Final Reflection-Summer 2010

I became a student of writing this summer. I entered my classroom on the fourth floor of the Ed Building, set up my laptop, and started writing to a prompt. Often the prompts would cause me to remember a memory that I thought I had forgotten. I would struggle to find the just right word, the ending, a good lead, and then I shared my piece with a peer writer. I would share this piece several times with a peer asking them questions about meaning to editorial comments. Then I went home to revise some more. Our writings continued to change as we learned more about writing possibilities. It was a worth while investment of time for this teacher-writer. I'm certainly going to understand the struggle that my student writers will have. I'm ready to be their supporter and encourager.

My Responses to the Workshops

Beginning Writers need some extra help. I have a list of ideas that I can use. Spelling ideas for young writers is also helpful. Writing with music is possible. Responses written while listening to music would be a wonderful way to do a prompt. Handwriting in young children can be difficult to correct. Using strategies from Handwriting Without Tears, provides unique ways to help children. These were new to me. Picture books are wonderful ways to teach and provide writing examples for children. Writer's notebooks were introduced as ways to grow writing in students. I would like to use notebooks with my students. I think it would be really fun to personalize these notebooks in some way. I also appreciated the possible ways of grading a journal. My workshop was writing in the social studies area and I think I'll use the writing ideas and story ideas to expand the reading of Molly's Pilgrim.

Response to Emily's Talk

Literacy assessment is now focused on whether students succeed or fail on state tests. Emily felt that preparing students for these high-stakes test should be placed in a genre all its own. Teaching students how to conquer tests starts by defining what writing for the test or reading for the test looks like. Test taking is an opportunity kids to show what they know. Teachers can prepare their students to produce the product that will be scored for the state test.

"Good writers will do well on standardized writing tests." The article supported writing workshop, the writing process, 6 + 1 traits, and modes of writing to produce good writers. These best practices should be part of our classrooms.

Well, I can see the value of including both approaches. I agree that writing for a test looks different from the authentic writing that we want our students to write. There will need to be additional thinking and planning for this to happen in my classroom.

Teaching with Rubrics - Heidi Goodrich Andrade

An instructional rubric is cocreated with students. It is used with peers, with self, and with teacher feedback. Getting feedback improves learning. An instructional rubric gives multiple opportunities for feedback and it can give specific feedback. Self assessment and peer assessment is used to improve the assignment. An instructional rubric also helps a teacher remain fair with his/her grading. An instructional rubric created with student help becomes a teaching, learning, and assessment tool.

I'm a little concerned about designing my own rubric but feel that the benefits outweigh my concerns. I feel that communicating well with students is the heart of good teaching. A rubric made with students would certainly communicate those areas that are critical to their project. Revising their work is a powerful way to continue learning at a deeper level. As a teacher, I always enjoy encouraging students to turn in their best work.

Top Ten Ideas on Revision

Top 10 Ideas on Revision to help students:
l. Ask questions of the writer that will help them write their leads or add more information.
2. Encourage students to describe so their writing is believeable.
3. Insert dialogue into your writing.
4. Help students to see what they can add to their writing or leave out of their writing.
5. Help students to see the creative possibilities for revision.
6. Don't overwhelm students, take these revision posibilities a little bit at a time and practice in their own writing.
7. Conferencing with students will help move their writing forward. Ask students about their ideas.
8. Revision can happen anywhere in the process.
9. Encourage your students to have many beginnings.
10. It shouldn't be perfect the first time you write.

2/3 of Stephen King - A Memoir of the Craft

"It's best to have your tools with you. If you don't, you're apt to find something you didn't expect and get discouraged." (quote from Uncle Oren) Stephen King has some suggestions for putting together a personal writer's toolbox. Good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style, and then filling the third level of your toolbox with the right instruments. With lots of hard work, dedication, timely help, a good writer may become a competent writer. The genius writers are Shakespeare, Faulkner, Yeats, Shaw, and Eudora Welty. These people were just born gifted.
Stephen King is a slow reader. He reads 70-80 books a year, mostly fiction. He likes to write 10 pages a day. That's about 2000 words. The work is always one word at a time. Always tell the truth in your writing, writing is pliable, use life experiences to give life to your writing, be brave. A new story for King begins with the situation, flat characters, and narration. Good description is a learned skill. My desire is to help my students think and live like a writer. Reading about Stephen King's life supports this desire.

Non-Magical Thinking - Janet Emig

This year I made a paradigm shift in the way I teach writing. A parent purchased the Lucy Caulkins curriculum for me. This curriculum has a more developmental view of writing. I looked through it and liked what I saw. This article supports what happened in my classroom. I became a writer too and shared my writing and revisions with my class. Our writing time was every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and was structured in the way we began, moved into a mini-lesson, conferenced, shared, and published. I'm so pleased that my students had this experience. My desire is to have a safe and encouraging writing workshop that is also playful. What kind of writing could be playful for my second graders? They love humor. I tend to be rather serious and intense. This article provides research and support for my continued efforts in this direction.

What's Right with Writing - Linda Rief

Linda Rief listed several essential elements that students need to write well. Students need time to write. They need topic choices so that they will care about their writing. Writing models are needed to promote better writing and to build understanding. A constructive response moves the writer toward improvment It is best when a teacher and student can conference together. If this cannot happen then write the strengths of the paper and ask a few questions of the writer about their piece. These elements are necessary for a Writer's Workshop experience.

Reaffirming the Writing Workshop -Sheryl Lain

Several ideas stood out to me in this article. Sheryl Lain does Writer's Workshop with just a few changes. Her writing journal for students became the place where they kept rough drafts, revisions, and practiced conventions. She had her students write a page a day and kept writing fluency scores. She felt that poetry needed to be part of the writing workshop. The conference time with students differentiated the curriculum. She used a record sheet from Nancy Atwell. The Teacher Edit Box was for the next to the last draft as the teacher helped the student correct grammatical conventions. Students wrote every day and their test scores went up. I don't know what to think about the teacher edit box. I still believe that the students should be finding the mistakes and learning from those experiences.

Lucy Caulkins - Worshop Environment

I was pleased to hear that structure and organization are important pieces of a writing workshop. A writing workshop will have a predictable time for writing so that students may plan for this extended writing time. A session may end or begin with a mini lesson. Response groups are student facilitated groups that take the status of their members. Everyone needs to have something to do! Peer conferences may also happen but these will be about 5 minutes in length. There will be share times when 3-4 students may read their writing to the class. Public celebrations are planned so students can have a real audience. I need to know more about response groups. This is one part that I did not use with my students.

Lucy Caulkins - Conferring Ch. 13 - 14

Conferring with students and students conferring with their peers is an important part of the writing workshop experience. These two chapters described the different types of conferences that can take place. Conferencing with a student should begin with a process conference. This is when a teacher reads the draft for the first time. What is the writer trying to do? Listen and enjoy their work. A content conference allows the writer to teach us about their subject and add more information to their writing. The design conference helps determine the order of the story and also what type of writing it will be. Lastly, there is the evaluative conference that may look at different pieces of writing and the child decides their best, average, and poor piece of writing. These conferences help students to think about their writing. I appreciated knowing about these different types of conferences and to not mix the types together.

The Writer's Toolbox - Laura Harper

Barry Lane's ideas for helping students revise their writing was used by Laura Harper in her limited English classroom. Her students needed concrete ideas that they could practice in their writing. Their toolbox became a manila folder that held five notecards. Her students learned how to revise rather than recopy their work. My second graders would benefit from these same writing ideas because they are understandable and doable. They are: using Questions, Snapshots, Thoughtshots, Exploding the Moment, and Making a Scene. I think I need to make a poster for my classroom.

Bonny Mary Warne's Articles

I read Bonny's articles after hearing her speak. These articles were my favorite ones to read. They capture the struggle we have as educators to reform our teaching but teach to the test. I too have taught in areas where students needed to learn conventional English. I continued to read with interest as she thought about her teaching and used literature to teach grammar conventions. She also described how the students learned these conventions by using them in their writing. These conventions made them more confident writers and prepared them for the Idaho ISAT.

Bonny's second article is titled, "Writing Steps: A Recursive and Individual Experience." Again, the writing standard describing the steps in the process became the vocabulary that Bonny and her students shared. These steps did not remain linear as students wrote and revised in a variety of ways. The writing process focused on what the students wanted to say and then they edited at the very end. Bonny says in her article, "I have been their teacher, and they have been mine." We learn a lot from our students.

Barry Lane Ch. 6-7

Barry Lane continues to share revision ideas for me to try. In chapter 6 titled "Friction or Nonfriction" Lane gives the idea of graphing a main character in a piece of writing. The graph provides a way to revise my draft. A snapshot, thoughtshot or scene at the point of change could be added. Writing in third or second person would also be interesting to try in my writing.

Lane's chapter 7 is titled, "Don't Fix My Story, Just Listen to Me." My job as a teacher is to be interested in the writing of my student. I need to let the student provide the direction for the conference. The student should leave the conference encouraged to continue writing. I liked the structure and accountability that was part of the writing workshop. Creating a form for peer conferencing would be a great idea. I also like writing down the status of the class.

Response to Lane Ch. 1-5

"Writing is revision." I am still struggling with my pieces of writing. Perhaps I'll try some of these ideas. Barry Lane shows us ways or tools to use with our young writers. Since I'm the writer this summer, these are the ideas that I would like to try. I would like to try some thoughtshots to show what my character is thinking and feeling in a personal narrative. Writing with dialogue would also build my scene especially if I included snapshots and thoughtshots. Another writing idea I would like to try is shrinking a century. I will need to find a moment that I can describe or characterize with an adjective. Hmmm. Now I need to think of a new story.

I Am From Poem

I Am From

I am from hand tied family quilts with wool batts from my grandparents' sheep
from sermon notes and Bibles and shelves of books.
I am from the orderly quiet disturbed by ticking clocks
and the smell of home-made food cooking for hours in an oven.
I am from the flowering orchards in the Hood River Valley near the grand Columbia River.
The old oak trees standing tall, burned long ago, whose long gone limbs I remember as if they were my own.

I'm from a heritage of faith and hymns hummed or played.
from quiet, reserved Doris and outgoing, personable Alton
I'm from breakfast with dad and my parent's prayers
and from family dinners with homemade pie.

I'm from try again and you can do it and what a friend we have in Jesus.
I'm from holidays spent with exciting older cousins.

I'm from Olympia, Washington and the Oregon Wallowas
smothered fried chicken and apple pie.

From a family of two, we grew to a family of four.
Dad's silent clocks now hang on our walls.
Now we are a family of three.

I have read Stephen King's A Memoir of the Craft On Writing. I feel that these are the three big ideas on writing from his own experience. Interestingly, he shares the feelings of other writers. I love seeing those connections.
Three big ideas:
l. "Good writing is often about letting to of fear and affectation."
2. "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot."
3. "Reading is the creative center of a writer's life."

As I chose these three ideas, I thought of my second grade writers. The first idea encourages all writers to do their best writing. Just write and don't worry about judging it good or bad.

The second idea supports literacy in children. Reading and writing go together. How can I give more learning experiences that include reading and writing experiences?

The third idea supports the idea that great ideas can come from books. Books enlarge our world forever. Books will support the growth of my student writers.

Anne Lamott, Julie Cameron, Ralph Fletcher, and Alexandra Johnson are writers that see writing as being a necessary part of their lives. Stephen King also felt that writing makes his life a brighter and more pleasant place.

If writing enriches the lives of these writers, how could it enrich the lives of my second grade writers? I loved Alexandra Johnson's journaling ideas from her book "Leaving a Trace." She gives simple ideas for single purpose journals that I think would get my second graders writing more. These ideas included: geneology, dreams, artists sketchbook, spiritual journal, letters, joint emails, and scripts.

Responses to Britton and Moffett

Britton reminded us that our writing begins with the expressive category and moves outward to the transactional category or the poetic category as our writing becomes more public. An example of poetic writing would be Hamlet by Shakespeare that will remain unchanged over time. It will remain just as the writer intended it to be. A transactional piece of writing may change over the years as pieces of facts get changed in some way. As teachers, we need to give our students opportunities to write in both of these categories. We begin our student writers with types of expressive writing which can be broadened into transactional writing or poetic writing. I was encouraged to expand my writing choices to include journaling or personal reflections in my class. These expressive ideas could be expanded upon in all subject areas. The connection between journals and writing across the curriculum is necessary. This approach begins with the individual and their personal thoughts and then can expand to an audience.

Moffett supports this writing organization for children from his own research in 1965. The student writer needs to begin with the personal and then moves outward to an audience. These writing assignments demands that the student think deeply about his topic. This is much more beneficial than providing a form or questions to be answered. The student should be the one to find those ideas from his reading which are interesting and then respond to those ideas in written form. I need to allow opportunities for the students to respond to their reading with open ended activities that allow for choice. Journals have now taken on more importance and need to be available to my students.