I just re-read my 'Finally, I am Back' post and realized what I was talking about.
First - the grading. I want to become more active with students assessing themselves. I need to read about this because I am not familiar with how it works in a classroom. Also, I think I need to go back to lit circle roots and use particpation charts and observation in my grading. To me that is more important than the final product many times.
Second - the mistake. I said I made a mistake about asking the students to share how they felt about themselves as writers after I did my poetry assignment and not before. At first I felt like the whole process should begin with the students being asked to think about how they felt about writing. Now I am glad that I made the mistake because I have two different situations to compare.
NOTE TO SELF - next year, start with the 4 corners statements to get the kids thinking about their own attitudes right away.
Friday, May 18, 2007
The Natalie Inspired Post
Okay - Natalie asked me some great questions about my last ramblings. I am going to try to answer them all coherently since I haven't been able to before.
First - What are Writing Circles? They are what my research is about actually. During my first stay at "The Project" I came up with the circles to help writing workshops move a little better. The true inspiration is from Literature Circles. Lit Circles give students roles in small book clubs like questioner, vocab finder, summarizer etc. The students then read with their role in mind and use the role to help with discussing literature. I came up with using the same idea in writer's workshop. The difficult part about workshopping is that you cannot get the students to invest in what they are doing and you cannot get them to discuss their writing or anyone elses on a deeper level. Well, 'cannot' may be a bad word, but both tasks are difficult. So the writing circles use roles to help the students understand what they should, could, and will talk about with each other. The students are in groups of 2-6 people and they all have different roles. They read each others papers and comment using the direction of the role they are assigned (voice finder, conventions editor, organizational editor etc.) The difficult part is when they are finished reading, they need to discuss their papers and help each other. Okay - I think that answers the first quesiton.
Second - What is the 4 corners game? This is where you have a list of statements to share with a group. In each corner of the room you post a possible answer. In my case the possible answers where 'Definitely Me,' Definitely NOT me,' 'I Am in the Middle,'and 'I Don't Care.' I would read a statement like "I like to write ' and let the students go to the answer that best suits them.
Third - How did I have the students grade examples? I had examples of voice and word choice on the overhead. Well back up, first I gave them rubrics for voice and word choice and we went over what needs to be in writing to succeed at both traits - we made class posters with keywords about the traits on them. Then I showed the examples and we discussed what was good and what was bad. Then we scored them 1-6 and then I shared what the papers 'official' scores were.
Fourth - What children's book did I use and how did I use it? I used the book Alexander and the No Good, Very Bad, Horrible Day (I am sure I messed up that title :) I told them to pay attention to the details given, the point of view and voice and any other techniques the author used. I read the book aloud and then we discussed it a bit. Then I gave them their assignement. "Write about your worst or best day." I told them they had the option because I like the room for optimism. Then we discussed prompts and what you could do to make your response more interesting, like combining two or three bad days and making them sound like one, exaggeration, borrowing things you know happened to some one else, etc. They were to write 1-2 paragraphs. Well, they all begged to write more. I received typed pages, 4, 5, 6 paragraphs - it was pretty amazing.
Fifth - What mistake did I make with the questions? I have to get back to this one because I don't remember what I was referring to in my original post.
Sixth - What about grading? Well my intention was to ask the students how it should be graded and have them come up with a rubric, but the truth is that I ran out of time. I wanted to include self evaluation too. I knew I wanted to grade on voice and word choice and I had rubrics set up, but that was not my goal with this assignment. I wanted experiment.
Whew - aren't we all glad that Natalie asked all of those questions? Truthfully, I am because it made me go back and think about what I was doing again. I am going to re-read my post and refresh my train of thought.
The other thing that answering all of these questions did was make me think. Many teachers believe that writer's workshop takes up too much time. It is cumbersome, it may not always be productive. But after this experience I am thinking that doing this kind of writing 6-7 times in a year would makes students grow a lot more that the regular grind. What do you think???
First - What are Writing Circles? They are what my research is about actually. During my first stay at "The Project" I came up with the circles to help writing workshops move a little better. The true inspiration is from Literature Circles. Lit Circles give students roles in small book clubs like questioner, vocab finder, summarizer etc. The students then read with their role in mind and use the role to help with discussing literature. I came up with using the same idea in writer's workshop. The difficult part about workshopping is that you cannot get the students to invest in what they are doing and you cannot get them to discuss their writing or anyone elses on a deeper level. Well, 'cannot' may be a bad word, but both tasks are difficult. So the writing circles use roles to help the students understand what they should, could, and will talk about with each other. The students are in groups of 2-6 people and they all have different roles. They read each others papers and comment using the direction of the role they are assigned (voice finder, conventions editor, organizational editor etc.) The difficult part is when they are finished reading, they need to discuss their papers and help each other. Okay - I think that answers the first quesiton.
Second - What is the 4 corners game? This is where you have a list of statements to share with a group. In each corner of the room you post a possible answer. In my case the possible answers where 'Definitely Me,' Definitely NOT me,' 'I Am in the Middle,'and 'I Don't Care.' I would read a statement like "I like to write ' and let the students go to the answer that best suits them.
Third - How did I have the students grade examples? I had examples of voice and word choice on the overhead. Well back up, first I gave them rubrics for voice and word choice and we went over what needs to be in writing to succeed at both traits - we made class posters with keywords about the traits on them. Then I showed the examples and we discussed what was good and what was bad. Then we scored them 1-6 and then I shared what the papers 'official' scores were.
Fourth - What children's book did I use and how did I use it? I used the book Alexander and the No Good, Very Bad, Horrible Day (I am sure I messed up that title :) I told them to pay attention to the details given, the point of view and voice and any other techniques the author used. I read the book aloud and then we discussed it a bit. Then I gave them their assignement. "Write about your worst or best day." I told them they had the option because I like the room for optimism. Then we discussed prompts and what you could do to make your response more interesting, like combining two or three bad days and making them sound like one, exaggeration, borrowing things you know happened to some one else, etc. They were to write 1-2 paragraphs. Well, they all begged to write more. I received typed pages, 4, 5, 6 paragraphs - it was pretty amazing.
Fifth - What mistake did I make with the questions? I have to get back to this one because I don't remember what I was referring to in my original post.
Sixth - What about grading? Well my intention was to ask the students how it should be graded and have them come up with a rubric, but the truth is that I ran out of time. I wanted to include self evaluation too. I knew I wanted to grade on voice and word choice and I had rubrics set up, but that was not my goal with this assignment. I wanted experiment.
Whew - aren't we all glad that Natalie asked all of those questions? Truthfully, I am because it made me go back and think about what I was doing again. I am going to re-read my post and refresh my train of thought.
The other thing that answering all of these questions did was make me think. Many teachers believe that writer's workshop takes up too much time. It is cumbersome, it may not always be productive. But after this experience I am thinking that doing this kind of writing 6-7 times in a year would makes students grow a lot more that the regular grind. What do you think???
Monday, May 7, 2007
Finally, I am back!
Okay - it ahs taken me a while but I am back! I had out of town guests and school stuff to do and did get a bit sidetracked, but not really. You see, I have been working on writing circles and workshops for almost 2 weeks in my classroom. The time has been spent wisely and even my mistakes feel successful.
First, I had the students do a poetry assignment with the writing circles. I used examples in a different way and tried to be role specific. I was also able to put some student work on the overhead and comment out loud so the class could see what was going on in my head. This is not the first time I have done this, but I did change it around a bit and students seemed to respond well. Especially when I was able to use their work (this is not always easy to do).
The second time I did this I was concentrating on word choice and voice. I used examples and had students grade them. I used a children's book for the prompt. But first and foremost, I started to ask them questions. This was my mistake. I realized I should have done this before the poetry asignment, but now I like having the comparison of the two assignments and see how the responses go. When I asked questions I started with basic questions about writing (do you like to write, do you prefer fiction or nonfiction, do you consider yourself to be creative, do you like to share your work). WE did this using the 4 corners game. I recorded the responses too. Then I asked them in a conversational way what they liked about workshops and what they did not like. The responses were really interesting.
So they have just completed their writing circles after all of this research and I have taken their suggestions and responses into consideration and have implemented some too.
My final question will be "how should this be graded?"
Oh yeah - I had them pick the roles in the circles too!
First, I had the students do a poetry assignment with the writing circles. I used examples in a different way and tried to be role specific. I was also able to put some student work on the overhead and comment out loud so the class could see what was going on in my head. This is not the first time I have done this, but I did change it around a bit and students seemed to respond well. Especially when I was able to use their work (this is not always easy to do).
The second time I did this I was concentrating on word choice and voice. I used examples and had students grade them. I used a children's book for the prompt. But first and foremost, I started to ask them questions. This was my mistake. I realized I should have done this before the poetry asignment, but now I like having the comparison of the two assignments and see how the responses go. When I asked questions I started with basic questions about writing (do you like to write, do you prefer fiction or nonfiction, do you consider yourself to be creative, do you like to share your work). WE did this using the 4 corners game. I recorded the responses too. Then I asked them in a conversational way what they liked about workshops and what they did not like. The responses were really interesting.
So they have just completed their writing circles after all of this research and I have taken their suggestions and responses into consideration and have implemented some too.
My final question will be "how should this be graded?"
Oh yeah - I had them pick the roles in the circles too!
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