Sunday, June 27, 2010

Regie Routman's Writing Essentials- Ch. 8: Organize for Daily Writing


Ch. 8: Organize for Daily Writing

This chapter discusses what writing workshop really is and how you can include more writing in your daily schedule. I’ve always heard people use phrases like “writer’s workshop” to describe their writing time in class, but I never really understood what was different about writer’s workshop than regular writing time or instruction. It really just seems like a fancy name for it. I’ve learned that writing workshop includes everything that’s done to create a meaningful piece of writing. It does not have to be focused on traits/skills or taught in order of prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Writing workshop is sustained daily writing that is done with purpose and for an audience. It can include conferences, celebration, and instruction by the teacher and it usually involves publishing text for a real audience.

In a writing workshop students write for specific purposes and audiences. The teacher gives demonstrations and gradually releases responsibility to students using the optimal learning model. The teacher’s job in a writer’s workshop is to celebrate students’ writing, respond to questions, evaluate writing, teach new skills, conference with students, and help them move forward with their writing. I feel like I do most or all of these things, but I’ve just never really called it a “writing workshop” or “writer’s workshop”. I also may not do these things to the best of my ability. I need to improve the way I teach and demonstrate writing by including more shared writing in my instruction. I also want to include more conferencing with students, consisting of group, peer, and one-on-one meetings. Celebrating leaps and bounds in the writing process is very important, so I plan to give my students more opportunities to share their writing in the author’s chair.

Regie Routman recommends including writing into your schedule for forty-five minutes a day, at least four days a week. I try to include thirty minutes of writing instruction into my schedule each day, but I must admit, it does not always happen. I think that the standardized testing of reading and math skills tends to put math and reading at the top of our priority list when it comes to scheduling. When I feel like I need more time for reading or math, writing/spelling or science/social studies usually takes the back seat. I need to try to change this mindset because according to Regie, putting off writing for several days can create a writer’s block or disturb the flow of writing for students.


One thing I do in my classroom to ensure that students have worthwhile topics to write about is have them create a list of things that they know a lot about, care a lot about, and want to learn more about. This list is kept in their writing folder throughout the year to help them choose topics. They can also continue to add items to their list as they think about them throughout the year. After choosing a topic, children need to plan out how they will write their papers. Creating webs and extravagant forms for planning writing is apparently not very sensible because it can exhaust students before they even begin writing. I have my students make webs sometimes and I can see that some students become more confused and frustrated with writing before the actual process even starts. I’ve learned that children can plan their writing by simply talking aloud, drawing pictures, writing down notes, or just thinking as they go. Honestly, when I write, I usually think as I go, reread what I’ve written, think again, and then add more content. I almost never create a web. Sometimes I don’t even list or organize my ideas first- I do this as I go along by cutting and pasting. I need to use more common sense when teaching my students to plan for their writing as well. I need to show them various different strategies to use so they can decide what works best for them.

I’ve learned a lot about writing instruction from this book and plan to incorporate what I’ve learned into my instruction. I need to do more free-writes because students enjoy writing about topics of their choice without concern for grammar and conventions. I also need to do more demonstration and shared writing activities so my students can observe and gain understanding of the writing process. Adding conversations about writing into writer’s workshop time can give students ideas before writing and can model the thinking process that goes along with planning and writing. Conversations can be as simple as conversing with one student in front of the class or having students converse with one another in groups or in pairs. Having conversations about writing can encourage students to take risks in their writing and feel like more confident writers. Sometimes I have conversations and conferences with individuals about their writing, but I rarely model a conversation for the class. I’d like to try to do this next year.

Regie Routman recommends including writing in all subject areas, rather than just limiting it to writer’s workshop. I feel like I do this already as I often have students respond to our daily reading, journal about the daily math lesson, or write what they’ve learned about a science/social studies topic. When you incorporate writing into your daily schedule like this, you can get more writing into your day than you think. I have a thirty minute time set aside for writing each day, but when I think about all of the extra times we write in class, I realize I really may be hitting that forty-five minute mark that Regie recommends.

Organizing daily writing and getting in the appropriate amount of writing involves careful planning and good classroom management. Classroom management is something that I feel like I struggle with at times. I have routines, procedures, and expectations in my classroom, but I feel like I need to be more consistent and firm about them. I also need to model behavior and have students model expected behaviors for the class more often. I try to do this at the beginning of the year and come back to them when our class is having trouble following the guidelines. I think that I need to include more procedures than just the general ones when we model them. Regie recommends modeling what it should look like to get supplies, sharpen pencils, sign out for the restroom, confer with a peer, ask for help, etc. These are more than just the general procedures that occur in the classroom and students need to know how to perform these tasks appropriately and respectfully during writing time. Creating a chart with students to document what writing time should look like and sound like can also help by giving students expectations to refer to during writing time.

Behaviors that are modeled can also include writing behaviors. Students need to see the teacher and other students demonstrate appropriate writing behaviors including writing legibly, skipping lines, including the date, etc. I try to model these before we begin a writing project. When students write they need to have very few distractions. They should also be organized and prepared for writer’s workshop. In my classroom students have a writing journal that they use for rough drafts and a folder that they use for final copies and important lesson information. Regie recommends using a three ring binder for students and separating it into topics of minilesson notes, writing forms, drafts, genres, and published pieces. This is a great idea and would be very helpful to students, although I’m not sure if I can add another binder set of dividers to our supply list as we already have the parents buy one large binder and dividers for all subject areas. I think that we can make do with the folder and spiral as we also have a writing divider in our general notebook.

Regie Routman recommends simplifying genre teaching and teaching more nonfiction. Genre study can be simplified by using more child-friendly language at the beginning of a study and adding the labels to it later. Schools can decide which genres will be introduced at what grade levels and then they can be revisited each grade level after that. Our district has curriculum guidelines for the types of published pieces students should create at each grade level so that genres are introduced at certain levels and practiced at others. More practice with each genre continues throughout the grades. Nonfiction writing is so important because most of what our students read and write is fictional. Students should have many opportunities to read nonfiction text and explore text features such as the table of contents, graphs, pictures, and captions. The more exposure students have with nonfiction text, the more easily nonfiction writing will come to them. I’d like to do more shared writing experiences with my students next year in general, but if I can incorporate nonfiction writing into some of these experiences, it should help my students understand nonfiction and feel more confident reading and writing in the genre.

I really enjoy assigning shorter pieces of writing to my students and Regie Routman recommends doing this because it takes less time and is easier to publish. I like that students are able to see the final product more quickly and can practice writing without being too overwhelmed. One mistake that I make when assigning shorter pieces of writing is that I do not focus enough on editing and revising. Sometimes the students write one copy and they’re done. I need to take advantage of shorter pieces of writing by using them to practice revising and editing skills. Using shorter pieces to do this would be less overwhelming to students and would help them apply the skills to larger pieces of writing. Some short pieces of writing that I’d like to try with my students include the book of compliments and student snapshots.

Image from : http://www.bcps.org/offices/lis/models/islandofbluedolphin/images/organize.jpg

1 comment:

  1. I like the way you are already making plans for how you will incorporate things you are learning from this book into your teaching. Just the fact that you are writing down these plans, and they are in a place where you can easily return to them, you have dramatically increased the likelihood that you will actually implement your ideas. It takes a lot to change the way we teach - determination and knowledge. Hopefully this class helps with the knowledge part, but the determination is up to you!

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