Entry 3

The readings this week were very beneficial to me as both a teacher and a student. I struggle when it comes to writing: teaching it and organizing my own, but primarily teaching it. I am not sure if it's just that I cannot find the time, but to teach the writing process seems VERY time consuming. I'm not saying it is not time well spent, but with the amount of things we teachers need to get accomplished, it is hard to justify fitting it into the schedule.

What I liked about the "Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing" piece, was the habits of mind. I think these are very important to develop in our students. To develop these, it seems creative writing assignments about topics that appeal to students  would be ideal. The genre pieces project we are doing for our class comes to mind. All of us in class demonstrated the habits of mind because we were engaged and curious, the rest followed because of that engagementand curiosity. When students are invested in something they have chosen, it helps make them feel responsible and own it. After opening students up to these habits of mind, and having success with certain writing assignments, I think they would be more likely to attempt and perservere through different types of writing that may not appear as "fun" and creative. They'd be able to practice that fexibilty and adapt to new situations, once they are comfortable with writing.

According to "Frameworks," it is all about giving our students multiple opportunities to practice, and exposing them to a variety of different texts. Like Tompkins use of mentor texts to teach students strategies, exposure to all types of books, genres, and writing is necessary to have students build that critical thinking and rhetorical knowledge. Students understanding of rhetorical knowledge will only come through exposure to all types of texts.

We still must act as that guide however, that link between the texts and our students. I just wish I knew exactly how to do this. Tompkins talks in her chapter 2 about how important modeling strategy is for students, and I have read this several times, but noone ever says "and this is how you do it..." I mean, sure she walks through the process, but I still am not able to explicitly teach my students any real strategies. I can do think alouds for them, but other than that...?

Since I do struggle with teaching writing, I would love to have some writing strategies under my belt that make sense to teach. I have 45 minute periods, and that time flies. The Card strategy sounds great in theory, but to implement with my group of students...seems impossible. Maybe I am just starting to vent, but the extensive modeling that goes in to these...I can just see and hear my students getting frustrated and bored already! :(

Any tips/suggestions are welcome,
Signed a despairing urban alternative program ELA teacher

Entry 2: Author's Craft

I love to read. Mostly I read novels: realistic fiction and historical fictiion are my top two favorite genres and I tend to read multiple books by the same author. Joyce Carole Oates is one of my favorites, and most recently I've been into New York Times Best-Sellers, introduced to me by my sister who told me I had to read Gonegirl by Gillian Flynn. I read it in a bout 22 hours. I then quickly read Flynn's other book Dark Places. Because of my love of reading and habit to read multiple books by the same author, I think I am adept at recognizing SOME aspects of author's craft when I am reading traditional texts. I would say ideas, organization, voice, word choice, and sentence fluency are among the elements of craft that Tomkins (2012) cites that I cannot help but notice and pay attention to as I read. I think this is because certain author's tend to use the same words in multiple books: the one that jumps to my mind right now is J.C. Oates, she uses "myopic" to describe many of her characters across books. The first time I came across this word I had to look it up, I knew it had something to do with glasses based on the context, but I wanted the exact meaning and I found it menat someone who was short sighted. After reading several of her books, I found her using the word often. Same goes with the word "gossamer," but I found this word to frequent among the genre of Horror. So, these are only examples of word choice, but it goes for the other elements too, if you are an avid reader, elements of craft seem to jump out at you.

As far as digital texts, I think I recognize the presentation aspect and media aspect of an author's craft beyond what I would notice in a traditional text. Certain websites and web-texts appeal to me more than others due to their layout, accessibility, color/font, and so on. Sometimes as I am reading something online I say to myself "why would they do it this way?" or "I like the way this is done," so I do think I recognize some aspects even among digital texts.

As far as writing, I probably struggle with organization the most. what's funny, is that my reading and writing are not similar. I read fiction, I write non-fiction: essays mostly, emails, rationales for unit plans, so I am much less skilled as a writer when it comes to author's craft than I am as a reader and recognizing it.

Ever since I read Hicks' (2013) and Tompkins's (2012) chapters on author's craft I have been contemplating how I will address it in my own classroom. I think much of craft comes in the pre-writing stage and revising stage, so I would begin by spending much more time teaching those and allowing students to make changes to affect voice/word choice/play with sentence structure/and different organizational patterns and structures. These are areas where in the past I never spent much time on, as far as revising, I would do a quick peer edit sheet, or I would edit it, but I never stressed making big chnages that would alter a pieces meaning and allow the student to see author's craft in action.

First Entry

I value respect, kindness, and an interest for learning. I believe that students should focus on big ideas and less on what it means to be right or wrong. I do try to enact this in my teaching....in that we do a lot of higher order thinking questions and discussion. I like to get to know my students and have them share in the journey of learning as if it should be:  a natural and fun experience  led by their curiosity.

Though I have tried I do not think I have given my students enough time for real authentic reading and writing experiences. Last year I wanted a drop everything and read day on Fridays. I had students select books from the library (classroom and school). We started off with only ten minutes and I tried to build up their endurance. This worked really well with my 7th grade girls who loved to read and always came with books already. My 8th graders, it was a struggle. I think most importantly, they were low level and I did not put the right books in their hands. Towle (2003) writes about how important it is to pair students with books that are at their independent reading level. I failed to do that.  Many had books way too high above their reading levels, but it seemed to be a pride thing. They would'nt budge even though they could not read the book! I wnated it to be an authentic experience that gave them free time to read and learn and discuss their books with others...but it never became that because my 8th graders fought me so hard on it I eventually ditched it. They used it as nap time, or yawn real loud time, or a variety of other almost distracting and irritating things.


As for writing....A lot of bellwork activities I would do with my students required them to think and then write about specific questions. Many of my "lower" students never would write a lot. Again, many of my 7th grade girls wrote more. Last year I did a few major essays with my students and 3 that stand out to me are the Freedom Writers essay, the Holocaust Essay, and the short story they had to write. For the first two, the essays, I did not start with free-writing....or even pre-writing.... for the first, they had to write their own thesis statement based on a mini-lessson we did and the themes of the movie we had discussed. Once they had their thesis statement we moved in to completing an outline with topic sentences and supporting details (CEI). Though they did (many)  have fun with this essay, and some went beyond the simple formula and made it their own, I felt it was too rigid and did not allow for their own creativity because I was too interested in having them come up with an already organized and developed piece of writing. I could make and excuse and say I didn't have time for the 5 stage writing process....but truthfully, I just didn't really know to teach it. For the Holocaust essay, that was about the same, except they had to pull from a variety of non-fiction sources and compare them to Elie Wiesel's experience. We used a graphic organizer to start with and as we read the articles we took quotes to compare. Again, too formulaic. I think if the kids did have any genuine original ideas they got pushed aside for what we "wanted them" to conclude and write. Now! The short story, that's a different story.

We spent the last few weeks of school doing a short story unit, and after only having read two or three short stories I proposed the short story project to the kids. I had a character chart they could use to make their main character, and we also studied the parts of a story and plot, so they knew what they story had to contain. This was a small class, only 10 kids, two were very low level. Of the two, only one struggled. The other, i learned was an avid fiction writer and was so happy to be doing this project. One student, one of my best :) did research for his story and wrote and amazing one...the rest were in between, I think all had fun with it (thoroughly enjoyed it!) They found it challenging, and learned more about stories from it. BUT! I only had them do one draft (except for one kid who wrote super fast so I had time to conference). I met with each student where we would tweek certain sections as he/she wrote, but I do wish I had peer conferences and taught them about the revision stage. What I believe to be one of the most important stages. Many of my students believe once its written, it's good enough. Many feel the effort they put in was so great that they have done enough. And how can I blame them when I have never taught them otherwise? Besides some minor changing up, asking for clarification,,,,the most I do with my students writing is proof read for errors! :(


I think the main thing I read that can help me in teaching the writing process (which though I have not taught in all its stages, I do value and use in my own writing!) is the writing wheel, to focus on one aspect at a time and move fluidly through each stage and back....