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Trail-3-5
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1. Prewriting 2. Drafting 3. Revising
4. Editing 5. Publishing
What is the writing process? Usually teachers describe the above. Perhaps there's a little more too it. If you need a refresher on the stages, click here.
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| Objective: I'd like you to be able to describe major features of the writing workshop in your own words. | What is the writing workshop? | |
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Home Schooling Online Writing Club | |
| Real teachers discuss managing the writing workshop | I have found that as far as writing conferences go, what works best for me is to have the students sign up when they are ready for a conference (on the board.) They are then to either keep working on the story, work on a different story or begin a new one. I cross off their name when I am ready and go to their seat instead of them coming to me. I also have two mentors (students) who field any questions from other students while I am conferencing. The mentors are expected to answer questions if possible and keep a log of who asked and what they needed help with. That way if there is a question that they were unable to answer, I check the log and help those students. It also helps prevent uneccessary questions being asked. | |
| Guide
Sheets
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Generally, I try to choose very open ended topics that the students can write about, drawing from their own life experiences. I will start by using some kind of pre-writing activity (a brainstorm of scary things, a web, a share time for those students who are more oral, so they can get their ideas). After that, the students do a first draft. The first draft is edited by a peer editor. A guide sheet is a good way for students to check each others work. The sheet could include: Is there a capital at the beginning of each sentence? Are there complete sentences? Did you understand all of the piece, if not, did you discuss it with the author? Any questions that you feel would work in your room? The author then does a second copy. When they finish, they answer the peer edit questions by themselves and then sign up for a teacher conference. By making them check for capitals and punctuation, usually the teacher conference goes faster. After the teacher conference is completed, a publishable copy is attempted on the computer. When the student feels that his or her work is good enough, they take it home for a parental proof read. One copy stays in school, just in case. If their parents sign off on it, it goes into their portfolio choice folder and may be placed into their portfolio at a later date, if they choose. | |
| Journaling @ the top of the hour | You might try starting each session with ten minutes of solid writing: everyone in the room writes, adults included, with absolutely no interruptions -- no talking, no going to the bathroom, no sharpening pencils, etc. | |
| More journaling | I start by giving writing journal assignments geared toward the genre of the next writing assignment. Then on the first day of the workshop for that assignment, they will have several pieces in that genre from which to choose. I also take their writing home with me and take a little time to read each one and type up some sort of comment which includes what I really like about it, what can use improvement, and words of encouragement. They love receiving a personally-typed comment each day, and it gives them guidance right away while I help the students who I know need help having looked at their work the night before. It takes a little extra time at home (perhaps 40 minutes), but the payoff in class is tremendous. I have found that when I ask students to do a peer edit, they model after the comments I write to them. They write encouraging words and suggest ways the piece can be improved. I love it! Good luck! | |
| Experts | Here's the resource that helped me begin Writers' Workshop: "In the Middle" by Nancie Atwell. It is a fantastic book with the "nuts and bolts" of setting up Writing Workshop, theories, and all sorts of practical ideas. I wouldn't be without it! Actually, anything by Nancie Atwell or Lucy Calkins would be great. Others to read are Donald Graves, Peter Elbow, Tom Romano, Don Murray. | |
| I bet you'll find some these techniques helpful | Great Writing Across the Curriculum Strategies | |
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| How do you respond to essays? | http://www.ncte.org/teach2000/ideas/B17608.shtml | |
| Do Computers Benefit Writing? | What
the Research Says:
When students use word processing to write, there is a significant improvement in their attitudes toward self, teachers, and writing. 1 Low-achieving writers benefit from participation in telecommunications-based writing projects in which they are intrinsically motivated in a real communications environment. 2 Urban LEP students improve their writing by using word processing (and become more positive about school and about writing). Support from word processing includes: overcoming illegible handwriting, conferencing about assignments, extending the length of assigned writing, overcoming fear of errors, and encouraging student collaboration. 3 Reviews of the research on the effects of word processing indicate that there is an increase in revisions, fewer mistakes, and more correction of them. And when word processing use is combined with an effective teaching model, students achieve at a higher level than those not using a word processor. 4 Studies show significant performance differences between students using computers and those writing essays by hand. Students who used computers received higher performance scores and higher grades on their essays. Computer essays contained fewer punctuation errors, and had a greater average sentence length and a greater number of complex sentences. Sources Citations for Research Results: Kurth, R. (1987). Using word processing to enhance revision strategies during student writing activities. Educational Technology, 27(1), 13-19. Spaulding, C. & Lake, D. (1991-1992). Interactive effects of computer network and student characteristics on students' writing and collaborating. Cited in Riel, M. (1992). Approaching the study of networks. The Computer Teacher, 19(4), 7-9, 52. Silver, N.W. & Repa, T.J. (1993). The effect of word processing on the quality of writing and self esteem of secondary school English-as-a-second-language students: Writing without censure. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 9(2), 265-283. Snyder, I. (1993). Writing with word processors: A research overview. Review of Educational Research, 35(1), 49-65. Robinson-Staveley, K. & Cooper, J. (1990). The use of computers for writing: effects on an English composition class. Journal of Educational Research, 6(1), 41-48. |
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| How to make time for writing conferences- A short piece by Peter Elbow | Writing Conferences: "What I've found very helpful to deal with this situation is to borrow the idea of having frequent short conferences. I forget where I first heard about this. Don Murray, I guess, though he had longer conferences and called off a lot of regular class meetings I think (When a Writer Teaches Writing). Someone else told me about using short, 15 minute conferences and keeping classes. Lad Tobin makes great use of conferences and talks about it well in his Writing Relationships. Here's how I've come to use them. I have a fifteen minute conference each week with half my students--so I see them all in a two-week cycle. I try to have a bit of conversation and get to know them gradually, asking in particular about what is working or helpful for them in the course and what is problematic. But I make those con- versations short and move to the main business of the short con- ference: having them read to me the piece they are working on: usually a substantial draft or a substantial revision. What I love about the conferences is that I get to relate to them as individuals and to begin to know them a bit as individual people. When I am with them as a whole class, sometimes I feel them as a group and even a "lump" of "they." But when I get to be with them as individuals, I can almost invariably like them and feel them as pretty sweet and open. The conferences vastly improve my feeling and my relationship to the class. You might say, "But these conferences require a huge amount of time." But the important point here is that when I have a conference, I don't have to take the student's paper home with me for written feed- back. I'm done. In fifteen minutes! I can seldom write comments at home that quickly, so by and large, I think the conferences save me time. I try to get them to bring an extra copy for me to look at. I don't always succeed at this and so sometimes I'm looking over their shoulder as they read and sometimes I simply sit back and close my eyes and listen as carefully as I can. After they read (and here's something I learned from Don Murray), it's crucial to start off the conversation by asking them, "So what do you notice? What seems to work here and what doesn't satisfy you?" I then make my response, but often I can piggy back on exactly what they say; often I can be more generous and appreciative than they are--and point to virtues they didn't mention. But of course, if I think it's important to point to what didn't work or to make suggestions for revision, I do that. My goal here is for students to *experience* their own writing. Stu- dents often enough write prose that is syntactically unclear or tied in knots--or write ideas that are tangled or don't make sense--not quite seeming to realize it. But when they *read their writing out- loud* they can almost invariably *hear* these problems with no diffi- culty. And usually they can readily fix the incoherence or the tangle--right off--just by speaking. The operative questions are very simple: "How would you say this to someone?" and "What are you getting at here?" Because the student is there with me, I can get *him or her* to answer those questions. If I'm at home alone writing a comment, I have to try to answer it. Lots of the important feed- back is coming from them. You might say, at this point, "But it's hard to hear the student's paper well enough to give good response if I just hear it read out- loud." Yes, that's a problem. But consider the trade-offs in their most extreme form: You read the paper silently, carefully, well and therefore give brilliant insightful productive feedback. But the student sits silently as you read and doesn't really (re)experience her paper. As she listens to or reads your brilliant feedback, all she has is whatever memory is left over from last night or a few nights ago when she read it. (Of course she can read it again in the light of your feedback, but even if she does, this tends to be an incomplete or partial reading *through* your feedback--and often the student doesn't even read the whole thing as a piece-- but goes back and makes piecemeal changes.) The student reads outloud and as a result actually hears and experiences her essay--her words, her thinking, her rhetoric--her relationship with the reader. But since you can't read it slowly and carefully on the page, you can't "get" it as well, and hence your feedback is ordinary, mediocre, not very good. I'd vote for (b) as preferable to (a): the student's experience of her own paper is more valuable than our brilliant feedback. This is not just for the sake of her general long term growth as a writer, but for learning the crucial writerly ability to have one's own insights about how to revise one's own writing--and not be dependent upon the teacher's feedback for what and how to change things. Of course spoken feedback is more evanescent and less complex; the student doesn't have a record of it to take home and look at. But on the other hand, I can suit it better to the exact situation of the student and the student's needs--after hearing him or her tell about her writing and her feelings about that paper. Also, remember that I do this only every other week--so it usually happens that on the alternate weeks I give them some written feed- back." | |
| Optional Reading | Report in Argument's Clothing: An Ecological Perspective on Writing Instruction | |
| Question for the Thread | Is progressive writing instruction workable? | |
| Random Good Thing | Visual Learning + Harvard Study | |
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