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Inspiring children to write by living like a writer: teaching writing workshop with our notebooks wide-open

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Title: Inspiring children to write by living like a writer: teaching writing workshop with our notebooks wide-open


1
Inspiring 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

2
Overview 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

3
Action 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)

4
A 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.

5
How 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)?

6
Realizations
  • 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.

7
What 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

8
Real Writers Notebooks
  • School-issued five-subject notebooks
  • Homework assignments class work
  • Blueline and Moleskine Writers Notebooks
  • For daily entries

9
Informal 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

10
Whats 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

11
Mentoring 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.

12
Mentoring Elaborated Entry
13
Mentoring Acrostic Poetry With More Than One
Word Per Line
  • My Acrostic Poem Providence
  • Students Acrostic Poem Smile

14
Mentoring Vivid Imagery in My Free-Verse Poem
15
Mentoring 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.

16
Slice 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.

17
Slice 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)

18
A Slice of Life Story from a Students Notebook
(4th grader present class)
This entry was written before the SOLS Challenge
began.
19
Mentoring 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/.

20
Mentoring 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/,.

21
Now 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!

22
Questions? 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/.

23
Closing 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)!
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