics with a strategy that simply does not work? Why do we force students to rehearse errors and teach grammar exclusively out of the writing context? Would love to hear your responses. More points at http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/why-daily-oral-language-d-o-l-doesnt-work/ and, more importantly, a grammar/mechanics warm-up/opener/bell-ringer that uses a balanced approach of error analysis and model writing is detailed at http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/why-daily-oral-language-d-o-l-doesnt-work/.
ReplyDelete