Juli Kendall's Weekly
Writing Workshop Journal
A MiddleWeb Listserv Project
Members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List and other interested teachers
are joining together to explore the Writing Workshop and other ideas about
supporting young adolescent writers and readers. Juli Kendall, a reading-writing
teacher/coach in Long Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion.
Last year, Juli kept a weekly journal from her Reading Workshop.
This year, Juli is continuing her journals, but this time she's focusing
on her Writing Workshop. Find out more about our project at our Reading/Writing
Workshop homepage. You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues are embedded
in these journals. Most often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin
to download. You'll find a list of the downloads here.
If you'd like to join the daily discussion that parallels Juli's Journals,
find out how here.
Writing Workshop
Week #9:
Motivating with "Open Mike"
It's November and I for one am having no trouble at all finding things to
be excited about. Admittedly, I tend to flip out over things like puppies,
yogurt with boysenberry topping or a new book about writing workshop like
Nancie Atwell's Lessons
That Change Writers. But this year there's plenty of actual writing
stuff to satisfy the appetite for enthusiastic celebrations in even the
most well balanced among us.
Not curious yet? You obviously skipped last year's Reading Workshop Journal
(#28) about Shared Reading and its accounts of Karaoke
Club, which enthralled students and delighted teachers. Compared with the
traditional attempts at making the teaching of literacy skills interesting
in middle schools, the microphone and popular songs that are a part of Karaoke
are so many "fluffy puppies." You might expect that sober heads
would prevail, and we'd be shying away from celebrations and frivolous spectacles
in Writing Workshop.
Quite the opposite! Talk to our writing workshop teachers, celebration makers
and those who want to motivate reluctant writers, and you'll find that our
teachers and students are reveling in our publication day "Open Mike"
with much enthusiasm and abandon.
Beyond the obvious question of why anyone would go to the trouble of setting
up an "Open Mike," the thing that's puzzling is more basic: Why
are so many of us compelled to whoop it up? The appeal to kids is obvious:
Get the mike. But what about the grownups? What do we get out of
this celebration of our Writing Workshop publishing days?
For most of us, the appeal is all about finding a way to motivate reluctant
writers and urge them on to frequent publications of their work. During
the initial phase of "Open Mike" last year, we saw performances
and readings of letters, songs, poems, a play (actually more than one),
memoirs and information books. Writing was driven by the desire to have
something for "the audience" to respond to and enjoy.
How we do it
Here's what's involved in Open Mike:
1. You need a microphone. We started with an imaginary one that was
introduced by a very dramatic and believable teacher I work with. She would
step up to "the mike" at the front of the class, pretend to be
adjusting it and then go through a litany of "Testing, testing. Can
you hear me?" The kids ate this up. They loved it! Now, we just use
the mike from the Karaoke machine.
2. Kids need to have work that is ready to publish and "go public."
Last year we introduced Open Mike at the end of our first unit of study.
From then on, it was the kids who were always asking, "When is the
next Open Mike?" They were using that celebration to plan and organize
their writing work. So this year, we're giving them a list of publication
dates so they can plan and be ready to present their work to a live audience.
3. Everyone needs to be open to the spontaneity that arises from such
an event as "Open Mike." For me, it was important to see another
teacher manage it so that I could clearly see how motivating it is for kids.
4. It needs to be simple. All you need is an imaginary or real microphone,
student publications, and an eager audience. We never did invite distinguished
guests, or have refreshments, although it does sound like a nice idea.
5. "Open Mike" needs to be scheduled regularly and frequently
to have the best chance of motivating writers to publish their work.
Last year it was scheduled every three or four weeks. This year it will
be at the end of each unit of study in Writing Workshop. We've created a
Year-Long Calendar for Publication Dates for Writing Workshop. "Open
Mike" is scheduled on the publication date for each unit of study.
(Here's a PDF file of our calendar.)
How we control ourselves!
The impulse to go "over the top" with these celebrations is real.
But Katie Wood Ray cautions us about this:
"I think that one reason students don't publish more is
that, in too many writing workshops, publishing has come to mean this huge
fanfare we put on where students make these elaborate books with elaborate
pictures, and then we invite everyone we know to come and hear the students
read them, and we have some elaborate refreshments afterwards. And when
we think of doing more of this, it is overwhelming. No way can we do more
of all that. But we don't need to. That's not publishing! That's a celebration
of things students have published, and we can do that once or twice
a year if we want, but our students need to be publishing way more than
that.
From The Writing Workshop: Working Through the Hard Parts (And
They're All Hard Parts) by Katie Wood Ray, p. 259
We want publication to happen early and predictably in our Writing Workshop,
and Open Mike helps us with this. So we're wary of over-celebration but
conscious of the need for motivation.
"Author's Days" are another way of harnessing the teaching power
of publication. According to Lucy Calkins, they are
...best if they are scheduled not only frequently but predictably.
Many teachers find it helpful to set aside, say, the first Wednesday of
every month or of every other month for such a celebrationthese Author's
Days can become part of the rhythm of a writing classroom. In preparation
for Authors' Day, children complete whatever piece they are working on,
and make sure that their rough drafts are stapled with their final copies
and that this work is filed into either cumulative folders or portfolios
or else taken home. Authors' Days provide a deadline, and impetus to finish
dangling pieces, a chance for students to look back over what they have
done and learn from it before they move on. Students may perhaps spend some
time ranking their pieces from best to worst and talking about their progress
during the interval since the last Authors' Day (this, of course, is revision:
looking back in order to look forward.) But Authors' Day also provides a
chance for new beginnings, for a fresh start with a new resolve.
From The Art of Teaching Writing by Lucy Calkins, p. 267
So whether we do Open Mike or Authors' Days, we'll be celebrating our publishing.
Given the alternatives, maybe it's not such a bad thing that so many of
us "pump up the volume" in our Writing Workshops, combining it
with readers, writers and an audience to turn it into a publishing spectacle.
You might even call that fun. But don't tell the sober heads!
Download Juli's Curricular Calendar
#2 (memoir genre study) for Writing Workshop
Download a comparison of Juli's Reading
and Writing Workshop plans
Read next week's journal
Read last week's journal
Read Juli's backgrounder about her work
Back to Juli's journal index
Back to the Writing/Reading Workshop Index Page