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 #21:
What a Writing Workshop Trainer
Shared with Us
I walk around the corner into the school office, and there he is -- Mark
Hardy, our trainer from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project.
I forgot he was coming, but I'm sure glad he's here. Right now, we need
a shot in the arm.
The February blahs have arrived in full force. Alongside the flu and the
El Nino rainstorms, my green tea needs a little more kick.
For the four days he's with us, the time is divided between grade level
conversations and classroom observations of Mark modeling Writing Workshop
for teachers. With six different grade levels and more than fifty teachers,
it's a smorgasbord of strategies to improve how we teach writing.
Here's just a little taste of what we explored together:
Talking about writing
One teacher comments, "I can't get my kids to work independently when
I do conferences with individual students. They just want to talk."
As we're having conversations about how to teach writing, Mark reminds us
that talk is the most important writing strategy. Allowing kids to talk
about their writing (in pairs, in small groups, and as a part of a class
discussion) needs to be built in to writing workshop. Talking is the way
that they get ready to write, revise and rethink. It facilitates the "telling"
of the story.
A variety of models of text p; published, teacher written, student
written
During our grade level discussions with Mark, he talks about the importance
of using a variety of models of writing with our kids. He suggests that
we collect pieces written by students, pieces we write as teachers, and
professionally published pieces. That's what I tried in our unit of study
about persuasive essays, and it worked well.
As for using our own writing, in the classes he visits where teachers use
their writing as a model, the students' writing is stronger. Kids are more
invested in their work as a result of their teacher's modeling. "Try
doing your writing in front of your class," Mark suggests. "See
what happens."
Rereading as a writer
Repeatedly, we watch as Mark demonstrates the importance of writers rereading
their work. He writes stories in classrooms, and he models rereading aloud
as he "thinks" about what to write next, revising as he goes.
During student conferences, he asks writers to reread their work for a variety
of purposes such as revision or editing. Now we can more easily visualize
how rereading becomes a natural part of the writing process.
What about revision?
"How can I get kids to write more?" questions a teacher. "They're
done so quickly."
"Revision more often happens as you are going along," Mark comments.
Consequently, it often gets left out of Writing Workshop. We worry about
prewriting, drafting, editing, final drafts, and publishing, but we never
get around to the revising.
Our conversation about revision led me to buy Barry Lane's book, After
the End - Teaching and Learning Creative Revision. I'm currently
exploring many of Lane's ideas about revision as an ongoing part of writing,
not just a separate piece of the process. In our next unit of study on realistic
fiction, I'm going to focus on the use of questioning during student and
peer writing conferences to encourage more revision.
Writer's Notebooks
In several of the classrooms where he demonstrated lessons, students use
Writer's Notebooks. Mark talked about the purposes of notebooks -- to gather
seeds for writing and to provide a place for artifacts.
Every time he visits, he reiterates the importance of keeping the production
of writing ongoing. He cautions us not to let Writer's Notebooks keep kids
from completing pieces of writing for publication.
Does it make sense?
I raised the issue of student writing that doesn't make sense. It can be
such a problem for struggling writers. Others agreed that their kids don't
seem to know what to do when they reread their writing and discover that
it doesn't make sense.
I talked about how I manage this. I use peer editors to frequently monitor
the "sense" of the writing. It's worked well for our kids since
their classmates are less threatening than adults are. But we need to monitor
frequently for "the sense of the story." Reading each other's
writing every day or two works well for our kids.
Pearson's "Gradual Release of Responsibility" model
Mark's comments about Pearson's Gradual Release of Responsibility model
were a reminder to me of the importance of releasing the responsibility
for learning to students. In writing, as in reading, the responsibility
for the learning needs to be moved from the teacher to the student, not
all at once, but gradually over time. (Stephanie Harvey describes her process
on page 53 of Nonfiction
Matters.)
Teaching for independence is what it's all about in writing workshop. Pearson's
model provides a clear representation of what that looks like. At the Wisconsin
LEARNS site, there's a great visual
example of the Gradual Release of Responsibility model. (You can download
a GIF also.)
The search for balance
On his last day, Mark handed out this article by Kathy Short, "The
Search for Balance in a Literature-Rich Curriculum," Theory Into
Practice, Volume 38, Number 3, Summer 1999, College of Education, Ohio
State University, 0040-5841/99 $1.50
The author was the lead trainer at the University of Arizona when I completed
my training to teach Reading Recovery in Spanish (Descubriendo La Lectura).
I pay close attention to what she writes since I have so much respect for
her expertise. (Here's
an article by her on the Web.)
Her article contains some food for thought about three literacy functions
-- learning literacy, learning about literacy, and learning through literacy.
Short bases her understandings of balance in a literature-rich classroom
on the research
of Michael Halliday, a linguist, and these three functions of literacy.
Here's an overview of what she says:
Halliday's research provided me with a way to sort out these
engagements according to their central purposes. My goal is to ensure that
students are involved in learning events that highlight each of the three
opportunities Halliday identified. Students need opportunities to learn
language by reading extensively, to learn about language by reflecting on
their reading strategies and literacy knowledge, and to learn through language
by using literature to inquire about the world and their own lives. (p.
131)
"Let's teach about today," Mark said as he packed up his materials
at the end of four days. "Use the excitement and joy of writing to
teach for today. We are so busy teaching for tomorrow."
He comes back for a week in May, and by then, I'll be ready to learn more!
Download Juli's Curricular Calendar
#6 (persuasive writing) 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