Today's class was all about writing in the classroom. I think writing is one of the hardest things to teach, but it is one of the most important things to learn. I find Writer's Workshop very helpful when it comes time for writing. I think it is very important to have students just write. They need to have opportunities to write whatever comes to mind because it makes the stories personal. My experience with students and writing is that they all love to write if they are given the opportunity to write about anything; once the teacher gives them a topic they all seem to struggle a little bit. I also believe it is important to work on sentence structure, but the most important thing is the students' ideas. It is so fascinating to see what students write because most of their writing relates to a personal story.
As far as technology and writing, I think it is important to have students hand write their writing and type their writing. Students can write the rough draft of their writing and after they have looked it over and talked with the teacher, they can type their final draft. It is very important that the students have the opportunity to type their work because when they get older, they will type everything they are assigned.
I've had two very different experiences with writing. In my first placement, I could not motivate my students to write. They absoutely hated it! We also did not use a lot of technology so I wonder if I could have motivated them more if we did use it. I did try giving them fun topics or beginning a story but my students were not creative. We tried writing letters and they hated that. When we did journal writing, they had the option of choosing their own topics or getting 3 tiles from the jar to start a story. My students would ultimately choose free choice and may acrostic poems because there wasn't much writing involved and they were not quality poems.
ReplyDeleteIn my second placement, I had students create books with stickers and markers. I asked my preschoolers to write their names and make up their own stories. I did have cards with words that started with our letter of the week. If they didn't know how to spell something they would make it up, use scribbles, or ask us. Then they were instructed to read it to at least one adult and I also had students who went to every person in the classroom to read their story to them. If they wanted to read it to a peer they had to ask and if that peer said no, my students were respectful in their wishes.
I really appreciated the quote Erin shared in class today; “writing is for writers and conventions are for readers”. Conventions are important but they should not be our focus. We, as educators, need to be focus on teaching students how to transfer their thoughts and ideas onto paper or the computer screen.
ReplyDeleteI am a big supporter of the 6 + 1 Traits of Writing model for writing instruction and the division of the traits makes teaching and learning writing more approachable and less overwhelming…and it blends well with Writer’s Workshop.