In the
5th grade classroom, my MT likes to implement a variety of writing
opportunities for the students. Mrs. C. believes practicing writing is
extremely valuable for students to prepare for the future and its correlation
to other subject areas as well. Throughout the school year, I have seen her
discuss different types of writing styles and engage the students in writing
lessons pertaining to these various styles. The 5th graders have had
lessons on narrative writing, persuasive writing, and expository writing. Usually
a writing prompt or choice of writing prompt based on a subject area and a style
of writing are provided for the students to work on over an extended amount of
time. During this time, the students take a period to plan their writing,
write, revise, and publish; however, I do not believe I have ever seen
peer-editing during the revision process of writing.
In
addition to the long-term writing prompts that the students work on, they are
also given quick-write prompts throughout the year. These are assignments that
are not meant to be spent a long period of time on and are not revised;
typically students are given about a week to work on these quick writes. Mrs.
C. also has students do many projects at the conclusion of a lesson to assess
the students’ knowledge; many of these projects have a vast amount of writing,
which coincides with the International Baccalaureate curriculum. I have seen a
variety of group and individual projects that students have completed, yet the
partner work that I’ve seen among students varies from the type of partner work
Hsu focuses on in her article, Writing
Partnerships (2009).
Hsu
elaborates on how the partner work she implements in her classroom has given
her students the opportunity to be less dependent on the teacher and more
dependent on peers to help provide feedback. Although there is a vast amount of
partner or group work in my field placement, I rarely see a decline in the
amount of teacher support needed to complete a project. Rather than direct the
partners to build off each other’s ideas instead of asking her for help or
direction first, my MT provides students with the help that they need a
majority of the time.
One way
to help increase student conferencing in a way that can make students more
responsible for their supportive needs is to have a permanent partner
throughout the year for students to work on their writing with, similar to Hsu’s
classroom. Hsu (2009) discusses that determining specific expectations for
partner work is critical to a successful outcome of partner writing. I think
the 5th graders could really benefit from knowing that they were going
to work with one writing partner throughout the year because they typically
work with a person or group of choice for partner projects. Since students
typically pick their friends, they are not given the utmost opportunity to
develop their skills since the time they have to work together may be more of a
social time rather than productive learning time.
Working with a student the entire
year based on achievement level can also help students become comfortable with
that one person’s writing and know how to provide feedback in a way that can be
used constructively. I know there have been classes where we do a peer review
and some writing I am aware of how to edit the writing and provide feedback and
other pieces where I feel like I honestly have no idea what I can say to help
promote better writing. By partnering students up with the same person
throughout the year, it will give each student an opportunity to adjust to one
person’s writing style and build off of that to help that writer improve
throughout the year.
I have
helped students edit their writing by going through and editing any grammatical
errors or questioning any parts of their writing that seem confusing. Rather than
have teachers do all of the editing, I think it would be beneficial for Mrs. C.
to start implementing partner work to help build in the students’ strength in
independent writing. Although she does a great job of providing plenty of
opportunities for students to practice writing, this time can be used even more
effectively if the students have the opportunity to practice writing as well as
practice editing or discussing writing with their peers. Providing feedback to
peers can be a great way for students to recognize aspects of this feedback that
they would also like to see or not see in their writing.
Tracy thank you for posting this!
ReplyDeleteThe idea that you read about in Hsu seems very positive and is heavily incorporating student success in writing as well as peer review/edit. There is one change i may make to the activity if I were to do this in my classroom and that is that I would probably have students change partners maybe every couple months. I know it is important to have students get comfortable with other students writing and editing but I also feel that it would be beneficial to have students work with others as well over the whole year. I would have the students stay with one partner for a couple months which could be a worthwhile time as well and then switch. In the end, I really liked that activity you found and would no doubt use it in my classroom.
The article i read was Tompkins chapter 12 about Reading and Writing in the Content Areas. This chapter talked about the many ways teachers can incorporate the writing into subjects and also how important it is for the learning of that subject but also good practice for the students writing and reading abilities. The most interesting part in this lesson which I could relate to most based on what i have observed in my MT's classroom was about the journal entry activities.
There were two journal entry activities that I liked most: double-entry journals and simulated journals. Double-entry journals are when students split their paper into two parts, one for the facts in the book they are reading and then another section for their reaction to the facts or their opinions. The simulated journal was where a student could read a book or novel and write in their journal from the perspective of a character or situation. Both these suggestions I would take into my MT's classroom. The only opportunity my MT gives her students to focus on writing or practice in journals is when she has them write in their journals every morning for about a half hour to 45 minutes. I have talked about this activity before but although it is a good strategy, my MT does not seem to manage it properly. The prompt for my MT's students is ALWAYS open prompt, I have never seen her give a prompt or form of direction in this whole year I have observed. Along with no prompt, the students are never asked to show their writing. They are asked to share their writing at the end of the writing time but even students who didn't write anything still share a "story" that they make up in their heads. So not only is there no prompt, the students don't know what to write about a lot of the time, they make up stories and don't write during writing time, and my MT never goes through and checks their writing so the students never learn to edit or revise their work. If my MT implemented one of these journal entry strategies then maybe the students would now have a focus for the writing and can write more constructively rather than with an open prompt. The content area focus journal entries can give the students a goal and help them practice writing about the content they are focusing on!
This week I read the Hue article, along with Tompkins Chapter 2. I found the Tompkins reading to be very similar to what we read about comprehension. The fact that Tompkins went into great detail about the writing process, made me think about the Things Good Readers Do strategy. There were a lot of strategies for teaching students how to be effective writers but, overall, I found myself more intrigued by the article. The textbook touched on a lot of things I am already familiar with, such as, the writing stages. These stages have been emphasized throughout most of my educational career, and while I know they are very important to learn and teach about, I think that learning about other ways to improve writing is essential, too.
ReplyDeleteI have never had a placement that utilized partner activities in writing. Partner-reading has always been a common activity but, after reading the Hue article, I wish I have seen this in the classroom. My mentor teacher has the students write in their journals everyday, but she has never gone over the writing process with them. I thought it had a lot to do with their grade-level, but it seems like it would be effective for them now. Even if it means having them proofread their neighbor's writing, it would be helping them practice skills that never seem to go away. Writing is something that we want them to never stop doing, so we need to make sure that we are teaching them how to be good, productive writers. Doing this will help build their confidence in writing, and encourage them to write more.
You all make a lot of great points when it comes to writing. I am in a second grade classroom where writing is something new for them. For my lesson i had students create a Venn Diagram and then had them construct paragraphs based on the similarities and differences they found. many of them struggle with starting and after reading the Tompkins article i feel that all of the second graders should start with the writing process. Mrs. Hen does a lot of this however i feel that students need more. there is not enough writing done in the classroom that makes students feel comfortable enough to perform with quality. one idea that Tompkins present in the writing stage that i feel would be very useful is pre writing. This would be great for my second graders because i think it would help them to focus on key elements in writing such as sentence structure and spelling (which they most struggle with). I think this would help motivate the students and make them feel that they are good writers once the final drafts is written and perfected.
ReplyDeletelike Valand i have never seen the partner writing in a classroom before, however i do feel that it would be great in a classroom with older students because for second graders writing is new so they may struggle with assisting their peers in the right direction. my MT does, however, have students read their writing to their peers but there is no editing done. Writing is very important and it is important for students to understand that. One way to do this is to have students use a journal to write about their life experiences or respond to an interesting prompt, and also have them write multiple drafts of their writing.