ENTRY #6: Reflecting On Progress In Class

 Dear Dr.Jones, 

            I'm happy to say that I've been really enjoying LTED 618. I think that with the primary focus so far around literacy being about the oral language that taking a deeper dive into the written language part has been a refreshing change. The structure of the course isn't anything I expected it to be, class seems to be more set up in a workshop way than the traditional lecture followed by assignment. I will say there are parts that it has taken me a minute to grasp, such as the tracking of the writing process. I find this particularly interesting, I wonder if it's because I don't have any memory of tracking my writing in elementary school, or have a harder time separating the different parts of the writing process. It's almost as if when I'm in class I'm back in the position of a student in elementary school completing a writing project. I personally like that we're relearning the writing process through the shoes of a student in grade school. I think it allows for me to gain perspective of what thoughts might be going through students head during this process that are going through mine. As well as the hands-on aspect,  assist in figuring out what are strategies that I'm using that will be helpful to my students one day.

            There are a couple of learning activities/instructional strategies that I've learned during this course already, that I can see will be beneficial to my work as a teacher of literacy. One of the biggest things I've learned is the importance of using mentor texts, and how helpful they can be to our students writing. When you start a new writing piece with your students in class, bringing mentor text in for your students to do a book walk with to look at how the writing is structured, or do 2-3 minute readings of, to listen to how that genre might sound like when written. This in my opinion provides students with a great example, and they can pick up on some of the important features and ideas of the genre. I also really have thought about and would like to include strategy's like the card strategy lesson. I've learned that using writing as a way to brainstorm is a really important part of writing. The card strategy allows for students to move their written brainstorms around to make sense to their thinking about how to write a piece, or what might be some great things to include. As a reader and writer myself, this course has let me learn that the writing process/reading process are parallel processes. I can now see when I'm reading how rereading a section of writing is like the editing stage of writing, because it's like you're rereading to see if the meaning makes sense to you, or clarify the big idea just like when you edit a written piece. 

        I  think moving forward my biggest challenge is differentiating the genre pieces project from the teaching the genre. I think that my brain just combines the two together, and then I get confused on what I should be focusing on during the writing portion of the asynchronous time. I think I might be able to improve this if I start to print the Moodle page for the week with the agendas it might be helpful to be able to easily go back and reread for clarity then trying to find it on Moodle again. 

                                                                                    Best Regards,                                                                  

                                                                                            Marissa Towers  

            

    

ENTRY #5: Reflecting on the Card Strategy

 When I first read about the Card Strategy lesson in Kucer and Rhodes article Counterpart strategies: Fine tuning language with language, I had struggled to really understand how effective this strategy could be. When I brainstorm about topics I want to write about, I typically on a graphic organizer would think of the general topic and then branch off into 2-3 smaller sections that has a relevance to the purpose of the main topic. Brainstorming on what to write was never really a creative/fun process for me, it was more of a "this is what you have to do, so pick a topic and start writing about it". When I got to actually participate in the card strategy in class, I felt like I gained a greater perspective and understanding of how this can be a great tool for our students to use writing as a way to think. When reflecting on the experience, through this strategy it allowed for me to see an abundance of ideas that I could talk about in my writing that had to do with my topic. I think the most important part of this kind of brainstorming is that it's very visual and manipulative. There is a-lot of movement of cards and rearranging of what I thought had the most relevance to my topic. For students this is great because their brains are always moving and sometimes you can't always move the ideas on the page around as fast as your brain is thinking. 

I think another really effective part of this card strategy is having a peer rearrange your subtopics in an order that makes sense to them. When my partner was doing this for me I discovered another perspective of how I could talk about my subtopics, this allowed for me to think about my writing in a new way and grow more ideas. As Kucer and Rhodes state the strategy during this part students are "amazed that their meanings can be structured in a variety of ways...builds flexibility with the writing process and gives the students access to a variety of options" (1986, p.191). I would love to use the card strategy some day in my own classroom to help students in the writing process. I think that the more hands on we can make the writing process for our students the more they're going to enjoy the process and grow their ideas. The lesson card strategy allows for students to be collaborative by sharing their ideas with peers, be hands-on in moving ideas around, not being limited to the amount of subtopics they make cards for, and gain perspective on a variety of ways their ideas can be arranged. This process doesn't box the student in to writing a certain way or order but provides discovers, "Spencer didn't use the cards as a restraint or a rigid outline; as he wrote he discovered and included a major new ideas" (Kucer & Rhodes, 1986, p.191). In the future I will be using this writing to think strategy to engage my students in the writing process.

References

Kucer, S. B. & Rhodes, L. K. (1986). Counterpart strategies: Fine tuning language with language.                           The Reading Teacher, 40(2), 186-193

ENTRY #4: Writing To Think

 In my days of being in school a-lot of the writing that I had done explored my thinking process in different ways. When I think of writing to think, I think of open ended questions, brainstorm sessions and journaling. However there are many more ways that writing can be used to think. In Tompkins (2012) chapter 2, he presents several cognitive strategies that can be used to help students write to think. When I was reading about the different strategies, I felt that most commonly I have used and been asked to the strategies regarding organizing and questioning. 

When writing any kind of paper or creating a research project on a topic, the first thing that I was always asked to do before starting to write was to think about what information is so important to my topic that it's going to have to be included, what information do I think isn't going to make it, or have little relevance. I would decide this by creating a graphic organizer or outline and thinking about where to place the pieces of my writing. The majority of this process was filled with eraser marks and scribbles, it took time to place everything to make a cohesive outline for my paper in order to be prepared to write. The process of using organization writing to think is used at different stages of writing as well. Tompkins (2012) states that although organizing is usually a prewriting strategy "... students also use the strategy during the drafting and revising stages: If their organizational plan isn't working during drafting..." (p. 40). I think that sometimes we forget that although theres a writing process, the strategies can be interchanged with different stages. I know that sometimes my prewriting hasn't always fit the prompt that I was writing about, or my thinking hadn't been completed to help the reader. I have gone back to the drawing board and used writing again to think about how I can rearrange my ideas to make sense to my reader. It's rare you hit the bullseye the first time, you really want to be able to show by the end that you've gone through a tremendous process of altering and thinking to get a writing that you're truly happy with.  

In my opening sentences of this blog I had mentioned that one of my initial thoughts when it comes to writing to think was open ended questions. Tompkins had altered my perspective of questioning as I read chapter 2. I didn't realize when I had mentioned open ended questions that is coming more from a readers perspective of answering an open ended question to think about the writing. Whereas Tompkins discusses questioning as throughout the writing process you're questioning the physical writing you've created, "students ask self-questions to guide their thinking during writing. They construct questions such as 'Am I ready to begin drafting?' and 'Should I move this part?'"(p.41). I really think that the mini-lesson on p.42 has helped me understand how it can be used in the classroom. It's important that the students know what and how questioning is used during writing, providing examples. As a teacher I think before my students use this strategy I would want as a class to create an anchor chart that held possible questions we should be asking ourselves while we're writing. I believe that some of the questioning does come naturally for some kids, or at least some questions. I was the kid that would have a full on conversation with myself while rereading my writing to verbally talk through it and try to see if what I'm saying is going to make sense to my reader, that would include questions. I really am excited to be able to explore more the use/strategies of other ways that we can use writing to think.   

ENTRY #3 Enhancing Instruction for Students

 As a soon to be teacher I believe it's our job to keep making changes and updating our instruction for our students to benefit from. Frequently teachers get caught up in what they're comfortable with, or what has been working for them for years. If we aren't changing with the times we aren't helping our students evolve and grow to their full potential. When I was reading Tompkins I saw a few craft lessons that I thought would be great for teaching future 3rd graders. When I was working in a 3rd grade classroom as a sub one day, I had realized that the students were good at creating a story that had a beginning, middle and end. However, the students weren't connecting their sentences which off set the flow of the story. The majority of the sentences started with the characters name for example, "Nana went to the grocery store and they were out of muffins. Nana went to a bakery to get muffins there." I would make time as a teacher, knowing that this is a struggle in many kids writing, not just 3rd graders to spend time teaching transitional words. Tompkins says that teaching kids transition words helps students to "keep the sentence-to-sentence rhythm going in their writing." (2012, p. 75). I want to note here however that I would focus more on the ones that aren't as popular such as "besides", "meanwhile", "therefore". I think kids over use the ones they're taught to use to tell a story in 1st grade such as, "first", "second", "next" etc. Tompkins offers a mentor text "Suddenly! A Preston Pig Story", where students can investigate with putting other transition words in for the word "Suddenly" that is overused. I would love to try this one day with students! 

If I taught a younger grade, In the Richards and Hawkes (2011) article they also talk about transition mini-lessons using a different mentor text, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. I think this just shows the importance of discussing effective transition words with your students and how mentor texts help students greatly during instruction. Richards and Hawkes offer a bunch of mini-lessons that help with word choice which is something I really believe is key in great writing. I really like "What words or phrases grab your attention", and "How does the author's words help you develop sensory images" (2011, p. 371). There are a lot of other great word choice lessons that caught my eye as well. When I was in my clinical the reading specialist I was working with, in her room had on her bulletin board a grave yard, and in the graveyard were "dead" words. The students knew that in their writing if they wrote one of the dead words to go back and find a better word choice. I think that this is definitely something I'd like to have in my classroom as a support to word choice mini lesson. With the combination of mentor texts, supporting word choice walls, to go with the mini lesson I think that my students will be successful. Mentor texts allow for young writers to have a positive example of what good writing looks like in an interactive way where they're both engaging with the text and learning the skill to incorporate into their own writing. 

References

Rickards, D. & Hawes, S. (2006). Connecting reading and writing through author's craft. The          Reading Teacher, 60(4), 370-373.

 

ENTRY #2: Reflecting on Essential Elements of Writing

 Thinking about the past weeks readings on what essential elements of writing programs consist of and what it might look like in classrooms. I can think back to many times were I have experienced my own interactions with elements as a student in school. In Calkins and Ehrenworth's article they talk about three main essentials, having protected time to write, choice, and response in the form of feedback. In elementary school we had 30-40 minutes a day blocked out just for writing. What I find interesting thinking back to elementary school is that it wasn't always consistent with the amount of time we actually had to write as we continued to move up on grade level. Calkins and Ehrenworth have mentioned how "teachers across grade levels to agree on a progression of skill development and corresponding units so instruction at one grade builds on instruction in the prior grade, with units of study fitting tongue and groove together" (2016, p.12). As I went up in grade level sometimes we would use that writing time to finish things that didn't get done in other subjects such as reading our chapter book and filling out comprehension questions. It was almost like teachers thought as long as we were writing something on paper it could be counted as writing time, the components of writing didn't always matter. 

How I see it is that like Tompkins says "teachers should provide 15-30 minute lessons" (2012, p.17) prior to the writers craft to teach students explicitly and then the chance to practice the skill and gain feedback on their writing in order for students to grow. Without consistency in grade levels I felt that there was gaps in my writing. One thing that really helped me throughout my writing is the feedback I received in my writing. For every piece of writing I did I would use that feedback to also help guide me in my next assignment. I was the type of student that thrived and was motivated off positive compliments and the use of suggestive feedback. I felt that with feedback I was always in the "know", I knew what I had to do to make my writing better and with the compliments I saw my strengths which helped me to grow confidence. 

I have not yet had the chance to be a teacher of writing, but as I read I was thinking about what would be beneficial to my future students in their writing workshop. I think that routine is something very important while incorporating the essential components. I think that it would be useful that students have a mentor text to go with their mini-lesson, students being able to see what that writing skill looks like in a text is a great reinforcement. Students learn differently as well and I think that adding this aspect especially helps our visual learners. I think that also students in my past would've benefited greatly from being able to have a choice of what they're going to write about. I have witnessed the huff's and puff's, and lost faces when writing about what they're told to. However like Calkins and Ehrenworth say "the quality of writing will go up if students are allowed to choose the subtopics into which they inquire, the primary research they pursue, and the positions they defend" (2016, p.9). I hope to have the chance to run a writing workshop one day that the students take ownership, and find engaging.

References

Calkings, L. Ehrenworth, M. (2016). Growing extraordinary writers: Leadership               decisions to raise the level of writing across a school and a district.The                    Reading Teacher, 70(1), 7-18.