Teaching Writing

As the school year winds down, I am starting to get excited for next year
already!  The changes that I intend to make along with the new additions make me
believe that I will be a better teacher next year than I have been.  One of the
things I am most excited about is the incorporation of Writer's Workshop.  This
class along with Nancy Wood Ray and Regie Routman have provided my with many
aspiring new ideas and have fostered my new drive to help my students want to
write, to love to write!  Chapter 5: Time in the Workshop as a Predictable Event
reminded me of how perfect my schedule is to accommodate a workable writer's
workshop with my second graders.  I have an open, uninterrupted block of 3 ½
hours in the morning to be used for language arts.  I have no excuse!  Writer's
workshop can be as predictable as lunch, and hopefully will be starting next
year.  According to Ray, "We need lots of time and we need regular time for
students to grow as writers" (57), something I can successfully offer and
incorporate into my schedule.  I know that if my excitement continues, my kids'
excitement will follow.  Even though it's at the end of the school year, I have
tried mini writer's workshops this year and my students have loved it.  They are
excited to write, and are asking when they get to do it again - if only I would
have started it earlier.  I appreciated reading Ray's recommendation for time
management and how to schedule the writing events.  I know with second graders,
independence can be hard, but not impossible.  With structure and schedule from
day one, independent writing time can be done and done well even at the younger
grades.  I am hopeful that Katie Wood Ray's book, About the Authors will provide
extra suggestions that I will find helpful and useful as I try to incorporate
Writer's Workshop into a second grade classroom.

Expectations…..where to begin.  I expect all of my students to learn and to perform, but can there be different expectations for different kids?  I know that all students need to excel and perform, but there are some students who I know will never do so at the same level as their peers even though they will forever be in the regular education classroom.  It’s not that I don’t expect them to do their work, I just know they are not capable of the same amount or the same quality.  I don’t want anyone to feel that I’m lowering my standards for some, and raising them for others.  However, adjusting materials and expectations, in my opinion, is necessary if we want to provide every student with a feeling of success….Success needs to be brought to their level and their ability wherever that may be.  I always nurture and nudge my students as Routman suggests.  Overall they receive the same instruction and modeling along with sufficient encouragement along the way, but with varying expectations in the end.  As I get to know my students, I develop appropriate and adequate expectations for each of them.

Establishing schoolwide expectations is necessary and essential if students are going to continue to excel and progress.  This is of concern to me as my school seems to be very inconsistent with their expectations from grade level to grade level.  At the beginning of the year, they seem excited about 6-traits, but by the end of the year, they have heard about something new and plan to try it out, but with only certain grades.  We are always trying things out, and only certain teachers use certain programs.  There is no consistency between grade levels, yet within grade levels.  We need to adopt a writing structure(s) and stick to it so kids will understand and continue to develop their writing from year to year.  With consistency, improvement in writing should be seen.  And we wonder why our kids are struggling with writing and the MEAPS?  If we want our kids to be good writers, we need to begin the development early and progress with consistency throughout the grades as students build on their prior knowledge and skills rather than continuing to change the direction and format from year to year.

It seems as though Regie Routman has additional and valuable information to share regarding the writing process and essentials we must provide our students.  Rachel Wood Ray impressed me from the very start, but Routman has done just the same!  Her ideas are fresh and exciting, and I was excited to read about new suggestions as well as ideas I am currently practicing in my classroom.  From simplifying the writing process to the celebration and sharing of writing, students must be actively engaged and interested. 

I never thought of myself as a writer and because of that writing has never been an area in my teaching that I have felt success or excitement about.  As I read the words presented by Routman, however, these feelings changed.  In addition to Nancy Wood Ray’s suggestions, the two have sparked a new interest and excitement for teaching writing, and I’m already anticipating next year’s writing curriculum.  I am excited to bring writing into my classroom with the ideas and suggestions brought forth by both Ray and Routman. 

One of the ideas Routman presented was the importance of celebration and writing.  Everyone in my classroom must celebrate their successes, risks, and learning opportunities that will develop from their writing experiences.  As Routman stated, “The celebration of children’s writing needs to move right up front to become a major teaching goal.  Too many of our students find writing painful, and much of that pain comes from too much concern and correctness at the expense of enjoyment” (18).  Unfortunately, my personal experiences with writing have been negative, and I have lost the enjoyment associated with it.  I feel that Routman provided many suggestions and ideas for me to use and incorporate as I try to bring back and build the excitement for writing in my own classroom.  I want my students to be excited about writing as second graders and continue their love for writing through the years.  Not only are there suggested goals for myself as a teacher, but outcomes to help me assist my students in developing and meeting their goals as writers.

Another suggestion from Routman included the importance of modeling good writing as well as depicting how a struggler writer may think.  Students need to see that writing just doesn’t happen, and even their teacher can struggle.  Students need to hear how to work through the stumbles and falls as a topic and ideas are created and developed.  Not only does the act of teaching writing need to be modeled and shared, but the idea of just writing needs to be done as well.  When students write, teachers should write, too, something I need to focus on more next year.  Whenever my students are engaged in writing, I will also try to do the same.  Students need to see that writing is important to me.  If I want my students to write for me, I must do the same for them.

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.

As I sat down to read the first assignment, I was excited – excited for ideas to use in my classroom.  Before starting this class, a few of my peers at school mentioned how great the class was, how much they learned, and how much information they received that they could apply in their own classrooms.  To top it off, the first chapter was on persuasive writing, one of the writing types we are supposed to cover, but a topic that I’m not comfortable in introducing and teaching.  However, I was pleasantly surprised with the examples presented in chapter one by Lane, ones my second graders could even connect with.  I know all of them have convinced their mothers or grandmothers into buying them something and now all I have to do is pull the information out of them!  Writing can be easy especially when the writer has experiences and can make connections.  When I thought about persuasive writing, I tended to think more about big topics as presented in chapter two, but the first section of reading helped simplify things into language and concepts my second grade students could practice.  I am excited to try out the activities presented by Lane and Bernabei.  Although I will end the year working with the simpler persuasive concepts, next year could bring more complex issues from chapters two and three if the style is taught earlier in the year.  Lane and Bernabei have wonderful lesson ideas that will spark interest and excitement in young kids and hopefully help them to develop into a writer beginning at a young age.