(Page 126) “Content-area teachers will rarely have time to teach all the aspects of composition; we’ve got our subjects to cover! Still, the more we understand the writing process and the qualities of good writing, the more we can help our students.”
These chapters cover lots of components of writing, but I think the authors do a good job explaining that every teacher doesn’t have to teach everything about writing. To me, it gets to that whole depth over breadth notion. Sure, you could whiz through everything and say you “taught” the writing process, but did anyone really learn anything? It’s sort of telling students every fact that could possibly be on the EOC just so you can say you covered all the topics, but did the kids really learn anything? By choosing just one or two of the steps to focus on and spending a substantial amount of time on them, then students come to understand and retain how to do different components.
These chapters cover lots of components of writing, but I think the authors do a good job explaining that every teacher doesn’t have to teach everything about writing. To me, it gets to that whole depth over breadth notion. Sure, you could whiz through everything and say you “taught” the writing process, but did anyone really learn anything? It’s sort of telling students every fact that could possibly be on the EOC just so you can say you covered all the topics, but did the kids really learn anything? By choosing just one or two of the steps to focus on and spending a substantial amount of time on them, then students come to understand and retain how to do different components.
I particularly liked the “Four Corners” strategy discussed on page 128. I think the use of this one is not limited to writing—it could be used with a variety of things. In fact, we may have to do this in class one week before the year is up! It’s a great way to find where people stand on particular subjects why keeping them from just sitting in their desks. It also forces students to come up with a response instead of being lethargic and not participating at all. Even if students don’t say a word through the entire process, you still know what they think. So, based on what you teach, what parts of what Daniels et al wrote about do you think you could use in your classroom?
11 comments:
“Kids should not be getting ready to be real readers someday-they should be immersed in every day grown up text right now.” – I completely agree. With students desire to grow up quickly, this is one aspect that we can allow and encourage them to grow in. Current events, reading and writing strategies, there are several adult categories that we can help students immerse in that may give them confidence and feel like stronger reading.
“Remember that teaching students how to think like a mathematician, chemist, or historian is teaching them their subject.” - I have caught myself being complacent and asking for generalized writing without going into details or making the topic seem worthwhile and exciting. I never stopped to ask myself why they don’t find the topic interesting or why they aren’t able to go well into detail when I don’t offer them the opportunity to?
In Chapter 6, I enjoyed 4 card stud. I think it provides a great way to break down a generalized topic and that’s something a lot of my students struggle to do.
Responsibility sheets also present a diverse approach to writing that allows students to keep track of the skills they’ve learned and mastered. The part I like the best is when they discuss how responsibility sheets turn assessment into learning rather than judgment. Anything that promotes self-esteem will ultimately allow people to be more successful.
I think these chapters (5 & 6) tied in perfectly with the direction the media center is headed the rest of this school year and beyond. I need to be familiar with the wide variety of strategies Daniels, et al discuss in chapter 6 so I can suggest the strategy that meshes with the personality and content area of the teacher with whom I am collaborating.
One piece of equipment the media center will obviously need to acquire prior to the start of the next school year is a document camera. This teaching tool will go a long way toward making the teacher and/or media specialist able to model the writing task for students on demand.
The small group feedback mentioned on p. 134 would lend itself to a particular lesson I am collaborating on with a math teacher for next year. We are going to ask students to research great mathematicians throughout the ages (lots of females and minorities to be included in this research). The students will work in teams and present their research via a front page newspaper (more on that in chapter 7). Anyway, a great way for the teams to assess where they are in the process would be small group feedback.
Content Area Writing: Chapters 5 and 6
(Page 115) “Choice: When kids have some control over their writing topics, the feeling of ownership is enhanced and the chance for deep engagement is elevated.” As I have stated in previous blogs, I agree with the authors in this statement, I have definitely observed this in my class on numerous occasions when my students have made a connection with a particular topic. My students write in their journals each day with a topic provided by the teacher or one of the students and when their interests is piqued their writings demonstrate a better writing piece. Now it is time to switch gears for the big time as the beginning of this chapter suggests. I think that I’m ready to move forward with my young authors in the classroom. On page 119, it states-- that if we want kids to write well, we must: set aside time and…, -- conduct activities…--at each stage of the writing process. With this in mind, my hope is to move forward by encouraging and enforcing new experiences with my students in this writing process. Initially, I felt inadequate and overwhelmed about it all, but as Diane states in her blog as well as the authors of this book suggest that we choose one or two steps to focus on at a time and our students will and can become fluent and successful writers.
Content-Area Writing, Chapters 5 & 6
“…kids need side-by-side coaching, modeling, and mentoring through all stages of the process. We cannot leave them alone to write any more than we’d leave alone to dissect a fetal pig or cook up some chemical reactions. Ka-boom!”
I love this quote. It’s so very true. I think that it can be all too easy to give students a writing prompt and expect them to hand in an excellent paper, but the more I’ve taught (and I know it’s not very long), the more I’ve come to realize how important it is for students to have writing modeled to them. My students recently completed an essay at the end of our Romeo and Juliet unit. We worked hard, I mean hard, on these essays. And you know what? They were some of the best essays that these students have written this year. We did pre-writing, we worked on the rough drafts together (even writing the introduction together), they followed the RAGS method (Gallagher) of giving suggestions to their peers, and then they wrote their last drafts. I know the students got more out of this essay than they have in the past.
One thing I want to work on more the rest of this school year is to provide choice . I know it’ll bore me a lot less when reading all 120 essays. And it will provide more motivation for the students to write. I know that when students take tests such as the HSAP they won’t be given choices in the extended response writing; however, if they’re given choice now, they might be a little more motivated to write. And when they’re more motivated to write now, they’ll write more. And when they write more, they’ll become better writers.
Since I’m all about mentioning things I need to work on, I’ll go ahead and add that I know I need to limit the markings that I put on student papers. These chapters reminded me of the Collins Writing Project seminar I went to. I know that it would benefit my students the most to focus on certain skills in each paper. This way they will not be bogged down with everything they did wrong. Instead, they’ll focus on one area and work to improve their writing in that area.
Chapter 5 and 6
I definitely agree that students should be given choices as they learn to become good writers. I know that some test such as HSAP does not give them a choice, but I feel students will learn to become better writers when they are writing about something that interests them. At least through this they can learn the process so they willl know how to answer that writing question on HSAP even though it doesn't interest them.
I also agree that students need time to write in class. This gives the teacher an opportunity to provide support, but it also gives the student time to work on the assignment. Unfortulately a lot of our students have to work and take care of themselves or siblings when they leave school. A student I was talking with in my office the other day said his mom had left him and his brother to go live with her boyfriend. I asked who looked after them and he told me his grandmother lived next door. However, I could tell the situation had affected the young man more than he was saying.
Diane I also like the four corners activity. That would be an activity I would have used in my classroom. I love activites that get students up and moving and requires them to participate. I actually have done an activity very similiar to this at a conference I attended. It was great fun and I met people I would normally not have spoken with. This could give students the opportunity to talk with other students that they normally would not speak to.
I completely agree with Diane that a lot of these strategies could be used more for just "writing" assignments. I am excited to use several of the "pre-writing" activities to introduce new topics. At the beginning of a new unit, I sometimes pose a focus question for the unit. The Anticipation Guide and Four-Corners strategies are excellent ways for my students to respond to this focus question. Normally we discuss their answers as a whole class. Well, really 5 or 6 students share their reasoning. I like the idea of students being responsible for their answer choice in the Four-Corners activity. A lot of the time, students choose an answer but don't understand their reasoning behind their choice.
Content Area Writing Chapters Five and Six
On the last page of chapter six, Daniels et al write, “We’ve thrown a lot at you.” No doubt! There’s tons of information in these two chapters to respond to. I have to admit I haven’t done any public writing this year, but I have had my kids write much more than they did last year. They do quick writes all the time, and what I’ve noticed recently is there isn’t too much complaining when I pop the prompt up on the projector. They’re also able to complete the quick writes faster than they did at the beginning of the year. I have to admit that when I give the quick write topics, they’re always attached to the topic we’re studying so there’s not really a choice in topics. There is, however, much choice in how they approach the topic and in which direction they take the topic. Do y’all think that counts as choice?
I like the “Four Corners” strategy as well Diane. Did we do a variation of that in our HSTW meeting this summer? I just remember there being more than four choices posted on the wall and us picking one. Do you remember what I’m talking about? I also like the “Four Card Stud” strategy for helping kids organize their writing ahead of time. “Letting It Rest” is a strategy I used with the What Bugs Me assignment we started two weeks ago (before I knew it was an actual strategy). It seemed to help students look at their writing with fresh eyes, and they were able to see things they wouldn’t have seen if they had written a quick write and then immediately started to turn that into a more substantial piece of writing.
I am one of those teachers who marks too many mistakes on student papers (Ruth Anne, it’s a curse), and sometimes I even do it in red (December and February for Christmas and Valentine’s Day)! I believe if your kids know you’re not out to get them and you’re only trying to help them, they don’t care what color you mark their papers in. And if the kid’s a Blood, they’d probably prefer you use red.
I liked the fact that at the end of chapter five, Daniels et al make the point that even though we teach writing as a five-or-six step process, real writers rarely follow the process linearly. The steps overlap and sometimes you even backtrack.
P. 119 – “If we want kids to write well, we must set aside time and conduct activities at each stage of the writing activities.”
I am in the middle of an HSAP Writing Prompt with my academic support students. My student teacher I are about to go nuts because we want the paper done, but at the same time, we know that the time we are spending on working through each step (brainstorming, first draft, revising, editing, and final draft) is so important. I really feel that too many teachers just assign writing without modeling the steps and helping their students work through the steps. In dealing with resource students, if I just assign writing, I will get something that I don’t care to read. If I take the time to really help them during every stage of the process, then I will get papers that they are proud of and that I want to read. Yes, they will have to write on their own for the HSAP, but my job is to scaffold the experiences up to that point so that they are ready for that prompt on the day they have to write.
P. 138 - “You don’t need to mark all the errors, even within one aspect of writing. If you see a pattern in a student’s paper, mark two or three instances and ask the student to find the rest and return the paper to you.”
I used to mark every error I could find. What a chore! Now, I help them get started with their editing. I mark the first two paragraphs with them during an individual conference. Then I ask them to finish revising their paper. I also write words that they have difficulty spelling once and then ask them to compare my spelling with the rest of the paper. Students need to take ownership of their work, and we, as teachers, need to spend more time on more productive work.
Content-Area Writing
Chapters 5 & 6
As many of you have stated, we must give students choice when it comes to writing papers. Not only will this alleviate boredom on their part, but also when it comes to us as teachers having to grade them...and I must admit, I love English, and I love writing, and I love seeing my kids write, but when you have to read the same essay over and over again, it gets HARD, especially when they are all saying the same exact thing. I’m working really hard on providing several topics to choose from when composing essay assignments. I also encourage journaling in my class. It’s so fun to read their thoughts on a particular subject. In fact, I did the activity in my class that we did not too long ago where we had to write a story in 55 words exactly. The activity was really successful and you should have heard some of their stories...they were AWESOME! I always give them the opportunity to share their thoughts with the class and usually it’s like pulling teeth, but this time everyone wanted to share and it was great fun!
Also, I like the excerpt on plagiarism. This is a subject that should not be taken lightly. I agree with the statement, “We can repeat the phrase ‘other people’s words’ a thousand times, but long experience tells us that kids just don’t get it...we need to take the time and teach this complex idea of using other people’s words and ideas,” (116). During the first week of the new semester, we do an extensive lesson on plagiarism; what is plagiarism, what constitutes and plagiarism, and how to avoid it. And through a brilliant idea of Stephanie’s, I show them examples of my work to model how to properly cite “other people’s words and ideas.”
I decided this semester that, as time consuming as it may be to grade, I was going to work more in depth with writing than I have before. A lot of times students seem to have poor writing skills or they are not producing work that mirrors a junior or senior level in high school. Sometimes it is because the student is used to getting away with products that are adequate (but are not stellar) and sometimes it is because teaching the writing process can be tedious and no one has taken the time to break it all down.
I do agree that students should be given choices with writing. I try to combine choice-driven writing activities with more analytical pieces. While I feel students need to have a choice, I also feel that college bound students should know what to expect in college and how to produce writings that will be expected of them on a college level.
CAW Chapters 5 & 6
Again, I notice the theme of choice- student choice! Gallagher wrote about the importance of this and now the authors of this book are promoting the same thing. “When kids have some control over their writing topics, the feeling of ownership is enhanced and the chance for deep engagement is elevated” (page 115). Students will be better writers when we give them choice and TIME. Another key is support. From us- the experts! We must model, model, model!! This is easier said than done. Sometimes I still find it difficult to model or put myself out there. I do plenty of read alouds. Now I need to challenge myself to do what the authors call “write alouds”. Think how valuable this would be to students as they attempt the type of writing that I am assigning to them. If we break down the writing process, then it is not as difficult as students make it.
I like the ideas mentioned in Chapter 6 but especially the idea of samples from page 130. This always helps me when I am writing. I try to save student examples- good and bad- from year to year so that I can show students. Students get an idea of what I expect and we also have the opportunity to discuss good and bad characteristics.
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