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???
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2 comments:
Whew! Thanks, I now have a MUCH better idea of what you're talking about. For me this whole thing has made me remember to make no assumptions - I will always try to remember to take a moment and consider my audience when I write something. Even those things that seem so clear and simple in my mind might be a realy maze for someone else.
I love the idea of assigning roles in writing circles because it seems to me that most students need additional structure, especially when being asked to go out on a limb. Are the students restricted to their particular role - or can they add suitable comments they might think of? My "assumption" - there I go making that assumption I said I wasn't going to do :)- is that the roles are in place to elicit input. When I moved from elementary to secondary teaching one of the biggest surprizes I found was the need to added structure - but structure that didn't "look" like structure to the student - this seems like a great example of this idea.
Thanks!
Well put, Natalie, I think that creating "structure that doesn't look like structure to the student" is a pretty decent summary of my personal teaching philosophy.
BTW, Natalie, (sorry Renee for using this space, but I am stuck) your blog is only accepting comments from "team members" and it appears I am not on the team. If you don't want my inane ramblings on your blog, I understand, but if I can join your "team" I would love to do so! Also, you don't have an email link on your profile so I didn't know how else to contact you.
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