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Friday, February 4, 2011
Chapter 5
This chapter stressed the importance of shared writing. I am somewhat unclear as to what shared writing really is. Is it simply writing together as a class or small group with everyone contributing and the teacher writing down the text? It almost seems too easy. I don't do as much of this in my classroom as I should. When we do shared writing it is mostly to summarize stories or create story maps. Our school uses Write 4 Today. One week focuses more on conventions and the next week is a writing activitiy. On the writing weeks the first day their is a given topic, situation, etc. The students brainstorm their ideas using story webs, Venn diagrams, fill ins, etc. The second day the students write their rough draft. On Wednesday, they look over it correcting anything that they can. I stress using words other than "good" and not starting all sentences the same. On Thursday, the students show their writing to an adult in the room and the adult makes corrections as far as spelling, capitals, etc. We do this because as second graders they don't know everything that they want to write and I don't want them to be hung up on not using words because they can't spell them. We talk them through the corrections that we made and tell them why we are correcting things. On Friday, they take their corrected papers and copy it onto their final draft. They use their best handwriting and really try to make it "perfect". This is the second year that we have used this and I can see a big difference in the students writing. My students do journal writing during center time. This is often lists, free write, etc and I usually don't read these and if I do I don't correct in their journals. I thinks writing is an area that I could use more instruction in myself. I am never sure what is acceptable and what isn't. I don't want to push the students to the point of making them hate writing, but I don't want them to not do all that they can either.
photo from http://teacher-supplies.carsondellosa.com/search?w=write%204%20today
photo from http://teacher-supplies.carsondellosa.com/search?w=write%204%20today
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You have the basic idea of shared writing, but it's much more than the teacher just writing down what students say. The teacher is thinking aloud while writing - emphasizing how she figures out a way to spell a word or how she decides which ending punctuation mark to use or how she makes a decision about exactly what to write next. It's a powerful teaching tool that can be tailored to what the children need to work on at the time.
ReplyDeleteI tried a shared writing experience with my class after reading this chapter. We wrote a paragraph together. We started with the brainstorming step then went through the whole writing of the paragraph. During the activity, I thought aloud, mispelled words, forgot punctuation, explained why I wrote sentences the way I did. I was amazed at how attentive the kids were, and how smoothly it all came together. This is a strategy that will become a staple in my lessons.
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