Thursday, December 1, 2011
WRITING GROUP - Belief Statements
What a great class the other day. I love hearing your writing, your thoughts and ideas around writing. What we did not get to in class was for everyone to share their beliefs about writing and the teaching of writing so for this month's post I am going to ask that you reread your beliefs and post them here on the blog. We will return to these beliefs at the end of our course to see if our thinking has changed at all over the course of our work together.
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I believe I can be writer. Writing is a process that can be taught and I as a teacher can help students become better writers. I also believe that writing and reading are related; those that read a lot have a much easier time getting better at writing.
ReplyDeleteWriting is a process for all students. For some, that process is easy. For others, it's not. Telling students how to write is not difficult. Showing them how to write is what I sometimes struggle with. Sharing my writing with students takes me out of my comfort zone. I believe that I can write a little bit better than my students, but is that good enough?
ReplyDeleteI believe that I've always been a writer. I didn't tap into it much prior to becaoming a teacher. Then I began trying assignments before giving them to the kids. It prepared me for their questions. I worked with similes, metaphors, a varitey of poetry styles, fables, folk tales, and narratives. Every type of writing I asked my children to work on came with samples of my own writing. (I can remember writing a folk tale about my uncle Lou after he passed away - it was a tribute. I could only read part of it to the class because I knew in the end he would die, and I started crying before I could get there.) Anyway, it never occured to me that I could teach writing without writing myself. Mostly I've written outside of the classroom. As an idea for a lesson comes to me, I write about it by listing and creating examples. I believe that teaching writing by example has been a strength of mine. I am a VERY unpracticed "quick writer" though. I've always spent time pondering and writing as the mood or the feeling or the lesson hit me, so I can definitely use some rehearsal for that type of writing.
ReplyDeleteWritng was a very important part of my life as a child. I would fill notebook after notebook, but it never occured to me that I should be writing in school. Now, as a teacher I still struggle with the personal aspect of writing in school-students' as well as my own. Penny Kittle writes "Emotion is the engine of the intellect". So I guess it is time to bring the two together in my classroom. This year I am amazed at how excited my students are to write. Perhaps part of that is the permission I have given them this year to write what they want very frequently. "There is not enough play in high school. I'm afraid there is no longer enough play in elementary school" If choice writing can translate into play, then I am happy to provide that time.
ReplyDeleteI believed I wasn’t a writer. I believed writing was hard and not fun. I believed writing was just writing papers for assignments (research – ICK!). I believed writing was a chore because of that. I believed writing a great piece was something only “writers” or “authors” could do. I believed editing was as far as I need (a.k.a. wanted) to take a piece of writing. I believed I was a reader not a writer. I believed creating an interesting product was something that writers were skilled at and I was not granted with that gift.
ReplyDeleteI believe writing opens up doors and souls. I believe writing myself betters me as a writer and a teacher of writing. I believe writing is a process. I believe I just need to try to write to be a writer. I believe evolving as a writer takes time and drive. I believe I am a writer (in progress).
It is my job to make my students believe…some have gotten there, others are traveling to this destination, and a few have not decided to join us on this journey – yet.
I am a writer. I would write all day if I didn't have bills to pay. I wish I could make a living as a writer. I am struggling now with this dichotomy: am i a writer who teaches or am i a teacher who writes? What is hard for me now is that the amount of writing I assign prevents me from my own writing. And the writing I do do, I feel I have to structure for middle schoolers to be able to look at. When i am not writing, my teaching of writing sucks. I feel uninspired and flat.
ReplyDeleteTeaching writing: one on one is where it's at; I struggle to make/find that kneeling down next to them time. That "How can I help?" time. Management, systems, paperwork, Encore, Rev, somebody help me I'm drowning and I can't keep myself afloat and teach well at the same time. But maybe I'll learn to.
Writing... it still gives me a queasy feeling in my stomach! I do not believe I am a writer. I do know that I can teach writing, and teach it with passion, but myself as a writer, I beg to differ. I do not remember learning how to free write in school, nor do I remember being told that writing was supposed to be fun. It was always purpose driven writing and that continued through high school and college. I do know that through amazing professors over the last few years and team teaching with Pam A.,along with such generous colleagues, I have gained a different perspective on how to love to teach writing to my students. If you love what you are writing about .. they will too! I truly feel that you need to expose yourself to all writing and that is how you become a better writer and as I type this, I am opening myself up to learning how to love to write!
ReplyDeletetesting again....
ReplyDeleteWriting....content area writing....hmmm....we recently took a break from our fabulous fiction stories to work on social studies ancient civ papers. It was very interesting to see how well-intentioned graphic organizers caused havoc with our students' papers. After researching and organizing their facts on graphic organizers, the students wrote their first drafts of their essays with my teammate, their SS teacher. After these steps, they came to us to revise and edit. Very interesting.....upon rereading what they had written, they found their essays to be choppy, incomplete, dry, and very "skeleton-like." It was like they had created just a blueprint of a paper....but the building hadn't "happened." Hmmm....so.....we went back and discussed the purpose of the paper....the purpose of content area writing....the purpose of graphic organizers, the purpose of first drafts, the purpose of revisions, etc. etc. etc. So....here's what we figured out....they did not realize that if you take facts, line them up in sentence-form and put them into paragraphs....you have "facts lined up." You do not have a paragraph and certainly, you are not showing what you know about a topic. In other words....their first drafts were decent 'starts.' but, they were not essays. They were facts lined up....choppy, disconnected, boring, incomplete. What was missing? Very interesting....what got "lost in translation" while using graphic organizers was the POINT of the paper. "Show what you know about ancient civilizations in this essay." Very surprising....the students did not realize that it was ok to take the facts they researched and synthesize this info with the information, understandings, and connectiosn that they had in their "heads." Hmmm....so....what did we do? Well, we spent four busy days adding information, rewriting topic sentences, giving examples, and reading our papers aloud. The students were very surprised to find that they knew soooo much more than what they wrote on the graphic organizers. AND....it is "ok" to put this information into their essays. So....what lesson can be learned? Tools can be misused. We can put steps in the paths of writers that actually take away from writing. We can jumble up the thoughts of writers by making the process contrived and black/white. Do such organizers often work very, very well? Absolutely. In this case....it seemed that they spent a lot of time going down the wrong track.....it's all good now. They've rebuilt, and we had many great workshops around the challenges we faced. It was exciting to see how far their writing came once they realized that they were not married to the organizers. They were still writers who were able to use their own thoughts, knowledge, voice, and creativity to "show what they know" about ancient valley civilizations." It's all good. :)
ReplyDeleteTHE ABOVE ANONYMOUS STUFF IS ME....KIM C. LOL
ReplyDeleteI AM NOT TRYING TO BE ANONYMOUS. PROMISE. HAHA