This chapter was about how writing workshops help to organize classroom time while helping the needs of struggling writers. Writing workshop is effective because it sets up a routine for the students and ensures that they are writing for a block of time each day. There are two important structures that take place during writing workshop: minilessons and independent writing time.
Minilessons are often short lessons that focus on the writing skills and strategies, address the qualities of a good writer, or address management and organizational issues (pg 32). Minilessons are often based on the particular class or particular day. A teacher must base his or her minilesson on the assessment of the students. For example, if they are having trouble with the use of quotations, the teacher might make the minilesson about where and when to use quotation marks.
I enjoyed learning about the third grade teacher’s rules for writing workshop. I like that he had the rules displayed in a visible spot in the classroom to ensure the students could look at it while writing. I think the idea of having a “quiet” table is a great way to separate the children who need quiet. I am the type of person who needs quiet when I work, so that is the place I would be sitting at. Even now when I do my work I get the most done in complete silence. I also like the rule that there is no talking during the first five minutes. This ensures that students will think about what they want to write about without consulting with their friends first. Often times if kids see or hear their friends say they’re going to write about baseball, they will decide to write about baseball too.
I also think it is important to have discussions and peer lessons, which this chapter talks about. I think that whole class discussions are extremely beneficial to students, especially in the third grade and higher. I think this allows students to hear their classmates’ questions, comments, and concerns, often which are the same for many students. Peer reviewing also helps because it opens a student’s eyes to what they missed while they were writing. The book states that “peers are an effective and credible source of information about the craft of writing, especially for struggling writers whose relationships with teachers have often been strained by the stress of academic failure” (pg 42). I thought this was the most important piece of information in the chapter. Sometimes children feel safer talking to their peers because they’d rather hear the criticism from a peer than a teacher. I thought this was a great point and it is something that I had never thought about previously.
Kristen, I completely agree that whole class discussions are extremely beneficial to students. This allows the students to voice their opinions and also raise questions to each other about the content. They get to interact with one another on an intellectual level, rather than just always wanting to talk to each other about something outside of school. This sometimes even sparks interest in students enough to talk about the subject or issue outside of the classroom, which is great. This is a perfect example of a true democratic classroom.
ReplyDeleteKristen, I thought that the "quiet table" idea was great too. I have always gone to the library whenever I had a lot of work to do because I could never concentrate with any noise distractions. Throughout elementary school, I often got label as hyper or a inattentive. I think that if I had a table or place where I could go and work in quiet, I would've been a lot more attentive.
ReplyDeleteKristen, the point made about students feeling safer to talk to peers about their writing was interesting to me because I never really thought about that. Reflecting on my experience in elementary school, now that I think about it, I often went to my friends and classmates before going to the teacher with a question. Since this is a trend, as teachers, we need to embrace this and teach students the proper way to peer review and edit. This will ultimately make peers in the classroom a more credible source.
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