Saturday, January 24, 2009
Writer's Notebook Ch.7&8 group b 4pm
View the first sample chapters (available on line) Using the Writer's Notebook in Grades 3-8: A Teacher's Guide at (http://www1.ncte.org/library/files/Store/Books/Sample/35006chap1-2_x.pdf) and begin your writers notebook then post entries on Class Blog. Engage in an online discussion group on our class blog. Please read designated chapters and 1)propose “meaty” fat questions to discuss, 2) make connections to your teaching and work with students, and 3) make connections to your work as a writer (ie Keep your own notebook and share your response to it), 4)Please respond to two of your classmates’s entries in your study group, 4) Consider how what you have learned from this book might support the work of your integrated language arts unit.
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Hi Tiffany and Heather!
ReplyDeleteI liked reading this chapter because I always feel like my students and I have an easy time writing so many different things in our notebooks, and then we have to figure out what to do with them. I try to teach my students to always have a plan for what they want to write about, but Elliott mentions that it's okay to sometimes start with an idea in mind and discover the path along the way. When I taught narrative writing, we used the writing diamond to help students formulate their ideas, and now that we are teaching expository, we use the five box graphic organizer. Some kids really need these tools to help organize their thoughts. Do you guys use any kinds of graphic organizers? What do you find that is helpful?
I also think it is important to expose students to a variety of different writers so they can try to emulate that writer and/or try out a different style of writing. I always try to point out different techniques that authors use when I am doing a read aloud, and I ask my students what the author did to keep them interested, with the hope that they will apply the same strategies in their own writing. I loved the idea of writing in different formats such as letters, recipes, speeches, interviews, plays, and bumper stickers. Sometimes, kids think that the only writing is narrative or expository, and I think it is important that they understand that announcements, signs, slogans, and menus are writing too.
Have either of you done a unit of study using your writer's notebooks? If so, was is successful and do you have any feedback you would like to share about it? I guess technically I am doing this with my Integrated Language Arts Unit because I am having the students write down interesting things they learned in their notebooks about the Oregon Trail to use in the journal entries they are going to write from the point of view of a pioneer traveling west in a covered wagon.
In my own writer's notebook, I have written a lot about my family experiences and funny stories that my family has as a way of preserving them so I can share them with my own children someday. I was thinking of making my own memory book using all the funny stories I put in my notebook. This might become a summer project though!
Hi Allison and Tiffany!
ReplyDeleteI also really enjoyed these two chapters. Like you said Allison the ideas of writing in so many different forms is a great one, and wonderful for this time of year when all of my students are getting "bored" with what we've been doing so far. I loved the recipe idea and am actually going to plan that for writing next week. We've been really looking at and focusing on adding elaboration to our writing and I think this is a wonderful idea to do that.
Allison to answer your questions, I haven't really done a true unit of study with my students using their notebooks. I would like to and that's something I'm planning on doing next year. I already looked up Katie Wood Ray's book on amazon and am considering buying it, it looks like it has some wonderful ideas for doing units of study within the classroom. As a district we have the Caulkins series for units of study, but personally I don't use them, I find them hard to navigate and they are very scripted which I found hard to use when teaching writing. I like to be able to go off of what my students are really needing at that time, and with that series I found it hard to do. Right now we're working on poetry which may be considered a unit. All of the 5th graders are really getting into writing about different things, including one of my more reluctant writers who wrote a comparison poem on being skinny and fat. I wasn't too sure how to respond to him but it wasn't mean in anyway he just compared the two things.
As for graphic organizers, I've found that I change what I use each year depending on the needs of my students. We have several different organizers for expository that we can use. We introduce them all when we begin, and see which one the students respond best to, this year my students don't like organizers so I don't push them on them. They know what they need to do to organize their writing, and that's all I really care about.
Allison you mentioned mentor texts, when I was reading about them I wrote a question in my book. Do you find using mentor texts helps your students, or do you find that some of your students just "copy" what the author of the mentor text did? I can see it being hard for my students to take what they see in the mentor text and then put their own spin on it without just copying what they just read.
I actually have my last observation of the year this coming week, and now that I've read these two chapters I think I'm going to do a writing lesson using some of the ideas in this chapter. I've already tried the hot seat activity we did in class with my students, and I may do that with the novel we're reading and include writing out interview questions and answers for some of the characters in the novel as they all have very different perspectives on what is happening to them. I've found this book to have wonderful ideas that are practical and easy to use in the classroom.
As for my unit, I like the idea of writing from different perspectives, so I may have my students read one of the books I have about the Westward Movement and then re-write it from another characters perspective. This will allow them to really synthesize what they have learned and put themselves in someone elses shoes.
Hey guys!
ReplyDeleteI also found both of these chapters pretty useful. Of course for me, in chapter 8, I really enjoyed the 5 questions about using the writer's notebook. As you guys know, this being my first time using a writer's notebook, it's nice to continue to understand how and why using a writer's notebook works.
As far as the graphic organizers go, I'm am ALL about this! Especially for my population of special needs students, it's so important to use these in every single writing assignment practically. I love story maps, the 4 square boxes, basic webs, and the skeleton model. All of these are so important in getting my students to put down their ideas and get organzied before they can even write. Since writing any sentence is extremely difficult for them, this helps them get their ideas down, and then using sentence starters, can transfer their ideas to some written piece.
I also love graphic organziers because I am huge on planning for myself. I had written in my journal that even in my interview in Cheshire, I had been asked to write an essay about my 3 best qualities of being a teacher right there in the conference room after my oral interview. Even while I only had 45 minutes to do this, I used the first 5 planning and organizing my thoughts on a piece of scrap paper. I just needed it to organize my thoughts and support what I wanted to say.
One of the things that I also liked in Chapter 7 was talking about writing with an authentic purpose. What are some of the ways you guys do that? Do you use something often, or just try to incorporate it whenever you can?
Hi Tiffany and Allison!
ReplyDeleteTiffany as for your question about writing for authentic purposes, I've been trying to do more of that with my students lately. As I said in my earlier post we're doing a poetry unit right now, and we took a field trip to the Noah Webster house a couple weeks ago. When we got back I had my students write an acrostic poem about what they learned. They had a good time doing this because a lot of what they learned about was how he created the first dictionary, so they all had dictionaries out looking up words (most of the words they wanted to use had no relevance at all, but they were excited to be writing.) I try to get my students to write about what they know and what they experience, because before this year many of them never had a writers workshop so they were constantly looking for a prompt to respond to before they could write. I have really seen them open up as writers as the year has progressed.
I agree with what you said about organizers also, they are a great help especially for students with special needs, and I've also found for my more visual learners, because they can see everything written out before they begin.
Like you said Tiffany I enjoyed those 5 questions about the notebook. I often find myself struggling to write in my notebook if I think too much about what I'm going to write about. If I just sit and write, and don't analyze what I'm going to write about I find that I'm more relaxed and write more. When I start to think about what I'm writing I get stressed out and can't write, I constantly second guess what I'm writing about and then can't get anything written. I think that frustration is a good thing to share with students though, because they often get frustrated with writing when they can't find something to write about.
Hi Girls,
ReplyDeleteI am glad you find graphic organizers helpful too! I have been told by some people that they are overused, and I have been told by other people that teachers should use more of them! I really like them because I feel like it can only benefit my students by helpin them organize their ideas. I really like using Venn Diagrams, webs, KWL charts, and many others. I like using character maps and character sketches too when my students are reading books and studying the main character. I feel like it is especially great for my special education students because they do not feel the stress of writing in complete sentences, but they can abbreviate their thoughts and write in short, meaningful phrases!
Heather - I do find that my students sometimes end up copying styles they see in their mentor texts, but I don't always see this as a bad thing because they are getting practice and trying something different. Usually, they use bits and pieces of the mentor text which I think is really great because it forces them to experiment with writing.
As for writing with a purpose, I am always working on making sure my students know who their audience is. Usually, it is just me because if they are writing diary entries then the audience is really themselves, but since I am grading them, they are writing for me. It's difficult because I don't want to grade them on grammar if they are writing a diary entry because diaries are supposed to be thoughtful reflections, and not based on grammar. I told my students that I am not going to grade them on spelling because the pioneers did not check for spelling errors in their pioneer journals! The only thing I remind them of is using capital letters and periods. They are responsible for applying the skills that we have been working on all year!
Hey girls,
ReplyDeleteI really think it is so useful for students to write with an authentic purpose. I had one of my students write to McDonalds one time, and he had the most amazing voice in his letter! It was something that he really loved, so he was able to understand the purpose for his writing. It was especially great when McDonalds wrote him back with a gift certificate! I have never seen such a great smile from him. It really helped him validate why writing can be important, because he hated it so much.
Another idea for authentic writing was a research article that I read (Allison you heard me talk about this in the other class), in where the students wrote in the journals to a parent/guardian every night to increase writing for a purpose. They would have to inform them about their school day, or ask them to come to a field trip, or if they could on the trip. They all got responses, and their writing really improved over the year. This is such a great idea, however I'm not sure that either of you have the parents commitment to make sure that the journal got responded to every night. It's such a great easy way to help writing.
I think for my unit on sequencing, I will have some of the students do some sketching of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before we list the steps to make one. I will have them draw or write down any ingredient that they know can be in the sandwich. Then, after we read a book about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, they will have already began using their background knowledge through the journals. I can then stem it into writing sequential steps of other procedures used in their life.