Pitfalls and Successes
From the desk of Carol C…
When teachers yearn for the days of old when children could just write, write, write creative stories, I cringe. I remember the never ending stories children wrote. The tones were so overwhelming that I couldn’t face the task of helping the kids revise their work. Plus the few times that I did attempt to teach revision skills, my kids were tired of working on their stories and wanted to move on. Who could blame them? Ten pages of alien abduction or superstar mania would be enough to make anybody want to bail. My approach to teaching writing had to change!
After much thought and reading, I grabbed the Writing Workshop model with both hands. It was not the smoothest transition I’ve ever made, and it was difficult at times. However, the longer I taught writing through the workshop model the more I realized that creating perfect pieces of writing was not the goal of the workshop. Ask any published author and he or she will tell you that they have never written a perfect anything. Their goal and mine for my students was to see genuine growth in their writing. With all of this in mind I hope today’s blog will help you avoid some of the pitfalls that I encountered on my way to developing a love for teaching writing.
1. Pitfall: Those long, long, long, never ending stories that usually are unfocused and well…boring to be honest.
My Solution: Limit the amount of time spent in writing workshop when you first start it. Writers need to have some skills and strategies before they can handle long writing periods effectively. I used to use my first few whole group and mid writing workshop time to teach “narrowing the focus of your piece”. No visits to Disney World, no vacations to the beach, no history of wars between aliens. Instead, I taught them how to center in on one small moment in time and then create an image and an emotion in that moment. The bar is set high. Rigor is inherent. Celebrate individual growth and teach by looking through the lens of what a child can do and not what he can’t.
“Even if some of children end a unit of study still unable to turn their images of good writing into realities, simply developing a richer image of what they are working toward when writing a story is a huge accomplishment.” ~ Lucy Calkins
2. Pitfall: Using adjective, after adjective, after adjective. Somewhere along the line (maybe at birth) we all think that the more adjectives the better. You know…”My pretty, nice, tall, good looking, cute daddy said ‘Goodbye'”.
My Solution: Find excellent mentor texts to use to show them how to use words (not necessarily adjectives) to create a picture for or an emotion in the reader. Every year these two sentences began my lesson on creating images. “The mud ran over my toes.” I hear a few “yucks” and a few “cools”. Then I say “The mud oozed between each toe on my foot.” Now this gets a reaction! We talk about the second sentence and why it gets such a stronger reaction then the first. From there I read one of the texts I’ve chosen to reinforce this idea. I’ll use this book or other mentor texts every day but not just for strong verbs. I read them for examples of so many other elements of good writing, too. Mentor texts are essential. There are no right or wrong ones either. Think about what speaks to you and what element it is that you are trying to teach. This is how you choose a mentor text. Two mentor texts that I love are The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant and Come On, Rain by Karen Hesse. Both books still make me laugh. These texts use words to create humorous scenes, make an ordinary event interesting, and create strong scenes using simple analogies.
“I learned to write from authors. I didn’t know any, but I read their books.” ~ Cynthia Rylant
3. Pitfall: Not honing my own writing skills
My Solution: I started to write in class every day. I didn’t write for the entire workshop, but I did write. This provided a positive role model for my students by showing them that I valued writing. Also, because it reminded me daily of the struggles writers face, I became more empathetic to the difficulties my students faced. They saw that writing wasn’t easy for anyone even experienced authors. They learned that the first copy is never the charm and that it is a process, not a destination. Writing with my students enabled them to see me as a partner not an observer in our writing community.
“If you have never written in front of your students before, take the plunge. They will appreciate your risk taking, and you will have a much clearer idea of what you are actually asking them to do.” ~ Regie Routman
4. Pitfall: Thinking each piece of writing was worth publishing or turning into a book.
My Solution: Thinking about the real world of paid authors and publishing. Everything they write certainly isn’t published. Why should ours? I had my students write as many different stories, essays, or poems during the unit as they were able. Then about a week or so before the end of the unit they read back through all of their pieces and choose one they thought worthy of publishing. That one was revised, edited, and shared with an audience (another class, parents, administrators, each other). These finished pieces still had problems and punctuation mistakes, but they were miles ahead of where the rough draft had been. Students don’t have to fix every mistake at one time. It will take you and them too long and create too many headaches.
“How helpful it is when we can see what students are almost doing, instead of seeing only what they can’t yet do or struggle with.” ~ Lucy Calkins
Writing Workshop is powerful! It allows us, as teachers, to differentiate instruction and provide scaffolding to create a deeper understanding of writer’s craft. In other words we are better able to meet the individual needs of our students.
To gain a clear picture of all Writing Workshop entails, I would suggest finding a good book on teaching writing. I’ve made two suggestions below (oldies but goodies), but remember they are only suggestions. You are the best judge of what you need. Now it’s time for you to take on the challenge of setting up a real writing workshop. You won’t regret it !
The Art of Teaching Writing by Lucy Calkins
The Writing Workshop: Working Through the Hard Parts (And They’re All Hard Parts) by Katie Wood Ray and Lester Laminack