Notes for Words-on-the-move #5
Peter Johnston – Choice Worlds: Helping children build literate worlds worth living in classrooms.
• We as educators array people each day in the classroom through use of language.
• We say we want them to be assertive, independent strong willed people when they are adult but we want submissive students
• Teachers need to say “I just made a big mistake as a reader, I got distracted when someone came into the room, so I’m going to reread this section here. (this statement allows mistakes, errors – and when that happens it becomes no big deal, just try again)
• A phrase to use often in the classroom is “Say more about that”
• Teacher should refer to another child’s point of view or suggestion which then gives that child a place of credence and importance.
• As teachers we teach individual minds as well as collective minds
• “Child’s language reflects the books that he reads.” PJ
• Two children see writing with different definitions:
o One views writing as accuracy, grammar
o The other views it as having something to say
Teacher’s feedback, use of language, feeds the child’s definition of who he is or in this case what writing is about.

Students have implicit questions that they ask during the school day
What are we doing here?
Who am I? Who can I be?
What do people like me do?
How do we relate to one another?
How do we relate to the object of our attention? (reading writing, science, art, math, etc.)

3 necessary dispositions
Toward Resiliency
Tendency to maintain a focus on learning when the going gets tough
Opposite is brittleness – avoidance of challenging tasks
Toward Reciprocity
Engage in joint learning tasks, asking questions,
Take other’s purposes and perspectives into account
Toward Playfulness
Ready and willing to innovate or notice variations in learning situations
Creative in framing problems
Notice unfamiliar
Generate alternatives
Inclinations to play
Opposite – unplayfulness
Inclination to see only in terms of familiar mindlessness
See only familiar uses for objects
Not able to see beyond initial interpretation
Agency – If I act, and act strategically, I can accomplish things.
“What problems did you encounter today?”
Be enthusiastic and celebrate problems – normalize having a problem.
If there is no problem – not learning strategically
Teach looking for options – teach optimism
Problems may be intentional

Build an expectation of change
PJ “Teaching is noticing opportunity and orchestrating change to happen”

Fixed Theorists
Question ability and assign blame for failure
Growth Theorists
Self instruction, self monitoring, don’t see self as failure.
References:
Choice Words by Peter Johston
About the Authors: Writing Workshop with Our Youngest Writers by
Lisa Cleaveland;
Comprehension Through Conversation: The Power of Purposeful Talk in the Reading Workshop, by Maria Nichols
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol Dweck

Music : Revelation IV from Soundzabound by Barry Starlin Britt

Resources and Highlights
Strategies by Patrice Ball District Curriculum Specialist in English Language Arts

A p p r o a c h
Strategies
Activities

Obermeyer, Mark, 2005. When Writing Workshop Isn’t Working , Stenhouse Publishers -Chapter 10 How Do I Plan for Writing Instruction?

Notes: Start by planning for the entire year, making sure all important standards, genres etc. are covered. Next plan units or months at a time. Now we are down to the weeks at a time and the daily adaptation and revisiting of the plan to see what we have done, what we can eliminate, and what do we need to add to assure student learning.

www.all4ed.org
Graham, Steve and Dolores Perin, 2007 Writing Next : Effective Strategies to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High Schools, Alliance for Excellent Education.

“ The Optimal Mix: In the medical profession, treatment is tailored ot individual patient needs; at times, more than one intervention is needed to effectively treat a patient. Similarly, educators need to test mixes of intervention elements to find the ones that work best for students with different needs. Researchers do not know what combination of how much of each of the recommended activities is needed to maximize writing instruction for adolescents in general or low-achieving writers in particular. Nor do they yet know what combination of elements works for which types of writers.” P.12

“A Note about Grammar Instruction
Grammar instruction in the studies reviewed involved the explicit and systematic teaching of the parts of speech and structure of sentences. The meta-analysis found an effect for this type of instruction for students across the full range of ability, but surprisingly, this effect was negative. This negative effect was small, but it was statistically significant, indicating that traditional grammar instruction is unlikely to help improve the quality of students’ writing.” P. 21

Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Strategic Learning in the Content Areas 1999.

p. 39 Supplementary Reading Materials
p.53 A Model for Strategic Teaching and Learning

Other helps on the MPS Portal available to MPS teachers are
Instructional Strategies for Writing
BP Writing Tool for MPS
Writing Next

MediaSite the ELA 3rd session ( the last half).

Be a collector of words – these are the bricks of language communication.
Kids can get sick of an activity, but that is not a strategy.

Approach is the goal
Strategy is the map
Activities are the specific mode of transportation

Need to be flexible, adapt, abandon, or modify as one uses a strategy for individual students.

The Education Plan has the strategies and teachers do the activities to support the strategy.

Target (Standard)
Approach
Strategy
Activity
Assessment

wordsetc.edublogs.org
blog for teachers
mathnut.podbean.com for the podcast
podcast hosting site

WSRA convention February 7-9th

Lucy Calkins presentation on Saturday Feb. 9th.
Notes that were important to me.

• Life provides the Big Ideas for writing (the subjects)
• Need to provide an environment that is conducive to writing
• Can not teach writing well alone
o Need collaboration for teaching writing –both horizontally and vertically
o Students need more than one year of good teaching in writing to become a good writer.
o Ideally you need the entire school to embrace “good writing”
o Example : 4th grade teachers meet in May/June to map out the next years pacing of units for writing. The order of units is not as critical as the fact of grade levels be in sync. Plans can change during the year but must stay in sync.
o Should check for spiral development of writing skills and expectations

• K-2’s purpose is to get kids to write independently
o Cycle of idea – write – publish
o May add extra units from her published units such as Fairy Tales or Persuasive Writing
• 3-6’s will write less published pieces but focus on developing skills per genre
o Class all write in same genre but may have different topics.
o Teach the structure of the genre
 Narrative structure
 Expository structure
 Poetry structure
 Etc.
• Teacher needs to have a clear vision of what kids will be about
o 3rd -5th will produce possible 2 narratives in a months time
o 1st grade may produce 18 personal narratives in the same time
o Set dates for Author Celebrations at beginning of year
• Begin unit by identifying strategies for generating ideas
o Think of a person that matters
 Then think of some small moments with that person
 Issues that matter
 Places that matter
 Etc
 Chart these for a room reminder
• After a couple of days start lifting the level of writing
o Minilessons
 Focus – how to make more powerful
• Details bring out purpose
 Difference between “summary” and “story telling”
• Choose entries from strategy exploration and pick a seed idea.

 Rehearse for Writing
o Make a timeline of the story
o Do this orally/aurally
o Have students start at different point of the timeline
o Try out different story leads
 Dialogue
 Small action

 Upper grades – write whole draft in one sitting
o Subsequent days 1 major revision per day
o Watermelon – big topic – summer vacation
 Seed – day my grandmother and I baked cookies
 When telling a story the oral thinking is important
 Have young children use different pages to simulate timeline.
 They point to page and tell what they will tell about on that page.
 After rehearsal – then begin writing process
 When revising – find important pages and start them (or paragraphs for older students) and those are the points where more details can be added.
 If having trouble getting started advise them to talk about the weather.
o Start with “when ….
o Mentor or coach can help with revising and lifting the story.
 End of Unit – pick the best piece and publish it. (not everything written needs to be published)

 Kindergarten –
o Think about life – what you do
o Make picture – tell story
o Letters are for later
 Kindergarten students are reading at the C level when they can write in a way that they and we can read and make sense of it.
 After a few days of drawing the pictures they can add labels.
o 4-5 labels by beginning of October
 Paper to use
o Beginning of year – no lines
o Month or two later – one line
o Months later – more lines
o Diverse array of paper available in one classroom for different developmental writers.

 Conferencing
o Goal is to have writer leave the conference wanting to write.
o Time
 Sample period
 Minilesson
 Circulate to make sure all have started
 May table conference a small group
 Individual conferences
• Teach one thing at a time
• Expect the best they can do
• Conversation may be
o What are you working on as a writer
o What struggles are you having
 Compliment
• Not only the writing but the writer
• Compliment should be able to be generalized and used for future writing impact
 Assessment
 Develop levels of writing per building
 Each classroom bring a typical good and excellent writing sample.
 Lay out on table in order – now note the levels and their characteristics

 In class
• First day of class have everyone write. (teacher is silent)
• (this is on-demand narrative writing)
• After the units on narrative writing have been celebrated
• Another on demand timed narrative writing
New book for coaches and principles coming out this summer
What to look for
What do you do in editing and revision segments
Will be evident in the drafts

Minilesson on Re-Vision
Stand back and see again
Look through one lens at a time
Example – look at organization
Can I read each paragraph and give it one sentence heading?

“To be a writer, one must behave as writers behave.  They write.  And write. And write.  The difference between a writer and a wannabe is that a writer is someone who can’t not write, while a wannabe says, “One of these days when…, then I’ll…”  Unabel not to write, I write every day that I’m home.”

I was also thinking that changing the word write to read would be a accurate quote for reading.  Reading and writing happen by doing.  The question is how best to get students involved and doing the reading and writing. 

Basic Principles of WAC
            As one response to students’ lack of writing practice throughout the curriculum, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) programs emerged in the 1980’s. The philosophies underlying these programs generally agree on certain basic principles:

• That writing is the responsibility of the entire academic community.
• That writing must be integrated across departmental boundaries
• That writing instruction must be continuous during all years of k-12 education
• That writing promotes learning and
• That only by practicing the conventions of an academic discipline will students begin to communicate effectively within that discipline.

What is Writing in the Disciplines?
The second category of WAC is often called Writing in the disciplines (WID).  Writing assignments of this sort are designed to introduce or give students practice with the language conventions of a discipline as well as with specific formats typical of a given discipline.  For example, the science lab reports  includes much different information in a quite different format from the typical social studies research paper.

Why Include Writing in My Class?
In our professional careers, educators use writing every day for a variety of purposes:

• To communicate infromation (memos, textbook evaluations, letters of recommendation, e mail)
• To clarify thinking (when we work through an idea ofr problem on paper)
• To learn new concepts and information (taking notes on reading and research topics)

Students need practice to be able to use writing effectively to meet these same goals.

One or two classes, or incorporating writing in one or two subject areas just can’t provide enough daily practice.

What’s in it for students?
Like all language skills, writing skills atropy when they aren’t used.  Yet some students often report that they do very little writing at all during a semester.  Some upper grade students don’t even take notes during some classes.  For students who take only multiple-choice exams, writing can be avoided almost completely for months at a time.  Assigned writing in all courses helps students keep their writing skills sharp.

Moreover, faculty in all content areas have discovered that assigning writing in their classes helps students learn material and improve their thinking about ideas in the courses.  Writing assigned across the curriculum also helps students prepare for the day-in and doy-out comuunicative tasks they’ll face on the job, no matter what the job is.  Equallly important, students need to learn about how writing is used within a discipline, and many kinds of assignments give students practice with disciplinary forms and conventions.

So shy assign writing throughout the curriculum? Students will learn more and will leave your class better prepared to face communication challenges if they write consistently over the course of a k12 program.  Specifically, students will learn more about the material in your courses if you assign writing for your courses.

What’s in it for Me?
Including writing in classes has both short and long –term benefits for teachers.  In the short run, teachers are better able to guage how well students grasp information and where they need elaboration of key concepts.  In the long run, as more teachers incorporate writing into more courses, students become more and more practiced at using writing as a communication and learning tool.  Especially for more advanced or specialized work in the discipline, teachers reap the benefits of having students who are better grounded in the fundamentals and ready to engage in more sophisticated analysis of ideas.

Writing to Learn
Although how writing fosters critical thinking is not clear (Applebee), theoreticians and practitioners alike agree that writing promotes both critical thinking and learning (See Adams, Britton, Bruner, Emig, Herrington, Knoblauch and Brannon, Odell, Parker on the bibiliography.) As toby fulwiler and Art Young explain in their “Introduction” to Language Connections: Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum:

Writng to communicate – or what James Britton calls “transactional writing” – means writing to accomplish something, to inform, instruct, or persuade.  Writing to learn is different.  We write to ourselves ass well as talk with others to objectify our perceptions of reality: the primary function of this “epressive” language is not to communicate, but to order and represent experience to our own understanding.  In this sense language provides us with a unique way of knowing and becomes a tool for discovering, for shaping meaning, and for reaching understanding. (p.x)
 

In “Writing to Learn Means Learning to Think,” syrene Forsman makes the same point, but she directs her attention not to a theoretical justification but a practical rationale for writing to learn:

As teachers we can choose between (a) sentencing studetns to thoughtless mechanical operations and (b) facilitating their ability to think.  If students’ readiness for more involved thought processes is bypassed in favor of jamming more facts and figures into their heads, they will stagnate at the lower levels of thinking.  But if students are encouraged to try a variety of thought processin classes, they can, regardless of their ages, develop considerable mental power. Writing is one of the most effecive ways to develop thinking. (p.162).
 

The consequences of Writing by Robert P. Parker and Vera Goodkin is an especially good resource on writing to learn.  Following a detailed discussion of the theoretical links between language (especially writing) and learning, these authors outline projects that focus on writing in entomotly, clinical nursing, psychology, and mathematics, all with similar results: students learned key concepts and understood material more fully while also practicing some features of discourse for the specified discourse community.  Thus, writing to learn can have additional positive effects in helping students mature as effective communicators even though the initial goal is to help students become better learners.

Alternatives for evaluating WTL Assignments

Because they are informal and often impromptu, wiring –to-learn activities usually aren’t marked for correctness.  Rather, teachers or classmates quickly read the writing for a general sense of what students understand and don’t understand.

            Most teachers cannot read through and comment on every WTL activity students complete.  See the following suggestions for alternatives to reading and /or commenting on every writing response:

• Us an occasional WTL warm-up at the beginning of class as a “sort cycle assessment.” Pick up a single sheet of paper and comment briefly on students’ grasp of a reading assignment or key concepts.
• Pick up WTL material from five to ten students every day or every other day.  Don’t read every word, but skim quickly to identify tasks students might need help with – a reading that bogged down in class discussion, a page that has very little written a page that has a lot written.  This can also help to quickly identify misconceptions or misunderstandings.
• Use different colored pens or highlighters to note points in selected entries.  One color means “good idea,” one means “consider pursuing this idea as a paper topic, another means “come back to this idea again and explore it in more detail,” and so on.
• While writing at the beginning and end of class, walk around the room and read over shoulders.  This technique is especially easy if you have students writing on computers.  Stop to talk to or jot a note on the writing of 3-4 students.  If students don’t like having you read over shoulders, ask them to select a few recent WTL activities and put those one side for you to collect and read quickly.
• Ask students to select their best of most provocative WTL writing for you to review.
• Ask student to share WTL activities with one or two classmates.
• Ask students to send the WTL writing that contains questions about class material to you over e-mail
• Ask students to post provocative questions or summary/analysis of readings on an electronic bulletin board or Web forum for class comment.

From the University of Colorado at Boulder http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/index.cfm 

Compiled on 1/31/06

(Excerpts from the MPS Expository Prompt Books)

Science: Students may:

            Wirte a procedure for a science experiment

Write an informative essay about a scientist, invention, or other science-related topic

Illustrate and write captions for a scientific process

Social Studies: Students may:

            Write direcions for maps, gobes, graphs, tables, etc.

            Compare eras, presidents, regions, etc.

            Write a report on a current event

Literature: Students may:

            Write book reprots or summaries

            Compare characters, settings, plots, etc.

            Explain author’s point of view

Mathematics: Students may:

            Explain how to solve a problem

            Compare mathematical operations

            Explain how math can be used in every day life

Assignments to encourage thinking:

            Book reviews

            Character analysis

            Research papers

            Informative essays

            New articles

            Photo Journalism

            Definition papers

            Personal evaluations

            Technical manuals

            Explanatory papers

            Interpretations papers

            Contrast and comparison papers

            Classification papers

Taken from Patti B. and SMART writing