Sunday, September 23, 2012
Routman's writing advice
In order to follow Routman's advice it is important to "focus on excellent teaching of writing, you will be teaching beyond what the standards require."
Things to work on:
-When only several students need explicit guidance, form a small group to teach, instead of teaching the whole class.
-Watch the amount of time spent on mini lessons. Sometimes kids don't get the chance to write when the lessons take up all the time.
-Before the kids write, go over the key writing techniques that you went over the day before to help remind the kids what you're looking for in their writing. (Expectations!)
-Focus more on the content and coherency of the piece instead of focusing on capital letters and punctuation.
-Keep the flow of writing. Have them try to write every day, but if this isn't possible, have them write on consecutive days.
-Share your thinking!
-Talk about writing, demonstrate different kinds of writing, have the kids talk about writing and ideas
In order to help my students with writing, it is important to share writing samples with them, in order for them to write on their own. This is part of the "we do it;" where the teacher guides the children in the correct steps, and models fluency. It is important to allow students to express their ideas orally, before starting the actual writing. This helps students feel more comfortable with the writing process as they become more confident with their ideas. Shared writing is especially important for ELL students.
I think that one of the dilemmas I might encounter is making sure the kids have enough time to write, especially with younger students. It is so easy to get caught up in a lesson, and answering kid's questions that you lose important writing time. Another issue I have with time is that many of my younger students take a very long time to think about what they want to write, before they begin the drawing or writing process. This gives them less time to develop their writing piece. I could "finesse" this by integrating smaller learning groups for the students who still need guidance, in order for other students to begin writing.This would create more time for my students who are eager to write, but still creates the time I need with my students who need more instruction.
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Ashley, I definitely agree with you that it is important to share writing samples and having the teacher model as a part of 'we do it.' When we model writing sample for our students in our class I have noticed that they are much more comfortable writing and have less questions about what they are expected to do. I have a suggestion for you in terms of you worrying about your students taking to long to think of a topic to write about; in my class we give the students a big idea and have them think of things that relate to them. Example: have kids write 'happy' on their paper, then have them think of things that make them happy or a time when they were happy. They now have multiple ideas to write about! I found that making the topic less broad limits the 'thinking' time the students need.
ReplyDeleteFor my students I wish to focus more on the content and coherency of their writing instead of capitalization and punctuation. There are a few students in my class that are so focused of writing a lot or making sure there punctuation is correct that their writing doesn't make sense and is just 'fluff.'I also hope to do more small group work. We do a lot of this with reading but no small groups with writing. We have a few students that are ahead of the class and need to be challenged more and a few that are below the rest of the class and are getting overwhelmed. I think it would be very beneficial to break the class up into small groups to focus on their needs more intently.
Like Ashley, I too feel that time as a whole may be the biggest challenge of the writing curriculum for me this year. We also have some students that take a long time to think about what to write about while others are ready to get to work. I really like Julie's idea about a broad topic where they can list some ideas but I feel I would only want to do this with some of my students as other students are ready to write as soon as the topic is announced. One thing we did at the beginning of the year was have students brainstorm a list in the front of their notebooks of things they could write about for free-writing topics. They use this list any time they cannot think of what to write about. In addition, we often write in three small groups (one group with each classroom teacher) and brainstorm a quick list as a small group based on the topic. Currently the groups are randomly assigned (we just numbered off the students in threes) but it is my understanding that these may be changed to groups based on need or interest as we move through the year.
ReplyDeleteI have also found that the class I am in has a great way of keeping lessons short and focusing on the writing time: we limit the lesson to a 7 minute mini-lesson and send the students off to write quickly. The only questions allowed are questions that are "for the good of the order" or questions that apply to everyone. It took a while for students to understand this idea but they are already able to keep track of this and ask appropriate questions. Then if they have personal questions they raise their hand from their seat. I feel that this helps us focus our time on the writing rather than all our time being spent on the lesson.
Like Julie, I am also interested in focusing on the content of the students' writing over the mechanics of the writing. Many of my students are writing at a level where this will be quite easy to do but some of them have such poor spelling that I often do not know what they write and struggle to help them with content. I have asked them to read me their writing but they often cannot read it back to me either. We have a few students that can narrate what they want to write but are struggling to write anything down. These students are getting assistance from both the reading and speech interventionists but I struggle to help them without this help in the classroom. Small groups will soon be used in my class as we have just finished the writing and spelling evaluations recently but I do not know how this will work with such a large class. Is there anything anyone does in their class to specifically focus on content over mechanics, especially with students struggling to write at all?
One thing I found to work well with time is "catching an idea". After we go over our mini lesson for writing (7 minutes same as Becky's class) on the community carpet area we tell the students before they return to their seats they must think of what they want to write about and tell us. Hearing the different ideas out loud helps the students think of their own ideas and it only takes a few minutes before everyone knows what they are going to write about. However, I too struggle with balancing between focusing on content verses mechanics. We have been trying to focus on length and mechanics but every time we tell a student to erase something and rewrite it it discourages them. For this reason, motivation is a big issue in terms of writing. Those that want to write utilize their time wisely and write a lot. However, not all the stories that are long have good content information. They are struggling to focus on details. I try to model and give them ideas but a lot of times getting their ideas from their heads to their paper is a struggle. Those that just don't want to write will only write a sentence or two in the time given. I am trying to encourage them but if anybody has advice on how to motivate them intrinsically I would love to hear them!
ReplyDeleteAfter giving them writing time the students on the bench for that day share their stories with the class. We compliment aspects of each story (especially the strategies we modeled in our mini lessons). Does anyone else have E/I time in their school? It is a time set aside to focus on materials already taught. I am thinking this could be a good opportunity to separate time to focus on mechanics and content but so far we have decided to dedicate it to math.
For those of you who have mentioned things about brainstorming...do you find it cuts into the students' writing time? I try to teach techniques in a quick concise way individually but by the time they finish brainstorming writing time is over. How would you suggest incorporating brainstorming without cutting too much into writing time?