Assignment Eight: Read Writing Essentials Chapters 11-12 and Section Five. Reflect on the comments below and any additional reactions you have after reading these chapters. Post your thoughts to the course blog.
Chapter 11: Build on Best Practice and Research • What are some of the key research findings most relevant to writing instruction?
• What are the practices of highly effective teachers?
• How can you be part of the ongoing professional development discussions in your building?
• What about test scores? What are the characteristics of high performing schools?
• Think twice before adopting a “program”
Regie begins this chapter sharing her experiences doing residencies in schools and the surprising (and delightful) discovery that whole school cultures changed during the course of their work improving literacy instruction. As she said, “This is what education should be about…whole schools working together so that all students (can) succeed.” How is the climate/culture in your school? On your team? One reason we continue to look to Regie for inspiration is that we feel she is so practical. There is not one right way or method to teach writing. “That is why formulas, programs and recipes don’t work. Every context, school and person is different and has different needs. Literacy is not a set of acquired or learned skills.”
Chapter 12: Make Every Minute Count• You need to “REDUCE THE PAPER LOAD!!!”
• What can we do that will save us time and allow us to focus more on meaningful instruction?
• Regie states, “Take more time to see the light!” Don’t get bogged down with daily worksheets and isolated exercises.
Though this chapter is short it is full of valuable ideas and reminders! Regie reminds us in this chapter to stop and reflect about what we are doing in the classroom. Ask yourself: Is this the best use of my time? Is what I’m about to do going to help my students become more joyful and accomplished readers, writers and thinkers?
“It might be that the best use of your time is to read a professional book, see a movie, visit with a friend. Sharing your experiences with your students may be a more useful way to get them to think about their writing than marks and comments on a paper.” “It’s hard to come to school all excited about teaching if you’ve spent hours the night before pouring over papers.” It is a disservice to our students and ourselves “if our out-of-school time is all about paperwork.” In fact, “Teachers’ comments on students’ papers do little to improve writing, even if the comments are positive ones. It is far more effective to conference with students and focus on specific writing issues with the student at your side.”
Also “(b)e sure that most of your writing time is devoted to writing, not preparing for writing or doing activities about writing. Safeguard sustained writing time; it’s critical for becoming a writer. Limit take-home work for students too, and place more emphasis on free-choice reading. Having more reading experiences positively impacts growth in writing skills.”
Regie closes this chapter by reminding us to breathe, relax and enjoy writing- and your life! “One way to reduce stress and have more energy for teaching and advocacy is to have a life outside of school. I worry about teachers and principals who work twelve-hour days. I have seen no research that shows educators who work the longest hours get the best results or that longer reading and writing projects teach more about reading and writing. Keep evaluating whether what you’re staying late for-or the hours of work you take home- will help your students become more effective readers and writers.”
• What are the practices of highly effective teachers?
• How can you be part of the ongoing professional development discussions in your building?
• What about test scores? What are the characteristics of high performing schools?
• Think twice before adopting a “program”
Regie begins this chapter sharing her experiences doing residencies in schools and the surprising (and delightful) discovery that whole school cultures changed during the course of their work improving literacy instruction. As she said, “This is what education should be about…whole schools working together so that all students (can) succeed.” How is the climate/culture in your school? On your team? One reason we continue to look to Regie for inspiration is that we feel she is so practical. There is not one right way or method to teach writing. “That is why formulas, programs and recipes don’t work. Every context, school and person is different and has different needs. Literacy is not a set of acquired or learned skills.”
Chapter 12: Make Every Minute Count• You need to “REDUCE THE PAPER LOAD!!!”
• What can we do that will save us time and allow us to focus more on meaningful instruction?
• Regie states, “Take more time to see the light!” Don’t get bogged down with daily worksheets and isolated exercises.
Though this chapter is short it is full of valuable ideas and reminders! Regie reminds us in this chapter to stop and reflect about what we are doing in the classroom. Ask yourself: Is this the best use of my time? Is what I’m about to do going to help my students become more joyful and accomplished readers, writers and thinkers?
“It might be that the best use of your time is to read a professional book, see a movie, visit with a friend. Sharing your experiences with your students may be a more useful way to get them to think about their writing than marks and comments on a paper.” “It’s hard to come to school all excited about teaching if you’ve spent hours the night before pouring over papers.” It is a disservice to our students and ourselves “if our out-of-school time is all about paperwork.” In fact, “Teachers’ comments on students’ papers do little to improve writing, even if the comments are positive ones. It is far more effective to conference with students and focus on specific writing issues with the student at your side.”
Also “(b)e sure that most of your writing time is devoted to writing, not preparing for writing or doing activities about writing. Safeguard sustained writing time; it’s critical for becoming a writer. Limit take-home work for students too, and place more emphasis on free-choice reading. Having more reading experiences positively impacts growth in writing skills.”
Regie closes this chapter by reminding us to breathe, relax and enjoy writing- and your life! “One way to reduce stress and have more energy for teaching and advocacy is to have a life outside of school. I worry about teachers and principals who work twelve-hour days. I have seen no research that shows educators who work the longest hours get the best results or that longer reading and writing projects teach more about reading and writing. Keep evaluating whether what you’re staying late for-or the hours of work you take home- will help your students become more effective readers and writers.”
Assignment 8-
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to me that best practices for writing has so much in common with best practices in all of our instruction. Work on your craft each day, make it meaningful to the student, bond with your students, work to increase your own personal knowledge and work with parents are just a few of cited research points to improve writing. I would contend, however, that this is true for all instruction. With that said, it is clear that my number one priority for next year is to continue along the path of professional improvement. I can’t imagine trying to teach writing next year without this class, but we will have teachers on staff who will be in that situation. I think that this is when the ongoing professional conversations have such a big priority. Next year I will be guiding five teachers in a cooperative writing project through the University of Oregon. It is called Project Direct and it is through the Oregon Writing Project. http://owp.uoregon.edu/?page_id=151 Here is a link. We were signed up through an old colleague that is working with this project. He contacted me and I got our school signed up. I am hopeful that this is will be a positive professional experience for a staff with a limited amount of writing instruction experience.
The most thought provoking Regie paragraph in this chapter is when she wrote that, “Teacher’s can’t be expected to be accountable if they are told specifically what to do. Accountability requires the professional autonomy to do what’s right.” I love it. It thought it was interesting because it flies in the face of the growing trend of using highly prescriptive programs with our students. Our elementary program recently stopped using Success For All. The most common complaint I heard from the teachers was that they felt that they weren’t doing any teaching. They literally had to read what to say from a booklet. Kids that weren’t meeting a certain standard were sent away from the main instruction to work with IA’s in a separate space. This is seems contradictory to everything that I’ve been reading in this text. I feel that it has been a positive change to go away from Success For All because it will hold the teachers more responsible for the learning in the classroom.
I agree very much with Regie that test scores and the drive to improve them can be a double-edged sword. The focus on testing and scores really varies depending on the leadership in each building. Overall I don’t believe that they have enhanced the educational experience of the student. I agree with Regie, however, that pulling good scores carries some power. This passed year a colleague was getting very good results in math intervention so all of the math teachers were asked to conform to her approach. I felt that this was a very reactionary step to take based on the scores of the first round of testing. I stuck to my format and approach at the risk of potential professional consequence. At the end of the year my class scored at the same level as the other teachers class and had a higher level of improvement. Getting good scores builds cache, but if it dictates a certain approach or method to others then it has the potential to be damaging.
Making every minute count is a helpful chapter in giving the teacher the responsibility and permission to keep class and lessons manageable. Over the years I have noticed that I used to spend hours upon hours with correcting and then watching the student throw away their paper. Why? It wasn’t meaningful to them. It wasn’t engaging. I realized many years ago that if the instruction wasn’t engaging then getting them to want to improve is difficult. Instead of focusing my energies on countless hours of correction I like to make sure that what I am doing in class puts a smile on their face and then we can get to the business of learning. Luckily enough it is much more efficient and pleasurable to teach this way.
I didn’t find as much helpful information in chapters 8 and 9 as I had hoped or found, previously, in her book. It was good to think about my school community and reflect on how effective we are as teachers and as a team of educators. We’re okay, but there is definitely some room for collaboration and working across grade levels. This year we will be kicking off “Professional Learning Communities” across the district. These are both within- and across-grade level teams in each building. The stated goal (in my school) has been to improve math instruction and scores. The kinder team has already decided this is not that helpful for us, but a writing focus would be really beneficial, especially as we have a new team member this year. I look forward to bringing Routman’s ideas to the team. I have a feeling we are all doing some of them and we can all improve through others.I'm not sure how much "writing as a process" is used in my fellow kindergarten classrooms. It is so easy to write individual pieces each day that sometimes we forget to give kids a chance to write more about what they've started! Additionally, I have a new principal this year, which makes me think we have a chance to start anew in our thoughts about observing each other. Maybe this is our chance to establish it as common practice to take time to observe in each other's rooms. There are always good ideas out there to be stolen.
ReplyDeleteThe gold for me in this assignment was Section 5. I loved watching Routman on the DVD in the last assignment, and found her notes for “Secrets of Second Graders” especially helpful in how I plan my writing week. It should have been clear to me by now, but I internalize best when I see something laid out in a chart (i.e., page 292). That, alone, inspired me to think of each of my weeks/writing assignments as week-long, even for kindergartners.
I often start writing with modeling something from my life, but it had never occurred to me to verbally think out three ideas and then pick one. OF COURSE! It makes so much sense to model to the children choosing of the idea. In her poetry lesson, she has the students write their “about the author”. Earlier this summer I was at a kindergarten writing workshop where this was also used and modeled- I love the idea and plan to have parents in early in the year to help interview students.
Finally, Routman mentioned that even kindergartners can be taught transitions through shared writing. I processed that for a long time and realized that so many facets of writing will be taught through shared writing. I hadn’t tackled a number of topics with kindergartners last year because a few of them still didn’t know the alphabet, but that doesn’t mean, in shared writing, we can’t jump into it all together. I love this idea.
Chapter 11
ReplyDeleteI felt like the key research findings that were most relevant to teaching writing and that spoke to me were: write everyday; write with a purpose; and write for an audience. I took another writing class this summer and this was also a strong theme in that class. I fell like I am taking steps toward practicing to be a highly effective writing teacher. I took this class to be on the same page as my teaching partner, I took another writing class to learn more about audience and purpose, I will demonstrate and model daily, as well as conference with student this year in a new way. I also have a unique opportunity to present to teachers 4 times a year. I thought that this year we might focus that professional development time on writing. I can already see how I could use the “Try It Apply It” with my colleagues this year. Two years ago my school did a lot of work as part of the Nike School Innovation Fund on raising test scores for writing. This work was amazing and helpful! We worked together to form common practices and goals. But, sadly when the year was over so was the work. I would love to revisit it, see how our ideas have changed, and see if we, as a staff, were able to move forward with the work.
Chapter 12
Last year I took home papers to “grade” almost every night! And I teach 2nd grade! I loved to hear Regie say that correcting papers is not the best way to teach students. That conferencing with them and writing everyday will have far more impact. Last year, I had students filling out grammar books, completing worksheets about retelling, and answering questions from the back of the reading book. This created a lot of correcting or just checking off if items were done. A lot of my time and sanity was taken with these tasks. In the upcoming year, I will be trying out the Daily Five, conferencing, writing everyday with purpose and audience, and explicit writing lessons. This does not seem too paper intensive and much more manageable for me. I do not want to be the sad, tired eyes that Regie sees when she walks into classrooms. I want to be excited and energized. I plan on writing her thoughts from page 283 on a piece of paper to keep on my desk: “if I’m going to help learners experience hope, risk taking, success, and enjoyment, then I have to spend time meeting those eyes and giving them reasons to smile. I have to believe I can make a difference.” If I cannot get that feeling back this year it will be another difficult year ahead. But, I feel I am on the road
Teaching in Action
I can see myself using all of these activities before the winter break. The other class I took this summer talked about trying to get in each mode of writing before the winter break. I had always taken three to six weeks on a writing project. After the first week or two everyone was frustrated and sick of the story they were writing. This year I am going to try Regie’s lessons which will allow me to get more writing and teaching done than ever before.
Examining Beliefs About Writing
I could see using this list as a jump off place for a professional development discussion. It was tricky answering some that you know you should do and sometimes don’t do. I was happy to find out I agree with what research says is best practice, now I have to make sure I do it each and every day.
In the last section of this book I really felt Regie was talking about what all of us teachers know and that is what’s best for students. In this section I really thought a lot about the fact that I am the one in the classroom and I know what my students need. I feel this part of her book is empowering us teachers to make the changes in the schools that we know need to be made to help student learning. I will admit I am in a school where the high stakes test are front and center. We spend a lot of time talking about needing to get these kids to pass the test. I personally have had debates with colleagues on things that I allow and don’t allow in my class during certain teaching because I don’t feel it’s my job to teach them how to pass a test, it is my job to teach them!
ReplyDeleteI really feel these chapters are telling us to get back to what we know works: deep, rich, meaningful learning. If we give the kids a purpose for learning and an excitement for their education they will be equipped to past the “tests”. I feel very empowered to get back to the basics so to speak and teach the kids the way I know works. After all, it is my job to teach not to worry about testing scores. However, I think if we as the adults breathe a sigh of relief and get back to great learning the students will also breathe that same sigh and do so much more than we have been seeing lately. I know in my school although I try not to make it apart of our classroom my 5th graders have felt the test pressure. I also think if we spend less time focused on the test and more time focused on good learning the kids will be able to receive the actual content so much more. I think sometimes they have to spend so much energy preparing for a test that there is no more room to store the content needed for the test.
I feel that the professional conversations are imperative. I have a hunch that many of us educators have the same thoughts and feelings it’s just a matter of getting enough of us together to support each other in advocating what is best for the students. I also think that through these professional conversations that we will share so many more great ideas with one another and we will all grow as professionals. I feel the more a school communicates the more cohesive everything is for the students, which leads to better learning and accomplishments. In this upcoming school year my school will have a lot of new staff members as well as a new principal so it will be interesting to see what is done to foster connections between staff to help create a positive school community.
Finally, in going through Regie’s lessons I really noticed that she is very deliberate in everything she did with the students. This showed me that she really thinks about all her lessons and the direction the class with take for the day so there is no wasted time. I really saw how all students are set up for success and I look forward to focusing writing for a purpose and celebrating writers.
In Chapter 11 I thought the section on test scores was the most interesting. It said that schools with high test scores had more: modeling, write for an audience, have high expectations, write daily, conference, have quick writes/free writes, and have continuing discussions/professional developments as a school on writing. All of these things are best practices in writing. I am not hopeful of school wide development work on writing due to decreasing budgets and cuts. I am very excited however about working closely with my teammates to take a closer look at making some changes to our writing program. My ultimate goal this year is to make writing more meaningful for my students.
ReplyDeleteI liked reading Chapter 12. It was a good reminder for me on several things. The two things that stuck with me the most were: Am I making the best use of the students time and how are they learning or benefiting from this? These are two great questions that I will be revisiting while I rework my writing plan for the year. I also liked reading Reggie's best advise for fitting in writing successfully daily. The last paragraph is a great reminder. It is so easy to get completely consumed in the school year and forget about doing things for you!
Teaching in Action: I really liked looking through these lessons. I automatically found myself thinking about how I can adapt each of these activities to my grade level. As was mentioned in a previous post, I also really like how these writing assignments don't take weeks to complete. I also at times tend to be guilty of that and the students and myself get so bored and just ready to move forward by the end! I am anxious to complete these lessons and then focus on celebrating when we are finished!
Absolutely Michael, those are best practices for all subjects.
ReplyDeleteWow, Michael what a great opportunity to get in on this project on the ground floor. I just looked at the web page quickly and watched the video clip. I’d suggest all of you take a minute and check it out. It’s very interesting to consider where education may be heading in the future. Distance learning is a wonderful option for rural schools and smaller schools that may not have large budgets or many staff members.
Yes, that is a great quote about accountability!
I still think it’s a crazy practice to send our most struggling students off with aides, these are the students who need the teacher’s expertise the most. Good for you for flying under the radar and doing what you felt was best for your students. Now you have the evidence to prove that your methods are just as educationally sound.
There is great value in professional conversations, collaboration and sharing; but requiring that teachers use just one method, even if it’s successful for someone else is not good practice. Most teachers need to modify and adjust methods to make them work for them and their students. Even from year to year individual teachers adjust their instruction based on the needs of their students.
Hello Jennifer,
Good luck with the new principal. Hopefully they will also view time for observation and collaboration as important. Glad you were able to get a few more ideas to use next year.
Hi Kristian, Julie and MacKenzie!
Kristian, We’re glad that you are excited about your upcoming writing program. We really believe that the points you mentioned: write everyday, write with a purpose and write for an audience will dramatically improve your students’ writing; and that you will also enjoy the addition of writing conferences.
Focusing the time of your professional development on writing is a great way to foster professional conversations.
Julie, Your comment, “It is my job to teach, not worry about test scores” stood out to me. I really wish that administrators would remember this and “protect” the teachers from a lot of the “stuff” that interferes with our time for planning, teaching and reflecting. You make excellent points that I think most of us agree with-- if we can just get back to doing what we know works and teach deeply and authentically then the students will meet the standards on the high-stakes tests.
MacKenzie, great reminder that even if there are not funds for building-wide professional development we can all work with our teams and develop ways to make writing more engaging and meaningful for our students. Good luck with the changes you make for your writing program.
I think the thing I appreciate most about this chapter is the way Regie encourages teachers to think carefully about their limited time and to choose those activities with the most “return on investment.” Simple as though it sounds, it is no small feat to simplify one’s process—in any endeavor. In my own future teaching, I’ll strive to keep in mind her back-to-basics approach that integrates content areas and stays true to a student-centered, rather than test-centered, philosophy.
ReplyDeleteI also like her final emphasis on context. I firmly believe that no one learns best without context. Although I am a communicator, I work within a training department that provides IT and soft skills project management courses for our organization. My colleagues are stellar educators and every class they teach gives context for their adult students. It is no different for children, or perhaps more important for children since they are still building a portfolio of experiences from which to draw understanding.
As I think about my own future teaching career, I know that I want to be the kind of instructor who makes education something personalized to each student. I think Regie’s tools and recommendations are all so successful because they do exactly that: meet students wherever they are. Besides being a model that works academically, it is a model shows a great deal of respect for students.
Tiah,
ReplyDeleteGreat comments! Thank you. Yes, I would agree that children are still building their experiences to draw from so it's even more important to teach in context.
I love your comment about having education be personalized for each student. Not so easy to do when you are using mandated, prescribed programs. :D