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?

Bonnie Warne

I always really appreciate seeing an author in the flesh. There is always a huge disconnect for me between reading the articles and imagining these authors as teachers in their classrooms. To see her and hear her talk made it easier to understand what was happening in her classroom. I think that in academic writing, the passion for teaching can be lost in the rigid form required by the journal. I learned a lot about that corner of Idaho, I haven't spent any time there. Also, I have been looking at sentences inside a book, I think pulling them out and using them in place of practice worksheets should have been a natural next step, but I haven't made that step yet. Thanks Bonnie. Another strategy for my toolbox.

What He Could Do Grandpa Diamond

Touch electric fences just for the shock.
Set a straight corner post. Drill a well.
Butcher chickens. Castrate calves. Make time
to listen to me. Take Sunday off.

Keep ten hoodlums in line
at home. Get picked first for baseball
at age seventy-- by seventh graders .
Crack it to center field.
Surprise even the skeptical.

Steward a centennial homestead. Move
from horse to Model T to GMC. Tame
wild Angus. Live by example. Exude patience.
Dance a jig. Strum a guitar. Crack a wise smile.
Hold back an I told you so. Notice
the beauty of simplicity.
Nap during chaos.

Jill Diamond
Moscow ID
NIWP Summer Institute 2009

Conferring

Lucy Calkins
Have you ever experienced this?

"Then it's like popcorn. From all corners of the room, one writer after
another pops up saying, "I'm done.'' "I'm done." "I'm done."--pg. 223

It is terrifying. I spent all last year trying to figure out what to do with them. They can't all have my attention at the same time. I had to find things for them to think about, strategies that they could do, when they thought they were done. I realized, admittedly this took a long time, that I would have to directly teach this, and list the possibilities in their notebooks and around the room. I created a You Think You Are Done revision checklist consisting of the mini-lessons that I had taught up to that point. I also offered the choice of starting a new piece, typing the draft, peer conferencing about their writing with list in hand, reading as a writer, and putting their name on the board as an available conferencer. I have a pocket chart that has all of the stages of writing. I have them put their name in the teacher conference pocket, so I know who I need to get to that day. I also try to get a hold of three of my reluctant writers or shy students that won't initiate a conversation.

Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers

Nancy Sommers

I love the idea that writing begins at the point where speech becomes impossible. I would really like to hammer this point home next year. I think that it is important to remind students that writing allows us to say what we want to say, exactly like we want to say it, the first time. It doesn't require redundancy. You don't have to think up arguments on the fly that sometimes can derail your whole train like you would during a conversation. It is a freeing form of communication because you are the ultimate authority when it comes to your own writing. You get to revise your thoughts until you are making the point or telling the story that you want to share with your reader. You don't even have to share until you are ready. This is powerful.

This article also gets at why revision is so hard for my students. They have a very difficult time re-viewing their work. They can't seem to take that step back from it. And if the writing starts to take a student in a different direction, they often refuse to go along. I know that it is important to teach my students to focus their subject, but if they are trying to write about Christmas at grandmas, but keep coming back to that one Christmas in Aspen, maybe they should give it up and write about Aspen. I will try to formulate some sort of mini-lesson about writing as a form of discovery next year. My students have a very hard time abandoning a draft that they consider a representation of a lot of work, even if the work is weak. I really liked the idea that came up about having a physical collection of these sentences, paragraphs, and drafts. I think it will make a student feel like they can dig through the box later, but they can let go of that snippet of writing for now and continue onward.

I'll do it my way

by Stephanie Dix

I thought the structure of this article was a nice change of pace. I wasn't shocked with the key finding of the article that young writers, like expert writers, work in different ways. It was still nice to read the three profiles and relate characteristics of these students to other students that I have watched in their own writing process.

I also liked that the distinction was made between poetic and transactional writing process for these students. Working with students, I have noticed that they are much more comfortable revising their poetic writing. I think it is because they are so much more familiar with their subject. They also have a stronger sense of ownership. Often, the transactional writing done in my class is on an assigned topic or at least genre, but the poetic writing usually features student choice. I think that the amount of choice and ownership that students feel that they have in a piece directly correlates to the amount of time and effort that they will put into revising that piece. I also think that there is a relationship between ownership and the depth at which a student will revise.

After the end

Chapter 10
Revising a Basal pg.150

I have done an assignment similar to Revising a Basal with my students but up until now I had completely forgotten about it. I am excited to dredge this up from the depths. Just like Lane suggests, I have students take a basic first grade reader (one of the uncreative ones) and have them use all that they have learned about making a narrative more interesting to make the reader more interesting. They can start by asking questions that they would like to know more about. We then ask another class to match original works to expanded upon works. My fifth graders LOVED this assignment. One reluctant writer said that he felt that the hard work had been done for him. He considered finding an idea to write about the most challenging part of writing. Once he had the story elements he brought them to life.

After the End

Chapter 7 pg. 105

In every reading, I am searching for things to bring back to the classroom next year. After three months of conferences a few times a week, students are coming to me and telling me what they need to fix before I even have a chance to open my mouth. Then I have to ask them why they didn't fix these things before they sat down with me if they felt that they knew what I was going to say. I would like to try the absentee conference after the year gets really rolling. I think that it might address this behavior I find in my students.

As a reminder: The Absentee Conference suggests that students write a dialogue between you and them talking about their writing. They take this script and the writing to the conference and you read it together and talk about it or even act it out.

Doesn't this sound like fun?

The Art of Teaching Writing

Lucy Calkins

When I read text about the mechanics of writing workshop, I spend a lot of time concentrating on how teachers organize their space and time. I was comforted by:

How we structure the workshop is less important than that we structure it.--Calkins, p. 188

Also, I was empowered by someone, anyone, writing about throwing away ineffective, outdated curriculum.

If we, as teachers, want to move on, we need to take carloads of curricula to the dump. It is only by cleaning out some of the old things that we can give time and space to the new ones.—Calkins, p. 187

I want to type this quote out, take it to Kinkos, print it on a banner, and hang it in our curriculum director’s office. We were handed so many new things that some of the old are going to have to go. Not once has my district said to me that these materials are meant to replace those materials. It is always a matter of adding additional requirements in to the ring to fight for classroom time. To see a quote about this in someone’s writing is the start to a larger community movement. We need to admit, to ourselves and the world at large, we can’t do everything. This includes squeezing anymore in without some housekeeping. Our students’ learning is fragmented enough.

Reaffirming th Writing Workshop

Reaffirming the Writing Workshop for Young Adolescents
By Sheryl Lain
This article offers a very practical overview of writing workshop. The introduction did just what the title claimed, it reaffirmed the reason I clear the space for a writer’s workshop every day even though other teachers in my building don’t think that it is worth the time ‘sacrificed.’ Writer’s workshop is good teaching and its process has bled into other content areas during my instructional day. One could evaluate the structure of either my math or my reading block and determine that these two subjects are also workshops in form. I love that Lain calls the blank spiral notebook the textbook for her class. Really, that is what writer’s workshop does. It allows students in on the planning process of their learning. The curriculum is based solely on their needs. They are each writing their own version of the textbook. Talk about differentiation.

Admittedly, I don’t use very much poetry in my classroom. After my experiences so far in this class, I am changing my mind. I don’t know, but somewhere, I lost the appreciation, the mystery and magic, of good poetry. Maybe I overlook poetry because, as the author concludes, the emphasis on state, district and grade level test scores makes me crazy. Lain makes a good case for poetry increasing student scores. It is one element I plan to make a conscience effort to include more of, in part because I read this article.
Another thing that I really appreciated was the author’s attention on what goes on in her writing conferences. I know what happens in my own writing conferences with students, but I have never been given the opportunity to listen in to other teachers with their students. I needed the validation that her words sound much like my own. Sometimes it feels like, by focusing on only one area, I am not giving enough. But now I realize that by giving students timely one on one feedback and joint problem-solving , they are getting more feedback from me than they have from many other teachers in their past.

thunder on the palouse

thunder on the Palouse

the land of mild weather
was showing off last night
trying to impress me
or maybe trying to welcome me home
filling the air with light and sound
but I was left with longing

Non-magical thinking

Non-Magical Thinking
By Janet Emig

I love the idea that writing is something that we are just hard-wired to do, a logical extension of spoken language. I have often thought of the creative genius of children in regards to their ability to play with language and sound. It is a system that young children, even though they are still learning the intricacies explicitly, have a natural ability to manipulate in pleasing, surprising, thoughtful ways. When and why do we begin to lose this ‘natural’ ability as we grow? Does our environment change as our age does? As children age, what used to be cute, creative word play is often corrected or considered wrong and corrected. How do we teach students the rules of our language while still allowing them to play with words? I know that my classroom encourages wordplay, but I often find myself steering students away from the silly. Maybe I shouldn’t. As I add this article into my thinking about writing, I will continue to examine the environment that I set up for my writers. I will try to add more playful encounters with words to my approach to teaching writing. In the land of Direct Writing Assessment, writing often becomes a very serious matter. It is a ironic idea that if I approach writing a little less seriously with my students, they may just go further, faster.

What is Right with Writing

By Linda Rief

There are a few ideas that I really latched onto in this piece. The first deals with assessment of writing. I have be reassured that we will talk about this issue at length later in the class, but I still want to make mention of it in regards to this article. The author states that ‘evaluation should move the writer forward.’ I really appreciate this idea. I try during writing conferences to move each student forward. During my evaluation of each draft of a student’s writing, I try to move them forward. Eventually however, I have to put a grade down in my grade book. Turning their hard work into a numerical value, even when using a rubric, is hard for me. I still struggle to give writing grades for individual pieces. Grades at the end of the quarter should consist of some mathematical average of all of the graded work over that period, but I have a hard time giving weight to each part of the writing process and product. In the article, Rief declares ‘that process and product are equally important.’ I completely agree. This is really the foundation of my grading philosophy in writing. I still have a very hard time translating this balanced approach to grades. I wish my guidance was enough. Can anyone else offer me any insight? What do you do in your classrooms?

Now that We've Been to School

By James N. Britton

Let me start off by saying that I considered Britton's work a relief after my struggle trying to wade through Moffet's style. This text was much more accessible to me. It took the author a bit of time to get to his central idea. Once he arrived, his model was more in line with the way I view the progression the student of writing goes through. It seemed more circular than linear. On my initial reading, I appreciated that the author didn't try to give more value one form of writing or another. I learned a lot about what we expect from our students as writers when we tried to categorize the writing assignments that we give during the school year. I realized in my own classroom I serve students poetic examples of writing and then turn around and ask them to produce a product that is closer to transactional. I'm sure my students have noticed this disconnect, but it took going through this exercise for me to notice. Only a few times a year do my assignments yield poetic writing. I am now looking for opportunities to incorporate more poetic writing into my classroom.

Where I'm From

I am from dirty prairies
from grit in my teeth and chaff on my skin
I am from the field my father tills
(golden,vast,
praying for rain)
I am stained red from the strawberry patch.

The unlikely peach tree
whose stolen fruit made me
sick for days.

I'm from sunburns & snowdrifts,
from cow calls and meadowlarks.

I'm from five-more-minutes
and probably-not-todays.
from 'Hose yourself off" & 'It'll stick that way!'
I'm from Sunday School Circle
with stale donut prizes
and waiting during communion
all by myself.

I'm from Ireland and the Homestead Act
potatoes and ice tea.
From the memories that my grandpa's lost
stolen by age
The mouth that my mom keeps shut
to keep the peace.

The hay loft of the barn
skeletons of things forgotten
purpose unknown
trampled by technology.

I am rooted in this soil,
my branches reaching upward,
my seeds caught by the wind,
my heartwood at home.

Ohhh Moffet

By James Moffett

Before we read Moffet in class, Rodney spent some time discussing his take on personal writing. As I heard him, he told us that he would never assign a personal writing assignment to a college students. One of his reasons, among many well stated points, included that he didn't want to perpetuate the narcissistic nature of these students. I understand this completely. He said that we need to prepare our students to think about the world. I agree with this too. But what do I do with this information as a fifth grade teacher? We spend much of our year focusing on personal narrative. Am I helping to create the unprepared college student that professors complain about? Oh man, what is Rodney going to think about my demo on personal narrative?

We read Moffet shortly after Rodney offered his opinions. Moffet seemed to be sent to me in order to help me clarify my opinion about teaching students to write about themselves. I think that Moffet would agree that in fifth grade writing about yourself is important. Writing an essay would be a very daunting task for a fifth grader. We are spending time giving students that background necessary to eventually work up to essay writing. Fifth graders are climbing the abstraction ladder, but haven't reached the rung required to see exposition writing clearly. Moffet helped my justify my teaching of personal narrative after stressing about what Rodney said. I, therefore, am not panicked to teach exposition. Thank you, Moffet.