Question: Most teachers work across their careers to improve their writing instruction. If Regie Routman visited your classroom during a typical week, what advice would she have for you about what you can (agency) do (action) to improve writing instruction? Be specific about whether she might suggest targeting how to integrate basic skills more efficiently, or organize for daily writing, or ways to talk with students about their writing, etc. Why would she suggest focusing on that target area?
We began writing workshop in my class on day two. So far I have really enjoyed the writing workshop lessons that my teacher has given. However, after reading Routman's chapters there are a few things that she would change about our writing. One thing that I believe my MT and Routman would agree upon is examples. My MT gives many explicit examples of good writing. Her focus currently is on getting the students to write a personal narrative in which the experience happened in a short time period. She used "Big Mama's" and "The Shortcut" by Donald Crews to show a good example of writing. The students get at least 15 minutes of silent writing time per day. This week we are beginning to write our stories based off of the ideas they came up with earlier this week. My MT had the students come up with several leads that they will be able to use in their story. I do not think that Routman would agree with this. I believe that if she would have come in today she would have told the students that the lead to the story could come later because she believes that getting the ideas down first is important. I am having trouble agreeing with her 100%. After seeing my students' writing styles, I believe that they need to have an idea about where and when the story they are going to write will take place. And, it was for this reason that my MT had them write several leads. Or, would it be a natural thing for the setting to come out in a 3rd graders writing, and then the organization of where the setting is placed in the story can be done late?
Routman talked a lot about celebrating the students' work. This is definitely one area that she would tell my class to work on. We have not shared any writing thus far. She says that it is important to do this so that the students can feel proud about their work, and they will then have not only the teacher as the audience, but also their peers.
Our curriculum map focuses on including word wall words. My MT loves to throw in a few games for them to play with the word wall words a couple of times a week. This is something that I have never seen done in other classrooms who use these words. My MT explicitly explains that the words are up on the wall for them to find in the room, look at and use because they are commonly misspelled words that they need to just learn. She is eventually going to give them a list that they will be able to keep at their desk as well.
Routman says that it is important to conference with the students. One idea that she focuses on is that the students see revising as the teacher's job if they just turn in their writing without ever doing any revising themselves. My MT and I have not done any conferences with the students. We are currently just brainstorming lists of ideas; however, I think that it would be important to even conference this to make sure they are on the right track of finding something good. I think that conferencing would be even more important if the writing is taught in the way that Routman suggests. Routman suggests that the students just get their ideas down on paper, and then in the conference suggest how the student could organize all of the sentences into paragraphs. During and after the conference is when the students would make sure they had topic sentences for their paragraphs. I see where Routman is coming from; however, I was not taught in this way so I think it would take some time to get used to in order to teach a lesson in this way.
Kelli
ReplyDeleteWe have only done writing workshop in my class 2 times and once was when I was gone on a thursday for class so I have only seen it done once. The one lesson I did see, my teacher brainstormed ideas about what she wanted to write about and then brainstormed details to go along with the topic she chose. She then modeled writing it out. one thing that Routman would tell her to focus on is to think aloud more while she was writing out her sentences to model the process that is going through her head. My teacher could have done alot more of that. But unlike your classroom Sarah, my teacher has only really focused on getting the students ideas onto paper and not on specific lead sentences or anything. I have been in classrooms where teachers teach mini lessons on specific parts of writing so I can picture what Routman is talking about when she explains this. I used to think that it was the only way to teach but now I understand why it might be better to go the other route. Some students get so bogged down in the conventions and the specific little pieces they are taught that they cant even get their ideas onto paper. once children get their ideas out, I feel like it makes sense to teach them where to put everything. Do you think that this would be beneficial to helping your students with their ideas sarah?
We also have not celebrated students work... particularly because they have not produced any work! This is something that I really want to talk to my MT about because I have always felt it is good to take ownership in your work and share and learn with and from others.
Since we are in the same building (Sarah and I), we are also following the word wall curriculum. I was in charge of putting together games with the words that we could do to study them but now this week MEAP prep has taken over our literacy time so I am no longer doing it. I know we are supposed to include certain games through every month so Im sure I will be doing more of that in the future. I havent heard for sure but if your MT is going to give the students lists for their desks then Im sure mine is too. I think we talked actually about having them write the words in their writers dictionaries but Routman discourages use of dictionaries... Do you think it wold be different if we only gave them the dictionaries to use when they are working on publishing their work?
Reading conferencing in Routman make me wish we were doing more writing workshop at the point in the year. I love to work with students one on one and this is a great opportunity for that individualized attention. I want to get students going and see how it works to have them get their ideas out and then teach them to organize their thoughts. I feel like this could be a lengthy and tiring process to conference with every student and give each of him or her that instruction! Like you Sarah, we also have not started this at all so I am interested to see how it will be laid out and how it would work with only one classroom teacher!
The part of the text that really caught my eye was the proven strategies for writers who struggle. I love reading through all these ideas and visualizing how they would work in a classroom routine. It makes me want to get into teaching writing right away. I feel like I am struggling in the classroom right now with dealing with all the MEAP prep and beginning of the year assessments and I'm antsy to get into the teaching and the implementing of these tools we are learning. Is anyone else feeling this way?!
We have done 2 lessons on writing workshop but we have not had a lot of time in the classroom to do this because we have been working on MEAP prep, which I'm sure you are doing this as well. It is not the students' favorite thing to do, however it is something that has to be done because the MEAP will start in October. The main focus of the writing workshop has been to start ideas for writing stories. My MT has found that when students have a list if ideas that they can write about they spend more time writing when writing time starts then thinking about ideas and then beginning to write. I also noticed that Routman would be against this plan, however, it was a great way to introduce the students to writing workshop. They had to come up with three people that are special to them and after that they would think of three things they did together with that person. That gives them a total of nine ideas that they have to write about if they cannot think about a topic. I will say that I liked how Routman brought up free writing. I remember doing that when I was in elementary school. I am not sure that enough of the students in my class would enjoy this activity because of my observations when they are writing. A lot of the students struggle with writing so even if they could write about anything I can see a lot of them feeling pressured to write the "right" thing even if there is no right or wrong way to do a free writing piece.
ReplyDeleteMy CT and I are going to start conferencing the students on their writing next week. When I asked her what conferencing meant she explained to me that we will go around to every student during writing workshop and talk about what they are writing about. If they do not think of much to say about their writing then we go to the next step and we go through their story and check punctuation and find places where more details can be added. I think this kind of goes along with Routmans' ideas that students should just write about their ideas and then go back through their paper.
I have had the privilege of doing one of the word wall lessons and my MT thinks it is a great idea to come up with a chant or some sort of action to go along with the word. For example, one of the words in my lesson was 'want' so I came up with a chant. When I held up the flashcard the students would chant: "I want, I want, I want, I want to spell the word W-A-N-T" and I came up with a chant or action for each word wall word for the month. The kids really enjoyed it and I could tell it would help them remember how to spell the words better. Hopefully after the MEAP is over we will be able to focus a lot more on the different aspects of writing!