Krista Milen, Tina
Hatcher, Crystal Lawrence
The Art of
Teaching Writing by Lucy Calkins
Our book club
this week read pages 59-287 from Lucy Calkins. The first part dealt with the foundations of literacy
(writing in the home, nursery school and kindergarten). She emphasized that oral language
“takes place on a non-sequence, whole-task basis.” We wouldn’t
dissect oral language into component parts and we shouldn’t drill young children on all the sounds of
the alphabet before inviting them to write. We should treat early writing with
respect just like we would a baby’s first words. She says when launching a
writing workshop in the primary-level classroom teachers to accept whatever
they may put down.. Children don’t need to be afraid they will “fail” but need
to be accepted and praised for what they can do. We liked how she addressed the students
as “writers” Calkins also stresses
that children’s drawing is rehearsal for them. It plays an important role in that it provides a supportive
scaffolding within which can help children write. They can return to their drawing and most of the child’s
meaning is carried by the picture.
Calkins later discourages drawing, as a way of rehearsing for writing
because she says that no solution works for every child and not solution should
works forever. She says we should
watch for signs indicating that a child no longer needs to weave drawing and
writing together. She states that
drawing is a predominant form of rehearsal for many 1st graders, but
talking is the most effective form of rehearsal for 2nd grade. We all three liked the idea of
notebooks in primary grades. They
have it with them throughout the day and go home with them at night. It is a place for gathering bits and
pieces of their lives. She also
states that peer conferences may not get better writing, but longer texts.
Calkins
went on the discuss Writer’s Workshop in the upper elementary grades. We discussed how a lot of students are
no longer comfortable to really get in to their writing due to peer pressure
and bullying. We all agreed that
students at this age need us to care about them and what is going on in their
lives outside of the classroom.
Building a community is especially important at this level of Writer’s
Workshop. When building the
community we must demonstrate our love for reading and writing. This is the age
to make the reading/ writing connection. Students at this age still apply some
of our values to their lives. We
agreed with Calkins when she said that launching Writer’s Workshop with
students in secondary grades is difficult. The teacher in Secondary Writing Workshops must build one on
one relationships, seize the moment and teach on your toes, encourage students
to voice themselves through writing, and see the energy in the classroom and go
with it.
We agreed that in order for Writer’s Workshop to work it must be
predictable. Teachers must be
organized, and set-aside particular times every day. “It is almost impossible to have a successful writing
workshop if students write only one or two times per week. We like the components of Writer’s
Workshop. We discussed the mini
lesson, work time, conferencing, share sessions and publication. The mini lesson is just what it says. This is the time that is set aside to
“teach” all the students something. We shouldn’t expect for every student,
however, to use what was taught that in his or her papers. There is not a set curriculum on what
to teach in the mini lessons.
Teachers must decide what to teach based on the needs of the students
that she is teaching. A problem
that teachers face with mini lessons is that teachers often struggle with
reverting to the “old” way of teaching at this time. We all agreed that we must remember who ever is doing the
most talking is doing the most learning.
We had a lot of favorite things about
the book to discuss when we met. One
of the sections we all agreed upon was the section on mini-lessons of
revisions. Crystal told the
us that she especially enjoyed the phrase by William Faulkner, “Writing a first
draft is like trying to build a house in a strong wind” (Calkins, page 209). The sense of urgency he discusses is
what it is like when students are writing their first draft. They need to get the ideas all down on
paper quickly before they forget what their ideas were in the first place. I will list a few of the recommended
strategies for topics of mini-lessons here:
· Write about a subject in a different
genre
· Rework a confused section- the ending,
the title, etc
· Take a long draft and make it shorter
· Take a short entry of a draft and
expand it
· Imagine a purpose and an audience for
it
· Reread the draft evaluating what works
and what does not
· Read the entries/draft and think, ”Where’s
the mystery here?”
· Put the draft aside and return to it
another day
· Take a jumbled piece and rewrite it in
sections or chapters
These are just a few of the
strategies that we found would be most helpful to our age group of students. (Calkins, pages 209-210)
In the chapters on ‘conferring’, one
phrase stood out to me that I shared with my group. “Creation and criticism- these are
central to our work with clay and blocks, and they are also central to our work
with words.” (Calkins, page 222) In
these chapters of the book, Calkins was discussing how important it is to
question themselves about their writing. As readers, we should ask a question
or two about our drafts. No matter the age, questions like these can be used
over and over.
· What have I said so far?
· How do I like it? What is not so good
that I can fix?
· How does it sound? How does it look?
· How else could I have done this?
· What am I going to do next?
These are some questions that can
be discussed during teacher-student or peer conferences to get a student to
learn to interact with their own writing. The goal for the teacher, over time,
is to be unnecessary or unneeded. We want students to be successful at
self-questioning.
We enjoyed the different stories and
anecdotes in this book. There
was a particular story about a little boy named Noah on pages 262-263 that was
meaningful to me so I shared it with my book club group. The story was in
the chapter on publications. Calkins
was sharing how the 5 year old had written a 10-page book, with words and a
picture on each page. After
reading his book to the class, his teacher asked him what he had written on the
back of the book. He told
her that it was “nuthin”, just “sumfin” for the library. He had put symbols for the section of
the library that it would go into for the librarian. This is humorous, yet significant,
because he already sees himself as an author. As Calkins says, “His teacher has not
only helped him develop skills, she has also helped him develop a self-concept
as an author.” (Calkins, page 263) We
want our students to not only act as writers, but to become one. To see him/herself as an author causes
the children to make connections with the books they read. When they make connections, they are
learning.
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