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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Chapter 7 This chapter is FULL of amazing ideas for mini lessons and reminders of how to establish an effective writing classroom.
ReplyDeleteI have been to lots of trainings about writing as well as several Writing Standards trainings. The programs we’ve been given teach skills first, so it’s interesting to read how Regie writes first and teaches skills through the pieces. I love the freedom of this kind of instruction and it completely makes sense to me.
I don’t spend much time on voice, but I have been trying to help reluctant writers verbalize their thinking before writing. We have tried the idea of “writing is like talking.”
This week after writing “Friendly letters” to the principal, we found that some of our writing needed to be fixed up so that she would understand what we were trying to say. It was the perfect example of applying skills already taught to a writing purpose..
Chapter 8
Finding the time! It’s a constant challenge. After reading this chapter, I want to find the time for free writing. I worry with all of the structure around writing that this might be difficult, but what a gift for my students if they can grasp just writing for the freedom to explore their ideas without the pressure of finishing a task. Our schedule is often so tight… Staff at our school just had a conversation about finding more flexibility in our day.
I also want to revisit helping students with ideas for writing. This chapter is so full of amazing ways to generate those ideas.
I feel fortunate in that my district has focused on nonfiction literacy in the last few years and this includes writing. I love finding opportunities for students to write what they have learned through a specific topic.
Chapter 9
I’m with many other teachers who find it difficult to manage and schedule equitable writing conferences. And I think that I spend way more time with those that need more attention and instruction. So I’m excited to try more often whole group conferences with several students, using those opportunities to instruct or remind about what good writers do. I agree with Regie that first graders need to share often to build their confidence.
Another high point for me in this chapter is that of “frontloading.” If we teach thoroughly and take the time to build solid skills, there will be less need for conferencing.
Conferencing is tricky business and I find that some students are fragile. I love Regie’s section on “Putting the Writer First,” so that my students make good progress as writers as well as gain confidence in their abilities. I have tried “self editing “ sheets in the past.
Chapter 10
I’m often grateful to be a primary teacher and relieved not have to deal with the pressure of state writing assessments. However, we do have a district scoring system that is used at all grade levels and becomes part of each student’s portfolio. It is aligned now with our report card, so there is that pressure of specific instruction for this purpose. We now score writing for expository, narrative and opinion.
I’ve been on district writing committees and aligned standards as well. It’s a heady task to say the least and often leaves out “the joy of writing.” I’ve relaxed my “scoring” practices the last couple of years and tried to help students become confident and excited about tackling any writing task. We do use 11 stages at the beginning of the year and I actually enjoy telling students to pay attention to how they grow the first few months with hard work and focus. I appreciate Regie’s suggestion to not dwell on these tools so as not to create added stress for our youngest writers.
The “Aim for Fluency” list is very comprehensive and useful for working towards proficient writing for first graders. Will refer to this often!
Chapter 7
ReplyDeleteIntegrating Skill Work – Routman encourages us to reduce isolated skills work and to incorporate as much skill building as possible into whatever writing unit a teacher is teaching at the moment.
Oral language practice doesn’t work – I need some clarification on Routman’s comment. What are we talking about in terms of oral language practice? As an ESL teacher I’d be out of a job if I was wasting students’ time by having them use oral language before producing writing.
Audience and purpose – I’ve made extra effort to focus on audience and purpose with my students. Unfortunately, I have not seen them take a lot of extra pride in their writing when knowing the purpose and audience. I’m sure there is more I could do, but it’s not as simple as Routman makes it sound.
Think alouds – I’m really trying to include more think alouds while demonstrating my writing.
Revising – “Will my writing make sense to my readers? Will it engage them?” Those are two simple questions that I think I’ll use when modeling/encouraging my students to revise. I also like the idea of doing a revising think aloud, then having students identify different strategies I used.
Chapter 8
ReplyDeleteWriting Workshop – Routman’s idea of what a writing workshop is is a pronounced chunk of daily writing time each day in which students are developing as writers with a focus on her ideals.
I think of writing workshop similarly; a daily activity in which writing is the focus. It is a time in which we work on longer and shorter pieces. My idea of writing workshop focuses on one unit/genre at a time, in which skills, language, and vocabulary mini lessons are incorporated into class periods.
Student Choice – Here, I wish (as I have many times) that Routman would get specific. She highlighted the importance of student choice within a writing topic, but I wish she’d explain how that would look for persuasive essays or character analysis essays for example. The ability to provide students with choice is what often sets writing apart from others subjects like math. Within a genre (character analysis for example) you can encourage students to select topics/texts they enjoy. Choice, thus, provides students with motivation.
Writing Talk – Having students talk about their writing – telling a narrative or sharing their thinking about a topic - is an excellent way to informally use the prewriting process. It helps develop ideas and gets students to think deeply about what they’re about to write.
Genre Study – It is important to have some school wide consistency. Though themes/topics vary, students tend to work on the same units grade after grade. For example, students in my districct do personal narratives in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. Collaborating as a school helps ensure consistency, ensures that students get exposure and practice, and makes learning more efficient.
Possibilities within genres – Routman encourages us to keep genres broad, to introduce new units in an exciting manner, to engage students, and to not bog students down with genre related labels.
Chapter 9
ReplyDeletePurpose – The purpose of conferencing is to help a student feel good about their writing and themselves as a person, provide feedback, assess learning, and provide the help necessary to strengthen their writing/learning.
Types of Conferences – Basically, Routman tells the reader that “conferencing” takes many forms, not just a one on one, student-teacher discussion. Conferences can be in many forms. If you are helping an individual or the whole class, you are conferencing. Peer conferences, roving conferences, and quick shares are non-traditional forms of conferences.
Using “Share” effectively – To use it effectively you should set it up to be successful. Share your expectations to students and teach necessary skills. After doing so, have a student read their writing twice to the whole class. After providing compliments and encouragement, dive into specifics of what the student did well and what they could improve upon. Elicit responses from the class as you, the teacher, looks for teaching points he can use to help the whole class improve their writing. Also, use this share time as an informal assessment. Routman suggests that we use share as a conferencing method that reaches many students, not just the one who receives feedback. I love the practical, wide ranging implications of this strategy.
Conducting conferences effectively – According to Routman, teachers should teach conferencing expectations and procedures. Having done so, she urges that teachers focus on content and focus on positive content first. You want to really pump up the writer with what is working. Then provide suggestions, or better yet, guide the student to noticing where writing can be improved. Write down ideas for the student and/or have him/her restate what they will work on next. Next move on to editing. Provide practical help and feedback. She says to not except lazy editing.
Management and Routines – Routman encourages the reader to set up clear expectations and to provide practice time for students so that all students – those involved in conferencing and those not involved, understand what they are to be doing.
Chapter 10
Chapter 10 focused on how to get students to write effectively without emphasizing high stakes tests, over-assessing writing, and using rubrics incorrectly. Routman provided some helpful “dos and don’ts” regarding how to effectively use assessment tools. The most immediate sub topic in chapter ten was the section on preparing students for on-demand writing. I have some state testing coming up in which my ELLs have to answer prompts. I’ll use her suggestions – all though, some of her tips I all ready do employ. For example, I teach the language demands of the test, how to answer prompts with multiple questions, and how to explicitly follow directions. Her suggestions to discuss pacing with students and to have them score themselves ahead of time using the state rubric, are ideas I’ll try to use.
Hello Karen,
ReplyDeleteI agree, it also makes sense to me. ☺ Students need to write, a lot, and have time and opportunities to practice writing. Then we can pick the skills that the student needs at that time to move them forward. Too often I think many students aren’t ready for what our “lesson of the day” may be, especially as the students are developing as writers. But if the teaching point comes from their work and helps their message to be clearer there will likely be more interest in learning and buy-in. I say it often, but we give students so much time to learn to read, without always correcting every single error they make. We need to extend children the same opportunity with writing and give them lots of time and opportunities to write without ripping apart their attempt each time. For some reason teachers have felt the need to correct every single error to make a piece perfect each time. That’s a lot negative feedback for kids and who would want to do something that they felt they were no good at? We need to pick one or two things at a time as the teaching points and focus on those, while pointing out what the student IS doing well and what growth they have made. We need more celebrations and recognitions for the children (and ourselves!)
Voice is one of the trickier things to teach, in my opinion. Yet, it’s what makes a piece unique. Helping kids to verbalize their ideas is a great strategy! Glad the friendly letters lesson worked out so well.
We are having the same conversations in Vermont regarding more flexibility in the day. It all comes down to resources; there is never enough time, money or people. ☹ That’s great your staff is having these conversations. Good luck! Great things happen when we are forced to think outside of the box.
Hello Brian,
ReplyDeleteWhat I believe Regie is referring to is the Daily Oral Language sheets and sentences on the board that teachers use to (or still ) use that has capital, grammar, punctuation and spelling errors. The skills don’t transfer to the students' writing. And I have to agree, when I first started teaching I used DOL and never found it to be worthwhile, so I stopped using it and had time for the kids to read when they came into class. (It was sort of a busy work/ morning work activity for kids when they first entered the room in the morning.)
I am a big fan of oral rehearsal for the reason you listed. It is a powerful way for students to think deeply about what they plan to write. And many students need this step to help them process, solidify and organize their plan of action.
Chapters 7-10
ReplyDeleteI can appreciate the structure of whole-part-whole teaching. I used to teach this way years ago, then the pendulum changed. This is not how our district curriculum is currently set up, but then again, we have gone rogue this year. I’ve really been reflective on what kinds of writing I was getting from students when the structure was more writers workshop and writing little books, when we weren’t asked to grade first graders to the 4th grade state writing rubric. I love all of the mini-lesson examples and am looking to do some structural changes starting NOW! I love the spelling strategies chart and the word wall use ideas.
I like how Routeman emphasizes the involvement of the students in the writing process, it’s not all teacher lead. All of the discussing, brain storming, scaffolding, focusing on audience seems like it would build excitement and enthusiasm to “getting started right away.” It makes me excited implement these strategies again.
We have our designated writing scheduled at the end of the day, 4 days a week. I’m thankful that our core reading model encourages/allows for writing to be integrated and taught simultaneously with reading and special units of study. This allows us to have some flexibility in when and where we do the components of reading/writing and units based projects.
The “Start by Engaging Students” section is eye opening. I love the Teach it First, Label it Later, it makes so much sense! Right now we are learning about N and S pole, animals in these regions climate. Along with this unit is an integrated lesson on non-fiction features that looked VERY similar to the one in Regie’s book. We spend from now until the end of the year in non-fiction units of study.
Write Short Projects with Simple Criteria…this is list is invaluable to me. There are a certain amount of skills needed to be taught in 1st grade about how to write and the expectations of a good writer, but this list of ideas will really engage students to write and through that writing, teach the skills mandated by the district/Common Core.
Our principal broke her leg last week so reading use “writing as an act of kindness” really got me thinking. We often write letters in our classroom, but giving it a label of kindness will create so much intrinsic desires to write for an authentic purpose. Next week will be letters to our principal!
I have struggled this year with conferencing with students. Some years I have felt I was much more successful in reaching students and directing them individually with more specific purpose. I need to do some restructuring to make this happen. I love the idea where Regie uses the whole-class as a conference. This will help me justify the amount of time it takes to get through 30 six year olds who wish to share their thoughts and ideas!
I use quick writes in a little different way, yet with a lot of the same intention… to get kids thinking and writing quickly. I use pictures and give them 2-3 minutes to write something about the picture. I think this would be a great thing to use as a share because they would all have the same experience of the particular picture. It’ll be great to see what is observed, important and opinions. I’ll be experimenting with this after writing acts of kindness writing.
My teaching partners and I had rubrics made for students to use as self assessments as well as what they were going to work on next. So far, they are cut up and ready to go, yet still sit in my box of things to do with students. I think if I create a writing folder with them, they could keep these rubrics as reminders and goals to have access to as they do their daily writing.
Ch 7-10
ReplyDeleteI started teaching at King Elementary in 1st grade for the first six year of my career and eventually landed at 4th grade for seven. I realized that there was a large disconnect between what first graders were taught and what fourth graders needed to know. That became our building’s focus. 4th grade had the State Writing Assessment. It was our job to teach them many skills before the assessment in February! The one area that the majority of students didn’t get a passing score was in “Conventions”. Obviously, the DOL we did 1st-3rd and again in 4th wasn’t transferring. How do we get these students to spell the “no excuse words”, let alone remember to use a period? My favorite example to share, besides the book Punctuation Takes A Vacation, was the saying “Let’s eat, Grandma!” & “Let’s eat Grandma!” They laughed, but it was still a constant battle. The second thing we learned was that not all kids have the same life experiences. If they had never been camping, they couldn’t accurately write about it. It wasn’t meaningful to them. We made it a point to pick prompts that all students could relate to and would feel a connection with. Connecting with writing topics also helped their voice come out in their writing.
Since my old building closed due to low enrollment, 4 years ago, I have once again moved schools and back to primary and finally this year to first grade. I have learned that I need to slow down the writing instruction. I don’t have to teach them everything in one year. Second grade can build upon the skills. As we focus on quality, my goal will be to embed “conventions” lessons in the guise of whole group conferencing and celebrations. The sample of mini-lessons will be a great starting point and Reggie’s spelling conference with Derek is a perfect example of what I want it to look like. Our word wall is in constant use, but it is not flexible as described in the book. I will be thinking about how I can make that happen. It might even reduce a few charts we have up in the room.
I’ve mentioned before that I have some behavior issues in my room. Having those behaviors forced me to create a classroom culture and climate of kindness, trust, and “expected” behaviors for all procedures in the classroom. We have “expected” behavior for every aspect of our day. The students know what each activity looks and sounds like. I couldn’t have taught these past few year had those management pieces not been in place. All ideas courtesy of our sped classroom teacher and our behavior psychologist :). Reading about establishing procedures and routines makes me think that our writing time together would be more productive if I consistently reviewed the procedure of what whole group conferencing and celebrating should look/sound like along with the why we do it. When it comes to independent writing, the students and I will be creating at least one rubric, similar to the one on page 241. We already have, not only the state scoring guide based on what fourth graders should be able to do, but also our districts 10 stages of writing that teachers use as an evaluative. I want the students to think about everything we have discussed when writing and conferencing and want them to create (with my guidance of course) a rubric about what good first grade writing looks like. I also want to consistently spend more time writing, both whole group and independently. Making it happen will take some uninterrupted moments as I look at our current “blocked” schedule. As I’ve been reading this book, I have been adding extra writing time here and there. I’m ready to make it a priority.
Chapters 7-10 wasn’t food for thought, it was a smorgasbord.
Hi LeAndra,
ReplyDeleteI feel like some of us have been knocked around by that pendulum a few times as it keeps swinging...;D I'm glad you got so much out of this section!
Hi Brenda,
I love Punctuation Takes a Vacation. Great book. :D I've mentioned that Leah Mermelstein worked with one of my schools for a couple of years. She shared that having students write about topics that we all had a common experience with was easier to help the students who were below level. For example, a topic could be the day the hamster got loose, or when there was a sub one day or the day Mrs. Mitchell tripped on the carpet. Having this shared experience makes it easier to support and scaffold for the students who really need it. As you said, not all kids have camped or even been out of their neighborhood...
So excited that you are adding more writing time to your day! LOVE IT! "A smorgasbord." Awesome!!! :D