Monday, July 11, 2016

Assignment Five: Written Reflection - Section Three

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.”

20 comments:

  1. Teaching the basic skills in the way that this chapter states sounds very interesting. The two things that really stuck out to me was spelling and the word wall. I like the suggestions of having the students write and use invented spelling. Then to go back and work on words that need to spelled correctly. I found last year that if I would tell the kids how to spell words while they were writing, then I would have more than half the class up asking me how to spell words. I started a page on the smartboard with words that kids would ask how to spell during writing, but found that the next time we wrote many of the same words were asked. (BECAUSE the number one word asked for in writing) I am planning on doing the word wall this year, but didn’t quite know how to organize it. I am going to do it like the book said, plus I am going to do an individual word wall for their writing journal. I am also going to do it for their math journal.

    Valuing writing will make it important enough that you will teach it daily. I like the daily quick option of having kids freewrite. . Short, sweet, just to get them writing. I have planned to have my class set up so that I write with the students everyday. Using the demonstration/ shared demonstration/guided practice/independent practice model. Teaching students how to pick worthwhile topics will be valuable for them in 3rd, but will expand their choices when the get into middle school and have to write essay after essay. Talk about writing with the students and have them talk about it with each other. Demonstrating model writing behavior is something I have always done. I like that it is stressed. My goal this year is to write and publish more of the students work. In fact I have several idea on how that is going to happen. (I spoke of this before) I also love the writing more letters part. We just don’t write letters to anyone anymore. But the best part of this chapter was to use writing to perform acts of kindness. Oh my, I will be doing this weekly. This is something not only my students but the world needs so badly right now.

    I loved the quick chart on the purposes of a writing conference. Listening, affirming, reinforcing, assessing, teaching, scaffolding, and setting goals. I think it summarizes this whole chapter. It is really important to make sure the students have a positive feeling about their writing. If they think they are doing it wrong all the time, or aren’t improving, it can really damage the writing process and make the students now continue to improve. Sharing their writing is a wonderful way to increase their confidence. But you need to be very careful that it isn’t an avenue for other students to put them down. This is a big problem with some of the bullies we have in our school.
    The productive conference chart was very helpful. My favorite tip was not writing directly on the student's paper.

    Assessment has become such a dirty word these days. I loved the Good writing Grade three rubric. I am going to have my class come up with a rubric this year for our writing. What a great way to get total buyin. While we will use the rubric, I am going to keep the focus on writing as much as possible, make sure student are doing their best, and really focusing on their readers. As a third grade we did not spend a lot of time preparing for the state tests. We taught the standards, and just let the test happen. It didn’t seem like a huge deal for the kids. The only thing they stressed about was how long the test was. It has not helped me at all with my classroom instruction. So as the book said, I did rely on more classroom assessment. But since this was all new to me, I didn’t have the best model set up. This is going to be a much better year for writing in my classroom. I feel I have so much more information on how to set up a great writing class this year.

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    1. I have the same problem in my school about kids laughing or being mean to the student who is sharing their writing, but I feel that if we as teachers model how to give positive criticism that can be avoided, or at least brought to a minimum.

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    2. I agree with you Julie. And I believe setting up clear expectations from day one of the school year will help with this and clearly outlining that making fun of students' work or bullying will not be tolerated in your classroom. It's easier to do this from the start than part way through the year. But it's not impossible to implement at any time of the year. Good luck with creating a culture of mutual respect in trust in your classrooms!

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  2. While reading this chapter I realized that I do not do a good enough job at explaining why we are learning or doing specific activities in class. I can hear my students saying the exact same lines that Routman heard in a 3rd grade classroom, “Our teacher asked us to”, “I think they’re going on that bulletin board over there.” They don’t really know the true purposed of the exercise and the value it’s bringing to their learning. I need to say more of “The reason we’re doing this is…” I also like the idea of them having to say the reason they are doing the activity back to me.

    I do think the why we are doing this can come from my writing demonstrations in front of the class. I can explain why I am rereading, why I am crossing out this word and adding in this new word, why I am completely taking out a whole sentence and adding a new one, why I want to change the period to an explanation point. Adding my voice to the writing process they will understand more of the why and not just the structure of a writing piece.

    I think it is important to to teach the students that Revision means to see again. They need to start thinking of revision as part of the writing process, not just as a thing to do before the write their final draft. I like her idea of using the mindset of “will my writing make sense to my readers? Will it engage them?” I can do this by modeling my thinking and keeping it visible for the kids to see. Her chart she created with the student would be a great resource for them to look back on while writing their own stories.

    I have a word wall in my classroom but I use the Fry’s 100 word list and just print the words out and place them on the word wall for the kids. I don’t really talk much about the word wall except that I want the students to spell those specific words correctly in their writing. Next year I plan to start the year completely different. I want to move the word wall closer to the kids eye level, start with the names of the students and their picture and then add words that I find are being spelled incorrectly and that I think every 2nd grader should know. I also like the idea of using different colored paper to teach word patterns and phonemic awareness. If they can spell “all” they can learn to spell other words using that pattern.

    I like her teaching tip for sharing your thinking. She jots down a few ideas on a sticky note and then explains to the class that she isn’t sure which one she will write about. She briefly talks through each one out loud and decides she one is “pulling at her” at that moment. She then writes about that subject.

    I like the idea of having a whole class conference because it can benefit other students to listen to the teacher student conversation and to learn from it. They can also learn how to conference with other students by listening to our conversation. I like how Routman always give positive feedback to the students during this time.

    I like how direct Routman is during the editing conference and her choices of words she uses with the students.

    I like Routman agree that student’s writing does not all have to be graded. I only grade about 4 pieces of writing per year and I do use the districts rubric they have created to do this. It has Sentence Fluency, Organization, Conventions and Grammar included on it and it has a 1-5 score. I tend to put more emphasis on the growth of my students opposed to their number score. I feel that if they are showing growth in their writing that should be celebrated.

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    1. I love and agree with your last sentiment...we need to celebrate students' growth not just a perfect score!!!! AND we need to celebrate our efforts and growth as well! More fun and celebration in school for everyone!

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  3. I agree when Regie says we’re so over focused on details and looking for the “right” program. Integrating basic skills is a must, and is so helpful to do school wide. I have seen in my classroom too that isolated skills transferring that much. i do believe DOL is a great resource and will continue to use it. I appreciate Regie including focusing on meaning and quality first and the rest of the skills we need to teach will fall into place. Too often I start with the end in mind and don’t set the stage for the purpose and audience of the writing to get students invested. Writing standards have to be integrated where they fit in this teaching of writing. The list of common mini lessons Regie includes will be so helpful to use in the classroom. I use a word wall in my classroom with spelling words, but noticed this year, that kids weren’t really using it. I plan to reread this section and plan a better way for kids to be invested and USE the word wall.

    My definition of writer’s workshop is any time we are working on writing. Isolating it into a 45 minute block isn't utilizing the writing time across the curriciulum. the examples of student choice within a structure that Regie gives makes perfect sense and will be an easy fix for students who struggle to write and helps them connect to their writing. As teachers I think we need to use anytime available to teach writing within the context of other subjects. Thinking it through it seems that it would be easier than teaching writing in isolation. I’ve been so focused on teaching the 5 traits I hadn't made the connection that I could do that within everyday writing. Honestly, I couldn’t do any of this without routine, organizations and modeling. I spend the first month of school doing just this throughout the curriculum and school day.


    The purpose of a writing conferences a meeting to discuss students work. Different types of writing conferences include to celebrate, validate, encourage, teach, nudge, asses, and / or set goals. the concept of whole class Share as a conference is a great idea. Having other students engaged in another student’s conference and modeling what a good conference looks like has so many positives: connections, mini-lessons, reviewing, highlighting goals/purpose. I highlighted so much in this chapter and appreciated the examples of anecdotal records and training kids how to know when they are ready for a conference.


    In my classroom, I love using rubrics. They help everyone be on the same page for what to do, how to do it and what evaluation looks like. The quote “The best test prep is excellent teaching” is 100%. I’ve been fortunate to teach at schools where that statement is supported. Collecting reliable data throughout the day is one area I complete, but don’t always document. I use it more as a formative assessment to adjust my lessons.


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  5. Chapter 7:
    I am excited about creating more opportunities for students to write with an audience in mind. We have made several classroom books, but I would like to go beyond that. I have a classroom website and I could add a blog to publish student writing online. I would also like to have students write stories to share with 2nd grade students in other classrooms, perhaps other grade levels even.
    I have started saving exemplary writing over the past two years and would like to find more ways to use it. It would be great to have the students highlight reasons they find it to be good writing instead of only me telling them why it is good. The common mini-lessons list was very helpful. I also loved the “my revision process” checklist. I would really like to use this in my classroom. It also reminds me that I need to repeatedly emphasize how important it is to reread their work. I might have the students put a check at the top of the page for every time they read their writing aloud to themselves.

    Chapter 8:
    I feel confident about my choice within structure approach and we also have take time to share our writing. I would like to incorporate more time for freewrites or journaling. I did this a few times last year and the students all seemed to enjoy it. I also wrote with them to model free writing. Another idea I would like to use is doing more writing in math and science. This is such a great way to solidify new concepts and use our writing skills.

    Chapter 9:
    I would definitely like to work on doing student conferences more often, both roving and formal. It is always a struggle to find time to meet with students individually on a regular basis. This year I would like to be more organized and keep a precise list of which students I have meet with and the areas they are working to improve. I liked the teacher talk helpful responses lists. I started doing some peer conferencing last year and this was highly successful. It was so sweet to see the encouraging notes they wrote to each other and often students were more motivated to revise or rewrite when their peers had suggestions.


    Chapter 10:
    In our district we have a rubric and an assessment for each writing unit. Overall, these have been helpful. It is especially helpful that we can review these and grade them together as a team. Comparing writing and sharing ideas and tips has been valuable. I also have a more kid-friendly rubric for students but would like to work on refining it and using it more effectively as a tool. I have not had students do a formal self assessment in writing. I think this is a great idea.

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  6. Shelley Tate
    ASSIGNMENT FIVE

    Chapter 7: Be Efficient and Integrate Basic Skills

    I loved the puzzle analogy in this chapter; it’s so true that kids don’t know how to put all the pieces of writing together if we don’t teach writing as a whole. It gave me a pang to read what the teachers did on page 143 – it’s so exactly what my colleagues and I did! We divided up the skills and created powerpoints and exercises, with the best intentions! I will definitely change my goals like those teachers did – the chart was helpful!
    I resonated with the idea that we should make writing real and for a real audience, not just for me for a grade. We should tell them why we’re doing each assignment and why it’s important.
    First, we should demonstrate, especially revision. I like the idea that we should have them brainstorm what needs to happen and make lists for the class to use. I will also have students generate a list of what constitutes good writing and use it the entire year.
    I can see that I will be adding a great deal more writing to the daily schedule! If they write often, there will be plenty that they may not revise. Students can choose what to take the next level and revise. With all that writing, the teacher gets a sense of what mini lessons need to be taught, but stay authentic and explain the why.
    It’s also important to help students take responsibility for and pride in writing. They should read aloud, putting themselves in the reader’s shoes. I love not worrying about conventions and spelling initially – that frees the kids to actually communicate (which is the whole point, after all!) The spelling ideas are wonderful – as long as it makes sense initially it’s fine, then really check and proofread after revision. It surprised me when she said that telling students that that spelling is not important initially makes it more important later, but I think I get it! I really love the word wall – great scaffolding yet sets high expectations for spelling. I plan to use it for homonyms especially. I think I might also create a root wall – Greek and Latin prefixes, suffixes, and roots that will aid in deciphering vocabulary.

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  7. Chapter 8: Organize for Daily Writing

    I really felt strongly about her statement that we make time for what we value – it cuts off that common teacher complaint of never enough time! I will try to offer much more time to write. I may not call it a writing workshop, so that students don’t isolate writing from reading and social studies. The book seems more geared toward elementary, with a full day with the students. With two hours a day, I need to adapt her ideas somewhat!
    Since I agree that students should have some choice in their writing, I will try to keep choice within the structure, by offering a variety of topics within the curriculum. As I’m planning for the fall, I’m looking at reading/ writing focus every other day. Any pointers for how to make that work? Of course, there will still be elements of both every day in literary study and social studies. There needs to be a push in middle and high school to write across the curriculum (math, science, etc). We discussed this a great deal at my old school, and I hope it will be a priority at my new school.
    In the classroom, the author suggests that we practice all of the expectations and model behavior so that writing time becomes easier and more fluid. I also loved the idea of rethinking prewriting – so true! I will offer the tools but have students decide what works for them. I also plan to implement more freewrites and the idea of “teach it first, label it later”.
    I use groupwork often in my class, and I hope to extend that into writing. Her pointers for conversations are useful, and I may create a list of sentence starters /ideas for them to lead their own conversations. I will have students write and publish more short pieces such as letters - I already use welcome/intro letters but will add more. The snapshot idea is fun and fits into my intro /teambuilding activities like “Marketing a Classmate”. I also love the idea of using class writing in the classroom library and make pieces available for everyone to read – booklets, zines and so on.




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  8. Chapter 9 – Conference with Students

    The idea of writing conferences was daunting to me, until I saw that there were so many ways to do it – “informal or formal, short or long, public or private, teacher or student led, whole group, small group or one-on-one”. Whew! The whole purpose is to affirm the writer’s attempts and scaffold them to greater success. It was interesting to me how much she recommended a full-class conference with a student; I can definitely see it in terms of modeling feedback but it is definitely intimidating. I’m grateful that she offers some step by step processes and tips. The guidelines for when students are ready for a one-on –one are useful too. I like that she gives us permission to value our teaching time and tell students not to expect us to focus our time on them until they have done “absolutely everything you can do”. Yay! That very idea sets up an expectation of mutual respect for each other’s time. I like that an editing conference is last, and that editing is not the focus until the message is clear. I feel more confident that I can actually pull this off in my classroom; I just need to be more structured and aware of my own time.


    Chapter 10: Make Assessment Count

    Assessment should be just a way for teachers to establish where a child is in their learning, and to decide where to go next with teaching. It is also a means to communicate with parents how that child is doing in class. Unfortunately, assessment has become so high stakes and stressful that the original purpose often gets lost. Regie’s stance on state testing is similar to mine – make everything transparent to the kids, guide them through what to expect, and encourage them to do their best. Other than that, I don’t spend a lot of time on test prep with my students. I really like the advice on page 247 about visualizing the reader of state essays – “Wake her up!”.
    I use rubrics often, and spend a lot of time creating them. However, I like that the author frees us from having to grade every piece of writing by rubric. Sometimes you want to just grade on content or give a holistic grade! I will follow her advice to have students help create the rubrics and to be “realistic and humane” with grading. That’s so true!

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  9. Chapters 7-10
    This has been my favorite section of the book so far. I have already read it twice, trying to soak it all in. I know that I will be returning to the book throughout the year(s).
    Teaching specific skills is so tempting to do as a teacher, since we are given a big list of standards and we just want to check them off. But she is right! They don’t translate or stick with the students, so why bother? Teaching these skills in the moment is much more effective, it just takes a switch in the thought process of lesson planning, because it seems like you may do a lot on the fly. I also like her ideas about Writer’s Workshop and not making it so structured. I have felt that students just rush through the steps to get their work done and when it is done, it’s not their best.
    Teaching voice was always a mystery to me, but through reading this section I realized it was supposed to be a mystery. It’s hard to teach voice because it comes out naturally as we write. I have never thought as I writer that I need to include my voice, so why was I expecting students too? It just takes a lot of practice as a writer and reading good literature.
    Fitting it all in is my biggest stressor. I find that it is not only the daily schedule that I struggle with, especially with the timing of ERC push-in support, but also unforeseen things. For the past two years, I have had behaviorally challenged students mainstreamed in my classroom with little support. These students would often require a room clear or be so disruptive it was all we could do to just get through the day. This impacted my classroom so very much. How can I teach when there’s so much disruption? Thankfully, I have a supportive principal who did as much as he could, but it was still a challenge on too many days.
    Regarding our schedule, this coming year they have merged our content time with writing (45 minutes) and added a “reteach and enrich” section at the end of our day (30 min). I am going to do some juggling with these times to get more writing and reading (especially independently) in our day. However, it also depends on when I will get push-in support. This is the stuff I need to figure out in two short weeks.
    Conferencing, this was the biggest Ahha! moment for me thus far in this book. I had it in my mind that conferencing needed to be a one on one formal conference. They took so much time and I mainly used it to edit their writing rather than coach them. I never thought the coaching I did while walking around the room when they’re writing was a conference. I am already making an anecdotal record sheet to use next year to keep track of who I talked with and what they need. Also, I am excited to try out the whole class conference. I think that could be very powerful.
    Regie also brought up some good points about the importance of sharing. I cognitively know that it is so important. However, in practice, I would rush through this or skip it all together because I felt the pressure to fit it all in. This coming year, if I frame this time as important teaching time, I know I will make sure it happens and that it is useful for all students.
    Assessing students writing is not an area I struggled with too much, but I feel that Regie offers some good points. I do think I was grading too much of their writing, rather than letting some pieces stand. However, I now realize that my students were just not writing enough. I am going to try and collect more data on them throughout the day with my notes, rather than a formal grading process. I also need to make sure my students are writing every day and are interested in it. The only thing I am wondering about, is what do you do with that one student who doesn’t seem to care about anything?

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  10. I hadn’t thought much about teaching students to consider their audience when writing. Then Regie said, “We adjust our language according to who our audience is, but kids don’t know this,” and I realized what an important skill that is to teach. I think my students will benefit greatly by making that a priority. I loved the four major changes list on pg. 144. That has helped me make a plan for my writing lessons, especially since this is my first year in 5th and I really don’t know what to expect as far as student abilities and interests. I didn’t deal much with “voice” in my 2nd grade class, but I will with my 5th graders. I loved the comment, “Voiceless writing is like soup with no seasoning.” I think voice is difficult to teach, but I agree with Regie that it comes through modeling and through helping students understand it’s a sharing of who you are – so the reader “hears” you.

    I liked the list on pg. 152: use humor, sound like the people we are, make every sentence count, give our endings some punch. I especially like “sound like the people we are”. I think that makes it clear to students that we want them to expand on their writing, but still remain true to what they know and how they feel/felt. I also like “make every sentence count” because these kids, in their hurry-up world, don’t want to waste time writing to begin with. If we can encourage them to plan ahead and write efficiently, I think they will appreciate it – and – it will them more prepared for state testing where they have a somewhat limited amount of time to write.

    I wrote a note to myself that one thing I want to do with my fifth graders is show them examples of a poorly written story with no grammatical, typographical or convention errors, and compare that to a well written story with errors. I want to drive home the point that the story/information needs to come first, and then we go back to revise to make it make sense to our reader, then edit to make sure it is all correct. I think conventional teaching of writing has them edit, edit, edit with no regard for if the content is well written. We have to teach them to step back and really read what they’ve written before they fine tune by editing.

    I appreciated Regie’s comments on spelling instruction. Last year my experienced co-teacher said studies have shown that spelling shouldn’t be a major focus. I agreed, to an extent. But at some point students need to be made aware if they are incorrectly spelling common words. I’m excited to implement a differentiated spelling program in my class this year. Hopefully that will address the issue of it being wasted time for natural spellers, because each student will choose spelling words that are challenging for them. I appreciated the list/tips on pgs. 169-72 for writers who struggle. That will be a helpful resource once I get to know my students and can ascertain their needs.

    I am debating what I want to do with a word wall. Last year the words on the word wall came from the reading curriculum, but they weren’t really helpful for students’ writing. This year I’m thinking about doing personal dictionaries for commonly used words, and then make the word wall “spicy” words, and allow the students to decide what gets posted. I’m also undecided about using writing rubrics. I used rubrics in my own schooling, and appreciated that they made it clear what was expected, an helped me determine how much effort I wanted to put forth in order to get the highest score. But I think students in primary and elementary grades might not have the motivation to strive for the highest score, so seeing what they can “get by with” is not necessarily beneficial. Rubrics can also limit the teacher’s ability to recognize those students who might have really creative ideas but don’t meet all the convention requirements. At this point my idea is to have the students help me generate our writing rubric. I also don’t intend to give a lot of writing scores because I want because I want to encourage and support students as they’re still in “practice mode”.

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  11. Hello Patricia,

    Yes, giving the students to sound spell and not get so hung up on perfect spelling as they work on their draft allows students the permission to focus on getting their ideas down. And we should remember that it takes students much longer to process and actually write out their thoughts than it does for adults. So focusing on their content first helps improve the quality of the writing and lessens the chance that they will forget what they wanted to say as they wrote it.

    I know, it’s so special when we receive a letter in the mail. And anything that we can do to promote acts of kindness is a plus. As you said we could all use more kindness and thoughtfulness!

    I hope with a lot of modeling and support from families and administration you will be able to decrease the bullying in your school. Many schools have a zero tolerance policy in effect; perhaps your district does as well. And if not, then maybe it could be something you bring up with your administration for consideration.

    YEAH, I love that you feel you have gained more information to improve your writing program for next year! We think Regie says some pretty great stuff. ;)

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  12. Hello Julie,

    Yes, it takes YEARS of hard work by teachers to help students understand that revision is part of the writing process. As I said before, I was shocked when I taught at a high school and realized how similar the students were to elementary level in regard to their writing pieces and having to revise them.

    One of the reasons I love author visits to schools is that many of the authors will bring their many drafts and revisions and talk about the process with their editors before a book is finalized. The more students can hear and see this message, the better, in my opinion.

    Great plans for your word wall this year!

    And yes, the whole class conference is very powerful. In fact, if you do roaming conferences you will see that the students in the vicinity area also listening and learning even though you are specifically targeting one child for your teaching point. ☺

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  13. Hi Theresa,

    Excellent, increasing your focus on purpose and audience will be a great addition to your instruction and plans for next year. Glad you find the list of mini lessons useful.

    Absolutely! Teachers need to teach writing in the context of other subjects. Our high school in my town is putting a lot of PD into writing and helping math and science teachers find ways to implement more writing in their subjects. A positive change, in my opinion. :D

    Hello Lindsey,

    Great idea to add a blog to publish students’ writing. Depending on how you set up the blog privacy settings, you can invite teachers, librarians, counselors and administrators to reply to the students’ writing. I know I have responded to student blogs before and the kids love hearing from other teachers in the building. And buddy classes are a great audience to read to and write for.

    Great idea about the check at the top of the paper for each time they read it to themselves.

    Awesome, I love to hear that teachers plan to incorporate more conferences into their instruction!

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  14. Shelley,

    It looks like you got a lot out of this section. :D

    Another strategy that I support is using oral rehearsal for students. I think most teachers don't devote the energy or time to this simple strategy to help writers begin to write their ideas in an organized fashion. This goes along with brainstorming as a way of helping students organize their thoughts. We can support students by asking them what they want to write about, repeating it back to the student and then having them repeat it back to you out loud. It is a big help for our struggling writers. Even with our little ones you can put blank lines for the number of words the student needs to write or add the beginning letters to each underline to remind them of the word as they work independently on recording their idea.

    Oral rehearsal is so important for all students and not only for vocabulary development. With our younger students and struggling writers it's a great strategy to have them say out loud what they are going to write. Too often teachers want it SILENT when students are working. I think there needs to be a balance between a healthy buzz of engaged writers and a respectful classroom atmosphere that honors all learners and their unique learning styles.

    Let students orally discuss what they want to write either with classmates or with you where you can have them tell you exactly what they are going to say to start off their paper. Then send them back to their seats... once they have this "practice" aloud and articulated what they want to say, it's much easier for the students get down to the business of writing.

    I am a huge fan of oral rehearsal, and often write about it each term. Here is a link to a couple articles you might find interesting. The first is only 4 pages long. The article is “Storytelling and Story Writing ‘Using a Different Kind of Pencil’” by Dr. Terry A. Campbell. It was published in Oct. 2009 in What Works? Research into Practice

    http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/WW_Storytelling.pdf

    There is quite a bit of information on the Internet about Talk to Text, Oral Rehearsal and Storytelling and writing skills. In fact, it is easy to became a little sidetracked noting other articles you may want to read.

    Leah Mermelstein had this article on her new blog:

    http://www.heinemann.com/shared/onlineresources/enewsletter/mermelstein_the_power_of_write-alouds.pdf

    Even though these articles may be targeting elementary level, middle school teachers who have students that struggle (or ELLs) may find them useful as well.

    I am a huge fan of choice within structure. It respects students yet gives them support through a narrowed scope. One thing I would say about your reading/writing focus every day is to be flexible when you need to be. There may be times when you really needs to do 2-3 days in a row for writing or for reading. So tring to keep a balance is great, but don’t frustrate yourself by being too rigid if your needs (and the needs of your students) require you to spend more time or days on the writing aspect (or reading aspect.) Anyone else with ideas or suggestions with middle school experience?

    Don’t forget to put published pieces in the school library as well. I’m sure the librarian would love to put a basket out of “Featured School Authors” from your class (and others.) It would be fun for them to do a dedication page, copyright page and about the author page with a picture of themselves. :D

    YES, You CAN do this in your classroom! The more your confer, the easier it becomes. So be kind to yourself as you are beginning. You will improve over time and both you and the students will enjoy yourselves!

    Yep, I agree, assessment is useful and informative (well hopefully all the assessment is useful and informative but I know this is not always the case) BUT in many cases the original purpose has been lost. It’s a great reminder that assessment informs our instruction but to keep it in perspective.

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  15. Hello Cindy!

    I agree, I also think your students will benefit greatly from considering their purpose and audience. Yes, teaching voice is difficult but so important. It really gives flavor to the students’ writing.

    Great plan to share the examples. ☺

    You wrote what I was going to suggest. I’d involve the students in creating a student friendly rubric. You can even start simple and add to it or modify it over the year as the students become more skilled with using it. I love your last comment. Less writing scores to foster more writing practice time! Hear, hear!

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  16. After reading this section I realized how often I don’t explain the purpose behind what we are learning about, or why different parts of our writing are important. It seems like a no-brainer, because I usually want to know why we are having certain professional development sessions. ;) So it only makes sense that my students want to know the purpose behind their work as well. I like how Routman emphasizes the need for students to know their audience when they are writing. These are two changes I am definitely going to bring into my classroom.

    I was so intrigued by how Regie does her conferences. At first it seemed daunting when she said she often gets through 5 conferences a day. But after reading on, it seems really doable. I’ve always had a more rigid idea of what a conference is, but she really simplifies the whole process. It takes a lot of the stress away to know that a conference can be a minute long at times. I also love the idea of holding conferences in front of the whole class. I think there would definitely be some expectations that would need to be discussed ahead of time, but I can see how beneficial it would be for the students listening in. Again, I like how conferencing also fits right into the Optimal Learning Model.

    “Teach it first, label it later.” I feel like this line really sums up Routman’s beliefs on integrating basic skills, rather than isolating them. I think it brings a lot more meaning to the skills when they are modeled as things that good writers do, and then given a name after students understand. It seems like it relieves some of the pressure off of students as well. They can focus on becoming good writers, without going through a checklist of components that they “should” be including.

    I totally agree that we shouldn’t be grading every piece of writing our students produce. I usually only grade pieces of writing using our district rubric at the beginning and end of a unit, which adds up to about 6 times. Our team always falls back on “go with your gut” when using rubrics. Sometimes a student’s writing doesn’t fit neatly on the rubric, and I think it is ok to use our best judgment and what we know about that student as a writer to assess them. Last year, students helped to create the rubrics that we used. We started off brainstorming a list of things that should be included in whatever type of writing we were focusing on. Then we worked together to group things that went together so that we ended up with three different sections (purpose, organization, and conventions). Each time, the rubrics ended up pretty well aligned with our district rubrics. Students were definitely more invested in making sure their writing had these components because they had come up with the expectations. I can see how layering on the purpose behind each of those expectations would add to students’ investment in the writing process.

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  17. I struggle keeping the conferences short and tight, but have gotten much better with it. My motivation is that I can reach more students when I keep them brief.

    Yes, trusting ourselves is something a lot of us should do more of! That's excellent that you created the rubric with the students. I agree they are more motivated when they help create the criteria.

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