By teaching ESL for 4 years now I know how important it is to model for my students. I make sure that first I do, then "we do", next "two do" or if not possible "you do" model. It is still very hard for me to teach writing this way. The author of Writing Essentials stresses how important it is to first demonstarte, then have a shared demonstration, next guided practice, onto independent practice, and finally a celebration and sharing.
Our school district recently went through a KAGAN training and we learned about the importance of classroom community building and team building within the classroom. According to Routman, shared writing is powerful for building classroom community. I am curious to know how often shared writing should be done. Do you need to model everyday? Just some lingiring questions that will hopefully be answered throughout the book.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Chapter 2 Thoughts
I believe that celebrating students writing is very important. When my second graders finished writing their fairy tales we were able to share with each other and with other teachers and the students were so proud. I was amazed at how awesome each fairy tale turned out and how creative each student was. This was a specific writing project that I modeled for my students and I could tell how much they learned from watching me write my fairy tale first. We even celebrated by watching a classic fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast to wrap up our unit. The students still want to write their own fairy tales and love to read them as well.
The author says that teachers should only model as much as students are able to write. I never really thought about that, as I reflect on my own modeling, I was modeling way to much probably making it difficult for my students to pick out the main ideas of what I wanted them to know and do. As I continue to model for my students I will take this into consideration and model only as much as I want them to write.
I would love to teach poetry in my classroom but have never really tried. I don't feel that I would be a very good model. I have incorporated reading poetry once a week in my classroom and responding to the poetry with words and a picture and making it into a poetry book for the students.
The author says that teachers should only model as much as students are able to write. I never really thought about that, as I reflect on my own modeling, I was modeling way to much probably making it difficult for my students to pick out the main ideas of what I wanted them to know and do. As I continue to model for my students I will take this into consideration and model only as much as I want them to write.
I would love to teach poetry in my classroom but have never really tried. I don't feel that I would be a very good model. I have incorporated reading poetry once a week in my classroom and responding to the poetry with words and a picture and making it into a poetry book for the students.
Chapter 1 Thoughts
Writing has never been something that I feel strong at doing for any of my classes which makes it difficult for me to actually teach writing to my students. This past summer I was reading about writing on one of the teaching communities that I am a member of and decided that I would go ahead and read the book that people were suggesting. It was called No More "I'm Done!" Fostering Independent Writers in the Primary Grades by Jennifer Jacobson. It was a great read with tons of awesome information and ideas but I still feel like I need to re-read it and keep trying to become a better writing teacher.
The book Writing Essentials by Regie Routman and Jacobson's book both express that students need to be writing everyday and they should have choice about what they are writing. I am trying to do that in my own classroom but have not felt that I have been successful for the first semester of school. My goal for the second semester is to have my students write everyday, we'll see how well I do this.
The book Writing Essentials by Regie Routman and Jacobson's book both express that students need to be writing everyday and they should have choice about what they are writing. I am trying to do that in my own classroom but have not felt that I have been successful for the first semester of school. My goal for the second semester is to have my students write everyday, we'll see how well I do this.
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