Units of Study

Chapter 12 it talks about have unites of study. Since I am only in my field experience classroom two days a week I don’t get to see much of the beginning of their writings. By the time I get there on Thursday they are usually finishing up with fixing their errors and making a final draft. Nevertheless from what I have seen there is certain times where students are allowed to free write, and then there are times that they are given a prompt. Chapter 12 talks about the importance of both of those.  Its important to let students pick topics because they are learning how be a good writer and by giving them some freedoms they could enjoy writing more.  I know by observing my kids they seem to move a lot faster when they are able to write about something that interests them.

                One thing that this chapter talks about that I have never seen before was the idea of taking a hour slot every other week where they practice writing to a prompt as they would if it was a test. Hopefully I can see this during my full week of teaching. I’m sure some of my teachers have done this I just have not been in the classroom at the time. I also really liked that the idea of letting students spend some of their writing time reading and sharing about a genre/author so that they can gain a better understanding of that author/genre so that when they write they can really understand the topic.  Lastly, I really liked the 2^nd to last sentence in the chapter there it says that, “Any lesson we teach, any conference that we have, has both a history and a future in the life of the workshop.”