Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 48) “They don’t need a teacher who assigns writing; they need a teacher who demonstrates what good writers do.”
How many times have we said about a student, “That kid can’t write”? Although we don’t have a definitive answer, what are the odds that same kid was repeatedly taught HOW to write? Just as with reading, we often expect students coming to high school knowing how to write—that’s something that’s taught in elementary school. Or, if it does need to be taught at high school, it’s the English teacher’s job. Just as the English teacher can’t possibly teach every kind of reading, she/he can’t teach every kind of writing. I surely don’t know the first thing about how to write a lab report. The thing is writing isn’t easy and our own work isn’t always pretty, so it makes us nervous to share our own with students—they might think it’s hard for us. But that’s all the more reason to share! Let the kids see that we—college graduates—struggle with writing at times ourselves and show them what we do to get a finished product. Students often think good writers (and especially professional writers) don’t have any difficulty, and a final draft is instantly produced. I attended a panel discussion made up of four writers of different genres while I was at the WIN conference last week, and they were asked how many revisions they make to their work. While they said it varies, the lowest number of revisions by one of the professional writers was 2-3 while the highest was 10-11. How much more approachable does a person become when you discover he or she has difficulty doing something? I find myself walking on eggshells a bit when I think someone is an expert. But if I could have that expert break down the process and show me that things don’t come so easily to him, I can learn so much more from him and am much more willing to show my flaws. Last year we discovered how important it is to model our reading (a la the think aloud); I think we’re discovering it’s just as important to do the same practice with our writing.
Content Area Writing
(Page 118) “The lesson here, as we think about content-area writing, is that kids need examples, models, templates, samples of what good writing in the field looks like.”
If we rely on the English teachers to teach all writing, we’ll end up with students who only know how to respond to literature or the HSAP rubric. Reading and writing go hand-in-hand. We have to give students plenty of examples of good writing in our content so that they have a variety of models. The writing requirements on SAT and AP are tied more to content, so we all need to make sure students are learning how to write like historians or scientists.
I assigned this chapter as introduction for producing public writing. I realize there aren’t a ton of different ideas to respond to within this chapter, but I think it gives a good overview of writing in the classroom.
(Page 48) “They don’t need a teacher who assigns writing; they need a teacher who demonstrates what good writers do.”
How many times have we said about a student, “That kid can’t write”? Although we don’t have a definitive answer, what are the odds that same kid was repeatedly taught HOW to write? Just as with reading, we often expect students coming to high school knowing how to write—that’s something that’s taught in elementary school. Or, if it does need to be taught at high school, it’s the English teacher’s job. Just as the English teacher can’t possibly teach every kind of reading, she/he can’t teach every kind of writing. I surely don’t know the first thing about how to write a lab report. The thing is writing isn’t easy and our own work isn’t always pretty, so it makes us nervous to share our own with students—they might think it’s hard for us. But that’s all the more reason to share! Let the kids see that we—college graduates—struggle with writing at times ourselves and show them what we do to get a finished product. Students often think good writers (and especially professional writers) don’t have any difficulty, and a final draft is instantly produced. I attended a panel discussion made up of four writers of different genres while I was at the WIN conference last week, and they were asked how many revisions they make to their work. While they said it varies, the lowest number of revisions by one of the professional writers was 2-3 while the highest was 10-11. How much more approachable does a person become when you discover he or she has difficulty doing something? I find myself walking on eggshells a bit when I think someone is an expert. But if I could have that expert break down the process and show me that things don’t come so easily to him, I can learn so much more from him and am much more willing to show my flaws. Last year we discovered how important it is to model our reading (a la the think aloud); I think we’re discovering it’s just as important to do the same practice with our writing.
Content Area Writing
(Page 118) “The lesson here, as we think about content-area writing, is that kids need examples, models, templates, samples of what good writing in the field looks like.”
If we rely on the English teachers to teach all writing, we’ll end up with students who only know how to respond to literature or the HSAP rubric. Reading and writing go hand-in-hand. We have to give students plenty of examples of good writing in our content so that they have a variety of models. The writing requirements on SAT and AP are tied more to content, so we all need to make sure students are learning how to write like historians or scientists.
I assigned this chapter as introduction for producing public writing. I realize there aren’t a ton of different ideas to respond to within this chapter, but I think it gives a good overview of writing in the classroom.
7 comments:
Teaching Adolescent Writers - pp. 57-62
The area of writing instruction that I struggle the most with is the revision stage. In this chapter, there are two wonderful strategies that I want to use with my sophomores when I do my memoir writing unit later this month. The first strategy is the one that starts on p. 57 in which the students observe their teacher and then write a sentence describing his behavior. Then they take that basic sentence and rewrite it five different times, once a day for five days. they might revise for strong verbs or by even upgrading their verbs. They might rewrite a few simple sentences as one complex sentence. Another idea might be to turn common nouns into proper nouns. The other strategy is the STAR strategy (Substitute, Take things out, Add, and Rearrange). I really like this idea for my students because it's almost like a checklist of what they should do to revise their papers. Both strategies will need to be modeled, though, in order for students to really understand them. I have a few memoirs I have written over the past few years that could stand some fine tuning, and I could use them to model both strategies.
Content Area Writing - p. 119
My response to this chapter is short as the chapter was rather short, but meaty. I like how the authors sum up the chapter by saying, "If we want kids to write well, we must set aside time and conduct activities at each stage of the writing process." It is simply not enough to tell them to write a paper.
Modeling is no doubt the most effective way to make kids better writers; so why don’t the majority of educators, me included, do more of it? I think it comes down to an issue we all struggle with which is the coverage of material. We cover material and then assign writing as a way to assess learning; but we are so concerned with getting to the next topic, skill, or concept that has to be covered, we don’t model for students how to go about completing the assigned writing. Then we get frustrated when students don’t give us what we were looking for.
In Teaching Adolescent Writers, I loved the poem, Don’t Be Afraid to Fail. I’m going to use it in class. The idea of expecting a student to be able to create a Grecian urn just by seeing one was a great way to illustrate the importance of modeling. The chapter was filled with great strategies for revising student writing. I love the idea of taking something students can relate to like MTV’s Pimp My Ride, but can we say Pimp My Write? I’m with Pam on the STAR strategy; it seems like it could be effective in helping students improve the content of their initial drafts of writing. And I am all for a 4:1 grading philosophy, especially for English teachers who are brave enough to make improving student writing a huge part of their curriculum.
As for the assigned reading in Content Area Writing, I sure am glad this chapter was so short after the length and depth of the TAW chapter. Whew! I liked the section that spoke to teachers being partly to blame for student plagiarism. With a little more effort on the part of teachers, the right topic or question can make it much more difficult for students to cut and paste from online sources.
Teaching Adolescent Writers- Chapter 3
I agree with Claire. Modeling is such an easy concept. I can always do something better when it is modeled for me. The same goes for our students. I think part of the problem could be our own insecurities as a writer. Students have to see our struggles through the writing process. Writing is hard and when our students see that we struggle as well, and then the message is clear. First drafts for everyone is lousy!! Then there are the standards. How can we teach everything in the standards and still teach good writing??? Well, I am beginning to notice a major theme in the book (LOL)- we can teach content through writing.
I loved reading the author’s experience on page 52. He labored and worked on a great piece of writing only to scare his students to death. Some of the strategies were great- first, talking the paper out. I have sent students out to the hall so they could talk through their writing! I talk aloud for Pete’s sake! I also loved Pimp My Writing- that is something that the kids can relate to. They always want the best so why not work on their writing. The acronym STAR is easy to remember so I think that this strategy would be easy to implement in my class!
Content-Area Writing- Chapter 5
Short chapter- beefy information! I always fuss about kids copying from books or the internet but now maybe I think I need to take some of the blame. I agree with the authors that maybe it is our type of assignment that encourages that behavior. If we allow more choice and give more guidance, then maybe students will take a more direct approach in their writing.
Teaching Adolescent Writers- Chapter 3
I liked how Christy brought up the idea from this chapter that first drafts for everyone are lousy!! I like how the author discusses this and flat out tells us that our students fear the quality of their work and do not realize that everyone has a true rough draft. Gallagher goes on to say “From bad writing, I tell them, the seeds of good writing will eventually grow. Bad writing is necessary before good writing emerges.” Now that is a quote to always remember – it can hold true to a lot more than just writing. Once we tell our kids that we all have lousy first drafts we can use the great strategies that Pam mentioned to help our kids (and ourselves) improve their writing. I think that Gallagher’s strategy having the students write the “same” sentence five times (Pam mentioned this strategy) would be a fun, easy, way to get our kids thinking more complexly about simple things – a great start to “pimping” their writing.
Content-Area Writing – Chapter 5
I liked that this chapter said that students need to read different examples of great writing (not just textbooks) within different subject areas – published magazines. Those are definitely great examples of subject-specific writing but a lot of students may struggle with that type of writing. Much like textbooks, my guess is these magazines aren’t geared towards students at or below a high school reading level.
November 13
Chapter 3 Teaching Adolescent Writers
I really enjoyed this chapter. There were not just lofty ideas of teacher modeling but specific strategies for those of us ‘non-English’ majors who actually don’t teach English. I thought the Grecian Urn story sounded so very much like a first year teacher but don’t we still catch ourselves doing similar things in our expectation that our students come to our classes already in possession of so many skills required to write well? I liked Gallagher’s point that if teachers write alongside the student then the anxiety is greatly reduced rather than the Grecian Urn effect.
The “Talk the Paper Out” strategy is also a strategy that I, like Christy, could easily employ in my classroom. Although mapping out my essay would not be a favorite choice for a social studies teacher like me I would much prefer and do give my students a choice in their writing. The JFK example was great but I loved the much more relevant “players in the decision to invade Iraq’ topic that allowed the students to write a persuasive piece. I have always believed that when we let a student have say in the topic that they compose then it will be given more effort and here is more evidence of that in chapter 3.
I like Claire, loved the Pimp M y Write idea and boy could the students compose a lengthy essay there! This would definitely be one as a teacher that I would love to compose along with them. It would be interesting to note the difference in perspectives for sure. I had never seen the STAR method before reading this chapter but do admit that it would greatly improve a student’s understanding of revise or rewrite or edit.
Chapter 5 Content-Area Writing
I agree with Kelly that this was thankfully shorter than chapter 3 from Gallagher…especially when I read chapter 5 and realized that I had read the wrong ‘long’ chapter! Anyway, I do agree that we do give writing prompts that allow our students to ‘find’ the information so well written that they can just copy and paste sometimes with little or no difficulty at all. For instance, I had a student last semester in my psychology classroom who decided her topic would be comparing the sexes..although she did not stick to her approved topic from the pre-writing conference. At any rate, I am fairly certain that it was lifted almost in its entirety from internet sources. Did the student take the opportunity to actually learn well from selecting her topic? No. But, I still say that if we design our topics in better ways then students can’t plagiarize with nearly as much ease.
I really liked the STAR strategy because with many students (especially those with learning disabilities), they need something to remind them exactly what steps they should follow in order to complete something. By being able to look at the acronym, STAR, they are able to see what they need to do first, second, third, then last.
Giving students writing prompts that let them “find” information is something that we unfortunately do entirely too often. I was one of those students who ‘lifted’ a bit of my writing in high school from other texts (there was no internet back then) but learned quickly in college that was unacceptable. I think too many of our kids get away with that so much that they confuse that with writing and probably actually think that it is THEIR writing. I don’t think they have the ability to understand that they just copied that information and was not an original thought because they have gotten away with it for so long. I agree with Jamie that if topics were designed a little more carefully that plagiarism wouldn’t be as big of a problem as it is. Students need to be taught that they are able to find some information, but that they also can find some of that information within themselves and they need to do that more often than not.
I would be the best example of how not to be a good writer. Writing has always been a struggle for me, as I have said numerous times here. I want to write well it's just that I struggle getting my thoughts down on paper. I know what I want to say but I can't get it to come out that way. It may be this way becasue I was a poor reader as a child. I don't know. I do know that I never had a teacher that told me they would help me do better as a writer. I do not want to make that mistake with my students. I want to be a good model for them, whether it is reading or writing. These classes are helping me learn to be one.
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