Ch. 12 Make Every Minute Count

The title of this chapter says it all! As with all curriculum areas we need to make sure that students are doing activities for a purpose. I also agree with Reggie when she says that we should lighten the load on ourselves as teachers. Kids are not the only ones who will shy away from writing if we continue to make it a heavy burden on ourselves and keep lugging that bag of work home each night. Finally, I have always felt that a strong rapport of trust and respect between my students and I was essential to enjoying my job and being an effective teacher. I spend seven hours a day with these kiddos and I grow to care about each of them. That was reaffirmed as Reggie points out that it's important that our students know who we are. I often tell little stories or funnies that happen in my household. It helps the kids know who I am. I don't always think to include those little stories in my modeling of writing. This will be something new for me to try.

Ch. 11 Build on Best Practice and Research

I feel that it is important for an entire building to make a commitment to improve the teaching of writing. I think our school could be successful at putting this into action. Reggie states that it takes minimum of three years to make a real change and five years to make a big impact. I think for so long we've wanted some kind of "writing program" because we as teachers felt overwhelmed and confused about how to organize and teach writing. I agree that teaching the skills in isolation is not the approach that we should take and after reading this book, I feel more confident about teaching writing, but I have to admit that it still feels somewhat sporatic for my comfort. I have have hopes though as I have tried to implement various ideas and concepts from this book and will continue to improve and value the teaching of writing.

Ch. 10 Make Assessment Count

One of the first statements that I found interesting in this chapter was that placing students on a writing continuum can sometimes be helpful or perhaps a waste of time. We as teachers need to make sure that we are spending our efforts teaching effectively and not just trying to stick kids into a labeled writing stage. I also agree that we should not even attempt to score all students writing but to give them plenty of writing opportunities where they feel comfortable taking risks. I think that we must remind ourselves not to get too hung up on scoring writing with the six trait rubric. Scoring with a rubric is fine to occasionally assess a piece of writing however, we need to keep in mind the individual growth in a student that sometimes may not be fully represented in a rubric score. Finally, I continue to work on having the kids so some self assessing of their own writing. This has been difficult because after they've worked on piece they tend to think it's perfect! I think this goes along with increasing expectations for self editing their own writing. All in time!

Ch. 9 Conference with Students

This chapter helped ease my mind about conferencing. I too, always seem to become overwhelmed with trying to fit in all the conferences. I like the various types of conferencing that were suggested. It helped me realize that not every conference has to be a "sit down and fix all" meeting. One thing that still remains a puzzle to me is how to get the kids to do most of the editing and fixing. I know that it all boils down to expectations and frontloading, but I have yet to figure out how to raise students' personal level of responsibility. I really liked the description of the term frontloading. It's a concept that I've always been aware of and use but a new term and way to think about preparing the kids for writing. Finally, I think Regie makes a great point about always starting with the positives in a child's work and building a rapport of trust. Children seem so easily turned off with writing that we must make every effort to keep it positive in order for them want to grow as writers.

Ch. 8 Organize for Daily Writing

When I first read that Don Graves says that if we don't teach writing at least four days a week for forty-five minutes, then we shouldn't teach it at all, I felt a big oops! Although my kids do writing every day, we don't necessarily spend 45 minutes on it. I then stopped to think about all the writing that we may do throughout the day and that could total up to be forty-five minutes. So I'm hoping that small segments of writing throughout the day are effective as well. I do agree that we must value writing time and I'm working to make writing time a higher priority in my teaching. Another topic of this chapter that I found interesting is teaching students how to choose worthwhile topics. So often we are told not to give kids story starters. While I agree that kids should have freedom to pick their own topic, I often find that kids get overwhelmed sometimes if they're not give some choices or direction. I try to find an even balance of giving kids choice and sometimes directing them on a topic or choices of topics. One thing that my students have enjoyed is that they have a list of 100 topic ideas pasted in the cover of their journal. If they are struggling with what to write about they will often times pick one of those topics or springboard off a listed topic to get them started.

Ch. 7 Be Efficient and Integrate Basic Skills

Experience before label, a well known theme in brain based learning. We need to do the same for writing. Expose the children to a concept or skill and let them experience it before you ever attach a label or tell them the "skill" you're wanting them to learn. This chapter also discussed spelling expectations. I agree when Regie states that, "It is reasonable to expect students to be able to spell a bank of frequently used words correctly, even in drafts." I experienced this when I taught 2nd grade in another district. They used the Sitton Spelling Program and as 2nd graders there were 30 "No Excuse" words. They were the the first 30 Dolch high frequency words. The 3rd graders then had 40 words and each year there were 10 words added. Although the Sitton Program has been criticized in other ways, I truly witnessed that kids can and should be expected to have a bank of words that they are expected to spell correctly.

Ch. 6 Capitalize on the Reading Writing Connection

I so agree with this chapter when it states that, "Children who read literature.....become better writers than children who primarily read basal reading texts." Therefore, it's important to have children reading trade books and for the teacher to do read aloud in the classroom. Read aloud is something that I do in my classroom every day. It's a good wind down for the kids after lunch and more importantly, it offers us a great springboard for discussions on the author's writing. Another thought that stuck with me on this chapter is the importance of teaching children to reread their writing. Children often times forget or choose not to do this, however when they begin to share, they often find little mistakes that they have to verbally correct such as an omitted word or incomplete sentence. Rereading my writing is something that I've made a conscious effort to model and point out during shared writing or even writing notes on the board.

Ch. 5 Do More Shared Writing

The title of this chapter totally sums it up for me. I do need to do more shared writing. I used to do more word work when I worked with younger students but Regie suggests that it's good for older students as well. I enjoyed reading through her lesson dialog that she had when writing a story with her students. I have to admit that I often think that I have to have my "prewritten" product in my head before I start writing with students when in actuality I need to let the students guide the direction of the story and go with it. I like several of the ideas that Regie lists as tried and true and can't wait to try some of them out.

Ch. 4 Raise Your Expectations

I particularly found the part of this chapter about handwriting interesting. I agree that we should hold high expectations for neatness. I've become frustrated over the past few years with students entering third grade and still forming the letters incorrect. I think this is one more example of some of our expectations that get pushed aside because there seems to be so many other things to cover. Two other thoughts that I took away from this chapter are first, that students need to a have a good amount of independent writing each day. "Just as it is necessary to doa great deal of independent reading to become a competent reader, so too is it with writing." Secondly, one can never underestimate the power of kind words. We need to repair some of the negativity that some students already hold against writing and protect those that still hold the "I can," spirit.

Ch. 3 Share Your Writing Life

I really liked the quote from page 35, "Doing the task and feeling competent at it are two different things." Later the it tells how one teacher shared ..."I tried to impersonate what I thought a good writer would do. I finally realized I needed to be me." I personally can identify with both of these thoughts. This chapter was reaffirming for me. I know that I don't write enough and I'm working to increase that, but I do find myself organizing, thinking of my reader and constantly rereading my writing as I'm composing. I liked the idea of "snap shot writing." I will try that in my classroom. In the past I've done "quick writes" where you give the students a topic and ask them to write about it for 3-5 minutes. This exercise sometimes help that student who struggled at the "getting started" stage. They simply needed to write down the first ideas that came to their head, but there again, the students were given the topics to write on and so therefore didn't hold a personal value to them. My goal after reading this chapter is to increase my modeling and thinking out loud with my students.

Ch. 2 Start with Celebration

"Enjoyment and writing have not coexisted, and they must do so if all our students are to become proficient writers." This quote hung in my mind throughout the whole chapter. I do believe that most children start out with an enjoyment of writing but it's stifled at such an early age. As teachers we need to somehow keep the writers' spirit up. I believe in having students write about topics of their choice however, I have also seen the need to sometimes help narrow the topic. For many students, asking them to write about "whatever" can become scary and too overwhelming. We need to be cognisant of celebrating a student's risk taking in writing. This chapter has helped me become more aware of the need to acknowledge students' success at writing.

Ch. 1 Simplify the Teaching of Writing

Simplify the Teaching of Writing- Chapter 1

There's no doubt, as a whole, that students are much more motivated and successful when they are writing for authentic purposes. However, there are those students that sometimes still struggle to "buy into" the authenticity of a project. One of my top readers and student as a whole this year, is one of my weakest writers. If this book does nothing else for me, I hope that it will help me to help this student enjoy writing as opposed to him viewing writing as something to "get done" with the smallest amount of effort possible. I also hope that it will help me grow both as a writer and a teacher of writing. As I read through this chapter and took a look at my beliefs and practices, I came to the conclusion that my students do writing every day in various ways, but that I need to improve on modeling and giving them feedback on their writing. I also like the idea that less can be more; simplify the process and raise the expectations. I was so able to identify with the example of being overwhelmed when we have so many thoughts and ideas yet, we're suppose to create something on a big, blank sheet of paper. I think the author summed it up well, "It takes enormous energy, courage, confidence and skill, not to mention a positive attitude."