ASSIGNMENT TWO: WRITTEN REFLECTION–Section One- The Essential Writing Life Chapters 1-3
BRIEFLY reflect on the following comments written below from Chapters 1-3 and any additional thoughts that you have after reading these chapters.
Chapter 1: Simplify the Teaching of Writing• Simplify our teaching
• Becoming more knowledgeable about teaching writing
• Examine your beliefs
Regie gets to the heart of her book Writing Essentials with this quote on the final page of Chapter One: “By reducing the clutter in our teaching lives-the over-planning, the unnecessary activities, the paper load, all the ‘stuff’ that takes our time and energy and does little to improve teaching and learning-we bring joy back into our work and the world of our students.” Many of us work very hard and spend many hours complicating our teaching lives. In this book Regie will help you simplify your teaching life for your benefit and that of your students.
One of the frustrations that teachers encounter regularly is the ever changing “latest and best” writing programs that districts or states force on them and their students. With this revolving cycle of programs, teachers are spending too much time learning how to use the program rather than becoming better writing teachers. Regie explains that in the districts where students are the best writers, they are writing for real purposes and audiences and publishing their writing; teachers are not using prescribed writing programs.
Look at Appendix A (page A-2.) Examine your beliefs about writing by reading the statements about the writing process and marking true or false in your book. (Go ahead and write in your book, it’s OK! You can even use a pencil and mark very lightly if you want to.) We found this activity very enlightening. Let us know what you think after you complete the activity.
In your reflection for Section One, please include your thoughts about the following questions or statements:
• Regie demonstrates how to use the Optimal Learning Model (shown on the front cover and page 11) throughout the book. Consider how the Optimal Learning Model fits into your own instruction.
• As you think about how to teach writing so that all students can become successful, effective and joyful writers, reflect on how you presently teach the “12 Writing Essentials” (as described on pages 13-14 in the text) during your daily writing instruction. As we continue to read through Regie’s book, hopefully you will begin to see how you might make changes in your instruction to better incorporate these “12 Writing Essentials.”
Chapter 2: Start With Celebration
• Make sure writing is meaningful not just correct
• Use stories as springboards and ensure that ALL students hear stories
• Write in front of your students and connect home and school
The title of Chapter Two simply states, “Start with Celebration,” and that’s exactly what we need to do for our students. The celebration of all students’ writing needs to be put into the forefront and be made our first teaching goal. Celebrations should happen school-wide, within our classrooms and with students individually. As children begin to see themselves as successful writers, they will take more risks in their writing and in turn will become better writers who enjoy the writing process.
Another key point that Regie highlights in this chapter is to “make sure writing is meaningful, not just correct!” Students need to understand that writing is “enjoyable and for a real purpose and audience.” She also reminds us “that teaching skills in isolation does not make student writers; neither does teaching to the test. And breaking writing into bits and pieces robs children of the joy of writing.”
Regie suggests using stories as a springboard for teaching and learning. Hearing and telling stories builds our students’ oral language skills and these stories are “an entryway into reading and writing.” Only when students are reading and writing real stories can they connect the “skills” based learning to their reading and writing!
Please include your thoughts about the following questions or statements in your written reflection of Section One:
• Regie explains how important celebrating student writing is. How do you celebrate student writing in your classroom? How might you add more celebration of student writing to your day/year?
• Consider what changes you could make in your writing instruction to make writing more meaningful and purposeful for your students.
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ReplyDeleteSection One Reflections: The optimal learning model fits very neatly into a lot of my instruction. I’m currently using it as I teach my students about finding the main idea in short nonfiction paragraphs. I’ve modeled reading these paragraphs out loud, I speak out my thinking process as I decide what are details and what are main ideas. I’m now at the point of moving from shared demonstration to guided practice. I have students in need of both, and of course we are working towards independence. I have not used this model though with writing, and am now thinking about how I might do so.
I definitely can see ways I am not incorporating the 12 essentials. The very first one on the list is perhaps one of the biggest I am not currently providing opportunity for. My students usually choose from a list of prompts which at least hopefully gives them some buy in to what they are writing, but thinking about who the intended reader might be is missing. I really liked the list, I think in the 3rd chapter, of the many different types of writing: notes, poetry, letters of all kinds, cards, book reviews, etc. I think broadening the type of writing my students are doing might help them think about who their reader is meant to be and also to help them feel meaningful about what they are writing.
Another of the 12 Essentials that I’d like experiment with more is the rereading, rethinking, revising part of the writing processes. It has been very difficult for me to help my students see a difference between revising and editing. The idea that they might consider changing something they’ve already written is often met with offense and extreme resistance, especially my kiddos who are on the autism spectrum and who are extremely black and white in their thinking. But anything can be taught, I firmly believe. As I think about it now, really focusing on this part as I model writing myself might help a lot in this area.
In terms of celebration, at the beginning of the year I had incorporated what I was calling “publishing” our writing, which basically meant that they shared what they had written by reading it to the class. Thinking back I do think this was powerful for a handful of students. It did become a trigger for some unsafe behavior with one of my students who refused at first to share, and so I kind of let the sharing part slip. But doing so probably wasn’t fair for the rest of the class, or even for that student. I don’t have to be convinced of the value of celebrating writing. I think I can bring back the sharing component, and I also like the idea of making a class book perhaps with examples of everyone’s writing.
The OLM goes by a variety of names... The Gradual Release of Responsibility, I Do, You Do, We Do, and To, With, By. (The last two bother me a little as it implies that there are only 3 steps of the process, when in fact there is four steps. And the middle two are where teachers usually short-change due to time constraints. I find many teachers need to really focus on the Shared Demonstration and Guided Practice before releasing students to Independent Work.
ReplyDeleteIf you are able to adjust a little and give students choice (within structure) a purpose for writing and let them know who the intended audience is you'll see improvement from your students.
Yes, more celebrations. For your student who become violent or unsafe, what about asking them if you could share for them, so they weren't uncomfortable or upset. Remember, it doesn't have to be pages long. It could be a clever title, topic or a really descriptive sentence. When you share it others may want to focus on that and try it themselves. Or, if it continues to be a big problem, don't have that student share. It's ok, maybe later there will be something they are proud of that they want to share. It might take months, but hopefully it will happen.
I love class books and student's do as well. Great idea to implement.
It has worked to share for those students who can become unsafe, and some of those students have actually become more willing to share themselves after seeing their peers sharing and the activity becoming something more regular and expected.
ReplyDeleteI did a shared writing experience with my class the other day as we all wrote together a thank you letter to a volunteer who came into our class. It did seem quite productive and so I am excited to focus more on that shared part of the Gradual Release of Responsibility!
I'm glad the Thank You Letter went well. I just had a thought...since these are high school students, what about giving an assignment that they bring in examples of song titles or lyrics that mean a lot to them, that they just like the sound of or that they find beautiful or descriptive or inspiring. (I'm just thinking back to how much music meant to me in high school.) The real point of this is just to get students more comfortable sharing but with a subject that they don't have to create and that they also have a connection to. Maybe you could share an example from a favorite band or musician that you like to demonstrate. Led Zeppelin has some great songs that actually tie to some classic literature...
ReplyDeleteOf course, you might want to set up some guidelines of appropriateness...or maybe not. :) You know your students. I feel like this could have all sorts of possibilities. Students could share the words and then a snippet of the song (or whole song) then students could write reactions to the ones they felt were most powerful or moving or that they were now interested in learning about a new band... Or how they imagined the song would sound vs. actually hearing the artists version.
Just a thought. :D