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)
After looking over the list, I narrowed down to the topic of pets. I chose to write about our new classroom pet, the hamster named Piper. Several things that came to mind while I was writing in front of my class was, is the topic entertaining for them? Are they understanding what I want from them in their writing? Should I have chosen a different topic, does everyone have a pet? What about the time frame, will it be enough, am I wasting time with to much detail/outline?
ReplyDeleteI chose to write my thoughts out about Piper, not necessarily sentences but word bubbles detailing specific words that went with the story of her arrivial to the classroom. This was a concept the kids were used to doing in class and was not foriegn to them. I take three of the bubbles and turn them into sentences, re-reading them as I write. I talk outloud about the steps I want to take in making sure my reader understands my topic.
I really do not have a problem writing in front of my class. I enjoy writing stories for them and having them help me insert words into my sentences. They enjoy it when I tell them things about my life, even if it is as boring as my trip to Fred Meyers to buy groceries! I would like to get away from writing with pictures, a lot of my students want to write one sentence and then draw this elaborate picture.
I would model and tell students that the pictures for writing are just a quick sketch. I'd tell them this is not the time for elaborate pictures, the sketch is just to help the writer get an idea of the story. After a story is complete and a final draft, then detailed illustrations can be created.
ReplyDeleteWriting in front of my class has moved me a step in the right direction. While these activities have been nowhere near perfect, they are a good starting point and I feel like I learned from and will improve with more practice and experience. The first piece that I wrote was about my best friend and the second was about going to the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2 premiere at midnight. It really helped me in both instances to tell about my best friend and tell about the night at the movie theater. It refreshed my memory and got me thinking about details that I might want to add in my writing. I did a lot of rereading during both pieces and revised as I went along. In the piece about my best friend I decided to focus on the qualities that make her a great friend and then elaborated on each of those qualities with examples. With the piece about the movie theater I focused on the senses and all the things I heard, saw, smelled, tasted and how I felt about watching the final movie. I felt that my writing aloud was sort of overtaken by the “aloud” part and not the “writing” part. I got so focused on the sharing about the topics that I didn’t do as well as I wanted with the modeling of the writing process and the sharing of my composing as I wanted. I really enjoyed both activities and I saw a difference in my students writing as they were able to mimic my planning and focus in their own writing. I plan on doing more writing in front of my class!
ReplyDeleteExcellent! Oral Rehersal is sooo very important for students. (Which is usually not allowed in many writing classrooms...teachers often expect it to be "Quiet" while others are working. But students need to talk, remember, add details, hear how it sounds out loud and get their ideas ready before they write.) Keep writing in front of your students, they will continue to pick up ideas and lessons from you and it will become easier and easier for you to do.
ReplyDelete