Saturday, January 24, 2009
Writer's Notebook ch.11,12&13 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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7 comments:
Meaty Questions:
As I read Chapter 11 about engaging boy writers I could understand completely the 3 reasons that Ralph Fletcher mentioned contribute to this struggle: topic choice, violence, and humor. I feel as though I struggle the most with the issue of violence. It is something that tends to come up with boy writers and not that often with girls. How do you establish the acceptable level of violence in their writing? There has to be that line so they know what is ok for their writing and so the teacher isn’t putting their writing down.
Chapter 13 revisited a lot of topics discussed in this text, assessment being one of them. I like the areas that Elliott mentioned to use for assessment. I was wondering if anyone uses something similar to this? Also, does anyone have their students take their notebooks home?
Classroom Connection:
I really enjoyed the discussion in Ch. 11 about having the notebook be a workbench for different topics. I know my boys love to write about sports, especially their own experiences. I find that they don’t frequently write about other stories that aren’t their own. I think this would be a great activity to try and they could apply a lot of skills to this piece. I also think that they would be rather excited about having to watch and observe other sports experiences, especially since a lot of the students play in the same leagues.
In Chapter 12, Elliott talks about using the notebook across the curriculum. I like the idea of having students respond to current events. I think this would be great to do with the local newspapers to help connect them with their community. Having students record their thoughts and information in their notebook I think is a great way to help them organize future pieces.
Unit Connection:
Ch. 12 mentioned having students conduct an inquiry project on people, places, or events that interest them. The text mentioned having them do this with their state. I think this could be zoomed in even more and done with a variety of topics. In social studies, I feel as though my students could do this with their town. For my unit, I think it would be great to have students pick a form of water or part of the water cycle that they are curious about. They can then use their notebook to record information that they gather and possible work with partners to present this information to the class.
My Notebook:
I hadn’t thought about responding to the media in my own notebook prior to reading these chapters. I have recorded quotes and other things that interested me, but I hadn’t directly responded to a song or painting. I plan on responding to a song and a painting to see what thoughts come to mind and what messages I get from these arts.
Meaty Question:
Tracey, my question is very similar to your question. As I read Ralph Fletcher’s suggestions for motivating boy writers I too felt a little anxious. I know for a fact that many of the boys in my classroom are interested in wars and violence. They play violent video games; they take out books on the civil war from the library. However, in the classroom you need to create an environment where everyone feels safe. Allowing violence as a topic can become quite sticky. I can see many of my other students feeling uncomfortable with this, especially the girls. I also can foresee many parents’ angry reactions. It seems like many parents go over board over every little thing now a days. Allowing students to write about violence just will be a catalyst for these parents. Also, with all of the unfortunate school shootings, violence has been an extremely touchy subject. It seems like every mention needs to be reported and documented. With that said, as I do believe many of my boys would enjoy writing on this topic, I am very cautious to tread those waters, what do you think about this?
Classroom Connection:
Many of my students are reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid. When I first started teaching, I would not stock my classroom library with a title like that. Anything that I didn’t feel was quality literature did not make the shelves. However, I have backed down on this and now I try to include books that will interest my readers. That means that I now have titles like Mighty Robots, Goosebumps, and Captain Underpants. I have realized that my idea of quality literature is not my students’ idea, and allowing them to read what they love is important.
Classroom Connection:
In chapter 13, there was discussion of a web. I recently had my students make a web about themselves. After I modeled that step for them, I showed them how the web will aid them in making an acrostic poem using their name. This lesson worked very well for my students and they were really motivated. This was a nice tie into our poetry unit.
Connection to my writer’s notebook:
In chapter 12 Elliott discussed the two faces of writing; for an audience and for our selves. Many times I find myself writing to clear my own thoughts. I use my notebook to let out my frustrations with life, and to write what I love about life. I have also used it to plan my life. I have one section that is all about my goals.
Connection to my Unit:
In chapter 13 one idea was to use an artifact to write about. I can see my students picking an artifact such as a leaf, flower, seed or plant to write about in their notebook. Just by providing a simple artifact students can come up with a variety of writing topics in their notebook. I can definitely tie this into my plant unit.
Response to classmate:
Tracey, I have just started using the notebook in my class so it is new for me. I have not used it to assess my students. So far they are all writing which is my goal. I am assessing pieces that they are publishing from it. Once the pieces go the next step and leave the notebook then I look at it closer.
Response to classmate:
I also struggle with the topic of violence. So far, I have not accepted it, except for their fantasy pieces. That was one area I allowed it, but I had to be careful and monitor closely. Students did write about things exploding and blowing up bad guys and aliens but I felt that it was not directed toward anyone and it was in a fantasy piece so I did allow it that time. It is really tricky and hard, definitely something I am not comfortable with.
Questions-
Tracey and Diane, I wanted too to ask a question about boys and violence, but since you two pretty much have that covered, I'll have to twist my question differently. I was thinking in chapter 13, Eliott mentions privacy of the writer's notebooks. I have never offered my third graders the option of privacy. They usually tell me if they are writing about something that is more emotional than the usual topics, perhaps because they are so young. Do you have privacy issues or concerns with your classes notebooks? What are your thoughts on looking, esp. if a parent has a concern?
Connections to Teaching
Well, my kids, boys and girls love the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books too. They always tell me it is because it is funny, although they don't tend to write funny stories themselves. I think sometimes they try but they turn out to be less funny than they imagined. I think that this could be because humor requires a lot of planning and that is something that third graders need to have a lot of help and assistance with to encourage. I think they would love it if they were able to create a humorous story, but I also haven't encouraged it beyond writing homonym jokes.
I also was able to connect to using the writer's notebook in the content areas. Although we have a science notebook for our inquiry findings, my students were using their writing notebooks to write about their Rocks and Minerals field trip on Friday. Some students just wrote it on their seeds lists, while others took time to describe the rocks or locations we went to. I think this was a perfect use of the writer's notebook to reflect on a fun day!
Connections to My Own Notebook-
I appreciated the writing notebook never being graded. I do not feel very comfortable with all of the pieces in my notebook. I know they need revision and aren't perfect, but they are what I produced at the time. It is up to me to decide what should and should not be evaluated. I feel extreemly less comfortable with the creative writing process then the "paper writing process". Perhaps this is because I have been writing papers for my undergrad and graduate years but I haven't been keeping a writing notebook. It is like if I haven't run in 8 years. I wouldn't be able to run races right away, I have to start slow and make the writing more of a habit before it is something that I am proud of. I need to put the practice hours in.
Integration to Unit-
Like I said, my students already included reflections and seeds in response to our rocks and minerals field trip. I think it is a great place for students to write the ponderings and wonderings that they ask me every day about the rocks and minerals. I think that they can then check off or write about questions they found the answer to and investigate ones that they still are unsure about.
Diane,
I don't usually allow students to take their notebooks home because they frequently end up missing. Students ask all the time and my usual comment is to take paper and we'll staple it in the next day. I know it's not optimal, but I hate to loose all that work, especially towards the end of the year. I have broken my own rule on special occasions, as we sometimes tend to do... but I think it depends on your students and their track record with things like that.
Tracey and Diane,
I agree the violence thing is an issue. My major concern is when video games and tv shows are the primary focus of the content. I try to encourage students to make variations to the theme. I allow students to write about violence, but I haven't had an issue with third graders going over the edge. I think using model texts to show how authors use violence in an appropriate way might help students to make good choices about the violence that they include in their writing.
Diane,
I also use to discourage the reading of books like Captain Underpants. I no longer discourage this, unless it is all a student reads. I do feel that we need to expose students to quality literature and through this exposure students are encouraged to read some of it themselves. I think it is all about balance. Frequently students might think they won't like a book because it doesn't look as fun as the comic type books, but usually a read aloud of the first chapter can turn kids on to more quality literature.
P.S. Free comic book day is May 2nd. I usually call the comic book stores to get extra copies of the books for classroom use. The kids love them!
Response To Allison:
In response to your question about privacy with student’s writer’s notebooks, I myself to not have privacy in my class either. It is something that has never come up. I think similar to how things are in your classroom; my students know that their notebook is a place to write and that we will be looking at it together. I did really like the suggestion in the book that mentioned giving students the option of folding the corner of the page down. This would then allow them to have some privacy if they wrote about a topic they wanted to keep a secret. It would also allow me to just see that they have written, even if I did not read the piece. It is something that I am considering for next year.
P.S. Thanks for the info about free comic book day, I had no idea. When I told my students, a lot of them were rather excited!
Response To Diane:
Diane, I used to have the same strong feelings about what books I would allow students to read in the classroom. Just as you mentioned, I would not put books like Captain Underpants on my shelves. At first, I didn’t even really look into the books, just by their style and topics I deemed them to be not good enough. I have found though that for some of those picky readers it works. Just as Allison mentioned, I make sure that this is not the only type of books they are reading. I feel as though I have been able to find a happy balance with a lot of students, especially boys. For those students that really don’t want to read anything else we usually set up some sort of agreement so they can read one Captain Underpants and then another title that we pick together. They are surprised when they enjoy the title we picked together!
Hello ladies!
Wow, what a great book! So easy to read and full of great ideas!
Meaty questions:
Share time: Chapter 12 touched on the importance of share time again and having kids share their work and you share pieces of your writers notebook with your kids. I totally understand the importance of this and I include sharing in my reading workshop model, but I'm still finding that this is so hard to always accomplish. Sometimes I'll only call on a few students to share to save time but there's always some hurt feelings. I'm trying to squeeze it in. Any success stories or ideas on how to better do this?
Also, I loved the idea of integrating the arts and music into the writers notebook. I find that so many of my kids are so into music this year, especially with guitar hero. They're learning the verses to songs that I never knew little second graders could memorize. I don't think they know the meaning of the songs, but I'd love to try this out and have them pay attention to word choice and mood. I've had kids draw pictures in reactions to poems to visualize the poem, but I'd love to do this with music especially. Anybody ever try that in your class?
Response to Tracey:
You talked about how to establish acceptable level of violence in your student's work, especially with the boys. In the beginning of the year, I said this and it seems to work: " If you think that I could show the work to our principal or your parents and they wouldn't mind, it's probably okay. We talked about examples of things that wouldn't be appropriate and got them all out on the table, and the kids had a great time of coming up with ideas that would be inappropriate. They made a deal that they wouldn't write about those things in school, an d it was never really a problem. I don't mind war stories but nothing that showed another person killing or hurting someone maliciously.
Also in response to Tracey:
No, I have never let my kids take their books home. I know in chapter thirteen, she recommends doing this for homework, but I have some irresponisible children and parents (yes, parents!) who might not allow the child to bring it back. I guess it's just me being a control freak, but I prefer to keep them in their desks so it has no way of getting lost, stolen, etc...
Class connection: The chapter on getting boys into writing really hit home for me because I've been seeing the abundance of new series for girls but not nearly as many for boys. Yes, there are magic tree house and a to z mysteries, but those are geared toward both sexes. My boys love Captain Underpants and for a few years, I refused to buy them for my library but my boys absolutely love them and if they're reading, why not! I also want to invest in more joke books because my boys love them too! They're great springboards for writing their own jokes. One of my boys is even wrote all the jokes he knew one day in his notebook because he didn't want to forget them. I thought that was a great idea!
Notebook Connection: In my own notebook, i wrote a list poem about my wedding since it's coming up. I included things that I've done and still need to do. I jazzed up the writing and threw in a few rhymes here and there but I finished it feeling good about what I had done and was very clear as to what still needed to be done! It was like writing a to do list but it was fun and creative!
Unit connection: I have my kids write a poem as one of the activities in my unit and I know how valuable it is, but I had a hard time figuring out how to assess it, because I gave them the freedom to write in a way that they felt fit. Now that I'm thinking more about it, perhaps I should have them write a particular type of poem like a recipe poem so that there is a clear set of expectations for them to follow. I think that assessing poetry can be so tricky because you don't want kids to feel like their thoughts and ideas aren't good enough... hmmm..
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