Graphic for 10-12

This cartoon is sad but true. When students do not do well, the workload for many students tends to increase with the idea that somehow it will help.
www.techtoon.tripod.com

Building on Best Practice

It is frequently mentioned in this book about teachers gearing up for the writing assessment by doing lots of test prep with students. How does a teacher test prep for writing? Do these teachers constantly have their students write using dull, boring prompts all the time? If so, how horrible to be that teacher and read those awfully boring papers. I can only stand to read them when I am required to give the writing assessment. Maybe that is not how those teachers prepare; I know teachers do a lot of test prep for the reading assessment, but writing assessment prep is new to me.

Writing every day is frequently stressed throughout the book as well. I do not know how a language arts teacher could not have his or her students write every day. In my classroom my students are always writing. It may not be a lengthy paper it could be a journal reaction, summary of what we read the day before, telling me what they did over the long weekend, etc. It would be interesting to go into a language arts room, and not see writing, what else is there to do?

Fortunately for me, I have worked with some wonderful language arts teachers, which is maybe why it is hard for me to understand how to prepare for the writing assessment or have a class that does not write every day. I feel like the language arts teachers in my building all want to improve their instruction by revamping a lesson or recreating a new unit entirely. My friend (job alike) and I often shared ideas on what to do better, we were always (and still are) up for trying a new format for instruction, and providing any lessons or handouts to teachers in need.There have been some meetings that I have attended where teachers were not willing to share any lessons with other teachers, or teachers were not receptive to making changes in their classroom even if these changes were backed by research. It baffled me, and still does, that there are teachers who think and act in such a way. After reading this book, I have found some wonderful ideas that I am eager to try with my classroom, and to pass on to the other language arts teachers in my building. I definitely plan to do more modeling for my students, and try the whole-class conference with writer's workshop.

Assessments

It seems like there is a lot of pressure on writing assessments. Maybe it is just me, or my district, but I do not feel nearly as pressured about the writing assessment as I do the reading assessment. This is probably due to the fact that we have not had one in three years since the state did not have it in their budget. 

However, our DCT says the writing assessment is scheduled to return in 2013. With that in mind, our DCT wanted us to find a better way to assess writing. We had a meeting not long ago discussing giving our students a writting pretest and post test at each grade level (6-8). We had not done this before, but our feeder high schools are, therefore, we thought it would be beneficial to all if we started it in middle school. We decided the pretest will be given within the first two weeks of school, with the idea that not many teachers will have taught writing so the results will give the teachers a good baseline. There are five prompts that the students are to select, and each grade level has a different set. There also a specified number of days (only because we need a control factor) to complete the writing. Each grade level will be given a specified rubric to use for grading the pre/post assessments. The post test will be given the last two-three weeks of school. We had decided that the students would get to select one of the five prompts, but could not write about the same one. This really is our only change in our curriculum, which will actually be beneficial to all the teachers. CA teachers will continue to write every day, and will now have a product to use as a jumping off point for teaching writing at the beginning of the year.

This chapter talks about rubrics, and how some teachers get "rubric happy." I use them when grading projects or writing, but do not solely rely on them. There are some great kid friendly rubrics available, which are what I use. I also like my rubrics to be very specific for my students to understand why they missed two points on a part. Has anyone tried having their students help them to create a rubric? That is something I would like to try.

From my experience thus far, I have found providing student examples of excellent and poor writing to help students see what my expectation is for them. Yes, a rubric tells them the areas in which they are graded, but allowing them to see what is deemed excellent givens them a true understanding. Not only showing the examples, but like the books says to ask students questions like:

• What made this a good piece of writing?
• What did the writer not do?
• What revisions could the writer have made?
• What suggestions would you give if a student had written this piece?
• Even if the piece is good, what could make it better?

I always enjoy having these discussions, they transcend well into writing and teachers are able draw back on it when meeting with students or the whole class-the students almost always seem to remember.

Graphic for Ch. 7-9

This cartoon reflects these chapters pretty well. With a conference, the teacher would know that the student is struggling with his writing :)
Taken from www.justkiddingcartoons.com

Conferencing

   Chapters eight and nine really sparked some ideas for my writer's workshop; there are several things that I would like to try in the fall. I like how these two chapters always start off with the problems that teachers are having with writing, especially this chapter with the questions of how to fit the conferences in and what to do with the other kids while you are conferencing? I tried having the one on one conferences, but was never able to get to every student, and found myself revising and editing. I eventually quit because I couldn't keep my eye on the troublemakers as well, and shifted to the "roving" conferences where I felt I had more control of my classroom. Class ran more smoothly, but I was not able to have the conversations with students like I had with the one on one conferences.

   It never crossed my mind to have a whole-class conference. I really like that idea, and think that would definitely work wonderfully for the beginning of the year to transition into conferences. It sets the expectation and creates an environment for the students to not only share, but learn how to help one another with suggestions for writing. Having the students reread their work before sharing is also a fantastic idea. When I had done this before, my students would hand me their work and I read it. I don't know why I didn't think to have them read their work to me. It would take longer, but if the students had reread their paper then it would be likely they had caught some errors which would save time for me. Also, I like the use of the "author's chair." I think it is a cute idea, but is it too elementary for sixth grade?My problem would be those students who are painfully shy that won't want to sit at the chair and read their paper aloud. If that were to happen, I think I would arrange for those students to share in a small group until they gained confidence in their writing.

   The idea of doing a shared writing of what to expect when writing and conferencing is another great management technique. It would set the precedence of the guidelines and expectations for their writing behavior and conference etiquette. This would be a great time for students to ask questions, for the teacher to explain the different conferences, and emphasize that when the students want to meet one on one they must have given it their all. One of my biggest pet peeve'swas when a student would come up and expect me to do all their revisions. It was even worse when I made suggestions and  the student took none of my suggestions and made absolutely no revisions. Hopefully that will diminish with the conference forms, which I like much more than what I have at school. There are some great resources in the book, has anyone found time to watch the DVD? I am a visual learner and think that I could really benefit from watching it.

Daily Writing

    I wish I had read this chapter before I did my previous post because it answered some of my questions. Maybe it was the way the chapter was organized or maybe it's because this is my third book to read about writing, but I am finally starting to see how to make writer's workshop work for me. Like I have said before, I am one of those people who has to have a plan and know where I am going. With writer's workshop I didn't feel like there was a plan, more of a fly by the seat of your pants plan, that changed daily. This book has given me a better explanation and overview on how to organize my writing curriculum.

   There are several parts in this chapter that I found interesting. First, I think it is great to essentially get away from the rigid writing process. We are suppose to teach the students skills that they will use. Well, I do not draw out a web when I start prewrite, like my students I make lists and outlines, and if I know exactly what I am going to write about then I start my draft so I don't forget. Once I've gotten it down on paper, then I can go back and make revisions. I tell my students that I don't care how they brainstorm as long as they are getting their ideas flowing.

     It was also interesting reading about how to teach students to brainstorming meaningful topics. I did this with my students also; we did what Nancie Atwell calls "writing territories." It's true that students need guidelines when writing, and I believe it is important to stress to students that they should not just write about anything. They need to care about it, know a lot about it, and be able to provide interesting details.

     Probably my favorite part in this chapter was the part on keeping records. It would be a relief  to focus mainly on the minilesson notes, cumulative writing history, and conference notes. Managing all the paperwork was one of my biggest challenges, especially with 90 students; there was no way I was taking 90 four page papers home to grade. I also love the idea of using an organized binder, rather than only a writer's workshop folder. Does anyone have other suggestions for grading,organizing papers, and keeping track of where each student is in the process?

Incorporating the Basics

   It sounds like I am not the only one who struggles with determining what skills to teach and how to incorporate it into a writing classroom. I really like the concept meaningful writing with a writer's workshop, and allowing the students to write for pleasure; then, taking time out to focus on different parts of writing like leads or transitions. Like the teacher in the book, I too have had my students work on DOL's, but noticed that the information did not transfer over to their writing. After practicing capitalization and punctuation, students continued to make these mistakes in their writing. This being said, I would like to try the "whole-part-whole" concept with my students for next year. Does that mean I get rid of DOL's entirely? I really like using them because the students have something to work on upon entering the room. Other altnernatives to this?

    The other issue I have with "part" teaching is that I never know where to start. For instance, when teaching commas (which I don't like since I don't always use them correctly) I am not sure where to start with the clauses. It bores me just thinking about it. Is there a way to make internal punctuation engaging for students?

   In the past, I have started my writer's workshop lessons by focusing on one of the six traits for a few weeks. We often started with the ideas trait since it essentially is the heart of the writing. When introducing it, I would pull out a student example of writing with a strong ideas trait, and an example of writing with poor ideas. Before the students read the two examples, we went over what the ideas traits is and it's importance to writing. Then the students read the two student examples. While they read, I had them write down two things the student did well, and two suggestions the student could improve. We then discussed the two papers. With seventh graders, there was often no holding back with their suggestions for improvement for the poorly written example. I often heard, "The kid needs to burn this paper and completely start over," or, "This kid is an idiot. Did he ever learn to write?" I would bite my tongue when this was said because often I had a handful of students who wrote as terrible as the poor example. Ironically, it has always been one of my poor writers who makes such a comment. Still, I would have several students who gave great suggestions for improvement, and tons of comments on what the student did that made his writing so much better than the other. This lead us then into discussing what made a piece interesting and easy to read. Although, I started by "focusing" on one of the traits (which the book says not to do) I have found that it is a good jumping off point when introducing writing, because in doing so my students often draw upon the other traits. I'd get students who said the writer put a good amount of emotion into the piece (voice), there was an obvious conclusion (organization), there were hardly any spelling errors (conventions), the sentences were not choppy (sentence fluency), and the writer did not start every sentence with "So then" (word choice). 

    The rest of the week I would do different writing activities that supported the ideas trait, and my students often seemed to enjoy the different, out of the box writing activities they got to do. Then, we would move on to the organization trait and do similar activities with it, but continue to include the ideas trait. We did this with every trait, just building onto the next. I liked this because I knew the direction I was headed with my planning. How else can I teach writing without planning units on one of the traits?  Are you constantly assessing all six traits? Suggestions are welcomed!

Reading and Writing

    First off, I thought it was interesting the author mentioned how reading and writing were typically taught in two different classes. I am sure my students think that since I teach communication arts and reading (they see me twice a day).  Sixth grade teachers often have to explain the difference between the two, even though there really is not a difference, at least not in seventh grade. When I get asked about the difference, I usually say no a whole lot, just a little more reading in reading and writing in CA. CA is just focuses a bit more on language arts, and reading focuses more on comprehension. However, all students should be writing in every class. Our new thing at our district is "writing to learn" activities, which I do on a daily basis but never realized nor purposely planned for-it just made sense to write before, during, and after reading.

   Which leads me to the second item I found interesting- book reports. Now, I have never had my students do book reports, but I know in sixth grade (which is what I will be teaching this fall) I think has at least one a quarter, and it's usually over a specified genre. I am on the fence about book reports. One side I see it as a way for students to share what they read, and maybe interest others to read the book. Yet, the problem I see is that more than likely there are going to be students who didn't read and are going to make the whole thing up using Google (if they're smart). Plus, if I haven't read the book, I will have no clue whether the student is telling the truth or not. I guess I will have to talk with my friend/job alike about this and see what she thinks! Anyone have other options to suggest if I have to shoot down her book report plans?

   Last topic I want to address is summarizing; it always seems to be a huge problem with my students. By the time I get my students some have been taught to summarize,while many of them have not. When I ask for a summary, I often get the retelling of the whole story not just the main points/purpose. Summarizing isn't just a problem for seventh grade, but it was something that all grades seemed to struggle. Last year, we made it a point to focus on summarizing in every class so we could better help our students. It became one of our SMART Goals. The problem was that teachers would ask their students to summarize (like I had done) and no one was really teaching it. It was my fault for assuming the students had learned to summarize prior to coming to seventh grade. Honestly though, I do not ever remember being taught how to summarize; we were always told to just write two to three sentences about what we read. There are a lot of things that I teach now that I never remember learning, and I was a good student! I guess things have changed in the last fifteen years. Now, I will try to make more of an effort to ensure that my students know how to summarize.

Graphic

Taken from www.nairaland.com 
I know this does not relate exactly, but I found it to be quite humorous. Students can really tell when a teacher just does not like to teach, or is not all that great at their job. It's not a job that just anyone can do.

Shared Writing

   Maybe it is because I teach seventh grade, but I have never tried shared writing before in my class. I have done some guided teaching with certain writing assignments that we started as a class, but have never written more than a few sentences. I definitely think this is something I would like to try with my sixth graders next year, as I feel they are still at an age where they can stay focused through such an activity. I would definitely use the "language that affirms and encourages participation" on page 92 as a resource for my first few times.

   I have tried a few times giving my students a topic or a sentence starter that they are to use to start their story. After two or three minutes of writing, I would tell them to stop or finish their sentence. I would give them either a word or phrase that they had to use next, and they had to pass their writing to the person sitting next to them, and add to their writing. We would continue this process a few more times and then the student who started the writing got their original paper back. The kids loved reading out loud the story they had collectively written.

   If I taught elementary school, I would definitely make use of activities like words with tiles or cutting up sentences. I am not sure how I could step up those activities to fit sixth grade. Any ideas? It does remind me of an activity I did with poetry this year. I cut up a bunch of adjectives and nouns, and had the students draw out five of each. They were to write a personification poem using one of the nouns, and four of the five adjectives in their poem. It was a challenge for some, but many of them enjoyed it and it finally got some of those students to understand personification!

What are the Expectations?

   Setting expectations, I think, is sometimes a difficult thing, especially when explaining them to students. My school has become increasingly diverse over the years with students moving in from other states and local districts, due to the number of apartment complexes that have been built near our school. Because of this, our principal had us read Fair Isn't Always Equal by Rick Wormeli. If you haven't read it, it is an interesting book to read, and I must say there were several parts that I really had trouble "seeing it" the author's way. 

   The book is all about differentiating in the classroom, which is why I have found setting expectations a challenge because not all students receive the same expectations (in my opinion at least). For example, when I assign a piece of writing that has to be taken into final production, like many teachers, I receive several amazing papers and some not-so-good ones. This is where the differentating has to come in, because I have to move my expectations around for each student. This is easier once I have gotten to know my students and their abilities. I have to think of how they have grown and compare their work to prior writings, which usually helps me to determine whether they met my expectations or not.

   I am for differentiating and everything, my problem is that the state assessments do not differentiate. Therefore, my student who typically does not-so-good work, may have improved with his writing from what I saw in class, but if he were graded by the state he would score at average, or just below. I have other opinions about the assessments that I will not go into, but all seem to circle back to the fact that teachers are suggested to teach/assess students a certain way, while the "testing that matters" is assessed another. I constantly feel like things I am told contradict each other, and I feel like I am always trying to do both (if that makes sense at all).

   More positively speaking, our school has established a more direct list of writing expectations that are posted in every classroom. Some of the expectations are that students are to write their first and last name on their work, words that should be capitalized are capitalized (first letter, proper nouns), appropriate ending punctuation, all answers are written with the restating of the question in complete sentences, and no usage of texting language. If the students do not follow the expectations when they turn in an assignment, they have it returned to them to make corrections, or points are taken off (if it is a repeat offender). We did not start using this until December, and hope to start the year off with the explanation of our school's writing expectations. I really hope it helps!

Fitting for Language Arts Teachers

I found this and thought it was rather fitting.
Comic is taken from www.cartoonstock.com

Struggles

I know there are no perfect teachers out there, but it seems like any time I take a professional development class or meet with other content teachers, I feel as though I am doing everything wrong. I don't know if it is because I was originally a social studies teacher and all the units built upon the next in chronological order, but I struggle with the details of planning units.  With social studies, I knew specifically what I was to cover for each unit. Now as a reading and language arts teacher I have a hard time "seeing" units; they don't build from one to the next, and I feel there is an enormous amount to cover, and I cannot seem to figure out what items/skills fit with which unit.

  These struggles all go back to the new writing requirement. I struggle with what I should teach first. Is it introductions, since majority of writing has some form of introduction? Or should I teach prewriting strategies and detailing through the writing process? Or should I just show my students how I start my writing? I know there is no "right" answer, which is probably why I struggle with this so much; there really are no guidelines to follow when teaching writing at the middle school level.

  Not only is teaching writing a struggle for me, but writing in general is a struggle for many of my students. On a daily basis I have students ask, "Why do we have to do this?" It is usually asked when we are doing some sort of writing activity. It has become a goal of mine to start showing my students more real life examples of writing to give them a better understanding of the purpose of why we write so much. I will admit that I have told the students that it is important to learn how to write, especially if they are planning on going to college; it does not matter if you plan to be a doctor or an engineer, you will be required to do some form of writing. However, I have to remind myself that not every student will go to college, and therefore, I need to find more examples in which students can relate.

   With this in mind, I have been trying to find more real life examples for my students to see. When we were discussing letter writing, I showed my students my cover letter that I had written when I applied for my teaching position. It was an opportunity for me to teach the format of a business letter, and also reflect with my students on parts that I should revise. I told my students how it was a struggle for me to get started on this letter because I did not know where to start, and had never written a cover letter before. We discussed why it is easier to write something after you have written it a few times, and I pointed out that that is the reason why I ask them to write more than one draft; it gets easier and you think of new ideas.

   I know that I may never make writing a breeze for every student, but I do know that I can never help a student too much by trying new strategies and providing every day examples. Like with writing, teaching gets easier after a few years of reflecting and making adjustments

Sharing Writing Success

I felt very brave one day, and decided to try the full on Writer’s Workshop concept. My students already knew about WWS and the expectations of the classroom during this time. As a class, I asked students for different ideas for writing. We drafted a pretty decent list, and I threw in a few ideas of my own. The students were actually excited at the thought of writing something new like a script for a TV show or creating their own comic book, instead of the traditional three to five paragraph essay. Before I let my students start writing though, I wanted them to sit at their desk and think for three minutes about the different things they could write, and I encourage them to write down anything that came to their mind. While they were creating their personal list, I project my computer screen for my students to see and wrote a list of my own. After the three minutes was up, I selected for my students one of the ideas off my list. I decided to write a personal narrative about my experience getting stitches. Asking for the class input, we decided on the best graphic organizer for my writing. I modeled how I would fill out my graphic organizer. I was a bit self conscious about it because I knew my writing and spelling was not my best, but I guess that let the students know that nothing is perfect the first time around.  Finally, after many sighs and questions of when they can start, I graciously let off on their own.

   I was very skeptical of this at first because I knew I would have students who would either write nothing or would want to write Haiku after Haiku because it was easy; the challenge was trying to figure out what to get those kids to write. I was glad that I had gotten to know my students pretty well by this time, so when I found one student sitting at his desk doing nothing I knew I had to help him brainstorm something to write. Luckily I knew this student loved football, was obsessed with the game, so I talked to him about football. We decided he could create his own football newspaper article. By the end of it he was making up different teams, lineups, and summarizing games that he had made up. This typically awkward, shy student was actually meeting with other boys in the class and sharing his writing. 

  As the end of the hour neared I decided to select a few students to share their writing thus far. It was very surprising to see the number of seventh graders raise their hands to read aloud their writing. I was actually impressed with those who volunteered, their writing was original and much better than I had predicted. Eventually I had to cut them off before the bell rang to dismiss them. The next day, kids came to class asking if they would be able to share their writing. This actually became a great revising tool because when the students read their work aloud to a friend they would catch their errors and were able to fix the confusing sentences. I truly enjoyed doing these lessons, but still struggled with the continuation of it. I did, and still do, not know how to take a grade for it, what to assess when students are writing thirty different pieces, and what to do when five students are “finished” while fifteen are still on their first draft. I guess I am able to start the process, but still struggle with the middle and end of Writer’s Workshop. Maybe this is just something that takes a few years to get the handle of....I hope!

Writing Struggles

   In my three years of teaching communication arts, I have noticed how writing is gaining ground in its importance. See when I first started teaching, I knew I would have my students work on DOL's (Daily Oral Language) a few times a week alternating with journal reactions, and every quarter my students would write a paper that would  be taken through the whole writing process. I was never told to cover certain things with writing; I was handed the benchmarks and indicators my students were tested over for reading and inferred that I was to focus mainly on the items tested. It seemed to me that reading took precedence over writing.

  Since then, our district has required that we have Writer's Workshop in our classroom one to two days a week. I was excited to try something new, yet I was a bit confused with the idea. We were going from not having writing as the main focus (or so I believed) to basically becoming entrenched in writing, which was utterly overwhelming. The concept of Writer’s Workshop seemed so laid back and student direct, I couldn't understand how I could just let my students write without giving them guidelines. I understood that I would have mini lessons that I would teach to cover certain things like transitions, writing an appropriate introduction or conclusion, etc. Still, I had no idea what my students were to have mastered by the end of the year, and whether we would have our students write the same papers we had done the year before.

   Going into this year I feel as though I have writing better figured out because of the trials and tribulations I experienced with Writer's Workshop for the past two years. I had started out with a rigid, inconsistent mode of teaching writing. Since then I have learned the importance of determining what is essential for the students to learn, and how to make writing more exciting and useful to them. This past year I had an “aha” moment when it truly hit me how important it is to model writing and to show writing to my students. I pulled out old papers I had written in college to show students examples of thesis statements; I dug out former students’ essays to give my students ideas on different writing and my expectations for them; I found articles that discussed writing as a lifelong skill. With the help of my Elmo, I finally could project my student’s writing for the class, and draw attention to what areas the student had done well. There is still more I need to tweak with writing in my classroom, but I feel I have the means and desire to improve my writing lessons