Regie Routman's "Writing Essentials"- Ch. 5 Reflection

Ch. 5- Do More Shared Writing

I did not know much about shared writing before reading this chapter. In fact, I really haven’t done much of it at all. Because this is such a new concept to me, I feel like I’ve really learned a lot from this chapter. Shared writing is when the teacher and students compose a piece of writing together. It builds on the write-aloud model as students have the chance to participate and help out with the writing. Shared writing can be done in pairs, groups, or as a whole class. Regie recommends doing shared writing as a whole class so you can really guide and explain how writing works throughout the process as all students are engaged and participating.

I like the fact that shared writing involves a lot of discussion and social interaction among the students and the teacher. The kids really get to take ownership in creating a story or text, yet the teacher still holds the pen and guides the whole process. When students give ideas the teacher can add to those ideas or probe the rest of the class to try to add more. Correctness isn’t expected as the main focus is on ideas, content, organization, and the reader or audience that the text is being written for.

I can definitely see how shared writing could be a good strategy to use when you have English language learners in the classroom. Rather than just having the students sit down and start writing on their own, they get to listen and respond orally as you put their ideas on paper. I have not really had a lot of English language learners in my class as our school is not a designated ELL school with a teacher or program available, but I can definitely see how the shared writing process could benefit these students in the regular classroom. ELL students could really get more involved in the writing process and I like the idea of creating a bilingual story. This could help ELL students learn English and other students learn words in a second language!

Our school uses reading text books as a basis for a lot of our reading instruction. We use the stories from the books and modify lessons to work for our class and to teach important skills and concepts. Every once in a while we throw in a core lit book to give the kids a break from their text books. I like Regie’s idea of linking shared writing experiences to reading. You can create the shared writing piece together as a class, and then use that for your shared and guided reading lessons for the week. Using the writing that the students helped create improves fluency, vocabulary, and other skills.

I like the idea of using text from shared writing to do different types of “word work”. Students can use cut up sentences from the text that they created to reassemble the words into the proper sequence and create the appropriate message. They can also do cloze worksheets that are built from the shared writing they did together. I’d like to try utilizing some word sort activities with students in my class, especially with my lower level readers. I think that sorting words from a story that students helped create makes the whole experience more meaningful and enjoyable to the students.

The tiles that Regie talked about where students use them to write letters and create words reminded me of a spelling activity that we do sometimes in third grade. The students work in groups to create spelling words using letter tiles after the words have been verbalized to them. Students work together to use the letters and sounds to make the words as quickly as possible. I think that I can incorporate some of Regie’s ideas into my spelling or reading instruction by using words from our shared writing and asking students questions like, “How many letters/tiles does it take to make the word ___” and “how many words can you make that end with at?”.

I was excited to see that Regie included a shared writing lesson plan example in this chapter. I was a little confused about how the whole process worked, but with her example it started to make a lot more sense to me. I honestly think I will go back to this example to help me plan for some shared writing lessons next year. I think that the whole shared writing experience will be beneficial to my students as it will help build their confidence as writers and readers.


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