Periodically, I will be sharing books that I have read that might be of encouragement to you. Some of these will deal with writing instruction and others may be about best practices for all teachers. It is very rewarding to me to lead or participate in book studies about current educational issues and research, so I think it will be beneficial for me to introduce these books to you all.
1. Teach Like your Hair’s On Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56 by Rafe Esquith
Rafe is a trail-blazing, fast-talking, fifth grade teacher who works at a Los Angeles public school. Ninety-two percent of the students in the school live below the poverty level. Regardless, his students tackle Algebra, philosophy, and Shakespeare. He says this book is like a cookbook for teaching in an urban classroom. The main two rules he operates by are “Work Hard” and “Be Nice.” The title of the book comes from an incident while he was helping a student in class with a chemistry experiment.
2. Writing Strategies for All Primary Students:K-3
This is a model for incorporating writing-strategy instruction. If you have ever wondered how to incorporate mini-lessons into any writing program, this is the book for you.
3. Day One and Beyond by Rick Wormeli: geared to middle and high school teachers
This book has practical ways of setting up your grade book, classroom management, what to do if you have only one computer, how to give homework, how to understand this age student and many other relevant topics. Wormeli is known worldwide in the educational community and was one of the first Nationally Board Certified teachers in America. He is a master of differentiation.
Publishing student work does not have to be a complicated matter and does not have to happen after all writing. It actually doesn’t have to come at the end of the process but can occur throughout it. Probably most of you have thought about this as a major undertaking with a lot of time wasted as all students share every word they have written. This doesn’t have to be the case.
Student writing can be shared informally or formally depending on your purpose and time allowed. To begin, let’s look at the informal publishing. Throughout the process, students may share exciting vocabulary, a well-written sentence, or maybe even an entire introduction or conclusion as these are being revised. Classrooms may have Writing in Progress bulletin boards where students share bits and pieces of what they have written. Writing is read aloud in conferences which is actually publishing unfinished works to teachers and other students. But there comes a time when students may be asked to share or publish their finished writing in a formal way.
Today’s technology gives us endless means to publishing. We have blogs, class websites, digital books and the tried -and- true class anthologies and books using word processors. Scholastic offers publication choices. Sometimes just having the teacher read and evaluate is a type of publishing. Our son’s seventh grade language arts teacher always had an Authors’ Day where students read aloud entire pieces and enjoyed brownies that the teacher had baked for the young writers. That gave them a purpose for the revision. All the students felt special while sitting in the author’s chair upfront while their peers encouraged them as writers.
I am including some sites that may be helpful to you and your students as you publish student writing. Remember some writing may not be for publishing (journals, for instance) but you and your students will figure out what works well for you. Having you publish your own writing by sharing it with your students is also a great motivator.
The final copy is a copy of the writing once all the changes have been made through revision and proofreading. Please remember that not all writing has to be taken to the final copy . Sometimes students just need the practice in revision and proofreading and will put aside the writing at that step of the process. For those writing assignments that will make it to the final copies, I am including some tips that should make writing them less of a pain for you and your students.
1. Have available to students fun writing supplies like colored pens and pencils and bright-colored paper. One of the best final copies I ever got was a research paper that I had students write on brown paper bags. They punched holes around the edges and tied yarn to make a small rug. We published them on a bulletin board entitled “Research Rugs.” Be creative and encourage creativity in your students.
2. Students should use the format that is appropriate to the writing purpose and audience. If they are learning to write thank you notes, have them use actual thank you cards and write them by hand. If they are learning to write memos, use a memo pad that you can purchase for a dollar at many stores. If they are practicing for the state writing test, they need to follow the specific instructions provided.
3. This is the time to pretty-up the writing. Not all final copies have to be typed, but students do need access to word processors. If copies are not typed, students need to be reminded to use their best penmanship.
4. Most importantly, students need to realize that a final copy is NOT a recopying of their rough draft before changes.
Come back next for ideas for publishing your students’ writing.
It is impossible to write about all the wonderful strategies for revision, but I do have some more that I wanted to add. We have discussed revising for organization, word choice, and for a different audience (voice), but I haven’t really mentioned much about revising with details that appeal to the senses. It is very important for students to show, and not just tell, in their writing.
Also, when helping to delete parts of their papers (that they will swear are set in stone), tell them that you are just helping them cut clutter. Just tell them like it is.
When working on slotting and word choice, encourage students to use specific action verbs and not to rely on weak helping and linking verbs.
I discussed using M-E-S-S when revising, but there are other acronyms that you might want to keep in mind.
ARRR: adding, rearranging, removing, replacing
ARMS: add, remove, move around, substitute
Coming soon: Writing the final copy and publishing student writing
Ok, we’ve worked to make our papers clear, concise, and complete during revision. Now let’s proofread to work on the way the writing looks: punctuation, capitalization, spelling, formatting/indenting, homophones, contractions, margins. You know: all that grammar and mechanics stuff. We work on that regularly through Daily Oral Language (DOL), but let’s take it to the next level and apply that DOL knowledge. Students have to acquire the ability to proofread, and we have to acquire the ability to teach them how to get it done. Again, teaching skills in isolation won’t transfer when students go through the writing process. Skills need to be taught in context.
Hopefully, you have posted common mistakes and given students a checklist before starting to proofread. You know the grammar and mechanics skills your students are responsible for and at what time. Hold them accountable once you have taught the skills and they have had adequate time to practice them in context. After they proofread for two or three skills, check for corrections and then move on to another skill. They can then make changes in those on the same rough draft. You should have several proofreading sessions with feedback between each. If revision and proofreading really happen, your students will have a sloppy copy as a rough draft!
Tips:
1.Have students read the paper backward so they aren’t blind to their own errors. This way they read what is there and not what they think is written. Reading a paper backward is a great way to check for spelling errors.
2. This day and time, we need to have students check for texting shorthand.
3. Have students pair up and read their papers aloud. When they actually look at what they have written as they read, they will catch errors.
3. CUPS is a commonly used acronym that might be beneficial. CUPS stands for capitalization, usage, punctuation, and spelling. The following chart I found online might be useful.
http://www.stjoanofarc.org/school/grade5/cups.htm
I will be adding to this list so come back when you can.
What a day to be an educator and a student when one considers all the wonderful technology at our fingertips!! Did you know that the definition for literacy now includes interacting with technology in a meaningful way besides just the reading and writing components of literacy of which we are aware? Technology is a tool to help us teach and to help us reach our lesson objectives, not an end-all. It should help to motivate students and to make learning more relevant to them. As someone once said, technology adds a new dimension to our teaching if used effectively.
To start off, I want to make it clear that I am not an expert on the technology that is available today. In fact, sometimes it scares me just to think about it! When I started teaching in 1980, I had a chalkboard and chalk, a filmstrip projector, and a huge reel-to-reel film projector on wheels that I checked out from the library. Using the purple master copier was a highlight of my day. And to think…I averaged my grades by hand!! I won’t ever forget the day we received overhead projectors and no longer had to erase the chalkboard after every class. You get the picture. Over the years came white boards and markers, computers, e-mail, and all of what we have today: all of it much easier for our students to use than for us. Technology is such a normal part of their lives, and we do students a disservice by not experimenting with it and implementing it into our plans on a regular basis. Let’s make it a point to take advantage of the necessary training that is offered to us so we will be prepared and relaxed. Seek out those co-workers that have been successful with the technology and ask for help.
Not all of us are afforded the same technology, but we all have something we can use as we encourage our students down the writing road, as we take them from passive to active learners.. Whether it’s an overhead projector, LCD projector, or SMARTBoard, our students need access. Technology is such a part of their worlds that we cannot be afraid to try. Just try. Word processing and laptops are an easy place to start. Why not have our students e-mail “real” authors? We’ve got digital and video cameras that can enrich interview sessions as preparation for a writing assignment. We could create digital memory books. Powerpoint is available for final presentations, google docs for rough drafts, revision, and feedback, and the internet for research. Blogs and class websites can be used for publishing. And what about Skype and video-conferencing? With permission and some planning, you have the world in your hands. With a little innovation, imagine how we can transform our classrooms.
Technology can give us access to programs that help struggling students with organization, notetaking, and writing assistance. Really, there is no excuse for not experimenting with what is “out there.”
If you really want to venture out, think about iTunes, iPhoto and youtube…
All school systems have procedures for usage of technology and you know when parental permission is necessary. Yes, we are accountable and should be cognizant of the need for safety as our students go online. However, the advantages of using the technology far outweigh the disadvantages. Decide today to get to know a new technology and then find a way to share this with your students. Take advantage of all the training that is offered to you and expect great dividends. Don’t let a little fear or technology-intimidation stop you from making a difference.
Before sentence-combining is begun in revision, please take time to review the types of sentences. Review declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory. Teach simple, compound, and complex, and in some cases, teach the compound-complex sentence. Review your standards and the expectations for your students to see what they should know and be able to use in their own writing. Again, do not teach these in isolation. Of course, you must model and use mini-lessons. Rather than have students copy 40 sentences from their grammar books and label them (though there is a place for a grammar book as a resource), have them find these sentences in their writing, in their library books, and in exemplary papers that you share. Have them write some of their own as a ticket- out-the- door. Listen for the types of sentences in class discussions and note them. Chart examples and post them around the classroom. Students need a reference as they begin revision of their own papers, especially the sentence-combining component. Isolated grammar instruction appears to have little or no positive impact in helping poor writers become better writers. (Graham and Penn 2007) Let’s keep that in mind.
Start by asking students what it means to combine something. Explain that sentences are combined to help improve style and voice and to keep their writing from being monotonous. It is about changing sentence structure. The purpose is NOT to produce longer sentences but to produce more effective ones. We need to model sentences of different types and lengths and then expect to see these used in student writing. Variety is the key to more interesting papers.
Tips:
1. Combine two simple sentences into a compound one by using a comma and a conjunction or by using a semi-colon. You may need to stop and teach these skills at this time. Talk about independent clauses.
2. Combine elements within a sentence. Rather than write “Sally laughed at her sister. She also hugged her.” Talk with the students about compound verbs. “Sally laughed at her sister and hugged her.”
3. Use appositives to connect ideas. “My brother is a doctor. He lives in St. Louis.” becomes “My brother, the doctor, lives in St. Louis.” You talk at that time about how to use commas with appositives.
4. For practice, give pairs or groups of students kernel sentences and specific instructions on combining them. Once they practice, have them apply immediately the knowledge to their own writing.
5. Have all students share orally one place they used sentence-combining.
6. Talk about differences in dependent and independent clauses and then practice complex sentences. Discuss comma usage with complex sentences. Have students find a couple of places in their papers to apply this concept.
You need to inspect what you expect so conferencing with all students is very important.
Now you are equipped with all four strategies for cleaning up the M-E-S-S. Please let me know any success stories you have with your students as they continue writing.
Expansion is just what it sounds like: adding details and expanding ideas. This is a great place to teach modifiers, but don’t get too carried away with adjectives and adverbs. E.B. White said, “It is nouns and verbs, not their assistants, that give good writing its toughness and color.” Students do need descriptive language peppered throughout their papers, but too much is overkill.
Teach students to ask the who, what, when, where, how, and why about what they write. Teach them to pretend the audience knows nothing about their topic and that they need to leave the readers with no unanswered questions. They have something to say; we just have to help them say it.
Slotting is another part of cleaning up the mess during revision. I talk with students about what a slot is and then we discuss taking out overused words and replacing the slot with more descriptive vocabulary. We make a list of overused words to post on our word wall , and we call these dead words. We then use the thesaurus to help find vobabulary that we can use to replace the dead words. The lists are posted on the word wall, placed on the SMARTBoard, and written in their writing notebooks for them to refer to during revision. Together we look at their papers and highlight words they have overused. Then they use their lists and write new words above the old ones.
Some commonly overused words are good, bad, cute, nice, little, big, said, and old. Let these be a starting place for your class as they begin to slot. Tell them from the beginning that “Said is dead,” and you choose not to see it quite so often. I do give them a chance to use, but not overuse, these on words on occasion.
Next time, we will look at sentence-combining. Until then, I hope you try expansion and slotting and see some great results.
While I have been working on the revision blogs, I have had in the back of my mind all of you who are working with those at-risk students and how difficult teaching them to write can be. I want to encourage you not to give up but to keep working and you will see progress. I am listing some tips here that might give you a bit of help.
1. Writing needs to be relevant and related to students’ backgrounds and experiences.
2. These students need a minimum of 30 minutes of writing DAILY. More would be great , but this is adequate.
3. They need to be engaged in practical and creative writing.
4. Writing at home is generally not successful for them.
5. Look at and discuss pictures, movie clips, and picture books as a basis for their stories.
6. Keep in mind that these students usually have low vocabulary so you must work on building it.
7. Don’t stress over mechanics too soon. That will come later.
8. Many of these students are weak in spelling, grammar and have poor handwriting. Work on these but not in isolation.
9. Patience is key.
10. Many of these students are passive. Genuine learning is active, not passive. To work on this, give writing that stresses discovery and active learning.
11. Work regular teacher-student conferences into your schedule.
Please don’t get discouraged and give up on the students that need us the most.
Movability is a strategy I have used for many years with my students, all levels and abilities, as they revise their sloppy copies/rough drafts. I introduce it by asking students what the word sounds like and they generally tell me it sounds like “move.” That opens the door to what it really is: moving ideas, words, parts of sentences, whole sentences and even entire paragraphs. The goal for revision is to improve style, voice, and organization. Movability is one way to help meet that goal.
Before they are required to try this on their own papers, I give students practice papers, and we work together to revise using this strategy. We then move to their own papers to select a place for them to try movability. Once I see they are “getting it,” they choose a section of their own to practice. After students understand the purpose for this revision, they usually have little apprehension about trying it. I know many are wondering how long this takes. Well, that depends on you and your students.
Students do not need to recopy a draft after each revision session. They continue to make changes by highlighting, drawing arrows, whatever works for your classroom. Skipping lines in the rough draft helps if you worry about students’ papers getting too sloppy. That way they have the space for changes. Also, if their rough draft is in pencil, making changes in ink works well. Try until you find what works for your classroom of students.
Tip: Have students underline the first word in every sentence. They will probably be shocked at how many begin the same way. Give them an opportunity to have a couple of sentences start the same way and then reword the rest until they have more variety. Soon their own voice will begin to shine through their writing.
Expansion is next as we guide our students toward cleaning up the MESS . I hope you’ll join me as we continue down the road of revision, often rocky but so rewarding.
1. Teach Like your Hair’s On Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56 by Rafe Esquith