Writing Without Boundaries

Hi Deltas,

The book that I’m reading explores the idea of giving students choices in their writing. The authors assert that students become more engaged in their writing when they are allowed to choose what they write. I’m kind of torn on this issue. I do belive that placing limits on what students “can” write places limits on their creativity. However, if I allow my students to choose the type of writing they do, how will I prepare them for the ADAW, where they are told what to write?

This book presents a lot of great ideas for different genres of writing. Some examples are ABC books, adventure stories, family trees, and timelines. In reviewing these options, I was reminded of Dr. Ash’s independent reading and response assignment, which I have implemented in my own classroom. This assignment gives students options for responding to books, as opposed to creating a traditional book report. Some examples are creating a bookmark, a bumper sticker, or a poem. Some of the options for indpeendent reading and response appear on the list for genre options in Writing Without Boundaries. I believe the IR&R assignment is a better place for genre exploration.

Any thoughts? 

Dionne

Six Traits, Continued…

Well, now I’m up to reading about Voice, Word Choice, and Sentence Fluency.  The book is continuing just as it was when I posted last time, with an excellent description of the traits and TONS of writing pieces to analyze.  I don’t think I mentioned before that the writing samples come from a wide variety of grade levels; this most recent chapter had grades 3-12.

I love this sentence: “Voice is many things: personality, passion, engagement with the topic, energy and enthusiasm, and audience sensitivity.”  That’s a lot to teach, eh?  Luckily, this is probably best taught through looking at some quality writing samples.  (There’s a Cisneros snippet in chapter 5 that’s really good.)  Some other books that were suggested for finding good uses of voice: Seabiscuit (I haven’t read it! Egads!), A Christmas Memory, Charlotte’s Web, and Angela’s Ashes.  That reminds me: I was lucky enough to hear Frank McCourt speak many, many years ago.  It was at the NCTE Annual Conference in Nashville (not the last time it was in Nashville but the time before that.)  This guy IS voice!  He was telling teacher stories, and recall that this was years and years before he published Teacher Man.  I guess he was working on his chops (or at least his stories.)

Happy reading, Deltas!

 

John

Lessons That Change Writers

Last week, I read (most of ) Nancie Atwell’s Lessons That Change Writers.  I’ve read In the Middle before, in a college class, and while her descriptions of reading and writing workshops sounded wonderful, I couldn’t wrap my mind around how to realistically fit the kinds of things she talks about into the daily life of my classroom.  This book, while it still seems to be set up for middle school teachers that are lucky enough to have complete control of their curriculum without worrying about making sure that their students pass standardized tests, helped me visualize more clearly how writing workshop, and writing workshop-type lessons could work in my classroom. 

The lesson that stood out to me the most was “The Rule of So What,” which asked students to think of a “so what,” a reason that a certain topic or event is meaningful to them, beyond the “this was so much fun.”  When I did memoir writing with my students this year, I found that many of my students were writing about events and not explaining why they were meaningful to them.  I tried to explain to my students what I wanted, and show them examples of memoirs that showed this meaning, but I love how Atwell makes the idea so clear and so accessible in just two words.  I also think that this idea of the “so what” would be much more accessible to students when reading literature than talking about the “theme.” 

While I still don’t know if I would be able to devote several days a week in my classroom to writing workship, and I’m not quite sure how I will balance my students development as writers with the prescribed curriculum that I have to make sure my struggling students master in time for state testing, I can see myself using many lessons in this book.  I love the variety of lessons that Atwell gives, and the number of resources that she provides in this book.  After reading this book, I think more than anything I find myself wanting to be a student n Atwell’s class, and to experience these lessons first hand.

Commas

Basically I just wanted to post to see if this works. So, I included this excerpt from Writing with Power by Peter Elbow. He quotes from Gertrude Stein’s Lectures in America. I thought this theory on commas was pretty funny:

And what does a comma do, a comma does nothing but make easy a thing that if you like it enough is easy enough without the comma. A long complicated sentence should force itself upon, make you know yourself knowing it and the comma, well at the most a comma is a poor period that it lets you stop and take a breath. It is not like stopping altogether which is what a period does stopping altogether has something to do with going on, but taking a breath well you are always taking a breath and why emphasize one breath rather than another breath. Anyway that is the way I felt about it and I felt that about it very very strongly. And so I almost never used a comma.

Creating Writers Through 6-Trait Writing Assessment and Instruction

Hello, Deltas!

I was drawn to this Vicki Spandel book because I really don’t think I do a very good job of teaching the six traits.  I always assumed that the traits were an invention of the National Writing Project, but I don’t think that’s correct.  Spandel was actually one of the creators years ago.  (This book is in its fourth edition.)

In case you don’t know them or need a refresher, let’s start with the Six Traits:

 

Ideas – The heart of it all, the writer’s main message and the details, evidence, or anecdotes that support or expand that message.

Organization — The internal structure or skeleton of a piece that gives support and direction to the ideas.

Voice — Verbal fingerprints.  A mix of individuality, confidence, engagement with the topic, and reader rapport–that something that keeps the reader reading.

Word Choice — A knack for selecting the just-right word or phrase to make meaning clear and to bring images or thoughts to life.

Sentence Fluency — Rhythm and flow, the music and poetry of language, and the way text plays to the ear.

Conventions — The writer’s skill in using an editor’s tools (punctuation, spelling, grammar, capitalization, and layout) to clarify and enhance meaning.

 

The first important point is that most writing teachers incorrectly focus on conventions.  I think I already knew this!

 

I’m finished with the first 4 chapters.  The biggest thing I learned from the first few chapters is how to better design writing prompts.  I learned more from these few pages than I learned from 17 years of writing prompts for my students.  It’s also noteworthy that there’s a nice long list of excellent prompts that are ripe for the stealing in the book!

 

The next topic involved rubrics.  There really wasn’t anything groundbreaking here.

 

Next, the author is taking me thought the traits, one at a time, in order for me to learn them; this is the same way it should be done with students.  There are some important points here, and I’m reading slowly to make sure that I can reliably assess the sample pieces trait by trait.  I really like how many pieces of writing are analyzed.  It goes on and on!  This, it seems, will take up much of the bulk of this book.  I’m happy about that because initially I was a little frightened by this 400-page monster.  However, the reading has been interesting so far, and I think the training with the traits is an excellent use of space.

 

Oh, I almost forgot something else.  There’s a long list of pet peeves from teachers.  I really thought the list itself was interesting, but the point of the list is that writing teachers need to be aware of what personal biases they bring to the table.  Their students should also be aware of them.  The example was given of a student who received an “F” on an otherwise effective piece of writing because she wrote it in purple ink!

 

I’m off to read some more…

 

John

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