Yesterday I had an awesome experience with about 16 teachers in rural area of South Carolina. For three hours we met to discuss, write, and explore new ideas for teaching writing in the classroom. I planned this presentation out here and shared my first ideas here. I began with a Read Aloud, Thank You Sarah, The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving. This book lead to a discussion about using picture book- fiction and non-fiction- as mentor text for writing. This book fits the bill for teaching persuasive writing. (And if you have never read this book, take the time. Thanksgiving is coming soon.) Then we started by writing.
First quickwrite, I posed the question “what makes teaching writing difficult?”. After two minutes of writing they shared their thoughts in small groups. I heard responses such as ” time, lack of training, teacher confidence, student confidence, difficulty for some kids “.
Quickwrite 2: I used When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant. They used “when I was young, I..” as a starter. Following each quickwrite, everyone shared their writing with a partner.
Then we began talking about strategies for quickwrites and how this could be used with young writers. Great ideas!
Quickwrite 3: I read What a Wonderful World by George David Weiss and Bob Thiele. Several of the ladies started singing. This time I asked them to draw a picture of their wonderful world. Ten minutes later, they had to share with their partners. Then I asked them to think of a story with characters and a storyline with the picture and next they shared their story with a partner. This led into a discussion about teaching young writers. I shared work done by Katie Wood Ray and used some thought from a previous post. Early writers begin with pictures. With pictures you begin mimicking words and then sentence. We did a Think Pair Share about how this strategy would work with older writers and we brainstormed ideas for related strategies. Great thinkers in the group.
(The audience was a K-5 school.)
Quickwrite 4: I shared a humorous poem titled “When I Grow Old.” This led to a discussion about using favorite lines from poems and stories as a jumping off point for writing. The text or storyline presents a context in the writer’s imagination and that triggers imaginative work. One teacher told us with the right story could trigger the writer’s voice in our students.
Next I spend an incredible small amount of time on writing. I made a blunder out of this, but the huge point I wanted to make their is huge correlation with reading to learn and writing to learn and students need more time to write for different audiences.
For the next hour we focused on revision. My goal was to teach them that good revision begins with asking questions.
I shared my scary story. First I eagerly got their attention and gave a big to do about how scary it was going to be. I told them that it really happened and then I said, “I woke up in the middle of the night because I heard a noise. And I was really scared.” They were stunned and I repeated the story. “I woke up in the middle of the night because I heard a noise. And I was really scared.” Then I sat down. (Interesting facial expressions)
Quickwrite 5: Brainstorm a list of question you would like to ask me about the story. After appropriate amount of time, I started chart their questions on chart paper. I explained if we had the time I would list all the questions on chart paper from every student. Only when we had accumulated enough questions or everyone had a chance to share, I would start answering the questions.
Questions helps the writer to get to the story. Several teachers comment the story I told is similar to what they get from students.
Then we did a Think Pair Share. Interesting conversations….
I am a huge fan of Barry Lane’s work and have had the opportunity to be a part of a writing retreat in the 90′s where he lead the writing workshop. I recommend his book After the End for teaching all writer’s young and old about revision. The above strategy came directly from Barry Lane. He modeled the strategy with us that weekend.
I modeled two more strategies Snapshots and Thoughtshots. Teaching kids these strategies work. We practiced these strategies and moved on to reading a text to find Snapshots and Thoughtshots. This lead to a great discussion about reading to write and more great ideas.
The last 30 minutes was time for conversation about writing in their classroom. Teachers brought sample student writing to share with each and they begin to think about how these strategies could be applied in their classroom. Need conversations happened.
I left feeling good. One teacher told me that I validated everything she believed about teaching writing. Another great time.
Thanks to everyone who gave ideas along the way and thanks for letting me rehearse here in my blog.
Thanks
