Writing is a huge part of reading, as we’ve seen in our tutoring sessions over the last few weeks. My tutoring groups love to make up stories and then dictate them to me so that I can retell their story to them. Kids love hearing their words told to them in a story. Chapter 11 of the Devries text gives many strategies to help readers learn to become writers. The major difference in reading and writing as stated in the Devries text is that reading is using receptive language and writing is using expressive language. In other words reading is being able to decode words and comprehend what the author is telling you in the story. Writing is being able to relay your thoughts onto paper to get your ideas across to the readers. Each of these takes an enormous amount of practice to prefect. Although I do understand the need to teach proper grammar, spelling and punctuation, I feel that you also need to allow student to be creative and not have to worry about what the “technical” stuff the first time around. As author Gary Hogg stated “this is just the draft, rewrite and add details until you have it perfect”. Students need to be free to write what they think and feel not what they can spell. Once again I am brought back to my son, bless his heart, he loves to write but his se4very dyslexia means that his spelling is still done phonetically and is around a kindergarten level in 4th grade. He makes up these huge worlds in his stories that all have different characters, powers and settings. But if you picked up his writing you would think it was a string of meaningless letters. What I do is have him write a page of his story and then he retells it to me and used the Dragon Dictation software to transcribe it into a word document. I am listing to the story at the same time to make sure that the Dragon software does not make an error because he also has a speech delay that can cause confusion. Ashton now can write and be creative without worrying about using only words he can spell or that no one will ever be able to read it. This has made a huge impacted on his willingness to write creatively. Devries talks about being able to identify the stages of writing and I want to stress this because if you are seeing a delay in this you may have a reading issue with the child that is not being identified because they are so good at reading the context clues that the reading issues may go unnoticed until 3rd grade.
I have researched the Dragon Dictation but have never seen it used. I am glad that this helps your son create his stories, plus it is probably really fun to use! Yes, I also agree with Gary Hogg, and this is also noted in the chapter as well, we need to not worry about spelling, punctuation, and other mechanics while creating our writing. This is to worry about while doing the editing and revising part. This is why it is important to teach students the steps to writing so that they will enjoy writing and not feel the stress of getting it right the first time, so that the students can focus on the details of their story. Speaking of details, my students are lacking the ability to include many details into their writing. So while grocery shopping I came across a bag of a crazy bag jelly beans and thought it would be a cool idea to have students provide many details to describe the flavor of the jelly beans they eat, so to describe them to another person. We will see how this goes! I thought it may or may not strengthen their detail skills when they do their writing.
Chapter eleven is based on writing. In the class meeting, we learned how Mrs. Stoppel has the students write their own stories, publish the stories, and then give students the chance to share their stories. This is what this made me think of while reading the chapter. Also, in my tutoring group, we are creating our own books while also including vocabulary from our word wall. In this chapter, the author tells about the commonalities between reading and writing. It was very interesting to read through this information. Reading and writing depend on the same cognitive systems and share many of the same goals or skills. However, reading is receptive language, while writing is expressive language, and readers decode words while writers encode words. So there are differences as well. I do like that this chapter talks about the stages of emergent writing. We have learned about this topic previously but I am glad it covered it again. I think this is great information for educators to know about and what our students should be doing at each stage. Also like chapter 9 based on comprehension of informational text, there is another list of skilled and unskilled writer characteristics. The skilled writers list is a great idea to have in mind while creating goals for my students. The unskilled provides me with ideas of what I need to look out for.
Danielle, Good point of what we had learned from the recordings about the student's writing their own stories. There are a lot of quality things that come from students being their own authors. It is weird how reading and writing can be so similar yet have great differences. Ricky
Danielle, I like that you are having your tutoring groups work on their own books. I have been having my 1st graders add one page to the stores that we read for guided reading each week. They really get into this and have a blast doing this each week. I have been impressed at how detailed some of them have been since we are reading stories at the B/C level. I really liked how this chapter really tied reading and writing together because I feel that these two subjects really should be taught at the same level. Great Post.
Chapter 11 of the text was all about writing. This was a good chapter because it was able to give an alternative view to the reading and writing process. The text cites that there are many similarities between the process mainly in terms of cognitive factors. Some of the similarities is that while in reading a person will have thoughts and information while writing means the person puts it down on paper. Writing is simply the idea of knowledge being put down on paper. One of the differences is that reading is something that brings in information while writing is the expressive form of information. The text was also very descriptive about the writing process. Including things like the per-writing stage where writers gather information, get instruction and generally get ready for writing Then other things like the rough draft and revision. I really liked the idea of the attitude surveys. That would be very useful for getting a good idea of what a teacher might want to lead students with their writing. I have always liked to write finding it very relaxing and theraputic. The problem being that sometimes I am not always the best technical writer. I have found the extreme need to use things like the revision and reviewing time to double check the technical part of writing. I had a teacher once say that everyone can be a reader but not everyone can be a writer. Which I tremendously disagree with. Everyone can do what they want and it does not always have to be great.... though helpful to write with quality.
I myself was never good at reading which resulted with not being a very good writer. Today, after many years of practice my reading is great, I enjoy it, and my writing skills have bloomed as well. I love to be articulate about my thoughts and use words that grasp more of my ideas and thoughts with feeling. I will try and teach this to my students.
I also liked the attitude surveys section. I can say I had never heard of these before this chapter. I feel they could be very beneficial to a teacher and would cover all the students interests and attitudes of writing in one survey. There was a lot that went into the pre-writing strategies that I never would have thought of. As an adult you just start writing or typing. This chapter did a good job of breaking down what students should be thinking of before, during, and after writings.
I think finding something the interests the students, which there will be many different interests, enhances the student's motivation which will help the student learn to like to write and therefore become more skilled at writing. I see a lot of students get discouraged because they don't enjoy writing and therefore don't put in the effort.
Chapter 11, gave great insight on the importance of ‘Writing’. One would only realize just how much from outside sources and knowledge is involved when casting on the concept to “write”. I found it interesting early on when Elbow argues that, “very young children can write before they read, can write more than they can read, and can write more easily than they read – because they can write anything they can say.” P. 283, oh how true this sounds. Especially if you have little ones around your house and they share with you a story they have wrote, yet it only makes sense to them. The steps to creative writing however starts young and teaching writing begins with comprehending a story, plot, idea, body etc. This chapter also mentioned that reading and writing enhances one another. I honestly never sat there long enough to think so deeply about these two strands of development; but DeVries continues to explain that, “the use of cognitive processes such as gathering ideas” does in fact enhance writing. DeVries also continues to say, “ that English learners use writing to express themselves.” Technology effects everything in our lives these days and it continues to bring reading and writing to help with create compositions such as: Art, photography, and/or music. These great ideas can also be shared with people worldwide. Two big differences between reading and writing: 1.) readers decode words and writers encode words automatically. 2) Readers must comprehend what others have written; writers must know their audience. At this point I do not have any questions. This chapter covered many wonderful points that I found interesting and meaningful for when I get into the classroom. This chapter reminded me about my 1st grade daughter who is learning to write, stories. They began this year by being their own “author”, I believe the teacher discussed this activity in one of her live chat sessions. My daughter loved being able show everyone her work, read her stories, and understand how stories are put together.
I really love the quote you mentioned in your post! It is so inspiring and fun to hear some of the stories that little ones can put together. My daughter is only 2 and a half, and sometimes I cannot believe some of the things she says and does.
I'm glad that your daughter is becoming an author already in the 1st grade. I bet they have so much fun writing and sharing their stories. What a fun way to get them excited about writing. I have noticed all too much that as the students get older, they begin hating to write. Maybe starting out at younger ages can combat this stigma that writing has gotten.
This chapter talks about how writing can and should be connected to reading. The two areas of reading and language arts contain many of the same goals that have to do with letter and word recognition strategies. Writing can help the students with these sort of reading skills that they need work on. The book discusses the 7 stages of emergent writing and shows examples of each from the drawing stage to the conventional spelling stage. It is neat to see the progression this way in the students as they are developing their writing skills. The book also discusses the stages of the writing process that should be taught to students from an early stage in their writing progression. The stages are prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and publishing. These steps will help ensure that students will develop good writing skills. Another important feature in this chapter was the section that describes the 6 + 1 Trait Writing Assessment and Instruction framework. This framework was developed to work together to provide a student with the necessary foundation for becoming good writers. The framework consists of idea/content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation. The chapter then goes on to list many writing activities from guided writing to diamante poems and will be a good resource for future writing activities.
2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue.
One question that I have in regards to teaching writing is how to really incorporate your grammar instruction in to this as well. Whether a school uses the Shurley English series or something different such as Write Source, there needs to be a grammar element. I think the two can combine together nicely into one lesson per day, but I would like to see how an experienced teacher gets the flow down with these two subjects.
3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently?
I didn’t realize how important writing could be to help with reading and vice versa. I don’t think students are spending enough time writing in the school that I am working at, because they all seem to hate it a great deal. I find that they take many shortcuts when writing and don’t use the best grammar and sentence structure. The school just got rid of Shurley English series because they weren’t using it and moved to Write Source. I think our school focuses too much on the assessment preparation for Reading and not as much on the writing and grammar element. I now see that these two things (reading and writing) can lend a lot to one another and it makes me more excited to include writing activities for my students.
4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience.
As mentioned above, I have not seen a lot of writing in my 2 years as a para. Our Special Education students are asked to write in their journals a few times a week, but the entries are poorly structured and hurried through. In addition, there is no real follow up with the students regarding their grammar, punctuation, and other details, so I am wondering what they are getting out of it. I plan to include writing often in my lesson plans so that the students are not missing this important reading and language arts element.
I agree with you that students are not spending enough time writing in school! I was talking to a friend who is a teacher and she was concerned that her students were not getting enough time in the day to work on writing. She said that her schedule for her students is so jammed that it is hard to get a good chunk of time to focus on it. One idea that I have for when I teach is to maybe have my students journal at the beginning or end of the day.
Chapter 11 is about writing and helping struggling writers. The beginning of the chapter shows us how much reading and writing are connected to each other. Many of the same reading strategies with letter-sounds and words along with fluency are put into writing. There are multiple different stages of writing and teachers need to know this based on the grade they are teaching. Teachers cannot expect a Kindergartner to write every word correctly and understand the concept of inventive spelling. The 6+1 traits of writing seem like a good useful assessment of students writing and with helping them write successfully. Breaking down and guiding students in all these steps could help all writers gain an understanding of the important parts of writing. The chapter talked a lot about writing for an audience. I feel this is an important factor in writing and students should be given audiences to write to as much as possible, this would help them improve and think more critically in their writing; depending on who they're writing to and their knowledge. In interventions it did well to break down activities for the 6+1 trait. I feel it would take some time to do, but could greatly benefit the students.
When reading this chapter I thought a lot about my Reading internship last semester. She had her students do journals every day after the whole class reading. These journals were written back and forth between the students and their parents (an audience). Many students considered this there favorite part of school, even over recess. I think having an audience is a key factor in getting students interested in writing. I saw just how much most students worked on their writing since their parents were going to read them that night. The internship meeting with Gary Hogg also reflected in this chapter. He talked a lot about sounding smarter by using adjectives, adverbs, and fancier words. I think showing the students just how much better their story sounds when changing a simple word would make them feel good about their writing. Finally using computers for blogs, pen-pals, and other things is now a very large part of writing. This will be something that has to be added to writing schedules. Computers for writing are going to be a large part of the students lives as they grow and we need to understand this and incorporate this often in class, unfortunately I do not see it much in my internship classroom while I feel it should be.
I really like the idea your Reading internship teacher did with the journals! That is a great idea to have them write to each other or their parents!! I may keep this idea for when I get into the classroom!
Chapter 11 was about writing and the direct relationship of writing to reading. According to our textbook, "reading and writing depend on the same cognitive systems- semantic, syntactic, graphophonic and pragmatic"(pg. 283). The semantic components of writing is when students recognize that letters form words and how to use words appropriately. The graphophonic component of writing is when students learn letter sound relationships. This includes know whether to use silent 'e' for a word when writing it. The Syntactic component of writing is when students know how to organize their thoughts and form sentences and paragraphs. I did not have any questions or contradictions on this chapter. I felt it was very informative and explain the process of writing. This chapter made me look differently at writing. I have always known writing was important but after reading this chapter I understand how writing and reading go hand in hand. With the tutoring group I have they have been writing in a journal twice a week. I think I need to puss them more with their writing and have them write more and using more details. My students enjoy writing but they tend to only write just what they have to and no more. Next week in I hope to encourage them to write using their imaginations.
Rashawna, I think you covered all the elements discussed in the chapter very well. I also find it hard to get studnets motivated to learn. Actually when I was reading your post about your tutoring group and how they aren't very motivated to write I was thinking about the Gary Hogg presentation and how his teacher turned his bad behavior into writing. I wonder if this would work with some of our tutoring students. Or, when you're teaching and you have a student want to talk about what he did that weekend you could have them write it in their journal and you can read it later.
Chapter 11 was all about writing. Writing I feel is somewhat lost at an early age with schools these days because teachers are being pushed to get other information hit upon. Moving on, the text states that "reading and writing are complex cognitive developmental process that depend on the same cognitive systems- semantic, syntactic, graphophonic, and pragmatic." Reading and writing go hand and hand and as future educators we all need to keep that in mind. The text tells us that not only do they have similarities in cognitive processes but they have many of the same goals/skills. I was very interested to read that the two big differences between reading and writing is that reading is considered a receptive language art and readers must comprehend what others have written; where writers must know their audience, choose the genre that best expresses their ideas, choose words that wiull alllow the audience to understand the message. The chapter also discusses the components of writing- graphic, semantic, graphophonic, and syntactic, as well as the seven stages of writing; drawing, scribbling. letter-like forms, letter strings, copying, invented spelling, and conventional spelling. I was very much appriciative of the protion of the chapter that discussed different activities appropriate for each of the stages of writing. It's important to allow children to go through these stages and allow them to participate in activities that adhere to each of the stages as well. This will support the developments of each stage and lead to hopefully better writing in the future. I was also very into the information presented in teh 6+1 trait writing assessment and instruction model within the chapter. It's important for each writer to know and understand the traits before writing at a later stage (idea/content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation) I didn't have any questions about the chapter and I am excited to get to put to use the activities that the text had at the end of the chapter.
I agree with you that at times writing does get pushed aside, at least until students get into upper elementary or middle school and they have a language arts course. While reading the chapter my thoughts even led to how technology has perhaps influenced and changed peoples writing skills. Writing and technology were stressed, but one of my favorite activities was the pen pals. I would love to do this and have students write and mail true letters to students in another country. The art of writing is disappearing and I think a lot of it has to do with the push on technology, emailing, texting, etc. Just for an example, in my social studies internship the students are learning about ancient Greece and I would love to see them find a classroom of students in Greece to pair up and pen pal with. I think this would be a wonderful extension activity to learn about their lives and customs. Okay, that's enough on that! I enjoyed your post and agreed with you about the stages of writing and activities we can do with students or even our own children to help develop their writing skills at an early age.
I really liked the beginning scenario of chapter 11. I think most teachers, like Mr. Burns, just want to convey their love for a subject to their students and they try to find ways to do that. The writing workshop is a wonderful idea and lets students get creative, but in this time of accountability we still have to find ways to help our students do well on their state mandated assessments. I thought Mr. Burns classroom was a great example of looking at the tests and finding out exactly what the students need to know and do, and then finding strategies and activities to achieve their goal. I also appreciated the collaboration with other teachers and integration across other subjects. Chapter 11 was also wonderful at explaining the reading/ writing connection, as well as some true differences. There are five aspects of language that students must utilize when they write; they are graphic, semantic, graphophonic, syntactic, and pragmatic. Figure 11.6 was excellent at outlining the characteristics of skilled and unskilled writers, which I found helpful. I also thought figure 11.8, the checklist for proofreading was fantastic and hope to use it in the future. As a mother and pre-service teacher I am so fascinated with the stages of emergent writing. I find the beginning stages of drawing, scribbling, and letter writing very interesting and liked how the seven stages of emergent writing were listed in figure 11.1 as well as the examples in figure 11.2. I love watching kids get creative and work so hard to create, draw, and write. This reminded me of some things we learned in the elementary art course. I just love how everything ties together sometimes! I wish I had read this chapter sooner because I have a tutoring student that hates writing and I have a hard time getting her to write anything down. I get one word or one idea and very short sentences from her. I think there were some good strategies in here that I would have liked to have tried with her to see if it would improve her writing or her attitude about writing. I did have my students write poems about themselves and draw a self-portrait. They did acrostic poems with their name and they turned out wonderful, but I wish I would have had all the poem ideas from this chapter to utilize while teaching them about the poems. The chapter emphasizes the importance of getting students to write and share their writing with others and I couldn’t agree more! During my RLA internship I was in a first grade classroom and the teacher stressed the importance of writing and sharing. The students had the opportunity to write in their journals every day. Most of the time it was over a topic of their choosing, but occasionally she would give them prompts. The teacher had a karaoke machine in her classroom and the students would use the microphone to share their journals. The students loved it and it was a great way to get them excited about writing.
I like how you said we should have read this chapter sooner. It would have been useful to read the whole textbook before we started tutoring, huh? However, I think reading about it after we've seen the problem helps us put it into context. We can now visualize the things we should have done and how they would have worked because we have had the experiences before we read about it.
I also love reading about emergent writing. My kids are 5 and are in the invented spelling stage. I love reading these chapters and getting ideas for what I can do with them. Hopefully it will give me experience for when I am in the classroom!
Chapter 11 spoke about writing. The text states that reading and writing depend on the same cognitive systems. These systems include; syntactic, graphophonic, semantic, and pragmatic. Although both reading and writing depend on the same cognitive systems, they have two major differences. Writing is considered expressive language because it involves the act of conveying a message, writing also encodes words automatically. Reading is considered receptive language because it involves receiving a message, reading also involves decoding words. Emergent writing has seven steps to it according to Zecker. The seven stages are; drawing, scribbling, letter-like forms, letter strings, copying, invented spelling, conventional spelling. There are many differences between skilled and unskilled writers. Skilled writers tend to find more on the topic, write with an audience in mind, have an inner voice, and include details and elaborate. Unskilled writers write about only what they know, they have no idea of an audience, and they struggle with mechanics. I thought that it was very important for the text to mention that developing writers need to feel good about they work and sharing and displaying their work is important. I felt that the information presented in this chapter was easy to follow and the information made sense to me. I have notices some writings that look as though help is needed. I feel that these writers need more help into knowing what exactly to look for to be a skilled writer. Many students that I see race to write the sentence instead of thinking about how to expand on what they are writing about. What I would have liked to see more of in this chapter is more examples of correct writing at each grade level. This chapter gives me a totally new view on writing and how strips it down and teach my students to become skilled writers and enjoy the process of it.
Hanna- In my opinion, I think some of the deficits we see in writers these days stems from the students having no model of what to do or "how" to do it. You can write a topic on the board- "Over the three day weekend I _________" for children to begin writing. However, I don't see anything more than this. There is no mention of editing their work, adding more detail, or even rereading their work to see if it makes sense. This is really sad to me. The other day, this example was put up for morning work for my second grade intern students. Some literally wrote 2 sentences and were done. There was no editing, there was no checking punctuation, capitalization, spelling errors...the students weren't even directed on resources in their desk or elsewhere to help them with spelling! There is no word wall (which really shocks me!) and stretch spelling or even sounding it out I found is not even something they do. I was totally blown away. I think if teachers modeled more and actually taught each process our young writers would be better and it would definitely build a solid foundation as they advance into higher grades.
This chapter was all about writing, how it relates to reading, the stages of emergent writing, the stages of the writing process, and how we can improve students’ writing skills through strategies such as guided writing, 6 + 1 Trait writing, and other techniques.
First, reading and writing depend on the same cognitive systems (semantic, syntactic, graphophonic, and pragmatic). Writing is an expressive language art because it involves processing words and ideas to create a message unlike reading (receptive), which receives and processes the message from outside sources. Also, writers must encode words instead of decode words like reading. This is an important skill that will help reading skills.
The stages of emergent writing are drawing (pictures to represent words), scribbling (lines and marks), letter like forms (the lines and marks resemble letters), letter strings (letters the child knows, some patterns), copying (child copies environmental print), invented spelling (connection of letters to sounds), and conventional spelling (most words spelled correctly). There are appropriate activities to do for each stage. For the invented spelling stage, “share the pen” is useful because it gradually lets the student do more and more of the writing. It starts with the teacher writing most of the words; over time the student will be able to sound out more words with the teacher only filling in a few. For conventional spelling, using sound boxes to help children with unknown words is beneficial.
The writing process includes the stages of prewriting (gathering ideas, thinking about structure), drafting (writing without regard to spelling and mechanics), revising (adding or removing detail), editing (refining spelling and mechanics, through self, peer, and teaching assistance), and publishing (putting words into books or print, sharing inside or outside the classroom). Unfortunately, I have never seen the full writing process despite my semester in RLA internship. I saw a lot of writing and attempts at writing, but never any prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, or publishing. My internship was in first grade, and I wonder if this was too young for the process? I definitely saw some publishing and slight editing in kindergarten. Another thing I saw in kindergarten was student critiques. One or two students would get to show their work, while others students first had to state what they liked about it, then the other students asked questions about it, and finally they offered suggestions to improve it.
One thing that bugged me about my RLA internship was that there was a reading workshop every day (a short whole group lesson on a writing skill) but then when the kids went to write they didn’t practice the skill at all. I thought this was a tragic mistake because unless the kids get immediate, guided practice with the skill they just won’t remember it.
Amy- I agree with you that I never saw any "processes" of writing before either. I too worked with first grade and now second grade and it seems if they are given a topic to write on, they write a few sentences and are done. I don't see the teachers asking them to go back and check for spelling errors, check for punctuation, add more detail, etc. If this really begins at a certain age or grade-level, I would like to know. It seems though even the younger ages should be at least doing dome of this and the teachers should be explaining and modeling them.
Amy- I was just saying in my blog how discouraged I am after reading this chapter in regards to the lack of writing instructions within the school where I work as a Para educator. It would seem to me that the writing process should be as important as the reading content due to the fact that reading and writing go together. I can remember writing being an everyday part of our lessons when I was in school, and the process was taught as well. In my opinion there is too much emphasis placed on the subjects that are assessed within the state standards and not enough emphasis placed on areas such as writing and the writing process. Like LeAnn said, it is important at an early age that teachers provide writing instruction and model to their students as well.
Amy, after reading your response I was very saddened to hear that students you were observing were not using the steps to writing. Their teacher is failing them in regards to writing. These steps I can remember using as a child and I still use them today. I always brainstorm what I am going to write still to this day. These steps are so important and something the students will use for the rest of their lives. Thanks for sharing your personal experiences.
1. Analysis of the reading/issue. 2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue. 3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently? 4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience.
Chapter 11 in our DeVries text is over Writing. Reading and writing share many of the same cognitive processes as well as many of the same goals. There are two main differences though in reading and writing: reading involves receiving a message, but writing involves creating and conveying a message; when reading you must comprehend what the author has written, but when writing you must know your audience and select the genre that will best express your ideas and the words you chose to convey that message. There are seven stages for emergent writing: drawing, scribbling, letter-like forms, letter strings, copying, invented spelling, and conventional spelling. Writing is a skill which needs to be developed. A child must go through the scribbling stage before they go through a copying stage. Each individual stage is important and builds upon the next. Like I have seen in my interning classrooms as well as what Mrs. Stoppel has mentioned in her lectures, unfortunately there are children that are beginning school that do not even know how to hold a pencil correctly. This puts them at a disadvantage to those children who have been given writing utensils early on in life to practice with and were worked with and taught how to form letters or even the shapes that is needed to begin to form letters. As a future teacher, I am going to need to spot these children who are at a disadvantage and work with them. If they cannot correctly hold a pencil or do not even know letter-like forms, we can’t expect them to do letter strings or even invented spelling if they do not know what to do with a pencil. In this week’s reading we also learn about the writing process. There is the pre-writing stage, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. What is important about this that I learned in the reading is that just because you schedule the time in your day for writing doesn't ensure that all of your students will develop good writing skills. You can’t tell your students to do the different writing stages and expect they know what to do. The teacher needs to give assistance to the struggling writer and teach them how to complete each of the steps in the writing process. I witnessed this the other day with my second grade class where I am interning. They were given a topic to write on. Some of the children wrote a sentence or two and were done. I asked if they went back and revised their work- did they edit it, check for spelling errors, and add more detail? Some of them looked at me like I had two heads! I was shocked that for second grade they didn't know what the writing process was. This is something I definitely will address in my classroom with my students one day.
I thought you did a great job outlining the chapter and focusing on the important issues. Your statement regarding writing and ensuring students develop good writing skills is important for all educators to understand and work with the individual needs of each student. In regards to your comments on second graders not understanding the writing process, it could be that this is not addressed until later in the year. In my daughter’s first grade class they are learning how to appropriately structure and write a sentence.
The reading-writing connection is related cognitively and also they share similar goals. When students read and write they use cognitive processes such as gathering data, questioning, and hypothesizing. Reading requires that the student use background knowledge and connect it to new information that they are reading. Writing requires students synthesize their thoughts to articulate a message. The goals and skills are divided into seven goals and skills. When reading these goals I found that some of them have been used in my tutoring sessions. There are four components of writing, graphic, semantic, graphophonic, and syntactic. I try to incorporate writing in every lesson, each student in my tutoring group has a personal journal that they write in and the writings or drawings are related to the guided reading, read aloud or activity that they will do or have done during the session. The chapter then goes into the writing workshop and the stages of writing. I have experienced this last semester when I was in a fifth grade classroom. I was able to see the writing process from initial brainstorming, drafting, revising, and then the final written work. I was also able to be there before, during and after state assessments so I could actively participate in activities centered on the six trait writing process. The students were frequently reminded of sentence structure, word choice, and conventions. Students were encouraged to use dictionaries and thesauruses’ when writing. Through my own personal experience I remember there being a big focus on 6-trait writing during school.
One of the key points that this chapter stresses is how important writing is when it comes to reading. The chapter stresses how writing has changed in the last decade, and I totally agree with that. In the classrooms where I work, I am not seeing near as much writing instruction as I am with other subjects that are addressed in the state standards tests. The four aspects in language that effect writing that were discussed were graphic, semantic, graphophonic, and syntactic. I enjoyed reading about Zecker’s seven stages of emergent writing, which were drawing, scribbling, letter-like forms, letter strings, copying, invented spelling, and conventional spelling. Each stage was explained examples were shown as well. I am a very visual learner, so I liked the fact that examples were provided with an explanation of each of the stages. In my opinion, the different stages are amazing and from ages 2-7 children really advance in the writing process drastically. They talked about different activities for ELL students and provided a summary and description of the stages of writing development between English, Spanish and bilingual speaking students. There was also a topic describing the differences between both skilled and unskilled writers. It is important as an educator to know these characteristics and be able to apply them to teaching instructions. 6+1 Trait Writing Assessment is something we do in the school where I work also. There are strategies that start in third grade to help advance the writing process for students when they are assessed over writing. I loved that the book provided strategies for connecting the reading and writing process. They also provided activities for each stage of the 6+1 Trait Writing. During my tutoring sessions I have read two Judy Blumes books and my students really enjoy her books. I noticed that she was one of the author’s that has different writing activities on her site. I am glad that the chapter gave the different authors and their websites for educators to explore. I will definitely be using them in the future also. I guess one of the questions that I have for this chapter’s reading is how much is writing assessed in regards to formal assessments? In other words, is it done every year, or are there only certain years during the state assessments that writing is addressed? Before reading this chapter, I didn’t really realize the connection that reading and writing had with one another. It made me see that one cannot exist without the other really. I guess I am just not seeing it as much as I think I should in the school where I work and I am left wondering why it is not included more in the teaching instructions. Now of course this is just my opinion, but as a Para I am seeing all of the content focus being placed on those subjects that are tested within the state standards, which leaves writing out a lot. If I do see writing in journals, there is no emphasis placed on the writing process, and the stages of creating a skilled writer that were discussed in the chapter reading. I guess this chapter leaves me a bit disappointed that more emphasis is not placed within the school where I am working.
Chapter 11 is all about writing. Reading and writing are of course linked together and have quite a few similarities. Cognitive processes like questioning, hypothesizing and gathering together ideas are all used in both reading and writing Reading and writing also have some the same goals. Some goals they share are being able to automatically recognize words or write words, being able to connect words that you know with words that you do not, and connect spelling with meaning. There were 2 differences stated in the book between reading and writing and that is reading is considered a receptive language art where writing is considered to be an expressive language art. The second difference listed was readers must be able to comprehend what other people have written where the writer needs to know the audience they are writing for. The last difference is that the readers decode words, and writers encode words. The chapter goes on to discuss writing instruction by going through the components of writing which are graphic, semantic, graphophonic, and syntactic. I really liked that it went through the stages of emergent writing since most of my experience has been helping to teach students in kindergarten and first grade. The author lists activities that can be used for students in the different stages of emergent writing. The chapter describes many writing activities and strategies that can be very helpful in helping to teach students to write. I really like the Parodies activity that can be used with books that have repetitive text, which many of the guided reading books we used in these sessions had in them. Another activity that would have been fun to d with my students is the acrostic poems. I am wishing we had more time to work with our students to do more of these activities that we are reading about each week. It is a bummer when you read about something really cool to do with the students but you are unable to due to time constraints. There are actually quite a few activities I would really have loved to do with my students but was not able to due to the short amount of time we had in each session to get everything done. The author mentioned the ReadWriteThink website which is an excellent resource and one I have used.
I also wish we had more time! I am always seeing great activities that I would like to incorporate into my lessons but there just isn't enough time. I hope that I will be able to use a lot of these strategies and activities in my future classroom.
Chapter 11 discusses Writing. I really liked this chapter because I think that Writing and Reading go hand in hand. I have really tried this semester in my tutoring sessions to incorporate Writing into our lessons. The beginning of the Chapter discusses the Reading-Writing Connection. It discusses the similarities and differences between the two. So far this semester I have found that it helps my students to write the vocabulary words when we are first introduced to them. Pages 286 and 287 show examples of Drawings that students have done and what stage they are at when they drew them. I remember learning about these stages and being completely suprised that you could tell at what age or stage they were at just by looking at their drawings. In my RLA internship I was in a Kindergarten class and the teacher would often suggest that the student draw a picture of the word they are wanting to write if they don't know it. page 288 in Figure 11.2 gives the suggestion that the student draw a picture. I really like this idea because I think it helps the student to feel that they can still get their message across. Overall I enjoyed reading throug Chapter 11 and found that alot of my thoughts on writing were confirmned throughout the book.
Tammi I incorporated writing into my sessions as well. I wanted the students to connect writing and reading together. We wrote poetry, and short stories. I also had them create new endings for stories we read. They had to write sentences containing sight words that we were working on as well as phonics skills for the day. I like the idea of using a picture, and this is how so many of them are reading bigger words like doctor, nurse, flower. I enjoyed Ch 11 as well.
Christine, I am glad to hear that others used drawing. I feel like I used it quite a bit with my students just to give them a few seconds to process. Sometimes I would have them draw as I did the verbal review - they could draw whatever came to mind just to help them get into the lesson because they are such doodlers and I wanted to let them use their crutch and stay involved in the lesson.
Chapter 11 covers writing and the first part of the chapter connects reading and writing through cognitive processes in gathering ideas, questioning, and hypothesizing. The differences in writing and reading include reading involves receiving a message and writing involves expressive language arts. Some of the components of writing are semantic, graphophonic, and syntactic. The writing process and writing workshops were also mentioned. I can remember as a child drafting and revising with editing over and over. However, we never published anything and I would love to do that for my students. Gary Hoggs spoke on this very thing and I would like to create an environment to which he referred to. I love the idea of portfolios; we did one for our tutoring sessions. We included poetry, short stories, and illustrations that students had created. In the chapter it also discusses assessments. I never realized how important assessing could be. When I was a kid a teacher gave me a grade and went on. I love the rubric example on page 300; this would be a great tool for assessing knowledge. In the Activity section I really liked the interactive writing “Sharing the Pen” activity. The ideas of the teacher scribing the ideas and then having the student gradually take over the pen. My FAVORITE is the POW, I want to make a poster out of this and hang it on my wall for writing. P-pick your own ideas, O-organize your thoughts, using notes, and W-write your ideas (And Pow you’re a writer!) Of course, the Tree is good too. I have always loved poetry so I really enjoyed the DIAMANTE activity (seven-line poem). To sum up this chapter it is important as teachers that we teach students to write by modeling and mentoring in the five steps of writing and make it fun using different strategies.
Sometimes I feel like a broken record. I always wish that I read more of the textbook before the bulk of the semester as over. Every semester, with the lone exception of the book When Kids Can’t Read, I read just the sections required and always find myself thinking “Man, I wish I knew that a few weeks ago!” This week was not an exception to the rule. There are several things that I wish I had read about before beginning my work with my students. I wish I knew more about evaluating writing instruction and more about the 6+1 trait writing. Most importantly, I wish I knew more about some of the interventions that would have been a big hit. While we did do some interactive writing it would have been helpful to know more about adding the 6+1 to it. I think the one idea I wish I had tried with them was on page 308, the idea of using expository frames to introduce sequencing. We worked a lot on sequencing activities and they always struggled with it. I bet this would have been perfect for them. My question about this chapter is about the activity on page 306 on Using Concrete Examples. My students often don’t understand examples. Part of this is because they have a hard time comparing and contrasting things, they have a poor grasp of illustrative language, and they were very confused by the idea of homophones/double meanings/or adding commas to change meaning and they despised our poetry section. Would it be best to stick to some of the tried and true examples discussed in the chapter or tackling something like #5 or 6 to help them better understand the concept. I wonder if using some of the poetry ideas might have been helpful with the twins to help them learn to like poetry more. They were so resistant that I feel I should have pushed it a bit more to help them find a level of comfort with it.
I feel that using some of the websites for helping them to better develop their writing schools would have been of assistance to them as well.
Like you, I wish I could have read this entire book before beginning our tutoring, but the great news is that we will have this book AND the experience from our tutoring sessions in our toolbox as we begin teaching. The activity on page 306 are examples, but they are also for grades 5-8. I did poetry with my group of kids in my tutoring sessions, but I found some really fun poetry that I know kids enjoy. We did Miss Mary Mack and used jump ropes after we read it and learned it well in a few sessions. For the next session, we had a camp-out and I used poetry in song with the camp song Boom Chicka Boom and they really loved that. I think it really has to be age appropriate and fun for you too! I think I may have had more fun watching them learn it and then letting them branch out on their own and be creative with it by inventing new ways to sing it.
You are not alone in how you feel about wishing you knew more about something that we have read about before planning your lessons. It seems like each week there is something that we have learned that would have been great to include during a lesson, but by that time it is too late. At least we eventually become aware of it and can use it later on in our teachings. I am sorry to hear about the struggles you have had with your students when it comes to using examples. I have had my own share of struggles. It is interesting to see that things that seem so simple and easy for us to understand can actually be very difficult for our students to comprehend. That is probably why we do get so frustrated when we see activities or strategies that we think could be very beneficial for the students we are working with, after the point.
Jessica, I had an example of double meaning in my last unit. One vocabulary word was "marine" with the definition of relating to the sea. One student was quite excited because he knew the meaning "someone in the military". He tended to be stuck on that meaning and had difficulty retaining the meaning that we were using for the unit.
For examples, I often create PowerPoint presentations to show on my iPad with illustrations of words or examples of words, especially homophones, words with different meanings or words/concepts that students are struggling with. Another example was the word "absorb" I used a picture of a sponge with water.
Writing was the topic this week. DeVries reminds us that reading and writing enhance one another. On page 283, our text says that when students read and write they use cognitive processes such as gathering ideas, questioning, and hypothesizing. There are similarities, but there are also three differences. Reading is considered a receptive language art because it involves receiving a message and writing is considered an expressive language art because it involves creating and conveying a message. The last two involve knowing your audience when writing and understanding what the writer has to say when reading and encoding when writing and decoding when reading. There are distinct components of writing as well as stages. Graphic involves knowledge about how to form the letters, semantic means the letters that make up the words, graphophonic is how one sound may be written in a variety of ways like the long /a/ sound is written a, ey, ay, and ei, and the last is syntactic which means how to write a good sentence, organize ideas into paragraphs and make it easy and enjoyable to read. DeVries shares six essential elements for a writing workshop on page 290 and on page 291 begins to share the five steps in the writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Graphic organizers are very helpful for any group as they learn to write. On page 297 there are great ideas for enhancing our instruction and our classrooms to help our students become good writers. The six plus one traits are idea/content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation. As always, there are great ideas in the text that focus on connecting reading and writing with useful activities.
I do not have any questions.
I liked the strategy of writing a letter to fairy tale characters. This could be a very useful writing exercise as well as add fun and excitement to the classroom. I love the idea of a classroom blog on page 315. This is a great way to connect the classroom and home too. Connecting with Authors from page 317 would be a lot of fun.
This chapter talks a lot about the usefulness of graphic organizers and I found one to use to help my students write a story together in lessons 11 & 12. The face represented the whole story. One eye represented the characters and the eyelashes were the details. The other eye was the setting and the eyelashes were the details. The nose was the problem and the solution was represented either by a smile or a frown depending on whether the ending was happy or sad. They understood that all of the parts were needed to complete our story.
I often use graphic organizers in my lessons also. I often refer to eduplace.com for my graphic organizers. In fact, I have it in my "favorites" on my computer for quick reference. Scholastic also has a good collection of graphic organizers.
Chapter 11 is a very interesting chapter. Reading and writing are connected. They share many of the same cognitive processes AND the same goals and skills. Reading in considered receptive and involves receiving the author’s message. Writing is considered expressive and involves expressing the writer’s message to others. There are four components to writing: graphic, semantic, graphophonic and syntactic. Zecker identified seven stages that children go through: drawing, scribbling, letter-like forms, letter strings, copying, invented spelling and then conventional spelling. There are particular characteristics that distinguish skilled and unskilled writers. The 6 +1 Trait writing assessment is a framework for assessing, discussing and organizing writing for teachers and students. To practice quick writing exercises, the POW and TREE strategies can be used. POW stands for Pick you idea; Organize your thoughts, using notes; and Write your ideas. TREE stands for write a Topic sentence that states you view; state the Reasons, at least three; Explain each of the reasons wit details; End you passage by writing a good summary sentence. I had not been aware that writing and reading were so related. However, I have seen many students who do not like to write. I wonder if there is any correlation between not liking to read and not wanting to write. Is spelling competencies involved? I would like suggestions on how to get students to want to write. I am wondering if allowing student to write/type on the computer provides incentives for them to write. I know that for me personally, I tend to write more and the thoughts are put down quicker when I am typing than when I am writing with a pencil.
One way I think you can get students to want to write is let them write about something they want to. Let them be very creative and use details in their stories. I can remember doing writing assignments all through school. I did not love to write, but I didn't mind it. However, when I could choose what I got to write about (such as in a journal), I could write for a long time. As for typing, I think it is a good idea you could tell the students they could type out their completed writing. I believe this would motivate a large amount of students.
Chapter 11 was over writing. Reading and writing have a lot in common. They are both part of the developmental process that occurs before, during, and after each distinct task. When students read and write, they use processes to gather ideas, question, and hypothesize. Reading and writing also share many of the same goals or skills. There are also differences in reading and writing. First of all, reading is a receptive language and writing is an expressive language art. Second, readers must comprehend what others have written and writers have to choose certain ways of writing for their audience to understand their message. Something that I liked reading over was the section over the different stages of emergent writing. The book said there are seven stages of emergent writing. It is important to note that students pass through these stages at different ages and rates. Teachers need to understand everything they can about the writing stage because it is extremely important. One thing I can relate to from the reading was a writing assignment we did in Reading and Language Arts. Dr. Walizer watched us write and also graded us on our handwriting. I think it is important for teachers to teach their students how to write properly. However, I have seen many future teachers and classroom teachers not use proper technique when writing. I think this can sometimes influence students to try to write incorrectly. It may be something as simple as how to hold a pencil correclty. Dr. Walizer really stressed this point, and even gave little pencil grips to instruct us on how to properly hold a pencil The last thing I want to mention from the text is the section that discussed is the section over writing and technology. With today’s technology, we often have many word processing programs that help us with grammar, spell check, and so on. It is important to use technology in your classrooms, but it is even more important to have students check their own work. Like the book mentioned, these programs are not “magical.”
Jarett, Agree with you. I think that students are using the computer to write so much that they are looseing some writing skills that they may use from using pencil and paper. The studnets are useing electronic tools to do their work for them which is not good.
Chapter 11 covers writing. Reading and writing have a important connection. When writing an individual must take their thoughts and put them into print. Both reading and writing depend on the same cognitive system: semantic, syntactic, graphophonic, and pragmatic. The two share many of the same goals as well. For example a goal is to focus on the main purpose of reading and writing, which is to communicate meaning. The goals are listed on pg 284 of the text. I was aware that writing has changed but for some reason did not make the technology connection. Writing instruction has changed a great deal since I was in elementary school. DeVries notes that teachers have to also understand that students need to learn to use computers effectively while writing. The chapter also did a great job of illustrating each of the 5 components of writing. A student can no write graphically without understanding how to form the 26 letters of the alphabet. As a Pre K teacher I found the information on emergent writers to be very helpful. Most of my students are on stage 5 the copying stage. I have two students who do a wonderful job at inventing spelling. Looking at figure 11 made me smile. Figure 11.6 comparing skilled and unskilled writers was also very insightful. As I got farther into the text I got lost in the wealth of knowledge of activities and teaching strategies this book has to offer. I will continue to say how valuable this text will be to me in the future. Writing gets me excited because it was something I always loved as child. I loved to read and write. Now as a teacher my excitement is in watching children express themselves through writing. Was anyone else able to connect to this chapter with personal experiences?
I felt the same excitement Jade! Reading and writing have always been something I have enjoyed as well and I am very eager to instill this in children! I found myself thinking of all sorts of activities. This chapter did contain a lot of information and I almost feel that it should have been split into two different chapters because of this. It was all information that was very helpful though!
Chapter 11 talks about writing. Immediately, I thought about the presentation by Gary Hogg. In his presentation, Mr. Hogg pointed out that teachers who show the students their love for reading and writing are more effective than those who don’t. If you don’t love to do something, why should your students? This love and passion can be a great thing but as we saw in the scenario with Mr. Burns, this does not always translate to scoring well on testing. As teachers, we have to make sure that the way we teach, allows students to successfully show their skills on their standardized tests.
The chapter points out that writing has changed and as I think about the ways it has changed, I would have to agree. Common Core is focusing more on informational text. When looking at this type of text found in textbooks, there are many features such as highlighting important words and providing pictures, diagrams, and graphs. Informational text is not only found in textbooks though. Many students are familiar with information text through sites such as Pinterest, blogs, and other online resources cited in figure 11.11. While students must be careful that there is research backing the ideas before they are believed to be facts, there is much to gain from students looking at this type of writing. For example, when a blog or post is found in Pinterest, the author usually has a catchy picture and short phrase or title to draw the reader in. Once you go to the full page of text, the author often includes several more pictures, bolds or numbers key ideas, and cites their information. I think using this format and providing students with a topic would help motivate students to want to write more and improving their writing. I wonder, though, how this would align with Common Core standards and help prepare students for standardized testing.
Figure 11.12 was very helpful in providing an example of a rubric for projects. I also like the activities listed for this chapter. A few activities that I really like for grades 5-8 are Quick Writes, POW, and TREE. During my tutoring sessions, I used a video from flocabulary.com called Five Things to help the students learn about plot, character, setting, theme, and conflict. After listening to the video, the students were able to describe the five different parts of a story. Using this prompt and the guided reading book, the students were able to write about the story we are reading.
1. Analysis of the reading/issue. Chapter eleven of the textbook Literacy Assessment & Intervention by B. Devries discusses writing. Writing is a critical process and has a lot to do with reading. Many of skills that are used in reading are also used in writing as well. There are many stages of writing that students go through and many people may not think of some of these stages of a way of writing. Page 286-287 has a reference for the different stages that students go through in the stages of writing. According to the textbook writing has four components which include “graphic, sematic, graphophonic and syntactic (Devries, 284-285). There are many different ways to connect writing to reading and this chapter discusses these ways to connect the two together.
2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue. None at this time.
3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently?
I think that if I would have known now what I learned about writing from his chapter I would have had the student who was struggling with writing do a different level of writing in the lesson. I think that instead of actually writing in words I would have him do something a little simpler so that he would not been so frustrated with the activity.
4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience. During these tutoring sessions I have learned a lot about students writing and reading being connected. One of the students in my tutoring session wanted to write all the time. I would tell her that she did not want to write any more and she said that she wanted to write more. She always wanted to share her writing with the group as well. The other student on the other hand did not like to write and wanted to stop as soon as possible. The student that likes to write was also advance on her reading skills as well and the other student struggled.
Writing is a huge part of reading, as we’ve seen in our tutoring sessions over the last few weeks. My tutoring groups love to make up stories and then dictate them to me so that I can retell their story to them. Kids love hearing their words told to them in a story.
ReplyDeleteChapter 11 of the Devries text gives many strategies to help readers learn to become writers. The major difference in reading and writing as stated in the Devries text is that reading is using receptive language and writing is using expressive language. In other words reading is being able to decode words and comprehend what the author is telling you in the story. Writing is being able to relay your thoughts onto paper to get your ideas across to the readers. Each of these takes an enormous amount of practice to prefect.
Although I do understand the need to teach proper grammar, spelling and punctuation, I feel that you also need to allow student to be creative and not have to worry about what the “technical” stuff the first time around. As author Gary Hogg stated “this is just the draft, rewrite and add details until you have it perfect”. Students need to be free to write what they think and feel not what they can spell.
Once again I am brought back to my son, bless his heart, he loves to write but his se4very dyslexia means that his spelling is still done phonetically and is around a kindergarten level in 4th grade. He makes up these huge worlds in his stories that all have different characters, powers and settings. But if you picked up his writing you would think it was a string of meaningless letters. What I do is have him write a page of his story and then he retells it to me and used the Dragon Dictation software to transcribe it into a word document. I am listing to the story at the same time to make sure that the Dragon software does not make an error because he also has a speech delay that can cause confusion.
Ashton now can write and be creative without worrying about using only words he can spell or that no one will ever be able to read it. This has made a huge impacted on his willingness to write creatively. Devries talks about being able to identify the stages of writing and I want to stress this because if you are seeing a delay in this you may have a reading issue with the child that is not being identified because they are so good at reading the context clues that the reading issues may go unnoticed until 3rd grade.
I have researched the Dragon Dictation but have never seen it used. I am glad that this helps your son create his stories, plus it is probably really fun to use!
DeleteYes, I also agree with Gary Hogg, and this is also noted in the chapter as well, we need to not worry about spelling, punctuation, and other mechanics while creating our writing. This is to worry about while doing the editing and revising part. This is why it is important to teach students the steps to writing so that they will enjoy writing and not feel the stress of getting it right the first time, so that the students can focus on the details of their story. Speaking of details, my students are lacking the ability to include many details into their writing. So while grocery shopping I came across a bag of a crazy bag jelly beans and thought it would be a cool idea to have students provide many details to describe the flavor of the jelly beans they eat, so to describe them to another person. We will see how this goes! I thought it may or may not strengthen their detail skills when they do their writing.
Chapter eleven is based on writing. In the class meeting, we learned how Mrs. Stoppel has the students write their own stories, publish the stories, and then give students the chance to share their stories. This is what this made me think of while reading the chapter. Also, in my tutoring group, we are creating our own books while also including vocabulary from our word wall.
ReplyDeleteIn this chapter, the author tells about the commonalities between reading and writing. It was very interesting to read through this information. Reading and writing depend on the same cognitive systems and share many of the same goals or skills. However, reading is receptive language, while writing is expressive language, and readers decode words while writers encode words. So there are differences as well.
I do like that this chapter talks about the stages of emergent writing. We have learned about this topic previously but I am glad it covered it again. I think this is great information for educators to know about and what our students should be doing at each stage. Also like chapter 9 based on comprehension of informational text, there is another list of skilled and unskilled writer characteristics. The skilled writers list is a great idea to have in mind while creating goals for my students. The unskilled provides me with ideas of what I need to look out for.
Danielle, Good point of what we had learned from the recordings about the student's writing their own stories. There are a lot of quality things that come from students being their own authors. It is weird how reading and writing can be so similar yet have great differences.
DeleteRicky
Danielle,
DeleteI like that you are having your tutoring groups work on their own books. I have been having my 1st graders add one page to the stores that we read for guided reading each week. They really get into this and have a blast doing this each week. I have been impressed at how detailed some of them have been since we are reading stories at the B/C level. I really liked how this chapter really tied reading and writing together because I feel that these two subjects really should be taught at the same level. Great Post.
Literacy
ReplyDeleteChapter 11
Chapter 11 of the text was all about writing. This was a good chapter because it was able to give an alternative view to the reading and writing process. The text cites that there are many similarities between the process mainly in terms of cognitive factors. Some of the similarities is that while in reading a person will have thoughts and information while writing means the person puts it down on paper. Writing is simply the idea of knowledge being put down on paper. One of the differences is that reading is something that brings in information while writing is the expressive form of information. The text was also very descriptive about the writing process. Including things like the per-writing stage where writers gather information, get instruction and generally get ready for writing Then other things like the rough draft and revision.
I really liked the idea of the attitude surveys. That would be very useful for getting a good idea of what a teacher might want to lead students with their writing.
I have always liked to write finding it very relaxing and theraputic. The problem being that sometimes I am not always the best technical writer. I have found the extreme need to use things like the revision and reviewing time to double check the technical part of writing. I had a teacher once say that everyone can be a reader but not everyone can be a writer. Which I tremendously disagree with. Everyone can do what they want and it does not always have to be great.... though helpful to write with quality.
I myself was never good at reading which resulted with not being a very good writer. Today, after many years of practice my reading is great, I enjoy it, and my writing skills have bloomed as well. I love to be articulate about my thoughts and use words that grasp more of my ideas and thoughts with feeling. I will try and teach this to my students.
DeleteI also liked the attitude surveys section. I can say I had never heard of these before this chapter. I feel they could be very beneficial to a teacher and would cover all the students interests and attitudes of writing in one survey. There was a lot that went into the pre-writing strategies that I never would have thought of. As an adult you just start writing or typing. This chapter did a good job of breaking down what students should be thinking of before, during, and after writings.
DeleteI think finding something the interests the students, which there will be many different interests, enhances the student's motivation which will help the student learn to like to write and therefore become more skilled at writing. I see a lot of students get discouraged because they don't enjoy writing and therefore don't put in the effort.
DeleteChapter 11, gave great insight on the importance of ‘Writing’. One would only realize just how much from outside sources and knowledge is involved when casting on the concept to “write”. I found it interesting early on when Elbow argues that, “very young children can write before they read, can write more than they can read, and can write more easily than they read – because they can write anything they can say.” P. 283, oh how true this sounds. Especially if you have little ones around your house and they share with you a story they have wrote, yet it only makes sense to them. The steps to creative writing however starts young and teaching writing begins with comprehending a story, plot, idea, body etc.
ReplyDeleteThis chapter also mentioned that reading and writing enhances one another. I honestly never sat there long enough to think so deeply about these two strands of development; but DeVries continues to explain that, “the use of cognitive processes such as gathering ideas” does in fact enhance writing. DeVries also continues to say, “ that English learners use writing to express themselves.”
Technology effects everything in our lives these days and it continues to bring reading and writing to help with create compositions such as: Art, photography, and/or music. These great ideas can also be shared with people worldwide.
Two big differences between reading and writing: 1.) readers decode words and writers encode words automatically. 2) Readers must comprehend what others have written; writers must know their audience.
At this point I do not have any questions.
This chapter covered many wonderful points that I found interesting and meaningful for when I get into the classroom.
This chapter reminded me about my 1st grade daughter who is learning to write, stories. They began this year by being their own “author”, I believe the teacher discussed this activity in one of her live chat sessions. My daughter loved being able show everyone her work, read her stories, and understand how stories are put together.
Jennifer,
DeleteI really love the quote you mentioned in your post! It is so inspiring and fun to hear some of the stories that little ones can put together. My daughter is only 2 and a half, and sometimes I cannot believe some of the things she says and does.
I'm glad that your daughter is becoming an author already in the 1st grade. I bet they have so much fun writing and sharing their stories. What a fun way to get them excited about writing. I have noticed all too much that as the students get older, they begin hating to write. Maybe starting out at younger ages can combat this stigma that writing has gotten.
1. Analysis of the reading/issue.
ReplyDeleteThis chapter talks about how writing can and should be connected to reading. The two areas of reading and language arts contain many of the same goals that have to do with letter and word recognition strategies. Writing can help the students with these sort of reading skills that they need work on. The book discusses the 7 stages of emergent writing and shows examples of each from the drawing stage to the conventional spelling stage. It is neat to see the progression this way in the students as they are developing their writing skills. The book also discusses the stages of the writing process that should be taught to students from an early stage in their writing progression. The stages are prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and publishing. These steps will help ensure that students will develop good writing skills. Another important feature in this chapter was the section that describes the 6 + 1 Trait Writing Assessment and Instruction framework. This framework was developed to work together to provide a student with the necessary foundation for becoming good writers. The framework consists of idea/content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation. The chapter then goes on to list many writing activities from guided writing to diamante poems and will be a good resource for future writing activities.
2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue.
One question that I have in regards to teaching writing is how to really incorporate your grammar instruction in to this as well. Whether a school uses the Shurley English series or something different such as Write Source, there needs to be a grammar element. I think the two can combine together nicely into one lesson per day, but I would like to see how an experienced teacher gets the flow down with these two subjects.
3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently?
I didn’t realize how important writing could be to help with reading and vice versa. I don’t think students are spending enough time writing in the school that I am working at, because they all seem to hate it a great deal. I find that they take many shortcuts when writing and don’t use the best grammar and sentence structure. The school just got rid of Shurley English series because they weren’t using it and moved to Write Source. I think our school focuses too much on the assessment preparation for Reading and not as much on the writing and grammar element. I now see that these two things (reading and writing) can lend a lot to one another and it makes me more excited to include writing activities for my students.
4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience.
As mentioned above, I have not seen a lot of writing in my 2 years as a para. Our Special Education students are asked to write in their journals a few times a week, but the entries are poorly structured and hurried through. In addition, there is no real follow up with the students regarding their grammar, punctuation, and other details, so I am wondering what they are getting out of it. I plan to include writing often in my lesson plans so that the students are not missing this important reading and language arts element.
I agree with you that students are not spending enough time writing in school! I was talking to a friend who is a teacher and she was concerned that her students were not getting enough time in the day to work on writing. She said that her schedule for her students is so jammed that it is hard to get a good chunk of time to focus on it. One idea that I have for when I teach is to maybe have my students journal at the beginning or end of the day.
DeleteChapter 11 is about writing and helping struggling writers. The beginning of the chapter shows us how much reading and writing are connected to each other. Many of the same reading strategies with letter-sounds and words along with fluency are put into writing. There are multiple different stages of writing and teachers need to know this based on the grade they are teaching. Teachers cannot expect a Kindergartner to write every word correctly and understand the concept of inventive spelling. The 6+1 traits of writing seem like a good useful assessment of students writing and with helping them write successfully. Breaking down and guiding students in all these steps could help all writers gain an understanding of the important parts of writing. The chapter talked a lot about writing for an audience. I feel this is an important factor in writing and students should be given audiences to write to as much as possible, this would help them improve and think more critically in their writing; depending on who they're writing to and their knowledge. In interventions it did well to break down activities for the 6+1 trait. I feel it would take some time to do, but could greatly benefit the students.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading this chapter I thought a lot about my Reading internship last semester. She had her students do journals every day after the whole class reading. These journals were written back and forth between the students and their parents (an audience). Many students considered this there favorite part of school, even over recess. I think having an audience is a key factor in getting students interested in writing. I saw just how much most students worked on their writing since their parents were going to read them that night. The internship meeting with Gary Hogg also reflected in this chapter. He talked a lot about sounding smarter by using adjectives, adverbs, and fancier words. I think showing the students just how much better their story sounds when changing a simple word would make them feel good about their writing. Finally using computers for blogs, pen-pals, and other things is now a very large part of writing. This will be something that has to be added to writing schedules. Computers for writing are going to be a large part of the students lives as they grow and we need to understand this and incorporate this often in class, unfortunately I do not see it much in my internship classroom while I feel it should be.
I really like the idea your Reading internship teacher did with the journals! That is a great idea to have them write to each other or their parents!! I may keep this idea for when I get into the classroom!
DeleteChapter 11 was about writing and the direct relationship of writing to reading. According to our textbook, "reading and writing depend on the same cognitive systems- semantic, syntactic, graphophonic and pragmatic"(pg. 283). The semantic components of writing is when students recognize that letters form words and how to use words appropriately. The graphophonic component of writing is when students learn letter sound relationships. This includes know whether to use silent 'e' for a word when writing it. The Syntactic component of writing is when students know how to organize their thoughts and form sentences and paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteI did not have any questions or contradictions on this chapter. I felt it was very informative and explain the process of writing.
This chapter made me look differently at writing. I have always known writing was important but after reading this chapter I understand how writing and reading go hand in hand.
With the tutoring group I have they have been writing in a journal twice a week. I think I need to puss them more with their writing and have them write more and using more details. My students enjoy writing but they tend to only write just what they have to and no more. Next week in I hope to encourage them to write using their imaginations.
Rashawna, I think you covered all the elements discussed in the chapter very well. I also find it hard to get studnets motivated to learn. Actually when I was reading your post about your tutoring group and how they aren't very motivated to write I was thinking about the Gary Hogg presentation and how his teacher turned his bad behavior into writing. I wonder if this would work with some of our tutoring students. Or, when you're teaching and you have a student want to talk about what he did that weekend you could have them write it in their journal and you can read it later.
DeleteChapter 11 was all about writing. Writing I feel is somewhat lost at an early age with schools these days because teachers are being pushed to get other information hit upon. Moving on, the text states that "reading and writing are complex cognitive developmental process that depend on the same cognitive systems- semantic, syntactic, graphophonic, and pragmatic." Reading and writing go hand and hand and as future educators we all need to keep that in mind. The text tells us that not only do they have similarities in cognitive processes but they have many of the same goals/skills. I was very interested to read that the two big differences between reading and writing is that reading is considered a receptive language art and readers must comprehend what others have written; where writers must know their audience, choose the genre that best expresses their ideas, choose words that wiull alllow the audience to understand the message. The chapter also discusses the components of writing- graphic, semantic, graphophonic, and syntactic, as well as the seven stages of writing; drawing, scribbling. letter-like forms, letter strings, copying, invented spelling, and conventional spelling. I was very much appriciative of the protion of the chapter that discussed different activities appropriate for each of the stages of writing. It's important to allow children to go through these stages and allow them to participate in activities that adhere to each of the stages as well. This will support the developments of each stage and lead to hopefully better writing in the future. I was also very into the information presented in teh 6+1 trait writing assessment and instruction model within the chapter. It's important for each writer to know and understand the traits before writing at a later stage (idea/content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation) I didn't have any questions about the chapter and I am excited to get to put to use the activities that the text had at the end of the chapter.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that at times writing does get pushed aside, at least until students get into upper elementary or middle school and they have a language arts course. While reading the chapter my thoughts even led to how technology has perhaps influenced and changed peoples writing skills. Writing and technology were stressed, but one of my favorite activities was the pen pals. I would love to do this and have students write and mail true letters to students in another country. The art of writing is disappearing and I think a lot of it has to do with the push on technology, emailing, texting, etc. Just for an example, in my social studies internship the students are learning about ancient Greece and I would love to see them find a classroom of students in Greece to pair up and pen pal with. I think this would be a wonderful extension activity to learn about their lives and customs. Okay, that's enough on that! I enjoyed your post and agreed with you about the stages of writing and activities we can do with students or even our own children to help develop their writing skills at an early age.
DeleteI really liked the beginning scenario of chapter 11. I think most teachers, like Mr. Burns, just want to convey their love for a subject to their students and they try to find ways to do that. The writing workshop is a wonderful idea and lets students get creative, but in this time of accountability we still have to find ways to help our students do well on their state mandated assessments. I thought Mr. Burns classroom was a great example of looking at the tests and finding out exactly what the students need to know and do, and then finding strategies and activities to achieve their goal. I also appreciated the collaboration with other teachers and integration across other subjects.
ReplyDeleteChapter 11 was also wonderful at explaining the reading/ writing connection, as well as some true differences. There are five aspects of language that students must utilize when they write; they are graphic, semantic, graphophonic, syntactic, and pragmatic. Figure 11.6 was excellent at outlining the characteristics of skilled and unskilled writers, which I found helpful. I also thought figure 11.8, the checklist for proofreading was fantastic and hope to use it in the future.
As a mother and pre-service teacher I am so fascinated with the stages of emergent writing. I find the beginning stages of drawing, scribbling, and letter writing very interesting and liked how the seven stages of emergent writing were listed in figure 11.1 as well as the examples in figure 11.2. I love watching kids get creative and work so hard to create, draw, and write. This reminded me of some things we learned in the elementary art course. I just love how everything ties together sometimes!
I wish I had read this chapter sooner because I have a tutoring student that hates writing and I have a hard time getting her to write anything down. I get one word or one idea and very short sentences from her. I think there were some good strategies in here that I would have liked to have tried with her to see if it would improve her writing or her attitude about writing. I did have my students write poems about themselves and draw a self-portrait. They did acrostic poems with their name and they turned out wonderful, but I wish I would have had all the poem ideas from this chapter to utilize while teaching them about the poems.
The chapter emphasizes the importance of getting students to write and share their writing with others and I couldn’t agree more! During my RLA internship I was in a first grade classroom and the teacher stressed the importance of writing and sharing. The students had the opportunity to write in their journals every day. Most of the time it was over a topic of their choosing, but occasionally she would give them prompts. The teacher had a karaoke machine in her classroom and the students would use the microphone to share their journals. The students loved it and it was a great way to get them excited about writing.
I like how you said we should have read this chapter sooner. It would have been useful to read the whole textbook before we started tutoring, huh? However, I think reading about it after we've seen the problem helps us put it into context. We can now visualize the things we should have done and how they would have worked because we have had the experiences before we read about it.
DeleteI also love reading about emergent writing. My kids are 5 and are in the invented spelling stage. I love reading these chapters and getting ideas for what I can do with them. Hopefully it will give me experience for when I am in the classroom!
Amy
Chapter 11 spoke about writing. The text states that reading and writing depend on the same cognitive systems. These systems include; syntactic, graphophonic, semantic, and pragmatic. Although both reading and writing depend on the same cognitive systems, they have two major differences. Writing is considered expressive language because it involves the act of conveying a message, writing also encodes words automatically. Reading is considered receptive language because it involves receiving a message, reading also involves decoding words. Emergent writing has seven steps to it according to Zecker. The seven stages are; drawing, scribbling, letter-like forms, letter strings, copying, invented spelling, conventional spelling. There are many differences between skilled and unskilled writers. Skilled writers tend to find more on the topic, write with an audience in mind, have an inner voice, and include details and elaborate. Unskilled writers write about only what they know, they have no idea of an audience, and they struggle with mechanics. I thought that it was very important for the text to mention that developing writers need to feel good about they work and sharing and displaying their work is important.
ReplyDeleteI felt that the information presented in this chapter was easy to follow and the information made sense to me.
I have notices some writings that look as though help is needed. I feel that these writers need more help into knowing what exactly to look for to be a skilled writer. Many students that I see race to write the sentence instead of thinking about how to expand on what they are writing about. What I would have liked to see more of in this chapter is more examples of correct writing at each grade level. This chapter gives me a totally new view on writing and how strips it down and teach my students to become skilled writers and enjoy the process of it.
Hanna- In my opinion, I think some of the deficits we see in writers these days stems from the students having no model of what to do or "how" to do it. You can write a topic on the board- "Over the three day weekend I _________" for children to begin writing. However, I don't see anything more than this. There is no mention of editing their work, adding more detail, or even rereading their work to see if it makes sense. This is really sad to me. The other day, this example was put up for morning work for my second grade intern students. Some literally wrote 2 sentences and were done. There was no editing, there was no checking punctuation, capitalization, spelling errors...the students weren't even directed on resources in their desk or elsewhere to help them with spelling! There is no word wall (which really shocks me!) and stretch spelling or even sounding it out I found is not even something they do. I was totally blown away. I think if teachers modeled more and actually taught each process our young writers would be better and it would definitely build a solid foundation as they advance into higher grades.
DeleteThis chapter was all about writing, how it relates to reading, the stages of emergent writing, the stages of the writing process, and how we can improve students’ writing skills through strategies such as guided writing, 6 + 1 Trait writing, and other techniques.
ReplyDeleteFirst, reading and writing depend on the same cognitive systems (semantic, syntactic, graphophonic, and pragmatic). Writing is an expressive language art because it involves processing words and ideas to create a message unlike reading (receptive), which receives and processes the message from outside sources. Also, writers must encode words instead of decode words like reading. This is an important skill that will help reading skills.
The stages of emergent writing are drawing (pictures to represent words), scribbling (lines and marks), letter like forms (the lines and marks resemble letters), letter strings (letters the child knows, some patterns), copying (child copies environmental print), invented spelling (connection of letters to sounds), and conventional spelling (most words spelled correctly). There are appropriate activities to do for each stage. For the invented spelling stage, “share the pen” is useful because it gradually lets the student do more and more of the writing. It starts with the teacher writing most of the words; over time the student will be able to sound out more words with the teacher only filling in a few. For conventional spelling, using sound boxes to help children with unknown words is beneficial.
The writing process includes the stages of prewriting (gathering ideas, thinking about structure), drafting (writing without regard to spelling and mechanics), revising (adding or removing detail), editing (refining spelling and mechanics, through self, peer, and teaching assistance), and publishing (putting words into books or print, sharing inside or outside the classroom). Unfortunately, I have never seen the full writing process despite my semester in RLA internship. I saw a lot of writing and attempts at writing, but never any prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, or publishing. My internship was in first grade, and I wonder if this was too young for the process? I definitely saw some publishing and slight editing in kindergarten. Another thing I saw in kindergarten was student critiques. One or two students would get to show their work, while others students first had to state what they liked about it, then the other students asked questions about it, and finally they offered suggestions to improve it.
One thing that bugged me about my RLA internship was that there was a reading workshop every day (a short whole group lesson on a writing skill) but then when the kids went to write they didn’t practice the skill at all. I thought this was a tragic mistake because unless the kids get immediate, guided practice with the skill they just won’t remember it.
Amy- I agree with you that I never saw any "processes" of writing before either. I too worked with first grade and now second grade and it seems if they are given a topic to write on, they write a few sentences and are done. I don't see the teachers asking them to go back and check for spelling errors, check for punctuation, add more detail, etc. If this really begins at a certain age or grade-level, I would like to know. It seems though even the younger ages should be at least doing dome of this and the teachers should be explaining and modeling them.
DeleteAmy- I was just saying in my blog how discouraged I am after reading this chapter in regards to the lack of writing instructions within the school where I work as a Para educator. It would seem to me that the writing process should be as important as the reading content due to the fact that reading and writing go together. I can remember writing being an everyday part of our lessons when I was in school, and the process was taught as well. In my opinion there is too much emphasis placed on the subjects that are assessed within the state standards and not enough emphasis placed on areas such as writing and the writing process. Like LeAnn said, it is important at an early age that teachers provide writing instruction and model to their students as well.
DeleteAmy, after reading your response I was very saddened to hear that students you were observing were not using the steps to writing. Their teacher is failing them in regards to writing. These steps I can remember using as a child and I still use them today. I always brainstorm what I am going to write still to this day. These steps are so important and something the students will use for the rest of their lives. Thanks for sharing your personal experiences.
Delete1. Analysis of the reading/issue.
ReplyDelete2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue.
3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently?
4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience.
Chapter 11 in our DeVries text is over Writing. Reading and writing share many of the same cognitive processes as well as many of the same goals. There are two main differences though in reading and writing: reading involves receiving a message, but writing involves creating and conveying a message; when reading you must comprehend what the author has written, but when writing you must know your audience and select the genre that will best express your ideas and the words you chose to convey that message. There are seven stages for emergent writing: drawing, scribbling, letter-like forms, letter strings, copying, invented spelling, and conventional spelling. Writing is a skill which needs to be developed. A child must go through the scribbling stage before they go through a copying stage. Each individual stage is important and builds upon the next. Like I have seen in my interning classrooms as well as what Mrs. Stoppel has mentioned in her lectures, unfortunately there are children that are beginning school that do not even know how to hold a pencil correctly. This puts them at a disadvantage to those children who have been given writing utensils early on in life to practice with and were worked with and taught how to form letters or even the shapes that is needed to begin to form letters. As a future teacher, I am going to need to spot these children who are at a disadvantage and work with them. If they cannot correctly hold a pencil or do not even know letter-like forms, we can’t expect them to do letter strings or even invented spelling if they do not know what to do with a pencil. In this week’s reading we also learn about the writing process. There is the pre-writing stage, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. What is important about this that I learned in the reading is that just because you schedule the time in your day for writing doesn't ensure that all of your students will develop good writing skills. You can’t tell your students to do the different writing stages and expect they know what to do. The teacher needs to give assistance to the struggling writer and teach them how to complete each of the steps in the writing process. I witnessed this the other day with my second grade class where I am interning. They were given a topic to write on. Some of the children wrote a sentence or two and were done. I asked if they went back and revised their work- did they edit it, check for spelling errors, and add more detail? Some of them looked at me like I had two heads! I was shocked that for second grade they didn't know what the writing process was. This is something I definitely will address in my classroom with my students one day.
I thought you did a great job outlining the chapter and focusing on the important issues. Your statement regarding writing and ensuring students develop good writing skills is important for all educators to understand and work with the individual needs of each student. In regards to your comments on second graders not understanding the writing process, it could be that this is not addressed until later in the year. In my daughter’s first grade class they are learning how to appropriately structure and write a sentence.
DeleteChapter 11 Blog
ReplyDeleteZoë Greenemeyer
The reading-writing connection is related cognitively and also they share similar goals. When students read and write they use cognitive processes such as gathering data, questioning, and hypothesizing. Reading requires that the student use background knowledge and connect it to new information that they are reading. Writing requires students synthesize their thoughts to articulate a message. The goals and skills are divided into seven goals and skills. When reading these goals I found that some of them have been used in my tutoring sessions. There are four components of writing, graphic, semantic, graphophonic, and syntactic. I try to incorporate writing in every lesson, each student in my tutoring group has a personal journal that they write in and the writings or drawings are related to the guided reading, read aloud or activity that they will do or have done during the session. The chapter then goes into the writing workshop and the stages of writing. I have experienced this last semester when I was in a fifth grade classroom. I was able to see the writing process from initial brainstorming, drafting, revising, and then the final written work. I was also able to be there before, during and after state assessments so I could actively participate in activities centered on the six trait writing process. The students were frequently reminded of sentence structure, word choice, and conventions. Students were encouraged to use dictionaries and thesauruses’ when writing. Through my own personal experience I remember there being a big focus on 6-trait writing during school.
One of the key points that this chapter stresses is how important writing is when it comes to reading. The chapter stresses how writing has changed in the last decade, and I totally agree with that. In the classrooms where I work, I am not seeing near as much writing instruction as I am with other subjects that are addressed in the state standards tests. The four aspects in language that effect writing that were discussed were graphic, semantic, graphophonic, and syntactic. I enjoyed reading about Zecker’s seven stages of emergent writing, which were drawing, scribbling, letter-like forms, letter strings, copying, invented spelling, and conventional spelling. Each stage was explained examples were shown as well. I am a very visual learner, so I liked the fact that examples were provided with an explanation of each of the stages. In my opinion, the different stages are amazing and from ages 2-7 children really advance in the writing process drastically. They talked about different activities for ELL students and provided a summary and description of the stages of writing development between English, Spanish and bilingual speaking students. There was also a topic describing the differences between both skilled and unskilled writers. It is important as an educator to know these characteristics and be able to apply them to teaching instructions. 6+1 Trait Writing Assessment is something we do in the school where I work also. There are strategies that start in third grade to help advance the writing process for students when they are assessed over writing. I loved that the book provided strategies for connecting the reading and writing process. They also provided activities for each stage of the 6+1 Trait Writing. During my tutoring sessions I have read two Judy Blumes books and my students really enjoy her books. I noticed that she was one of the author’s that has different writing activities on her site. I am glad that the chapter gave the different authors and their websites for educators to explore. I will definitely be using them in the future also. I guess one of the questions that I have for this chapter’s reading is how much is writing assessed in regards to formal assessments? In other words, is it done every year, or are there only certain years during the state assessments that writing is addressed? Before reading this chapter, I didn’t really realize the connection that reading and writing had with one another. It made me see that one cannot exist without the other really. I guess I am just not seeing it as much as I think I should in the school where I work and I am left wondering why it is not included more in the teaching instructions. Now of course this is just my opinion, but as a Para I am seeing all of the content focus being placed on those subjects that are tested within the state standards, which leaves writing out a lot. If I do see writing in journals, there is no emphasis placed on the writing process, and the stages of creating a skilled writer that were discussed in the chapter reading. I guess this chapter leaves me a bit disappointed that more emphasis is not placed within the school where I am working.
ReplyDeleteChapter 11 is all about writing. Reading and writing are of course linked together and have quite a few similarities. Cognitive processes like questioning, hypothesizing and gathering together ideas are all used in both reading and writing Reading and writing also have some the same goals. Some goals they share are being able to automatically recognize words or write words, being able to connect words that you know with words that you do not, and connect spelling with meaning. There were 2 differences stated in the book between reading and writing and that is reading is considered a receptive language art where writing is considered to be an expressive language art. The second difference listed was readers must be able to comprehend what other people have written where the writer needs to know the audience they are writing for. The last difference is that the readers decode words, and writers encode words. The chapter goes on to discuss writing instruction by going through the components of writing which are graphic, semantic, graphophonic, and syntactic. I really liked that it went through the stages of emergent writing since most of my experience has been helping to teach students in kindergarten and first grade. The author lists activities that can be used for students in the different stages of emergent writing. The chapter describes many writing activities and strategies that can be very helpful in helping to teach students to write. I really like the Parodies activity that can be used with books that have repetitive text, which many of the guided reading books we used in these sessions had in them. Another activity that would have been fun to d with my students is the acrostic poems. I am wishing we had more time to work with our students to do more of these activities that we are reading about each week. It is a bummer when you read about something really cool to do with the students but you are unable to due to time constraints. There are actually quite a few activities I would really have loved to do with my students but was not able to due to the short amount of time we had in each session to get everything done. The author mentioned the ReadWriteThink website which is an excellent resource and one I have used.
ReplyDeleteI also wish we had more time! I am always seeing great activities that I would like to incorporate into my lessons but there just isn't enough time. I hope that I will be able to use a lot of these strategies and activities in my future classroom.
DeleteChapter 11 discusses Writing. I really liked this chapter because I think that Writing and Reading go hand in hand. I have really tried this semester in my tutoring sessions to incorporate Writing into our lessons. The beginning of the Chapter discusses the Reading-Writing Connection. It discusses the similarities and differences between the two. So far this semester I have found that it helps my students to write the vocabulary words when we are first introduced to them. Pages 286 and 287 show examples of Drawings that students have done and what stage they are at when they drew them. I remember learning about these stages and being completely suprised that you could tell at what age or stage they were at just by looking at their drawings. In my RLA internship I was in a Kindergarten class and the teacher would often suggest that the student draw a picture of the word they are wanting to write if they don't know it. page 288 in Figure 11.2 gives the suggestion that the student draw a picture. I really like this idea because I think it helps the student to feel that they can still get their message across. Overall I enjoyed reading throug Chapter 11 and found that alot of my thoughts on writing were confirmned throughout the book.
ReplyDeleteTammi I incorporated writing into my sessions as well. I wanted the students to connect writing and reading together. We wrote poetry, and short stories. I also had them create new endings for stories we read. They had to write sentences containing sight words that we were working on as well as phonics skills for the day. I like the idea of using a picture, and this is how so many of them are reading bigger words like doctor, nurse, flower. I enjoyed Ch 11 as well.
DeleteChristine, I am glad to hear that others used drawing. I feel like I used it quite a bit with my students just to give them a few seconds to process. Sometimes I would have them draw as I did the verbal review - they could draw whatever came to mind just to help them get into the lesson because they are such doodlers and I wanted to let them use their crutch and stay involved in the lesson.
DeleteChapter 11 covers writing and the first part of the chapter connects reading and writing through cognitive processes in gathering ideas, questioning, and hypothesizing. The differences in writing and reading include reading involves receiving a message and writing involves expressive language arts. Some of the components of writing are semantic, graphophonic, and syntactic.
ReplyDeleteThe writing process and writing workshops were also mentioned. I can remember as a child drafting and revising with editing over and over. However, we never published anything and I would love to do that for my students. Gary Hoggs spoke on this very thing and I would like to create an environment to which he referred to.
I love the idea of portfolios; we did one for our tutoring sessions. We included poetry, short stories, and illustrations that students had created. In the chapter it also discusses assessments. I never realized how important assessing could be. When I was a kid a teacher gave me a grade and went on. I love the rubric example on page 300; this would be a great tool for assessing knowledge.
In the Activity section I really liked the interactive writing “Sharing the Pen” activity. The ideas of the teacher scribing the ideas and then having the student gradually take over the pen. My FAVORITE is the POW, I want to make a poster out of this and hang it on my wall for writing. P-pick your own ideas, O-organize your thoughts, using notes, and W-write your ideas (And Pow you’re a writer!) Of course, the Tree is good too. I have always loved poetry so I really enjoyed the DIAMANTE activity (seven-line poem). To sum up this chapter it is important as teachers that we teach students to write by modeling and mentoring in the five steps of writing and make it fun using different strategies.
I like the idea of POW too! I imagine the posted as an explosion moving outwards and the POW looking like it is moving off the page!
DeleteI like how simple it is and that it can be used with many different grade levels. I like that you can add other ideas with it
P Pick your own ideas
(Pick your topic, Prepare to write, etc....)
O Organize your thoughts
(Organize your opinions, Obey writing conventions, etc...)
W Write your ideas
(Write them down, Why are you writing, What is your goal, etc..)
I also really liked TREE and felt that it would be a great poster for a classroom as well. I can already picture the tree image and design.
Sometimes I feel like a broken record. I always wish that I read more of the textbook before the bulk of the semester as over. Every semester, with the lone exception of the book When Kids Can’t Read, I read just the sections required and always find myself thinking “Man, I wish I knew that a few weeks ago!” This week was not an exception to the rule. There are several things that I wish I had read about before beginning my work with my students. I wish I knew more about evaluating writing instruction and more about the 6+1 trait writing. Most importantly, I wish I knew more about some of the interventions that would have been a big hit. While we did do some interactive writing it would have been helpful to know more about adding the 6+1 to it. I think the one idea I wish I had tried with them was on page 308, the idea of using expository frames to introduce sequencing. We worked a lot on sequencing activities and they always struggled with it. I bet this would have been perfect for them.
ReplyDeleteMy question about this chapter is about the activity on page 306 on Using Concrete Examples. My students often don’t understand examples. Part of this is because they have a hard time comparing and contrasting things, they have a poor grasp of illustrative language, and they were very confused by the idea of homophones/double meanings/or adding commas to change meaning and they despised our poetry section. Would it be best to stick to some of the tried and true examples discussed in the chapter or tackling something like #5 or 6 to help them better understand the concept.
I wonder if using some of the poetry ideas might have been helpful with the twins to help them learn to like poetry more. They were so resistant that I feel I should have pushed it a bit more to help them find a level of comfort with it.
I feel that using some of the websites for helping them to better develop their writing schools would have been of assistance to them as well.
Like you, I wish I could have read this entire book before beginning our tutoring, but the great news is that we will have this book AND the experience from our tutoring sessions in our toolbox as we begin teaching.
DeleteThe activity on page 306 are examples, but they are also for grades 5-8. I did poetry with my group of kids in my tutoring sessions, but I found some really fun poetry that I know kids enjoy. We did Miss Mary Mack and used jump ropes after we read it and learned it well in a few sessions. For the next session, we had a camp-out and I used poetry in song with the camp song Boom Chicka Boom and they really loved that. I think it really has to be age appropriate and fun for you too! I think I may have had more fun watching them learn it and then letting them branch out on their own and be creative with it by inventing new ways to sing it.
You are not alone in how you feel about wishing you knew more about something that we have read about before planning your lessons. It seems like each week there is something that we have learned that would have been great to include during a lesson, but by that time it is too late. At least we eventually become aware of it and can use it later on in our teachings. I am sorry to hear about the struggles you have had with your students when it comes to using examples. I have had my own share of struggles. It is interesting to see that things that seem so simple and easy for us to understand can actually be very difficult for our students to comprehend. That is probably why we do get so frustrated when we see activities or strategies that we think could be very beneficial for the students we are working with, after the point.
DeleteJessica,
DeleteI had an example of double meaning in my last unit. One vocabulary word was "marine" with the definition of relating to the sea. One student was quite excited because he knew the meaning "someone in the military". He tended to be stuck on that meaning and had difficulty retaining the meaning that we were using for the unit.
For examples, I often create PowerPoint presentations to show on my iPad with illustrations of words or examples of words, especially homophones, words with different meanings or words/concepts that students are struggling with. Another example was the word "absorb" I used a picture of a sponge with water.
Writing was the topic this week. DeVries reminds us that reading and writing enhance one another. On page 283, our text says that when students read and write they use cognitive processes such as gathering ideas, questioning, and hypothesizing. There are similarities, but there are also three differences. Reading is considered a receptive language art because it involves receiving a message and writing is considered an expressive language art because it involves creating and conveying a message. The last two involve knowing your audience when writing and understanding what the writer has to say when reading and encoding when writing and decoding when reading. There are distinct components of writing as well as stages. Graphic involves knowledge about how to form the letters, semantic means the letters that make up the words, graphophonic is how one sound may be written in a variety of ways like the long /a/ sound is written a, ey, ay, and ei, and the last is syntactic which means how to write a good sentence, organize ideas into paragraphs and make it easy and enjoyable to read. DeVries shares six essential elements for a writing workshop on page 290 and on page 291 begins to share the five steps in the writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Graphic organizers are very helpful for any group as they learn to write. On page 297 there are great ideas for enhancing our instruction and our classrooms to help our students become good writers. The six plus one traits are idea/content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation. As always, there are great ideas in the text that focus on connecting reading and writing with useful activities.
ReplyDeleteI do not have any questions.
I liked the strategy of writing a letter to fairy tale characters. This could be a very useful writing exercise as well as add fun and excitement to the classroom. I love the idea of a classroom blog on page 315. This is a great way to connect the classroom and home too. Connecting with Authors from page 317 would be a lot of fun.
This chapter talks a lot about the usefulness of graphic organizers and I found one to use to help my students write a story together in lessons 11 & 12. The face represented the whole story. One eye represented the characters and the eyelashes were the details. The other eye was the setting and the eyelashes were the details. The nose was the problem and the solution was represented either by a smile or a frown depending on whether the ending was happy or sad. They understood that all of the parts were needed to complete our story.
I often use graphic organizers in my lessons also. I often refer to eduplace.com for my graphic organizers. In fact, I have it in my "favorites" on my computer for quick reference. Scholastic also has a good collection of graphic organizers.
DeleteChapter 11 is a very interesting chapter. Reading and writing are connected. They share many of the same cognitive processes AND the same goals and skills. Reading in considered receptive and involves receiving the author’s message. Writing is considered expressive and involves expressing the writer’s message to others. There are four components to writing: graphic, semantic, graphophonic and syntactic. Zecker identified seven stages that children go through: drawing, scribbling, letter-like forms, letter strings, copying, invented spelling and then conventional spelling. There are particular characteristics that distinguish skilled and unskilled writers. The 6 +1 Trait writing assessment is a framework for assessing, discussing and organizing writing for teachers and students. To practice quick writing exercises, the POW and TREE strategies can be used. POW stands for Pick you idea; Organize your thoughts, using notes; and Write your ideas. TREE stands for write a Topic sentence that states you view; state the Reasons, at least three; Explain each of the reasons wit details; End you passage by writing a good summary sentence.
ReplyDeleteI had not been aware that writing and reading were so related. However, I have seen many students who do not like to write. I wonder if there is any correlation between not liking to read and not wanting to write. Is spelling competencies involved? I would like suggestions on how to get students to want to write. I am wondering if allowing student to write/type on the computer provides incentives for them to write. I know that for me personally, I tend to write more and the thoughts are put down quicker when I am typing than when I am writing with a pencil.
Kimberly-
DeleteOne way I think you can get students to want to write is let them write about something they want to. Let them be very creative and use details in their stories. I can remember doing writing assignments all through school. I did not love to write, but I didn't mind it. However, when I could choose what I got to write about (such as in a journal), I could write for a long time.
As for typing, I think it is a good idea you could tell the students they could type out their completed writing. I believe this would motivate a large amount of students.
Chapter 11 was over writing. Reading and writing have a lot in common. They are both part of the developmental process that occurs before, during, and after each distinct task. When students read and write, they use processes to gather ideas, question, and hypothesize. Reading and writing also share many of the same goals or skills.
ReplyDeleteThere are also differences in reading and writing. First of all, reading is a receptive language and writing is an expressive language art. Second, readers must comprehend what others have written and writers have to choose certain ways of writing for their audience to understand their message.
Something that I liked reading over was the section over the different stages of emergent writing. The book said there are seven stages of emergent writing. It is important to note that students pass through these stages at different ages and rates. Teachers need to understand everything they can about the writing stage because it is extremely important.
One thing I can relate to from the reading was a writing assignment we did in Reading and Language Arts. Dr. Walizer watched us write and also graded us on our handwriting. I think it is important for teachers to teach their students how to write properly. However, I have seen many future teachers and classroom teachers not use proper technique when writing. I think this can sometimes influence students to try to write incorrectly. It may be something as simple as how to hold a pencil correclty. Dr. Walizer really stressed this point, and even gave little pencil grips to instruct us on how to properly hold a pencil
The last thing I want to mention from the text is the section that discussed is the section over writing and technology. With today’s technology, we often have many word processing programs that help us with grammar, spell check, and so on. It is important to use technology in your classrooms, but it is even more important to have students check their own work. Like the book mentioned, these programs are not “magical.”
Jarett,
DeleteAgree with you. I think that students are using the computer to write so much that they are looseing some writing skills that they may use from using pencil and paper. The studnets are useing electronic tools to do their work for them which is not good.
Chapter 11 covers writing. Reading and writing have a important connection. When writing an individual must take their thoughts and put them into print. Both reading and writing depend on the same cognitive system: semantic, syntactic, graphophonic, and pragmatic. The two share many of the same goals as well. For example a goal is to focus on the main purpose of reading and writing, which is to communicate meaning. The goals are listed on pg 284 of the text. I was aware that writing has changed but for some reason did not make the technology connection. Writing instruction has changed a great deal since I was in elementary school. DeVries notes that teachers have to also understand that students need to learn to use computers effectively while writing. The chapter also did a great job of illustrating each of the 5 components of writing. A student can no write graphically without understanding how to form the 26 letters of the alphabet. As a Pre K teacher I found the information on emergent writers to be very helpful. Most of my students are on stage 5 the copying stage. I have two students who do a wonderful job at inventing spelling. Looking at figure 11 made me smile. Figure 11.6 comparing skilled and unskilled writers was also very insightful. As I got farther into the text I got lost in the wealth of knowledge of activities and teaching strategies this book has to offer. I will continue to say how valuable this text will be to me in the future. Writing gets me excited because it was something I always loved as child. I loved to read and write. Now as a teacher my excitement is in watching children express themselves through writing. Was anyone else able to connect to this chapter with personal experiences?
ReplyDeleteI felt the same excitement Jade! Reading and writing have always been something I have enjoyed as well and I am very eager to instill this in children! I found myself thinking of all sorts of activities. This chapter did contain a lot of information and I almost feel that it should have been split into two different chapters because of this. It was all information that was very helpful though!
DeleteChapter 11 talks about writing. Immediately, I thought about the presentation by Gary Hogg. In his presentation, Mr. Hogg pointed out that teachers who show the students their love for reading and writing are more effective than those who don’t. If you don’t love to do something, why should your students? This love and passion can be a great thing but as we saw in the scenario with Mr. Burns, this does not always translate to scoring well on testing. As teachers, we have to make sure that the way we teach, allows students to successfully show their skills on their standardized tests.
ReplyDeleteThe chapter points out that writing has changed and as I think about the ways it has changed, I would have to agree. Common Core is focusing more on informational text. When looking at this type of text found in textbooks, there are many features such as highlighting important words and providing pictures, diagrams, and graphs. Informational text is not only found in textbooks though. Many students are familiar with information text through sites such as Pinterest, blogs, and other online resources cited in figure 11.11. While students must be careful that there is research backing the ideas before they are believed to be facts, there is much to gain from students looking at this type of writing. For example, when a blog or post is found in Pinterest, the author usually has a catchy picture and short phrase or title to draw the reader in. Once you go to the full page of text, the author often includes several more pictures, bolds or numbers key ideas, and cites their information. I think using this format and providing students with a topic would help motivate students to want to write more and improving their writing. I wonder, though, how this would align with Common Core standards and help prepare students for standardized testing.
Figure 11.12 was very helpful in providing an example of a rubric for projects. I also like the activities listed for this chapter. A few activities that I really like for grades 5-8 are Quick Writes, POW, and TREE. During my tutoring sessions, I used a video from flocabulary.com called Five Things to help the students learn about plot, character, setting, theme, and conflict. After listening to the video, the students were able to describe the five different parts of a story. Using this prompt and the guided reading book, the students were able to write about the story we are reading.
1. Analysis of the reading/issue.
ReplyDeleteChapter eleven of the textbook Literacy Assessment & Intervention by B. Devries discusses writing. Writing is a critical process and has a lot to do with reading. Many of skills that are used in reading are also used in writing as well. There are many stages of writing that students go through and many people may not think of some of these stages of a way of writing. Page 286-287 has a reference for the different stages that students go through in the stages of writing. According to the textbook writing has four components which include “graphic, sematic, graphophonic and syntactic (Devries, 284-285). There are many different ways to connect writing to reading and this chapter discusses these ways to connect the two together.
2. Questions and/or contradictions about the reading/issue.
None at this time.
3. How did the reading reflect you or allow you to look at an issue differently?
I think that if I would have known now what I learned about writing from his chapter I would have had the student who was struggling with writing do a different level of writing in the lesson. I think that instead of actually writing in words I would have him do something a little simpler so that he would not been so frustrated with the activity.
4. Connecting the reading to you. Examples of your own experience.
During these tutoring sessions I have learned a lot about students writing and reading being connected. One of the students in my tutoring session wanted to write all the time. I would tell her that she did not want to write any more and she said that she wanted to write more. She always wanted to share her writing with the group as well. The other student on the other hand did not like to write and wanted to stop as soon as possible. The student that likes to write was also advance on her reading skills as well and the other student struggled.
Thank you all for your great posts and replies!
ReplyDeleteChrista