Chapter 12 Thoughts

"Make Every Minute Count" is something that should be instilled in every part of someone's life. With family, when teaching kids, with friends, etc. In the sense of teaching, every minute does count, we only see the kids for so many hours each day and then they are gone. Making sure to give our best to the students each day and expect the same from them, their education will excell. There were some specific ideas and tips that Routman wrote that I also took notes on:

Schedule writing every day or at least on consecutive days

2. Limit the use of prompts that have no real audience (such as, "Write a letter to the author telling him one thing you would change about the story").

3. Provide more choice of writing topics. Students write more easily about something they are interested in.

4. Integrate test preparation.

5. Teach basic skills in context.

6. Teach students to revise and edit as they go; this saves time later on.

7. Expect high-frequency words to be correctly spelled. This saves correction time and aids speeding of writing.

8. Expect legible handwriting. This saves time for your students and for you.

9. Encourage invented spellings within reasonable, agreed-on-guidelines. This speeds up writing and encourages broader use of words.

10. Use parents as final editors in the classroom.

11. Tell students why - make writing purpose understood. Students will invest more in their writing.

There are some really great teachers that teach at my school but I think they spend way to long at school everyday. I stay for a little while but I know that there is a little boy and a great husband waiting at home and I really don't want to miss a minute that I can spend with each of them, especially together!

Chapter 11 Thoughts

I liked the quote Routman said, "The best teachers are not followers and have an independent spirit." I have learned only being in the teaching field for 5 years that you cannot just jump on the band wagon and expect great results. It takes a lot of time and lots of reading and your own research of trial and error to make something work. I love being able to talk with my colleagues and get great ideas or go and watch excellent teachers but I have to use their ideas and what I know and have learned to help the students in my classroom excell. I have a really great relationship with our coach and she has given me some very good advice and help when I have asked her. She has even come in and modeled for me but I am sad to see that there are A LOT of teachers in my building that do not utilize her as a resource in their classroom and building of their own knowledge. I get the feeling that they think she is evaluating them in some way and making judgements, therefore, they will not go to her for help or advice. Sad but true. According to Routman, in order to become successful ongoing professional conversations and study groups must be happening!!! Also, something I feel that our school needs to have in place is common goals for writing, I know that we have them for reading but we are leaving out writing.
To end, I like what she says, "Only a highly knowledgeable teacher, not a program, can teach writing well."

Chapter 10 Thoughts

State Assessment writing in 5th grade = :(
Testing kids on one paper that was probably timed to be written in 30 minutes or less is absolutely not a good way to evaluate anyone's writing. I give the KELPA to all English as a Second Language students and there is a writing part. The students are only given 20 minutes to write either about a picture or a prompt. I couldn't imagine being those kids having to come up with an idea and then actually try to write something that makes sense and is considered adequate. Together all ELA teachers meet on one given day after the window for the test has ended and we score the tests on vocabulary, sentence fluency, grammar, mechanics, organization and development. Some of the stories are actually surprising and very good and then more often than not there are the ones that are absolutely terrible! What can we expect when we only give the kids that much time and we are only looking at one sample from them? I like the idea of using rubrics when the kids are writing something required but don't want to overuse the rubrics and give the students more choice but also have a guiding criteria.
I thought that it was important to remember this and so I typed it into my notes:

1. Schedule writing every day. Try for 20-30 minutes of silent sustained writing.

2. Time your minilessons. Limit yourself to between 5-15 minutes and teaching that take place improve the quality of students' writing.

3. Don't shortchange the time for whole-class share. The celebration and teaching that take place improve the quality of students' writing.

4. Announce the time frame at the start. You will have twenty minutes to complete this piece.

5. Announce when students only have a few minutes left to write. You have five more minutes. Finish up where you are and reread.

6. Make sure the topics students are writing about are relevant to their lives and interests.

7. Do a great job of demonstrating and frontloading. The more prepared students are to write, the more easily they write.

8. Use quickwrites (pg. 179), also called freewrites, regularly.

Schedule writing every day or at least on consecutive days

2. Limit the use of prompts that have no real audience (such as, "Write a letter to the author telling him one thing you would change about the story").

3. Provide more choice of writing topics. Students write more easily about something they are interested in.

4. Integrate test preparation.

5. Teach basic skills in context.

6. Teach students to revise and edit as they go; this saves time later on.

7. Expect high-frequency words to be correctly spelled. This saves correction time and aids speeding of writing.

8. Expect legible handwriting. This saves time for your students and for you.

9. Encourage invented spellings within reasonable, agreed-on-guidelines. This speeds up writing and encourages broader use of words.

10. Use parents as final editors in the classroom.

11. Tell students why - make writing purpose understood. Students will invest more in their writing.

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Chapter 9 Thoughts

Conferencing with students is something that I feel very insecure about. I am not really sure what to actually ask them and guide them. I really like the roving conferences idea that it only takes no more than 5 minutes and involves:

Note who needs help getting started

            - Affirm students' efforts

            - Encourage students to continue writing, reread, check spelling

            - Teach on the spot

            - Assess

            - Offer specific guidance

            - Take brief notes

The idea of whole class conferences is exciting to me, what a great way to involve all students and do on the spot teaching. Each child can learn and benefit from whole class confences. Whole class conferencing would be very easy for me to incorporate into my lessons and the kids would feel valued that we want to hear their stories and give them feedback. Currently my students will listen to each others work and say that it is great, nothing needs to be changed. Yikes, don't take a look at it because most of the time it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Editing conferences must come after the content conferences. I now realize this. I was trying to do way to much all at once and when I was helping with the editing mistakes, I wasn't really helping at all with the ideas. I am actually excited to incorporate conferences with students. I think that if I was to first feel comfortable with whole class conferences that one-on-one's will be much more useful to the students.

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Chapter 8 Thoughts

Chapter 8 had some very insightful ideas on how to organzie a day with writing. First and foremost was to find a time for DAILY writing. This is something that if I didn't have enough time, I skipped. Now I realize that I am doing more harm to my students by not giving them the opportunity to write each day. Even when I do have the time I am spending too much time teaching (isolated skills) and not allowing enough time for the actual writing. :( As I think to next year I am going to definately schedule in time every single day for writing for at least 45 minutes to an hour. I want my students to become confident in themselves as writers. Chapter 8 gave some great information about doing more freewrites to build endurance and confidence, something that I have been reading about in The Daily 5 for reading. Students must build their stamina in order to be able to sustain for long periods of time and they need long periods of writing time to actually get information on paper.
As I was reading I was typing notes of information that I thought important (wish I had done this for all the previous chapters) and this was something I thought was important to refer back to:

Suggested Time Frames for Daily Writing

Demonstration or minilesson based on student's needs and interests as well as curriculum requirements	5-30 minutes Typically 5-15 minutes
Sustained writing - Students writing (uninterrupted, quiet) -Teacher may also be writing (on same topic as students) -Students having a one-on-one content or editing conference with the teacher -Students conversing and conferring with each other	20-40 minues
Whole class share	10-15 minutes

As with anything new, students must be taught how to do something, it must be modeled correctly and incorrectly. The teacher must model exactly what is expeced like writing on every other line and why, dating each entry, writing on the correct side of the paper and more. We can't expect our students to do these things on their own without any demonstration.


I really connected with the idea of writing more short stories, I am the teacher that gives long projects for the students to do like their autobiography. Instead next year they are going to make glogs for their autobiographies. I am also excited about the idea of the beginning of the year doing the example about writing a snapshot of each student and publishing in a book. What a creative and cleaver idea to get to know each of the kids and use for future students, visitors, and staff.

Chapter 7 Thoughts

As I was reading this chapter I kept thinking to my own teaching of writing. I am guilty as charged, I know that I have been isolating the skills. My knowledge of teaching writing has been next to nothing and so I ventured out on my own last summer to read some literature. Still, I have not shown the growth that I wanted to in teaching writing to my students and instilling the love of actual writing. I realized that what I was having my students write was not what they were interested in and they had no real auidence. I did however gain a little confidence when my second graders wrote their fairy tales. Although they were all based off the Three Little Pigs just with different characters and such, they were energetic in wanting to write them and stayed with them. We were able to take them all the way to publishing and they turned out really great. After that, I haven't had much success with motivation from the students or quality.
Reading I have realized the students need to write about something they care about adn for a reader who really matters. I liked teh sampling of minilessons that were provided on pg. 155. I am never really sure what I should teach and when, I realize that you have to do what your students are ready for.
I have a word wall in my room that has all of the words that K,1,2 students have been introduced to and should know but you would be amazed at how many 3rd graders still don't know them. I always tell them to refer to the word wall or they own personalized dictionary that they can add words to. This word wall was put up before they ever start school. I think that this year I am going to take down the whole thing and start fresh. I will keep some of the common words that are misspelled but not put up the easier ones like "a". I will not put up the words until I have reintroduced them and add more meaningful words that come up in our reading and writing.

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