Note: These section are packed!!! Pick and choose your discussion points so that the blog doesn't become overwhelming and packed with so much information that participants won't want to read each others' comments. :)
Sections Four and Five- Advocacy Is Also Essential and Teaching In Action: Lesson Essentials
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."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Assignment Seven: Student Writing Conference
ReplyDeleteI conducted a conference with Natalirose, a third grader who struggles with connecting letter sounds combined to form blends, digraphs and diphthongs.
She wrote a short piece on what makes a good teacher. She started out with her main opinion: “Teachers should help us if we have trouble. Who wants a mean teacher?” She then proceeded with great details about a bullying incident, involving being choked (!), pushed down hard stairs (!), and being prevented from using the sllde. There had been no apparent consequence for the perpetrator. “She just let him run away. If I were the teacher, I would put him in detention.”
I complimented her on the structure of her persuasive flow, great details, and voice. What I focused on was the closure. I explained how the last sentence was a “feeling” sentence that served as a “bow tied around a present,” a closing connection with the reader. Natalirose closed with: “I like to feel safe at school.”
I applied Regie’s simple rubric for persuasive writing in this lesson:
• Opening lead that states purpose.
• Position statement with supporting arguments.
• Closing summary.
For the next conference, I will write a short informational piece with Natalirose present, using Regie’s three-part rubric, and focus again on wrapping it up with an ending that connects to the reader. Natalie can then write a short piece on her favorite foods. She is very interested in food and has a lot to say about her likes and dislikes!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteChapter eleven gave me a deeper understanding of the importance of having students write everyday. One research based statement that stood out to me was, “Writers who enjoy writing and are motivated to write do write more”(Hollady 1979, Guthrie 2002, Routman 2000), and I believe that the more writing that occurs in my classroom the more my students will enjoy writing and want to write. Since taking this class I have been more aware of not only the amount of writing that occurs in my classroom daily, but also the type of writing. I also found the research statement that mentioned students are more likely to become proficient writers when they have some choice of topic and audience and value the writing purpose (Graves 1994; Ball and Farr 2003; Routman 2000a) to be true when it comes to literacy centers in my classroom. Many of my students choose writing over all other centers and enjoy it the most because this is the time that they have a choice in what they write about. After centers, I have 1-3 students show/share their finished writing pieces and they LOVE it!
ReplyDeleteWhile reading the Adopt Practices of Highly Effective Teachers section, I found myself circling several suggestions that I found to be beneficial to writing instruction. Teaching authentic writing rather than isolated writing exercises and moving students toward assessing their own writing are practices that I have been following more since I began this class. My first graders know the importance of spelling word wall words correctly, yet they still forget to look at the word wall when writing a word that may be there. To help my students take more responsibility, I put a dot by word wall words and have them go and look for the word, rather than showing them where to find it on the word wall. One area that I would like to focus more on is conferencing individually with students. By conferencing, I will be able to set goals for each of my students and have a deeper understanding of their individual writing capabilities.
Now that I have began to use less daily writing exercises, I enjoyed reading chapter twelve and the information surrounding using less daily exercises to help reduce the paper load. I have been doing more group work surrounding isolated exercises rather than individual worksheets. For example, if we are focusing on correct punctuation mark to place at the end of a sentence, I have created Smart Board activities to complete as a whole group, rather than working on worksheets. When I notice that students are using skills that I have recently taught, I will make a point to share with other students or the entire class and mention what the writer is including/or the skill that he/she is working on. I hope that by doing this, other students will be more aware of their writing pieces. I am also spending less time writing comments on papers and spending more time conferencing and complimenting writing when a student reads aloud to the class.
Assignment 8 (continued)
ReplyDeleteWhile reading section five I was given several helpful ideas when holding a conversation with a reluctant writer. There are many times when I visit a reluctant writer and they have written one sentence and I encourage him/her to add more details. Section five provided me with great dialogue and how to guide my struggling writers. I also liked reading the dialogue when holding a conversation with a strong writer. Regie offered great ideas on how to encourage a strong writer to add more details, which will only strengthen their writing skills. Finally, when reading over Appendix A, and reflecting on the statements listed, I found myself often thinking about how talking about these statements with a coworker would definitely be beneficial. There were a few statements that I thought could be true or false, and I felt that having an in-depth conversation with someone on my school team could definitely help me with my response. I plan on showing this page to my principal in hopes that one day we will use this in a staff wide meeting when discussing the writing instruction that occurs in our school.
Hello Leslie!
ReplyDeleteIt's so exciting to read your post! It sounds like you've gained a lot of ideas to try out in your classroom and we love to hear this! Great idea to share Appendix A with your principal. I think some rich conversation would develop after reading the Appendix as a staff!