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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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One point I took away from chapter 7 was that it’s important for the students to see the big picture first, and only then can we dive in and isolate certain skills. Part of seeing the whole picture is being explicit with students about why they are doing something. Understanding why also helps me as a teacher, because I know the lesson has value if I can explain why it’s important for the student. I also saw the importance of making sure students have an audience, which adds to the authenticity of their writing tasks. This idea of authentic education fits in with the direction many schools, including mine, are taking with performance tasks in Understanding by Design or Project-Based Learning (PBL). Probably the most useful part of chapter 7 for me was the section about writing with an honest voice. The trait of voice has always been the hardest for me to teach. Like with many other skills the book has touched upon, one of the best ways to improve my students’ understanding and use of voice appears to be modeling more of my own writing in front of the students.
ReplyDeleteChapter 8 was important for anyone who has struggled with a less-than-ideal schedule to read. It’s true that we make time for what we value. When you have so many standards to meet in all the subject areas, sometimes it feels like something has to lose out. I can say that I’ve put writing on the back burner before when pressed for time. I liked seeing the different schedules with ways to incorporate more writing. I was able to take what worked for me in those schedules and discard what didn’t—like the schedule that had far too little time for math in my opinion. And I believe that using my judgment to make decisions about what’s best for my students is what Routman talks about when she mentions using our common professional sense.
The information and detail about different conference structures in chapter 9 was very helpful for me. I love the idea of expanding what I consider to be a conference. If I include whole-shares and quickshares, in addition to more formal one-on-one conferences, then I know I can regularly get to all of my students. I appreciated some of the specific phrasing Routman gave as examples of teacher talk during conferences. I try to be specific when giving praise, but after reading this, I realize that maybe I am not specific enough. I am likely to say something like, “I like how you used lots of vivid words,” instead of naming the exact words the student used to create vivid imagery. I also see that Routman addressed my editing concerns that I wrote about earlier. I think she and I are on the same page about helping students edit only the things that they cannot truly do for themselves yet. But I think I will have to practice being stricter about them editing all the things they can before I help them.
The idea that not every piece of writing needs to be scored formally with a rubric was like a breath of air. My last school was very caught up in tracking every tiny, single piece of data they could on each student, and it was exhausting as a teacher! On the other hand, I do think using rubrics judiciously are very beneficial for students, especially when they use them for self-evaluations and reflections.
Hi Kelly!
ReplyDeleteThis section does provide a lot of food for thought. We're glad you were able to take away ideas, like scheduling, and make it work for you. Yes, we agree, that Regie means for us to trust our own judgement! Just like with reading, we don't correct and score every single page a student reads; writing is the same. Students need a lot of time and practice to write…without the fear of being corrected or wrong or graded for every piece. We need to put the joy back into writing.
Assignment 5
ReplyDeleteThis is the section I was most eager to read. I really want to set up writer’s workshop to maximize the students’ independent writing time. Teaching first grade for the first time, I find it a challenge to get all students to not seek my help just to get started.
7 - Motivating writers: If I could sum up Routman’s main idea of this book, I would say that writing with audience in mind is it. The challenge is finding an audience without adding a lot of extra work. The class book idea is always great, but takes work. Furthermore, assignments aren’t always what the students are writing.
Like writing for an audience, giving the students a purpose for writing is clearly important. This could be the discussion I have with students while identifying the learning target. For example, one of our targets is to place story events in order. We state that at the beginning of the lesson and model it in our writing. To add to that, we could state the learning target and discuss the reason that is valuable.
Next year while planning, I will be sure to use the “What a Good Writer Does” and “A Sample Of Common Minilessons” lists. We look at the standards first and set learning targets. However, if we do that with these items in the forefront of our minds, we can make the standards work with what we want to teach.
Revising: model rereading, crossing out words or sentences, reorganizing or cut and paste, and checking for confusing bits.
Value spelling approximations: model this when you don’t know how to spell a word. Insist that dictionaries are for editing.
Word work can have words written in sentences then put on the word wall, rather than the other way around. Think morning message for this. I need to teach my, have and go this week. Use these words in morning message and put them on the word wall. Identify them as words they can no longer misspell and show them where to find them on the word wall. Get words from shared writing, modeled writing, etc. Possibility: End the lesson by asking what words could or should we put up. Which ones to leave off because not highly frequent?
Editing note: “w.w.” above the word that can be found on the word wall. The they have to go and find it. Maybe next time, they will know where to look.
Personal word wall: an empty grid with each of the alphabet letters. Add words as the require them. Some words will be left off if they are not high frequency or something they will use often. This will avoid overstuffing. Add them during guided reading so connect the reading to writing.
8 - Yay! No more graphic organizers that take longer that writing. Using a quick list on a sticky note makes more sense. Page 296 is my new best friend. I want to read it everyday. Combine it with independent writing, when the reluctant writers need a quick check in, and then my time is freed up for conferences. At the beginning of the year, I will model this with my writing. Choose a topic, make a list, then model turning the list into sentences. When you ask, “what are you writing about?” They tell you the topic sentence without prompting. The get into what happened.
10 – Self assessment: We are working on this as a staff this year. I plan on using this as a reference and share with colleagues. I hope to get student friend rubrics that help students think about their writing and understand what they can do without me.
Hi Kelly,
ReplyDeleteYou could think of "audience" in a different way also. Having the students think who their "reader" is may be a better way for you to think about this. The "reader" could just be you, or a classmate or their parents. It does not have to be a formal assignment and important people like the principal or for the newspaper. Students should want to make sure no matter who their reader is that the message is clear and as error free as possible.
Here's an idea for the interruptions during group or conferring time. Laminate 5 index cards that you have written the numbers 1-5 on (long way.) Hole punch and put a round clip on it and hang them in the front of the room off the chalkboard rail or off the side of your table. This way when a student needs something they can take the number 1 and you'll know who the first person was that needed your attention. Then next person takes the number 2 and so on. This is also helpful for the teacher not to forget to get back to a student when you are busy. Plus this gives the student something to do and they can get back to work and hopefully not feel like they have to wait until they talk to you.
And/or you can use the old "Ask 3 before Me" sign and practice with the students what are some things they might try asking another student for help with instead of waiting for you.
A modification on this could ask before you start conferring or reading groups who in class is confident in the directions and assignment and willing to be the "go to person" for anyone who may have questions while you are working with students. (Likely this will be a person who is a strong student.) If you noticed some people visiting with this person while you are busy you can check in with them while groups are changing.
And the big thing is spending the time (the first six weeks--or more) to clearly establish expectations, procedures and role play, problem solve and practice what to do during literacy time. This also includes being prepared with books and materials so work time isn't wasted.
Excellent, love it. No more graphic organizers that take longer than the writing. Yes, lists are what most people use in our real lives and writing, so it makes sense to share this as one of the main orgainzational strategies for students.