During the semester I have seen tons of writing in my placement, but much of it is the same stuff, and that is journaling. My students are in kindergarten and usually given a prompt and are supposed to draw and write responding to that prompt. From the beginning of the year to now I have seen such improvement within my students writing abilities. Their drawings are amazingly better and more detailed and I can now make out some words in their writings. They are now better able to write coherent stories that make much more sense than before and can at least explain to me what is going on in the picture now. I often times go around to my students during journaling and help them sound out words and make sense of their stories if they are having a difficult time creating them. I also go around and have them explain to me what is happening in the story and write it down on the back so my MT and I can go back and know what the story was about if the writing is not legible. Since many of my students skill cannot write out a complete sentence or even a complete word besides their name there is limited work on the writing process. I do believe there could be more done and that the students would benefit from learning about prewriting considering it is very important, "Murray (1982) believes that at leats 70% of writing time should be spent prewriting. During prewriting, students choose a topic, consider purpose and form, and gather and organize ideas for writing"( Tompkins, pg. 52). I think prewriting needs to be a higher priority in classrooms because I know I did not get much assistance with it and to this day I still struggle in this area.
One thing I do see in my classroom is connecting reading and writing. My students will often have a book read to them and then have to write about it or do an activity based on that reading, and this is similar to what I did for my lesson. I think this is very important to link the two, "reading and writing should be connected because reading has a powerful impact on writing, and vice versa. When students read about a topic before writing, their writing is enhanced because of what they learn about the topic, and when they write about ideas in a book they're reading, their comprehension is deepened because they're exploring big ideas and relationships among ideas" (Tompkins, pg. 390). I think this is so true and classrooms really need to focus on this because comprehension is so important and if you can enhance it while also working on writing skills then why not link the two.
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ReplyDeleteJulia,
ReplyDeleteI think it is great how much your students have improved with their writing and drawing skills. I think that it is important for children to build on their "story" skills and find creative ways to express themselves, especially at a young age. It is always beneficial to talk to the students and and ask them, "Tell me about your drawing...Tell me about what your wrote." When we use language like this is isn't labeling what we think they did-its therefore more self expression. I do this with the first graders and in my preschool placement. In my first grade placement I do not see the student write very often. I only see them write down spelling words and read A LOT! I need to ask about whether they are taking the time to write in the afternoon because when I do my lessons and post-assessments their writing is not very strong, and at times neither is their drawings. I wonder if this is from the strong push on reading? I read on Writing Partnership by Cathy Hsu. This article talks about how communication between partners and not just a teacher is a benefit to students and how the classroom flows in general, the presence of other people, feedback from others, access to tools, multiple options for activity, and problem-solving situations" (pg. 2). I think having partners toward writing is beneficial but can be at times harmful. I have always felt this way because sometimes students don't give feedback because they don't want to hurt someones feelings etc. I think it can be hard to find that perfect set up in the classroom for this scenerio. However, once I read the One Week Set-Up Implementation I thought this maybe could work and have its positives. I think this goes along with your article in terms of linking writing and reading together..and this links language/social skills. When students work through other students writing it will help enrich their vocabulary, spelling, and form of writing. It can definitely have its ups.
In my second grade classroom, we see writing everyday. Not only do they have an allotted time for writing everyday, but it is about an hour time slot which gives them plenty of time to write. Our students have focused on several different genres, including poetry, short stories, and small moment stories. These different styles have given the students a diverse working knowledge of writing, which allows them to easily write journals and other samples for every subject. Gibbons expresses the use of scaffolding students, especially ELL learners, to help build a stable writing background for our students. Gradually building up our students writing will not only make the students stronger writers, but the information we are teaching will be used throughout their writing samples more because they have been slowing introduced and reiterated. I agree with this tactic, because my MT uses this style because she always begins their writing time with a mini-lesson either teaching a new aspect of writing or reviewing the important things they must remember and work on.
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