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Melanie Nannizzi's "Balancing Process and Product in Writing Instruction"

As a third grade teacher, I feel a great sense of responsibility in laying the foundation for my students to enjoy writing and for them to experience success in this challenging task. The standards for writing in the fourth grade increase substantially in comparison to the third grade and I want my students to feel prepared for rigorous writing expectations that lie ahead. As a result of this desire, I have focused a lot of time and energy on the study of teaching expository writing to students in the primary grades. I have been reviewing literature surrounding this topic and I have interviewed and surveyed other elementary educators regarding their teaching practices in this area.

Through this research I have found that there is a trend in teaching expository writing. Teachers tend to either take a process based, or a product based approach to writing instruction. Product based instruction is a teacher-led method that uses model pieces of writing and specific assignments that require students to imitate a pattern or rule. Much of the writing process is carried out by the teacher in the form of class discussion and direct instruction and when the student’s written product is complete, the teacher provides written feedback. In this traditional instructional approach, teachers expect students to effectively apply the new knowledge to their writing. Writing is defined as students having knowledge about the structure of language, and writing development is defined as students successfully imitating the model text provided by the teacher. While this structure offers students guidelines on how to create a piece of writing, they do not have the opportunity to write for authentic audiences and experience the writing process.

Research done on writing instruction in the 1970s and 1980 gave way to a shift in writing instruction from a focus on product to process. Researcher teachers such as Donald Graves advocated for a process approach that emphasizes the cognitive processes and strategies used by effective writers by encouraging students to plan and revise, providing feedback during conferences, creating learning communities where students assist one another, and delivering process-oriented instruction through mini-lessons. This teaching model can produce more original student writing that is not mechanical and the use of free writing, without traditional remediation instruction, is effective because it increases students’ writing fluency. .

I have struggled to combine the strengths of both the process and product based approaches to teaching expository writing in my classroom. When using the process based approach to writing instruction, I found that I was not effective in providing my students with clear enough guidelines about the different genres of writing. There writing was unorganized and lacked the clarity it needed to have focus, yet I firmly believe in the principals of the process approach. I just needed a way to make it work for me.

This year I had the opportunity to attend the Step Up to Writing workshop on expository writing. I felt that what I learned at the workshop truly complemented the research that I had been doing and gave me the tools to implement a curriculum that emphasizes the importance of both the process and the product in our classroom. The Step Up to Writing curriculum focuses on teaching students how to write topic sentences and creating a plan, or an outline, for their writing before they begin to compose. The students receive direct instruction about how to create a plan, and how to turn that plan into an organized piece of writing. They also have the opportunity to go through the entire writing process, with a true understanding of the purpose of their writing while writing in the content areas.

I truly enjoyed implementing this curriculum in my classroom this year. I found that my students’ writings were more fluent, comprehensible, and organized than in the years past. The outline that the students created before they wrote was very helpful for multiple reasons. Primarily, it provided the students with a structure and organization that they had been lacking, but it was also very helpful for those students that were struggling with writing incomplete and run on sentences. The outline helped them to distinguish complete thoughts from incomplete and run on thoughts.

Another huge benefit that I noticed using this curriculum was that the students were very excited about writing and they were very engaged in the process. I think that primary reason for this excitement was that the curriculum teaches the students to plan their writing using three different colors of pens. They use a green pen for their main idea or topic sentence, they use a yellow pen for their subtopics, and they use a red pen for the supporting details. The students were so enthusiastic about using the colored pens that they seemed to forget that making an outline was laborious. I thought that the novelty of using the pens would quickly wear off, but it did not seem to. The students also enjoyed writing in the content areas because they were writing about topics that they knew a lot about. Their rich prior knowledge and enthusiasm about the topics they had been studying helped them to feel uninhibited about getting their ideas on paper.

I experienced great success with this curriculum, but there are some aspects of this teaching method that I do not like and I hope that I can improve upon. Although I originally believed that this curriculum would provide the students with the perfect balance between process and product, after seeing the results of using the curriculum for a year I now see that it relies more heavily on the product approach. The curriculum is very formulaic. The students are taught transition words, concluding words, and are given a very constricting way to plan their writing. Sometimes I would go through a stack of papers in which ten students had used the closing statement, “All in all” while the remaining students used the words, “As you can see.” Although the organization and readability improved, their writing was unoriginal and the student’s voice was lost. In order for them to be prepared for the fourth grade I need to foster more original sounding writing. I would like to work on helping students to use this structure, but still find their original voice in their writing.

Another way that I would like to improve my use of this curriculum is to spend time determining where I can integrate expository writing into all of the content areas. I think that this type of writing can provide an excellent way for students to demonstrate what they have learned in a unit of study or in their expository reading. I consistently find that I do not spend enough time on expository writing and I think that finding ways to integrate it into other curricular areas will help me to make writing a priority.

One of the greatest gifts of this profession is that each year you get a fresh start. With reflection and innovation you can improve your practice with each new group of students. Participating in the Redwood Writing Project Summer Institute offered me the perfect forum for reflection and inquiry about writing instruction and I feel inspired devote myself to making this curriculum my own in the coming school year.

Jennifer Pierce's "Journals: Time Well Spent"

The first journal I ever kept was a small, red, leatherette diary with a key that a girlfriend had given me for a birthday present. I was eight years old, and in Mrs. Gruzynski’s third grade. That journal held my private thoughts, my crushes, my complaints, hopes, dreams, poems, favorite song lyrics, lists and doodles. It was here where I first found my voice as a writer, and where I claimed writing as my personal tool- something that I could use to catalogue my thoughts.

Years later, while teaching fourth grade for the first time, I decided to give my students their own journal. I had them write in it every day, sometimes giving them a prompt, sometimes asking them to write about whatever they wanted, and I would collect and respond to them once a week. I had always kept a journal and thought they would enjoy it too. I hoped I would learn about my students, create a dialogue with them, and inspire them to write for the sake of writing. When the journals came in each week, I would pour over their thoughts, commenting, questioning, cheering, sympathizing, but never grading them. I spent hours reading my students’ journals and responding to them with lengthy, thoughtful entries of my own. If a child didn’t want me to read something they had written, I told them to fold over that page and I would respect their privacy. Journal writing was the favorite time of day for most of my students, and often the fifteen minutes I had allotted would stretch into twenty or thirty as they begged for more time to finish. I continued journaling with my class all that year and the next.

Then things began to change. Our school hired a new superintendent, and part of his regime was to require we turn in our lessons plans for the week before we taught so that he could review the content we were teaching and how much time we spent on each subject. This was in conjunction with our school being put on probation for performing a few points lower on the STAR tests than we had the previous year. Furthermore, we had just lost a big chunk of our prep time and I was feeling overwhelmed by the work I had to take home each night. We had just finished spending months redoing our report cards in an effort to make them more “parent friendly.” As I planned out my year that August, I began to rethink my use of journals. I worried that it was time I couldn’t justify spending- after all I didn’t grade them, they weren’t a “product” that I shared with parents, and I didn’t have a place for them on our report cards. I felt great pressure to spend my time following our recently adopted Language Arts program which didn’t address journals, instead offering workbook pages of mechanics practice and writing prompts tied into the reading selections of the week. There just wasn’t time in my school day for journals and, I admitted to myself, with the challenge of a new Language Arts program, turning in weekly lesson plans, and the pressure to make sure I was teaching towards successful STAR testing, I didn’t have the time to read through and respond to my students’ journals anyway. So I stripped journal writing time from my lesson plans, and as mounting pressures at work began to seep into my home life, I stopped finding the time to journal at home as well. Without realizing it, journal writing had disappeared from my life.

Now it’s a decade later, and I am in the midst of Redwood Writing Project’s Summer Institute. Part of our involvement included researching and responding to a topic we felt was important related to writing. I was pouring over my Writer’s Workshop books trying to decide what I wanted to write this inquiry paper about and, further down the line, what I wanted to present for a workshop. I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of ideas that poured into my brain. Perhaps I could research how to set up a Writer’s Workshop? Or maybe I would concentrate on just peer editing? Should I think about the teacher conferencing aspect? That led me to think about responding to student writing. Flipping through Adele Fiderer’s Teaching Writing: A Workshop Approach, I discovered her section on student notebooks. I started reading and thought to myself, “Oh yeah! I used to do that!” Then as I read on, I began to wonder, “Now, why did I stop using journals?” and “Could I do this with my third graders?” Finally I thought, “What benefits will this give my students- it’s a big investment of my time, so it better have practical applications and measureable results!” That was when I decided what to write my inquiry about: Why journal writing is an important part of the writing curriculum, and how to use journal writing in the classroom.

I believe, and my experiences have proven to me, that keeping a journal is one of the most enjoyable and liberating forms of writing we can do, and I am excited with the idea of being able to confirm that journal writing is a valuable tool in the classroom. I decided to research journal writing and gather support from teaching professionals to validate using journals to myself, my colleagues, my students, and their families. While researching, I planned to explore the differences between diary keeping versus keeping a journal or notebook. Furthermore, I wanted to explore how much time to give students to write, how often, what to require, whether or not to grade or assess their journal writing, and how to go about getting started. I also wondered if my student journals should be teacher directed, focused through mini-lessons, include word banks, have sections for story starters, and/or require writing to become a finished product.

Why is journal writing an important part of our curriculum? In the many books I used for research, I kept seeing a recurring theme: providing daily writing opportunities for children, beginning in kindergarten, is necessary for the growth and development of their writing. Journals or notebooks are an important form of writing because “expressive writing appeals to the intrapersonal, logical, mathematical and linguistic multiple intelligences. Journals have an unstructured approach that stimulates inventiveness and problem solving.” (Hughey, 2001) In other words, through writing in journals students make sense of the world around them. Journals can be personal sounding boards, allowing writers to examine their thoughts and ideas without feeling the pressure to produce a product. Journals are also a safe place to experiment with style, voice, mechanics and form. Journals can provide a teacher-student connection, giving students a chance to speak out in a risk-free environment. This allows opportunities for greater self-examination, therapeutic qualities such as stress reduction, and a chance to accept input in a comfortable way. Journal writing is also an excellent way to motivate writers: they have control of their topics, which allows them to write for personal and significant reasons.

Journals can provide an excellent source of topics to use within the Writer’s Workshop model, starting out as ideas and then being fleshed out and revised into published pieces. As children’s poet and author Jack Prelutsky wrote, “I save all my idea notebooks. I have at least fifty- and when I’m ready to write another book of poems I start working my way through all the notebooks…” And as if this wasn’t enough to convince you, after looking through the California English-Language Arts Content Standards, one would find justification for journal keeping under writing strategies, organization, focus, evaluation, applications and genre. In the multitude of research I encountered, study after study, teacher after teacher, the results of journal keeping were clear: students who use journals are more invested in their writing, are more able to express themselves clearly, develop a stronger voice and better vocabulary, and can experiment with and develop their use of genre, technique, mechanics and style. In short, the measureable results I needed to see were all there; students will grow as writers through journal writing.

One of the most powerful insights I had after researching journal writing is that there is really no wrong way to keep a journal. One distinction that was made for me was the difference between diary keeping and notebook keeping. A diary is usually a brief summary of events with a date. It records facts in bare detail, and is often just a record of the day’s happenings. A journal, on the other hand, is a personal written record of “one person’s feelings, interests, events, descriptions, experiences, memories and reactions.” (Hughey, 2001) Although it too has a date, and may record a day’s events, in a journal writers delve deeper into their thoughts. Student journal writing can also be focused into specific areas depending on the needs of the teacher.

There are a nearly infinite amount of ways to incorporate journal writing into your classroom. Here is a brief summary of some of the most common uses for classroom notebooks:

• Learning journals, sometimes called “learning logs” in which students examine topics they are studying in any area of the curriculum. There are literature response journals, which combine personal written responses with learning outcomes through reading and reacting, evaluating and sharing.

• Dialect journals pose an idea and then give the writer the task of identifying the issue and responding to it.

• Shared journals where the writer writes for a specific purpose and to a predetermined audience; an example would be Lewis and Clark’s trip journal written for the people back home detailing the new sights, sounds, animals, plants and experiences on their journey.

• Paired dialogue journals in which a lower grade student is partnered with an upper grade student, and the journal is a continuing dialogue between the buddies.

• Personal journals where students are given time to write “whatever they want” and may ask questions of the teacher, tell what has happened to them, explore their dreams, thoughts, or ideas, as well as create lists, stories, and poetry.

How can a teacher incorporate journals into her classroom writing time? Journal time can follow a mini-lesson on genre, mechanics, voice or any other aspect of writing as a way to incorporate the learned technique. On the flip side, you can use student journals to help you decide which mini-lessons need to be taught after examining your students’ writing. Sometimes teachers may give writing prompts to focus students before or after a lesson. Journal quick writes are an excellent way to gather prior knowledge before embarking on new subjects. When you are outside of the classroom don’t forget that journals are portable, making them an ideal field trip companion for quick writes, observations, or questions. In all these areas and more, journals can simply be used in their most pure form: to give your students an outlet for creative expression and introspection, a place to “dream, philosophize, imagine, vent, figure things out.” In short, to chronicle your “life’s journey-thus the term journal.” (Woodward, 1996)

No matter how you have your students keep a journal, if you give your students time to write, they will reap all the benefits of writing. The question then becomes, how much time is enough? The old adage that practice makes perfect is certainly true with writing. The more time you give, the better writers your students become. But how should we incorporate journal time into our already busy schedules? An idea that cropped up over and over in my reading was that daily journal writing reaps the most rewards. Setting the time aside daily creates the writing habit and helps students buy-in to the process and come full circle with expression and introspection. However, while establishing a routine is important, the amount of time you dedicate each day can vary greatly. The professional books I read recommended quick writes from as little as two to five minutes a day, all the way up to 30 minute blocks. This is excellent news to teachers who wonder where to squeeze in a daily journal write.

My experience has shown that younger children often need more time- at least ten minutes to get down one or two thoughts, as they are often hindered by their inexperience with writing and their lack of speed. Regardless, even a short period of journal writing each day will provide students with a creative outlet and much needed practice. As students grow as writers they may be able to write several thoughts or answer a prompt in only a few minutes. Of course, depending on how you use journals in your classroom, you will want to modify the time for assignments to meet your needs. If you want a written response to a math question that is stumping the class, a quick two minute explanation may suffice. However, if you want your students to relate an incident in your social studies lesson to their real life experiences, you may need to give them more time to process, plan and execute a meaningful response.

Journal writing can become an integral part of your writing workshop. Teachers use journals to brainstorm, make lists of interesting story starters and topics, create word lists, and answer teacher given prompts. Often teachers find that students who are given the permission to write about anything they want will get inspired by a story or idea and then develop it further during the writer’s workshop. Although journal writing does not need to create a finished product, it is often the nursery for ideas that later hatch into published pieces. As children’s author Lois Lowry points out about journals, “Stories don’t just appear out of nowhere. They need a ball that starts to roll.”

Should we grade our student journals? The short answer from all the sources I encountered was a resounding NO! As pointed out in Writing Through Childhood by Shelley Harwayne, “Journals are a safe place to start writing, without grades but with supportive and interested comments from the teacher…journals serve as a bridge between teacher and student, providing opportunities for mentoring and mutual trust.” Grading isn’t necessary, and in fact may sabotage some of the benefits of keeping a journal. Instead, as Harwayne pointed out, there will be an investment of time from the teacher being the reader/responder. Here is a wonderful side effect of classroom journals- they provide a place to foster relationships between the teacher and her students, providing opportunities to personally respond to a student’s thoughts, questions, and dilemmas.

One year I had a student whose parents were divorcing and she wrote in her journal that she had woken up in the middle of the night because she heard crying. After walking down to the kitchen she found her father in tears. She snuck back to her room before he saw her, but was worried and upset. She wrote, “Mrs. Pierce, what should I do? Should I talk to him? What if he doesn’t want me to know? I just wanted to give him a hug- do you think that would have been okay?” Of course I was able to write back to her with some hints about what she might do. Furthermore it alerted me to her anxiety, and I took steps to make sure she got the support she needed. The journal gave her a safe place to write about a frightening and potentially embarrassing situation- one she might never have shared with me otherwise.

Reading and responding to student journals does take time, but teachers may make up some of that time in other ways. For one thing, as children spend more time observing and writing from their own experiences, developing rich details and thoughtful entries, their published pieces will evolve from writing that needs fewer revisions and drafts. (Harwayne, 2001) If you are uncomfortable, as I was, spending time on assignments that can’t be graded, consider this: journals should be thought of as a testing ground for thought. Teachers can use journals throughout the curriculum to help kids synthesize information before sharing in class discussions, taking exams, or writing critical papers. In writing formal assignments, journals will help students to explore, clarify, modify and extend topics, and these in turn will be graded. The more I read, the more I saw journal writing as a support tool, much like flashcards are in math, and I no longer worried about spending time on something that didn’t receive a grade.

There was one more question- how often should I respond to my students’ journals. Again, I found there was no one right way to do this. Each teacher needs to consider her own schedule, time, and needs. Adele Fiderer recommended the following: “It is a good idea to collect notebooks every three weeks so that you can help your students look for a theme emerging out of their entries.” She goes on to say that if you stagger your students’ turn-in days, you can pace yourself. Some teachers respond directly to students on the journal pages, others prefer using Post-It notes. However you choose to do it, make sure that you comment specifically on what students have written, perhaps writing questions you have, or asking them for clarification. Stay away from value judgements, mechanics pointers, and criticism.

Working with students means that we will inevitably find some bad language, negative comments, inappropriate or worrisome themes. How should we respond to these? The technique I used was to tell students that they should fold over any page(s) that they didn’t want me to read, giving them the freedom to express without fear of repercussions. You may want to tell your class that they can write what they want, but if they wish to share or publish a piece, it must be school appropriate. Another way to handle this, before you begin journal writing with your students, make it clear to them that you are a mandated reporter. Let them know what that entails, and have a discussion about the ramifications this may have in their writing. Teachers must be the ones to set their own boundaries and guidelines while thinking about grade level, comfort level, classroom climate, and expectations. One colleague of mine expressed a concern over liability- what if a student threatens harm to himself or others? Do we have a legal obligation to report this, and can we be held liable? I think of it this way: you are a mandated reporter, but you do not have a patient/doctor confidentiality clause. Your students safety is your number one concern regardless of privacy. Therefore, report anything that is threatening to the writer or others right away to cover comply with the law and keep everyone safe.

One of the most meaningful ways to interest your students in journal writing is to share entries from your own journal. What an empowering example you can be! As I learned during my time in the Redwood Writing Project, teachers need to make writing part of their professional practice in order to be effective teachers of writing. Thinking back to my prior experiences using journals in the classroom, I am proud of myself for giving my students such a valuable tool. I regret stopping, but realize that growth comes through change, and even though ten years have passed, I can easily bring journal writing back into my daily classroom routine. Another important change is that I have brought journals back into my personal life. I purchased a new, blank journal recently and have made the commitment to spend some time each week writing. I plan on keeping a journal at school as well, and to declare daily journal writing time as sacred. I will join my students as they write, and share as they share. A colleague of mine made this brilliant suggestion: keep my classroom journal on my desk and have it available for students to read during free reading time. Keep Post-Ii notes available, and ask them to respond to my writing. What an empowering experience for the students! I can’t wait to try it!

The time to present my findings to my teaching fellows was drawing near. As I was preparing my workshop on journal writing, I decided I should present some evidence, some examples of journal writing. I didn’t have any student samples since I hadn’t had classroom journals for almost a decade. I was dedicated to starting them for this school year, but that still left me with no tangible evidence of notebook keeping. On a whim I searched through my house and found three of my childhood journals. How amazing it was to look back at my thoughts, poems, and stories, told in my own words. Like a time capsule, it brought me back to a different time and place. I had the evidence to share, and possibly the single most compelling reason to journal; you are helping your students create something they will look at again and again, and treasure for a lifetime. If nothing else, you can journal for posterity and, in the future, you will have a record of time well spent.



Fiderer, A. 1993. Teaching Writing: A Workshop Approach. Scholastic Inc. New York, NY.

Fountas, I.& Pinnell, G. 2001. Guiding Readers and Writers Grades 3 – 6. Heinemann. Portsmouth, NH.

Frank, M. 1979. If You’re Trying To Teach Kids To Write… Incentive Publications, Inc. Nashville, TN.

Harwayne, S. 2001. Writing Through Childhood- Rethinking Process and Product. Heinemann. Portsmouth, NH.

Hughey, J. & Slack, C. 2001. Teaching Children To Write- Theory Into Practice. Prentice-Hall Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ.

LeCount, D. 2002. Nonstandardized Quests. Heinemann. Portsmouth, NH.

National Writing Project & Nagin, C. 2006. Because Writing Matters. Jossey-Bass. San Francisco, CA

Woodward, P. 1996. Journal Jumpstarts. Cottonwood Press, Inc. Fort Collins, CO.

And of course: The California Reading/Language Arts Framework

Megan Day's "Writing in the Content Areas: Finding Time to Teach in a Meaningful Way"

It was late Sunday night, and I was finally ready to grade the large stack of Response to Literature essays that I had been avoiding all weekend. I knew I had to finish them by the next morning, but I just could not bring myself to do it. I knew exactly how they would read. The introduction would be a ten sentence summary of the book, ending with a thesis like, “Harry Potter was brave, intelligent, and unique”. Each body paragraph would then contain evidence as to how Harry was in fact all of these things. Each sentence displaying facts would start with, “For example”, while every sentence containing an opinion would begin with, “This shows that…”. I was about to be bored to death for the duration of the evening.

My husband observed my grading and could no longer ignore the grunting and groaning. He hesitantly asked, “What is wrong?”

“Oh, they’re just awful,” I replied, tired and deflated.

“Well that’s okay, just have them change them the next time,” he concluded, and walked away. Next time…what next time? The next time my students would have another chance to write a similar essay would be in the seventh grade, a whole year from now. How would they remember my comments and suggestions, let alone, what a Response to Literature essay was?

It was then and there that I realized I needed to find a way to offer my students multiple opportunities to practice each genre of writing so that when they write the final product for English class, they will be able to expand upon the basic structure while incorporating their own style and voice. I wanted their papers to be organized, but I also wanted them to be more original and unique. My dilemma was how to find the time to do both.

Currently, I am the only writing teacher for all of the sixth grade students at my school. I switch classes with my grade level partner, and have each group for only forty-five minutes. Even though I have the students in my core class for most of the day, I feel that it would be inequitable to give them additional instruction, and I often feel the time crunch to fit all of this material into such a short block each day overwhelming, if not impossible.

Due to these time limitations, I found that I have been teaching more breadth than depth. This can be frustrating, and I am always wishing for more time to teach. Over the years, I have tried to shift the focus from the quantity of writing to the quality of the writing. However, I feel that with only one opportunity to learn each type of essay each year, the students really are not getting the practice they need to feel confident and to retain their skills.

Since this is the students’ first exposure to this type of essay, my main concern is to teach them the basic structure, and then hope they will remember it in junior high school where they will add more of their creativity and personal style to the same type of writing. However, this year I would like to try a slightly different approach.

Given that there is not any more time in my English block, I need to find a place for these writings in other subject areas like social studies, science, and literature. My goal for the summer is to look at each subject area and create several writing prompts in other content areas that will offer the students additional practice. I am certain that this additional practice will help the students feel more confident and comfortable with their writing.

Even if I offer my core class more opportunities, I still have the issue of how to be equitable with both sixth grade classes. Instead of simply fretting about this problem, I have decided to seriously study it and see if more opportunity for process writing does in fact improve the final product.

In addition to being a classroom teacher, I am also working towards my Master’s of Education at Humboldt State University, and I think that evaluating the final products of my two classes this coming year will make a fascinating comparative study and will inform my teaching with real and tested results. I will begin the school year by doing a double blind read of the students’ first formal essay in both classes. Then, after incorporating several opportunities for practice through additional prompts in the content areas for my self-contained class, I will do another double blind read of the essays to see if there is any significant statistical difference in the students’ final grades.

I expect that the students, who have had multiple occasions to practice the basic structure of the writing, will have an easier time with the final product. I hope that this familiarity will allow them to incorporate their own voice and style into their writing, because the basic structure will be familiar and well rehearsed. I also am expecting to find an improvement in their knowledge of the content areas, and I would like to compare their work in these areas as well. The idea of testing my hypothesis with my students is exciting. Not only do I think I have a great topic for my thesis, but I am optimistic that my findings will inspire more teachers to incorporate writing into the content areas in their own classrooms.

I am hoping that my time in the Redwood Writing Project will help me with some of these ideas. Creating my workshop on Writing in the Content Areas has helped me go through the process of critically looking at the big picture in my teaching to see what the students need for each type of essay. Not only does it help my students and me to look more closely at their writing, but it also brings a deeper understanding of the content, which I hope they will retain.

One way to foster depth in a content area through writing is for students to practice a skill for an essay with a topic that has been difficult for them to learn in the past. For instance, each year I struggle to teach latitude and longitude in social studies. I know that it is not the first time my students have learned about these terms, and yet they still confuse the two. Therefore, after I have given my students direct instruction in how to write a summary, and I have reviewed latitude and longitude, I would have my students write a summary explaining these concepts. Rather than write a summary about a brief news article, or simply locate coordinates on a map, this type of assignment promotes a deeper understanding of the topic while giving the students additional practice with summary writing. I anticipate that this change will make the writing process as well as the content areas more meaningful for my students, and that I will find their writing more compelling to read.

I feel fortunate to have had the time to reflect upon my teaching and I look forward to the coming year. I know that this year when I sit down to grade the stack of essays over the weekend that not only will I not be dreading it, but I will be excited to read such original and gripping work. Instead of saying, “Oh, they’re just awful,” I expect I will exclaim, “Listen to this – I can’t believe a sixth grader can write so well!”

Lauralee Green's "A Look into Writing Routines for Kindergarten and ESL"

How do I create the kind of classroom routines that encourage students to write?

A few weeks into my first year teaching Kindergarten, a student approached me and asked, “Mrs. Green, why do we always have to come to your house?” I laughed to myself and told him that I did not live at the school, but that this was the classroom we use when we are together to learn. That year I had the standards and precious little else besides glue and construction paper to teach with. “So why do we go to Kindergarten everyday?” was a question I was also asking myself.

I scrambled for books to read and projects to teach science, math, and social studies. The only writing I could think to have them do was the ubiquitous journal. That first year I learned to model writing words around the room, drawing and writing stories, and I also took dictation for stories told to me. A colleague, who is a teacher consultant, shared with me about interactive writing, a technique whereby the pen is shared with students as a text is created on chart paper.

After attending the orientation for the 2007 ISI at Redwood Writing Project, I began researching about writing with young children. Since I am also an ESL teacher, I looked through books about writing with English Language Learners as well. Armed with research to inform my practice, I have clear direction how to proceed with both groups of children.

Like the students in my Kindergarten class, newcomers “often rely on drawing, moving to more elaborate drawings with labels and then to composing original pieces of writing.” (Samway 2007 pg. 58) Authentic writing and reflective writing is encouraged for all students. Silvia Ashton Warner used the Language Experience Approach (LEA) to teach reading with language minority students. It is also beneficial for young writers.

In the LEA, students dictate a text, which the teacher records on paper for the class. “The dictated text then becomes the reading material for multiple readings and for skills teaching.” (Samway 2007, 1999. Pg.184) In Write Now! pg.68 by Tunks & Giles, Morrow quotes: “The premise of LEA is that: what I think is important; what I think I can say; what I say can be written down by me or others; what is written down can be read by me and others.”

Through my research, I have found that writing needs to occur everyday; children already come to school knowing that they can write, and as their teacher I need to analyze their areas of interest so I can guide them as they choose their own topics to write about. My job as a teacher is not to criticize by pointing out errors, but to teach the process of drafting, revising, editing, and publishing, and let the child take charge over what is written down.

With my Kindergarten class I will continue my current routine and add portfolios for assessment. As I make writing an integral part of the day and have students select their own topics and keep their drafts in writing folders, they will know that when students come to “my house”- we will write!

References:

Graves, Donald H. 1990. Discover Your Own Literacy. Portsmouth,N.H.: Heineman.

Graves, Donald. 1983. Writing: Teachers and Children at Work. Portsmouth, N.H. :Heinemann.

Samway, Katharine Davies. 2006. When English Language Learners Write. Portsmouth, N.H. :Heinemann.

Samway, Katharine Davies and Denise McKeon. 2007, 1999. Myths and Realities, Best Practices for English Language Learners. Portsmouth, N.H. :Heinemann.

Tunks, Karyn Wellhousen and Rebecca McMahon Giles. 2007. Write Now! Portsmouth, N.H. :Heinemann.

Donna Doherty

“It’s likely that through out history, most people have never been particularly well educated, and the world has gotten by somehow. Independent thinking is a category that almost by definition applies to a small number of people, because the majority of people tend to think alike. . . The average person is as smart as he or she needs to be. And if we get in some terrible mess, then people are going to wake up and try to figure out what needs to be done.” (author William T. Vollman, interview reprinted in Utne, May-June ’07)

After reading those words, I had to stop and think--really question--whether I thought this perspective was true. Part of me saw that this view of modern people was practical and had definite merit. I could see some of my students agreeing with the idea that they were smart enough for what life was likely to bring their way. But a bigger part of me protested against the notion that most people didn’t need to think independently, or that the masses would “wake up” when it became necessary.

In my years of work with high school students, I’ve seen so many minds that were asleep, lulled by boredom, repetition and small, narrow thought. As Albert Einstein said, “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” Both internal and external pressures push teachers to focus on the mundane, practical and testable aspects of learning. At the high school level, we rarely hear about teaching kids to be informed citizens any more; instead, we are training them to get good jobs that will pay well.

Sometimes I feel as if I am waging a covert operation against societal mediocrity in thought. Between our culture’s past and our political present, there appears to be an underlying fear of knowledge and independent ideas. Science continues to be pitted against religious orthodoxy, and political or social dissent is viewed as subversive. To remain half asleep, lulled by new gadgets and constant, content-less entertainment, is so easy. National news has morphed into infotainment, with breaking stories simplified down to sound bites. Where is empathy to be developed when tragedy and triumph are delivered with the same half-smiling monotone? How will we learn to draw our own conclusions when reasons are irrelevant and outcomes prejudged? The timeless words of Socrates whisper to our society, “Beware the barrenness of a busy life” . . . “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

In ancient Athens, Socrates was convicted of “corrupting the youth.” Fortunately for me, my modern teenagers have an instinctive tendency to be drawn to what seems subversive. Both my Sophomore and Junior/Senior groups ate up anything I gave them on Philosophy, especially the old Greeks. I’ve seen what transformations take place when those minds wake up. As an English teacher, I rely on reading and writing as my primary tools to awaken sleeping minds and open doors to intellectual discovery and discourse. Students in my Global Mythology class almost unanimously rated our comparative world religions unit as the most relevant and powerful learning. They were allowed to examine their own prior experiences and biases, look at religions from the perspective of those who practice them, consider religions’ impact on history, and directly relate what they were learning to current events in world news. Many of these young people exchanged assumptions for open-minded inquiry. Especially when coupled with discussion and art, reading and writing can lead to expansion of understanding and vision. It appears that when minds wake up, they are hungry!

The most powerful and significant writing that my students produced this last year was inspired by the most demanding intellectual areas of inquiry. After reading All Quiet on the Western Front, Night, and Lord of the Flies, I presented my tenth graders with an “impossible” essay assignment: define human nature and analyze how it plays out in historical events, current news, and personal experience. I explained that many of them might find themselves more confused about human nature when they were done than when they started. Together we built up banks of resources, perspectives, small chunks of writing, structure options. Then each individual struggled to sort through, add to and pull all the pieces together. The whole huge process was so exciting and significant because not only my honors-bound Sophomores, but also the “regulars” were able to tackle a multi-faceted inquiry and write successful essays expressing their insights, discoveries and opinions. They truly impressed themselves. My students demonstrated that demanding expectations, carefully scaffolded, yield powerful results. As two ancient Chinese philosophers expressed, “The object of the superior man is truth” (Confucius) and “He who attends to his greater self becomes a great man, and he who attends to his smaller self becomes a small man.” (Mencius) How can narrow, practical expectations lead to great writing?

I believe I am honor-bound as a teacher to facilitate and entice all my students to go on the path to intellectual awakening. I believe that we are already “in some terrible mess” but not enough people are awake yet. The real challenges facing our emerging adults will require advanced abilities in critical thinking, dissent, creative problem solving, vision, expressing shared ideas, collaboration, and even hope. I agree with these words of Confucius: “He who learns but does not think is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.” The practical will always be with us, but the intellectual will thrive only if we actively encourage and facilitate it.