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.