Regie Routman's Writing Essentials- Ch. 7: Be Efficient and Integrate Basic Skills

Ch. 7: Be Efficient and Integrate Basic Skills

This chapter discusses the importance of focusing on the meaningful teaching of writing rather than teaching to the test or to specific skills. Working on a whole piece of writing should occur first, and then you can go back to the students’ writing to look at the individual skills and parts. Regie Routman described teaching skills before writing as being like giving a child a puzzle and telling him to put it together without giving him the whole picture to look at. From this I think that she means we should have students write a meaningful piece first, then they can look at that whole piece of meaningful writing (like the picture of a puzzle) and break apart the individual pieces (or skills and parts) of the writing to examine and fix them.

I’ve learned that doing skills-based worksheets and drills cannot easily be applied to real writing by students. At our school we tend to teach minilessons on the traits where students then do a worksheet to practice utilizing that trait. For example, if we are talking about organization, we will show examples of organized and non-organized writing, have students help us organize a sample piece of writing, and then have students work with a partner to organize sample writing. After that the students write their own small piece to practice the organization trait. I’ve learned that using this strategy is not really what Regie Routman recommends in her book because this focuses on the trait of organization before students have actually written their own piece to organize. Although we use something like the optimal learning model Regie discusses, we are still teaching in a part-to-whole way instead of whole-to-part-to-whole.

Regie explains that the quality of writing often improves when you have students work with real audiences and write meaningful text. I’ve noticed in my classroom that students tend to write more and write well when they are interested in what they’re writing. When I give assignments that students are not interested in, I do not get near the effort from them. I get frustrated when I see that my students are not trying their best, but I obviously need to start looking at my own teaching and what I am assigning as well. If I start giving my students more choice in their writing and help make assignments more interesting and meaningful I should start noticing more effort and better quality work on their part.

Focusing on meaningful writing and writing for a desired or specific audience can help bring out voice in students’ writing. I’ve learned that voice is not really something that can be taught as a separate subject. At my school we’ve shown and read students examples of stories with good voice and tried teaching it with those examples, but I’ve learned that students need to write on their own and then we need to point out when and where they are using good voice in their writing. As teachers we also need to be sure that we are being ourselves in front of our students. When we write and think aloud for our students we need them to hear the way that we put our own personality into our writing. We need to show them who we are and tell them our stories as we put them on paper.

In this chapter Regie Routman explains the importance of telling your students why things are being done in class. In college classes (as adults) we want to know the purpose of the assignments we must complete. We want to know that we can apply the skills we are learning to real-life situations. Our students want to know the same details. They want to know that what they do in class will be meaningful and useful in their daily lives. It is important that we keep this in mind when we are teaching and demonstrating writing for our students. We must make sure that what we are teaching can be used throughout our students’ lives and we must teach them why we are showing them certain techniques. If our students value the purpose of the assignments they are doing in class, they will be more likely to internalize the knowledge and apply it again.

If you teach writing effectively you can surpass standard and skill requirements because they can be met through your writing instruction. An idea that I really liked from Regie’s book was that of the chart or list of “what good writers do”. I think that this list could be made with your students as you evaluate text and talk about the important things that you see. For example- use descriptive words, sound like who you are, make beginnings exciting and endings something to remember. I’d like to make a list like this with my students next year so they can refer to it when they write. This could be a reminder to them of what good writers do and what they are capable of doing when they write.

We teach a lot of minilessons at my school which is fine, but we need to make sure that those lessons are useful and meet our students’ writing needs. When we teach minilessons we usually teach them because they cover the standards and curriculum. I don’t think we relate our minilessons enough to what our students need at specific points in the writing process. We need to create and teach minilessons based on what our students need help with at that point in their writing. For example, if many students seem to just end their stories with “that’s all” or “the end”, a minilesson on making a more creative ending/conclusion would be a good choice. Teaching in this way is more conducive to learning as students can use the information they learn right away in their writing, rather than try to remember it for another time.

Revision is probably the most difficult thing for my students as a whole. When I ask my students to reread their writing and go back to make changes, they just don’t seem to get it. That is probably mostly my fault. I need to make sure that I teach them to care about revising for their reader and for themselves. First of all I need to be sure they are writing for a real audience and that the writing is meaningful to them. Then I need to teach them how to revise by demonstrating the revision of my own writing for them during our shared writing time. I don’t think I’ve ever really done this! I’ve shown them a few examples here and there, but it is usually with writing samples that are not even my own. I can’t believe I expect my students to revise their work when I don’t revise my own writing for them and explain the process throughout it. My students need to see what revision looks like and what the thought process is behind it. They can only see this if I demonstrate it for them and we talk through the process.

Editing, including the correcting of spelling and other conventions, was the last topic mentioned in chapter seven. Regie Routman recommends teaching editing after students learn to produce quality writing. She says that focusing on correctness throughout the writing process can reduce quality and discourage young writers. Students also need to have content to edit before they can practice editing. We also need to teach why editing is important- the reader/audience is a large part of that. We want to get our message through to readers without frustrating them or turning them away.

Spelling, reading, and writing are all interconnected, so it is important for students to have the opportunity to write words, read text including those words, and talk about the words. Our school has adopted a spelling program that uses word patterns for each list. I believe this goes along with Regie’s recommendation of teaching word patterns. While reading this text I’ve learned some different things about accepting students’ spelling approximations. At first I thought that it was not allowed at all, but then I realized that it should only be allowed when students sound out and write larger unknown words to the best of their ability. Common words should always be spelled correctly and I feel that I need to raise my expectations for this. Any words that can be found around the room or on word walls (that I plan to create with my students next year) should be spelled correctly every time. To ensure that words are spelled correctly or to the best of my students’ ability I need to demonstrate how to sound out and stretch out the sounds in words as I do shared writing with my students.

One thing I read in this chapter that really surprised me is Regie’s recommendation to limit the use of thesauruses and dictionaries in the classroom. I always thought it was important for students to use these tools to help them improve word choice in their writing. I still think it is important for students to learn how to use these tools, but maybe it is not as important for them to use these resources during the writing process. Regie claims that using the thesaurus and dictionary during writing interrupts thinking and slows down the flow and process of writing. I think students can still use these tools during the editing process, but you have to be careful because students can choose words from the thesaurus that they don’t really know or wouldn’t really use. I’ve noticed this before in my classroom when students have found synonyms in the thesaurus for words that don’t really make sense in their writing. This doesn’t improve writing- it actually makes it more confusing for the reader and the student is likely to use the word incorrectly again if they don’t understand its proper use.

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