My students are continuing to love writing! They are continually eager to write and work on their pieces. Often during writing block, I think back to the struggle that I constantly had with students last year as I tried to persuade them to complete writing prompt after writing prompt- often expressing to them that they needed to be ready for a test. What a mess that was! Having said that, while my students are loving writing, I still have a long way to go as a writing teacher. I often do not know how to teach the specific techniques that help my students to become better writers such as tone and writer's voice. I constantly feel stuck in guiding them to better their concrete strategies rather than helping them revise their writing. There are two things in these particular chapters that helped me think more deeply about my writing instruction and the parts that I need to and want to improve for my students - conversational strategies and mentor texts.
The chart outlining conversational strategies on page 97 provided a deeper view of what TYPES of conversations help with what STRATEGIES. I often struggle with writing conferences when they get stuck and I am often not sure how to guide the conversations from there. Different students are able to express on different levels and with different articulation. Having a pocket full of strategies to use in our conversations helps me to better understand what they need for me to say in order to have the most productive type of conversation.
I have noticed that most of my students want our conversations to be guided by what they are writing and not HOW they are writing. This is an important distinction that I do not always notice because I get as entranced in what they are writing as they do. Redirection allows me to validate their thoughts while still encouraging them to move away from content topics and into process. Taking a tour of their writing gives me time to peruse what they have been working on in class and use more pointed questions to help the conversations about their writing flow. I do use the "taking a tour" strategy often but the discussion of it helped me to understand its uses more fully. Finally, the conversational strategy of amplification will be extremely useful with my students in helping them understand how to use academic language. Being able to name what they are doing is extremely powerful for them. When my students are able to talk about figurative language and why its uses help our writing to become more effective or methods of structuring their writing, they are able to set themselves up for success as writers as they move out of my classroom and into middle school.
The chapter "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" really struck me. I have come to a much better understanding of mentor texts and the importance of students having them over the last year but this brought it into a whole new light for me. The idea of my students having text sets that outline different authors and a mentor texts on the strategy that they are working on at all times actually blew my mind a little bit. It changes the way that I think about mini-lessons and the way that I choose mentor texts. As the book discussed, we should have a set of about 25 culturally relevant texts that cross an array of writing strategies to support our students' writing process. This chapter made me want to get more familiar with more literature that could be useful for my students. It also pushed me to come to better understanding of what it means to help a child develop a writer's voice and tone and strategies for compelling their readers to continue. For me, so much of that is intangible and therefore, more difficult to teach and more difficult for me to wrap my brain around.
Since these things are so intangible, the importance of having mentor texts becomes increasingly important. Here, students are able to SEE the strategy in use and make it their own to use in their writing. Just like teachers do not need to recreate the wheel, neither do my students as writers. They can take what is already there and formulate it to fit their style, their topic, and their writing while simultaneously working to enhance their pieces. I want to focus more on the use of mentor texts in my writing block moving forward. Their use for my students is invaluable in improving the more intangible skills of writing.
Your reflections are very poignant and I can connect with all of them. It is difficult to train students to talk about HOW they are writing rather than WHAT they are writing. I love how you connected your struggle to teach "intangible skills" and the benefits of using a mentor text. I, too, struggle teaching the skills that aren't as tangible as writing a hook, for example. There have been times when I've been in a writing conference and I didn't know what to say to the writer to help them. But now I'm thinking about how powerful it could be for me to direct students to a specific mentor text, especially in those moments when I'm not sure what to say. I think that we have to restructure the way that we teach writing so that mentor texts become a central part of our mini-lessons. I think that a lot of us try to use mentor texts every now and then, but I think that we need to see them almost as nonnegotiable. Thanks for highlighting the very important key points from these two chapters.
ReplyDeleteI really relate to that struggle of getting kids to participate during writing conferences. It's already hard for me to resist diving into critiques of their writing and finding things wrong--- but it's even harder when they don't have much to say. These chapters helped me with that too
ReplyDeleteI agree that the matchmaker chapter was helpful. Using mentor texts is one of
-allaisia
ReplyDeleteKelsey,
ReplyDeleteI can really connect with your reflection about students wanting to focus more on the content of their writing rather than the process. It is our job to guide them to notice their process and reflect on the things they are doing as writers. I also really like that you highlighted the role of mentor texts and how important they are to our students being able to have an example of strategies they are working on as writers.
Tenagne