Teaching Writing

The description provided by Ray on the opening page provided me with mixed feelings.  As a teacher, I struggle to find a happy medium for noise.  I struggle to define what is working noise, and what is distracting/off-task noise.  By the end of the year, my kids have a pretty good handle on it, but I wish they would achieve this earlier in the year.  I need to find better ways to teach them how to work constructively with each other.  I always feel that when my students are working and making noise through conversation related to the topic at hand, visitors to my classroom will interpret it as chatty-off-task noise especially if I’m working one on one with a student.  Parent perceptions of my classroom, I fear, will be disorganized chaos.  I wish there was a way to teach parents that noise is ok, noise is necessary for learning and can even be beneficial.

When it comes to structured writing workshop time in my classroom, I sometimes feel like I don’t have time.  But after reading about the necessity of a writing workshop, others have that feeling, too, but just find the time, something I am going to do more of next year.  I am excited to incorporate many of the suggestions Katie Wood Ray has provided so far, and can’t wait for further suggestions as I continue reading her book.  I also agree with Wood Ray that it is important to set goals as a teacher in what I want my students to achieve and what I want them to develop through writing workshop.  Students need to understand the many purposes of a writer as well as their jobs as a writer.  Along with developing an identity, students need time to write, all of which are responsibilities of myself to provide them.