Teachers as Writers

After completing this week’s readings, I thought to myself, “I’ve never been much of a writer... Sure I can teaching writing as long as I don’t have to write anything myself…” like many of the students in Routman’s book, I remember loving to write in early elementary school and somewhere along the way growing to resent it. Because I was so often forced to write about topics that I didn’t have any say in, I now even have a hard time writing about topics I choose myself. It’s become easier for me to write about specified topics than it is for me to express my own creativity. I fear judgment, not of my ability to respond to a prompt, but of my ability to clearly illustrate with words what I’m feeling or thinking. How should I expect my students to love writing, if it’s something they see me avoid?

After reading the beginning of Routman’s book, I’ve really realized the importance of keeping students passionate about writing. How can we ensure success in a subject to which students have become so resistant? My master teacher in my main placement classroom does a fantastic job of ensuring success in her writing curriculum. She doesn’t teach specific writing traits as lessons dissociated with writing itself and she doesn’t give children topics about which to write that don’t leave room for creativity. She embeds her lessons on organization, word choice, and paragraph elements on writings that students are already doing on topics of their choice. She models those elements of writing in her own work in front of the students. Not only does this allow her to show her students that nobody’s writing is perfect, it also lends itself to creating community in the classroom through learning more about one another. She goes through the revision process in front of the class allowing her students to see and hear her thought process as it is happening. After they are comfortable with this idea, she publicly helps individual students and allows the class to give suggestions as well. This promotes the idea that there is nothing wrong with very rough rough drafts of an assignment.

One of the most successful assignments I have witnessed her give to students is her “small moments” assignment. On the first day of school, students make a “name art grid.” They divide a piece of paper into 4 sections and decorate their name on one of them and are asked to draw 3 exciting life events in the remaining 3 squares. These students never have problems deciding what to draw. What they don’t know at the time is that they will use these for a later writing assignment. The teacher asks students to pick one story and journal about it. They are then asked to expand on one part or moment of that story in order to elaborate and give more detail. The teacher uses this to model many elements of adding detail to a story and completes the assignment herself. She models the writing process while making it relevant to something the students feel connected to. She celebrates student work and encourages their love of expressing their ideas on paper.

It has been a great experience for me to have seen many of the approaches in Routman’s book ahead of time. It helps me to realize that there is really a practical way to apply many of the strategies that we have been learning!

Back to Kindergarten!

After reflecting as a class on meeting with our Kindergarten buddies, I was surprised to see how many different levels of literacy kids can be at, even this early in the year. It was also interesting to see how many different ways kids expressed their understanding of literacy. Working both in my main placement in 4^th grade, and in Kindergarten, I have noticed evidence of best practices for literacy in place. In my 4^th grade placement, my master teacher spends a significant amount of time during their literacy block giving individualized instruction to students with both their reading and writing strategies. She works with her students individually and in small groups and only focuses on a couple of strategies at each time. After this focus, she checks in periodically over the next couple of weeks to assess student progress on those strategies. Many of the best practices for teaching children in the prealphabetic stage will benefit children. For example, even in 4^th grade, my master teacher will give her students opportunities to experience a variety of meaningful texts at different levels. This occurs both on their own and during read alouds. They are also expected to write every day for a variety of purposes. This is experienced both during literacy and at times during social studies, where they will journal about various experiences in the class.

Additionally, during my experience in Kindergarten, I noticed much evidence of best practices for literacy in the classroom. Before even reading Fox’s definitions of best practices, it was obvious that literacy was valued in the classroom. The alphabet was displayed in various places around the room and was also written on a placemat at each student’s desk. She had bulletin boards with word groups on them as well as a place for the letter of the week with words listed that began with that letter. She also had a bulletin board to track each student’s monthly progress through pictures and words. In terms of best practices, I noticed that she taught phonemic awareness through stretching and shrinking words. Students could hear her model this strategy and then were able to copy it in order to hear and identify individual sounds in words. Also, by having one letter of the alphabet as a focus each week, she was able to concentrate on teaching one or two skills at a time.

In working with my Kindergarten buddy, I noticed many elements of emerging literacy. I was surprised by how eager he was to show me everything he knew how to do. When we did our “get to know you” activity, he was able to write the answers for many of his own questions and wanted to write the answers for my questions that he knew how to as well. He was hesitant to make mistakes in his spelling and if he didn’t know how to spell something, he would resort to drawing a picture of the answer. He had a very clear understanding that he was to read left to right, which was obvious when he wanted to spell the name of TV show written on his shirt. Since he was looking at it upside down, he read from left to right as he saw it on his shirt and ended up spelling the word backwards!

When we read together, we read the book, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, which he was quite familiar with. When I would pause in my reading, he was able to finish the sentence. I wasn’t quite able to tell whether that was because he was so familiar with it or because there were parts he was able to read on his own.

Teaching Literacy

Throughout this program, I have expanded my definition of literacy quite a bit. I used to think that teaching literacy was solely about teaching students how to read. I thought that those who could read were literate and those that couldn’t weren’t. I’ve since come to realize what a narrow definition of literacy that was. Through my September Experience, my definition broadened to include reading and writing as a means of communication for someone to express their ideas. Since then I’ve furthered it to mean the ability of person to use language to communicate with others and express ideas both orally and through the written word in order to participate effectively in society. This implies that even before children are able to read, they are growing their literacy abilities (Sulzby and Teale). The changing of that definition will make a huge difference in the way I both instruct and assess my students in areas of literacy.

Sulby and Teale’s article on emergent literacy discusses methods teachers can use to develop students’ literacy at every level. Even before children are able to read and write fluently, they are still able to some extent to communicate their ideas through writing and to take in other ideas through reading. Successful literacy curriculums prioritize “active involvement” in literacy and should have opportunities for both reading and writing daily (Sulzby and Teale). This standard for literacy has been modeled to me by my master teacher, who makes time for both reading and writing daily. During the majority of days, there is a specific lesson centered around reading and writing, but on the days that there aren’t, children still have opportunities to do both. She models this through giving students opportunities to journal about their learning in other subjects, giving them opportunities to read aloud and silently in other subjects, and reading aloud to students at a variety of reading levels.

Read alouds are a great way to engage students in text they may not otherwise try (Ivey). Students take an interest in texts that may be above their reading level and then have the read aloud to help them navigate that text. Reading at different ability levels helps “demonstrate value for all levels of text,” which can build the self esteem of students who may be a lower reading level than the rest of their class (Ivey). Students are able to derive a deeper meaning both from texts that may seem below their reading level and from ones they wouldn’t be able to understand on their own. When teachers read aloud, they can model strategies for the students to use when they are reading silently. When students apply these techniques to their own reading, they are able to make deeper meanings from their own reading. My master teacher often uses read alouds to explicitly teach techniques she expects the students to adapt to their own reading. She uses multiple levels of texts to model to students how to make predictions in their readings and to stop and ask what the author is trying to tell them in their text.

I am excited to start using these techniques with students so I can more fully understand their value!

This is one of the most dynamic examples of whole brain teaching I've seen in a classroom! Check it out!