Chapter 3: Share Your Writing Life
• Write together as a staff
• Note your writing practices
• Tell students why you write
Chapter Two of Regie’s book segues right into her third chapter, “Share Your Writing Life.” In this chapter Regie drives home the importance of teachers sharing their writing process with their students. She encourages teachers to become writers in front of their students, on their own and with their staff, and also to share their daily writing practices with their students. The purpose of the assignment below (Assignment #3) is to get you writing.
ASSIGNMENT THREE: Sharing Your Writing Life!
For many of us, writing is not enjoyable and/or is very difficult. Perhaps it is because we ourselves were never celebrated as writers. Or perhaps we only remember the “skills” based comments written in various colored pens on our papers…that always sliced deep (and turned many of us into “non-writers.”) These comments never really helped our writing become any better. As a requirement of a summer writing institute (which I was conned into attending “so that I could become a better teacher of writing”) I (Jackie) bit the bullet and wrote extensively throughout the course. What they say is true: the more I wrote, the more I enjoyed it, and I believe I grew as a writer. The goal of this two-part assignment is to get you writing.
Part One:
For the first part of this assignment you need to think about topics for your own writing (ideas/stories that you can share to excite your students) and then actually write a short piece (ideally in front of your students.) If you do not presently have the opportunity to write in front of your students then please complete the activity on your own.
1. Use the topic idea list from Regie’s “Try It and Apply It” on page 26. Choose several topics, and then create a list of sub-topics for each.
2. Choose the sub-topic that most interests you and write a short piece that you can use to model writing in front of your students.
Part Two:
1. On pages 45-46, Regie gives suggestions for writing exercises for the start of school (or really anytime you need to get writing started.) Follow her criteria for “Capturing A Moment” (from the summer or any other time ) and draft a short piece. Follow the directions in the chart on page 46.
2. After completing the draft, which should take no more than 10 minutes, take a moment to write down some of your observations of your writing process. Again, use the suggestions from the chart or the bullets below:
o What are you thinking about as you are composing?
o What exactly did you do to plan, to get started writing, when you got stuck, or when you completed your piece?
o What does your process look like? Do you write straight through? Stop to re-read? Revise as you go? Look up information? Edit?
The goal of this activity is to get you to write - which will hopefully get you more comfortable writing in front of your children! Complete this activity and let us know how it went by sharing your answers to some of the bulleted questions above.
Please post your comments to the course blog. (We don’t need to see your writing piece. We are more interested in your thought process as you completed the exercise.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Chapter Three: Part One
ReplyDeleteI chose several topics to “test out” on the kids in my class. During the first week of school, I would mention a story that I would tell them “another time,” (like the time I met Michael Jordan, or the day we adopted our dog) and noticed the reaction I got. I slowly started plotting my list in my head. The ideas that I had for my topics were: One of the best days of my life, my best vacation ever, favorite memory, least favorite memory, lessons learned, and my most embarrassing day.
Part Two:
Last week, I chose to model the story of the day we got Busta from the Humane Society. I first told the story, and just wrote down main ideas in front of the class. The next day, I came up with my rough draft. I then decided to use this as my demonstration for “Capturing a Moment” (just not from this summer).
I asked the kids what they noticed me do as I told, then wrote the story. We brainstormed a list that is now hung in the writing area of the room. I noticed that I found it much easier to compose after I had told the story aloud. During the actual writing, I found that if I read aloud as I went, I could compose and come up with different/better ways to say what I wanted. I am more comfortable writing straight through, but because I wanted the kids engaged while I was writing, I read it aloud. Once I began doing that, I could make changes on the spot (helpful thing to know for the future).
This was so so so much fun! The kids got it and loved the fact that they get to talk before, during, and after they write. So cool!
Thanks so much for sharing your writing process! I love how excited you are about teaching writing...and how it spills over into your classroom. Your students are so lucky:) I am curious as to the story behind the name, "Busta"!
ReplyDeleteI have been trying to include my “little stories” just to see how interested students are. Although it is true, they know it is a rabbit trail and secretly hope it will keep me from the real lesson, I have been surprised to see how these little stories bring an alertness to students who had only been passively listening previously. When I read Lisa’s post, I realized I had been doing the same thing, really – keeping unofficial track of stories that interested students the most.
ReplyDeleteHere are a few:
When teaching cause and effect, I had much better luck asking students to tell me their own stories of the “Good (why did you get an award?), the Bad (why did you get in trouble) or the Ugly (how did you get hurt?)” than just asking for one of those ideas.
More topics that worked:
Scariest moment as a mother
Scariest moment as a teacher
Scariest moment as a kid
Best day
Worst day
My first job
How I got my name
A time I was disappointed
Something I’m really proud about
When my best friend dumped me
Dumbest thing I did
Smartest thing I did
Part II
I, like my students, was influenced by the example modeled….as I read someone else’s thrilling moment, I quickly thought about the most thrilling moment of my own. I thought I was going to start with me going down the road, but I realized that took too much explanation. It was easier to start at the physical beginning of the trip – and when I started writing, I quickly realized I needed to change the time to the beginning of the summer as well – it made for better theme.
I was then trying to figure out what parts of the moment made it so thrilling. As I began to describe them, it quickly became obvious that I was filling out the senses: what did I see, hear, feel, and then of course, think. It was a challenge to try to get the words in such a way that someone else could put themselves there….I wanted them to be jealous and wish they too had a cool jeep riding summer!
I didn’t let myself get stuck too much – if I got close to how I felt, I kept going. When I went back to read it, I was able to tweak it and rewrite to make something seem stronger.
I am constantly rereading it because I need to gear up for the next sentence and it has to fit the previous one. Sometimes it will flow, but sometimes I have to stop and think of the right way to phrase it. That’s why I re-read all the time, so I can hear how to write the next sentence.
My topic sentence actually came in the second paragraph! (how incorrect!) And although I kept wanting to “tell” I found it actually much easier to “show” the thrill and anticipation I felt at spending the summer with my new jeep.
Part I
ReplyDeleteStarting the second week of school, I introduced personal narratives to my fourth graders. After discussing what a personal narrative was, we focused in on generating ideas. At this point, I was using lesson plans from lucy calkin's work. Over a series of days, I asked students to brainstorm and write on the following topics.
1. THink of a person. Tell about one particular memorable event or moment with that person.
2. Think of a place. Tell about one on particular episode that happened at that place.
3. Think about an object. Describe one particular interaction that shows why that object is important to you.
Students and I were able to come up with a number of topics for each of these prompts that we stored in the back of our writing journal. My hope is that students will refer to these ideas when they are searching for ideas at later points in the year.
In addition, I introduced the topic of thinking about one particular emotion (positive or negative) and describing one exact time when they experienced that emotion acutely. Students had a lot of fun with this one.
Part II
At some point in our personal narrative study, the class and I were working on leads. I modeled a lead in my own personal narrative about a person in my life. First, I modeled what my leads often look like. It was more of a commentary on my brother in place of a more interesting, engaging lead. I find that I often write in my journal in this manner and, as a consequence, I hate going back and looking through old journals. I feel like many of my students struggle with similar problems.
I then told students that I was going to picture one moment with my brother and describe it like it was in a movie. When I thought about writing in that manner, words and exact description came easily. I wrote straight through. I didn't take suggestions from the class and I described what I was thinking out loud as I went along.
After I finished my lead, I stopped and read it back out loud to myself and the class. As I read it over, I fixed some spelling and grammar mistakes and swapped some words. I was so happy with my lead that I finished the story in its entirety later on by myself.
Thanks to both Teri and Tod for sharing your writing processes. As you can see, it’s so helpful to shared this process with your students and allow them to see what goes on inside your head as you work through the process.
ReplyDeletePart 1
ReplyDeleteI had some difficulty getting my students to buy into my writing sharing for this project and was a little disappointed by the lack of transfer for this writing assignment. I need to figure out where the breakdown occurred and then go back and teach this lesson again.
I made a list of topics just like the one that Routman has in her book, I modeled talking it out with another student and working to narrow down my selections. Then, I funneled my one topic idea down to a narrowed focus for my writing lesson. I feel like I did a good job not keeping the class sitting too long, as I stretched the lesson over two days.
One thing that was a little frustrating was how my class kept shouting out little things to me while I was writing and it was hard to focus as they kept interjecting their own little personal experiences into my piece. Normally, I would welcome this kind of interacting, but in this case it made it hard to continue my thought process. I may need to go back and introduce some expectations for modeled writing activities.
I also feel like the topic I narrowed down to write about was one that I only felt luke-warm about. It probably showed when I was writing for the class and maybe that lead the class to not be interested in what I was showing them either. I am also thinking that just switching over to a shared writing lesson might be a better fit for these students. They wanted to interject their thoughts, so maybe I should just go ahead and move to that phase of the OLM, because they seem ready to write together.
I am going to go back and try this lesson again. That is one of the best things about teaching; you can always go back and try again.
Part 2
One thing that struck me right away when completing this writing exercise was that when you really know an idea, it is easy to let the words flow. I really only had one big story from the summer that I wanted to tell, but since it was just one, it was an easy choice to make and write about.
I did little to nothing to plan my writing. I simply took a few minutes to outline some main points, but only in my head, then I let go with my pencil. I did take a little pause to talk out a snappy opening sentence, because this is a skill that I have worked hard to refine over my writing lifetime. It made me realize that this is a skill I need to help my students attain as well.
Once I stared writing, it was really easy to keep things going. In fact, I needed more than ten minutes to say all that I wanted to say. I did notice that I was very careful to stay organized and not list things out of turn in my narrative. Again, a skill that I will want to be sure and impart as I am completing these types of modeled writing lessons in front of my class. Hopefully they will be able to glean some of these things from my own writing pieces.
What I learned from this experience was that it should not be scary to write about yourself, and I will just be careful to find topics that will help me be more excited as a writer and then share this with my students.
Part I:
ReplyDeleteAlthough I enjoyed writing about the “Try It; Apply It” concepts on my own, we are working on hero essays in my class right now (having just finished our personal narrative assignment before I joined this class,) so I demonstrated that assignment, instead. I followed Routman’s recommendation to only prepare with my narrowed topic and jot down initial ideas (26) so that the writing experience I demonstrated would be authentic. On the day of the lesson and with my students watching, I tried to sketch out an introductory paragraph defining who a hero is and why I think my grandfather was heroic and important to my family. It was a disaster! I was surprised to find that explaining my thought process and why I focused on certain details while simultaneously writing them out was really hard. In the future, I am going to compose the paragraphs ahead of time, making notes of areas where I revised, and then reenact that in front of my students. My mind went blank when I was in the moment, and I couldn’t do it without more drafting preparation on my first try at modeling writing.
Part II:
As I worked on writing my “Capturing a Moment” piece, I found myself mainly revising words and rolling them around on my tongue mentally as I went. I thought the writing would be slow because I was focused on creating a cohesive, insightful piece in 5-7 minutes and also on using “juicy” words to tell the story with flair. Instead, I was happy with my topic and wrote without stopping, which is unusual for me. I only reread when I paused to take notes about my process. I experienced memory failure when I tried to think of my horseback riding trainer’s name, so I typed a blank line and had to go look it up as I revised—probably from the pressure of the limited time I had. I did a lot of correcting while I typed, especially with spelling mistakes. At the end of the exercise, I still needed a stronger conclusion, and I had to move ideas around to make the organization stronger; I would not have finished it in time if I had been given an in-class deadline.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHope and Alicia, I loved that you both had such a wonderful and reflective attitude over your modeled writing lessons. Hope, as you said, one of the pros about teach is that you can always go back and try to teach something a different way if you don’t find success the first time. Another great thing is to be comfortable to be able to make professional decisions that make sense for your class. I think that both of you realize that you are the professional “in” there everyday (Alicia, I know you’re not really “in”)..you are the one who can determine which type of instructional strategy would best serve your students (ie. modeled writing vs. shared writing)…or whether your writing needs to be composed ahead of time. Thanks so much for sharing your writing processes.
ReplyDeletePart I: I brainstormed a list of topic ideas that would be worth writing about with my 8th grade class. Many of the topics were too broad (i.e. sports, pets, friends, etc.) so we worked on narrowing the topic so that it would be more focused and easier to write about. Some of the ideas we came up with:
ReplyDelete• An exhilarating moment in my sports life
• My room
• The best place to be with friends (i.e. the mall, basketball court, beach, etc.)
• A special time with my pet
• A favorite time with a grandparent, uncle, etc.
• The day my sports team lost a major game
Although I mentioned and then wrote about an embarrassing moment, this wasn’t a topic that the students chose to have up on our brainstorm sheet. Perhaps there are too many embarrassing moments in middle school…
Part II: When I did this activity with my students I chose a story from a few summers ago when my family visited New Zealand. It was a story about an embarrassing, yet exhilarating (overcoming a fear) experience for me. I’ve told the story many times to friends, so it was actually easy for me to get my ideas down. This is usually the stumbling block for me. The kids were engaged with the story, especially because there was a lot of humor in it. It makes such a difference to tell the story first and then demonstrate the writing process. Because I told the story to the kids first, they helped me find more precise words to bring more excitement to the writing piece. I have to admit, it took longer than 10 minutes, but I do believe the kids had fun with me as I wrote it down. Thinking aloud was the toughest part for me, something I’m still getting used to. I told the students the audience I had in mind for the piece was my family. After that I just started writing, with cross outs, question marks for some spelling, and arrows showing where a sentence would fit better. I couldn’t remember the name of the specific place we were, so I circled the word “place?” in a different color so that they could see I would look this up at a later time. I found myself silently re-reading and had to remind myself to re-read aloud.
After this demonstration I had a student who wanted to demonstrate her writing process in front of the class! I thought this was novel. Since they had just sat through my process, I told her she could demonstrate the next day. She did a great job…and I’m hoping more students will have the courage to do that.
Chapter Three-
ReplyDeleteI 'home school' my son in the mornings before I go to my teaching job. Since I am not teaching literacy this year I opted to share my writing with him. This was actually one of the most wonderful experiences and, he says, it helped him with his writing. He said the best part was that he learned something new about me and he feels that my students would love it too!
Part two
Planning for writing is an area that I have struggled in teaching from day one. I have always felt that teaching ways to plan and planning organizers is a good thing (even though I was never taught to use any except an outline) but I have also wondered if forcing students to use a particular plan is such a good idea. I don’t use any form of written plan when I write. I think about what I want or need to say, get a brainstorm of main ideas and then just start to write. Aren’t there students that are that way too? Regie addressed this and I am grateful she did! What I noticed in my own writing is that I just plain cannot plan like my school wants our students to plan. I am really realizing that we are not allowing for different learning and writing techniques for different learners. I would love to ask about this at school, but feel that I won’t get a straight answer. Not only do I not do much planning, I also write straight through. I do some revision as I write when I notice that something could sound better or just plain doesn’t express what I really want to say, but I don’t do much revising after I am done drafting.