Final Thoughts on Bird by Bird

Anne Lamott

Bird by Bird helped pull me back into writing after leaving it and many other hobbies behind in an attempt to catch some sleep during my first years of teaching. Lamott doesn't speak to the writer who is ready to publish something that is already 'finished.' In fact, she speaks about these hopeful, hungry writers with a certain distaste. She promises within the first few pages to teach you everything she has come to know about writing, and although I have never read her work, the caliber of writing within this book gives her enough clout for me. She gets very personal when writing about writing which I really appreciate. With her dark, punchy sense of humor she candidly confronts the struggles that writers often don't speak about which causes many of them to secretly pour martinis in the morning or look at bridges longingly. This book isn't for everyone. It offers suggestions to overcome perfectionism and an interesting take on writer's block, but lacks nuts and bolts pertaining to style. But if writing is an addiction that you feed, a habit that you hate to love and love to hate, you might take a break from the self-loathing to read about someone else's sulking. I found myself cackling loudly throughout and nodding my head knowingly. It was a welcome distraction from writing.

Workshopping

I can't believe that the previous model didn't include watching the other fellows' workshops. I think that giving my workshop to this safe community of learners enabled me to get over the jitters. It also gave me a sounding board that was gentle and thoughtful.

I learned a lot about myself and what I know as a teacher by giving my workshop. At the beginning of this summer, the thought of giving a workshop to a group of teachers that were more knowledgeable than me left me quaking in my sneakers. I couldn't imagine what I could teach them. I felt like I was an expert at nothing. I realize now that I have done a lot of research to inform the strategies that I use in my classroom. So, even though my ideas are really a conglomeration of the great thinkers' ideas, I can summarize that research for other teachers to save them some of the pain. I can also give them an idea of what a pie-in-the-sky strategy looks like in the fifth grade classroom, a very real setting.

Maybe most importantly, I learned how to glean information that I can adapt to my classroom from a workshop that may have an intended audience that I don't consider myself a part of.
Each and every workshop gave me more tools for my tool box. I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this process.

Ways to Use Writer's Notebooks

gather ideas for future writing
--at home, in the park, on the playground, in the car, at McDonalds
record powerful images
word lists
--parts of speech, words they like the sound of, words that they stumble across during reading
notes from mini-lessons and craft lessons
--either as notes that students take, or glue ins charts that we create as a class
record their attempts at a strategy offered in mini-lessons
things that make them wonder
situations going around them that evoke an emotion
--paste in writer's helpers given to them by teachers

Reading as a writer
--stalking sentences that they like
--stalk phrases that they like
--techniques that they would like to try
--wonderings about writer's craft
--things that they would like to examine as a class
--examples of real writers using the techniques that we learned in class
--examples of authors breaking the rules
--studies of sentence variety
--studies of construction within a genre

Ideas I would like to try
--table of contents (add on as we go)
--use more class starters (as a management, focusing, prethinking tool)
--fluency writing (at the beginning of the year)
--record reactions to powerful events happening on around them
--more writing process reflection
--questions for the teacher for conferencing

Grading
A page count. I would also like to include a weekly page as a homework assignment.
If a student has something they would really like me to look at they need to flag it and put a sticky note on the cover explaining to me what I am looking at and why. Checklist of give-it-a-tries from the minilessons.

I like to try to help writers find a way of organization that works for them, not me. I teach them to use tabs or sticky notes as tabs.

Jill Diamond’s Top 10 list of Conferencing Tips

(in no particular order)

As overheard while eavesdropping on a particularly witty group of teachers

Be present in the moment of the conference
The force of listening draws out words
Teach to the writer, not the writing
Let the student hold their paper (and all that this implies)
Ask the students to prepare questions for you before the conference
You don’t have to read the whole draft
The person that does the work, does the learning
Sometimes the best thing you can give the writer is a simple human response
Remember that the writing is their writing
Start with: How’s it going? Or better yet, How is you writing going today?

Rethinking grading

I have been postponing the post about grading for as long as possible, hoping that if I ignore this topic it will go away. But alas, just like in my first three years, grading is threatening to give me ulcers yet again. I remember being physically sick for my first round of parent teacher conferences. I wasn't worried about talking to parents about their children, or presenting myself well, or sharing my concerns. Instead, I was mortified at the idea that I had to establish the entire system that determined what grade each student got. I felt like I wasn't teaching students anything by assigning them letter grades, I was just in charge of judging them. I still can't get away from the notion that grades are just judgments. Not to mention, judgments that are taken at a specific moment in time, but are speaking to a process that is dynamic.

I found grading writing especially difficult. If a student took all of the advice that he/she got during conferences and applied the mini-lesson strategies, and grew as a writer from draft to draft then I say A. Who am I to judge?

I have gleaned some new ideas from our dialogue that I will be trying next year to soothe my anxiety. Some of these are still held over from my previous grading model.

1. Give student access to the rubric at the beginning of a project.

2. Allow students to give feedback on the rubric.

3. Require students to score their own work using the rubric. Openly discuss the grade that the students will receive for a piece during a conference.

4. Allow them to rewrite for a higher.

5. Allow another reader to score if they think mine is unfair.

6. Give students a notebook grade--he/she tried the strategy or not

7. Give students a reading like a writer/collection grade.

8. Give a grade for revision process. (I still don't have the foggiest idea what this will look like.) Oh yeah, I also need to figure out how to weight these categories so that they reflect the writer's process and product. I still don't know about this...

I'm also still struggling about how transparent to be with my distaste towards grades.

I have been postponing the post about grading for as long as possible, hoping that if I ignore this topic it will go away. But alas, just like in my first three years, grading is threatening to give me ulcers yet again. I remember being physically sick for my first round of parent teacher conferences. I wasn't worried about talking to parents about their children, or presenting myself well, or sharing my concerns. Instead, I was mortified at the idea that I had to establish the entire system that determined what grade each student got. I felt like I wasn't teaching students anything by assigning them letter grades, I was just in charge of judging them. I still can't get away from the notion that grades are just judgements. Not to mention, judgements that are taken at a specific moment in time, but are speaking to a process that is dynamic.

I found grading writing especially difficult. If a student took all of the advice that he/she got during conferences and applied the mini-lesson strategies, and grew as a writer from draft to draft then I say A. Who am I to judge?

I have gleaned some new ideas from our dialogue that I will be trying next year to soothe my anxiety. Some of these are still held over from my previous grading model.

1. Give student access to the rubric at the beginning of a project.
2. Allow students to give feedback on the rubric.
3. Require students to score their own work using the rubric. Openly discuss the grade that the students will receive for a piece during a conference.
4. Allow them to rewrite for a higher.
5. Allow another reader to score if they think mine is unfair.
6. Give students a notebook grade--he/she tried the strategy or not
7. Give students a reading like a writer/collection grade.


8. Give a grade for revision process. (I still don't have the foggiest idea what this will look like.)

Oh yeah, I also need to figure out how to weight these catagories so that they reflect the writer's process and product. I still don't know about this...

What is a Portfolio?

When implementing portfolios in my fifth grade classroom, I will be using this operating definition:

Portfolios house a collection of a student's work that has been gathered by both teacher and student. This work demonstrates a student's current level of thinking with anchor pieces as well as the student's learning process on the way to their current knowledge and skill level.

Some Questions that I still have about portfolios:

How do I go about organizing a writing porfolio inside of each student's larger every content area portfolio?

Do I assign any grade to the portfolio? Right now, I don't assign any grade to the portfolio. I let the portfolio speak to the report card grades that the student has earned during this quarter.

How do I show students the value of portfolios? How do I get them to buy into the process?