Title: Inspiring children to write by living like a writer: teaching writing workshop with our notebooks wide-open
1Inspiring children to write by living like a
writer teaching writing workshop with our
notebooks wide-open
- Stacey Shubitz
- Rhode Island Writing Project, Spring 2008
Conference
2Overview of Action Research Project Completed at
Teachers College, Columbia University
- Research Question
- How does the use of mentor texts lift the level
of writing in my elementary school classroom? - Do published authors texts work better as mentor
texts than student- or teacher-written texts? - Worked intensely with three of my fifth grade
students during the 2006 2007 school year. - Inner City (East Harlem Section of Manhattan)
- Public School
3Action Research Overview
- Three Cycles
- Narrative
- Published texts
- My writing
- Expository/Non-Narrative
- Other students writing
- My writing
- Writers Notebook Entries
- My writing (i.e., notebook entries)
4A Key Finding from Action Research Project
- If teachers of writing want our students to live
like writers, then we must live like writers by
writing daily, carrying our notebooks with us,
and sharing the pages of our notebooks with our
students so they can see we practice what we
preach.
5How do I get my students to live like writers
daily?
- Sub-questions
- How can I make my students reflective writers?
- How do I help my students to make meaning out of
their own lives? - How do I get my students to write about the small
moments of their lives on an everyday basis
(recognizing their daily lives are worth
preserving)?
6Realizations
- If I want my students to live like writers, then
- They need to see my writing and hear how they've
written it so it can affect them. - When I expose my notebook to my kids, it allows
them to see how I attempted to fill a blank page.
7What can students learn from my notebook writing?
- Weekly Writers Notebook Checks
- Read and review
- Tuck-in my own entries to help students with
- topic choice
- paragraphing
- focus
- dialogue
- elaboration
- seeing the world in new ways
- growing thinking about everyday events
8Real Writers Notebooks
- School-issued five-subject notebooks
- Homework assignments class work
- Blueline and Moleskine Writers Notebooks
- For daily entries
9Informal Weekly Writing Lunches
- Share stories and writing in a small group
- Talk about their writing
- Share a piece of writing from each notebook
- Provide students with a mentor text (usually my
writing, but sometimes another student's writing)
to lift the level of their notebook work - Dependent upon the genre of their entry and what
I thought would move them forward with their
writing work. - Students craft new entries as a result of the
luncheon conversation and viewing my notebook
entries. - Share the following week
- Inspiration from each other
10Whats one thing I did well as a writer and one
thing I should work on as a writer?
- Allow your students to examine your notebook and
share what you do well as a writer and what you
need to work on as a writer. - Then, let your students generate a list of
attributes good entries have - Dialogue
- Internal thinking
- Strong voice
- Recreation of a small moment
- Telling a story that needs to be told
11Mentoring Student writes about an entire day in
one page.
- A student wrote this entry about part of her
summer vacation. It lacked detail. By early
May, I had shared many of my entries with her to
teach her how to elaborate about a small moment.
12Mentoring Elaborated Entry
13Mentoring Acrostic Poetry With More Than One
Word Per Line
- My Acrostic Poem Providence
- Students Acrostic Poem Smile
14Mentoring Vivid Imagery in My Free-Verse Poem
15Mentoring A Students Revised Free-Verse Poem
with Vivid Images
- This student revised this notebook entry after
reading Pool. - She revised her entry by adding more vivid words.
- Poem about tasting chocolate strawberries for the
first time.
16Slice of Life Stories Get Kids in the Habit of
Writing SOMETHING Daily!
- Slice of Life Stories as daily notebook entries
work well for - Reluctant writers
- Children who think that nothing interesting ever
happens to them - Young writers who are trying to get into the
habit of writing daily.
17Slice of Life Stories
- According to Wikipedia
- A slice of life story is a category for a story
that portrays a "cut-out" sequence of events in a
character's life. It may or may not contain any
real plot, and often has no exposition, action,
conflict, or denouement, with an open ending. It
usually tries to depict the every-day life of
ordinary people. The term slice of life is
actually a (more or less) dead metaphor it often
seems as if the author had taken a knife and cut
out a slice of the lives of some characters,
without concern for narrative form. - (Retrieved on 2/18/08 from http//en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Slice_of_life_story)
18A Slice of Life Story from a Students Notebook
(4th grader present class)
This entry was written before the SOLS Challenge
began.
19Mentoring A slice of my life
- Pancakes for Breakfast
- When I transferred the pancake mix into an
airtight container last month, I forgot to cut
out the directions from the side of the box
before I threw out the box. Oops! - This morning I made pancakes for the first time
since I threw out the directions. I started
thinking one cup of mix one cup of milk one
cup of water delicious whole wheat pancakes.
Well, once I got everything into the mixing bowl,
I quickly realized that was not the recipe.
Therefore, I started throwing in handfuls of mix
to thicken up the batter. Then I put in the
chocolate chips in hopes that would thicken it up
(it didnt). Finally, I cracked and egg and added
a splash of canola oil, which made the batter
thicker. - I began placing scoops of batter on the griddle.
The first four chocolate chip pancakes looked
lovely. Maybe it had worked! - I asked Marc, How do they taste?Im still
chewing, he replied. (Oh, that cant be good!)I
waited patiently and asked, Do they taste
okay?Yes, theyre delicious! he said. - Whew! My little bit of this and little bit of
that idea had worked. - Posted on Two Writing Teachers, 2/17/08,
http//twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/2008/02/17
/slice-of-life-story-pancakes-for-breakfast/.
20Mentoring Another slice of my life
- Was The Bear Cold?
- Proceed to the first landing, I told my
Assembly Line Managers once I saw that my class
was ready to leave the lunch room. - I saw a big bump under one of my students coats,
which she was holding in her arms, and decided to
stay at the back of the line. What could she have
under there? I wondered. - As the children passed me I saw a bit of fur
sticking out from the top of the coat. Then, I
saw two ears and two eyes peeking back at me. I
saw them for just a second because this student
quickly replaced the hood over the item inside of
her coat. I grinned. - Once the kids stopped at the first landing, I
came up behind this student and whispered, Was
the bear cold? in her ear. She giggled, as did
two of her classmates who were beside her. She
was caught with the bear, but I think she knew as
well as I did that I was NOT about to take it
away. (Im a sucker for teddy bears!) - When we got upstairs to the classroom, I said,
Put your coats away. When you get tapped, come
in and check your mail. However to this student
I said, Cmon in here with your coat. She
didnt come right away, since I dont usually
tell my kids to bring their coats inside.
However, a few students realized what I was up to
once they saw my camera. I just had to capture to
this moment. Hence, she held up her coat, with
the bear still inside, so I could photograph this
moment. - Anyway, we came inside after that the bear
stayed outside til the end of the school day at
which point it reappeared, though not inside of
her coat. - Posted on Two Writing Teachers, 3/5/08,
http//twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/2008/03/05
/staceys-slice-of-life-story-day-5/,.
21Now its your turn to try it!
- Take five minutes to write a short story that is
about a slice of your life. - Challenge yourself to include dialogue and/or
rich descriptions as you write. - Youll confer with a partner about your entry in
a few minutes. - Okay, lets begin!
22Questions? Thoughts? Feedback?
- Would you like to learn more about the
? - If so, point your browser to http//twowritingteac
hers.wordpress.com/ slice-of-life-story-challenge/
.
- Feel free to peruse the Two Writing Teachers Blog
at http//twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/.
23Closing Thoughts
- Our students respect us more when we work
side-by-side with them. - In minilessons and in conferences, I tell my
students about my struggles with my writing. - There are hard parts of writing for me...
- I want them to know that even though I've been
around for two decades longer than they've been,
it's still tough to come up with ideas (i.e., to
nurture and revise them into a finished piece)!