Spaces, Places, & Tools for Learning

Where do we learn? How do we make space, in physicality and time, for the types of learning we'd like to include in our classroom?

Sitting here in Panera, basking in the glow of their WiFi, I'm thinking about these questions. Jackson is sitting across from me, typing messages to my sister. They're generally very long and filled with many consonants and few spaces, sprinkled with the occasional words he knows how to spell and a few that T9 creatively correct for him. What's he learning about writing? What's he learning about life in this unexpected week of no school? And no electricity? Certainly this week is fodder for writing ideas. The warmest AND snowiest October on record. Halloween cancelled. The third week this year with no power. How to cook pancakes on a griddle on a coffee table in the living room, where the generator powers an outlet.

So many outside influences on what goes on in the classroom. Snow days, hurricanes, illness, family emergencies and issues, and of course, the ever looming MANDATES. Some days, all requirements and mandates of and for teaching leave me stranded on the couch at midnight, actually feeling the crush of stress as I desperately try to find something utterly stupid on TV to take my mind off the 8,498,949,358 things I'm supposed to have done, half of which are yet unfinished.

So, I really enjoyed this week's readings. They were very reflective of things I'm experiencing in the classroom currently. How to balance the high stakes of testing with the rest of the world of writing? I read Rankie-Shelton and Fu's article about Nancy, a teacher who seemed to find something that worked for her. Bringing in both the writing workshop model and an intensive period of test preparation, her writers managed to navigate the world of high stakes writing tests while still building a love of writing. It seemed to me that her class was able to make it through those 6 weeks of test prep and the test itself as a result of the writing community they had built up over time during the writing workshop - the trust they had in each other to share their writing and critique it, their resolve in working together to build their crafts. I found the article inspiring and saved it on my hard drive. ;)

From there to more specific and immediate concerns. The chapter on revision and evaluation in Best Practices was one of the best yet. I love the POWER mnemonic for the writing process and am totally stealing that. I've been struggling lately to get my kids to revise their writing at all, and have been modeling revising and focusing on revising for certain qualities of writing. Even so, I still have kids who will reread their papers, look back and forth through the pages, serious expressions on their faces, deep in thought, and then look up and say, "Nope, nothing needs changing. I'm done."

This was of course, before I realized that I would need to devote much, much, much more time in writing class to the teaching of revising that I had originally planned. I liked how MacArthur pointed out that in teaching revising, we continue to teach the craft of writing and it will apply in future writing. Usually by the time we get to the revision stage, especially of assigned writing, we all just want to be done with it.

(Side note: I just got Georgia Heard's The Revision Toolbox and I really love it. (Check out some sample lessons from it here. It's a PDF.) We cracked geodes in class last week as part of an anchor lesson on "cracking open our writing" and the kids loved it. And I've used some of the activities in there and the kids really enjoyed them. They seem to be starting to help - and funnily enough, I see it more when they are drafting something than when they are revising it.

Anyway, I digress. So, those kids whose writing is perfect. I have a temptation to laugh when they say it because I'm so with them (as a non-planning, non-revising writer). I've been working on really breaking down the task of revision - starting with something so simple as "Reread it." So I liked the mention of think sheets for revising, with directions for the editor (whether its peer or self), and clear, explicit steps for how to revise. I think my kids are pretty good at making changes - but they have a really hard time finding what they should change and are constantly asking me. Of course, my goal is for them to be able to evaluate their own writing and decide what needs to be changed. I've been bringing in some criteria checklists for them after we read the book on Formative Assessment, and it seems to be helping somewhat. I think the evaluation questions they mention in the chapter will be helpful in directing them to a place that needs revision. I also love how peer response groups are used and while I constantly think about teaching my kids to revise each other's work, we haven't really gotten that deep into it yet. We're mostly at the peer-editing/proofreading stage of things.

Ok. So I just changed the order of two paragraphs in this blog, added a couple sentences and changed a word. Does that count as revising? Trying to practice what I preach. ;)

The Writing Process & Drafting

I was thinking about this after our last few classes and some of the discussion about what the writing process and what exactly that means for each of us. Obviously, there's no cut and dry process that works for everyone. I've said before I'm not much of a planner. I'm also not much of a reviser, which makes my writing process particularly short. ;)

But I liked this blog from Two Writing Teachers about using drafts in the classroom and what they mean, plus how they tie in with the writing notebook. Getting my head wrapped around the idea that the writer's notebook is kind of like a pre-writing/idea-gathering place was a big paradigm shift for me. We do all our drafts on loose paper now. It's been working for us pretty well actually. I also like that it shows the kids that not every single thing we write must go through the prewriting/drafting/revising/editing machine. Sometimes we just write to get words on paper. Sometimes we just write to think. Sometimes we pour out some garbage cause it feels good.

Drafting on separate paper is also good for us since it allows us to cut things up/move them around as we begin to think about what we would like our final published products to look like - adding in illustrations with captions, changing the format, etc.

I also prefer "First Best Draft" to "Sloppy Copy."

Just some random thoughts. ;)

Confession of a Harried Non-Planner

I do not plan. Ok, maybe that's not true, entirely. But I do not plan on paper. I do not use graphic organizers. I do not outline or take notes before writing essays. Even written lesson planning is not my strong suit. Although I have been known to make a list or two.

I guess I would say I plan in my head, although I'm not sure that's any different than just thinking about stuff. I mentioned before that blogging suits me because I just start writing. But I pretty much do that with any writing. 2, 5, 25, 50 page papers - I just started writing. Research papers - I do loads and loads of reading. But no real planning. Then I wait for it to come. It. The impetus to write.

So, the chapter I picked this week from Best Practices is "Best Practices in Teaching Planning." I figured I might learn a thing or two.

First, I laughed out loud when the author wrote about the kid who says he can't write because he "doesn't know where the pencil sharpener is." I have a text-to-classroom connection for that one. ;)

I was particularly interested in the section on teaching strategies for planning a report. I was struck by how broken down and explicit it was. I was also struck by the discussion of the inquiry and prewriting phases of planning, and how lengthy they were! The idea of spending a writing class in a wheelchair in order to better write about someone with a disability? I can hardly imagine doing something like that in class, but it makes so much sense! If we want our kids to write with all their senses, about life's experiences and mistakes and wonderment, we have to give them time and space to explore the world. I've done the occasional "Let's go outside and write sensory details" thing, but what this chapter makes me think is that what I really need to do in my writing time is slow down.

I'm feeling rushed, and so I'm rushing them. I need to have this and that in the portfolios, and student work on the walls, and it's the beginning of the year so I have none of that, so HURRY UP AND WRITE SOMETHING KIDS!

Seriously, that's what I've been doing to them. Funny to have read this chapter tonight because today was probably the best writing session we've had yet. (Granted it was a short writing period.) A couple things were different. One, I decided that we needed to start writing with a meeting on the carpet. Then, we had a general conversation about writing and what we were thinking about it. We're supposed to write these "Life Plans," so that's my writing theme for the next couple weeks, but I'm trying to put a spin on it a little. We talked about how they've written them in the past. (They do this every year.)

Then I read them this quote, and asked them to talk about it:

"If you don't know where you're from, you'll have a hard time saying where you're going." ~Wendell Barry

And finally, I read them George Ella Lyon's poem, Where I'm From. (Brian is probably cringing reading this, but I had never even heard of this poem until he mentioned how overused it was in some schools.) We talked about it, and about how parts of it made no sense to us and how we thought that was probably because it was something that was so personal to the author that we wouldn't necessarily get every detail but could get the overall vibe.

Then we all spent about 10 minutes on the carpet writing/sketching in our notebooks under the heading, "Where I'm From." I wrote too - the first time I've done it in front of them. It seemed pretty powerful, I have to say. I just haven't been able to get my #$%% together enough to do it. And then we shared, and laughed over our common memories of sibling torture and parental threats and tasty food and mischievous plots. And what I'm totally loving about that is that A, everyone was actually writing; B, everyone seemed pretty into it; C, it felt like a community of writers for the first time, with sharing and getting inspiration of each other; and D, this list is not only going to help us write this Copy/Change poem, but become a repository of ideas to go back to for writing.

Of course, at the time I was thinking, "Good God, that's all we got through today? We're so behind." But now, I'm thinking this was time very well spent.

A Bridge to Best Practices

I've been so frustrated these past few weeks reading Best Practices in Writing Instruction. I feel like there such a gaping hole between what our curriculum requires of us and what we know to be best practices. Don't get me wrong, there are some things I like about our curriculum. It encourages the process of writing. Which is awesome. It encourages the analysis of various pieces of writing before trying it out on our own, and uses lots of modeling and the gradual release of responsibility. But it can be incredibly prescriptive and confining for my young writers. Our focus is on the five paragraph essay - for three grading periods out of the year. Then we move to the five paragraph persuasive essay for the final marking period. I have found it near impossible to find mentor texts outside of our curriculum book that we can use that follow the structure of what I'm trying to teach. Who writes 5 paragraph essays? Seriously, if you can find an awesome, poignant 5 paragraph intro-body-conclusion style essay in a magazine, newspaper, blog, etc - send it my way. 4, 6, or 7 paragraphs would work too.

Anyway, I think the big missing piece for me is the motivation piece. Almost my entire class detests writing. So first on my agenda, or maybe I should say next to about 43583 other things on my agenda, is getting my kids to enjoy writing. I think that comes with choice and voice in writing, which is hard to do within the 5-paragraph essay structure.

So I finally ordered Joann Portalupi and Ralph Fletcher's Nonfiction Craft Lessons. I think I should have ordered this book a long time ago. (Thank you Amazon!) I love love love love this book. It has copies of mentor texts in the back that I think I could weave into our curriculum, and sample mini-lessons that actually show the language used during the mini-lessons - something I really need right now. So many of the lessons completely align with our curriculum but have a little more zazz in them. (Did you know that Urban Dictionary actually includes the word zazz?)

I'm excited!

One More Thought: Changing The Writing Process

One more thought about that 21st century article. It makes the point that technology changes the writing process. This is striking to me as I'm talking about the writing process this week. I admit I always feel disingenuous talking about this because it's one of those times I'm teaching the kids to do something I don't do.

I very rarely "prewrite." Usually I just start typing.

So I like the idea of looking at blogging as prewriting/publishing. But that sort of crushes our traditional notion of the writing process, doesn't it then.

We're supposed to, when we grade writing and include it in the portfolio, represent "all stages of the writing process," which is supposed to mean prewriting, outlines/graphic organizers, first draft, revised copy, and then final draft. It's a good point to make that if we're doing all our writing online and revising within a Word document, the draft/revising/editing part of the process looks very different and leaves a different artifact trail. Not that I really have to worry about this right now since I do not have enough computers in my room to have every kid working through the writing process on a computer.

That's something to think about.

On a kind of side note, I got this year's class blog up (www.kidblog.com - great classroom tool) and running. The kids loved blogging last year and I'm excited to have a whole year to work on it with my kids (as opposed to 3 months last year.)