Sections Four and Five- Advocacy Is Also Essential and Teaching In Action: Lesson Essentials
Assignment
Eight: Read Writing Essentials Chapters 11-12 and Section Five. Reflect
on the comments below and any additional reactions you have after
reading these chapters. Post your thoughts to the course blog.
Chapter
11: Build on Best Practice and Research • What are some of the key
research findings most relevant to writing instruction?
• What are the practices of highly effective teachers?
• How can you be part of the ongoing professional development discussions in your building?
• What about test scores? What are the characteristics of high performing schools?
• Think twice before adopting a “program”
Regie
begins this chapter sharing her experiences doing residencies in
schools and the surprising (and delightful) discovery that whole school
cultures changed during the course of their work improving literacy
instruction. As she said, “This is what education should be about…whole
schools working together so that all students (can) succeed.” How is the
climate/culture in your school? On your team? One reason we continue to
look to Regie for inspiration is that we feel she is so practical.
There is not one right way or method to teach writing. “That is why
formulas, programs and recipes don’t work. Every context, school and
person is different and has different needs. Literacy is not a set of
acquired or learned skills.”
Chapter 12: Make Every Minute Count• You need to “REDUCE THE PAPER LOAD!!!”
• What can we do that will save us time and allow us to focus more on meaningful instruction?
• Regie states, “Take more time to see the light!” Don’t get bogged down with daily worksheets and isolated exercises.
Though
this chapter is short it is full of valuable ideas and reminders! Regie
reminds us in this chapter to stop and reflect about what we are doing
in the classroom. Ask yourself: Is this the best use of my time? Is what
I’m about to do going to help my students become more joyful and
accomplished readers, writers and thinkers?
“It
might be that the best use of your time is to read a professional book,
see a movie, visit with a friend. Sharing your experiences with your
students may be a more useful way to get them to think about their
writing than marks and comments on a paper.” “It’s hard to come to
school all excited about teaching if you’ve spent hours the night before
pouring over papers.” It is a disservice to our students and ourselves
“if our out-of-school time is all about paperwork.” In fact, “Teachers’
comments on students’ papers do little to improve writing, even if the
comments are positive ones. It is far more effective to conference with
students and focus on specific writing issues with the student at your
side.”
Also
“(b)e sure that most of your writing time is devoted to writing, not
preparing for writing or doing activities about writing. Safeguard
sustained writing time; it’s critical for becoming a writer. Limit
take-home work for students too, and place more emphasis on free-choice
reading. Having more reading experiences positively impacts growth in
writing skills.”
Regie
closes this chapter by reminding us to breathe, relax and enjoy
writing- and your life! “One way to reduce stress and have more energy
for teaching and advocacy is to have a life outside of school. I worry
about teachers and principals who work twelve-hour days. I have seen no
research that shows educators who work the longest hours get the best
results or that longer reading and writing projects teach more about
reading and writing. Keep evaluating whether what you’re staying late
for-or the hours of work you take home-will help your students become
more effective readers and writers."
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Many best practices of writing were shared in chapter 11. A few that I hope to implement this year is to model more, have my students write more, and be purposeful with our writing. I love the idea of building a community of writers that share, collaborate, and produce writing that can be visible in the classroom and in the school hallways. One thing I would love to have is having professional conversations within my team and across grade levels in my school. The quote, “The level of professional talk in a school impacts test scores,” makes me reflect on what I have used for writing and how to teach the skills, but also makes me realize how impactful it would be to have a whole team discussing writing expectations.
ReplyDeleteWith the focus in chapter 12 being “make every minute count,” I reflected upon what I value in my classroom. In the last years, I have really valued the time for sustained silent reading and it showed as many students grew as readers and read more than they ever had before. I feel the same can be done with writing. I appreciate the idea of having clear expectations and keeping things short and simple. With a class of 30 students on my current roster, it will be important to evaluate the importance of an assignment and what my students will learn from it.
Would you consider bringing this topic up with your staff or administrator? Vertical alignment where grades above and below get to have discussions and time to share data and examples is the next step after grade level alignment. It's well worth the time to do this. :)
ReplyDeleteYes, as you mentioned before, students can grow a lot with shorter writing assignments that are varied. You are smart to consider ways to make your work load manageable with such a large class. Sometimes we become more efficient or think outside of the box when we are forced to deal with less than ideal circumstances. (Like large class sizes.)
Candace Palmesano – August 14, 2017
ReplyDeleteEssential Writing – Assignment Eight-Section 4 &5
Some of the key research findings that are most relevant to writing instruction are that students need to write every day, should be able to share ideas, should bond with their teachers, should have writing taught as a process rather that a product and need demonstrations from teacher writings. Some practices of highly effective teachers that I would like to implement more in my classroom are as follows: 1. Demonstrate writing by thinking aloud and writing in front of students, share with students the writing I do outside school, raise expectations, observe other teachers, conference with all students and move students toward assessing their own writing. One Best Practice that I noticed Caryn Duryee, a teacher on this Blog, also mentioned, is the need for ongoing conversations with the staff at school. There are always the conversations about the Math & Reading programs, but the writing conversations are usually on what scoring guides to use. Although, my staff only comes together once every other week, my co-worker and I meet daily regarding curriculum and new ideas for all subjects. Obviously if the schools who have ongoing professional conversations and study groups are high-performing schools then we should have more conversations than we do. Every year we, as a staff, read and discuss a professional book. In fact, this year we are reading “Teaching Kids w/Learning Difficulties in Today’s Classroom” as a staff and we will discuss it next week which is the week before school begins. Adopting writing programs in our district has not been a priority for the last 3 or 4 years as we adopted a new Math and then new Reading Program which took a lot of exploring. I decided to use the writing portion of the Reading program (ReadyGen) because I liked the concept behind connecting what we were reading to what we are writing. However, the writing part was so broken up into pieces (like Regie writes on pg. 275) that I could just feel the kids losing interest. They wanted to write longer but we were onto another assignment. Students did not really have a choice on what they were writing either. We also purchased the Lucy Calkins, but as I said, I did not put the time into reading, studying and implementing it in my class. A teacher who retired, gave me the Trait Crate. I have a whole shelf of writing curriculum and some of it could be good if there was some organization to the way it is taught. I was glad to read that Regie shares her own personal life with her students. I do share what is appropriate of my life. My husband and my son would sometimes bring my grandson to visit on Fridays and it was amazing to see the students come alive. The year before last I took a week off and went to New York City. When I came back I told my students of some of my experiences being careful to not brag or tell of all of the things I did since some students haven’t even been to the Oregon coast. The amazing thing was that several students wrote about the subway and they have never seen or been on one, but because I told them about getting lost on the subway, some students used the subway in their writings. It made me realize how important and how much students enjoy hearing about my life.
Continued from above (Candace Palmesano)
ReplyDeleteChapter 12 and Section Five
Stopping and reflecting on what I am doing in the classroom is something I would like to do more often. I am sure my husband would agree with Regie that I need to do less paperwork in the evening and live more of my life outside of school. After examining my beliefs about writing by marking true or false after each statements about the writing process, I realized that my beliefs have changed over the course of reading this book. There are so many that I would have marked true before, like “Teachers should read everything that kids are writing” and “Young children cannot be expected to edit their own work.” I will try the Secrets of Second Graders” and “Heart Poems” definitely with Third Graders. I like that Regie gives the 5 day lessons and how long each lesson takes.
Candace,
ReplyDeleteExcellent reflection. You raise many important points. Yes as both you and Caryn mention having those on-going discussions with your staff is vital. Not only should you be talking with your team, you should also be vertically aligning.
Maybe you could suggest this text for next year's summer read? I can stress enough to course participants that they should re-read the book or at least sections of it after this class. Each time they do they will come away with new ideas to implement and focus on! The text is packed with a lot of great information!
That's the other piece...it's not enough to purchase "curriculum" and not plan for the time it will take to learn the ins and outs of the program. Expecting this to fall on teachers on their own time is never a recipe for success. This is a big piece of what is missing across the country.
I say it all comes down to resources...there is never enough: time, money, space, people-power in education. This is what the real problem of education can be broken down to.
How awesome the kids included subways in their stories. Did you show them a video snippet of what the subway looks like? (I like to show pictures, videos, visuals with new vocab for the students. And nothing can really capture the smell of the subway in August when the air-conditioner is broken. Ugh!)
That's awesome you feel that reading the text was beneficial and you have altered some of your beliefs (or focused in on them to be aware of them.)
Here's to less work at home, and more engagement at school for the students!
The most notable piece of advice from this was strong throughout—if you don’t appreciate writing, then you won’t be able to teach it effectively because it won’t be a priority. As I’ve said in previous assignments, I understand that I have an advantage since my classroom is only writing and English for an entire year, but I’ve known of colleagues who don’t put an emphasis on writing, discussion, and ideas, and they’re the ones that struggle year after year with their students.
ReplyDeleteAs far “programs” go, even though my class has suggested material from the college that accredits it, there is no mandate other than their final piece must be an argumentative piece. However I get the there is fine by them. I’m lucky to have that level of trust and autonomy, and I do all I can to give my students the same.
Exactly, it's very difficult to teach (well) something we don't enjoy or value.
ReplyDeleteYes, you are very lucky to have such flexibility in your program. We hear from many teachers that have strict mandates. :( I love that you also see it as important to pass that same trust and autonomy to your students! :D