Five Ways of Looking at a Polar Bear -created by the NIWP Fellows 2009

Listening to him to hungrily suck in air
as he breaks the surface. Hearing his
paw gently pat the glass as he
wonders on our strange faces.

With powerful muscles
(well oiled machines), the Polar Bear
lumbers across a
frozen land like
albino locomotives

The Red-stained snout
of the boar reveals
its hunger

Shall I compare Thee to a snowy day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Terrible
Sweet

Writer’s Notebook Goodies to Remember!

They are a place to store ideas, brainstorm, work on poems or any type of writing.
To draft and edit/revise before final draft.
A safe place to be creative and experiment, doodle.
Free writes/quick writes.
Put favorite quotes, words, phrases.
Write questions for the instructor (for conferencing).
Journaling or reflecting after a paper is turned in.
Concrete concepts and strategies (like in a science classroom).
Record or reflect to world events (like 9/11).
Use for research data collection.
“Strategy Try Out Book” –Jill Diamond
Use in different content areas, not just writing.
Ownership of writing.
Organize by sections, use sticky notes to mark things they want to go back to and revisit.
Whatever the prompt on the board is has something to do with what you are teaching that day.
Use table of contents.
Don’t let them leave the classroom.
Use composition notebooks so the kids can’t tear out pages and reorganize them to get credit for pages they already got credit for.
Use prompts from stuff the kids are learning in their other classes, “What did you learn in science today?”

Things I learned from the AWESOME Workshops!

I can’t say thank you enough for all the hard work and effort you fellows all put into your workshops! I am so excited to go back through these when creating lesson plans in the future. I now have a large range of weapons under my belt to use for improving my lessons and teaching. You are all so talented and special I’m grateful for the wisdom, experience, and fun you have shared with me! You all ROCK!!
Some things I took away from the workshops:
1) The Waltons can be used in the grammar class (bet they never thought they would be used in such a way!)
2) The love of words and their power to move and inspire based off of sentence structure can be spread to the students.
3) Paradise Lost isn’t so bad after all!
4) Spanish is cool, and can be a great tool in the language section of the English classroom.
5) Memoir can be done by anyone at any age. Our students have life experience, lets help them record it.
6) There are good and bad reading logs out there.
7) Metaphors are powerful only if students have the background knowledge to understand them.
8) I learned what the heck the DWA and how to use list writing to help students get going on their masterpieces.
9) There are magazines that publish student work and I have a whole list of web sites to choose from! Perfect for my magazine unit!

NinjaPirate

Top 10 Most Important Things about Conferencing

1) The questions are key. What you ask and how you ask can totally help or ruin your conference.
2) Don’t Hold the Paper!!
3) Don’t bring out the evil red pen, just take notes about what you talk about and give the notes to the student at the end.
4) Meet in a comfy/special spot.
5) Conferencing should not be extra work, find ways to slip it into the workshop.
6) Focus on the writer not the writing.
7) Make the student feel as though you are just talking or having a normal conversation, not conferencing.
8) Remember they are human and to act real with them and what they have written about.
9) Conferencing doesn’t have to take forever.
10) Teach students how to do peer conferencing by modeling and implementing it slowly.

Portfolios

My ideas and thoughts on portfolios have changed drastically throughout my college career. I think the thing that is trickiest about portfolios is that they can serve multiple purposes and we are trying to tie a nice and neat single-track-definition to them. Portfolios can be used effectively many different ways. One way is to evaluate the progress of your student over a certain amount of time; another way is to showcase your very best work all in one concise spot; and still another purpose is somewhere out there I'm sure. Overall, portfolios are tricky, but can be helpful and should continue to be used in the classroom. I think one of the most important things is to keep your purpose in view at all times.
What I want to know:
Where is the research on portfolios?
How do we get administrators on board with portfolios?

In Response to Grading and Rubrics

I think the overall consensus is that we need to change something about the grading system in schools. However, just how we do that is the big scary question. Students need to be challenged and they need to be motivated to overcome those challenges, but how? We all have experienced the frustration of spending time grading and putting comments on a paper only to give the paper back to the student and he or she looks at the grade and ignores the comments.

One of the biggest problems is everything we do in our culture is by assessment and ultimately by grades. Dr. Jacque Leighty said it best, “To live is to assess.” Every waking moment of our day we are constantly assessing. I personally believe assessment is a good thing, without it we would end up with mediocre products that fall apart and have no value, we would be stuck with second rate when we could have better. Students should be assessed to see how much they have progressed, if they weren’t assessed there would be no point for them to be in school. Kids could be learning on their own at home or doing whatever they feel like, but because we are trained and have extra schooling we as teachers have the capability of assessing our students and helping them grow in their education. The big question still remains, what about grades? How do we assess without taking away the necessary work and effort that is needed from the student in order for him or her to feel like they have done something worth while?

I think rubrics are the answer. Because so many people think English is merely a subjective subject that relies on the whims and moods of the teacher, I would like to use rubrics as much as possible to make it more objective. The student should be able to give him or herself the same grade I give him or her based on the rubric.

In Response to Bonnie Mary Warne’s “Teaching Conventions in a State-Mandated Testing Context”

I thought it was wonderful that Bonnie could come in and talk with us, it’s always nice to be able to pick the author’s brain to figure out just what is behind their reasoning in their articles. She was completely different than I thought she would be. I thought she would be all academic and snotty because her paper sounded so professional, but she was so down to earth and practical (although the practical wasn’t surprising given her article topics). She really gave me hope for getting future articles published.

The biggest concept I took away from her articles and her chit chat with us was the lesson on teaching grammar using popular novels and texts that the kids are reading. My biggest fear coming in as a first year teacher would be not knowing the grammar rules well enough to be able to just pull out examples of what we are trying to study. The grammar books are safe because they have the answer in the teacher’s edition, but they are also terribly boring and impractical. So maybe I won’t do this my first year, but once I have all the little grammar rules down I will switch to using popular texts.

In Response to “Chapter 13 Conferring Writing Becomes a Tool for Thought”

I really enjoyed reading this chapter, although it was a little disheartening reading all the things that you are absolutely not supposed to ask, and they are all the things that I have been asking my students while conferencing. I’m excited to try this new technique of conferencing, it seems I always want my students to dig deeper and learn instead of being taught, but I don’t always know the best way to allow my students dig deeper, this chapter has helped out tons!

I personally can admit that I have been guilty of what is talked about on 232, “Why is it so difficult to give a simple human response? I think it is because we try so hard to be helpful we forget to be real.” I totally forget to be real. If one of my friends came up to me and told me a story similar to one my student has told me I would not react in the same manner that I do for my students. This is unfair to the student because it makes their writing almost fake or artificial because I am not reacting to it in a real manner.

In Response to Stephanie Dix’s “I’ll do it my way: Three Writers and their Revision Practices”

I like the writing activity of having to write out the instructions of how to build a paper tree. I thought it would be fun to have the student pass their instructions to a fellow student and see if that student could build the tree based on the instructions; after this have the two students revise the directions together. I don’t know if it will really work, but it could be fun.

It makes sense to me that kids are more willing to revise poetry than other types of writing. The way we teach poetry suggests that there are multiple choices per line, and that there is more than one right way to write a poem. How could we teach the other types of writing this way so kids are more comfortable with remixing and adding to and taking away from their papers?

In Response to Nancy Sommers’ “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers”

I had actually read this article before in my teaching composition class last semester so this was a nice refresher of Sommers’ views on revision. One of the most interesting parts of the article, in my opinion, is found on page 383 at the bottom of the second paragraph, Sommer says, “At best the students see their writing altogether passively through eyes of former teachers or their surrogates…” This sentence has been haunting me since I read the article; it our fault as teachers that students stop writing for themselves and start writing for the us (the teacher). This makes me so sad because it is totally true! How can we change our student’s concepts of their writing, it’s as if we will have to fight against every other teacher our students have ever had.

I love how one of the experienced writers say that revising is an ongoing process that could go on forever. I have my BS in English Ed and it took me three advanced writing classes to figure out this concept. How do we get our students to make this ah ha moment if it took me forever?

In Response to Barry Lane's "After the End" Chapter 11

In chapter 11 on page 164 Barry Lane relates a little story about a teacher he observed named Ms. Treu. The part of this story that touched me the most was the end where Lane talks about Ms. Treu’s reaction each time a student hands in a piece of writing; he says, “She could have seen it a hundred times, it could be scrawled in smudged pen or smeared with erasure marks, but when a child hands her a story to read, her face beams with delight” (164).

Reading this just put a smile on my face. It made me think back to my school days; did I ever have a teacher like Ms. Treu? Not that I can remember, however, this has changed the way I want to see my student’s writing. I want to show my kids that their writing is special to me, not just some pile of papers that will leak into my weekend. I challenge each of you to try for this if you don’t currently have this attitude!

Barry Lane "After the End" Chapter 6 Response

In chapter six on page 92, Lane gives a lot of great activities and ideas for bringing characters to life. I think the fourth bullet down would be really fun to try. He suggests that you have your students adapt a story you are reading to a screen play and then map out the story. After you have the main points mapped out you can have the students draw pictures of the scenes.

This last month I took three classes from the Nixon Institute here at the U of I, two classes I took would really help me with this activity; one class was teaching the graphic novel and the other class was drama: from the page to the stage. I could see how turning a novel into a graphic novel would be really fun for the kids (maybe you could read a graphic novel in class before this assignment and teach them how to create graphic novels). Secondly you could act out the scenes that you draw. I learned all different kinds of fun activities to make the drama come from the page to the stage (actually having the kids act out the scenes).

I’m excited to try this! Have any of you tried anything like these activities? What has or hasn’t worked for you?

In Response to Sheryl Lain’s “Reaffirming the Writing Workshop for Young Adolescents”

I liked a ton of things Lain said, so I think this post is going to be a grab bag of Lain concepts that hit me the most.
Lain reasserts what we have heard so many times these past two weeks, “ We learned by becoming immersed in the writing process ourselves” (20). It is essential to think back to the time when we weren’t so confident with our writing skills and use those memories to relate to our students. We ourselves must be writers in order to teach writing!

Confer with students during the workshop. It is better to confer with each individual student many times throughout one of their papers than to “…simply editing and grading the final draft” (21). I can only imagine how much work will be cut out of the grading process for you if you confer with your students. Who wouldn’t want that?

I really appreciate that Lain outlines the first month of her school year. She talks about her specific directions when handing out journals, which is just wonderful for me who has had problems with keeping journals in the classroom in the past. I like how specific she is with her students, they don’t have any room for guessing what she wants them to do in their journals, maybe this ability comes with experience (something I lack). She says, “I ask two things—please date each entry, and draw a line between entries. I tell them they will write at least a page a day” (21). Maybe these tips will help me in the future! I’m excited to try.

Lain gives two great suggestions while doing student conferring: firstly, when she can’t think of anything to say she just makes a personal connection to the piece, secondly, she keeps a comment sheet and a chart of how her conferencing are going. I like the idea of the chart especially, because I have been asking myself how do you grade workshops, more specifically what the student accomplishes for the day. But she answered my question! For more ideas, how do you guys grade workshops?

In Response to Lucy McCormick Calkins’ “The Art of Teaching Writing”

Although, this article was really aimed towards elementary teachers and classrooms, I still really enjoyed the article and am feeling more and more confident about implementing workshops into my own classroom. It seems that we are being surrounded by anything and everything workshop this week and I think it is one of the best ways for me to get a firmer grasp on what they are and how to use them in the classroom!

One of my favorite concepts from Calkins’ article is found on page 209 at the very top (the whole block quote). Here she is quoting Randy Bomer from his book A Time for Meaning, he is discussing the issue of trying to get students to be more passionate about revising or drafting. The suggestion Randy Bomer gives is to push students through their first drafts quickly. GENIUS! He says to not give the students enough time to sort everything out right away; you want to make students feel as though they are “unsatisfied” with their work which gives them a desire to draft and revise their work. Bomer says, “I am trying to hold open spaces of possibility by pushing them through the first draft.” I don’t know why it wouldn’t work, but you never know, what do you guys think? Is this our solution in helping students care about revising?

In Response to “I You, and It” by James Moffett

I always love it when someone, like Moffett in this case, points out something that people do automatically all day long without even realizing it, it’s such a wonderful ah ha moment for me every time. Moffett discusses the concept of telling one single story in many completely different ways based on who the audience is, the medium of the audience also makes a difference (are they in person, reading it, listening to it ect. This is something we do every day but never realize it. I would never tell my classmates a story about my sister Kimber in the same way that I would tell it to my mom; first off my classmates don’t know anything about my sister so things that make perfect sense to me and my mom would be really confusing to my classmates.

Last semester in my Intercultural Communications class we discussed this very topic. We talked about how the bigger your audience the more diverse your audience is, meaning you have a lot of different kinds of people you have to try and get to relate to you and buy into your message. I remember specifically talking about the president of the U.S. and what a large challenge him and his speech writers have—he has to find a way to make 303,146,284 people relate to what he has to say. Can you imagine having to write in a way that allows every type of ethnicity, gender, and age understand and relate to what you are saying? It’s mind blow


In Response to James N. Britton’s “Now that you go to School”

I have to apologize in advance, I read the articles in a different order than the rest of the class so my views and ideas are biased based off the order I read the articles. I read Emig’s article before this one and I couldn’t help thinking what she would say about Britton’s concept about children writing the only way they know how at such a young age—writing speech. Emig says that writing is not just written talk, but Britton suggests that that is the only way young kids can write because they only have speech to pull experience from. What do you guys think? Whose side are you on? I am pulling for Britton personally.

In my intercultural communications class and in my phonetics class last semester we talked about how language is embedded in us as well as culture from the moment we enter the world. Kids learn the rhythm and stress of their language starting at about 8 months, it’s no wonder they try and write like how they talk, as Britton says language is all they know. One of the biggest problems I ran into when teaching writing was trying to get kids to write in a different way than they talk; they just couldn’t understand the difference of formality between speech and writing or they just didn’t know how to write formally, but who could blame them? Why do we write differently than we talk? When did it start or evolve? Just a few questions to ponder.


In Response Janet Emig’s “Non-Magical Thinking: Presenting Writing Developmentally in Schools”

First off I have to say thank you to Janet Emig for writing this article in a way that is easy to read and understand. I have a hard time being sympathetic to writers who want to start a revolution of some sort, but yet write their articles in such a manner that you need a dictionary by your side the entire time just to grasp some drop of meaning. Thank You!

The topics and concepts she addresses are some that I have never read anything about before; this may be because I am going to be teaching high school, not elementary and her ideas are more aimed towards the younger learners and writers. However, her points are worth discussing even for the older students.

Some main points I got from her article:
Teachers of writing must be writers themselves.
Writing is and can be a natural act.
Symbolic representation in play will eventually become written language.
Writing is not just talk written down.

The idea that teachers of writing must be writers makes complete sense. As a teacher it is very difficult to teach something you are not currently doing yourself. Just think how distant and out of touch you can become. I personally think you would loose sympathy and understanding for your student’s woes and issues if you weren’t also stumped trying to figure out how to start your own piece of writing.

I don’t know if I completely agree with Emig when she says that writing is not just talk written down. I know what she means, that writing is more deep and personal than just mere words that come out of your mouth, but I think that talk can also be defined as any idea or concept you think of out loud or inside your mind. Whenever I get a student that is stumped in his or her writing I ask them to just tell me what they want to say just as if we were talking on the street. This always helps, they can think out what they want to write.

Emig quotes Benjamin Singer’s five conditions that are conducive to nurturing fantasy play in children:
1. Opportunity for privacy and practice.
2. Playthings.
3. Freedom from interference of peers or adults.
4. Adult role models who encourage make believe.
5. Cultural acceptance.
My question is, most of these things can only be done in the home; how are we supposed to harbor these five conditions in our classrooms? Especially those of us teaching high school?


In Response to “What Right with Writing” by Linda Rief

Overall, I really enjoyed this article and found it to be more refreshing than most articles along this topic. My favorite part is on page 37 where Rief goes paragraph by paragraph explaining and answering the question “What do our students need to help them write well?” She explains that students need time, choice, models, and response.

After reading Lane’s chapter on conferencing and phrasing positive criticism just the right way and reading Rief’s paragraph on constructive response I am a little nervous. It clear now that a lot is riding on our comments on our students work. I know you should always say a nice comment with a not so nice comment, but now I realize that some of the “nice” comments can be bad as well, for example Lane talks about how only saying nice things about one paper can make the student think that they need to keep writing papers just like that one and not try to be creative. Basically I am getting more and more scared about this aspect of teaching, especially the whole conferencing concept; I never had any teachers really conference with me before so I don’t have any experiences to pull from. Does anyone else feel this way? Does anyone have any good advice about commenting and conferencing student’s work?