Writing, writing, writing!

Hello All

It has been awhile since I posted anything. It seems like getting back to school after Christmas break just sort of took over my life. Now I am back in the swing of things and ready to go.

I recently read an article in Today's Catholic Teacher about the writing process, writing workshop, and using the six traits. It got me thinking about how we can all use this information in our own classrooms. I know that many of the people on my staff are working on writing for their professional development project. I hope these tips and ideas will help invigorate or refresh what you are already doing!

The writing process is probably something we are all familiar with. This process is the steps we take to go from an idea to actual piece of published work. Teaching this process is so important because it will help students for the rest of their educational career. Not to mention how beneficial it will be for ISTEP. Children need to realize the importance of brainstorming ideas, planning out how to execute their thoughts, drafting those ideas into sentences, going back to edit and revise and finally publishing their piece.

Writing workshop is a great tool teachers can use in their classrooms because it helps model, guide, and practice writing skills. It can be used as young as kindergarten and all the way up to twelfth grade. Writing workshop is 30-60 minutes of writing time. There are four parts to the writing workshop. The first part is the read aloud. This can be a poem, article, song, or book that the teachers shares with class that emphasizes one of the traits or that is a good model of the type of writing the class is working on. The read-aloud usually takes 5-10 minutes.

The next part is the mini-lesson. This is the time that the teacher can introduce a new skill or strategy. The teacher models the skill or strategy and then allows her students to practice it with her. Once the skill has been taught, the students get a chance to try it on their own during independent writing time and conferencing.

These two things happen simultaneously. Each student may begin writing on their own while the teacher pulls small groups to practice a skill or individual students for conferences. I use this time for conferencing with my student. I like to see what their working on, identify their strengths, and then choose an area that I can help them grow. A colleague of mine has her students turn in their work the day before they want to meet for their conference. This allows her the time to look through their writing to identify their strengths and weaknesses and see where she wants to take them next. This is also my time to help with the revising and editing of their piece.

While I am conferencing, my students are working independently. At this point, they know the steps of the writing process. They can work on their rough draft, revise/edit their piece, or meet with a friend for peer editing. While they are waiting for me to conference with them, they may start a new piece or read quietly. I teach the second grade so times this goes smoothly and sometimes it falls apart. The key to a successful writing workshop is practice, practice, practice. This is not something that will happen over night.

The final piece of writing workshop is sharing. This is a time where students (or the teacher) may choose to share their work. This does not mean their whole piece, but maybe a sentence or two they are really proud of. I have a rocking chair in my room we call the "author's chair." They are very excited to sit in that chair and share their work with their peers. This also gives the other students ideas of what they can write about.

I finally want to share a little bit about the 6 traits of writing. These include: organization, ideas and content, word choice, conventions, sentence fluency and voice. Each trait has the child practice different skills in their writing. I attended a great conference by Dr. Maria Walther (consequently she has published many books and is even quoted in the article) that was fantastic. I have also had to create lessons for my masters classes that model the six traits. I will try and post a list of books that are great examples of the different traits in the section at the bottom of my blog. Check it out!

Have a great week!

Julie

Blogging: A new way to share my experiences!

Hello All,

I have decided to start a blog. I thought this would be a great way to share what I learn in my classes with all of my fabulous colleagues. Please check out my blog, tell me what you think, or what you want to learn more about. This is for YOU! Each week I hope to share something new in the world of education with a focus on literacy and reading education, which is not just for reading teachers!

This week I have 2 websites I want to share with everyone. I have found some websites that have been very useful to me. http://www.readwritethink.org/ This website is great for teachers and students. It offers teachers lesson plans and resources. There are also great kid activities for poetry, phonemic awareness, interactive games, and so much more. I used the lesson on how to write a class newspaper. It was very helpful and my kids loved it! Our first class newspaper went home to parents on Thanksgiving. It was written and published by my second graders with a little help from me. They picked out the pictures and the article topics. If I can figure it out, I will post their newsletter to my blog!

Another great website is educationworld.com This websites is for teachers and administrators. Again it offers lesson plan ideas, but it has 6 sections that are very helpful and informative; lesson planning, professional development, administrators, tech integration, school issues and market place. I am linking several articles about testing. I know we all dread that time of the year, but these articles let us know we are not alone and they offer some things we can do to make it more fun and useful for everyone. Happy reading! http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/focus/testing.shtml

Julie