UNITS 5&6

We are at the end of our journey and I do hope you had fun reading these blog posts about our semester. We have been speaking about Promoting Writing in the Primary Grades and what a great time we've had!!

This week we looked at some approaches and activities which can be used as a means of self- expression and communication as well as a source of pleasure and relaxation. Before writing, one must know why they are writing the piece (purpose), who will be reading it, how to appeal to them (audience) and how to structure the writing and the content to include (genre). 

 

We also looked at these six genres: story (narrative), informational (expository), descriptive, poetry, letters and journals. In each genre we identified the style, purpose, audience and gave an example(s) of a teaching/learning activity for each genre. Then, in groups of three we chose a genre and provided and explained some activities that can be used for each. 

Before this class, I never knew that there were so many activities we could use to help students improve their writing! I was shocked and they were fun and easy too. For example, my group chose journals and our activities were to have students write gratitude journals that allows them to keep a record of all the things they are grateful for and another activity was to revisit old journal entries and reflect on them.

One of the most amazing things I learnt in this unit is that each genre can take on one or more style. Style is the way the writing is dressed up or down and is reflected by the choice of words, sentence fluency and the writer's voice. So a piece can be frozen eg. The Bible, formal eg. business letters, consultative eg. sonnets, casual eg. some stories or intimate eg. love letters. 

AMAZING!!

The highlight of the end of the semester was going into a primary school to see first hand a student engaging in the writing process. The experience allowed me to see both what I would do when I go back into the classroom and what I would not do. It seemed as if most teachers still use the traditional approach to writing i.e give a topic and allow students to write on it, they mark it and that is the end of it. That will definitely not be my approach upon returning to the classroom. My students will interact will books, their peers and use technology during writing while I provide feedback and use different trends to help them develop their writing skills.

Here is a link to my observation of Tekiya. 

My Writing Philosophy

MY PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING WRITING

The following is a one-page document on my philosophy of teaching writing. Writing is defined according to Michigan State University (2002) as “a form of communication that allows students to put their feelings and ideas on paper, to organize their knowledge and beliefs into convincing arguments, and to convey meaning through well-constructed text. Learning to write occurs in steps whereby students move from scribbling to writing words, writing sentences, writing paragraphs and developing great stories and other publications. At each stage the teacher is a guide that facilitates the gradual progression between stages and to sharpen the skill of writing. This skill sharpens when students are given the opportunity to write daily. Routine writing helps students improve their writing as they are allowed the freedom to write.

Using a writer’s workshop, the teacher would teach and model effective writing. The teaching of writing includes the step by step teaching of the writing process (prewriting, writing, drafting, revising, editing and publishing) to include many strategies that students can use as they go through it. Furthermore, teachers should model writing by writing different genres so that the students can use it as a guide. It is also a great way to teach students how to be critical in their writing. There are several trends in writing that the teacher can choose from and different ways to combat challenges faced by students in writing. 

          To help with learning, teachers must give students many strategies and activities for writing and provide one on one feedback. The six traits of writing (Voice, Ideas, Presentation, Conventions, Organization, Word Choice, and Sentence Fluency) is a way of teaching, modelling, and assessing the instruction of writing. Moreover, teachers are to encourage much reading as this too helps develop students’ writing skills and allow them to see the connection between reading and writing. In addition, technology should be integrated into writing for example, digital storytelling, blogs, and wikis as a means of publishing and distributing writing. This will cause students to feel like their writing has a purpose rather than to be left inside an exercise book.

My goal for my students is to have them recognize that writing is just an expression of their thoughts and ideas organized in a well- structured manner. It is also my goal to have students appreciate different genres of writing and become critical writers. Furthermore, my ultimate goal is to have my students become good authors and publish their own pieces and/or books. Therefore, to help my students reach these goals I will first create a literacy rich environment containing a writing center, use best practices such as strategy instruction, peer assistance, prewriting activities, process writing approach etc. as well as have writer’s workshops and use technology for the writing and publishing of students' work.

Teaching Writing and the Reading-Writing Connection

It's SO nice to see you again! I have lots of things to share with you this week so I hope that you've got your pens and papers at hand! What I am about to share with you will absolutely blow your mind!

Prior to this class, I had been taught through a different course that Reading and Writing are connected and that a good reader is a good writer. However, this week's class really created that aha moment that I needed. 

So the lecturer comes in with many small reading books and I wondered what on earth are we gonna do with these? I was excited though because the weeks prior, language classes were so fun. We each got to choose a book and read it to ourselves. I looked for a book whose cover and title looked interesting and animated. I found a book that was entitled "Leo Goes To The Library" and there was a huge orange cat on the cover. Certainly, it could not have been that cat who was going to the library, I thought. 

The title and picture caught my curiosity so I chose that book.

The book was a short but interesting read and I could see children loving this story about the huge orange cat. After reading, the teacher asked us a strange question. She asked us to look at each sentence and see what lessons in grammar that could be taught from the book. 

Puzzled I began to go through each sentence and I realized that from this less than ten (10) paged book I could teach so many aspects of language. I could teach compound sentences (eg. When Leo wants to eat, he knows where to find food.), I could teach adjectives (eg. Leo is a huge orange cat, birds screech, pet shop), I could teach synonyms (eg. huge orange cat, big orange cat), I could teach literary devices (eg, purrfect), I could teach compound words (eg. inside, catnap, weekday) and many other things.

I was completely blown away by this discovery!

The one thing that I have taken away from this class that I will certainly do is to have reading books at EVERY CLASS! From this activity students can then write responses to these books in journals, summarize the books, improve on the different genres of writing. Reading helps students to learn different text structures and vocabulary and the use of language which would in turn help them to transfer this knowledge to their own writing. I strongly urge all teachers to include reading books into every language class and generate lessons from them. Furthermore, allow students to see the connections between reading and writing so that they themselves will see the importance of reading in order to become better at writing.

Writing as a Stage, A Process and A Trait

Guys! Guys! Gather around! Cause YOU my language scholars have GOT to hear this!

So I know you've just been dying to hear what I've learnt this week and I'm as eager to share. But, did you know that writing takes on different forms?

 

Yep! And I was just as surprised to find out! Writing is in stages, it is a process and it has 6 (plus 1) traits. Well since you never knew I'd be more than happy to inform you. Then I'm gonna tell you how this weeks' lesson went!

  Great! 

So let's begin....

I learnt that there are four stages in writing: the emergent stage, early stage, transitional stage and the fluent stage. Each stage has its own unique attributes and children  move from stage to stage smoothly. Each stage is just as important as the other and the stages are not bound to specific ages or grades. However, specific activities  should be given to help them move on to the other stage(s).




Awesome! 

So let's move on...... Writing is a process. The first part to writing is PreWriting, where you brainstorm and generate and explore ideas on what you are going to write. You can even use pictures  and other tools such as a graphic organizer. The next stage is called drafting whereby the writing is put together as a coherent whole. I love that in this stage there is no need to focus on spelling and other mechanical issues. YAY! After drafting is revising. Here we were introduced to an easy way to help our students remember how to revise their work, using the acronym ARMS.

A- Adding
R- Removing
M- Moving
S- Substituting

Pretty cool huh!  

The next stage in the writing process is editing and to help students remember how to edit we used another acronym called CUPS.

C- Capitalization
U- Usage
P- Punctuation
S- Spelling

    OH YEA!!!!

Now its time to publish or share our final copy which is the last stage in the writing process. The way it is published or shared is entirely up to you.




After looking at the writing process we looked at the characteristics of writing. The Six Traits of writing are Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency and Conventions. These traits create a guideline for teachers to use with students so that students would become familiar with the terms used in writing and help both the student and teacher identify the areas of writing that the student needs work at improving.

So what is the +1?



The “Plus One” trait is the presentation of the writing piece. This is the trait that is considered for all writing, but not specifically or directly taught as the other traits are.

NOW, let's get down to business.... how did I become such a master teacher of writing you may ask. Well, after the week's lesson I became an expert because we were asked to demonstrate the writing process. 

A picture was placed on the board of a familiar scene...The Beach!

 Students were engaged in a whole class discussion about what they saw in the picture while making real life connections to their own experiences on the beach. Afterwards, students began to write freely about a day at the beach. 

 

The above prewriting checklist was used to help students to ensure everything is included in their story. I personally like this checklist because it would grab the students' interest and imagine the students asking themselves, "Did you remember to use farts?" Besides them getting a 'kick' out of using the word farts IN CLASS, they would certainly use it as a point of reference and in the long-run this will ensure that students think about all the things a good story needs to have when they are writing. 

After the students wrote and edited their stories it was time to share. This was done orally. Teachers can use author's chair to have children share their stories. This gives our students a voice and allow others to celebrate and critique their writing. 

The writing process should not be taught all at once. Students should be allowed to master each stage of the writing process and perfect the traits of writing. Many activities should be given to cater to this. One strategy I believe I would use the most is peer-editing. Peer- editing would allow students to not only recognize weaknesses in another students' writing but would also help to strengthen that students' writing as they become more aware of good writing.

Comment below if you've enjoyed this post and remember there is no wrong or write in writing! 

Unit 5 & 6

okay so BOOM !
Today we're merginggggg 2 units instead of having two separate blog posts.

Basically in Units 5 & 6 I learned about approaches and activities for promoting writing in elementary school as well as designing writing assessments and assignments for elementary school.

We looked at the different genres of writing as well as the purpose of the writing as well as the audience in which the writing is designed for. We examined in detail each aspect fo the three previously mentioned so that we'd have a clear understanding of each and we did just that, well I definitely did lol.
We also looked at various tools that can help to promote this same writing, for example students can use: Journals, portfolios, poetry, songs, short stories, dialogues and much more as a means of assent of their writing. teachers can use these different tools to test the genres that students are more comfortable with and actually understand.

Developing a writing philosophy for teaching.

• “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison

This quote is so powerful, often time there a books students want to read or wish they could find but no one has written them yet. I think to myself what if they stop looking for books that people have written and start create books that others would never think of. They become their own authors and the things they look for as readers they will definitely find as they would cater to their needs as well as children or adults all over the word. 

Personally, I think children learn to write not by just learning the process or the aspects of writing but by first reading. When I was younger, I read a lot of books. 

Well for me they were lol. 

I learned how to write by reading how others wrote. Smart right?

So yes, children do learn how to write when we teach them the steps to producing great pieces but reading great pieces is a major element of becoming a great writer. We must not only write our work but we must read the work of there great writers in order to grow. Teaching students the process of writing and allowing them to be exposed to various genres of writing expands their vocabulary, their imagination, the development or various writing skills and so much more. 

As an instructor I will do just that. I will teach and practice with my students, allow them to learn from their mistakes as well as teach them how to not make these mistakes again. As an instructor I will provide my students with opportunities to read various genres so they can focus on their preferred style of writing as well as know how to write in any genre that may come their way. 

I have many goals for my students as writers, some of which are: 

Help Students Find Their Voice

Help Students Articulate and Follow Their Values

  Increase their motivation to write. 

  Help students to Independently write great pieces.

They keep to accomplishing this goals is to do what I previously mentioned above as well as use the strategies that I have learned to help my students become the great writers I know they can be. These strategies will make writing easier for them allowing them to be more relaxed and comfortable thus causing their love for writing to grow rather than seeing it as just another aspect of learning. Writing will become a part of them, something they love, a way of expressing their feelings, their opinions, a way of being THEM.

TWRWC

T - Teaching
W - Writing
R-W - Reading-Writing
C - Connection

Okay Guys so today we're talking about Unit 3. In this class we were presented with a number of books for children. We were instructed to take any one of our choice.
Ms. Quinn chose a few volunteers to read their books and of course I was the first.

At first I thought she just wanted to know the books we chose and wanted us to share with the class but little did we know that was not the intended purpose. After everyone shared we were asked to take note of the things that we could teach from the books we chose. I was so amazed when I realized the many topics of Language that can be taught from a simple story. You could teach punctuation, capital letters, subject and verb agreement and so much more. These little story books were like mini teachers. CCCRRAAZZYYYY

Afterwards we were given guidelines tips to writing narrative stories. Narratives are actually my favourite time of stories so I was quite excited. Ms. Quinn gives 15-20 minutes to complete our story and boyyy was I ready. 

The minute my pen touched that paper I was goneeeee. I ended up finishing my story that class even before the time was up. Unfortunately I did not get to read my story to the class that did but I knew it was a good one. 

We also dealt with different genres and split up in groups to write pieces from these genres that catered for a particular grade. That helped us to focus on the content and make sure it was age appropriate. That day created great awareness in me that books are more than just pieces of paper with words. Everything has a purpose.