This is it everyone!!! Welcome to the last assignment for the course! All coursework is due 12/5!!!
It's been great reading what you all have to share! Take a look at the last section in Regie's text, Writing Essentials, it's chock full of great resources!!!
Teaching in Action: Lesson Essentials
5 Day Lesson Plans & Appendices
• Secrets of Second Graders
• Heart Poems
• Procedural writing
• Hero writing
• Persuasive writing
• Appendix survey
Be sure to look through this section. If you haven’t already done so, look at Appendix A (page A-2.) Re-examine your beliefs about writing by re-reading the statements about the writing process and marking true or false in your book. Did you change any of your previous answers? Would you consider bringing this page to your team or even to your entire school to jumpstart discussions about writing?
Take some time to look through the appendices. There are several useful examples included. One we’d like to point out to you is Appendix L- The Genre Characteristics Excerpt on page A-13. Look to the Writing Essentials companion website at www.heinemann.com/writingessentials for the entire chart as well as directions to assist you playing the DVD.
ASSIGNMENT NINE: Final Course Reflection - Critically examine your current literacy program and develop realistic goals to improve your instruction. Also reflect on the balance between your home and school life. If our students are to become happy, literate people, they need happy, balanced teachers. BRIEFLY, share several of your goals with the class by posting them to the blog for this final assignment.
We would appreciate any feedback you might be able to give us about the course! Please email us comments and thank-you for participating in our course!!!! Jackie & Mary!
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Course Goals
ReplyDeleteThis course has helped me to rethink some of the philosophies I had about teaching writing and while I know I will not master writing teaching within a month, I do have a newfound ambition to revise my practices. I have created a list of goals that I would like to be sure and implement before the end of December and I sincerely hope that these will help my class to find success and joy in writing.
1. Create a conferring notebook and system for conference data recording
2. Conduct an editing conference in whole-class share
3. Begin conducting shared writing mini-lessons and publish to class library
4. Teach second-grade secrets lesson
5. Consider adding Routman’s ideas to my current word work
6. Find a way to get every student published and have a mini-celebration (apple cider toast)
7. Get going on book reviews and display them in the library
8. Find a way to share this new information and excite my colleagues
10. Carve out some time for me each and every weekend
I have a busy schedule, so I have to live and die by my lists. I have put all of these items on my list, so I will have the reminder of all the things I need to help move me forward.
One of my goals at the beginning of this year was to actually read this book. I am so happy that I did! After reading this book, I feel that I have somewhat of a handle on how to teach writing. I have set goals for myself throughout this year, and these are a few more to add to the list:
ReplyDelete1. Use the persuasive writing piece from the book.
2. Stay late at school only 2 nights a week.
3. Bring in pieces of writing that I use in my day-to-day life (Notes, emails, letters, thank you cards), to demonstrate the importance of writing.
4. Work on writing in front of students more frequently.
5. Leave the writing up for students to use as a model for their own writing.
6. Continue to have kids write every day, with fidelity and purpose.
7. Have high expectations for all students!
Thanks Hope and Lisa for your final comments! You both have laid out some very ambitious future plans for your writing instruction! Hope, if you can begin to feel successful using a conferring notebook to support your writing work with students for the remainder of the year, that alone, would be a huge accomplishment! Then move your #10 item (carving out time for you every weekend) to the #2 spot . Lisa, I’m glad that we could help you reach one of your own personal goals with this course (reading this book), in addition to you being able to earn some credits. I love your #6 on your list, “continue to have kids write every day with fidelity and purpose”…I believe this message is at the heart of Regie’s book!!! Thank-you both for being such thoughtful and reflective writing teachers!
ReplyDeleteI am beginning to feel more confident with the ELD piece of teaching - but I am always needing ways to transfer it better to my students' lives. Writing is a great conduit. Here are my goals:
ReplyDelete1. Keep the modeling shorter and spend more time on shared writing – using student ideas and suggestions to write a piece.
2. Read one middle school book a month, and find at least one example in each of good writing that I can share with students
3. Use the persuasive writing with next month’s lesson on civil rights.
4. Use the heart poem idea around Valentine’s Day.
5. By March, after I feel more secure using the reading workshop ideas, use the literacy coach to find ways to use a writer’s workshop with an ELD focus.
6. Increase the ‘no excuse’ list posted to include the top 100 words. Stick to it!
7. Bring in pieces of writing I use in my day to day life to demonstrate the importance of writing
8. Begin walking to school every day, unless the car is needed for hauling or errands. Rain is no excuse! Be prepared!
9. Begin hiking at least once a month on the weekend. You love it. Do it!
10. Celebrate and publish at least one piece from each student before the end of the year.
Five Goals to Improve My Instruction
ReplyDelete1.Write More Letters –
a.One of the most successful projects that I have done with my students was a quick letter-writing project we had to do at the last minute. Our PTO sponsored a food drive in which grade levels were paired to work together to bring in various food items for families in need. Fourth grade was paired with eleventh grade. To motivate the eleventh grade we wrote each one of them a letter. My students were able to produce focused, thoughtful and aesthetically pleasing letters in 30 minutes. I would like to heed Regie’s advice to employ letter-writing more often.
2.Draw Your Audience –
a.One of Regie’s foci is to always have your audience in mind. I think it would be fun to actually have my students draw a little picture (or write the name) of their audience at the top of their writing in their notebooks. I think this will be fun for a couple of my more visual students.
3.Integrate Writing and Reading Into our Program of Inquiry –
a.Our program of inquiry is broken into six units. Most of the units lend themselves well to literacy integration. Since I am constantly looking for more literacy time, I am going to try to better link our program of inquiry with reading and writing. 80% of our program of inquiry units are non-fiction, so this would be a great in-roads for purposeful non-fiction reading.
4.Do More Shared Writing –
a.This is one aspect of writing that I have not tapped into in my classroom. It seems like it takes a lot of time and management. I am going to experiment on a small shared writing task first.
5.Word Work –
a.Cut up sentences – I know this is not the newest idea, but I haven’t done it in years! I am going to try this out for the initial activity of our upcoming program of inquiry unit. Each unit of inquiry has a central idea. I am going to cut it up into individual words and have students try to reconstruct it. If they are struggling, I will tell them the title of the unit and let them continue. After they have rearranged sentences a few times (including star lines from the books they are reading), I want to have them create their own!
Five Goals to Improve My Home-School Balance
1.Limit What I Bring Home –
a.Ugh. It stinks to carry home a bag full of papers or notebooks. Usually my (good?) intentions of marking all those items gives way to the myriad tasks I have to do at home, only leaving me feeling guilty for not marking them! Once and for all, I am going to reduce what I bring home. I am going to limit myself to reading and responding to 3 readers’ letters, a school mandate.
2.Use Parents –
a.This year I have successfully incorporated parent help into our reading instruction. Several parents read with students, listening to them and recording their progress. I want to take that success to our writing. At the end of each of our writing units, I am going to ask several of these parents to come in and work with students on their final edits, sharing with students that this is similar to what would happen in real life between an author and her publisher.
3.Limit Minilessons –
a.Everyone has gotten stuck in a minilesson that seems to never end. To keep myself from doing this, I am going to work with my class time keeper (a student job) to time me and raise his hand when I hit five minutes.
4.Maximize Independent Student Writing Time –
a.I know that my students are at a point where they can write continuously and independently for 30 minutes, but they rarely get 30 unadulterated minutes to write. I am hoping that reducing my minilessons will allow my students that important time for their own writing.
5.Respectfully Reject Sub-par Work –
a.A couple of my students still turn in work that is below their abilities. Similar to what Regie said, I am going to talk with my class about what makes me (the reader) want to read their writing and what turns me off. I am going to share with them that at this point I think it is time I only accept writing that I can tell is best-effort writing.
Course Reflection
ReplyDeleteI am happy that taking this course for certification renewal purposes led me to this book. It has provided me with many reminders and new ideas about what an effective writing classroom looks like. I have already changed many things that are happening in my classroom and I will keep this book on my shelf as a valuable resource when I feel like things are not going so well.
Some specific things that I appreciated.
1. The focus on conferences. I have always thought as conferences as simply one on one student teacher conferences. In the past I struggled to reach each and every student often enough. The additional formats make maintaining constructive writing relationships with each student much more manageable.
2. The focus on writing within context. I reminded to shy away from worksheets or assignments that focus on one trait and instead teach writing as a whole and giving students a variety of topics to write about. This will help to keep writers engaged and interested.
3. Always keeping your audience in mind.
4. One thing that I am excited to improve in my classroom is the publishing aspect. With more effective student editing, I am looking forward to displaying and celebrating what students have accomplished.
5. The involvement of the whole staff. I have been lucky this year to have one teacher that I am paired with and we have had the opportunity to really analyze what is happening with our teaching of writing. I am excited about the opportunity to create larger communities with which to share ideas and improve the teaching of writing across the grade levels.
Thanks for everything. I want to reemphasize how pleased I am with discovering this book through this class.
Course Goals
ReplyDeleteI knew at the end of last school year that I wanted to jump start my writing program. Our staff identified grammar skills as one of the school improvement goals for the coming year. I knew that I needed to improve more than just grammar. I enjoy teaching literature and science much more than writing. My personal goal was to find strategies to enrich my writing classroom so that students would enjoy writing more, and hopefully do better with grammar and other self-revisions. A 2nd goal was to come up with projects and / or ways to teach writing that got me excited about the process as well. I wish I had found this class before school started, but am grateful for the improvements in my teaching and enjoyment just in this first trimester of the school year. As I made my goals for this reflection I tried to balance challenging myself, but remaining realistic to all that needs to be accomplished this year, both in and outside of my classroom.
1. The Optimal Learning Model: Write more in front of my students!! I’ve always been nervous to do this, but I’m gaining confidence. I also want to do more shared writing in the classroom.
2. Writing conferences: Build more whole class conferences into my lessons. Continue to keep in mind how important it is to empower the student and give them confidence in their writing abilities.
3. Sustained writing time every day: this is a goal also for my religion and science classes.
4. Begin compiling short writing mini lessons ~ and get rid of the worksheet and full class writing lessons
5. Build more celebration times into my classes. I’ll continue to celebrate by sharing and posting students’ work, but I also want to add bigger celebrations. I’m going to do a “coffee-klatch” / “author share” with my students using cocoa and mugs during December. We’ll use our own writing, as well as finding and sharing great writing in the books we’re all independently reading.Each month we’ll do something similar to celebrate in a bigger way.
6. Continue to have high expectations for all writing in all subject areas.
7. Continue my efforts for our school to take a closer look at how we currently teach writing and how we can build a much stronger writing program for our school, if we all follow a similar format. I’d like to start with looking at the whole – part – whole model of teaching writing. I’ve brought up some of Regie’s ideas in staff meetings and with our principal. I’ve discussed more ideas with our middle school staff.
8. Over Christmas break create a spiral-bound mini flip chart of all teaching tips of Regie’s that I’ve typed up, so that I have an easy reference for myself to remember things to say and do.
I joined this class with the specific goal of finding out how to teach writing, rather than talking about and assigning writing. Routman’s book was exactly what I was looking for, and I have a giant list of ideas to try and build into my teaching practices. I have a tendency to make a huge list of tasks and then not follow through with them, so I have made a very short list and will ask my supervisor to make them of my annual review so that I am accountable.
ReplyDelete1. Hand over more student responsibility:
a. Create a “no excuses” list for spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.
b. Return papers that do not follow assignment criteria.
c. Conduct conference calls, rather than doing the editing for them.
2. Share what I have learned with my schools’ professional community. Talk with Teacher Support to see what kinds of technology we could use to make the online curriculum more demonstration friendly.
3. Take lunch breaks and log off by 5:00 pm to have more balance in my life and make time for family, friends, and myself on weekdays.
4. Do more writing myself: email correspondence, letters to grandparents, creative writer’s group.
5. Join the NCTE so that I am more familiar with the research being done on teaching writing.
While I am not teaching the literacy portion of the day this year, I am hoping to change that for next year. So, my goals for next year will be:
ReplyDeleteTo utilize my writer’s conference notebook to document more positive in my students writing
To focus on developing my student joy of writing and helping them to have fun with it
To worry more about my students learning the craft of writing and the mechanics secondarily
To utilize whole-class share conferences to celebrate all students progress and positives no matter how small
To do more class publishing
To reread Regie’s book as the new school year begins to refresh all this new and wonderful thinking in my mind
To share more of my own writing, not just what I show in demo's
To encourage students to do more authentic writing
To incorporate 'No Excuses' items into each students writing (I love this idea!)
To encourage students to brign me suggestions that they find of authentic ways to write
Even though I had to rush to complete the reading of this book and the course work on time (do to a s-l-o-w decision by my district to pay for this course)I am very excited by it. Teaching writing is the one area where I felt somewhat incompetent with. Why don't we get more help with learning good ways to teach writing while in college? I feel like I have some skills I can lean on to become a good writing teacher.
Thank you for having this course!!!
Hi all!!! Thanks so much for getting your assignments in by the deadline, I did submit each of you in with a grade “A” since everyone has completed each of the assignments. Both Mary and I appreciate your participation in our courses. We will do our best to respond to everyone within the next couple of days…but as Scott said, it was a “slow” semester and many of you handed in your work within the last week. I hope everyone enjoys the upcoming holidays and finds some time to relax with friends and family (Remember Regie’s quote – “If our students are to become happy, literate people, they need happy, balanced teachers.”)!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Teri, Scott, Tod, Yvonne, Alica, & Amy for your comments on Assignment Nine. You have all set some great goals for yourselves with some common themes of setting high expectations and holding students accountable, trying to teach TO the students less, and giving them more time to write, considering audience, and making sure there is time to celebrate writing. These are all wonderful goals, but remember to give yourself time to make changes as to not get frustrated and overwhelmed….and only a few of you considered adding yourselves to your goal list….don’t forget yourselves