Engage in an online literature discussion group on our class blog. Please read the rest of the book and make four entries 1)propose “meaty” fat questions to discuss, 2) make connections to your teaching and work with students, 3) make connections to your work as a writer. 4) Consider how what you have learned from this book might support the work of your integrated language arts unit
Please respond to one or more of your classmates’s entries in your study group.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
32 comments:
Kerian said..
Questions:
How do you address shared writing in your classroom especially with students who are new-arrivals from non-English speaking countries and are inhibited to express themselves orally?
How do you show appreciation for multi-cultural writing in your classroom?
Having read chapter 4, I am beginning to get a growing appreciation for well planned professional developments. I especially like this chapter because it reinforces the importance of staff getting together to share strategies that work.
I look forward to collaborating with my colleagues at work especially at grade level meetings when we analyze data and discuss new ideas. This makes me think of a football team that each member must rely on each other for success. I usually take away a variety of instructional approaches from those meetings that enhance my own teaching.
One thing I learned from this chapter that I will be using in my unit is how to use technology to enhance instruction in my own classroom. To me, doing the Seagull lesson serves as a good example of learning others. This is a concrete way of applying the skill needed to prepare my own integrated unit for this class. I guess that is what Nagin wanted to communicate when he shared the case study on page 49 about Cathie, the teacher-leader who believe teachers should teach each other.
Question 1: The last half of the book talked a lot about professional development and assessing writing. How do you assess writing in your classroom? I use rubrics (which I need to revise) and after reading the last part of the book, I am now thinking that keeping a writing portfolio would be a good assessment. Do any of you have any good ideas or do this in your classroom?
Question 2: What types of professional development have you had in writing in your district? What have you found to be the most beneficial? For the past few years in my district, the teachers have requested more professional development in writing. Well, we finally got it last year. We now use the Lucy Calkins Units of Study, supplemented with Empowering Writers (if the teacher chooses). However, the workshop I found to be the most beneficial is where we looked at several pictures books to use as mentor texts. This teaches my students to read like a writer. I use the mentor texts for read alouds, while conferring with students, author's craft mini-lessons, etc. Let's discuss this at during our next class.
Question 3: How else do you (the other teachers in my group) integrate writing into the other content areas? I find that I tend to have my students respond to a question. I would like my students to write more for inquiry, critical thinking and active learning, which is what Nagin points out for students in high school. If we get our students to do this in elementary school, they may carry it through the middle school and high school.
Question 4: What type of writing teacher are you? One who assigns writing or one who teaches writing? I found this chart on page 90-91 very interesting. As I went back and forth between the two columns, I reflected on the way I teach writing in my classroom. I find that the workshop model allows me to "teach" writing and not "assign" it, but each point can bring up a good discussion between teachers and the way they teach writing. This is definately something that I am going to share with my colleagues and administrator.
Kerian,
I like how you pointed out that it's important for teacher's to teach each other. The school I work in is very small, so it's easy to collaborate with other teachers. What are some things that you share/discuss at your grade level meetings? Do you have the chance to talk to the second and fourth grade teachers?
Excellent writing ladies. I love to write and teach writing and it is helpful to hear about other teachers' experiences in other schools.
Christy asked about how we asses writing. I find that assessing writing is my favorite correcting task. Each time that I give my students a prompt, I can't wait to take it home and read it. I love to hear their voices rise from the pages and I always challenge them to WOW me by making me chuckle out loud or want to read a section of the writing to my husband or kids.
I use rubrics for different writing tasks. Most often I use the Empowering Writers Rubric for Narrative Writing. I find that if I use the page to take notes from the student work, then I can easily highlight the sections of the rubric that best represent that piece of writing. I write many comments and to be sure that students read them I have students sign their initials after reading each comment. I then have them keep the rubric sheet with them for the next writign assignment so that they can refer to their prior work and make an attempt at improving themselves. It is a great deal of work, but truly worth it.
Christy, I have the students keep all writing samples and rubrics in a writing portfolio. In the front is a table of contents and the meeting notes from any tacher or peer conference. They really can grow from looking back to what they have done and planning improvements for their next pieces. I also find that parents appreciate getting all their writing in the portfolio at the end of the year. It makes a nice keepsake for the students.
Kerian asked, "How do you show appreciation for multi-cultural writing in your classroom?"
I really struggle with this. I often share stories from other cultures, trying to use books that include the story written in two languages. Over the years I have had few students that are ELL. I would definately like to learn how to bring this sensitivity to my students so that they will have an opportunity to develop cultural sensitivities. Any suggestions?
Happy Birthday Christy!
In response to Christy,
I find that any time that I try to integrate writing into the content areas it enriches the experience for the children and offers them a chance to store thier new learning with stronger connections to real life and other learning.
I often have students write in a learning journal after a SS, SCI or Math discussion. I tell them to use language to express what they learned and what they wonder. I find that this makes for a great opportunity for me to catch misconceptions and gives a voice to students that are reluctant to share in the overwheleming class discussion.
Hey Christy!
I like your second question because it makes me think of something I’ve never thought of before. Professional development in my district is usually about math or reading almost never about writing. I can recall having attended one on district PD on writing in which we talked about using rubrics to score. The idea was to make certain were are all on the same page as far as what is qualified as 1-12 on the CMTs. What we found was that schools differ in their scores and the schools that scored the lowest throughout the year had the highest CMT scores. I did not find the information beneficial at that level because it focused on similarities and differences in schools rather than improving writing. That was interesting! I am glad that happened only once. I find the school level more benefical because we meet weekly as a team, and so, once per month we get to discuss writing more thoroughly and meaningful. We share ideas that work and exchange materials.
One final thought, I also use trade books as samples during my mini-lesson when I teach for example suspense. Is that what your idea of mentor texts means?
Hey Shannon!
My suggestion for your question about teaching ELL students is that you check out the case study on page 101. Even though these are high school kids, the curriculum can easily be modified to meet kids your grade level needs. I love the idea of kids learning from each other. How meaningful!
Hi all!
Another idea that struck me during the reading was on page 82 about student participation in developing assessment. I must admit that I have tried to build upon this component in my classroom every year with good intentions, but I don’t keep up. I seldom get my students writing reflections after teaching a concept because of time constraints. This is unfortunate because I know that just having a copy of kid’s scores and rubrics in their portfolio is not enough to show how they are moving along. To have kids actually write down areas of strengths and weakness they need to work on adds clarity to what they are learning. I feel this is one of the best clues to knowing what students know or don’t across the curriculum. I need help managing this!
Since getting kids involved in progress checking is often time consuming, how do you manage this system of student participation in your classroom? And to what extent do you manage it?
Kerian,
What do you mean be progres checking? Do you mean recording strengths and weaknesses?
IF that is waht you mean, then you are RIGHT ON to note that it takes a great deal of time. I set a gols of scoring at least 3 complete prompts using the rubric before the CMTs other than that, it is much easier to score one piece of a prompt. Like tellinghte students to write only about thier use of literary elements.
I have students keeo their learning journal as a literacy workstation writing option to. They ofen will choose to read one of their selections and reflect about their process.
Shannon Quesion 1 REsponse:
"Meaty Questions"
1. Would you be able to generate a variety of formats for your students to use in written communication to help them better grasp the purpose and task of writing to a specific audience. After reading the Case Study on pages 52-55, I wondered if I could come up with a list of writing assignments that would realte to my areas of study. This would bring the task of writing to a variety of audiences into the content areas and I believe that with practice students would develop more mature approaches. For example, I might have them write a law as though they were a member of the legislature, i may ask them to write a letter hoe form a newly settled pioneer, or even write a newspaper article informing the Native Americans of the change that is headed out west in the form of wagon trains.
Question #2:
Speak to the seven organizing principals on page 58. How could these principals add meaning, focus and motivation to professional development in your district?
I know that I am much more engaged and productive when I am approached with respect and given a valuable voice. This format seems to be a positive approach at improving instruction and writing experiences for students.
Meaty Questions 3 and 4:
3. On page 62 there is a suggestion to collaborate with other teachers by watching videos of other teachers teacher. Do you feel that this would hepl you? Why or why not?
I would really like to watch videos of others, but also myself and see if I could change my approach to be more effective,while still not losing my comfort to present the material. I guess I would like an opportunity to "study" my writing instruction with others.
4. What are your feeling about the types of professional developments opppotunities that you have been offered in writing, if any?
My experience relates closely to the comment on page 61 about professional development constantly shifting focus. We need time to dedicate to a task and tiem to debrief and hone our approaches, instead it always feels like a marthon to implement more, more and more!
Shannon's Connectins To Teaching:
As I read I really felt validated for making lots of time for writing in my own classroom. I do think that students learn through writing and that cognitive connections are formed and soilified when ideas are synthesized and recorded in a student's own approach. I however wish that I could find the time and organization to guve moe time for the process of revision. I find that the content area instruction moves so fast, we rarely, if eveer, get opportunities to practice revision on our content area writing samples.
Shannon's Connection as a Writer.
While reading on the effectiveness of teacher teaching teacher professional development, I got really excited. I would really love chances to get together with my colleagues and talk about what makes strong and engaging writing instruction. I think that when teachers see themselves as writers and as a work in progress, it gives them great insight into the experiences of their students. We remember how personal and valuable our writing is, as a reflection of ourselves. We also start to realize the emotional as well as intellectual journey that takes place during the writing process.
How My Exposure to the Becuase Writing Matters Text Will Influnence My Creation of the Integrated Language Arts Unit.
While I plan activities for students to experiece and respond to literature I will be sure to plan grade-level meeting with the third grade teachers to discuss the validity and organization. Seeking knowledge and input from other teachers will help me to enrich my own students' experiences.
Since my unit has a cultural component I will try to integrate writing in other languges to increase student awareness and sensitivities. I will have the students develop story telling skills and create a skinstory in which images act as the written form of the Native American story.
1. In reading these chapters, I immediately thought of my own school district’s professional development. I found it interesting when they were discussing the amount of time that should be spent educating teachers and administrators. The authors stated should extend beyond short-term workshops or conferences,” (p. 60). How long do they feel is appropriate to master this art of teaching? What about other subjects we teach, such as Science? I feel the third graders at my school are at a disadvantage because of the lack of knowledge we have in the content area of science. All seven teachers among my grade level have various background knowledge on the subject. I feel that the curriculum is thrown at you and you are forced to learn it on your own time. So how do you continue strong, long-term professional development in one area, when the others are also calling out for attention?
2. My district recently reconfigured our schools so that all grade level students would be housed together. My school houses grades 3, 4, and 5 for the whole district. One positive benefit that was to come out of this reconfiguration was an increased time for teacher collaboration. The third grade team meets daily for thirty minutes. Unfortunately, due to so many new initiatives, we have one day dedicated to a subject. During the meetings, there is a guest who heads that specific subject, as referred to on p. 61 Instructional consulting services, but we often don’t get to share common practices or advice on our students. Although I do appreciate meeting with my team and having an expert in the field once a week to speak with, the time constraints are difficult and we frequently don’t get through all that is needed to discuss each subject. This time is considered professional development; although at times it would be nice to have time to just collaborate as a team, or with the second and fourth grade team. I feel more collaboration within teams would result in a stronger curriculum. As the authors stated the NWP is working towards creating an alignment of the k-12 schools. Students would greatly benefit from common practices, and vocabulary from year to year.
3. The authors also discuss the importance of teachers truly understanding the writing process through being writers themselves. Personally, I love to write, but I do find it difficult to write as frequently as I should as a writing teacher. Between all the demands of today’s classrooms, along with everyday life, time is in high demand and little of it is devoted to writing. In all honesty, starting school again has required more of my time to put towards writing, which in turn helps me become a better writing teacher.
4. I found chapter 5 to add more input into the integrated unit. Throughout the unit I will be asking students to write about their new learning through a Science Notebook. This format will ask students to reflect on their new learning, use new vocabulary learned, and synthesize within the content area of science. It will also give students confidence in writing. Students will be able to share their written work as a class, which will give me a quick assessment of their understandings from the lesson to review if any key concepts were missed. I will also implement rubrics. I find that student input in creating the rubrics is also beneficial to where they aid in creating a document to assess themselves. Through these techniques, students will embed the new understandings and become more prepared for a final writing assessment explaining their learning through describing themselves as a rock.
Hi girls, I find the discussions amongst the text very interesting! Shannnon, I was thinking the same things you were in regards to watching videos of fellow teacher's lessons. I would feel more comfortable having other teachers come into my classroom and actually be in the environment to catch things the camera misses. I do also feel that common planning time to share practices and outcomes is extremely helpful to myself as an educator. I often find my colleagues look at things from a different way that I hadn't thought of, and it helps me to be a better, more well-rounded teacher.
Christy,
I haven't had a ton of professional development in writing. I did attend the Empowering Writer's Workshop for expository writing my first year of teaching when I taught fifth grade. After implementing the Trophies program from Harcourt, we blended Empowering Writers with the writing within Trophies. We did have a representative come in and share some activities from the writing. Yet, after reading this book, I found that I have a lack of writing pd. Where did you go for the picture book writing pd you spoke of? Was this an outside conference or one offered from your district?
Sarah Writes,
So how do you continue strong, long-term professional development in one area, when the others are also calling out for attention?
I agree with your frustrations here. We are always robbing Peter to pay Paul. I offer a theory that Elementary education is spread too thin with specific content, and takes less time for students to learn how to learn. If we were able to empower students to read a variety of texts for meaning and how to comminucate effectively through writing without the pressure of the dreaded week in March then I think that we would be doing them a better service. But, of course we do need some way to measure student growth, so I always find myself at a loss for how to fix things! I guess I just have to do my best to squeeze more hours into each day!
Sarah,
It sounds like your school is headed in the right direction with theh commonn planning time. What an excellent opportunity for professional discussion and leadership! If you find a way to squeeze in the sharing, let me know. I would like to bring this idea to my principal.
In response to what several of you have mentioned with regards to professional development, I completely agree! Most schools do not offer professional development in the area of writing, or if professional development is offered, there are not practical strategies for you to implement in your classroom. They offer great ideas and resources for you to use, but not practical enough to implement into the classroom. I usually find myself requesting to take outside professional development opportunities as opposed to experiencing what is offered in the district. Luckily enough, my district allows me to do this, whereas in some districts this is not an option.
The thoughts about professional development make you think about the students who are missing out on the instruction that is based off of quality professional development that only some teachers are able to attend.
Hi girls! I can't wait to discuss all of the new topics tomorrow night in class. Sarah, I use a lot of Cynthia Rylant books, Eve Bunting, Patricia Polacco books and many others as mentor texts. I have great book lists that categorize books by writing topic, depending on what you want to teach. I will bring them in tomorrow for you all.
Over the week, I was thinking how I could use this information in my integrated unit. Well,first of all, I really want the students to start writing non-fiction. It wasn't done in second grade so it will be my responsiblity to expose them to it. My integrated unit is going to be on Connecticut so I would like the students to write "about" the people of CT.
This may include researching famous people from Connecticut, learning about them, then taking it further to ask questions and answer them as if they were that person (like the activity we did in class a few weeks ago). We'll have to talk about some more ideas in class tomorrow night!
Thanks Shannon!!
Meaty Questions:
1. As the need for teaching 21st century skills was mentioned in our reading, how do you incorporate these skills into your own students learning? have you been provided with any professional development to address your concerns for instruction in this area? If so, how did it benefit your learning as well as your students?
2. Page 62 mentions suggestions for staff meetings as well as how to structure them. Could you see these strategies working within your own staff meetings? If so, how would you make these suggestions to your building administrator?
3. Does your district incorporate Professional Learning Communities? How can you utilize the information we read in this text to promote more positive professional learning communities within your building? What can you do personally, as well as a grade level team?
4. I found it interesting to have students writing across the genres. Working with students with special needs, it is challenging to even have them formulate grammaticaly correct sentences, let alone teaching different perspectives as well as different genres. How would you address this need with younger/learning disabled students?
5. Portfolios are a great assessment tool, especially when students can evaluate their own work throughout the year, as well as see the growth they've made. How do you use portfolios within your classroom? is it effective? What changes might you make to have them be a more intricate part of your learning environment?
Throughout the reading, I made connections to my teaching, when discussing assessment. I find myself when assessing student growth and progress, I evaluate every aspect of writing, with respects to grammmar, punctuation, capitalization, etc. I then have to go back through the assessment tool and evaluate the pieces of work for fluency and character, etc. It is challenging to look at students' work so critically, when they have stuggled to generate what they had written down; however, in order to gather a picture of where instruction should begin, it is necessary to find the flaws. Throughout the year, I gather a variety of writing samples, both structured and unstructured, and evaluate them with this criteria. I use curriculum based measurement, evaluating the student miscues, while promoting the positives within their writing. As a conflicting piece to this assessment idea, I find my position challenging because I don't always get to see the actual writing process of the students' work, but I can assist students in the development of ideas and the editing of their work. I usually have students complete the elaboration of their ideas on days when I am not in their classroom, when working with a teaching assistant. The challenging part of the assessment process is the missing links in my opportunity to work with them. I find that while working with the students, I am able to understand why they wrote what they did or how they did. When I evaluate the work when I do not know the origination, I have to put myself in the students' through process to see what thye were thinking when they were writing. On top of the assessment piece, we do use rubrics to demonstrate holistic writing/scoring, which are generally helpful for the students, as they are asked to evaluate their own writing, as well as others writing.
I wanted to share a positive PD experience on writing that follows with the teachers teaching teachers philosophy of the NWP.
We do teacher-led study circles in my school. The teacher presents a book to read for CEU's and the district purchases a bunch of books for the interested parties. LAst year I led a study circle on the Ralph Fletcher book Boy Writers:Reclaiming Thier Voices. We shared experiences and strategies and used the text to guide conversation. I really enjoyed hearing from other teachers about the teaching that goes in their classrooms. I learned a lot about writing, but also a lot about the instruction that takes place arnound me each day. I highly recommend the format! And...it is run by teachers and for teachers, so we choose a PD topic that we might not get other places.
I was able to make connections to my work as a writer, when thinking about how my own skills as a writing significantly impact the students with whom I work with. Everyone can write, but being able to teach students how to write, it a specific type of craft. there are millions of resources, but finding the one that works with specific students is what my job pertains to. We often think that the lessons that we do should reach all students, but sometimes or most times, they don't. that is why differentiation is important, especially for struggling learners. The idea of professional development is truly beneficial when thinking of this idea. Beginning teachers have a limited bag of tricks, and especially when they are learning new curriculum professional development and some sort of a structured curriculum guide would be benficial for these teachers. Not only would beginning teachers benefit, but even teachers who have been teaching for awhile, might need a refresher on what is quality instruction in the area of writing. I know that I find myself a better writer after reviewing what other people write or what they say. I often use work from other students to provide models for my students to work from. As a writer, I significantly rely on my own writing skills, as well as my students rely on my writing skills to become better writers. I rely on professional development to expose my writing skills for my students to use to improve in their own writing.
I have learned a significant amount from this text as I prepare for my integrated language arts unit. I will take the following that I learned within my unit:
1. Obviously integrate language arts tasks into the science based unit to have students express their learning in a variety of ways.
2. Increase the vocabulary instruction to promote a higher level of student learning. Aside from higher-level learning, students will also have a stronger background knowledge to increase their understanding of material that is read.
3. Create a portfolio that students will evaluate at the end of the unit to review the information they have learned, as well as evaluate the work that they produced.
4. Rubrics will be used to provide students with a guide to promote stronger work production, as well as a structured outline of what is expected of them.
5. 21st century skills- incorporating technology, and making what the students learn throughout the unit useful for them in the future. I will ask myself the question, "How can they take what I am doing with them today, to help them 10 years from now?"
Hi ladies,
To sum up everything on this blog I would like to say that I enjoyed writing back and forth to you. I think I learned a lot from all of you about ways to improve writing in my classroom, not just from reading the book.
One idea to keep in mind is the checklist for administrators on page 90 – 91 of Because Writing Matters that shows how to gauge writing instructions in the classroom. I think this chart is meant for classroom teachers as well because of the meaningful suggestions it highlights. I think of this as a great reminder to keep as we teach writing.
I like this checklist because it is user friendly and I can share the ideas with my team members at work.
Overall, I think the book had some good suggestions. I would recommend it for administrators to read.
Kerian, I completely agree that administrators should read this book, as there are alot of ideas that should be implemented from the top down.
I also learned a lot from reading each other's responses, thoughts, and ideas! Thanks for sharing!
Post a Comment