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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Essentials of Writing Assignment 5
ReplyDeleteIrene Osterman Sussman
Regie’s explanation of why isolated skills work doesn’t translate into effective writing was fascinating to me. Our team has a “Word Work” time of day; we focus on Word Wall words, word families and letter sounds. This is a time of isolated skill practice and yet I understand that those skills may not transfer if they’re not meaningful. I’m thinking of how I can tweak those lessons, for example having students create their own word wall sentences, books, pamphlets etc. to make the learning more meaningful. I appreciate her take on the importance of effectively using the Word Wall. I believe we do a good job, mostly, but I would like to make sure I’m introducing new words that make sense for what we’re doing at that time of year and I need to look carefully to make sure the words are at the children’s eye level.
Most likely the most valuable lesson I got from Chapter 7 was the importance of teaching “writing with an audience in mind.” Of course it makes sense that children will try harder, focus, and most likely add more details to their writing when they have identified who they are writing for. Regie’s emphasis on teaching meaning first (whole), then teaching the skills in the context of the meaning (parts), and then coming back to the whole, will help me next year. Often with modeling I struggled with teaching the parts and felt as though I was losing my story in the process. The jigsaw puzzle analogy is brilliant – we have to see the picture to complete the work!
Teachers constantly talk about not having enough time in the day to do (fill in the blank). It’s the nature of the job. Our grade level team is good at integrating writing with science and social studies; we generally have 45 minutes for those subjects three days a week. I was hopeful that Regie would have a magic answer for how to squeeze more time for writers workshop into the day and was actually dismayed to see the first grade schedule on page 185. Fifteen minutes for the District math program and thirty minutes for writing math story problems would not fly in my district where we have a primary math requirement of 60 minutes a day. Our first grade math program includes 10-20 minutes of math calendar plus the 60 minutes of lesson and workplaces. Unfortunately writing time takes a back seat to reading and math. One thing our team did last year was to use the morning reading read aloud as a model for our writing mini lesson as much as possible. I also played around with modeling my writing during a spare few minutes and then hoping the students would remember that during their workshop time. It didn’t work as well as I had hoped. I am interested to hear what you all do with your schedules.
Chapter 9 had so many great ideas on conferences! I’m inspired to improve my teaching by using whole group conferences as a teaching tool every day. In fact I wrote that several times in the margins to remind myself. I appreciate her specific format, I feel I can conduct roving conferences, note students who are trying out what we’ve been discussing, and then ask them to do a shared conference. In between I like to keep a record of who shared to make sure I get to everyone. Regie’s specific ideas are what will really help me. For example, she points out that if you do two or three roving conferences and two or three shared conferences each day that’s 25 a week; nearly the whole class. Regie’s emphasis on our choice of language is so important. Even the most confident child is a bit self-conscious when reading their work in front of the whole class. It’s vital that my language is respectful, positive and encouraging, while helping all students move forward.
What do you think about word work and applying it with a sort, game, or other engaging activity? I usually do this, and although it is in isolation, I'm wondering if it is using the kids as the "audience" to do something they love? Just curious :)
DeleteAlso, we have requirements for what we teach and when, too. I usually find that most of the books I read have too much time allotted for literacy, but I do the best I can to get as much in as I can...I think just do your best!
Finally, I think that if kids KNOW they are getting compliments, they are much more willing to share :) I liked that they noted that being liberal on compliments is important to the kids.
Amanda, I love the idea of using Word Work time to do games or other activities, I feel most of the time the students are engaged. The reality - it takes sooo much time to prep! Maybe I'm feeling this way because I taught kindergarten for two years and the literacy activity prep was over the top. I haven't recovered from that enough to find a smooth system for first graders.
DeleteEssentials of Writing Assignment 5
ReplyDeleteIrene Osterman Sussman
A quick note on assessments (my word count is too high). Our District requires a fall formative, spring summative, and two or three rubric scored writing samples for report cards. Beyond that I follow the assessment schedule of my team. Fortunately they are all about children writing, not about unnecessary formal assessments. Since writing is by definition something that children are producing, I can sense what a child is struggling with. Having said that, I do feel I need to keep a much better record of my conferences and my students’ growth goals. (I loved the chart on page 217).
Schedules are tricky and both Jackie and I will tell you that we sometimes have to operate under less than ideal situations. (We think Regie would agree with us that you can only do what you can do. Ideally we'd have reading groups 5X a week but reality is that it may only be 4X or on a 6 day cycle. So do the best you can with what you are given and don't beat yourself up about it. Sometimes amazing insights come when we are forced to think outside of the box.)
ReplyDeleteI'd def. suggest keeping a record of who shared and the dates. This way you can be sure to highlight everyone. Kids notice when you pick the same kids or forget them.
I am a huge fan of Paula Denton's Power of Our Words book. Not only is it vital our language is positive and respectful; our tone and body language matter also! (Another one of my soapboxes.) :D
Record keeping is something that can take a few years until you find a system that works for you. It's always helpful to see what other people are doing and using.
Chapter 7:
ReplyDeleteIdeas I had for common core writing with audiences: Personal narratives (story writing) – audience is parents/other kids in the classroom. Publish/put in our library, Persuasive/Opinion writing: letters to the principal about an unfair rule at school, letters to parents about unfair rules, requests for vacations with parents as the audience. The kids could even write to a politician at an older grade about a subject they are passionate about. Informational writing: Write about a topic to teach their buddies (3rd or 4th graders in my case). Miscellaneous: writing recipes for me (I love to cook ), writing letters to upcoming kiddos from other grades giving advice, and letters to the teacher to explain issues they may be having within the classroom. I loved in this chapter her words about revision. She said two things I starred in the book. First, she said that revision takes place even when we aren’t writing, and that it is part of our thinking processes around writing! I think I need to get the kids to see revising as something we do all the time, even DURING writing! She also said thinking about revising is also knowing when NOT to revise.
Chapter 8: I don’t know my schedule yet (hopefully soon), but as soon as I do, I will create my comprehensive literacy framework! I think it will really help me keep on track. I DO create my own planner, which is very similar. I need to have all times accounted for, but I think I could be more specific about literacy.
I liked the list on page 178 of topics that provided choice within structure. I could see the secrets one being a hit in my second grade classroom! The ideas for prewriting were very helpful, too. Too often, I get hung up on prewriting being only writing. But it isn’t always that way. I need to use talking a story out much more. My kids love freewrites and I felt a little like this was permission to do more Graphic organizers…I have a lot of success with them. I do use them a lot, but toward the end of the year, they tend to not need them because they understand the “formulas” of writing better. I do think they are beneficial for my ELL and SPED kiddos, and sometimes they just need them to get going.
Chapter 9: Conferring…dun, dun, dunnnnn….I have good intentions, but don’t always get in what I want! A few things stuck out in this chapter; one was the shares. I have done shares for a long time, but never considered them a conference…now I do as I totally see how that is so helpful! Ideas to take away; read it twice…brilliant! Keep more on top of recording who shares so everyone gets to share. I liked the brief notes on page 217 of how to record what is going with what student. I do that, but it is nice to see another teacher’s notes! That is really helpful. I really like putting the kids in charge of what they are ready for a conference by teaching the checklist! The author said to focus on content and initially ignore editing concerns because it is concrete. I like that focus because I can see how the conventions are easier to teach and notice and the content is much harder to really get. I’m completely going to get behind student editing, too! I think I’ve been to soft on them and that they might be able to do more. I am going to get going on that right away this fall so they can come to me with less errors in conventions and we can focus on the content.
Chapter 10: Assessments – so crucial, but so easy to overdo…especially at our district level. I see how they want us to test/track where are our kids are, but I really want authentic testing. The ideas that stuck out to me were: kids need to write a LOT, but not all of it needs to be graded, the simplicity of a second grade rubric (mine are way too complex and need to be more child friendly),keeping writing from year to year (I wish I could get my school to do this), portfolios in the classroom, the list of assessments (so much more than I thought) was really helpful!
Amanda, Thanks for sharing great ideas for common core writing with audiences. Great ideas! On the subject of revising, like you I need to help students see that they are revising all the time, not just when they are reading to me.
DeleteChapter 7:
ReplyDeleteThere are so many things in this chapter that really clicked with me that made everything that I’ve read so far and that I’ve been doing in class make so much more sense. First, I think that it’s so important to have students know who they are writing for and have that in their mind when writing so that it can encourage not only better content, but also better spelling and conventions. There have been so many times when students have told me these great stories with a lot of expression and then when I ask them to write it down they go to the basics of “First this happened, then this, last this” that it drives me crazy. Yet as I look back it is because I have drilled into them so many times through isolated skill use about how to write a sentence and to write a sequence of events, that it is impossible for them to actually write outside of this and to insert their own voice into the piece. I think that by beginning to use demonstration and meaningful shared writing, I can show students how to write with their own personality added to the piece. The other part that really stuck with me is helping students develop a revision consciousness. I think that my students have such a big desire to be perfect on the first try that they push away the thought and the need for having to revise their writing. Again, by first having a worthwhile audience that they are writing for and then also demonstrating to them how I need to revise my work, students will not only relax about this task, but also begin to see the need for it.
Chapter 8:
I have to say, that when planning for my schedule for school, if something comes up then writing is usually the first thing to go. Reading this chapter and this book though it has reinforced in me the fact that writing daily is extremely important for my students and to have this time predictable is even more important. It was definitely helpful to see the different examples of schedules and how those teachers were able to fit all of different parts of writing (demonstration, shared writing, independent writing) into their schedule. One thing that I found interesting was the concept of prewriting and brainstorming and how she encouraged us to limit the use of graphic organizers. This is something that I have struggled with because I see it as a useful tool for my students, but it also takes up a lot of writing time that I have wondered if it is really needed. I’m curious to try out this year to see if I can limit this more or do it in a more natural way (e.g. make a list, talk with a partner/adult first, etc.) and see what results I get from that. Another part that I liked was the encouragement to write and publish more short pieces. While there is a benefit to students writing longer pieces and being able to give more details and more information, by focusing on adding more shorter pieces into the writing throughout the year students get to work on all of the writing skills more frequently. I also think it will be important to add the celebration and sharing of writing each day so that students can get the chance to hear other students’ writing and to share their own. This is something that I haven’t done before I think will be an important addition to my schedule.
Chapter 9:
ReplyDeleteWriting conferences are something I have not done with my students in the past, but I am looking forward to adding them this year. I really liked the idea of doing whole-class share because it allows students to see how other students are thinking and writing and it also gives me as a teacher a chance to encourage all students and to give them confidence in their writing. It will also allow me to bring some teaching points to everyone’s attention based on actual student writing and not my writing. This may be especially helpful if some of them are making the same mistakes and they can see how I correct other students. I also like that Regie encourages us to assume the child is making sense and to be generous with our praise. I think that be complimenting the child and asking for more information or for them to expand upon a thought that it will continue to give students the desire to write and to see themselves as writers. I also think it’s important to remember what type of conference you want to have with the child (content vs. editing) so that you aren’t trying to cover too much in one conference. My students love having the 1:1 time with me, so I think it will encourage them to write their best in order to have that conference with me. I think the end was also really helpful to see that we should be teaching students more editing and then handing over the responsibility to them. As teachers we need to make sure that they are not relying on us to fix their work, but that they are actually taking it as their own job to make their work worthy of reading. There have been so many times when kids have rushed through their writing and handed it to me in order to tell them what they needed to fix without actually going through and trying to fix some of it themselves. I know that I am to blame there because I didn’t teach them differently or set the right expectations, so that is something that I will be working on in the beginning of the year is writing out those expectations with the students and modeling them and practicing them continually.
Chapter 10:
I am fortunate that I am teaching in a class where (so far) all of my students do not participate in the standard state assessment, which means that I don’t have to get them ready for it. I also don’t provide typical grades for my students, but instead report on how they are progressing on their IEP goals. Therefore I don’t have a lot of pressure that other teachers have when teaching writing and writing for a specific purpose. It is nice to be able to focus on what my students need and to be able to go at a pace that is right for my students. Aside from that though, a lot of this still applies to me. Even though my students aren’t getting evaluated by the state, I still need to make sure that I have good data and records to show their progress so that I have information that I can put on their IEPs. I liked the idea of rubrics and child-friendly rubrics so that students have an expectation about their writing, which can also be used during the writing conference time. I agree with the idea of keeping writing samples and portfolios of student writing to show their progress throughout the year and from year to year and it’s something that I have been working on doing with my students. I also think that it’s important to assess their writing every day and I liked the ideas that Regie provided. I’m going to try the idea of roving conferences to see where students are in their writing as they write - note what they are and are not doing. I would also like to work towards student self-assessment and have students think and communicate with me about what they are doing well and what they need to work on.
Hi Amanda,
ReplyDeleteMany other teachers have also shared that they were excited to realize that sharing could be a type of conferring.
Hi Tara,
I've seen an over-reliance on graphic organizers and when I really stopped to think about it, I use lists when I write. There's nothing wrong with introducing students to different types of graphic organizers, but I think we should cut down on the number and not require them to use them if they don't want to. Your plans to allow students to create lists and discuss sound great. Also I think planning to have more shorter writing assignments will work well for both you and your students.