Chambers 1

Kate Chambers
ECI 509
Dr. Harrington
28 July 2016
Final Exam

Overview

This class has truly been life-changing for me in terms of how I think about teaching

writing. I have learned so many practical ideas and gained a deeper understanding of the building

blocks of a successful writing classroom. I cant wait to do so much better for my students this

school year- I have already started planning! Some of my biggest take-aways include the

importance of a writers workshop model, the need to build a community of writers, and the

value of frequent, deliberate modeling with my own writing and quality mentor texts. I also

gained a deeper understanding of the importance of teaching writing strategies and the necessity

of building my students foundational literacy skills. Finally, I feel much more confident in my

ability to hold effective conferences with my students.

Writers Workshop Model

First of all, I regret that I always thought writers workshop was a model that was meant

for elementary classrooms. If only I had taken this class sooner in my teaching career! I am very

motivated to use this model in my classroom this year, especially given the support of my expert

book, Lessons that Change Writers by Nancie Atwell, my LiveBinder, and all the notes Ive

taken from our readings, videos, and discussions with you and with my peers. Of these resources,

I do think that the videos might have been the most helpful- it was amazing for me to see how

those teachers manage their workshop. However, I very much appreciate the assignments and

discussions that pushed me to synthesize, reflect, and make connections because I know that is

how the ideas will stay in my long-term memory.

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I am thinking that the most beneficial part of the writers workshop may be that it will

help my students to become more independent writers. In the past, larger writing assignments

have felt so overwhelming because my students all need a lot of support. I dont know why I did

very little of the I do, we do, you do structure in my writing instruction, even though I would

always do it in my reading instruction. I think teaching reading came more naturally to me, and I

learned to prioritize reading over writing in my planning based on that level of comfort, plus

watching other ELA teachers in my school, who focus on reading in part because that is where

our students are tested. However, I now understand that the writers workshop method allows

reading and writing to be intertwined in a way that can only help my students progress so much

faster in both domains! I think the format of mini lesson followed by guided practice and/or

independent practice and conferencing followed by reconvening at the end to discuss and process

is brilliant and is best practice for helping anyone learn something new, especially students with

disabilities who need explicit instruction and a structured lesson to be successful. Furthermore,

developing more independent writers will allow me more time to have meaningful observations

and conferences, which will help me in developing mini lessons as well as in tracking IEP

progress.

Setting and enforcing clear expectations for writers workshop might be the most

important part of making it work for my students. I understand that students need to write often,

for extended periods of time, and for multiple, authentic purposes if they are going to develop

into strong writers. For this to happen, the writing environment has to be structured and

nurturing, with expectations that students understand and follow consistently. I love the idea of

explicitly explaining how students are expected to act in each stage of the workshop, and having

students practice until they get it right. I know I will need to make anchor charts and have the
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students be involved in creating and frequently reviewing these charts as a reminder of our

expectations. I think it will also be helpful for my students to view videos from other classes

showing them how to run a writers workshop. I loved the video you shared with us on how NOT

to peer review. I know my students can be very successful with peer conferencing if I give them

the right support to get there. Just as with academic concepts, my students will need frequent

modeling and guided practice of how to peer conference before I set them out to do it on their

own. I like the idea presented in a video of one of the teachers (Jack Wilde, I think) of having

students conference in groups of 4 first, so you can help them learn from each other and you.

This kind of explicit and careful guidance will help my students succeed in a writers workshop

model.

Another part of writers workshop that stood out to me this semester is the writers

notebook. Again, I have dabbled in this area before, but I struggled with staying consistent

throughout the year. At first I tried to use the notebooks for both reading and writing lessons, and

I can see a value in this, although some materials I have read and viewed this semester had the

perspective that it is better to keep it just a writers notebook. I will need to make this decision

soon as I plan my curriculum for the upcoming school year. Also, many of my students struggle

with organization, and I found that many did not keep up with their table of contents or keeping

their notebooks neat. Some of my students would open their notebooks to a random page to write

despite reminders to open to the next blank page and a bookmark. I think I will need to prioritize

the setup and organization of our notebooks and revisit it often throughout the school year if my

students are going to have a resource that is helpful. This is important because students need to

be able to quickly find their notes from a mini lesson, be able to locate their writing seeds

when they get stuck and dont know what to write, and so on. I am hoping that by making
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writing a bigger part of our curriculum, and making the notebooks truly valuable for the students,

they will feel more ownership.

Modeling (Teacher as Writer and Mentor Texts)

Through this class, I have learned the importance of mentor texts and how powerful they

can be for helping students learn to write. First, I realize how powerful it can be for students to

see me as a writer. To do this, I will need to share my writing with them and teach them how to

analyze it and give me meaningful positive and constructive feedback, which I may or may not

incorporate into my draft. This will model so many things including how to be vulnerable and

share your work and how to confer effectively. Also, through writing on my own, I am reminded

of the hardest parts about writing and what writers need to succeed. The last thing I want to do is

to give my students mini lessons that are not helpful! Sometimes I need to actually write in front

of them, as terrifying as it may be. My students need to see me struggle and see how many times

I pause and think, or re-read what I have so far, or change words to something better, and so on. I

think this part of modeling will be the most helpful to my students, who often seem to think that

some people are just good writers and others are not. I really want them to understand that it is a

complex process even for experienced writers.

In addition, Ive learned the power of using mentor texts to teach authors craft. I have

always believed in incorporating as much quality literature into the classroom as possible, and all

of my classes have several read-aloud chapter books that we enjoy together throughout the year.

However, we usually focus on comprehension of the story and reading strategies- I never truly

used read-alouds as a way to explore authors craft! I look forward to using many genres of

mentor texts, including picture books, which are more accessible for some of my students. As

recommended in our textbook, I will explicitly teach and model how to read with a writers
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eye, something that will help my students become better readers, writers, and test-takers.

Through this, I can give them the academic language to talk about writing, like leads, and

dialogue, and vignettes, words I heard students using in the videos week after week. I

believe my students writing will improve tremendously when they are given the skills to analyze

quality mentor texts and use them to guide their own writing instead of just a prompt and rubric.

I look forward to opening my year with Nancie Atwells heart-mapping lesson that leads to

poems, and with the Where Im From poem modeled after George Ella Lyons poem and my

rendition of it. The internet makes it so easy to find mentor texts from professional and student

writers, so I know that I need to put forth the effort to build quality sets of mentor texts.

Writing Strategies

The importance of teaching writing strategies is another big take-away for me. Again, I

think I do a good job of teaching reading strategies, but I have not typically been as comfortable

teaching writing. This seems silly to me, since I love to write, but I usually find it so easy and

enjoyable that it can be difficult to remember what it was like to be learning how to write.

Although writing is difficult for many people, the physical, mental, emotional, and social

disabilities faced by my students often make it extremely difficult for them to write, and that is

something I cant relate to, as much as I try to empathize with them. In this class I have learned

the importance of emphasizing that writing is a process, and actually following through with that

by teaching students strategies for the various stages of writing and giving students enough time

to really struggle through the challenges of the writing process.

Specific strategies I have learned in this class that are research-based to help students

through the writing process include goal setting and planning, seeking and gathering information,

record keeping and making notes, organizing and ordering notes and text, transforming and
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visualizing a character to facilitate written description, self-monitoring and checking to see if

goals have been met, and self-evaluating and assessing the quality of the text or proposed plans

for writing, revising and modifying text or plans for writing. Other important strategies include

self-verbalizing, meaning saying dialogue aloud or personal articulations about what needs to be

done, rehearsing, or trying out a scene before writing it, environmental structuring, like finding a

quiet place to write, time planning/estimating and budgeting time for writing, and self-

consequating, or providing yourself rewards for completing tasks. Once I read through this list in

chapter one of our Best Practices textbook, I knew this was a great compilation of the areas of

writing where my students struggle, and consequently where I can help them grow. Obviously I

will need to prioritize and take my time teaching these strategies, because I think there is nothing

less effective than throwing a bunch of strategies at students before they have time to really learn

them and internalize them! It will take lots of modeling, guided practice, independent practice,

and continuing of this cycle but I am confident my students can learn these strategies to help

them become more independent and self-assured writers.

Foundational Writing Skills

While I continue to believe that my students need to be challenged to progress as much as

possible in their writing, working towards grade-level standards when possible, I also recognize

the importance of building my students foundational writing skills. I think this is so important

because just like with reading, the writing process is hindered when a student has to concentrate

on the basics of writing. Quality ideas are not going to flow as smoothly when there are problems

with pencil grip, letter formation, spelling, sentence formation, and so on. I know many of my

students get frustrated with writing because their ideas come so quickly in their head and they

can often communicate them verbally, but the translation to writing is painfully slow. This hurts
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their motivation to write as well as their self-esteem. However, I will be the first to admit that I

am really just learning how to teach foundational writing skills. My secondary ELA training did

not necessarily prepare me for this part of teaching struggling learners. Though I know I had

classes in my undergraduate program that would have helped me in this area, I didnt have the

opportunity to practice on writers at such a lower level and therefore didnt have the transfer to

long-term memory. I dont regret my two student-teaching placements at the high school level

because they were great experiences and I may want to return to high school one day, but now I

am finding that I really need to build my repertoire of strategies if Im going to meet my students

where they are at and help them move to a higher level of writing.

Luckily, I am finding that there are many quality resources available through books and

the Internet that can help me with this struggle. For example, I am looking forward to finally

teaching spelling in a better way. According to our chapter one in our Best Practices textbook,

one research-based method for teaching spelling is that every 2 weeks I could introduce the class

to two contrasting spelling patterns and show them how I would sort words involving the two

patterns into different piles with hints on why each card is placed in a particular pile, like

emphasizing a specific sound in a word. This should lead students to discover and specifically

state (with my help) the rule underlying the spelling patterns. During the next two weeks,

students would search for words in their reading and writing that fit the patterns, learn to spell

common words that fit the patterns by playing games (like tic-tac-toe spelling), and build words

with the patterns by adding consonants, blends, or digraphs to rimes representing the pattern (e.g.

the rime at for short /a/). This method is one that I would use in my decoding class, where

students are at the same reading level. A method that I want to try in my resource language arts

class, where I have varied levels, is the personalized word study method described by Nancie
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Atwell in Lessons that Change Writers. I wont explain every step of the procedure, but I think

this method could really work for my students because the spelling list is so manageable (5

words a week), the students have ownership because the words are ones they misspelled in their

own writing, and the word study Atwell requires is multisensory, which helps all students learn

better. I also like that the partner tests and monthly follow-up reviews throughout the year are

focused on mastery and understanding mistakes, not necessarily a percentage right/wrong that

needs to be part of a grade. Plus, it does not sound like this method to teaching spelling takes up

a lot of time, which is important to me when we have so many parts of literacy to develop! With

all of these attributes, the word study method sounds like one that could really work for my

students and I hope it will. Many parts of this method were emphasized in chapter 11 in our

textbook as well, including manipulating the sounds in words, looking for spelling patterns,

periodic review, the Look-Say-Cover-Write-Check study method, especially for words that do

not fit a pattern, and self-correction of spelling errors. One big concern I have is that students

wont follow through with studying the words at home, but I am hoping that if I get their buy-in

and parent support, we will overcome this challenge.

Conferring with Students

How can I support you? is the approach I am hoping to take towards conferences when

I setup our writers workshop this fall. Watching so many videos where I could see how teachers

talk with their students was such an effective exercise for me. I took endless notes on this

subject, but I will do my best to summarize some of the highlights! First of all, I love the idea of

conferring as a type of formative assessment of the writer and his or her writing. As stated in one

of the videos, I truly believe that if you learn to watch and really listen to students, they will tell

you what they need from you. I want to make a better effort to pay attention to my students tone,
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facial expressions, and body language because middle school students are often tight-lipped

when it comes to asking for help. This will help me read how they feel and what is most

important to them in their writing. One-on-one and small group conferences seem like the perfect

way to personalize instruction so it is truly meaningful for the student(s). I can take brief notes

during or after the conference and that can help me plan for mini lessons and keep track of

progress towards writing standards and IEP goals.

In addition, I love that the right approach to conferring can build confidence in the writer.

I actually tried the How can I support you? approach in my writing camp today with a 7th

grader who Ive only known a few days, and it worked pretty well once I gave her a few options

of how I could be most helpful, like giving advice on what she has already written or talking

through her next ideas moving forward. How powerful it will be if my students become self-

aware enough to tell me what they need! I think this will need to be a combined effort with the

writing strategy instruction I mentioned earlier. It is clear to me from my three years of

experience teaching middle school students that they are very capable of metacognition but that

verbalizing it does not come naturally.

Finally, I feel like having these frequent conferences will be a great way to bring me

closer to my students. In every class there are students who warm up to you right away, and

students who hold back. I am hopeful that by giving my students the tools and environment they

need to succeed in writing, they will feel more motivated to write, and that I can empower them

and connect to them through our conversations about their work.

Building a Community of Writers

The understanding I am most passionate about after taking this class is the importance of

building a community of writers. I believe that I have not truly succeeded at doing this in the
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past, although I have had success with it here and there, times when students have celebrated

each others work and built each other up, but usually I feel like students had a hard time

breaking out of their cliques and I didnt push it after a while. However, I know I can do better,

and I think building a strong, supportive community of writers will be the most important part of

the writing environment. Many of my students are shy and hold back from their peers, especially

in our middle school when there is a culture of teasing and playfulness that can turn mean very

quickly. Combine this with my students struggling writing skills, and lack of self-esteem after

years in special education, and it is difficult to get students to open up and really work together in

a productive, positive way.

I learned so many great ideas in this class for building community that I find it difficult to

prioritize what has stood out to me the most. That being said, I believe one part of this will be

continuing to read and celebrate quality literature together. For example, my students talked

about Freak the Mighty over a year after we finished reading it as a class, and I know that

brought them closer. In addition, I think I will build relationships with my students through

sharing my writing with them. I also need to make time often for students to share and celebrate

their writing with each other, and enforce clear expectations about responding to each others

writing. Another thing I will do is to display student work to celebrate it and help my students

feel that they have an authentic audience. I started doing this some in the past year, but not

enough. I also will have students keep writing portfolios where they can collect their work as

evidence of their effort and progress. I plan to make at least some of this writing portfolio online,

to house the Prezis and Storybird creations the students make throughout the year. Finally,

creating assignments that are meaningful for students and allow them to write for authentic

audiences will create motivation for writing. I loved many of the ideas shared by Kelly Gallagher
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in Write Like This will modify them to meet my students needs. By holding my students to such

high expectations, showing how much I appreciate their effort and their work, and teaching them

to do the same for each other, I think our community of writers will become even stronger.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, I am grateful to have taken this class and feel like I have learned so much

in just a few weeks, much more than I could summarize in this paper. The challenge now will be

to take these big understandings and translate them into my classroom, but I am willing to work

at it because I know the effects will be huge. I appreciate the varied instructional and assessment

approaches you used in this class- what a great model for us as teachers. Although I did not

consider it one of my major shifts, I was happy to have the opportunity to write creatively and to

give and receive feedback from my peers. It rekindled my love of writing and reading poetry,

which I plan to share more openly with my students this year. I look forward to transforming the

writing culture in my classroom and I hope to help my colleagues do this as well. Thank you for

all the support!