As I was reading Routman’s advice on teaching writing, I realized that there is a lot more to this subject area than I had previously thought. In order to be an effective writing teacher, I will need to understand the areas of writing that should be covered in 4th grade, as well as the Common Core Standards. As of right now, all I know about what is expected of my students is that they will need to write an informational, narrative, and persuasive pieces. Learning about the other skills that I will be teaching is crucial in order for me to effectively teach writing. I hope to develop my teaching skills by learning how to incorporate the basic writing standards and skills into the overall lesson goals. I also want to learn how to effectively monitor and keep records of my student’s writing. Since there are so many important aspects to writing, being able to keep track of each student’s individual progress is extremely important in order to help them improve their writing skills. I have already had several conversations with my MT about writing conferences, and I am excited to learn from her about how to utilize these rare one-on-one interactions with my students.
Some professional dilemmas I might encounter if I were to follow Routman’s advice is that my school has a writing curriculum that teachers are required to follow. The three pieces that I mentioned before (informational, narrative, and persuasive) are the main components of the curriculum and do not leave much time for other writing opportunities. Another dilemma that I would encounter is that much of the beginning of the year is spent on preparing for the MEAP test. Preparing for this test means that many writing skills are crammed into quick lessons in hopes that the students will be able to write a piece of work that scores high enough on the MEAP.
One way I hope to alter the writing curriculum is to have the students keep a writing notebook/journal. In this notebook, students could explore many different types of writing, genres, and stories. This would allow them to experiment with different types of writing other than informational, narrative, and persuasive. The only problem I foresee with this idea is that there will not be enough time allotted for mini-lessons that model and teach the various types of writing for my students to practice in their notebooks. I plan to speak with my MT and attempt to develop a plan that can incorporate these notebooks into our daily writing lessons.
Like Carly, I am also in fourth grade and I know that our students will also focus on the same three types of writing she mentioned (informational, narrative and persuasive). Our students are focusing on MEAP practice now with compare and contrast pieces and also doing some personal narratives as well, which they are already pretty familiar with.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the section of the text that offered suggestions of language to use during writing conferences (pg 230). I have noticed that I have started to do some false praising because it is the beginning of the year and I don't want to discourage anyone especially the struggling writers. When I wrote comments in everyone's first spiral notebook entries and I told everyone they did a nice job and that I was looking forward to seeing their writing grow. While the last statement was true, I probably shouldn't have told all the students they did a good job, because not all of them earned it. When it comes time for me to help with individual writing conferences I want to have some of this language in mind to use, so I can be positive but also find ways to give helpful feedback .
I also really like what this chapter had to say about the importance of mini lessons in regards to writing. My MT always starts writer's workshop with a mini lesson, and it is really cool how it gets their ideas flowing, and most are eager to share their work once it is completed as well. I think that I have a lot to learn from my MT and I hope to develop some of these skills that she has already comfortable using.
Like Catie and Kelsey, I TOO am in a classroom placement which will be taking the MEAP in the upcoming months. However, I have not seen a lot of MEAP practice thus far, and as far as my literacy and social studies MT has told me, she does not plan to implement much MEAP practice into her teaching schedule. Hopefully then, I will not have too hard of a time to continue focusing on common core standards. Only time will tell...
ReplyDeleteKelsey's self-to-text connection to the writing conferences mentioned in our reading also brought up memories of a similar situation that occurred in my own placement. Very recently, I was asked to go through every student's page long assignment on creating metaphors and make positive comments on their work. Like Kelsey, I ended up putting positive remarks on student's work that I did not particularly believe to be true, or what I now know to call "false praising". Initially, I was not entirely sure how to react to this incident, but thanks to our reading and Kelsey's connection I too can see how this is a great leeway into thinking about how I can better form criticism into helpful feedback.