Regie Routman's "Writing Essentials"- Ch. 1 Reflection

My Reflection of Chapters 1: Writing Essentials by Regie Routman
The Essential Writing Life

Ch. 1: Simplify the Teaching of Writing

In Regie Routman’s first chapter, I gathered that sometimes teachers’ concerns about test scores, grammar, spelling, and other test-related skills can throw their writing instruction of track. Many teachers tend to teach writing tools and “parts” of writing before allowing students to write for an audience and then go back to look at the multiple parts of their writing. This makes writing more tedious for both students and teachers when they spend so much time on the small parts and skills of writing before being able to “jump in” to the fun part.

Most teachers want writing to be enjoyable, stress-free, manageable, and successful. I know that I am one of those teachers! Reggie Routman gives some helpful hints about writing instruction and how to reduce some of the stress related to testing pressure and meeting standards. I’ve learned that as teachers we must increase the expectations that we have for our students and focus on teaching the key elements of writing, rather than focusing strictly on testing and standards. We also need to become more knowledgeable about teaching writing. Many teachers rely on programs or templates to guide their instruction, but students need to learn how to write for real purposes and audiences. Our students also need to observe their own teachers as writers. We need to demonstrate our own writing for students and use “think-alouds” as we write.

Regie Routman listed five things that we (as teachers) can do to ensure that our students become better writers. This list is summarized below…

1: Always write with a reader in mind- make writing and thinking visible.
2: Connect writing with reading through literature (read-alouds).
3: Help students choose topics they care about- give them time to think and write.
4: Teach strategies- draft, revise, edit, polish, publish.
5: Conference with students regularly to asses/evaluate- strengths, feedback, teach, set goals

I think that as a teacher I need to be better about pointing out that we are always writing for a reader/audience, even if we will be the only reader of the text. I try to write for my students at times and think aloud as I write for them, but I definitely feel that I could do this more often. At this point I doubt I even do this once a week, so this could be an important goal for next year- to improve showcasing myself as a writer to my students and to “think-aloud” for them throughout the writing process.

I try to include literature in my writing instruction by reading books that match the genre we are trying to write or that give good examples of some of the traits of writing (ex- voice, organization). I could also stand to increase my list of books that I use for examples in writing.
At the beginning of the year my students develop a list of things that they know a lot about and care a lot about. They continue to add to the list throughout the year and use this list to help them come up with ideas to write about. I also give them prompts to help them out at times, but according to Regie’s book, giving prompts for writing too often is not conducive to developing good writers. Writers rarely, if ever, choose prompts to write from in the real-world.

The strategies of drafting, revising, editing, polishing, and publishing are crucial in the writing world. It is important that students know how to do these and do them correctly. They cannot do this without correct modeling and guidance from the teacher. Regie Routman recommends demonstrating these strategies with your own writing and with the students’ writing through instruction, guided practice, and conferencing. Conferencing is an important part of writing education that I need to work to improve on. I try to conference with each student throughout the writing process, but with twenty-five students last year I had a very difficult time organizing this. I would like to learn the best way to organize conferencing sessions with students so I can talk with each child more than once throughout their process of writing and publishing a piece.

One thing that Regie Routman recommends to teachers is that we use our own belief systems about writing to assess our teaching of writing. She explained one school’s belief system that improved their instruction as opposed to another set of beliefs that would be more damaging to instruction and student learning. I feel that I share at least some of the good beliefs about teaching writing that Regie mentioned. These include the belief that quality is better than quantity, teachers need to demonstrate writing, and students should be able to share their writing with others and celebrate it. It is important that writing is fun for both yourself and your students. I learned that if you are hating it, the kids are probably hating it too.

The optimal learning model for writing instruction includes writing every day and continually giving more independence to students with their writing. Writing instruction should include demonstration and shared demonstration from teacher to student. It should then evolve to guided and independent practice for the students. Through this model twelve essentials should be included in writing instruction. I can definitely see myself using these to guide my writing instruction as well as my students’ writing. These are summarized below.

1: Write for a specific reader and purpose.
2: Pick an appropriate topic.
3: Present ideas clearly and logically- flow.
4: Elaborate on ideas (details and facts).
5: Embrace language (experience with words).
6: Create engaging leads (play with words)
7: Compose satisfying endings (closure).
8: Craft authentic voice.
9: Reread, rethink, and revise.
10: Correct conventions and form.
11: Read widely and deeply with a writer’s perspective.
12: Take responsibility for producing effective writing.

One thing I learned that was new to me was that teaching writing by focusing on the parts, such as the 6 or 6 +1 traits, is not how writers work and is not proper instruction. Writing should be taught the way that writers think, such as by thinking about what to say, how to say it, how to explain it, and how to engage and interest readers. In my district we are constantly teaching mini-lessons on the traits and practicing the traits with instruction, guided practice, and independent practice. We usually do this before the students begin their first piece of writing for the year. I’m starting to think that what we are doing may be all wrong. This is a little scary to me as I feel that we may need to redesign our curriculum or at least the order or way that we teach writing. This could be a lot of work, but if it helps our students understand writing and makes it more enjoyable for teachers and students alike, it could definitely be worth the work!

Explicit teaching is very important when it comes to writing instruction. This should be done through modeling, shared writing, and think alouds before students have guided and independent practice. I’ve found that I can improve in some various explicit teach strategies such as thinking aloud as I write with my students and as I read to my students. Another thing I’d like to work on is analyzing different types of writing with the help of my students so they can see what that looks like. I’d like to try to give my students more opportunities to share their writing with one another. This year I tried doing that more often with cooperative learning strategies such as stand-up hand-up pair-up, round robin shares, and journal swaps. I think that next year I will try to incorporate more pair-shares and class-shares into my writing instruction so that we can celebrate our writing with one another on a more regular basis.

Image can be found at http://artslink.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/writing-center.jpg