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 #16:
Feature Articles: Into the Fire!
Out of the frying pan and into the fire. That's where our Unit of Study
about Feature Articles is headed. We're only five days out, and the temperature
is beginning to soar. We've completed three parts of the frame from Units
of Study in the Writing Workshop by Isoke Nia. (Journal
#15) Now, we're up to our necks in the Second Immersion, our second
round of reading feature articles.
With my guidance, the students choose National Geographic Kids for
the feature articles we will use in our second immersion. But what about
the touchstone text? Selecting touchstone texts for a genre, like feature
articles, is a big job. In Units of Study in the Writing Workshop,
Isoke Nia lists 10 ways to find them. I use these as guidelines to choose
our touchstone text for the feature article study.
Selecting Touchstone Texts
1. You have read the text and you love it.
2. You and your students have talked about the text a lot as readers first.
3. You find many things to teach in the text.
4. You can imagine talking about the text for a very long time.
5. Your entire class can have access to the text.
6. Your students can read the text independently or with some support.
7. The text is written by a writer you trust.
8. The text is a little more sophisticated than the writing of your best
students.
9. The text is a good example of writing of a particular kind (genre).
10. The text is of the genre that we are studying.
"Survivor," a feature article from National Geographic Kids
(December 2002, pp. 20-23) is our touchstone text for this unit of study.
This piece, about the ability of the arctic fox to survive, is a wonderful,
informative, well-written text. I have read it and loved it, and so do the
kids. Now that it's selected, we're ready for the next part of our genre
study.
Learning Objective #4: Second Immersion
Given a feature article, "Survivor," students will read the article
and notice the details of the writing by studying the lead, conclusion,
and punctuation and writing style (word usage).
Learning Objective #5: Touchstone Try-Its
Using the feature article, "Survivor," as a touchstone model,
students will "try out the different writing moves they have noticed
professional authors using" by trying things in notebooks and drafts.
Learning Objective #6: Writing (6 days)
Given a unit of study in feature articles, students will be able to write
a feature article by choosing a topic, doing research, writing a first draft,
revising and editing, and writing a final draft.
Days 5 and 6: Second Immersion in Reading Feature Articles
"What do we notice about our touchstone article?"
As we read more feature articles, I remind myself that this is all about
reading like a writer. (See Journal #10.) We spend
the most time focused on our touchstone feature story, noticing the lead,
the conclusion, interesting uses of punctuation, and attention grabbing
language. Here's what we notice about "Survivor":
1. Lead: As Jazmin reminds us, "It has to grab your attention."
"The arctic fox relies on 3 tricks to get by -- stealing,
storing, and snuggling!"
2. Conclusion: "Juicy details," Jose comments.
"In this heat-saving pose, the cat-size animal stays cozy,
even as the brutally cold Arctic winds blow."
3. Punctuation: We all search for interesting uses.
Quotation marks--"Rather than face such hardships, most
animals flee to warmer climates," he explains. "Others hide in
underground burrows, waiting in hibernation for winter to pass."
Italics--"One animal that can survive Arctic winters"
Exclamation point--"Nevertheless, the geese don't tolerate egg-nappers!"
Dashes--"Those leftovers -- such as the bloody remains of a seal --
may not sound tasty to you, but to the hungry fox they are worth risking
its life."
4. Attention grabbing language p; We like the way the author uses these
words.
"Wind whips across the ice"
"when hunger strikes"
"swipe some leftovers"
"a craving for fresh fox meat for dessert"
"the herd's playful youngsters"
"the arctic fox dresses for success"
"wrapping its long, luxurious tail around its head like a scarf"
Days 7 and 8: Touchstone Try-Its
Our Touchstone Try-Its focus on leads. I take the first sentence from four
articles in the December copy of National Geographic Kids to use
for "try-its." The kids and I work in small group conferences
to do this. I need to remind myself that this should be "safe, even
playful." Before we write things down, we talk about them and try out
different ways to say them.
From "Time Travel": "Time travel isn't something only for
the future."
Try-It #1: "Kangaroo Jack" isn't a movie only
for little kids.
Try-It #2: "Dragonball Z" isn't a cartoon show just for little
kids. It's for teens, too.
Try-It #3: Cheetahs aren't just mammals, they are members of the cat family."
Try-It #4: The hound dog isn't just a dog. It's also an Elvis Presley song.
From "Survivor": "The arctic fox relies on 3 tricks to get
by -- stealing, storing, and snuggling."
Try-It #1: The polar bear relies on being very strong
to catch his food.
Try-It #2: "The Addams Family" movie relies on scaring people
away from their house.
Try-It #3: Deion Sanders relies on 3 skills to get by-backpedaling, jumping,
and catching.
From "Smart Toys": "Your new toy may be smarter than a Dexter's
laboratory invention."
Try-It #1: The Siberian Husky may be smarter than the wolf.
Try-It #2: College football may be more fun than high school football.
From "The Wild Thornberry's Movie": "Admit it: helping a
rhino who has told you poachers were after him can be pretty cool."
Try-It #1: Admit it: helping a snow fox to find food if a polar
bear was after him could be pretty scary.
Try-It #2: Admit it: watching people walk up the wall and do back flips
can be pretty cool. ("The Matrix")
Try-It #3: Admit it: snow dogs are much better than regular dogs. They work
harder.
It's like Isoke Nia says: "If they like some writing a touchstone author
has helped them to do, they may include what they have tried in their actual
publications."
Days 9 and 10: Topics and Research (Writing)
"What's it about? Choosing a topic and finding more information"
The topics kids choose to write about are never quite what I expect. This
time their choices include animals (snow fox, polar bear, hound dog, and
huskies), movies ("The Matrix," "The Addams Family,"
and "Kangaroo Jack"), and sports (college football and Deion Sanders).
Using the Internet for research, I find a wealth of information on how to
help kids use search engines at www.yahooligans.com and www.google.com.
We continually struggle to focus our topics and using the Yahooligans' search
engine helps us with that.
The topic hound dogs gives us practice and a good example of starting
big and narrowing the focus. It gets complicated when you need to choose
from twenty-three types of hound dogs.
Dogs>hound dogs>basset hounds>why are basset hounds
so short?
With all this research behind us, the drafting of feature articles begins.
As I watch, the kids begin to write about their topics, I remember what
Katherine and Randy Bomer wrote in their book, For a Better World, Reading
and Writing for Social Action.
A literacy event is what it is largely because of what the participants
intend. Writing to an assigned topic, no matter how "good" the
teacher thinks the assignment is, from the writer's perspective, is largely
if not entirely an act of compliance rather than a linguistic doing meant
to affect the world. Asking writers to come up with a topic, to formulate
a purpose with respect to readers, to design the content and form of their
piece, to pay enough attention to their own dialogue with the world that
they can identify trails of thought they would like to develop through writing
-- this is more than a different route to the same goal. It is a different
literacy. The only way to be free is to act freely. (p. 3)
Next week: Assessing, Reflecting and Looking at Student Work (LASW)
Download Juli's Curricular
Calendar #5 (feature articles) for Writing Workshop
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