Often when I read about education, I am overcome with the
notion that being an effective teacher is a difficult task, for a variety of
reasons. What I have been thinking about lately is the issue of classroom time.
Routman says that writing needs to happen daily and if a teacher values it,
then they will make time for it. She quotes Don Graves saying that if we don’t
teach writing at least four days a week for at least 45 minutes a day, we
shouldn’t bother at all. I whole-heartedly agree with Routman when she says
that “writing is one of the best ways I know to develop deep thinking.” Even
more so, writing is so applicable and important to life outside school, so it
surely deserves much time in school. It is just difficult to squeeze anything into
the schedule. As a side note, I really appreciate Routman’s discussion about
how to teach writing effectively, because the least you can do when there is
limited time is to make the best use of that time.
I am currently struggling
with the schedule we have right now in my classroom. We only have writing three
times a week for 45 minutes. There is even less time for other reading
instruction because the schedule gets filled with all sorts of things so quickly.
The sample schedules in the text have social studies and science integrated in
the reading and writing time slots, without any separate time scheduled
specifically for them. In our schedule we do have separate time slots for
social studies and science, three times a week for 45 minutes each. Also interesting
is that on the same ‘switch’ days, we have good fit groups, which are the tier
two intervention groups. This leaves a lot of time available on Mondays and
Fridays and not much on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, which makes for an
interesting dynamic. I know that time will always be a frustrating factor. There
is always so much we want to do with our students and only so long that we have
them for. I would love to read a text that has a more holistic focus, so that I
could read other’s opinions on the dilemma.
I am encouraged because I know the teacher across the hall,
who will teach writing to all of fourth grade, is really passionate about it.
She wants to finesse the Reading Street program so that the students are able
to focus more on the production of writing. The students just started
switching, so I do not have a complete picture of what writing will look like
this year, but it does seem like she wants to focus more on the whole of
writing, instead of the parts, much like Routman wrote about. Also, as I mentioned
in my last post, this is the teacher with the “I do, we do, you do” mentality.
I am very interested for this year to continue so that I can learn more about
literacy instruction, see what it looks like at Hiawatha right now, and continue
to craft my own philosophies about teaching.
I agree that one of the most difficult issues is fitting in the time for writing. Thinking back on my years in elementary school, writing was not a regularly taught subject. Luckily, at Elliott it is a large part of the curriculum. This is due to the district requirements. This makes me wonder how the Holt requirements compare to other districts, and how it will compare to the requirements of the district that I will have my first classroom in. As I see the effect of this teaching, and compare it to the reccomandations in Routman, I look forward to crafting my own writing instruction philosophy.
ReplyDeleteEvery day the students have a 35 minute block of writing instruction. So far, this time has been used for MEAP preparation. I have gotten to observe a lot of explicit teaching and demonstration. At first, we looked at past MEAP writing samples and critiqued them as a class, looking for elements of successful writing. This past week my MT has explicitly modeled writing, creating a response to one of the prompts. The next few days the students in the class will get the chance to put all that they have observed into practice by writing their own responses.
I believe the students have been set up for success, as much of what my MT did was presented in the Routman book as essential for success. As he wrote his piece, he repeatedly spoke through his thinking, and pointed out how it responded to the prompt, showed details, and effectively used dialogue to move the story forward. Since students have a piece to refer to, they will not be going into writing their own piece blind.
I look forward to the year, and am especially excited to get to try my hand at the same sort of explicit instruction and modeling.
Dimondale has been great so far with writing. It has definitely been MEAP prep but I've learned a lot from the lessons. Today we did transitional words. The other day we revised introductions. The teacher modeled a story first and then students wrote their own. They did not get to be creative and write something completely different but each student was instructed to write a personal narrative.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I know could end up being a problem with their writing is I kept having to encourage students to write more. This will end in poor organization. I did not get to read their writing yet. Some students finished their writing after a paragraph and I had to encourage more. I was also doing about 5 other things at the time so I'm excited to take the time and read it. I know that the fact I had to say to 'add' more will throw off the organization entirely and would be very low on the MEAP.
Other than that mistake, I am really happy with every lesson. Holt has a curriculum all set up so that we are preparing these students in a systematic manner.
I can take ideas for the reading into the lessons. There are many ideas I can take into the classroom to get the initial writing phase moving and motivational.
I can't wait to get their writing back so that I can read it!