These chapters really opened my eyes to what you really need in a writing workshop. I like that chapter 9 pointed out that curriculum guides and scope and sequence should just be used for support. I think that there are some teachers out there that just use those two things when it comes to telling their students what to do during writing time. I think I have had those types of teachers in the past, and they made writing uninteresting to me. I also liked that chapter 9 gave examples of group sharing and other writing ideas that can be used in my future classroom. I also agree that there needs to be many resources in the classroom for students. If students have many resources they can really “dig in” on a topic and have a deeper understanding. Also it talked about having one on one student conferencing. My field experience class does this and I think it is great. From what I have seen students enjoy the one on one attention and they have a better understating of their personal writing and what they need to work on as an individual.
Chapter 10 talk more about what students already know and when is the right time to have whole class teaching versus one on one or small group teaching. One thing I found interesting about chapter 10 was the bullet points on learning “how to teach writing well”. I thought that they were some good points, but I think that there is a lot more that goes into learning how to teach well. Nevertheless I want to try out these bullet points and see if they help me become a better teacher. In chapter thirteen there was a quote that states that “lessons only matter as much as they help students do that work and understand that work better”. I thought that was a great quote because teachers can plan lessons all day and the students could still not learn what they need to. What’s important is that the students can understand and learn from the lesson and become better writers.
I am thrilled to hear that you have conferencing going on in your classroom. Please listen in closely to the kinds of things that go on in conferences - we will really benefit from hearing your descriptions when we talk about conferencing in a couple of weeks.
ReplyDeleteI like that you see many more ideas to fit into writing instruction beyond what Ray points out. Sounds like you are already filling out a detailed picture of what writing instruction will look like in your future classroom.