Entry 6: A Letter From Midpoint...

 Dear Dr. Jones,

I am grateful that I am learning how to approach teaching writing, because by taking this course I realized that I really never had a solid grasp of how to do so before. Becoming a new teacher, I am constantly trying to find the answers to how to teach to meet my students needs. I am both storing away those answers and having the chance to physically engage in understanding how to teach them at the same time. 

It is amazing that concepts such as drafting, revising, etc., or genres like narrative writing, journals, etc., have so many intricate layers. My initial understanding of the course has changed, because I have seen how activities such as the Card Strategy Lesson (Kucer & Rhodes, 1986), gathering mentor texts and creating class status charts are writing/reading activities that can be adapted for our future classrooms. This class requires more active participation and at the same time, asks for us to engage as adults and complete much work independently. This in my eyes is to provide room for us to explore with our own hands-on learning of the writing process and how to write in different genres, with the flexibility to reflect on our topic when ideas come to us, versus being rushed to provide work of our efforts on set time frames per say (as I am talking about the Genre Pieces Project). 

As a literacy teacher, it is important to have a multitude of reliable resources at my fingertips. I have really liked the Tompkins (2012) text, for the step by step detailed descriptions of different processes, ideas for engagement activities and mentor text graphs (which are my favorite part!). I feel that I often get overwhelmed thinking of both how to teach, as so many options exist, that it can be even more hard to also pick out WHAT to teach too. 

What I discovered has really stuck with me was learning about "dollar words" which are "more descriptive [precise] words" (Tompkins, 2012, p. 72). I want students to consonantly be aware of the words they are choosing to use, and how multiple meanings/versions of a word exists. Part of the writing process that is never fully recognized for its power is the practice of rereading. Rereading in my eyes mainly needs to be taught to students in the manner for them to "appreciate the voice they've crafted... [learning] writers run out of ideas... [thus] it helps to generate more ideas and details" (Tompkins, 2012, p. 43). When I teach students how to write, I have to show them the importance, point out what makes an average story or average writer versus an extradentary story or extradentary writer. I have to ingrain (allowing students to feel) my belief that all of my students are scholars within our writing workshop. We will recognize the importance of how reading and writing going hand in hand during multiple parts of our day, not just one set time! 

As a reader and writer I use to see both practices as separate terms, not two terms that should be combined together. To me the end goal was the product, when I was writing English papers, or when creating my only writing lesson during student teaching. The reason that was the case from my understanding is because I thought of writing in a narrow scope. Now I am coming to see how texts can drive instruction, how our students identities can be reflected in their genre pieces and texts (as Gholdy Muhammad pushes educators to recognize the importance and the needed benefit of growing self-advocacy), and how children can operate together and become builders of their knowledge base. Experimentation is important, especially with writing. Yet, what I was missing before, was teacher strategies that fostered how kids can experiment and learn with guidance. 

Reflecting on how I am doing in this class, I feel pretty good. I do recognize that I often go over on the Blogs (for the word limit), which I'm sorry about! I have a hard time narrowing down my own thoughts and text connections. I have currently been focusing on the Genre Expert Project as I am in Group 2, and have not been diving too deep into my pieces project, but intend to do more soon. This project is mainly on our own, and I was wondering if I could send you my draft pieces or one piece of writing to make sure I am meeting assignment expectations along the way, as no length requirements are present/any voice, purpose and audience can be chosen? In regards to the Genre Pieces Project, I am still a little confused about the mentor text bibliography. Are we finding mentor texts for every genre, or only the 3 writing piece types we are writing about? 

Thank you! I look forward to gaining more insight about how to teach each writing genre and learning about more great mentor texts to use. 

Sincerely,

Kayli Krossber

References

Kucer, S. B. & Rhodes, L. K. (1986). Counterpart strategies: Fine tuning language with language. The Reading Teacher, 40(2), 186-193. 

Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating Genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Entry 5: Putting Aside the Notebook and Bringing Forth the Hands-On Thinking Tools

I would place a "gold star sticker" next to the Card Strategy Lesson (Kucer & Rhodes, 1986)! I found myself having a lot of fun, I even had a smile on my face and kept uttering "Wow, this is tricky". It felt a lot like becoming a detective and trying to solve the puzzle of which piece to order next, to create the overall sequence of events and topic that I felt the cards represented. Maddie and I worked together, sequencing each others cards. It was really interesting because for her cards I took the approach of trying to order them in an informational manner (as hers was about testing) and with mine she took the approach of ordering them in a narrative format (as mine was about amusement park entertainment). Our results proved that our thinking was not wrong (or "correct"), but rather that it reflected our understanding of the genre we felt that type of information would be best delivered in. It was really interesting to hear Maddie talk through how she interrupted my cards (with my intention being entertainment as the topic and with her picking excitement as the main topic). 

When I have brainstormed before, it has often been jotting notes and staring in space hoping a grand idea or thought strikes me. Sometimes this works and other times I am left waiting for the magic to come. Yet, I like how the Card Strategy Lesson (Kucer & Rhodes, 1986) put a multimodal effect to my learning, forcing me to think of multiple subtopics and grouping them together, finding similarities and differences, and ordering them in a logical manner. I intend to use this strategy again, and hope to teach it to my future students, in a manner that fits their learning development. I do have to question myself about why I never tried using index cards to fuel my thinking for writing? Why are we often taught to go straight to a notebook for brainstorming or a graphic organizer? Why not use hands on materials (ones that could become erasable) to represent how we learn/build our ideas as we progress forward and become in charge of our thinking as readers and writers? Perhaps a big factor and especially for the "older" writer is the simple fact that "the older the writer, the more difficult the idea is to convey because editing issues {i.e., spelling, punctuation, capitalization) always 'count'" (Sandmann, 2006, p. 20). I have been very guilty of trying to make my brainstorming look organized and neat, but now I see how I often rush the process, to get to the end product. 

In my mind this brainstorming approach with cards is not meant for the reader/writer in charge "to find the 'right' answer. When students construct textual sequences different from that of the author, it is because meanings may be arranged in a variety of ways... [through] generating and structuring" ideas (Kucer & Rhodes, 1986, p 192). These ideas can be ones students transform from their own or ones they could even experiment from an authors. When we have the ability to pull apart the main topic and subtopics, along with recognizing how to order such concepts to make sense, we are demonstrating our understanding of what type of language is needed for various writing styles or situations. 

Tompkins (2012) strategy of generating, in which "writers collect words, sentences, and ideas for writing, often using their background knowledge information they've collected through research, or other classroom resources" really stood out to me (p. 34). This is exactly what we are being encouraged to do in class, and some of these aspects of this strategy are ones I have always tried to do when I am drafting a writing piece. I often brainstorm words that correlate with my ideas. Rereading books and talking with classmates listed as activities for this strategy are ones that I feel I have come to see how powerful and important they are to my own learning process, when writing for specific audiences and purposes (Tompkins, 2012, p. 34). It is always good to build on our thinking when we have the chance to go over ideas and talk out our understandings. Hence why, I really liked that I was able to talk with a partner for the card strategy activity during class, because I realized I will be using this method moving forward and that some of my subcategories may become main topics for my writing pieces. 

References

Kucer, S. B. & Rhodes, L. K. (1986). Counterpart strategies: Fine tuning language with language. The Reading Teacher, 40(2), 186-193. 

Sandmann, A. (2006). Nurturing thoughtful revision using the focused question card strategy. Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy, 50(1), 20-28. 

Entry 4: Increasing Students Exposure to Writing on a Tight Time Schedule

Every school across our nation, even nations worldwide face the same troubling commonality: TIME. When acquiring an important life skill, like having the ability to read and write, I do not think it is fair that time compromises the learning process. Reading and writing provides individuals assess to supporting themselves, their families, the chance to acquire power, and perform societal expectations. Often teachers have discovered there is not enough time to properly address all of the required standards in addition to adapting instruction, creating lesson plans and fulfilling the multiple other roles an educator performs. This is not to say that teachers are unable to do these things, in fact, many educators go above and beyond. There has often just been a recognition that time feels to be on the opposing side of school environments. I personally have felt the concern of how do I address everything during the hours provided in the school day? This leads me to think of how certain subjects are often not fully taught (Science and Social Studies) or require an adequate amount of prepping and scaffolded learning, building on the notion of time, to effectively teach, such as writing. 

Calkins and Ehrenworth (2016) describe how "all writers... engage in the process of writing... [to] collect and organize; they draft, they revise, they edit" (p. 7). This process does not occur overnight. In fact, even when these various writing skills are acquired, it can often take more time and practice to feel confident in ones writing voice. As I mentioned previously in another journal, my own confidence with feeling like I understood the writing process took a long time for me to acquire. It is also important to recognize what knowledge is needed for various writing tasks. Last class, I internally took away the importance in knowing how journal writing (or any writing genre) can be confusing if we do not teach students the type of writers voice they are using, the audience (who usually reads a journal/etc.) and what topics can be addressed. These are all factors that I never personally think about, because I have it automatically known internally to just apply the journal writing skill, or any other skill. In fact this reminds me of how last semester and during the week at Midlakes (for the Clinical Assistantship program), I am always being reminded of how hard it is to teach learning to read, because I already have the skills and they are so automatic that I do not have to think of how I execute them or retrieve information. I acknowledge that I have been learning a lot in regards to how we learn, the best teaching styles and that it will be time for me in the future "to make the leap from theory to accomplished practice" (Calkins and Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 15). It will require practice, and not only telling students but providing examples of work that they can apply their learnings and understandings with in the process. 

How I feel that we can provide students both insight and guidance into writing is not just to give them the time to write, but also allow them to create and work towards their own "crystal-clear goals and receive feedback on their progress" (Calkins and Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 8). Just like our college level course work where we are moving ahead in our learning with self-set goals and guidance from documents to refer too, students need the same type of support. Often for students "what looks like trouble with writing is really trouble with a student's command of the subject" (Calkins and Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 9). This is where I feel mentor texts can come in, just with our class experience last week with how we got to see and read, feel, first hand what it was like to immerse ourselves in the style and purpose(s) for journal writing. Being able to understand the authors thinking will help students identify how they can command their own subjects in the future as they keep writing. 

With time playing such a huge factor in how we can instruct students, it will be important to create more focused lessons that do not just teach the definition but show students how to identify genres and how to identify and apply the skills. All the while modeling and supporting students with feedback during the writing journey. 

References

Calkins, L. & Ehrenworth, M. (2016). Growing extraordinary writers:                Leadership decisions to raise the level of writing across a school and a district.    The Reading Teacher, 70(1), 7-18.

Entry 3: Looking to the Past (How to Enhance Writing Instruction)

One writing lesson I taught and designed during Student Teaching was in my Special Education placement, a 6th grade 12:1:1 setting, where we reviewed what personal narratives were and focused on the drafting stage. We identified topics we could write about, and what language to use and how to make it a story that followed a timeline from the begging/middle/end. This lesson was a week long, where we kept working towards drafting our own personal narratives. We talked about how to choose a topic and brainstormed ways to write in a personal form. What we did not do, or more specifically me as their teacher, as we jumped into the writing process after vocally brainstorming ideas, was "encouraging them to apply what they're learning in practice activities" (Tompkins, 2012, p. 68). Modeling and having conversations is not enough, as I now realize. I wish I would have taught the students about sentence fluency, an important craft lesson Tompkins shares, where we could have collected our "favorite sentences from... books they're reading on sentence strips and post them in the classroom... [or] sentence unscrambling: Teachers select a sentence and break it apart into phrases, and then students rearrange the phrases to build a sentence and compare their sentence with the original one" (Tompkins, 2012, p. 73). Being sixth graders, fluency is a very important skill in relation to reading, and I know that my students had trouble reading fluently with emotion and focusing on punctuation. I also should have dove deeper into teaching more explicitly about technology, as students wrote their stories on Google Docs. I could have had them learn about the digital presentation trait, where they would have created "a layout that enhances their message, align the text with images and sound, and add headings and other features to guide readers through the composition" (Tompkins, 2021, p. 78). I really like these craft lessons, and intend to use them in any classroom I teach. The beauty of these lessons is how now I can make learning about writing more interactive with activities that hold meaning and get students to think more critically, versus me providing most of the thinking. 

When teaching personal narratives and drafting, I think the lesson had gone well, but it certainly had much room for improvement. I remember being nervous teaching a writing lesson, because writing has lots of parts and I was unsure of how to narrow down my ideas for teaching and managing our time together in class, all in one.  If I were able to go back in time and adapt the lesson, I would bridge together multiple aspects of writing and not only what is commonly thought of for drafting. As Rickards and Hawkes (2006) detail how Mr. Baker merged a lesson on similes and a story's setting in which "He modeled adding a simile to a paragraph describing the setting... He prompted and reinforced students as they revised" (p. 372). I remember I had created my own personal narrative for the students to view on the Smart Board, in which I tried to model how I wrote using "I", in sequence, and with purpose. I also recall modeling how to draft my writing and calling on the students for help. Yet, if I had wrote in front of my students (not ahead of time), pulled together their ideas and even wrote some sentences with grammatical errors or ones which could have been enhanced, I think this would have served my students better as they would of had a more active role in the process of what it feels like to reflect on ones story and how to look at it critically. They would have looked at what the author (I, their teacher for that lesson) was trying to say and how. Before even jumping into personal narratives and drafting, I could have taught a mini lesson about topic development to focus on how "Authors often write about ordinary things. What ordinary things does the author write about in the text?" and word choice, "What words or phrases grab your attention?" (Rickards & Hawes, 2006, p. 371). Both of these topics would be great minilessons to teach! Topic development by exploring what authors write about in books/how any (appropriate) topic can be written about and word choice by looking at different forms of writing and how language is used for different purposes. 

I feel my eyes have opened to the imperativeness of selecting texts based on their presentation style, written form, illustrations, and message. Mentor texts can be powerful tools, when selected with diligence, that now place learning in the hands of the students. This first takes place by the teacher "through the reading that students begin to value a book enough to be willing to look to its author as a writing mentor" (MacKay, Ricks & Young, 2017, p. 177). It will be important for me to not just have students start to draw their conclusions about text features and what they are understanding right away. Rather, I have to allow them time to connect with the authors work for them to even begin to "examine it through the eyes of a writer... and empower them to try something new" in their own writing (MacKay, Ricks & Young, 2017, p. 177, 185). Yet, I also have to allow my students power in the creation of their work, and this means reflecting back on how "students are [often] not involved with textual selections" which is a big problem (Muhammad, 2020, p. 139). I intend to have my classroom of writers partake in minilessons, where they can use a skill in another lesson and keep adding to their foundation of knowledge. I intend on having my students examine books and writing formats in multiple ways, to see how authors create connections and messages, to fully understand the purpose of what it means when we ask students to write something. I also intend to have my students be more active in their learning, by providing them with hands on writing activities that get them thinking. My students will be encouraged to express their input and to select materials for our classroom community that ties together their interests, cultures, and different styles of literacy to be empowering. 

References

MacKay, K.L., Ricks, P.H., & Young, T.A. (2017). Supporting young writers with award- winning books. The Reading Teacher, 71(2), 177-187.

Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating Genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Rickards, D. & Hawes, S. (2006). Connecting reading and writing through author’s craft. The Reading Teacher, 60(4), 370-373.

Entry 2: Reflections of a Learner and Teacher

When transitioning into my next life journey of becoming a teacher... it is often easy to forget the importance of never loosing sight of what it means and feels to be a K-12 learner. When you are a young child learning about writing, it is overwhelming and exciting. Overwhelming when you start to learn about writing conventions (spelling, punctuation) and you are still trying to make sense of it all. Exciting because it is your own words and thoughts, a form of self-expression even if not fully realized at a young age. This is why writing often sparks "'fuzzy thinking' and young people not knowing how to access and analyze information and to write with 'a real voice'" (Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 8). I learned my writing voice over time, and it took a while. Actually, I thought I had acquired it back in High School but more recently I realized that during College my writing has become more substantial and stronger. Something I am more proud of for sure! Every response I wrote, every essay I turned in, led to where I am today, in which I feel more confident in expressing my thoughts/ideas in a written format (instead of just answering the question). I also know that a big factor of my writing improving was feedback, "given just in time to learners in the midst of work" (Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 9). Without teacher comments, peer drafting sessions, or models of improved writing, I would of not grown in my writing abilities. 

As a teacher of writing, I have not taught this skill very frequently. Yet, I have had experience with the notion of how "Writing... is a skill that develops with use. Writers need time to write" (Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 8). My own personal time as a teacher has come in reflection journals, where I explore my "fears" and accomplishments in regards to the profession. When I have taught writing, it was for a brief time during student teaching or for a day subbing. The students were older, hence diving deep into some of the conventions of writing was not needed at that time (such as where to start on the page, punctuation, etc.). Their time for writing was often limited, but I recall that they knew the routine to get their journals or chrome books, brainstorm, and write their own ideas. As a teacher, I know that at times when I go to write on the board, as I search for the right thing to say in a written format, I can feel the pressure of spelling my thoughts correctly and formatting them neatly. Thus, I feel that as a teacher of writing, one needs to provide students time with the process and to also demonstrate confidence in their own ability to teach writing. 

Implementing a writing workshop sets students up, because clear goals and a routine is being established. Structure is being provided. It will be important for me to "write alongside... [the] students, at least for the first 5 or 10 minutes; in this way, [I] convey the importance [I] place on writing... engage[ing], listen[ing], react[ing] as a human being" (Tompkins, 2012, p. 19). I have had experience doing this by reading the prewritten daily message on chart paper, but during writing workshop, I would make this become an essential part for students to not just have guidance, but to understand why we write. I also think moving forward, for when I have my own classroom, it will be important to stress "class collaborations: Students supply the ideas for writing, and teachers model how to tackle common writing problems" (Tompkins, 2012, p. 23). Modeling emotion behind punctuation, demonstrating "errors" and corrections, along with talking about different writing forms will be important for me to gain practice in doing, as it is all part of an effective writers workshop! 

References

Calkins, L. & Ehrenworth, M. (2016). Growing extraordinary writers:                Leadership decisions to raise the level of writing across a school and a district.    The Reading Teacher, 70(1), 7-18.