On the packet of information for the Journal Genre that Dr. Jones gave us in her sample presentation, there are a few questions that we did not formally address or discuss, so I thought I would give them some attention on my own.
What makes the journal genre so engaging?
Authors have a unique opportunity with the journal genre that is more difficult to attain in the other genres: personal perspective. We have already discussed on several occasions the importance of author choice in topic selection. As Tompkins (2012) describes in her writing process, when students choose topics - instead of teachers - they are more motivated and passionate writers. With good reason. I mean, it makes sense, logically, that when able to write about something known or something that one is passionate about, then the writing will be easier, simply because the subject is familiar. For example, when I write about topics in Geomorphology - landscapes - I can produce a decent piece in half the time than when I am directed to write about Paleontology - little preserved dead things that lived millions of years ago. My tendency with Paleontology subjects is to find ANYTHING else to complete first - cleaning, dentist appointments, listening to Kenny G.... I mean anything. Not only am I more motivated when writing about topics that don't make me want to poke my eyeballs out, I find that my writing is better. I am more interested in finding more information, not just enough to get by. Not only is writing in the journal genre engaging because of the author's personal connection to the subject, reading in the journal genre is engaging for the same reason. The author has presented the reader with a way to connect with the characters, the plot, the setting in a way that can be easily related to. Its almost like talking to a good friend about his experiences, instead of reading a dry impersonal account.
How can journal writing be used to engage students in efferent and aesthetic responses to what they read?
The aesthetic response is the easy one for me to answer - journal writing is all about writing down your musings and feeling on a subject. A teacher merely has to direct students to reflect on who they felt about an aspect or the whole of a reading. Students do not extensive direction for this kind of response. While students may need time to develop their abilities to communicate their feelings, most are able to look inside themselves to enunciate what they thought about something (confusion, dislike, hatred, happiness.... easily identifiable and easily written). But what about the efferent? (And as an aside, was I the only one confused by this word? Efferent as in moving away from an organ...the opposite of afferent...as in blood circulation. Or is my nerd showing again...?) The examples that we completed as part of Dr Jones' packet were good examples of efferent responses. Double entry diaries can help to develop predictions, define ideas, and develop comprehension. The simulated journal entry asks students to look back to the text for details and ideas given by the author and apply those to their own writing. The entry must be based on specific information and ideas in order to be complete.
In what ways does engaging the process of composing journal texts improve reading fluency and comprehension?
Tompkins (2012) notes that for emerging writers, fluency can be monitored in analysis of the length of student entries, the presence of "voice", the spelling of words and the increased abilities of these. I remember being in fourth grade and my (all time favorite teacher, by the way) teacher, Mrs Emelson, had us write journal entries every day. I was a terrible awful no good speller, and she had me circle words I knew that were incorrect, and later in the day we would look them up together. Journals can also be used to determine if students understand the information. If they are journals kept between the teacher and student, questions about content could be asked in a more private or personal manner.
Just realized that this is reading fluency, not writing fluency. Something that I remember Dr Jones saying would be a running theme. As in, how does writing in the journal genre help students improve their reading? My fall back for this answer, no matter the genre, is always going to be that writing helps students become conscious of how an author has constructed their text, and therefore helps students become conscious of what the author intends for them to glean from the text that they have composed. However... what about the journal genre specifically? Journals help students define their responses. Sometimes, writing out questions, thoughts, feelings, and the like helps students to later do this while reading, but in their heads. If a student becomes used to using a double entry diary to make predictions and then modify those predictions as they read on, then that same student will start to use that process automatically when reading other texts.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Learning Log Entry 3
For session 4 of this class, we met with our writing groups for our Genre Pieces Project. Of which I have been mightily skeptical about. Let me give you a little BDA breakdown.
Before writing groups:
Um ok. So I'm supposed to have a peer to edit my papers before I turn them in? I was completely confused by this, honestly. I have a very articulate and critical sister who loves to edit my papers... so why would I ask people who I don't even know to edit my work? What if they don't actually edit anything, or if their standards are much lower than mine? What if they change things about my paper that I really like? Or, worse of all, what if they don't give me any advice at all?
These worries stem from my own high school and undergraduate years. In high school, my very small town world, I was the best at everything. People came to me for edits and advice. I had to rely on my older sister because not one of my peers was writing at my level. In some ways it has made me snobbish in my writing, and skeptical of the abilities of others. My attitude was only justified further in college, when I was forced to take an intro to writing course (much to my juvenile frustration - as if my perfect score on the AP English exam meant squat to Geneseo). My peers failed to provide any comments on my work, even if I provided the most unedited form for their review. These people couldn't even find an errant comma.
During writing groups:
I began to understand that writing groups are more than just editing groups. They help with questions on the assignments, brainstorming for new and better ideas. They are a mutual confusion group, a clarification group. A "stay on task while the teacher is at a conference" group. I wasn't forced to keep pace with others who were behind or ahead of my progress.
I had already decided on my topic - rock and mineral collecting. Two people in my writing group had general ideas, and one hadn't a clue by the start of class. We spent a large portion of time reorganizing the syllabus to better understand the assignment, something that is exponentially helpful with peers (with an obvious carrying capacity). We collaborated and commiserated on finding helpful information on the internet. We chided each other to spend more time searching, even when we thought that we had all that we needed.
After writing groups:
I'm not really satisfied that I am truly "finished" with this writing group, so I am considering my after portion as merely the (not so) profound thoughts I have accumulated after our meeting for the first time.
Writing groups provide students with authentic experiences with the writing process. Since the teacher merely suggests in order to direct, and has expectation of certain tasks to be completed, students look to one another for support and are allowed to develop at a pace that is appropriate for their ability. I'm not saying that I've had a complete and powerful turn of opinion regarding writing groups. I'm saying that I can see their worth in the classroom...and the ways they transcend editing.
Before writing groups:
Um ok. So I'm supposed to have a peer to edit my papers before I turn them in? I was completely confused by this, honestly. I have a very articulate and critical sister who loves to edit my papers... so why would I ask people who I don't even know to edit my work? What if they don't actually edit anything, or if their standards are much lower than mine? What if they change things about my paper that I really like? Or, worse of all, what if they don't give me any advice at all?
These worries stem from my own high school and undergraduate years. In high school, my very small town world, I was the best at everything. People came to me for edits and advice. I had to rely on my older sister because not one of my peers was writing at my level. In some ways it has made me snobbish in my writing, and skeptical of the abilities of others. My attitude was only justified further in college, when I was forced to take an intro to writing course (much to my juvenile frustration - as if my perfect score on the AP English exam meant squat to Geneseo). My peers failed to provide any comments on my work, even if I provided the most unedited form for their review. These people couldn't even find an errant comma.
During writing groups:
I began to understand that writing groups are more than just editing groups. They help with questions on the assignments, brainstorming for new and better ideas. They are a mutual confusion group, a clarification group. A "stay on task while the teacher is at a conference" group. I wasn't forced to keep pace with others who were behind or ahead of my progress.
I had already decided on my topic - rock and mineral collecting. Two people in my writing group had general ideas, and one hadn't a clue by the start of class. We spent a large portion of time reorganizing the syllabus to better understand the assignment, something that is exponentially helpful with peers (with an obvious carrying capacity). We collaborated and commiserated on finding helpful information on the internet. We chided each other to spend more time searching, even when we thought that we had all that we needed.
After writing groups:
I'm not really satisfied that I am truly "finished" with this writing group, so I am considering my after portion as merely the (not so) profound thoughts I have accumulated after our meeting for the first time.
Writing groups provide students with authentic experiences with the writing process. Since the teacher merely suggests in order to direct, and has expectation of certain tasks to be completed, students look to one another for support and are allowed to develop at a pace that is appropriate for their ability. I'm not saying that I've had a complete and powerful turn of opinion regarding writing groups. I'm saying that I can see their worth in the classroom...and the ways they transcend editing.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Learning Log Entry 2
I have had the very fortunate opportunity to work with a writing workshop first hand in my substitute teaching. Palmyra-Macedon Middle School often calls for me to substitute for a special education teacher who is often out for curriculum writing and character education program training. In an effort to keep the classroom as consistent as possible, they use me as her sole sub – and (sadly for her, and luckily for me) she has had maybe three full weeks of classroom teaching days since October. On “B” days, the job requires me to push-in to Deanna’s ELA class down the hall. I knew Deanna from my student teaching days at Pal-Mac, and have respected her since for her persistence to complete all classroom activities “by the book” – ie. research based and tested for excellence. It’s an awesome class to be in: the kids know what is going to happen next, and truly learn reading and writing strategies. The whole ELA department at Pal-Mac Middle School is pretty great.
So Deanna has been doing a writing workshop in her classes for as long as I’ve known her…not very long, but it seems fairly seamless, so I imagine she has worked with it for some time. Every 80 minute writing block that she has (I should note that the kids have writing on B days and reading on A days – so they’re getting some form of literacy every day): they do a warm up for about 10 minutes, with independent reading until all students have caught up; then a mini lesson in some aspect of writing (last week was using adjectives to expand descriptions in their “Hero Story”); and then the rest of class devoted to peer groups to help identify parts of their story that can be helped by the mini lesson topic, teacher one-on-one conferences, and writing/editing/revising time. I can’t wait to push in again with my new knowledge of writing workshop. I never realized that writing workshop had so much to it, and I want to analyze and compare her process according to Hicks (2009), Tompkins (2012), and the other authors we discussed this week.
Since the students that Deanna works with are my students from my last student teaching placement and (let’s be super optimistic here for a moment) ideally my own students when Pal Mac realizes that I’m in training to be the world’s best science teacher and hires me, I’d like to consider Pal Mac for this analysis of students, space, and the subject of writing according to Hicks (2009) chapter 7. And then I’ll add in my “future needs” for my future classroom, and modify it all to fit in my science framework.
Pal Mac students are in the middle of this digital world. They are farm kids at heart (I can say it because I went to Wheatland-Chili – it takes one to know one) and that holds them back from being completely submersed in digital media. Their home communities do not provide them with the resources to be plugged in 24/7. I’m coming at this from the monetary angle: the average family doesn’t have enough money to buy each of their kids an iPad, and an iPod, and an iPhone, and a MacBook Air – unlike the sassy sweet Pittsford middle schooler that I nanny. But most kids have a cell phone, and an iPod. Some may have a personal laptop or other device. The other side comes from the school community. Pal Mac is fairly up to date in terms of school trends (unlike my own farm town alma mater), and has a classroom set of iPads, approximately half of the classrooms are equipped with SmartBoards, and they have an active technology education program set up where students receive lessons in computer use through the library (which includes programs like Excel and Word, as well as procedural use such as citing websites). Students text, use Facebook, and type their essays on a regular basis. But I would doubt that they see blogs as having any sort of equivalence to their DBQ’s. That “farm town” spirit keeps the attitude fairly old-fashioned in regards to technology.
Space is an interesting consideration at Pal-Mac. Single desks are common – double student “lab tables” are most common in science classrooms. There are laptops that can be borrowed from the library, and three teachers have classroom sets of laptops in their classrooms at all times. There are five desktop computers in each classroom and a computer lab adjacent to the library for whole class work. The five desktops are the biggest hassle, in my opinion. They are forever positioned on the table legs, so that students must either straddle the table leg to type, or lean to one side. Not comfortable.
My ideal writing workshop space would have designated places for certain activities. I would set up groups of lab tables – two facing each other, so that there would be four students to a group – on one side of the room. In this area, students could work in groups to edit and revise work, to brainstorm, and other group activities. On the other side, there would be a table for teacher-student conferences. I’ve always wanted a library in my classroom: bookshelves with books about science in different genres, so that students could explore science in other texts besides a textbook. Ideally, I would have a classroom set of laptops in my room – so that students could return to their grouped desks to work.
In terms of virtual space… it all depends on the type of work I’d like to see my students completing. In the past I have wanted to have interest journals for students to work on in down time or when they finish their work before their peers. Recently, I’ve been thinking about creating a wiki or forum where students can continue conversations online on various subjects (homework questions, observations of the real world, “how come did” inquiries, etc). Projects for sure: creating an informative website that explains the finer points of the solar system; creating multimedia presentations about adaptations of animals through time and evolution. But what about the things I’m not as comfortable with? If I had a set time every week reserved for writing workshop, what other ways could I use writing to help students construct meaning in science? Found poems, descriptive essays about earthquakes or cold fronts, biographies of scientists like Darwin or Hutton or Wegner, or a learning log like this one. Then again, why does it have to be text writing the way I’m used to? What about podcasts, musical recordings, poster projects. Writing workshop could be a time for learning outside of the Regents Standard Method. Oooh, what if they used the time to create Regents style questions and then shared with a peer to answer?!
I’m tempted to resolve this post with a neat and orderly ending… but I’m not going to. After all, I sense that “this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Thank you Winston Churchill. The end of old school views of writing and text, and even of how I first started to think about writing workshops in science. I’ll be back to this post, to add and edit to my ideas in my comments – isn’t writing a recursive process after all? And really, there is so much more I need to consider to fully implement a writing workshop. Time is a serious nag on my mind - I could a writing workshop every four days with assignments that span topics and time. Or a whole week block of writing workshop for a project, and not return to it for a month. Or, 20-30 minutes out of an 80 minute block every single day. Maybe different units would call for different time schedules. And, of course, I can't even commit to a plan, because I don't have my own classroom, and I don't know what kind of resources, materials, administration, and co-workers I might have.
So Deanna has been doing a writing workshop in her classes for as long as I’ve known her…not very long, but it seems fairly seamless, so I imagine she has worked with it for some time. Every 80 minute writing block that she has (I should note that the kids have writing on B days and reading on A days – so they’re getting some form of literacy every day): they do a warm up for about 10 minutes, with independent reading until all students have caught up; then a mini lesson in some aspect of writing (last week was using adjectives to expand descriptions in their “Hero Story”); and then the rest of class devoted to peer groups to help identify parts of their story that can be helped by the mini lesson topic, teacher one-on-one conferences, and writing/editing/revising time. I can’t wait to push in again with my new knowledge of writing workshop. I never realized that writing workshop had so much to it, and I want to analyze and compare her process according to Hicks (2009), Tompkins (2012), and the other authors we discussed this week.
Since the students that Deanna works with are my students from my last student teaching placement and (let’s be super optimistic here for a moment) ideally my own students when Pal Mac realizes that I’m in training to be the world’s best science teacher and hires me, I’d like to consider Pal Mac for this analysis of students, space, and the subject of writing according to Hicks (2009) chapter 7. And then I’ll add in my “future needs” for my future classroom, and modify it all to fit in my science framework.
Pal Mac students are in the middle of this digital world. They are farm kids at heart (I can say it because I went to Wheatland-Chili – it takes one to know one) and that holds them back from being completely submersed in digital media. Their home communities do not provide them with the resources to be plugged in 24/7. I’m coming at this from the monetary angle: the average family doesn’t have enough money to buy each of their kids an iPad, and an iPod, and an iPhone, and a MacBook Air – unlike the sassy sweet Pittsford middle schooler that I nanny. But most kids have a cell phone, and an iPod. Some may have a personal laptop or other device. The other side comes from the school community. Pal Mac is fairly up to date in terms of school trends (unlike my own farm town alma mater), and has a classroom set of iPads, approximately half of the classrooms are equipped with SmartBoards, and they have an active technology education program set up where students receive lessons in computer use through the library (which includes programs like Excel and Word, as well as procedural use such as citing websites). Students text, use Facebook, and type their essays on a regular basis. But I would doubt that they see blogs as having any sort of equivalence to their DBQ’s. That “farm town” spirit keeps the attitude fairly old-fashioned in regards to technology.
Space is an interesting consideration at Pal-Mac. Single desks are common – double student “lab tables” are most common in science classrooms. There are laptops that can be borrowed from the library, and three teachers have classroom sets of laptops in their classrooms at all times. There are five desktop computers in each classroom and a computer lab adjacent to the library for whole class work. The five desktops are the biggest hassle, in my opinion. They are forever positioned on the table legs, so that students must either straddle the table leg to type, or lean to one side. Not comfortable.
My ideal writing workshop space would have designated places for certain activities. I would set up groups of lab tables – two facing each other, so that there would be four students to a group – on one side of the room. In this area, students could work in groups to edit and revise work, to brainstorm, and other group activities. On the other side, there would be a table for teacher-student conferences. I’ve always wanted a library in my classroom: bookshelves with books about science in different genres, so that students could explore science in other texts besides a textbook. Ideally, I would have a classroom set of laptops in my room – so that students could return to their grouped desks to work.
In terms of virtual space… it all depends on the type of work I’d like to see my students completing. In the past I have wanted to have interest journals for students to work on in down time or when they finish their work before their peers. Recently, I’ve been thinking about creating a wiki or forum where students can continue conversations online on various subjects (homework questions, observations of the real world, “how come did” inquiries, etc). Projects for sure: creating an informative website that explains the finer points of the solar system; creating multimedia presentations about adaptations of animals through time and evolution. But what about the things I’m not as comfortable with? If I had a set time every week reserved for writing workshop, what other ways could I use writing to help students construct meaning in science? Found poems, descriptive essays about earthquakes or cold fronts, biographies of scientists like Darwin or Hutton or Wegner, or a learning log like this one. Then again, why does it have to be text writing the way I’m used to? What about podcasts, musical recordings, poster projects. Writing workshop could be a time for learning outside of the Regents Standard Method. Oooh, what if they used the time to create Regents style questions and then shared with a peer to answer?!
I’m tempted to resolve this post with a neat and orderly ending… but I’m not going to. After all, I sense that “this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Thank you Winston Churchill. The end of old school views of writing and text, and even of how I first started to think about writing workshops in science. I’ll be back to this post, to add and edit to my ideas in my comments – isn’t writing a recursive process after all? And really, there is so much more I need to consider to fully implement a writing workshop. Time is a serious nag on my mind - I could a writing workshop every four days with assignments that span topics and time. Or a whole week block of writing workshop for a project, and not return to it for a month. Or, 20-30 minutes out of an 80 minute block every single day. Maybe different units would call for different time schedules. And, of course, I can't even commit to a plan, because I don't have my own classroom, and I don't know what kind of resources, materials, administration, and co-workers I might have.
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