Chapter 12 Reflections

Are we making the best use of our students’ time when we teach?  Certainly this is the most important question we need to ask when we plan our daily lessons.  We must deliver deliberate instruction that is meaningful to our students.  There are only so many hours in a school day and, as teachers, we should be certain that we are managing the limited time we have.

Regie Routman suggests that we make our lessons more meaningful by connecting our home and school lives, looking into our students’ eyes, reducing our paper load, being choosy about what we read, and remembering to live our lives outside of the school setting.

 I have done a much better job of connecting my home and school life in my classroom this semester.  Now my students know that I am a busy mother of four children, that I love to attend my sons’ ball games, that I live on a farm with “lots” of cattle just north of Holton.  

They also know that I just lost a very dear friend (Jena Rieschick) last Friday to a heart attack.  In the past I probably would not have shared this last detail with my students, but I did today because many of my children wondered why I wasn’t at school yesterday.  I was honest and told them I was at a funeral and was still feeling very sad.  Many of my students talked about losing a grandparent or some other special person in their life.  My heart almost melted when one little boy told me, “Mrs. Burdiek, it’s okay because she is watching over you and smiling at you.”  Our conversation continued as we connected our hearts, minds, and lives.   I feel that my class is evolving into a close-knit community of learners who really care for each other.

Routman’s last bit of advice in her chapter really hit home with me – “Take time to see the light.”  As I read this I thought about what the pastor said at Jena’s funeral yesterday – “Jena took the time to find the joy in every day.”  Important words for us all to remember . . .

Chapter 11 Reflections

This chapter describes what needs to be happening in our schools in order to provide our students excellent writing instruction.  One qualified, motivated teacher can make a difference in her classroom’s writing program, but what kind of writing are our students doing when they move on to another grade level?  This got me thinking about the writing instruction in my district.  I know my colleagues are excellent teachers, but I feel that as a whole we do not necessarily understand how to best teach writing.  Unfortunately, we tend to be more focused on the traits (voice, sentence fluency, organization, word choice, ideas and content, and conventions) of writing, instead of helping move our writers forward.  Also, it seems that writing is frequently squeezed out of the day in order to prepare our students for state assessments or to complete meaningless activities.

As a staff, I feel that we are not providing our students with effective writing instruction.  Regie Routman notes the key research findings that improve students’ writing.  Some of those findings include the following:  write every day, develop professional knowledge, create predictable writing routines, emphasize writing as a process, provide time for extensive reading and writing, value reading and writing as mutually supportive processes, recognize the value of authentic writing, and understand spelling development.

Routman stresses that this change in philosophy and approach to writing is going to take time (several years), collaboration amongst the teachers, and commitment to improving the writing program. 

 

After much thought, I decided to share this chapter with my principal.  I wanted her to read what makes a successful writing program.  She was eager to peruse it because she wants her teachers to improve their writing instruction.  I am not sure what changes or professional development may take place (especially due to budget cuts), but it is essential that we come together as a team in order to help our students become effective writers.  A good beginning for us would be to complete a book study on the text Writing Essentials.  In the meantime, I intend to continue to reread the book and work toward improving my own writing program.  Believe me, I am already seeing positive changes in my first graders’ writing since I’ve taken this class.

(Image from Amazon.com)

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."  (quote by George Bernard Shaw)

Chapter 10 Refections

How do I best assess my first grade students’ writing?  Should I judge their writing based on the six traits – ideas and content, organization, sentence fluency, voice, word choice, and conventions?  After all, this is what the majority of teachers have been taught to be “best practice” for evaluating writing.  I now understand that improving just one of these traits doesn’t necessarily mean that the child will become a better writer.

The use of rubrics was also discussed in this chapter.  Regie Routman contends that teachers use checklists (or rubrics) only when needed because they can cause the teacher to focus on the checklist as opposed to what the writer is trying to do. 

I did like the suggestion of creating a child-friendly rubric with my students.  The following is the rubric my students and I recently completed together:

First Grade Writing Rubric for Mrs. Burdiek’s Class I write about one idea. My introduction makes the reader want to read more. I use interesting words and details. I write like I talk. I do my best with capitalization and punctuation.

Our 1st grade writing rubric

I intend to review this rubric frequently with my students before they go off to their desks to write their stories.  As we are approaching the end of the year my students understand this criteria and the importance of using it to improve their writing.

Additionally, Routman discusses the importance of schools making the commitment to improve the teaching of writing.  I would love for my district’s teachers to receive professional training in writing.  We have put so much emphasis on passing the standardized tests that I feel we often overlook the importance of teaching writing effectively.  Routman states that there is no shortcut to helping students become effective writers, and there is no program you can buy that will do it for you. (pg. 240)  As teachers, it’s time for us to stop looking for that “magical” program; instead, we must invest in the time and energy to develop an effective writing program to help all of our students more forward as writers.

Questions & Thoughts:


I love the idea of conducting the quickwrites (using the same prompt) at the beginning and ending of every school year at all grade levels to document improvement, note strengths and weaknesses, and provide information to teachers and children to improve instruction and learning.  Our students have writing portfolios that contain a beginning and end of the year sample (different prompts) that is passed from one grade level to the next at the beginning of the school year.  Unfortunately, there is no discussion amongst the teachers about the students’ writing and this data is not used to help improve writing instruction.  We definitely need to do more with these writing samples than to just pass them on to next year’s teachers!

Teachers, have any of your districts participated in professional training to improve your writing program?  If so, what has or hasn't worked?  I would love for all the teachers in my building to read Writing Essentials by Regie Routman.  I think a book study on this book would be a great beginning as we work together in becoming a staff of effective writing teachers . . . 

Chapter 9 Reflections

Where does one begin to find the time to conference with 19 first graders about their writing?  Fortunately, I can answer that question a little more easily now that I have read the chapter on conferences.  The text helped me better understand the different kinds of conferences there are, and it helped me develop a clearer idea of the many purposes of a writing conference.  In my mind I had always thought that a writing conference must be a one-on-one formal conference with each student.  You can only imagine how difficult that is to do with a 19 to 1 student-teacher ratio.  I pretty much abandoned that impossible feat and decided, instead, that it would work best for me to walk around the room and try to assist as many kids as possible while my students were writing.  Realistically, I believe that this is what I need to be doing with my young (sometimes reluctant) writers. 

With this being said, I know that I must conference with my students in order to help them move forward in their writing.  I love the idea of having whole-class shares and conferences.  This set-up seems to be very doable and effective.  Regie Routman notes that one of the greatest advantages of whole-class share is the amount of teaching that occurs in a short period. 

I am listing the steps of whole-class share/conferences because this is one of the main structures that I want to begin using with my class.

1.     A student reads her story aloud while the class listens for the overall sense of the piece, the whole of what the writer is trying to say.   

2.     The student reads the piece aloud again as the class listens for specific language, things the writer has done well, and things that are confusing.

3.     Teacher and the other students celebrate what the writer has done well.

4.     Teacher makes one or two teaching points that will help move the writer forward.

5.     Teacher keeps track of students who share.

(pgs. 211, 212 from Writing Essentials)

Routman maintains that this type of conference is especially effective because they make the classroom easier to manage, more ideas are generated, and the status of students is raised because all the children are involved in the celebration and affirmation of the writer.

Example of Jack’s Journal Entry and Whole-Class Share and Conference:

Jack's writing before he shared and we conferenced. Jack:  “Saturday is my real birthday.  My birthday is going to have EMAW.”  (Jack read this from his journal just a few days ago.) Mrs. Burdiek:  I like how you started your story.  I bet you are really excited that you will celebrate your birthday next Saturday.  I think I know what EMAW stands for, but could you let your friends know what it means? Jack: “EMAW stands for Every Man a Wildcat.” Mrs. Burdiek:  I’m a K-State fan, too, and I just love that saying.  I went to K-State many years ago, but no one said EMAW way back then.  Tell me more about your birthday cake.  Who is going to make it? Jack:  I think that Donna Wege  is going to make it.  She is Kendon’s mom.  (Kendon is a student in my class.) Mrs. Burdiek:  Donna makes great cakes.  I’m sure it will be delicious.  Why do you like K-State so much? (I probably should had done a better job of having Jack narrow his topic by focusing on his cake instead of what he likes best about K-State.) Jack:  I like K-State because Jacob Pullen plays for them.  He is my favorite player. Mrs. Burdiek:  He has been a fantastic player for K-State this year. Mrs. Burdiek:  I can’t wait to hear your story after you have added more to it.  Jack heads off to his desk to work on his story.  I have written his ideas on post-it notes to help him remember his thoughts.  (I explained to the class what I was doing with the post-it notes before I wrote his ideas down.) Jack's writing after he share and we had our whole-class conference.  Notice how he used the caret to insert the word Pullen.

Other kinds of writing conferences that are described in this chapter include the following:

1.   Quickshares

2.   Roving, on-the-run conferences (I like the term “on the run” because that's what I feel like I am doing - zipping from one end of the classroom to the other – constant motion!  Who needs Mrs. Burdiek the most???)

3.  One-on-one formal conferences

4.  Peer conferences

Two additional points that I gained from this chapter are as follows:

1.     I really need to do a better job of not looking at my child’s paper when they read their story to me the first time because immediately I want to help “fix-up” their writing before we talk about the content.  I know now that I am showing my students that the mechanics/conventions of their writing are more important than the ideas they write.  (I am thinking I need to sit on my hands and have the students hold up their papers while they read.  This would definitely help me focus on their message.)

2.     It is important for kindergarten and first grade students to share their writing everyday.  I need to allow time for this. 

Questions:

1.     Is it okay to have students share their writing in small groups at their tables?  I still plan to do whole-class shares, as well.

2.     What does a teacher do when they have an especially reluctant writer(s) that seems to demand most of your time?  Any suggestions from anyone?  Thanks!

Chapter 8 Reflections

What is the most important component of an effective writing workshop program?  The correct answer is “the teacher who knows how to teach writing well.”  It is not a prescribed program, manual, or series of specific steps.

Regie Routman contends that writing workshop must include the following elements:

• Sustained, daily writing across the curriculum of mostly self-chosen topics.
• Writing for genuine purposes and audiences.
• Playing around with language.
• Conferring with students to respond to their writing, celebrate what they have done well, and teach necessary skills for moving writing forward.
• Teaching students what they need to know to write fluently and accurately.
• Doing what writers do to make a piece engaging for the reader.
• Publishing for real audience.

In order to include the essential elements of writing workshop, teachers must make a commitment to have their students write every day across the curriculum for a sustained period of time.  How many times have you heard a teacher say she has no time to schedule writing workshop in the day?  I bet if you asked that same teacher how many worksheets are completed each day, the number would be quite high.  Reading this section helped me realize that if you truly value writing you will make time for it.  I took a closer look at my own schedule because I knew my students were not writing enough every day.

Over the past few years I felt the amount of time my students were engaged in authentic writing tasks was being squeezed into smaller and smaller increments of time each year.  It was time for a change, and taking this class and reading the text has helped me realize I am the one that needs to alter what I am doing in order to help my kids become better writers.  As my first post indicated, I have built in 45 minutes for writer’s workshop each day.  Along with this change, my students are engaged in more writing activities across the curriculum – math, science, social studies, and reading.

Another aspect that I need to improve on is to recognize the value of having my students talk about their writing before they write, while they are writing, and even when they are finished.  I intend to have more in-depth conversations with one or two of my students before they begin writing.  The whole class will be listening as I draw students’ thoughts out through a one-to-one conversation.  (In fact, I just modeled this today with my student helper.  She chose to write a story about her wonderful mom, and I was really pleased with all the details she added to her story.)  It was also neat to see how many children chose to write about their own moms when they went back to their desks.

Chapter 7 Reflections

What do I need to do to engage my students’ minds so they enjoy writing and want to do their best writing?  Regie Routman suggests that our students will learn to “do” all the required skills and much more if we first change our focus to meaningful teaching of writing and then teach the required skills to support that writing.   The main concept I gathered from this chapter is that when teachers teach from whole to part and back to whole, learning becomes easier and much more meaningful for our students.

It was interesting to read about the changes that the fifth-grade teacher, Debbie Fowler, and her grade-level colleagues implemented in order to help their students improve the quality of their writing.  The four major changes of the program involved shifting from teaching isolated skills to the following:

1. Identifying writing genres that would interest students
2. Deciding whom the audience would be for each piece of writing. (real audience)
3. Modeling their own writing process and struggles in front of students.
4. Having students share their writing regularly.

The section that focused on voice through meaningful writing helped me realize that you can’t teach voice as a separate component of writing, nor are two voices alike.  Finally after all these years of trying to plan great lessons on using voice, I understand that the best way to get my students to write with voice is for them to be interested in their writing.  Students will not take time to produce quality writing if they are not invested in their writing.

Mini-lessons should always be taught at the beginning of writing workshop was an assumption that I’ve had for many years.  I now realize that mini-lessons can and should take place any time students are writing.  Additionally, it’s time for me to get rid of my sequenced list of mini-lessons and start paying more attention to what my students’ needs are by examining their writing. 

Routman’s discussion on revision helped me understand that when our students care about their writing, revising is not a big issue.  She goes on to describe revision as the time to revisit, revalue, reconsider, and look again at our writing (pg. 156).  I know that I need to do a better job of helping my students make revisions.  I believe that I’ve always shied away from revisions because I teach such young students:  I used that as an excuse to not emphasize revisions.  (I was pretty satisfied that they were writing several sentences!)  Now, I know that I must revise my writing in front of my students so they will see what the thinking behind revision entails.  This modeling will help them understand what revision looks like and sounds like.

Finally, Routman describes in depth the importance of teaching spelling well.  Fortunately our reading curriculum (Open Court Imagine It!) includes a strong spelling program that encourages students to develop a spelling consciousness with an emphasis on word study.  My students are expected to use the various spelling references (wall charts, personal dictionaries, word wall, list of students’ names, and any print that is displayed in the classroom.) 


Below are two of the spelling sounds cards that are a component of our reading program.  We refer the first card as the "coil" card with the two main spellings for /oi/ noted belowed the card.  The second card is out "long a" card.  The four main spellings for the long a sounds are shown in the bottom section.  I feel that this program has helped my students become more conscious about spelling.  They don't guess near as often; instead I hear them asking questions such as, "Mrs Burdiek, I want to spell the word train but I am not sure if it is spelled train or trane?"  They are becoming better thinkers and are more aware that a sound can have more than one spelling.

Examples of two spelling/sounds cards from our reading series.

 At each grade level in our building, we have established a list of “no excuse” sight words.  Each day we review one of these words by writing it in our learning journals and talking about the “tricky” part of the spelling.  My first graders are also asked to write or share a sentence using the word of the day.  This word list is sent home for children to practice with their families.  I always tell my students that if they use any of these words in their writing that they must be spelled correctly.  Of course, they are added to the word wall as I introduce them.

This chapter, as the other chapters I’ve already read in this book, are filled with useful and clear ideas to help any teacher improve their writing instruction.  I can’t wait to read more.


Some of the ideas/techniques that I want to incorporate in my classroom include the following:
1.  Create specialized word walls
2.  Highlight words and features of words
3.  Establish a list of writing goals for my first graders
4.  Help improve my students' revision consciousness
5.  Do a better job of telling my students why I'm doing what I'm doing

This shows the framework for the specialized word wall poster that my students and I will be creating as they learn more about these American symbols next week.  We will add words below each of the symbols as the students learn about them.

Questions:

1.  Are other teachers using the Open Court Imagine It! Reading Series?  What are your thoughts about the program's spelling component?


2.  I need to do a better job of having my first graders make revisions . . . any suggestions?  I am struggling because I still have several students that have difficulty writing just four or five sentences - then I ask them to make revisions??? 

Chapter 6 Reflections

The most important idea that I learned from this chapter is that reading and writing are highly connected.  Regie Routman notes that effective teachers are more likely to have their students engaged in reading and writing of whole texts, as opposed to having them spend the majority of their time on reading and writing activities.  Furthermore, growth in reading positively impacts writing, and growth in writing positively impacts reading.

As I continued to read the chapter, Routman discussed the importance of shared writing:  this writing becomes the texts the teachers and students read in shared reading.  I have had my students participate in shared writing lessons every day since reading about the importance of shared writing.  My students and I have written texts together that including the following:

• what good readers do
• our morning routine
• how we feel about having a student teacher
• ways that we can become “bucket fillers”
• how we become “bucket dippers
• our class rules
• why self-discipline is important
• what we learned to do that took lots of practice
• steps in building a snowman
• what we did at home on all of our snow days

How do we improve our children’s reading and writing achievement?  The answer is really quite simple – we have our students spend more time reading and writing.  As the year progresses, my first graders have more stamina to read for longer periods of time than they did at the beginning of the year.  (They can also write for longer periods of time.)  I aim to have them read independently for 15-20 minutes per day.  Fortunately, most of my students also receive additional independent reading time during library enrichment.  As teachers, we must make sure to read aloud stories, poems, short books, long books, fiction, and non-fiction.

Another key point that Routman makes is that teachers need to be certain that the writing children do in response to reading is worth their time.  This type of writing requires students to think deeply about the text.  They might be asked to explain, summarize, compare, evaluate, and draw conclusions.  Below is an example of a writing assignment I asked my students to complete after they read The Grandma Mix-Up.  The students were encouraged to write about what Grandma (Nan or Sal) they would prefer to stay with and why.  I wanted them to back up their answer with their reasons for making the choice they did.

Student example of writing assignment for guided reading lesson.

Additionally, Routman discusses the importance of integrating content-area teaching with writing instruction.  I have a group of first graders that love listening to and responding to non-fiction text.  After completing our unit on penguins, my students wrote five facts they learned about penguins.  It was neat to see the facts they came up with.  They also loved creating the penguin art projects to go along with their facts.

Example of a student's list of important facts about penguins

Graphic organizers were noted as being an effective method that can be used to help students remember content.  I use a variety of graphic organizers with my students.  For the most part, we complete them as a whole-class or small-group shared experience.