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.)
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I wrote in front of two small groups today. For both groups, I explained that I had listed a few ideas of topics but had selected just one to write about. I ended up writing about two different topics: sledding in the snow with my dad and practicing free throws when I played basketball in middle school.
ReplyDeleteAs I wrote, I found that I was thinking ahead to see where the story was going. I felt like I was a little ahead in my mind when compared to where I was on the paper. For both pieces, I knew what I wanted the title to be and so I was able to start there. While I mostly wrote through, there was a couple of times when I got stuck and I reread it out loud, which helped to jumpstart the writing again. I did not really revise as I went, unless I needed to make a change in order to keep moving on. I found a couple of errors when I reread (which my students thought were hilarious!) but I did not change them as it was my first draft. My students in the first group really enjoyed telling me that my letters were “floating” above the line (something many of them are working on!). On a few occasions, I did change the vocabulary in order to help make it more interesting to read.
I have to admit that I was very surprised with how my students responded. Both groups were engaged – in one group, there was a student who was reading along as I went while other students kept trying to tell me how my memory ended and the other group kept trying to guess what I was going to say next. It gave me hope that a writing lesson doesn’t always have to feel like I am dragging them along and that the students can enjoy it!
Excellent! So glad that the assignment went so well. This is why we ask teachers to do this activity with students!!!! Yeah!!!
ReplyDeleteOn Mondays we write in our Weekend News Journals. We’ve been doing this for a while and occasionally we go back and revisit the criteria – What makes a good weekend news story? I haven’t written anything since the very beginning of the year, though. This week, I wrote in front of my students, sharing a story from my own weekend. I had thought about it ahead of time and decided that I would write about my trip to Eugene and bowling with my family. I first shared the story aloud and then shared my thinking, starting with wondering how I could grab my reader’s attention. Because I had shared the story before I began writing, my students had some really good ideas for me and we had a great time interacting as I developed the story. I think I was thinking ahead a little bit, but I was also open to their ideas and suggestions, as long as it stayed true to the story I told. I appreciated Regie’s asserting that she never writes more than she expects her students to write. Often, my students get hung up on how many sentences their piece should be. I tried to think aloud about the quality of my story – does it make sense?, what else does my reader need to know?, can I make the words more interesting?, etc. Most students were engaged during this writing and then, we I asked them to pair-share something that happened during their weekend, the enthusiasm was high and they were ready to go off and write.
ReplyDeleteWhen writing on my own, my writing process was slightly different. I definitely revise and edit as I go, and I stop and re-read often. I think that when I revise and edit, it gives me the opportunity to stop and process what I have so far and where I’m going with it. I find starting really difficult and so I often make a deal with myself, giving myself permission to have it not make sense so that I can get various strands of thoughts and ideas out and then let them develop into something. I’ve learned this over the years though, in order to allow myself to begin. I find it very helpful to read aloud what I’ve written to get a sense of how it sounds and flows.
I was struck with your comments about how you shared your story first so that the students were familiar with the story and were able to make suggestions.
ReplyDeleteI often write about what a fan I am of oral rehearsal. Many students, especially our struggling writers, need the support of orally processing/telling the story and then getting the ideas down on paper.
I also think it would be great to share your last paragraph with your students about how you stop and edit and it gives you time to process. And I especially think sharing with them that it's hard for you to start but you just get your ideas down so you can organize them would be beneficial for some of your students. :)