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)
Mary posting for Megan
ReplyDeleteI have always liked to write with the kids. I find writing fun and don’t mind taking chances when 5-7 year olds are watching. While I have always known that modeling is important, I have slacked by not modeling writing enough; not thinking out loud while I write; and concentrating too much on conventions.
Reading this book has given me the oomph to model writing more consistently and hopefully more effectively. Wow, how just this practice makes a difference. The kids love to help me pick interesting words. They ask great questions which encourage me to be more specific and they most importantly they take the enthusiasm back to their seats and it is showing up in their writing.
I found that I mostly write about my kids and the mischief they get into. Most of my students have little sibling or cousins so they love hearing my stories, and making connections is quite easy. Another topic I routinely write about is my childhood. I like writing about little adventures my brothers, neighbors and I have had or special moments with my grandmother.
I have used Lucy Calkins small moments for many years and read the suggested books from the unit. The zooming in, awesome mentor texts and my personal experiences seem to encourage most students. I still have the reluctant writers. For these kids I try to conference with them more frequently.
While writing, I find that I am always trying to achieve a humorous twist. Maybe I should try to be more serious so my kids don’t feel the pressure to be funny? I tend not to plan, rather just start writing. After about three sentences I go back and re- read. I fix up my grammar and spelling and I also task for ways I could’ve written more clearly or chosen different words. I seem to do this quickly and the kids keep up quite nicely. For each writing session I only wrote for about 10-12 minutes then fixed up for a couple minutes.
My hope is that the success I am feeling writing for the kids will translate into a set predictable routine.
Yes, the students love to hear about mischievous siblings or naughty pets. I believe the connections they make are critical to engaging them and generating ideas for them to try in their own writing. I had a very naughty 100-pound dog that was always getting into trouble. The students (and quite a few adults) told me how much they loved to hear Quandary stories. : D
ReplyDeleteLucy Calkins is great. Your strategy of conferring and checking in with your reluctant writers is exactly what I would do. And also using the student's writing as a model or sharing it and celebrating some part of it with the class will go a long way.
I think it's fine to have a humorous writing style. This is your voice. Which is so difficult to teach to students. I wouldn't be overly concerned about it, but since you noticed that you tend to write in this way you can plan a couple of more "serious" writing examples when you find it fits with your goals.
It sounds like you keep your demonstrations pretty tight, which is great, especially since you are in primary. Some teachers forget that they don't want to write (demonstrate) huge, long pieces when their students aren't capable of replicating this. We want to write for a length that is about what your students can do and maybe just a little bit of a stretch for them.
The first writing unit we work on at the beginning of the year is personal narratives. This is my FAVORITE writing unit of the whole year, because it is such a great time to get to know the students and also have them get to know me. They love hearing stories about the dogs, our adventures, my family, etc.
ReplyDeleteAs I am composing my writing in front of the kids, my main goal is to have them see me excited and happy to share a story about myself through writing. I strongly believe this translates well when they are thinking of ideas to write about. We talk a lot about writing about things that are “in our head and in our heart.” There are times when I am focusing on a particular convention or a specific skill like word choice or transition words, and that will be the “focus” of my writing that day, but mostly, I believe they need to see excitement coming from the writer – excitement to share my idea with my sharing partner, and excitement to get started on my piece.
When I plan my writing lesson, I do take time to come up with a topic that I know they can enjoy and relate to. For example, this fall, when I was modeling a small moment, I wrote about being at the beach with my husband and dog, and how our dog Wrigley chased a huge flock of birds away and tried to jump after them, and they were chirping loudly, and he was barking loudly, and it was a sight! They love hearing stories that make them laugh and that they are completely engaged in. I find their topics and their writing are strongest when they are very engaged in my story and modeling.
As I write with my students, I model stopping and re-reading and well as writing straight through. Students in my class do both – so I want them to see me do both as well.
Just recently, a few weeks ago was the first time that I wrote in front of my students. I find that I do not plan, I write a sentence, reread, correct and continue writing. I realize how much I have been pressuring my students to use the writing process when I do not use it at all. I enjoy writing and always have although with four kids, I rarely find the time to it. I think that writing in front of the kids would be a great way to connect and engage them. All of my students have brothers and sisters so it would be very easy for them to connect to sibling conflicts and I have plenty that I could write about! I find that my students are super interested in anything that has to do with my life. Even going to the grocery store. I don’t think that I lack for topics. I think that as I write in front of them, it will be important for me share my thinking with them and I know that will be one of the harder things for me to do. I am excited to try this again as the first time I think that it went fairly well.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I do not have students to compose in front of right now, but I was able to note my process as I completed the activity. The topics list on page 26 was a great starting point because it was varied and gave me several options. I feel that it was a nice reminder that students should be given time to freewrite and have choice in their writing, but coming up with ideas can be one of the hardest parts so a varied topics list is a great help.
ReplyDeleteI selected the topic “favorite place” and had a hard time picking from my subtopic list because I wanted to write about all of them. Thinking if I were writing this in front of students, I picked my rocking chair with my daughter because that shares something that is really important in my life. I also would have known what I was going to write about, but definitely gone through the topic selection process in front of students so they could see me go through the decision process and the factors that influenced my choice.
My first thought when I started writing was I need a catchy beginning and what style could I do this in that would be most interesting to the reader. I quickly decided I would describe the place with some excellent descriptions and only at the end would I reveal to the reader the place I was describing. I wanted to leave the reader guess.
I basically just started writing and because I was describing a picture and a moment I could see in my mind, it flowed pretty smoothly. As a writer, I went quickly to senses descriptions, which is something I have worked on with students, what I heard, saw, touched, etc. I often stopped to re-read, but I didn’t re-read the whole piece each time, mostly it was the sentence I had just completed. I did cross out some words and change them while re-reading. I struggled some with how to end and how to reveal the place I was writing about. After I completed my piece, I re-read looking for conventions mistakes and considering changes. I did change the ending. I’ll re-visit the piece another day to see if it feels complete.
Absolutely Jennifer, it's vital for teachers to convey our excitement about writing!!!
ReplyDeleteYeah Jessica! Gald you are going to write with and in front of your students more!
Kaetlyn, this thougth process that you described is exactly what you should share with students! I'd save it for when you have your own class.