Today I asked my younger sister about the writing process. She looked at me and said: “ you grab a writing utensil. You use that writing utensil to make shapes on paper. And hope someone else can read those shapes. And then you proofread.”
While this seems a bit comical to those of us ‘later in the writing game,’ back when we were first learning it certainly didn't ever feel that way. We have gotten to the point where we can comfortably sit down and crank something out- depending on our content. Whether or not it is a good thing could be further questioned, but generally we are able to get something down on paper (or on the computer).
For someone who is learning to write, (or perhaps learning to write well) there are five stages to be considered. Call them what you will, it is the actual process involved that is important. The combined five are found within an activity that is found in schools sometimes titled “writers workshop” that encourages students to take the writing process one step at a time. With practice, I think some of the steps can be consolidated a little bit, but I feel the whole activity necessary for a strong finished product. Below I will go into detail about the general process, and reference the concepts from Sharon Creech’s Love That Dog and Mara Casey and Stephen Hemenway’s Structure and Freedom: Achieving a Balanced Writing Curriculum.
The Five Stages of the Writing Process
1. Pre-Writing The prewriting stage is the brainstorming stage. It is when the students think about their goals for their writing, and the ideas that they want to get down. Ideas can be organized at this stage, and an outline for what they want to write is developed. The purpose of the writing is also identified. In Love That Dog, the pre writing stage is when Jack (the author) is getting his initial thoughts down on paper, and is playing with (and fighting with) his teachers instructions.
2. Drafting. The processes where by students get their thoughts that they have created in the pre-writing stages into the beginnings of their published works. The focus on this stage is getting thoughts down on paper, rather than grammar. In Structure and Freedom, the author goes mentions that the students draft as well as revise, edit and conference with each other on how to improve their work, as one draft is not enough to produce quality work.
3. Revising. Revising can occur when students share their work with others, and then take this feedback into consideration. They may or may not choose to make changes to their work as a result of the feedback they have received, although between the first and last draft there should be several changes. In Structure and Freedom, it is discussed how students talked about their work, and then made changes to their work to improve upon the strengths of their work, as well as strengthen up the weaker areas.
4. Editing. Editing is when students proofread their own work for grammatical mistakes or other mechanical errors. This seems to be a big part of the writing process that is retained in the educational system. We have placed an emphasis on the ‘mechanical errors,’ such that students pay heavy attention to them. This is noted in Structure and freedom, that students recognize that their teachers pay heavy attention to this area, perhaps more than others such as the drafting process.
5. Publishing. Publishing is an important part of the writing process. It can happen in the classroom, the school community, or the community at large. It can be published by itself, sent to a newspaper or community group. In Love That Dog, Jack’s work is shared with the poet that inspired his work, as well as with the rest of the school community by having it put up on the board on coloured paper. By sharing work with others, it encourages students to do work well, and keeps it authentic.
To build off of the idea of the writing process, it is also necessary to think of the atmosphere of an engaging writing classroom. Students need to be in a location that facilitates a comfortable working environment that facilitates reading and writing. There are a variety of ways to do this, but I feel like it is important to highlight a few key examples.
Firstly, having a place to display published student work is important. This must be updated regularly, so that the work doesn’t become just part of the scenery but read by students and visitors to the classroom. In Love That Dog, Jack’s work is put up on the wall for the class and visitors for the class to read and think about.
Another method of creating an effectively engaging classroom is to have examples of well-written work for students to look at and think about. It can be posted on the wall, on the board, or given to students to think about. Miss Stretchberry (Jack’s teacher) gives Jack’s class examples of poetry that fit her lesson.
Lastly, having an opportunity or location for students to conference and peer review each other’s work comfortably can be very helpful for students. This might be a quiet area away from the main hubbub of the room such as a quiet corner with desks or special chairs. This can encourage students to take that extra moment to do a review, but also to feel comfortable and supported while they are doing it.
For myself as a pre-service teacher, I am going to keep a few things in mind when developing and maintaining an effective and balanced writing classroom. I need to make certain that I do not limit my activities to my zone of comfort, but instead weight all areas of writing equally. That is to say, if I have a preference for creative writing, I should not neglect more ‘technical writing’ and vice versa. Furthermore, I need to be cognizant of the needs and interests of my students and tailor my lessons to them. While not every activity is going to speak to all students, trying to find materials that engage as many students (and different students) as possible is something that I am going to strive towards. I want to create a classroom where students are able to try a large variety of things, and hopefully a good majority of them resonate.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Reflections from Grade 6
Looking back on my educational career, I have fond memories of my grade six teacher, and in particular one ELA unit. Up until that point, I had been included in the ‘read a novel, write something, move on’ club. Each chapter was read painfully going around the room, while my eyes glazed over, my head going elsewhere to deal with the monstrosity that was being committed within the classroom walls. Or at least, that is what I thought. It wasn’t that I didn’t like to read, per se, but rather had established that I was interested in a very particular genre (generally speaking WW2 historical fiction or autobiographies) and could navigate myself around the public library quite successfully.
We came in one day, and he announced to us that he was going to read to us. I was suspicious. Why was he reading to us? Was the book going to be terrible? Oh no. He was holding up a book with an animal on the front. I hated books with animals. I wanted to hear about people! I wanted to finish reading that Kit Pearson novel I had in my backpack! The last thing I wanted was to be bored out of my mind- yet again- by a novel that didn’t apply to me or interest me.
Instead of launching into (what I imagined would be) a long droning lesson on something boring, he simply opened up the book to the first chapter and started reading. I’m a visual person, but I love being read to. I always have. There is something so powerful about reading read a story, and being read a story well. In this case, my teacher paused after he had gotten us interested and handed out copies of the book so that we could follow along if we wanted to.
We were encouraged to listen. If listening to us meant to sit back and close our eyes, we were more than welcome to. The caveat however, was that we had to respond to chapters (usually this meant that we’d respond to 2-3 chapters at a time) in a journal. We were to write a response and to include a picture about what we were thinking about. Generally the practice seemed to stop us from falling asleep so I assumed that it was doing its job.
Quickly this became one of my favourite parts of the day. We talked about the characters, we wrote about the characters. We sat back and were able to enjoy what we were listening to. My classroom was taken away from its location on the military base, away from the idea of (most of our parents) away at sea, away from the kids on the playground, from the interschool rivalry between the kids in French immersion and us. I remember talking with other people in the classroom and feeling how strange it was that we ALL seemed to be enjoying this book. We coloured, and thought, and talked about how we were experiencing the book.
Taking our work and gluing it onto construction paper, making title pages, and comic strips explaining our favourite chapter or two of the book and including it in the book didn’t seem like work to me. We were able to explain our reasoning any way we wanted to, using poetry, written work, photographs and charts. I was having fun thinking about this book, because my opinions weren’t wrong, they were just different.
Taking my reflection a little bit further, I feel like the discussions were quite guided by my teacher, but still really open to the opinions of the class. Our book reports got put up on the board outside our classroom to share with the rest of the school. I remember being pretty proud of the ‘adult’ like work that we had produced- look how grown up we were! Writing proper reports!
The approach that I think my teacher took was more of an inquiry-based approach. We were guided to think about certain areas of chapters and encouraged to think about and reflect on themes, but ultimately it was up to us as individuals and as a class to get our own knowledge out of this book. At the same time, we were building off of our prior knowledge- thinking about what was being said, writing and drawing in our journals, and discussing with our classmates. We had opinions that we used to interpret the material and that was reflected in our journals.
Speaking for myself, I was in a place where I was exploring a new concept (animals in books! And they talked!) but I was doing so from a place I understood- bringing in emotions and my real life experiences. My understanding of Jean Piaget’s theory of learning (as from Language Arts: Content and Teaching Strategies 5th Edition) backs this up- we were learning new material, but using our previously gained knowledge to make it easier to accommodate the new material, and to include it into what we already knew or understood.
After a little bit of googling, I re-discovered the title of the book we read: The Incident at Hawks Hill. I sort of want to go back and re-read it, just to see how I interpret it now as an ‘adult.’ Thinking back about this activity really makes me realize what a good teacher he was. I’m really grateful for his calm insight, his patience in walking me through long division over and over and over again, and his book choice amongst other things. Not that he was perfect, but that we were able to try things outside of our own personal ‘worlds’. And for me, that is one of the signs of a good ELA teacher.
We came in one day, and he announced to us that he was going to read to us. I was suspicious. Why was he reading to us? Was the book going to be terrible? Oh no. He was holding up a book with an animal on the front. I hated books with animals. I wanted to hear about people! I wanted to finish reading that Kit Pearson novel I had in my backpack! The last thing I wanted was to be bored out of my mind- yet again- by a novel that didn’t apply to me or interest me.
Instead of launching into (what I imagined would be) a long droning lesson on something boring, he simply opened up the book to the first chapter and started reading. I’m a visual person, but I love being read to. I always have. There is something so powerful about reading read a story, and being read a story well. In this case, my teacher paused after he had gotten us interested and handed out copies of the book so that we could follow along if we wanted to.
We were encouraged to listen. If listening to us meant to sit back and close our eyes, we were more than welcome to. The caveat however, was that we had to respond to chapters (usually this meant that we’d respond to 2-3 chapters at a time) in a journal. We were to write a response and to include a picture about what we were thinking about. Generally the practice seemed to stop us from falling asleep so I assumed that it was doing its job.
Quickly this became one of my favourite parts of the day. We talked about the characters, we wrote about the characters. We sat back and were able to enjoy what we were listening to. My classroom was taken away from its location on the military base, away from the idea of (most of our parents) away at sea, away from the kids on the playground, from the interschool rivalry between the kids in French immersion and us. I remember talking with other people in the classroom and feeling how strange it was that we ALL seemed to be enjoying this book. We coloured, and thought, and talked about how we were experiencing the book.
Taking our work and gluing it onto construction paper, making title pages, and comic strips explaining our favourite chapter or two of the book and including it in the book didn’t seem like work to me. We were able to explain our reasoning any way we wanted to, using poetry, written work, photographs and charts. I was having fun thinking about this book, because my opinions weren’t wrong, they were just different.
Taking my reflection a little bit further, I feel like the discussions were quite guided by my teacher, but still really open to the opinions of the class. Our book reports got put up on the board outside our classroom to share with the rest of the school. I remember being pretty proud of the ‘adult’ like work that we had produced- look how grown up we were! Writing proper reports!
The approach that I think my teacher took was more of an inquiry-based approach. We were guided to think about certain areas of chapters and encouraged to think about and reflect on themes, but ultimately it was up to us as individuals and as a class to get our own knowledge out of this book. At the same time, we were building off of our prior knowledge- thinking about what was being said, writing and drawing in our journals, and discussing with our classmates. We had opinions that we used to interpret the material and that was reflected in our journals.
Speaking for myself, I was in a place where I was exploring a new concept (animals in books! And they talked!) but I was doing so from a place I understood- bringing in emotions and my real life experiences. My understanding of Jean Piaget’s theory of learning (as from Language Arts: Content and Teaching Strategies 5th Edition) backs this up- we were learning new material, but using our previously gained knowledge to make it easier to accommodate the new material, and to include it into what we already knew or understood.
After a little bit of googling, I re-discovered the title of the book we read: The Incident at Hawks Hill. I sort of want to go back and re-read it, just to see how I interpret it now as an ‘adult.’ Thinking back about this activity really makes me realize what a good teacher he was. I’m really grateful for his calm insight, his patience in walking me through long division over and over and over again, and his book choice amongst other things. Not that he was perfect, but that we were able to try things outside of our own personal ‘worlds’. And for me, that is one of the signs of a good ELA teacher.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
'No School Wednesday'
A neat thing about my program is that we have this thing my cohort likes to call 'No School Wednesday.' It is a day where our faculty offers workshops, and in November I will be attending my practicum school on Wednesdays.
I have a few workshops lined up in the upcoming weeks and I am particularly excited for them- you'll definitely get an update later on those!
Back to NSW's: I'm really working mine today with some serious multi-tasking. I know that I'm probably not going to be able to do this in my career, but I'm using mine to write up assignments and do readings to the sounds of the CBC and with a huge pot of tea. Its really nice to be able to focus on my school work and do my laundry at the same time!
The multi-tasking part I'm pretty sure will continue through my career. Earlier in the week, we were at a middle school where we were observing middle years classrooms. One teacher sticks out in my mind in particular, she was engaging, interactive and multi-tasking with the students. I remember looking around the classroom and looking at her and thinking: "this is what I want to be! I want to be ! A rockstar teacher!" She was working with a very active group of grade 7 students, mainly comprised of boys who were quite active. They were practicing the days of the week to music, and right before the last round she declared it the 'dance party round'. I'm a big fan of awesome things, and it certainly was: the room was full of dancing grade 7 students singing the days of the week- but the part that made me crack up the most was the can can line in the middle of the class comprised of a group of 6 or 7 boys. I love middle school!
I am going to be meeting up with a friend of mine in the Secondary Program later on today to go shopping for some more "cute teacher attire" (read: school appropriate attire of the sweater variety) and chat about her exciting next week. She is going to be doing her observation up island!
But until then I'm going to get back to my Art Education assignment, and relish in my NSW.
I have a few workshops lined up in the upcoming weeks and I am particularly excited for them- you'll definitely get an update later on those!
Back to NSW's: I'm really working mine today with some serious multi-tasking. I know that I'm probably not going to be able to do this in my career, but I'm using mine to write up assignments and do readings to the sounds of the CBC and with a huge pot of tea. Its really nice to be able to focus on my school work and do my laundry at the same time!
The multi-tasking part I'm pretty sure will continue through my career. Earlier in the week, we were at a middle school where we were observing middle years classrooms. One teacher sticks out in my mind in particular, she was engaging, interactive and multi-tasking with the students. I remember looking around the classroom and looking at her and thinking: "this is what I want to be! I want to be ! A rockstar teacher!" She was working with a very active group of grade 7 students, mainly comprised of boys who were quite active. They were practicing the days of the week to music, and right before the last round she declared it the 'dance party round'. I'm a big fan of awesome things, and it certainly was: the room was full of dancing grade 7 students singing the days of the week- but the part that made me crack up the most was the can can line in the middle of the class comprised of a group of 6 or 7 boys. I love middle school!
I am going to be meeting up with a friend of mine in the Secondary Program later on today to go shopping for some more "cute teacher attire" (read: school appropriate attire of the sweater variety) and chat about her exciting next week. She is going to be doing her observation up island!
But until then I'm going to get back to my Art Education assignment, and relish in my NSW.
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