In the readings for this week, I learned a lot about integrating basic skills, daily writing, and conferencing with students. In chapter 7, it talked a lot about making learning meaningful and engaging for the students. One of the things that stood out to me was when Routman talked about teaching students explicity and telling them why you are teaching them the subject. This helps students see the purpose of the lessons and help them see why they are important. At Averill Elementary, we have objectives charts that we hang up in our classrooms. The goal is for students to be able to refer to the objectives and understand their goals for the lesson. It also talked about the importance of word walls and how making the word walls flexible can help the students with their spelling and confidence in writing.
Chapter 8 talked about how to make our students better writers. We need to teach our students how to choose worthwhile topics, so they are writing about something they care about, something they can tell a lot about, and something where they can include appropriate and interesting details. The chapter also focused a lot on teachers modeling the tasks for the students. This can be done at every grade level. If a teacher can effectively model the assignment for the class, her students will be more successful in completing the task. It also mentioned the optimal learning model which relates to the gradual release of responsibility. In this model, it starts with the teacher demonstrating and modeling for the students and eventually the students will be able to do their work independently. Another thing Routman talked about in this chapter was "Teach it first, label it later". If you were to teach your students about writing an "expository multiparagrah essay", it would be better to do the assignment together first, and then explain to the students that they just wrote an expository multiparagraph essay so the students don't get overwhelmed and confused.
Chapter 9 discusses the different types of writing conferences, which include: whole-class shares, quickshares, on-the-run-conferences (while walking about the class-room as the kids write), one-on-one formal conferences, and peer conferences. During conferences, it is important to: listen to what the writer is trying to say, affirm what writer has done well, reinforcing the writer's strengths/attempts, assessing confusions/strengths/next steps, teaching, scaffolding, and setting goals with the student's input.
All of the readings have help me think of ways to incorporate these ideas into my classroom. The book offers ideas of implementing these concepts into my classroom and I look forward to integrating the basic skills, organizing for daily writing, and talking with my students about their writing.
The reading we did this week I found to be interesting and insightful- and more relevant to all grade levels than the past reading. Like Chelsea mentioned, Routman not only reveals many great ideas and concepts when it comes to writing instruction, but also discusses how to go about implementing the concepts discussed in the book to your own classroom. Unlike at Averill, Cavanaugh does not have have objectives charts hanging in all classrooms, and after completing this reading I completely understand the advantages they can provide both students and teachers with. I feel that so many students are driven to work when they are aware of what the goal of the lesson is. By using objective charts, those students who work best when they know exactly why they are completing a task (what the objective is) I believe will undoubtedly stay more on task and work to complete the task. I for one know that as a elementary school student I worked best when I knew exactly what the point of the lesson was.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both Emma and Chelsea. I find it interesting to hear what other people are experiencing in their classrooms with writing. My mentor teacher puts a huge emphasis on writing everyday, so I was interested to read more about writing instruction. I think Routman has fantastic ideas as to how to incorporate writing in to the everyday lessons and how to also make writing an important part of the day. I like the idea of being explicit about instruction. Similar to Emma my mentor does not tell the students very often why we are doing something or demonstrates the way to write a certain way. I think that this would really help some of the students in our class. I also really like the idea of conferencing with students and think that is a very important part of the writing process. All too often, just the low achieving students meet with the teacher to discuss their struggles. I think that every student should have a set time to meet with the students individually or at least in small groups to discuss their writing and their own process. I really think that the reading this week is completely applicable to our classrooms right now and our future classrooms.
ReplyDeleteChelsea mentions about making word walls is very helpful for students to develop their spelling and writing and I really agree with the idea. My mentor teacher hangs LOTS of things on the walls to let students read. We put words, numbers, calendar and anything that helps students to learn math, literacy, social studies and science. Especially, during our writing hour, she asks them to find words that have a letter we study on that day. For example, we studied b (/b/ sound) letter today and students were asked to find words that has b words from our walls. As they look around our classroom, they find different words and try to find letters and words. Then, I could see their progress as we repeat the activity although it has been only two weeks since we started the activity. Most of them, now, can combine all the sound of letters and make a word; they eventually build their confidence in writing and spelling.
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