Teach and Support Students
Chapters 11-21
"...independence is a misleading term, implying that the student learns to work alone, in isolation; the truth is that effective writers turn to others for help and feedback all the time. This is not a measure of their dependence, but instead a mark of their independence..." p. 61
These chapters are such an important reminder to me of how much support students continually need. I must admit that I have fallen into the "You are in tenth grade. You should know how to do this" mode before. It is so important that we give students the support they need to become independent. Whether it be teaching students to ask useful questions or using groups, Burke has jumpstarted the way I plan to support students.
What do you think about these chapters?
If you use any of these strategies with your students, tell us about it. What did you try and how did it go?
8 comments:
Create a Community of Writers-chapters 1-10
In my class, as in many others, writing is the most avoided subject. I have only had limited success getting my students to write daily; so I am looking forward to learning new techniques and strategies that will help my students in writing.
All of the chapters contained useful information, and I especially liked chapter 7-"Have Students Write About Subjects of Personal and Social Importance."
Two of my diploma track students are reading Nothing But the Truth, a documentary novel written in multiple genres. One of their assignments is to make on going journal entries written from the point of view of one of the main characters. They really aren't putting any effort or thought into their entries. I decided to use the "Dense Question Strategy" which is illustrated on page 37 in our text. This stategy forces them to think and make connections to their own lives and the world. It works great. One of them made a connection to a book he had previously read. Both of them are less reluctant to write. They continue to write as few words as possible, so next time I use this strategy, I will plan more time for discussion prior to written responses.
Blog 2: Teach and Support Students Chps. 11-21
I found some very interesting information in some of these chapters. For example, in Chp. 11 we are encouraged to use modeling in the classroom. I am a believer in modeling! I think that is because I am the type of person who needs to be shown how to do things, not just told. I use this technique often in my AP class. Fortunately, I have many examples of past essays to use, so I’m able to show the students “good” essays as well as “bad” ones. Also, in this chapter I learned something new about grading writing assignments: that they don’t have to be graded all at once! I have to admit, I avoid giving many writing assignments because of the time it takes me to grade them. I guess that writing teachers have more experience with this and it doesn’t take them as long to grade. However, the tip of doing a read-through to find common needs of the students is something I think I can adopt easily!
I don’t feel comfortable yet with using group strategies for writing (Chp. 13). Adding the element of cooperative learning on top of writing (a discipline in which I am not an expert!) would be too much for me at this point.
Chapter 14 made me think about directions in an entirely new way. I haven’t had the opportunity to write out many essay questions for science, as most of them are already written for AP Biology. However, if I think about it, I should be training the 10th graders for this type of essay. I think this is one area I will try in the very near future – I know it will take more time and effort, but it is such an important skill. I am concerned about how the students will do, so I think I will model the first essay question and then let them try one on their own. Writing the question might be more difficult than I anticipate, so I think it would be a good idea to get another science teacher to attempt the question before assigning it.
Chapter 16 and I do not get along! I have always disliked graphic organizers. I don’t use them in my classroom, and after reading this chapter I still don’t feel like I’ll be using them.
Finally, I especially enjoyed the section in Chp. 19 on various types of questions. I’m not sure how I will use it yet, but I definitely want to create an assignment centered on answering questions such as these. I think it would be interesting and informative, especially since science can encompass all of these types of questions and limit the discussion to one topic.
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oops. sorry for the asdf--i was testing..
ANYWAY.. the main thing that I took from this section of chapters is the importance of directions. I tend to get frustrated with students not reading the directions, but I think I just haven't spend enough time making the reading of directions an essential part of the routine. Sure, I go over assignments and rubrics, etc, but I think I will simply spend more time paying attention myself to the way I write directions and then, as one of the chapters suggested, help student highlight the main words and key actions. Simple enough, right? Then why did it take this long to see it?
As in Burke's other book, I love the graphic organizers as pre-writes and pre-discussions.
Just simple things to take away, but those simply things are often the key to simplifying life.
Many of these reminders prompted me to reflect on my teaching in ways I feel will be ultimately beneficial to both me and my students, but I will focus on three chapters: 14, 15 and 20.
Admittedly, I am fond of the long sentence, and when I'm writing directions, this fondness sometimes causes me to lose sight of my audience. This reminder stressed to me that I cannot forget my students. When I write long sentences just because I enjoy writing them, I create directions that may be difficult for my students to follow and am thereby setting a bad example. How can I tell them to remember their audience when I have forgotten them?
A story about reminder 15: My third block class has been challenging me as a teacher all semester. They are not bad kids. They are kids who care little about learning. This has created problems for me because my other two courses--advanced writing and creative writing--are filled with students who want to be in those classes. Motivation is not a big problem. Not so in third block. In my first two classes, I'll have wonderful discussions about writing, reading, current events, art, or education, then third block starts and I feel as if I've hit a wall or as if I'm being drawn slowly into a black hole.
My biggest success with this class I owe to Vick. I saw her students in the hallway one afternoon looking at student-generated descriptions of characters from The Canterbury Tales. Their task: to match the descriptions to the characters. As I observed them, I thought, “I should steal this.” And I did. The following week, I taped five poems in the hallway, wrote types of figurative language on the board for my students to copy, then I sent them into the hallway to find examples of the terms I’d given them in the poems. When they finished, they had to walk me through the poems and explain what they had found. My students enjoyed the assignment because it gave them the freedom to move, and I enjoyed it because I learned what types of figurative language were troubling my students and because I was able to deliver one-on-one help on the spot.
Then last Wednesday, before I had even read reminder 15, I decided to attempt another activity that required some physical activity. I photocopied a short-short story (about two pages), and Burke’s opening to the second section of our book. I cut the passages into paragraphs and, in the case of the story, small groups of paragraphs, and placed the pieces in envelopes. Then I had the students reassemble both pieces. I was able to ask them the following questions: Which passage was easier to reassemble? Why? How did you solve this problem? What strategies did you use? What previous knowledge did you draw on to help you? Can the strategies you used help you when you read any text? Can they help you when you write? Though the task frustrated some of my students, they enjoyed it because it was “something different.”
Then I read reminder 15, which mentions using a similar activity to teach paragraphing. I can say from experience that the method seems to work. And I’ll probably use it again to teach paragraphing.
Now for reminder 20: Wow! I love class discussions. I love listening to students as they bounce ideas off each other. I love prodding them with questions to rethink their ideas. But before I read Burke’s “Conversations” prompt, I had never considered the importance of teaching students how to participate in class conversations. The closest I’ve come to this type of thinking was to give students guided questions to use during group discussions of stories. Burke takes a far more detailed approach, and because it is so detailed it is undoubtedly more effective. I’ll be using this one, especially in my third block class. If they can’t talk about something off-topic, then they won’t talk at all. Maybe this will help give them the confidence they need to sound off about the topics we must discuss.
bac said...
Week 2
Re: Chapters 11-21
Our job as educators is to teach students to be independent thinkers and producers of writing in a variety of genres. In the big scheme of writing (business & pleasure), there is little formal writing. We need to be able to produce many types of writing to be coherent and concise. “How to write despite your best intentions not to” on pp. 62-64 has some extremely practical suggestions. We did a “Quick Write” this morning in Sociology class concerning race, ethnicity, prejudice, discrimination, etc. in reference to info learned via the text and the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? When students were asked to get out paper & something to write with… oh, the sighs. When I told them to write anything that came into their heads for the next 3 minutes in response to chapter 10 and the video, one child said “Oh! I love to do this!” YEA!!! You could have heard a pin (not pen) drop during the next 3 minutes. Silence IS golden. Give students a reason for reading. Help them to decipher, as they read, what is to be processed. The rubrics provided are extremely helpful as well as the “Toolbox” of graphic organizers. Graphic organizers weren’t used when I was a student. Watch it…… They are a fabulous tool for visual learners.
What is a waste of time is the repetition of Burke. I believe that he could have consolidated the ideas in this book in about 2/3 the pages that he uses.
The longer I teach, the more I realize how much students need support—the kinds of support discussed in this chapter. With writing this semester, I’ve learned the hard way that students need support beyond just curricular; they need a framework for, as Burke discusses, talking about writing. For example, earlier this semester when working through a major writing assignment, I copied student work onto transparencies and used them during mini-lessons. I selected student writing based on common problem areas and topics on which I wanted to focus. Since I have two English I classes, I tried to use work from one class as the “teaching transparencies” for another class; but, sometimes, for the purposes of example and teaching, I needed to use student work with his/her classmates. This immediately backfired when a student blurted out, “Hey, that’s ----‘s paper.” Gone was the lesson for the day; I was so upset. On other occasions, students were extremely critical of particular student work, but, thankfully, not a student in the class. These instances prove that students need support via direct instruction and modeling for evaluating writing. When reflecting about how critical they were of some student papers, I checked myself to see if I was in any way modeling evaluation that was overly critical and insensitive. I conclude, though, that some students are naturally more vocal and more likely to “blast” another’s mistakes; also, some students don’t naturally possess teaching/helping skills. This brings into minute focus the areas in which students need my help. As Burke addresses, in addition to instruction in writing, students need to know how to constructively reflect upon their process and help one another—in other words, how to speak the language of writing. This is part of building a community of writers where students are comfortable and confident.
Blog #2 Chapters 11-21
Chapter 11 provided excellent evidence that modeling is a valuable teacheing tool. I agree, as with anything trailt we try to teach our students, the ability for us to model gives instant credibility to whatever we are trting to teach. Writing is certainly no different. Chapter 12 talked about developing writers' independence. I believe this speks to the ability of a student to work through and produce a work of writing on their own. The maturity level and the previous successfulwriting experieces the studnt has had will make a big difference here. The remaining chapters provided different teaching/modeling strategies that teachers of writitng canuse in any discipline.From using groups, providing good directions and changing teaching techniques to providing a rubric for students prior to writing all are tools for the teqacher of writing to use.
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