Regie Routman's Writing Essentials- Ch. 11: Build on Best Practice and Research

Ch. 11: Build on Best Practice and Research

In this chapter of Regie’s book I learned that I really need to keep up with the newest research and be more of a leader for writing instruction at my grade level, in my school, or even in my district. We haven’t had much professional development on writing instruction in my school and I feel like we need more. If only we could have Regie Routman stop by! As of now we teach what is in our curriculum and use a program that is pretty traits-based. We have specific pieces of writing in designated genres that students do throughout the year. Most of the writing students do is assigned by us. In third grade some of the main projects students do are- write about a special friend/person/place, write a research report, create poems, write a persuasive essay, and write/demonstrate a “how to” instructional piece. Although we do give students choices within the topics, we are still telling them what to write and when. I know that I personally do not give my students enough time to free-write or quick-write. My students last year even asked for that time, but I felt like when I gave it to them it was wasted, so I kind of gave up on it. Research shows that writing everyday for a sustained period of time is good for the development of fluency. It also proves that free-writing with choice for a purpose and specific audience helps students value writing as a whole. Obviously I need to change my mindset, increase my expectations, and manage my class better so I can include this free-writing time for my students.

I’ve learned that teaching reading and writing together are considered “best practice”. Last year one of my coworkers started teaching the two together in the morning after a book that she’d read explained its importance. I didn’t read that book and wasn’t sure of the benefits, so I didn’t change my schedule to combine the two subjects. After reading this book and finding some of the research results, I’ve learned that reading and writing support each other. Good readers are often good writers and vice-versa. I’ve also learned that you can use shared writing experiences for your guided reading instruction, so next year I may try to switch my schedule around to place reading and writing next to each other during the day.

Regie recommends adopting the practices and habits of highly effective teachers. I’m happy to see that I am already doing some of the things that she listed, but there is also a lot I still need to work on. I already talk with my colleagues daily and as a professional learning community we talk about how we can improve our instruction in all areas, including writing. I feel like I am a pretty good communicator with my students and with stakeholders in their education, including their parents. I try to meet with students for conferences (whether they are one-on-one or quick roving) and I use what I learn from those conferences to help guide my instruction. For example, if I notice a lot of students are struggling with finding exciting ways to start a paper, I will teach a mini-lesson on that the next day. I have a lot of great books in my classroom library, but I do feel like I need to organize it a little better- maybe by genre, subject, or author. All of these are already strengths of mine or are becoming strengths.

There were some traits of highly effective teachers that I feel I need to improve on. I definitely want to do more shared writing with my students. I want them to hear me think aloud and watch me write. I’d also like to start sharing more of my own writing that I do outside of school so students can see that writing is a life-long process that is not only done as school work. Reading Regie’s book is a good start for learning about best practice and research-based teaching strategies, but I need to continue to stay up to date with research. I’d also like to talk to my principal to see if there’s any way we can have more professional development related to writing instruction. One thing I never get to do that I would really like to do is observe another teacher, or several teachers. I am always so busy teaching my own students and working over my plan time that I never really have or take the opportunity to observe other teachers. I’d like to try to make time for this next year so I can see what other teachers are doing in the classroom. Maybe we can all learn from each other!

I like the idea of charting what you’ve been doing with writing, the new strategies you try, and how the new strategies change writing as a whole. I think I need to wait and do this after I implement some of these new ideas next year, but I look forward to seeing all the changes that may be possible. Some goals that I have for next year include adding more modeling and shared demonstrations to my instruction, giving students more free-write time, and helping students visualize an audience/reader for their messages. I’d also like to make more time for the sharing and celebration of writing and for different types of conferences with my students.

Regie writes a lot about developing a school-wide vision when it comes to writing instruction. If our school has a vision when it comes to writing, I honestly don’t really know what it is. I just know that we follow the curriculum guidelines and use the resources we have to develop lesson plans that follow those guidelines. We also have students write in various genres throughout the year and keep samples for their portfolios. I feel like my coworkers and I work really well as a grade level team when it comes to planning instruction, but even as a grade level we’ve felt that writing is the hardest subject to plan. All of the grade level teams work together to develop their plans, but we don’t really meet with other grade levels or meet as a school to discuss writing instruction. Usually when we have staff meetings we discuss things like back to school night, parent-teacher conferences, or the Kansas reading and math assessment- along with other various things that are going on in school at the time. We rarely meet to talk specifically about writing instruction. It would be interesting to see what kinds of professional discussions would come up if we did meet regarding writing instruction. I’d also like to see what the overall school vision is for writing and how the other teachers feel about it.

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