Saturday, January 24, 2009
Writer's Notebook ch.1&2 group b 650pm
View the first sample chapters (available on line) Using the Writer's Notebook in Grades 3-8: A Teacher's Guide at (http://www1.ncte.org/library/files/Store/Books/Sample/35006chap1-2_x.pdf) and begin your writers notebook then post entries on Class Blog. Engage in an online discussion group on our class blog. Please read designated chapters and 1)propose “meaty” fat questions to discuss, 2) make connections to your teaching and work with students, and 3) make connections to your work as a writer (ie Keep your own notebook and share your response to it), 4)Please respond to two of your classmates’s entries in your study group, 4) Consider how what you have learned from this book might support the work of your integrated language arts unit.
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12 comments:
1."Meaty Question"
On page 7 the author mentions that a students Writer's Notebook can be a great tool for integrating writing into other content areas. I love the thought of this, but I don't know if I fully understand how this could be done. I have always thought about a writer's notebook as a place for students to record their thoughts and start to plant their seeds for possible future writing. How would it be used with science for example if students are already using a science notebook?
I was also wondering if anyone has established guidelines similar to the ones in chapter 2 on page 13? In my classroom we generated a class list of what it looks like to be a writer during Writer’s Workshop. I like the thought of this list to make students feel more connected to their notebook, but I wonder if it could be overwhelming to students. I was wondering if anyone does something similar to this in their classroom?
Tracey,
I agree that if you already have a science notebook, a writer's notebook might not work the same, however it all depends on how each of these work in the classroom. If the writer's notebook is where students record their thoughts and feelings, students might be encouraged to write RAFT or other similar writing in the content area strategies, while keeping experiments, results, observations of scientific principals in the science notebooks.
As an advocate for science notebooks in the classroom, this is a very tough question. As a district, we are currently working to have students keep science notebooks through the years so that they can constantly reference them in future years. It is the idea that students keep writer's notebooks throughout the years too. Perhaps these can be related in some way.
We don't have social studies notebooks, so the writer's notebook might be a great place for writing in reference to social studies topics. My students are constantly collecting ideas about the regions that they have learned from books and our letters to Beth the Oscar Meyer Hotdogger. The students use these in writing scripts to share information with the class, or in writing letters to other students. We could certainly do this in a writer's notebook.
Classmate Response:
Tracey, I think a Writer's Notebook is very different than a Science notebook. I have never used a Science notebook, so I may be mistaken but what I see as a Writer’s notebook is a free place to write your deepest thoughts. You don't have any topic or pressures to answer any particular questions. You are free to write about life's moments. I used a science journal before where the students had a question and they all responded to it in their journal. I also used the journal to have students record observations and questions they had. I think the two are very different.
Allison you referred to RAFT. What is that? I haven't heard of that term before.
Meaty Fat Questions:
On page 14 she talks about nurturing the writer by letting students just write. Some things get in the way with this. First, I have students who just sit during writing time. They don't enjoy writing and complain that they don't know what to write about. I have tried strategies with them to give them a start, brainstormed topics, sat with them to kick them off and soon shortly after I leave their side, they sit idle for a long time again. I can see how the freedom to write anything will be overwhelming to these students. I know that for many students it will be an enjoyable time, but for others it will not. Also, what age does Elliott recommend starting a writer's notebook? I have one and love writing in it, but I feel it has to be intrinsic. Elliott's book is for grades 3-8. What about the primary grades? I wish she went into more depth on how to incorporate a notebook in the early grades. I could see how it would encourage a young writer to enjoy writing time.
Connections:
On page 2 Elliott referred to the journal as a place to collect "seeds". I thought this was really interesting because last week Suzy Klien author of "Horrible Harry" came to my school to talk about writing and she mentioned her seeds for writing. She also showed students her notebook. I never realized how authors took a tiny idea and made a whole story out of it.
When I read about a place to savor life, it made me realize how fast life flies by. I have been married now for a year and a half, and now that I have my notebook I am finally writing about being a newly wed and how special life is being married. My husband and I had our first Christmas, vacations, and memories that I am writing down so that I can look back at later and hopefully share with our children.
Unit:
I am going to incorporate writing into my unit. I will have a science notebook. I think I will have to have a science free write also, to allow students a chance to write and explore their thoughts without any parameters.
Diane,
RAFT is a content area writing technique where the students are allowed to pick the way they write from a matrix of ideas. There are several ideas under each letter. The R stands for role (the role from which students will be doing the writing). A is audience, who the student is writing to, F is format, and T is for topic. Students love the choice that this provides, and I love all of the creative ideas that come out of it.
Response to Diane's Question-
I agree Diane, that the writer's notebook is a little different at the younger grades. Even in third grade I think that students need to get used to the writer's workshop before any real rules for the notebook can be introduced, like the rules you commented about Tracey. Once students have gotten used to just writing for an extended period of time, then they can suggest some rules for the notebook like the ones on page 13.
I also have trouble for students trying to find ideas. I have a couple of flip chart books that I got from a teaching store in West Hartford that the students do love to use. These have a set of cards for characters, setting, and problem. For example, one of my students is now writing a story in response to the set of cards that read: What if a toothbrush was crying in a movie theater. He is having a great time writing a comical story about this. I know that The Columbia Writing Project suggests that students use small moments to write about, but different students have different writing preferences and working to figure out how different students prefer to write is a difficult task. Helping students to find stories in these preferred genres can be even more difficult for reluctant writers.
Connections-
I was able to connect to the last section in chapter 2 entitled Nurturing the Writer. I was able to relate to my Non-verbal learning disorder student who is a very reluctant writer because the process of writing is so challenging for her. She was constantly trying to find ways during writer's workshop to get out of doing any writing. It was sad because she has such a great imagination and mind, but the task of getting the ideas on paper was too daunting to her. I would always start the workshop with her by writing her ideas on a graphic organizer for her to work from. As the year progressed, so did her writing. Now she is able to sustain her writing for over a half an hour. I think the line at the end the payoff will come later is true. Our first job is to get them writing, then we can revise to help quality.
Question-
Page 14 talks about sharing writing. It suggests that students not only learn about each other, but gain ideas for writing as well. Students love to share their ideas, but when they are working so well, it is hard to stop them in order to make time for sharing.
How often do you have your students share? What formats do you use?
Unit-
I agree, Diane, the science notebook is the way to go to incorporate writing into science. There students can collect notes about what they observe, ideas for experiments, questions about the outside world, and collections of writings about a particular topic. It is a way to help students make sense of what they are learning about.
Hello everyone!
Meaty question:
I just finished reading chapters one and two. I really was impressed with the rationale the author gave for doing a writers notebook and the advice that was given on how to begin implementing it. While I was reading, the question of assessment was on my brain. I think it's quite a motivation for kids to know that things like spelling and grammar won't be assessed, but how else do you assess this. Are we supposed to look for certain things in their notebooks to demonstrate growth beyond the length of their responses? What if a student writes about something extremely personal? Do we risk breaking any rules of confidentiality?
Connections to teaching:
Writing is an area that I struggle with the most in my classroom;especially helping those students similar to the one's the author quoted saying, " How much do I have to write" or " Do I have to fill up the whole page?" Even when I think that giving these students free-write opportunities will help, they say that they can't think of anything to write about. We did make a list of topics to write about at the beginning of the year, that they can refer to in their writing folders, but this still seems to fail them. When the author explained how personal these notebooks are, it made sense that they could serve as meaningful seed ideas during writing. If they choose something from the notebook, it's something that they have already demonstrated interest in and is a unique personal story or take on an event or item. In this sense, I think that having a writers notebook in my own classroom would be really helpful! My kids would LOVE the idea of not being assessed on neatness, punctuation, and capitalization. I wonder if students would take enough pride in it to do their best work anyway?
Connections to myself as writer: I have to be honest. When I bought my notebook, I was strangely very particular about my choice, just like the author stated our students would be. After the time I took finding the perfect one, I was excited to get started on my own. I imagine that my second graders would have a similar enthusiasm. When I first began, I wasn't quite sure what to write about, as I'm sure many students would be. I thought back to Dr Kurkjian's models and was reminded that it could truly be any form of writing. This put me at ease, I would hope that my own students would feel this same relief. My first entry was a list; something I have become quite comfortable and used to doing. It was a long list of things that needed to be done for my wedding. I was excited to get each one on paper and as the list grew, I began to feel overwhelmed. I began to get anxious that perhaps I had forgotten something. Then I began jotting down my feelings. I realized some things that I had to do to relax myself and make my mind more at ease. I was impressed that in one entry, I was able to really help myself. The next day I was able to write down some of the steps I could take to relieve my stress.
Response to Tracey:
I have not written guidelines for writers workshop before. For the most part, my students understand the routine without guidelines, but I'm sure it would be beneficial for some students. I rely a lot on peer conversations to spark ideas and having students refer to a list of writing ideas that we generated at the beginning of the year. I think a posted list of guidelines would be beneficial, especially for the writers notebook. For us second grade teachers, it would probably be better to make the language more simplistic or make a fun little acronym with the guidelines. Maybe we can all work on one together? As far as using it to integrate in science, I'm thinking that you'd need a separate writers notebook for science. Otherwise I'm thinking that it'd be hard to find specific entries later on. If you kept a "science writers notebook" you could let kids make poems, lists, drawings, questions, and thoughts that are all related to what they are learning about science. Good question though.. Do you all think the notebooks need to be separated by subject to make ideas easier to refer back to? ?
Response to Allison:
In your response to Tracey, you mentioned a RAFT as an example of a piece of writing you might use. I've never heard of this. Could you fill me in at some time (on blog or in class), of what this means? I agree with you that science notebooks are great. I did this the past two years in my planting units and saw that my students really took pride in feeling like scientists when they recorded the growth of their plants and observations they made. It was a great way to have them practice making diagrams and labels, as well as practice measurement. Perhaps you could ask students questions to think about before they write in their journals to spark their thinking about how the science or social studies topic relates to thier personal lives, outside world, previous learning, etc.. I'd also love to hear about letters to Beth the Oscar Meyer hotdogger! Sounds interesting!
Relation to integrated unit:
The writers notebook has made me think about incorporating a writers notebook activity in my own unit on in social studies so that my students could take the information that they were learning in the unit to write poems, songs, letters, or whatever questions, thoughts, or reactions they had to what they are learning. I think I would ask my students to share only what they wanted in small groups and/or the whole class. I think this would deepen my children's understanding of the topic.
Response to Allison:
Allison, I find it hard to stop students at times when they are really involved in their writing. I usually try to tell students at the start of our workshop period that there will be time to share during the last 10 minutes or so. I usually switch it up and sometimes do whole group shares, partner shares, or small groups. I find the students enjoy the time to discuss how their story is going and hear the same from their peers. At the end of each unit we do a more formal celebration and everyone shares with the class. As far as how often, I try to have students share at least twice a week. There are times when I find students need to discuss their writing more and I will have them partner up to try and get help from a peer.
Response to Rhiannon:
Rhiannon, I think you bring up a great point about a student’s notebook containing very personal pieces of writing. I think to help with that, it is extremely important to have established a safe, risk free classroom. I think if students don’t feel threatened about their writing it will lead to more creativity. I feel as though it is also important to establish expectations and guidelines in the beginning of the year for their notebooks. Students should know if everything in there is going to be read by the teacher or if there are pieces the students can ask not to have read.
I think in response to assessment, you can look past just the length of their response. When I am looking at their writing, I am also looking to see if they are incorporating the skills we have been working on. It is not a place that I use a rubric for though.
Connection:
At the start of Chapter 2 the author mentions how personal of an experience it is to pick your writer's notebook. At the start of the year, I give each student a composition notebook and that becomes his or her writer's notebook. I find that in 3rd grade, for a lot of my students this is their first time having one. A lot of the second grade teachers in my school use writing folders instead. As I discuss with my students what the purpose of this notebook with be to them for the year, I do find that they get excited. I then have them take it home over the weekend and they decorate it so that it can become personal to them and also a place full of writing seeds. After this, I have students share about their notebooks and I find that the students become so invested and excited about their notebook that they can't wait to write. I think it is important that I share a notebook with them as well.
Unit:
During my unit I think I am going to use a writer’s notebook and a science notebook. I feel as though in their science notebook students will have a place to record thoughts, results, and observations about what they are learning, but there will also be some more structured responses. It will also be a great place for them to write down questions that arise.
Connection to my own writer's notebook-
I found myself in the same position as the students in chapters 1 and 2. I was confused about what I should be writing down. I didn't want too many entries to be like journal or diary entries. I found myself constantly writing a page, thinking oh I have another idea... and then starting a new idea. I have finished nothing. I figure I can always go back, so right now I am following the directions from chapter 2 and am "just writing." I hope that the rest will come.
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