Week 7A: Too much!

This week I collected a larger writing assignment from my students........now the task of grading begins.  In class we have discussed all the reasons students are not going through all the steps of the writing process in school.  SOL's  have dominated this conversation.  However, I would like to argue that many teachers simply struggle with the work load.  To evaluate the writing process takes so much time and effort.  Teachers must first develop worthwhile writing tasks (I think this may be the topic I would like to consider in my lit review), create a rubric, review the pre-write, comment on the draft, help students with revisions, and then grade the final draft.  When teachers have large class sizes this is incredibly time consuming and can seem insurmountable and at times too  much.  It is easier to focus and teach content versus writing and to use MCQ or fill in the blank to evaluate learning.   I feel confident that if teachers had more manageable class sizes they would more frequently teach the writing process.

 

Week 6B: Report Card Comments

This week I have report card comments due.  This is my opportunity to communicate with parents and fill them in on what we are doing in class and how their son/daughter is doing in the course.  FA asks teachers to write full narrative comments (160 words) for each student.  This is a daunting writing task when you have over 60+ students.  I find writing these so challenging because these narratives are attempting to accomplish more than one purpose.  They are intended to inform parents about the course itself as well as how students are doing.  They are also to share suggestions and strategies for how the student can continue to grow.  Additionally for a private school these are a marketing tool to demonstrate how our instruction is individualized carefully laying out all of the benefits of FA.  It is sometimes almost impossible to explain to a parent their son/daughter is doing poorly while at the same time leaving them with a positive feeling about the education they are paying for. 

This type of writing is complicated and takes time.......lots of time. This is something as a teacher and mother of three (soon to be four) is so hard to come by.  Writing is labor intensive for me and is very much a process.  It was interesting approaching this writing task after being in this course.  I found myself willfully attempting to write my comments enough  in advance to allow for drafting and revising.  Yet even knowing how beneficial it would be to draft/revise I am just struggling fitting it into my already jammed schedule.  This has been a good reminder that my students are dealing with the same issue of time constraints which is why it is critical to build in checked benchmarks.  If students are just assigned a longer project with one due date many will procrastinate and not go through the steps of the writing process.  Many writers (including myself) need more than self created deadlines for pre-writes, drafts, revisions......they need help holding themselves accountable and for students that can be accomplished through a clear and detailed plan with a calender schedule.  Young writers need this guidance and help.  

 Follow UP:  my boss complimented me on my comment "skills".  This does not mean that I look forward to February when these are due again  but it was fun to reach out to my students families and compile and review each student and take tone of the growth of each of these students.  

Week 6A: Descriptive Language?

After reading the section in Tompkins on descriptive language I was trying to figure out which of these techniques and strategies could be incorporated into in a social studies course.  Since most of the writing is non-fiction is there in fact a place for figurative language, dialogue, sensory images in academic writing?  After considering the techniques there certainly is a case for explicit instruction in the techniques of word choice as well as specific information. 

Word choice in particular is critical for concisely communicating and sharing information.  Academic writing benefits from the use of specific nouns, that  help to clarify the argument.  Vivid verbs and colorful modifiers can help shorten sentences and quickly get the writers point across.  Repetition is a common error for high school students especially and academic writing, watering down an argument and boring a reader.  Academic writing is often perceived as uninteresting for students to read because it lacks descriptive language but it can be explained to students that it does not have to be this way.  Finding quality models of academic writing that utilizes quality descriptive language without taking away from the informative purpose is difficult yet beneficial for young writers to see.

Week 5B: Personal Writing

My first year in college was when I was assigned an email address.  Though I had an email account much of my communication with friends from home was through "snail" mail.  I communicated with my educators by going to office hours.  Fastforward 15 years. My son received an email account from his school starting in kindergarten.  I use to open up my inbox and wonder if I had any mail.  I now open up my inbox and always have new mail.  Most of my "personal" writing is in-fact email.  I put personal in quotation because most of my email is work related.  I just checked my sent email box and from the start of the school year alone I have already sent over 1,006 emails. 

 

This is my primary form of communication with my students, their parents, fellow colleagues, and administrators.  So much of what I do at work centers around email.  This will be true for my students as well which is why it is imperative that they receive direct instruction in this genre.  Students need to learn the importance of subject lines, tone, concise writing, proofreading, and reading and responding to "threads". I take a significant amount of time with my 9th grade students providing direct instruction.  I also try my best to model appropriate email etiquette in my email exchanges with them.  This is very much a part of the un-written or hidden curriculum teachers are expected to provide for their students.   

Week 5A: Reading Logs

A few years ago I was on a family vacation when I asked my brother-in-law (he was in high school at that time) what exactly it was that encouraged him to do his homework.  He explained that he did the reading assignments for the classes that USED or DID SOMETHING with the content vs the classes in which the homework was to simply read in the text.  This conversation informed my future approach to reading assignments and helped me recognize that the"doing something" not only encouraged students to complete their work but also helped them better retain what they had read.  This chapter of Thompkins provided so many different strategies for the "DOING SOMETHING" with literacy. 

This chapter was also very timely as the physics teacher and I recently collaborated on a reading response log rubric (as discussed pg 112-114) that we will both use to help with consistency in encouraging the same attention and focus to non-fiction reading and expository writing. 

What I also valued about this chapter is the majority of these strategies could be easily applied to 9-12.  This chapter felt much less geared toward elementary school compared to earlier chapters from this text.

Week 4B: Interactive Read-Alouds

On page 71 of Thompkins she explains the value and importance of interactive read-alouds.  Many people may picture that elementary school teaching reading aloud to her students something along the lines of The Three Little Pigs or my favorite anything from Roald Dahl.  Believe it or not this strategy is what history teachers, instructors of expository writing must also do.  They should be taking time to read well written journal articles, web resources, textbooks on the content aloud to their students.  Instructing them to listen with a writers eye.  This means considering the 6+1/writers craft that was effectively (or ineffectively) accomplished in the writing process.  Providing direct instruction in how to break texts down and identify and see the 6+1 traits in model texts does I have found directly impact their ability to apply these skills to their own writing.

Week 4A: 6+1=academic writing

Since starting this class my more experienced classmates (reading specialists already with masters) kept referring to the 6 traits +1.  Up until this week I really had little idea of what they were referring to.  I now feel in the know!  Ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentations. I appreciated Thompkins direct and clear explanation of each of these traits.

As I went through each of these I thought specifically how these 6 traits apply to the genre or writing I spend the most time teaching, expository or academic writing.  I went through with each trait and highlighted the sub-point that as a history teacher must be considered when addressing the writers craft.

1. Ideas-Identifying genre: Writers of history rarely get to choose the genre-or the form for that matter.  This sadly can stifle the writers craft to some degree however students do have choice in choosing a topic, focusing their topic, and developing their topic.  Which brings up the importance of TOPIC and certainly supporting the topic in expository writing. 
2. Organization-Crafting the lead:  In expository writing this is referred to as the thesis statement-it is not traditionally a hook as described in Thompkins.  This notion of crafting a creative lead is often actually problematic for developing expository writers.  In an effort to create a hook, or grab the writers attention as students have been instructed to do in journalism type writing, or fiction writing students loose site of clearly crafting a thesis statement or directly addressing a question prompt.  
3. Voice-Adopting a tone: Developing expository writers also struggle with appropriate tone.  Learning that the tone is NOT personal, is not a conversation or a blog, it is not opinion.  Instead the focus of voice is writing with knowledge well.
4. Word Choice-choosing precise words-helping students to writing CONCISELY is critical.  Students often attempt to insert "big" words used incorrectly and write more which is NOT always better.
5. Sentence Fluency-achieving a rhythmic flow:  It is important for students to use transition words so that their writing flows smoothly from one idea to the next to help eliminate some of the stuffiness of academic writing but more importantly clearly communicate their well developed argument.
6. Conventions-THE RULES-academic writing unfortunately demands the writer to more closely follow the rules.  SIDE NOTE: not fun with punctuation is expository writing!!!!!!!!!
7. Presentation-Clear and simple text features that serve a purpose. Illustrations and additional text features can not be inserted for the sake of doing so they must be purposeful and support the thesis if included at all.