Reading Assignment 6: Independent Writing and Whole-Class Sharing

Chapter 4 from A Classroom Teacher’s Guide to Struggling Writers is about independent writing and whole-class sharing. It provides suggestions on what students do and what teachers do. Independent writing requires significant blocks of time in order to assure writing development. This is especially true for struggling writers because they tend to spend extra time on things like spelling and grammar and less time on the actual writing. One of the suggestions that the book states, that I greatly believe in, is that “students are far more likely to work with a piece of writing if they have some personal investment in the topics of their writing” (pg 50). During my time in school, I recall more often than not, being forced to write about a particular topic or about a book that I didn’t even want to read in the first place. This makes the writing process so much more difficult and uninteresting. The only book reports that I remember writing were the ones where I got to choose the book, because I picked something that I related with. When I am student teaching, I see so much of this personal writing going on. In my first grade classroom, the children have journals that they choose what to write about. The students love it and are constantly writing about what they did over the summer or over the weekend, their legos, their favorite movie, their friends and so forth. They also are making “How to” books, in which they are writing how to do things of their choice such as how to make a paper airplane, how to make your bed, how to draw a pirate ship, etc. They choose each topic and by the end of the year they will have a book of all the ones they wrote over the months.

The book also stresses the importance of teachers working with struggling writers individually and in small groups while the students are working independently. This is a great time to do so because it allows them to address the specific needs of specific children without making it overly obvious. The teacher can float around the room, checking in with children and seeing how their writing is coming along, or hold writing conferences. One sentence from the book really stood out to me. It states, “It takes time to learn to conduct effective writing conferences” (pg 58). This is good advice because it reminds teachers not to get discourage if things don’t always work out as planned. The most important thing is that you assess what you did and try to fix it for the next time. I think it is also crucial to remember that each student differs from the next and a strategy you used with one might not work for the next.

The last thing I took away from this chapter was the idea for an author’s chair. I have never heard of this before and I think it is an amazing idea. I think that oral presentations are crucial in every grade level and I feel that by having them come up to the “author’s chair” it makes each student feel more special. The book also talks about the importance of teaching children how to respond supportively to students in the Author’s Chair. This is essential because the “author” needs to feel safe while presenting their work or else they will be discouraged and not want to present the next time. Constructive criticism does help improve writing but it can be hard to hear at times. Therefore it is up to the teacher to model this and teach the students how to provide comments and feedback correctly and in a beneficial way.