I found there were a couple of sections of the text that stood out for me because I have seen them happen in my classroom. The funny thing is that I often think writing is missing in my classroom because my CT doesn’t seem to focus on it. However, the first thing that struck me was exactly what she does. We have talked in class about reading should be integrated across the entire curriculum. These chapters suggest that reading and writing are very similar processes. With this in mind, writing should also be spread across the entire curriculum. This year my CT hardly ever sets aside time that I hear or notice her refer to as writing time. The class has notebooks for every subject though and they use them frequently. The way she almost always begins a lesson is with some form of: “Get out your __________ notebook.” This encourages the students to write about what they are learning and gives them a source to refer to later on in the project.
I also was very interested in the New Literacies entry on page 403 of Tompkins. I had never heard of webquests before, but I have seen them used at least twice in my field placement. I found myself wondering why when we went to the computer lab the sites for the students to research from were bookmarked. I assumed that the school’s filtering software made it very hard for students to search. This seems to be the case from many teachers I have talked to and this seemed like a good way to still let them get the information needed. The textbook seems to make a good argument for this as a form of scaffolding that helps students with new technology.
I also noticed that my field placement contrasts with my field placement from last year in 301. I was in a fifth grade classroom at that time too, but that CT seemed to put a greater emphasis on writing as a subject to be learned. Students created many different genres of writing and the purpose was clearly not linked with any other subject. I helped them create poems about what was in their desk as one example. Another example was that they created a comic strip about anything they wanted. While I can see how these activities would be fun, I wonder if they could have also been fun while integrating them into their areas of study. I think they probably could have.
This year I have had a few chances to help the students in my class with writing projects. I mentioned before the webquests that my CT had the students work on. One was related to her unit on the solar system. Students were asked to create a travel brochure for another planet based on their webquest. I helped them take the data they gather from their on-line resources and transfer it to a template the CT had created. This activity was more about teaching them how to use a new technology to write than it was about the writing process. I still think that in today’s society this is a valuable lesson that they are going to need and a new genre that needs to be explored. I am also in the process of writing up one of my mini lessons that I taught last week to a small group. In that lesson I worked on both the reading and writing process. The students are learning about introduction, ascending action, climax, descending action, and resolution in a story line. The students used their weekly reading selection from their text and as we read through it we created a ^ shaped chart to plot the sequence of actions from the story. This activity helped these students so that they could see where these elements came from. The next step that is planned by the CT is to use this information and apply it to a story that they create themselves.
You made some really great points in your post. I didn't even realize it until I read yours, but my CT also involes some aspects of writing that I did not realize. I read about "The Writing Process" beginning on page 52 of Thompkins. Thompson discusses the writing process as a series of five stages of what students think and do when they write (52). The stages are prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Prewriting is the “getting ready to write” stage (52). In this stage, the students decide on a topic and purpose for writing, figure out the genre, engage in rehearsal activities to gather ideas, and use a graphic organizer to organize ideas. I have seen parts of this stage in my classroom. My first grade students picked their own topic and considered the purpose for writing when I taught a lesson on bullying through a Hairy Maclairy story. Stage two is drafting which consists of a rough draft and emphasizing ideas rather than mechanical correctness. Stage three is revising, which is where you reread through the rough draft and share writing in writing groups. If a student’s story did not seem to make sense, we read through the draft together, which is parting of the revising stage. This relates to the drafting stage because by rereading their draft, they revising a first draft to create a second one. Not all students had to do this. Also in the third stage the students make substantive changes that reflect the classmates’ comments and conference with the teacher, which is basically how we revised the drafts. In the fourth stage of editing, the students proofread the revised rough draft, identify and correct errors such as spelling and capitalization. The fifth stage is publishing which is where the students make a final copy and share the writing with an audience.
ReplyDeleteJust because my CT does not say, "write a first draft or rough draft" she still incorporates drafts into writing when necessary. She also does revision and conferences with the teacher.
There are different genres when it comes to writing. These genres are descriptive writing, expository writing, journals and letters, narrative writing, persuasive writing, and poetry writing. So far I have only seen narrative writing in my classroom which is when students recall familiar stories with a beginning, middle, and an end. Descriptive writing is when students notice sensory details and comparisons to make their writing powerful. Expository writing is when students collect and synthesize information in a form of objective writing. Journals and letters consist of students writing to themselves and to specific audiences in a form of personal writing. Persuasive writing is when a student writes to persuade someone on a viewpoint of theirs. Poetry writing is when students create word pictures while playing with the idea of rhyme and other devises. There are some really good ideas of activities to use in the classroom listed on this chart on page 54.
I listed the qualities of the writing process that compare to ones I've seen in my placement, but I think the ones that contrast (or just aren't there) are because my class is young and just getting to know the writing process, at least in my classroom.
I worked with students on writing when they wrote their bullying stories. I helped them to think of ideas and plan out what they wanted to say as well as including important aspects such as characters and emotions and setting.
Just like you, I made a connection to my 301 class. I worked with my focus student on writing many times. We would do rough drafts, revise, plan, and finalize projects. Many of these things fall under the steps of the writing process.
Last year I had a CT who used a very similar approach to writing; it wasn't specifically designated a time, but was spread out throughout each subject and actually used the most in science. This year, however, my CT has very specific language arts time (the entire morning), but he goes through phases of what they focus on. For instance, since Christmas break, they have been working on genres. They would read a book on a specific genre (mystery, narratives, etc) and then they would write out their own stories that reflected that genre. Now, after focusing on those for so many months, they are spending most of their time with spelling and more grammatical things like diagraphs.
ReplyDeleteRight now, they have another story in progress, and today I actually had to go around and read their writing plans (they have to fill out specific plans before they can begin their rough drafts) and give them suggestions to make sure their stories made sense. They are writing mysteries based off of a picture, and a lot of the stories needed a lot of help before they could go to the draft phase. I have realized that my CT has done a very good job with formulating the students into good writers. They all know the pre-writing phases and are good at developing their ideas before writing. A lot of them do research for their stories, and that is also similar to a webquest. Most of them have their stories in a different setting where they need to do research on the town and the different landmarks, weather, and all of that information to make it more real. I have had to help many kids go through reference books and interpret maps and online information and translate that information into their stories. Their drafts are also age appropriate, but have a lot of different writing aspects involved with them. They have done a lot of work with dialogue and using words other than "said" with it. Instead of a word wall, they have a "said is dead" wall where the students put words you can use other than "said" on the wall. This is an active process that keeps being added to, and it gives them something else to pay attention to when they read.
I have been lucky to witness a lot of writing and a lot of good writing workshops in my classroom. I'm also lucky that I have been able to help out with their writing, whether it is with their online or reference book research, or with their writing ideas. It has been interesting to see the great work that fifth graders are capable of as well as how to formulate such good writers through workshops and various activities.