Chapter 3: Share Your Writing Life
• Write together as a staff
• Note your writing practices
• Tell students why you write
Chapter Two of Regie’s book segues right into her third chapter, “Share Your Writing Life.” In this chapter Regie drives home the importance of teachers sharing their writing process with their students. She encourages teachers to become writers in front of their students, on their own and with their staff, and also to share their daily writing practices with their students. The purpose of the assignment below (Assignment #3) is to get you writing.
ASSIGNMENT THREE: Sharing Your Writing Life!
For many of us, writing is not enjoyable and/or is very difficult. Perhaps it is because we ourselves were never celebrated as writers. Or perhaps we only remember the “skills” based comments written in various colored pens on our papers…that always sliced deep (and turned many of us into “non-writers.”) These comments never really helped our writing become any better. As a requirement of a summer writing institute (which I was conned into attending “so that I could become a better teacher of writing”) I (Jackie) bit the bullet and wrote extensively throughout the course. What they say is true: the more I wrote, the more I enjoyed it, and I believe I grew as a writer. The goal of this two-part assignment is to get you writing.
Part One:
For the first part of this assignment you need to think about topics for your own writing (ideas/stories that you can share to excite your students) and then actually write a short piece (ideally in front of your students.) If you do not presently have the opportunity to write in front of your students then please complete the activity on your own.
1. Use the topic idea list from Regie’s “Try It and Apply It” on page 26. Choose several topics, and then create a list of sub-topics for each.
2. Choose the sub-topic that most interests you and write a short piece that you can use to model writing in front of your students.
Part Two:
1. On pages 45-46, Regie gives suggestions for writing exercises for the start of school (or really anytime you need to get writing started.) Follow her criteria for “Capturing A Moment” (from the summer or any other time ) and draft a short piece. Follow the directions in the chart on page 46.
2. After completing the draft, which should take no more than 10 minutes, take a moment to write down some of your observations of your writing process. Again, use the suggestions from the chart or the bullets below:
o What are you thinking about as you are composing?
o What exactly did you do to plan, to get started writing, when you got stuck, or when you completed your piece?
o What does your process look like? Do you write straight through? Stop to re-read? Revise as you go? Look up information? Edit?
The goal of this activity is to get you to write - which will hopefully get you more comfortable writing in front of your children! Complete this activity and let us know how it went by sharing your answers to some of the bulleted questions above.
Please post your comments to the course blog. (We don’t need to see your writing piece. We are more interested in your thought process as you completed the exercise.)
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Part 1
ReplyDeleteReflections on times I have written in front of the class.
I found that when I wrote in front of the class either as a note to the student about the day’s plan or to give them academic information they always seemed engaged. I know this because they would make predictions about what I was about to say, give suggestions, gleefully point out my mistakes, and ask me to get out of the way. When I get back into the classroom I need to do it more often.
Part 2
My Summer Memory
It is hard to imagine a better summer vacation. When I was a kid, my parents took my siblings and I to a camp up in Northern Michigan with a group of about 10 other families from our church. Each family lived in a cabin and ate communally at the main hall. At the camp we were divided up into teams with other kids about our age and every day we took part in different activities: archery, water skiing, rifle range, baseball, swimming, etc. It was so much fun! The highlight of my time at camp came one year during the father son baseball game. With the game on the line, I made a diving catch to win the game.
a.What are you thinking about as you were composing?
At first, I was thinking about how I was going to start. After starting and deleting several opening sentences, I finally crafted one that I thought set me in the right direction. Then my focus shifted to making sure everything that followed was logical.
b.What exactly did you do to plan, to get started, when you got stuck, or when you completed your piece? I really did not do any formal preplanning. I just started typing. When I got stuck, I would go back and read what I had written to remind me of the direction I had in mind when I started, then either continue to write in that direction or adjust if I discovered that was not what I wanted to convey. When I was done, I read it, changed a few words and asked myself if the paragraph was clear, logical, answered the reader’s questions. Did I like it?
c.What does your process look like? Do you write straight through? Stop to reread? Revise as you go? Look up information? Edit.
I stopped to reread and revise a lot. I have no idea how many times I did that because once I get on a roll, I wanted to keep it going and not lose my focus.
d.Some personal thoughts.
I have discovered that I often write something and then I will be thinking about it later on away from my computer: out for a walk, doing dishes, brushing my teeth, etc. and I will suddenly think of something I want to add or edit. For me that is part of the writing process. I also know the quality of my writing improves if I let something sit for 24 hours and then go back to it. Lastly, I appreciate this assignment. Even though it was a bear to get started, it opened my eyes to how student might be thinking.
It does sound like you have a very engaged and eager class that will enjoy writing with you.
ReplyDeleteThe camp sounds like it was a special place! How wonderful to have so many families to go with.
I'm glad you enjoyed the assignment. It is hard to start to write on demand, and as you said, a great experience for teachers to step into their student's shoes and remember what it is like.
You can share examples from children's books of different ways to write engaging leads and ways to end writing pieces. Here's a lesson from ReadWriteThink (a wonderful resource if you don't know about it yet.)
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/once-they-hooked-reel-995.html
You can Google, search Pinterest or YouTube and find a ton of information about how to write strong endings.
Here's one site that I just found that looks pretty good. I like how she lays out her plans and provides examples of anchor charts here students created.
http://youngteacherlove.com/writing-narrative-endings/
There is also a TON of lessons about writing interesting leads on the internet. :) It's easy to get lost in cyberspace as you search. I have Pinterest boards where I save different finds. You might want to ad a few boards if you do have a Pinterest account to organize your searches and finds. :)