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ASSIGNMENT FIVE: WRITTEN REFLECTION-Section Three- The Essential Writing Day Chapters 7-10
Chapter 7: Be Efficient and Integrate Basic Skills
• How might we integrate skill work into student writing rather than teaching it in isolation?
• Daily Oral Language exercises – THEY DON’T WORK!!!
• The importance of focusing on meaning and quality first
• All writing needs both a PURPOSE and an AUDIENCE
• How thinking aloud can make your teaching more explicit
• Teaching WRITING – not just the language of writing (process, process, process)
• What about writing standards? In your District and State?
• Key writing minilessons
• Revision – how to get students to care about it
• Letting kids in on the secret that – Yes! – Conventions do matter!
• How can we effectively use word walls?
In Chapter 7, suitably titled “Be Efficient and Integrate Basic Skills,” Regie gets to the heart of what so many teachers struggle with: “Fitting it all in!!!” Many of the elementary teachers that we work with are beginning to feel as though their personal motto is: “Jack of all trades; master of none.” We just don’t have the time to teach well what has to be taught. The only answer to this problem is to modify our instruction so it agrees with Regie’s stance that isolated skill work (such as Friday spelling tests, DOL, grammar worksheets…) will not help our students grow into writers (or readers.) On page 144, Regie shares four components for an integrated Writing Workshop:
1. Identify writing genres that would interest students (and meet district requirements)
2. Decide who the audience would be for each piece of writing.*
3. Model your own writing process and show students how you struggle.
4. Have students share writing regularly (for both celebration and great teaching moments.)
*This created the biggest change in my own class’s writing - once my students began to write with an audience in mind, the quality of writing shot right up!
Regie also gets to the heart of what writing with “voice” really is and addresses how to teach children to write with an honest voice in their own writing. She describes voice as “the writer’s unique personality on paper, his own melody in words, her ‘mark’ as an individual. To write with voice, the writer has to be interested in the writing.” We think that many teachers and students are unclear as to how to add true voice to their writing. Regie suggests, “Voice is in the details – but details that show the real person and story behind the words, not just details for the sake of adding more words…”
Integrating those isolated editing skills such as grammar, punctuation, and spelling into our writing will increase the efficiency of our instruction. Bottom line – if the students care about their writing, are writing for a specific audience, and understand that “the importance of editing (and spelling conventionally) is to make their message clear and easy to read for their audience – or reader, they take this job seriously and work hard at making their writing clear.”
Chapter 8: Organize for Daily Writing
• What is our definition of Writing Workshop? What does Regie say?
• How can we have student choice within a structure?
• The importance of writing talk (teachers and students)
• The ultimate nightmare for all of us…scheduling…finding the time to write everyday
• The importance of routines, organization and modeling expected behavior
• Genre study – why it’s important to have both school-wide and district-wide conversations
• The possibilities within genres
Figuring out a way to “fit it all in” is usually one of the most frustrating things many of us face. It starts at the beginning of the year as we first plan our daily schedule and continues throughout the remainder of the year. Considering how you will create your schedule to include a solid chunk of time for both reading and writing will probably be the most stressful piece to the start of your year.
Create a Comprehensive Literacy Framework: Play with your time and consider what changes you might make in your daily literacy framework for next year. Take a look at the samples that Regie provides on pages 185-187 for some possibilities. You do not have to post your schedule, but we believe this is a worthwhile activity to complete on your own.
Chapter 9: Conference with Students
• What is the purpose of a Writing Conference?
• What are the different types of Writing Conferences?
• How can Share be used effectively?
• How to conduct a productive conference
• What about management and routines?
We are so glad that this chapter talks about Share during Writer’s Workshop. Too often this component is skipped by teachers who feel there isn’t enough time in the day to “fit it all in.” However, it’s a vital piece of the workshop and beneficial to all the students. Share sessions are an additional time to teach. The teachers in my school are quite comfortable using Share as their mini-lesson if the need arises. Given the reality of daily schedules they were finding that they couldn’t have a mini-lesson, confer and share everyday. They then realized that their Shares sometimes were the minilessons. For more information about Share we recommend looking at Leah Mermelstein’s Don’t Forget To Share: The Crucial Last Step in the Writing Workshop. In this slim book, Leah explains in detail four types of Share: Content Share, Craft Share, Process Share and Progress Share.
The “Tips for Successful Whole-Class Shares and Conferences” on page 215 are excellent ones to keep in mind. The bottom line for Conferences and Shares is that students should feel successful and want to continue to write. Make sure what you say to the child encourages them to keep on writing. “The conference is secondary; the student as writer and confident learner is primary.”
Chapter 10: Make Assessment Count
• Understanding how rubrics work
• What about Test Prep? THE BEST TEST PREP IS EXCELLENT TEACHING!
• How can we collect reliable data on students’ writing throughout the day?
• Guidelines for grading and providing evidence for parents, administrators and the public
“There is lots of writing assessment going on these days, but little of it actually improves the quality of students’ writing.” As Regie continues she points out that this ‘assessment’ “is seldom used to improve daily instruction.” This chapter is about becoming more knowledgeable about assessments. Regie notes, that unless teachers know how to teach writing well, it can be a waste of time to examine students’ writing and place students on a writing continuum. She encourages you, as a staff to “write together, study together, converse together, gather school-wide data, analyze these data and set goals for improving writing instruction. There is no shortcut to helping students become effective writers and there is no program you can buy that will do it for you.”
Remember to use rubrics judiciously and not overdo it. They should be “used as an evaluation tool, not as the driving instructional force.” “Use professional common sense. It is not advisable to apply rubrics to ALL writing nor to score ALL writing. Just as our students need lots of practice reading many texts without the expectation that they will be assessed on everything they read, they need lots of practice writing without being assessed on everything they write.” (Page 243)
Have your students do a lot of writing! “Extensive writing across the curriculum as part of an excellent writing program is the best preparation for doing well on (standardized) tests. Readers have to read avidly to become readers and the same holds true for writers. Kids who write a lot develop higher-order thinking and understanding that translates to higher achievement on all types of tests.” Be sure to check out “Try It Apply It” on page 246 and throughout the chapter for ideas to incorporate into your program.
As Regie points out in this chapter, “The joy has gone out of writing.” We need to “concentrate on developing kids as learners rather than kids as test takers.”
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Chapters 7-10
ReplyDelete7- integrate
My district has created curriculum maps for us in literacy using CCSS. The way it is laid out doesn't always make sense for what students need right now. I hear a lot of teachers stressing about whether they will or have covered certain skills in the map. I think the easy default for most teachers is to teach those skills in isolation to make sure that it is covered. There is often little regard for whether or not this is what is best for students. I have fallen into this trap myself. I like the idea of having topics that students care about, showing them your writing, and then teaching them how using those skills can help their audience read and want to read what they have to say.
We were working on persuasive writing this week. I had a student who needed to add more information and detail to her writing. I read a persuasive piece to the kids, modeled my letter to the students, gave them some ideas that they could write about if they were stuck and then asked them to go for it. She wanted to write a letter to me convincing me to do away with homework. When I read her writing I said, “I'm not convinced.” I gave her my argument against doing away with homework and asked her to try and write a few more reasons to convince me. She was very determined to convince me and was happy to add to her writing because she cared about it. It was also easier for me to point out how she needed to put more information into her letter using her actual writing. I'm sold!
8-organizing your daily writing
In this chapter it was clear that in order to have good writers students have to write. In order for them to write, writing has to be a priority in the day. That doesn't mean just making enough time for writing as a subject, but including writing across disciplines. If it is important we will make time for it. I liked the analogy about making time for her father after his stroke. I also liked the part about establishing criteria for writing. This is something that is lacking for me.
9- conferences
I liked the box on pg. 207 about different kinds of writing conferences. It doesn’t have to just be one way. I know the next chapter goes into this more, but I liked the strengths and setting writing goals with students from pg. 219. It is important to make sure that we are not overloading our mini lessons or our conferences. We need to give kids a narrow focus and allow them to have a manageable amount of nudges. I want to focus my mini lessons better using focused learning targets. I would also like to do this better with my conferences. I like the quote from pg. 236- “It's talked about very little, but independence is the goal of all excellent teaching.” I strongly believe this and am trying to focus my teaching in this direction through student self evaluation.
10-assessment
I just got back from a two day workshop on assessment for student learning. It is so important to involve students and have rubrics in kid friendly language. I am going to make posters with writing on a continuum and let students say where they are based on what they know they do well as a writer and what they need to work on to improve their writing. I liked the idea of students evaluating their own work. So much of the time I do the evaluating and sometimes never share that information with kids. This will also help build their independence.
Assignment five
ReplyDeleteChapter 7
Understanding that research shows that teaching skills in isolation does not work is sinking in with everyone. We need to teach writing as a whole- part- whole model to help our students understand. Make sure to model writing as a whole and then choose specific areas to discuss with students. Talk to them about a beginning that catches the interest of your reader. Remind them of the reader and the importance of making the writing good for them. Don’t let them forget the big picture.
We need to make sure students share their writing regularly. It is easier for them to read their writing and help them to notice the good parts of their writing. The teacher needs to be specific when sharing what is right in their writing. When we hear voice, we should tell them it sounds like they are talking to us.
If we keep coming back to making sure topics are interesting and that the reader is important to the writer we will get better material from our writers. They have more ownership and they are more willing to edit their work. If they care about their writing we can create mini lessons hitting specific writing techniques and get their full attention.
I like the lists in the book that tell us what good writers do. It is also helpful to have rubrics that were created by students and teachers in specific grades. I will be copying and placing some of these in my classroom right away.
Another good reminder, model and rewrite to show good work ethic. Show the students how much you care about your writing. Read work out loud to help notice errors. Show students that you value the reader and make correction to conventions, because they do matter to the reader.
Chapter 8
Writing workshop is practicing the process of writing in the classroom. We need to allow students the chance to write across the curriculum. We don’t want to only teach writing during a select writing time. We need to model good writing and in doing so teach the students the writing process. Make sure they know their audience and they have a purpose. This is one area I have already worked on in my classroom.
We need to teach students how to choose a topic and then how to narrow the topic. Tap into their passions and have them write about what they love. Help them figure that out, sometimes it takes a lot of talking to show them what they know. It is much easier for a student to follow structure when they are writing about something of interest to them.
Genre study is something I tend to save until later in the year. We gather books, read the books and then practice writing. Fairytales are one of their favorites. We create an anthology of the published tales from the kids. It is sad that when we do this assignment I worry that we are not doing the type of writing that will be required on the test. This is the assignment the kids remember and this is the assignment they can’t wait to do the following year. This class has helped me realize these are the assignments that help us with the battle of getting our students to love writing. We will continue the fairytales.
Chapter 9
ReplyDeleteWriting conferences help you and the student share their writing. Make sure the student has done the best editing they can do before having conference. Listen to the student and don’t look at their writing while they read. Start the conference with positive comments. Have the students repeat positive comments and make sure they leave the conference encouraged and excited to continue writing. We don’t want them leaving deflated or discouraged.
Conferences need to happen often, with peers, with group and with teacher. They won’t work if frontloading has not happened first. We must demonstrate writing, think aloud for the students, and do shared writing with the group. Model, model, model and then we can expect writing to improve.
I enjoyed seeing conferences for different purposes and having the editing conferences at the end. This allows for the students to have ownership and gives the major job of editing to them. I feel having them use colored pencils will add some pride to their editing. I will also add the rest of the editing “for free” once they show me them have done their best. Keeping in mind, my main goal for them is independence. I want them to end up conferences with themselves.
Chapter 10
Rubrics should be used as a tool. The best rubrics are made with the students’ input. Students have more ownership and understanding of the rubric when they help create it, using their vocabulary. It reminds and outlines to the student what is expected to be included in a piece of writing. Finally, it helps a person put a score to a writing piece.
Use your rubric as an evaluation tool, not as your only force driving instruction. Make sure you save good student samples to review with your students. Read the samples and have the students point out the good points in others’ writing.
We need to make sure we don’t use rubrics all the time. Students need to practice writing without the feeling of judgement. They need to write often to become better writers. This will add to their understanding and stamina. We need to make sure they free write regularly and make sure topics are interesting and relevant to their life. We don’t need to grade everything.
We can provide reliable data by using self- evaluation and conferences. Students can fill out class made rubrics with self or partner. They can have one on one conference with the teacher. Teachers can have students do the same assignment at the end of the year that they did at the beginning of the year and then the teacher and student can conference and compare the two writings. The teacher can save samples from throughout the year to show growth. I loved the idea of having a file to show a student their writing work from Kindergarten all the way through to their current grade.
Remember that our overall goal is to have our students become self -evaluators. To help with this: we need to have child friendly rubrics, posted charts showing “what good writers do “, model, model, model, and have students self evaluate. We want them questioning themselves to see if they have done enough. We want them to be successful writers without us.
Hi Tony,
ReplyDeleteIt has been my experience when there is a new adoption (or the new CCSS) that many districts are very strict about following the curriculum as written. With time, the administration seems to lighten up a bit and allow the teachers to use their best judgment. Sometimes, again from past experiences, it’s best to “fly under the radar” with our door closed and do what we KNOW to be best for our students.
That’s great that the process worked for you and fits with your teaching style; and that your student had motivation to write about the topic. :D (I have to say that I’m in your student’s camp as we aren’t doing homework in my house this year…or last year for that matter. I’m actually on the Family School Partnership team where one of our tasks is to create a homework policy. This is a soapbox that I can happily go on and on about… but do know that we read each day at my house and I told the teachers if there’s a project or an area where my boys need support I will def. help them but I’m NOT doing worksheets with them when they could be playing outside, reading, building with blocks or legos, helping me cook or just relaxing. Plus with our busy schedule of activities and sports, it’s just not worth the stress to force the issue in what little time we have at home together. At some point, yes my kids will need to do homework…but I don’t know when that will be…5th grade? 8th grade? High School? (My boys are 2nd and 3rd grade.) We’ll see.)
Ok, off my soapbox, but check out these links if you want to read more about homework policy. ☺ There’s no one right answer and each family has different wants and needs, but I’d like the option to opt out of homework for my family. (As our principal said, you have half the people who want less or no homework and half the people who want more.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/why-were-getting-the-homework-question-wrong/2012/05/13/gIQA1nJGNU_blog.html
http://stophomework.com/wyoming-elementary-school-eliminates-most-homework/164
It is important to make sure that we are not overloading our mini lessons or our conferences. We need to give kids a narrow focus and allow them to have a manageable amount of nudges.
Your statement above (which I love) is also worth repeating. We need to be careful not to overload our minilessons and conferences. We should regularly ask ourselves, what are the one or two things this student needs to move ahead in their learning. Again with the lack of time teachers try to cram as much as they can into each minute of the day…but being sure to allow time to think, process and reflect is vital for our students’ growth.
Great ideas for involving your students in creating rubrics and assessing their work! We want them to become more independent and these are steps that will help that process.
Chapter 7
ReplyDeleteI am really seeing the importance of the whole-part-whole way of teaching writing. I have recently changed my teaching to have students make convention corrections within their own writing. They have responded well to this and are beginning to catch their convention errors before I prompt them to reread.
Regie discussed the importance of teaching explicitly and tell students why they are doing what they are doing so that they know and have a purpose. Posting learning targets has been a big push this year. I agree that students should know why they are doing what they are doing. Everything needs a purpose because, as Regie states, when there’s a purpose students write more efficiently. We need to make our learning targets and our purposes for writing very clear so that students could tell anyone what and why they are learning what they are learning.
Chapter 8
Scheduling is the most challenging part of my job. I really wish I could push into classrooms for writing, but due to schedules and resources it makes it very difficult. In a perfect world, all students would receive services within the general education classroom which would solve the scheduling problem and help provide services across the curriculum. I find it challenging to support writing across the curriculum. I do believe it can be done, but it will take a change in teacher thinking and more collaborating on both ends. Through the last two years of running a resource room, I think I have begun to change some teachers thinking on how to best support our students by collaborating more and making accommodations/modifications to the general education curriculum instead of the resource room being completely different and left up to the special education teacher.
This chapter really helped me plan some changes I need to make in my teaching. I provide choice within structure, but need to define the purpose more explicitly and expand the choices within that. I also need to do true free writes. I let students openly choose, but I tend to give them ideas. I liked Regie’s discussion on how important it is to let students just write even when they struggle with starting, because then you can encourage them and support them for what they have done. I’m hoping that with giving my students more practice with doing free writes than they will increase their ability to write more independently. The other thing I need to work on is having more conversations about writing, along with shared writing, and modeling revising with verbally expressing my thinking.
Chapter 9
Whole class share may not be the best avenue for conferences in the resource room, but I may give it a try. I think quick shares may be more appropriate so that I can pull appropriate examples to give good teachable moments. I loved all of the language examples for one-one-one conferences. It is so important to give encouragement yet feedback to move the student forward without detouring them. I am excited to enhance my conferences and make them more purposefully by using the outline for guiding the conference. I also found the progression of the types of conferences you should have with students helpful. It’s all about the language and word choice you use with students to be able to provide them with encouragement and appropriate support to nudge them to go deeper with their writing.
Chapter 10
My school uses a rubric. Every grade level gives a writing prompt three times a year so that teachers can see the progression students are making and the areas students are struggling in. I liked Regie’s discussion on teaching to the test without teaching to the test directly. There are things we can do to prepare our students for writing assessments, such as give the reader a name and scenario to encourage/challenge students to impress. It is difficult to define a good purpose for a writing prompt assessment, but by getting students to “visualize the reader” (aka exhausted scorer) it gives them someone to write for.
Yeah Leah, there’s so much you can do with fairytales. :D As you said, that’s what the students love and remember…we need to do more of this type of assignment. Writing can be fun, engaging and collaborative. Many teachers have forgotten this.
ReplyDeleteHi Tia,
That sounds like success to me. Awesome that they are starting to catch their own errors and want to fix them for their readers. :D Yes, scheduling is the bane of many educators. It sounds like you are making progress…often it’s more slow than we like but I’ve found once you get one or two teachers on board, more start to notice and become interested.
Glad you liked the conference language. I think we all could do with more compliments…even us teachers. :D