Book Discussion #3
Krista Milen, Tina Hatcher, Crystal Lawrence
The Art of Teaching Writing by Lucy Calkins
Our group read pp. 285-517 from Lucy Calkins’ book this week. Chapter 18 dealt with editing and the best way to approach it during writer’s workshop. She discussed how many kids come to us thinking writing is a display of spelling, penmanship, and punctuation and they will focus more on that than the content. We all three have seen this happen in our classrooms. Students will just freeze up on spelling a word or where to put punctuation and then forget what they are even writing about. Calkins stresses in this chapter that we need to help them write freely and unselfconsciously. No one learns well while feeling afraid and ashamed. We need to let students realize it’s ok to make editorial errors as they write; all of us do, and then we correct them as we edit. She states that the best thing we can for their syntax, spelling, penmanship, and use of mechanics is to help them write more often and with confidence. When she launches writer’s workshop, she tells them their notebooks aren’t meant to be displays of perfect spelling and handwriting. It’s a place for deep thoughtful ideas and careful observation. Our group agrees that young students need to focus, above all, on what they are saying and let spellings come out naturally. We liked her quote, “This is a rough draft. It is meant to be rough. There will be a time for making it beautiful.” Some other ideas/comments we liked when writing rough drafts:
-Let them use a pen or pencil
-If too much time being spent making letters perfect, she might say,” No erasing allowed- Just cross out and keep going.”
-She might show students one of her first drafts
-When children keep asking how to spell a word, they keep asking because you keep giving them the answer. They need strategies for spelling words. Say the word. How many parts in the word? Now listen for the sounds in the words.
It was also interesting the research she did among two third-grade classrooms comparing how they were taught writing. Ms. West taught mechanics through daily drills and workbook exercises. She started at the very beginning, teaching simple sentences, periods, capitals. She did pretests and post-tests, but the children rarely wrote. In Ms. Howard’s class, the children wrote every day and chattered as writers do, about conventions of written language. When Calkins met with the “writers” who had not had formal instruction in punctuation, they could explain an average of 8.66 kinds of punctuation, whereas writers who had studied punctuation every day through classwork and drills could only explain 3.85 kinds of punctuation. Even more important, children in the writing classroom liked punctuation. Calkins stresses that when children view themselves as writers, like students in Ms. Howard’s class, they see punctuation everywhere. They start noticing it and becoming familiar with it. The nonwriters described punctuation by trying to remember the rules they’d been taught. How many of us do this? We get bogged down writing as adults because we can’t remember the rules or how to spell a word. Many of us were not taught to write “freely” and our first draft was our final draft. We wanted it perfect the first time.
She discussed one way to help students edit is by giving them a checklist to go over before they turn their work in. The one she gave was very simple and we can see ourselves using it with our students. When conferencing with students, notice the things a student can do and only pick out one or 2 things for the student to work on as a writer. We liked the idea of having a sheet of paper in their writing folder and jotting down what you notice and the one thing that student is working on. Calkins also stresses that kids need to know that when authors finish their writing, they move on to another piece.
We discussed that poetry is a powerful genre because of its condensed nature. Every child in the classroom can be a poet, because poems can be very short. We liked how she allowed the children to use pieces from their notebooks to turn those in to poems.
We all loved the section on Making Memoirs Out of the Pieces of Our Lives. Virginia Wolfe said, “A memoir is not what happens, but the person to whom things happen.” We all agreed that Memoirs will be a great way to really get to know our students, because we will learn their feelings, ideas, and insights rather than just reading about an event. The stage of writing memoirs is described by Randy Bomer as the stage of “shoving kids out of the nests.” He says this because they are forced out of their notebooks into a draft. They suggest that the easiest way to do this is by setting a deadline for a draft.
In chapter 25, Calkins discussed how we used to do research from an encyclopedia, but today research starts out with what we experience and what we know instead. She said we should tell our students to seek out new life experiences and relationships, which will help them to learn more, and to find more to write about. We enjoyed the quote from Jean Fritz in this chapter, “As human beings, we thrive on astonishment. Whatever is unknown quickens us, delivers us from ourselves, impels us to investigate, inspires us to imagine.” We should watch out for surprise and mystery, these things will make for good nonfiction stories.
She discussed how we should create conditions in our classrooms to help the ‘learning’ happen. We can’t ‘make’ students learn, but we can encourage them to ask questions, to notice and wonder, and to inquire about the world around them. Writing is a way to do these things. Writing throughout the day can be used to develop meaning and compose ideas about different topics. Some ways to use writing that interested us were:
· Writing to learn journals – add short journal writing activities into the classroom throughout the day to help them develop their thoughts and ideas
· Take a few minutes to write down what we are thinking about a topic – this helps reel them back in if they have tuned out of a whole-class discussion
· Have them summarize the ‘essence of the issue’ – use these summaries to get them actively participating in the class discussion
· Write down what we know or wonder about a topic before you start discussing a new one
· They can use writing as a tool for thought
· “The main thing we’re talking about is…” – is helpful to stimulate a whole-class discussion
· “The main thing I’m talking about is…” - is used for individual self-motivation
· Writing can encourage students to ask questions and problem-solve in any content area
· Write to support their reflections on their guesses and predictions during lessons
Calkins describes ways to make our students into active learners through their writing in this book. She talks about how much our teaching matters, and what a big responsibility it is to teach our students wisely. We discussed how important our teaching is, and how we want to use more of the writing techniques from this book to grow as teachers. We are teachers because we love our students. How better to show them our love for them, than by expressing our love of learning through writing?
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