Final Reflection

Over the past 4 weeks, as I have participated in the Summer Institute, I have grown as not only a writer, but as a thinker. Writing takes different skills than I had used in a long time. I can't say that I have EVER thought of myself as a personal writer, but I am on my way to seeing myself that way. During these weeks, I have allowed myself to plan for the coming school year while making a conscious emphasis on writing in the classroom. Handwriting has always been present, but personal writing has taken a backseat to other curriculum needs. This year, I want to include journal writing for my students daily or most days each week. I have learned so many things through reading articles, watching demonstration workshops, and participating in critical thinking. It has been a pleasure to collaborate with my fellow students, and especially April, Christy, and Rodney. Thank you all, and I will miss seeing you every day!!

Demonstration Workshops

What I learned...

I learned that journaling and using writer's notebooks can be an important way to help kids get their thoughts written down. They can use these notebooks or journals for keeping great writing leads or endings, story ideas or memories, quick writes or prompts.

I learned that there are many strategies for helping young writers get started with poetry. Using fruit or another tactile object can urge them to use their senses and write about what they see, touch, smell, taste, or hear.

I learned that using music in the classroom can be very powerful. Students can help to re-write simple nursery rhymes or write words/pictures after listening to a piece of music.

I learned that helping students with asperger's with their writing can be helped if you use simple strategies outlined in the curriculum "Handwriting with Tears." I also learned that sometimes it is OK to let a child with special needs choose the topic they are interested in for writing, even if the topic is the same every day. If this helps them to write, and writing is the goal, then we have just helped them to be successful in achieving a goal.

I learned that using a simple text, like "Molly's Pilgrim," can lend itself to exploring a whole unit on immegration, Thanksgiving, ancestry, or dozens of other topics. Picture books can open doors to enriching our student's narrow thinking and expanding their understanding of the world.

Digital Storytelling: Where I Am From

Bird by Bird #2 - Anne Lamott

Lamott continues to talk a lot about the imperfections of writing in the second part of her book, Bird by Bird. She talks in-depth about how false starts happen and your topic may change course mid-way through an article or piece of writing. Lamott also discusses that writers may begin writing and decide to scrap the whole idea and start fresh with something new.
The brutal honesty that Lamott expresses about the struggles that writers, even successful writers, face everyday are refreshing! Some students (myself included) assume that writers sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and end up with a completed work a few days/weeks/months later without any problems along the way. Anne Lamott dispels this myth with her witty humor and vivid descriptions of what it is really like to be a writer.
I appreciated the ideas that she gave on using index cards strewn all over and on your person at all times for those moments when you have a vision or idea you simply must write down. Lamott catches her reader’s attention with so many personal stories, some funny, some sincere, some gut-wrenchingly sad. Her personal stories open us up to her, as a person. This is what a memoir is supposed to do. As I read her book and re-read sections I like, I find my imagination following her through her stories, her days as a writer.
Lamott’s insights to novice writers are particularly useful. They give us a realistic view of the journey each writer takes, and how they are all different, unique to your experiences, but hopefully end up with some beautifully written pieces all your own.

“Thriving Writers” – Emily Duvall

Emily introduced us to teaching our students about test writing. This is a very important topic because of the high-stakes tests that students are currently being responsible for passing and teachers are responsible for preparing them for. Emily taught us that teaching students the language they will encounter on tests is an important piece for preparing them to be successful on the test. This instruction doesn’t have to be boring, as Emily demonstrated when she had us all think of an invention and then do an activity related to it as a group. Teaching kids the different styles and genres of writing can be as important as teaching them how to write. They need to practice writing in a variety of different modes in able to be ready for the test questions that will be asked. There are no writing components that are tested at the Kindergarten level, but setting up the foundation for test-writing is important at every level.

“Teaching with Rubrics” – Andrade

This article was a good review for me about the reasons to use rubrics. I was reminded that rubrics serve as a concrete way to assess student achievement in a variety of areas, including writing. Good rubrics “orient us toward our goals as a teacher.” (pg. 27) They are evaluation tools to help us see the areas where our students succeed, excel, and need improvement.
I learned about the function of different types of rubrics, such as scoring rubrics for assigning grades and instructional rubrics when we wish to include the students in the design and implementation of the rubric. Rubrics help us give our students informative feedback on what they need to improve, and what is working.
Rubrics often need explanation, especially to students. Students may need practice with rubrics before using one to score assignments. Rubrics should be designed with reliability and validity in mind and also aligned with the standards for the curriculum being taught.
I do not have much experience with using rubrics at the Kindergarten level. There are assessments and other concrete pieces that I use for grading, but developing a rubric for writing would be a very useful tool when doing grades each quarter. I should take the time to create or find a rubric for my emergent writers in Kindergarten.

Old Wooden Rocker

There’s an old wooden rocker, golden honey in color
lovingly assembled by the hands of my father.
Smooth, rounded edges greet my touch as I trace
the arm where tiny fingers once rested.

Each nick, each scratch, each flaw in the wood
tell stories of comfort and of pleasure,
of children reading softly and of giggling laughter
years of rocking with dolls and with sisters.

The drawer beneath holds a secret hiding place
for dozens of trinkets and treasures –
Christmas ornaments and bracelets of beads
hidden…sometimes ‘til months later.

I hear melodies sung by children in years past
while they sat gently rocking in this chair.
Tunes of “Twenty Froggies” and “Twinkle Little Star”
warm my soul like a breath of summer air.

As I gaze upon this most cherished possession
I’m reminded of the meaningful bond
that joins my family together: mother, daughter, sister, father
Like the spindles holding tightly to this chair.

“Non-Magical Thinking: Presenting Writing Developmentally in Schools” – Janet Emig

Emig asks us to stretch our thinking in her article about non-magical thinking. She says that, “…to believe that children learn because teachers teach and only what teachers explicitly teach is to engage in magical teaching.” (pg. 135) I really enjoyed this message because it encourages us to teach the right content, in a safe and enriching environment, and scaffold their learning, we will have the best results for our teaching.
Magical thinking suggests that writing is taught rather than learned, whereas non-magical thinking proposes that writing is learned instead of taught. Emig explains that research shows us that writing is a natural process in student development, just as talking and walking are natural processes that make us intrinsically human.
“Teachers of writing, then, must themselves write, frequently and widely.” (pg. 141) I enjoy this quote because I agree that it is important for students to see their teacher as a writer. I would like to demonstrate my new love of writing for my students next year in school.

6-Trait Writing

Top 10 Things I’ve Learned About REVISION

• Use questions to identify places where you may be in need of revision.
• Details can help the writer convey meaning. Dig for ways to add more details.
• Snapshots give the writer a chance to freeze a moment, explaining the sensory details.
• Thoughtshots give the reader a look into the character’s thinking. This provides insight into the true character.
• Build a scene using only necessary dialogue. The rest of the description and details help the reader get the picture in their mind.
• Explode a moment to draw a reader into a specific scene.
• Shrink a century to cut out the “boring parts!”
• Revision can occur any time during the writing process, not just at the end.
• Rearranging paragraphs and sentences can help to find a stronger lead and better flow.
• Double space your revision draft so that you can write notes in the spaces.

“The Writer’s Toolbox” – Laura Harper

I love the connections that Harper made to Barry Lane. This article really helped me to see how his techniques, strategies, and tools have been used by another teacher in their classroom. The connections she made with Lane helped me to understand his material even more deeply.
Harper talks about how she used Lane’s strategies of Questions, Snapshots, Thoughtshots, Exploding a Moment, and Building a Scene to build a literal “toolbox” for each of her students. After introducing each strategy, she would have the students write down information about the strategy, including a picture that had been decided on by the class to depict that particular strategy. Then, the cards were all kept in a manila envelope in the student’s writing folder. This was such a useful idea to share with other teachers! It makes me wish I was teaching Title I reading again (for about 30 seconds) so that I could utilize this idea more fully than I can in the Kindergarten room.

“After the End” - Barry Lane, Chapters 6-7

Chapter 6 of After The End describes how to use visual tools to help writers get their thoughts down on paper. Some of the diagrams, webs, maps, and graphs assist writers in thinking about their content in a different way and organizing their thoughts.
Chapter 7 focused on conferencing with students. A few quotes that I enjoyed from this chapter include:
• “Peer conferencing is a central element of a student-centered classroom. The more you empower your students, the less they will have to line up at your desk for a conference.” (pg. 108)
• “Students walking away from a conference are often overwhelmed with information. It’s important to teach them to learn how to listen to their own internal critics, which can sift through the comments and questions of their peers or teacher and find what’s important for revision.” (pg. 109)

Conferencing is important to do with our students for many reasons. A few key points I have made on conferencing are:
• Conferencing can help the student to be their own editor.
• Peer conferencing can also give students power because they do not always have to rely on the teacher for help.
• In a conference, it is important that the student speaks first. This can determine the flow and direction the conference needs to take.
• Conferencing helps writers make choices and define directions
• Take notes when the student talks. Help them to know you are really listening to what they have to say.
• Vary conference styles – change it up!

“After The End” – Barry Lane, Chapters 1-5

I was thrilled to read this book by Lane. He offers SO many practical ideas about teaching the writing process that I feel like I can use! These are a few of the things that I found to be particularly useful to me.
In Chapter 1 about questions, I really liked the strategy he talks about called “Growing Leads.” With this technique, you start off by telling the students a story with huge holes and gaps, leaving them wanting more information. This, in turn, will lead to questions! Students will come to understand that when they glance over important information in their stories, they leave the reader “hanging,” wanting to know more to clarify things that did happen in the story.
Chapter 2’s focus was on details. In this chapter, a section called “Digging for Details” tells how you can use a simple, but unique, object to have students describe. First, with generic descriptions, next with specific details to give another reader a real “sense” of the object if they were not there to observe it.
The strategies of Snapshots and thoughtshots in chapter 3 help to give the writer some techniques for making their writing have more depth. Using a “Magic Camera” snapshot technique, students pretend that they have a magic camera that can freeze a moment in their story. This camera allows them to not only see the details from the picture, but all smell, taste, touch, and hear important details. What a marvelous strategy to teach our students, or even use ourselves!
Building a scene is the focus for chapter 4 and I found the most useful tool in this chapter to be “Build a Scene.” Encourage students to write about a scene in their story without using dialogue to describe what is happening. Building a scene can include snapshots, thoughtshots, along with dialogue.
The last chapter in this selection is chapter 5, about exploding a moment and shrinking a century. I love the idea about exploding a moment in your story to make the action last longer. It gives the reader a sense of your story, the setting, what a character is thinking and feeling, the sights, smells, sounds, etc. Lane tells his students that it is like writing in slow motion.
Many of these techniques or strategies are too complicated to use with Kindergarteners with their writing (for obvious reasons), but I still like the idea of giving them examples of each of these as we find them in the books we read, talking about the power and impact the author can have on his/her audience, and why it is important to think about these things in our own writing.

“Writing Steps: A Recursive and Individual Experience” – Bonnie Warne, 2008

Warne does a great job in this article explaining the recursive process that writing takes. She uses Sommers idea that writing is a fluid cycle rather than a series of steps to compare the writing process to a Slinky, which I think is a visual metaphor. “The spiral model of the writing process posits that it is possible to brainstorm, draft, and revise all at the same time.” (pg. 25) Well said! We do our students a disservice if we teach writing as a process where you have to complete one step before you move onto the next. This, in fact, is not how real writers write, or at least not all the time.
I found that a passage that really spoke to me as a writer was: “The students, as Sondra Perl reported in her study of college writers, use a red editing pencil, at least in their minds, as they stab at their writing, unceasingly looking for the convention errors before they even know what they want to say (38).” (pg. 26) I am the student that Perl and Warne speak of here. One flaw I have is that I am so concerned about things being written correctly, that I don’t “let it rip,” as Bill Woolum taught us to do. So many things to work on, so little time!

“Teaching Conventions in a State-Mandated Testing Context” – Bonnie Warne, 2006

Warne brought in so many of her personal experiences and struggles with teaching writing into this article. She discusses the struggle teachers face with trying to balance teaching the writing process as students learn best and teaching the vocabulary and “steps” as they will see it on standardized tests, like the ISAT.
The students that we teach come from all walks of life. We take them as they are and try to bring them as far as we can in the short time we are given. Testing vocabulary and format are so specific to the testing world that we must spend time preparing our students for being successful on these tests by spending time teaching students how to take them and what they will need to know. This is unfortunate, since as Warne argues, filling out multiple-choice questions about writing is NOT the same thing as knowing how to go through the writing process.

“Learning to Confer” – Ch. 14, Lucy Calkins

Wow! I am learning so much about conferencing with students, peers, and myself about writing! How wonderful!! This chapter of Calkins book is similar to the last one in that she tries to give us more details about conferencing with students about their writing. I appreciated her talking about the different types of conferences that you can have with students about their writing.
Content conferences are simply interested conversations we have with students about the content of their writing, or even their lives. “Through content conferences, writers can also learn to anticipate their audience’s hunger for information and to anticipate places where their readers may be confused or need clarification.” (pg. 235) Design conferences allow us to meet with students about the structure and sequence of their writing. “Once writers can tell an event as it happened, they must learn that they need not follow the sequence of the event, nor do they need to show the whole scene.” (pg. 239) Process conferences help us to focus on the writing process, itself, with students. Here, one goal is to help students to ask questions of their writing, about what worked or didn’t work, such as, “Was that a wise choice?” or “Have I done something new as a writer?” (pg. 244) Evaluation conferences allow us to work with students to help them decide if they have truly finished with this piece of writing, or if they can still improve it. Students must ask themselves, “What’s my best work, less good work, worst work?” (pg. 246) and other similar questions about their current and past writing to see how their writing has changed, improved.
I did not realize that there were all these different types of conferences that all serve a different purpose. Amazing! Incorporating each of these into your classroom with writing workshop will help your students get the most from their writing.

“Conferring – Writing Becomes a Tool for Thought” – Ch. 13, Lucy Calkins

Calkins includes such great anecdotes in this chapter at the beginning with the students conferencing with themselves. I loved reading this section. It made me think of how rewarding that would be to see your students so engaged in their writing, understanding the writing process! Teaching students to question each other’s writing, and then question their own, is such an important piece of the writing workshop. It must first be modeled, as Calkins discusses on pg. 223, “In order for young writers to learn to ask such questions of themselves, teachers and peers need to ask them of young writers. Teacher-student and peer conferences, then, are at the heart of teaching writing. Through them students learn to interact with their own writing.”
Calkins encourages us to ask questions about our writers that will lead us to understanding the writer better first, not just their subject. We need to get to know our students well before we can help them with their writing in a purposeful way. Being a good listener during the conference is so important. Then the student knows they were really heard.
One part that really spoke to me, as a teacher and a person, is when Calkins discusses making suggestions that will help the writer, not the writing. “But it is not my piece of writing. It belongs to someone else.” (pg. 228) Being a perfectionist with writing (among other things in my life), I struggle to not try to change written works to how I think it would sound the best. I must remember that changing a student’s writing so that it mirrors something I, myself, would write teaches them nothing. Instead, it makes them more dependent on me and not confident in their own abilities. This is definitely an area of weakness for me that I need to work on!

“What’s Right with Writing” – Linda Rief

Rief includes lots of useful information in her article that I found a pleasure to read. I enjoyed reading her things that we have learned about writing and the teaching of writing:
• Writing is thinking.
• There is no one process that defines the way writers write.
• We learn to write by reading extensively and writing for real audiences.
• Writers need constructive response.
• Evaluation of writing should highlight the strengths of process, content, and conventions, and give the writer the tools and techniques to strengthen the weaknesses.
• Writing is reading.
How true each of these statements is! Writing is thinking. “…if we want children to become adults who are articulate, literate, and thoughtful citizens of the world, they must learn to think deeply and widely. They must commit their thinking to paper…” (pg. 35) In order for students to be able to write well, they need time, choice, models, and response. Testing is often the biggest thing that holds writing back in the classroom.
What a powerful tool writing can be to give our students voice in the classroom. “Putting words on paper gives us voice – allows us to be heard.” (pg. 35) Some questions I have that I still ponder include: How can I empower my students at the Kindergarten level to think deeply and write with voice? How can I incorporate as much writing into the curriculum as time allows?

“Reaffirming the Writing Workshop for Young Adolescents” – Sheryl Lain

Lain gives us great insight into her classroom in this article. She is so articulate about what has worked for her and how it has been a learning process to get to where she is today in instructing a writer’s workshop. Honestly, I enjoyed reading this article, but found that I did not highlight nearly as much powerful text as I did when I read Calkins or Rief, for example.
One part of the article that I thought was really powerful was when she talked about conferencing on page 25. “How do I know what to say in a conference? I write myself, and because I write, I know what to celebrate, what questions to ask, what teaching tips to offer, what to ponder. I know, because as I write my own lines or struggle to untangle a thread of my own thinking, I’m learning how writing works. This is the knowledge I share with my students.” How insightful! I really appreciated this passage because it brings home how important it is for us, as teachers, to also continue to be readers, writers, and life-long learners.
My journey as I writer is just getting started. This is my first real experience with writing for pleasure. My writing in the past has always had a real purpose (a focused assignment, transactional writing). Even though we are completing assignments in the Summer Institute, I feel the structure is flexible enough to let us really explore our writing. Thank you for this experience!

"Establish a Predictable Workshop Environment" Calkins, Ch. 11

Writing workshops are a great way to get students engaged in the writing process. Scheduling your writer’s workshop time each week helps kids to plan and prepare for what they want to do next with their writing. On pg. 183, Calkins says, “I have finally realized that the most creative environments in our society are not the kaleidoscopic environments in which everything is always changing and complex. They are, instead, the predictable and consistent ones…”
Some components to a good writer’s workshop include: mini-lessons, work time (writing and conferencing), peer conferencing and/or response groups, share sessions, and publications celebrations. Mini-lessons may begin or end your workshop time and usually last about 10-15 minutes. They are informal meetings where students gather around the teacher (either in whole group or small, depending on the needs of your class for this individual mini-lesson topic). This is a time to focus on, share, or introduce a writing strategy that they will use often.
Work time is just that – it is the time that you give your students to focus on their writing pieces. You can use this time to conference with students about their writing. Peer conferences are usually short (5 minute), student-initiated conferences with a classmate about writing works in progress. Response groups, on the other hand, are small groups (4-5 members) that meet almost daily for about 20 minutes to see where students are in the writing process and what members of the group may need help with.
Share sessions are informal meetings with the whole class gathered around to share and support student works in progress. Usually 3-4 students will share their writings during this time in the author’s chair. Publication celebrations sometimes take place on Fridays, or can take place after a unit is completed (about every 6-8 weeks). These celebrations can include inviting parents or grandparents, sharing published works, or having students read their works on audiotape.
I don’t yet have a writer’s workshop set up in my classroom, but Calkins gets me excited to think of the possibilities and ideas for starting one next year. My biggest enemy in my classroom now is time. Trying to find a block of time that would even make it worthwhile to begin a writer’s workshop will be a challenge. Still, I think it will be worth it when I make it work!

Sunnyside, Washington

I always like summer best.
You can eat corn right off the cob
from Mom & Dad’s garden
and ruby-red cherries
and juicy watermelon that runs down your chin
and blackened hotdogs
at backyard barbeques
and roast golden marshmallows that you eat in layers
at the fire pit
and run through the sprinklers
and play card games (like Phase Ten and Golf)
not only when you are 8 years old
but always.

"Bird by Bird" Response - 3 Big Ideas

1. Writing is a process. It never comes out right in the first draft, but write it down anyway. Write everything.

“For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.” (pg. 22)

2. Being published is not the reward, writing is the reward.

“I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.” (pg. xxvi)

3. Writing is hard. Don’t beat yourself up about it.

“You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work.” (pg. 7)

Where I Am From

I am from an old clothesline, pulled tight between two metal posts
from Kix cereal and Dawn dishsoap.
I am from the home with an old tire swing
(dusty black, swinging lazily).
I am from the pink peonies growing along a picket fence
the forsythia bush
whose long gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

I’m from family potlucks and homemade ice-cream
from Anna and Teunnis Johannes.
I’m from Halloween trick-or-treating and 4th of July sparklers
and from candlelight Christmas Eve service.

I’m from “clean your room” and “be careful”
and “Over in the Meadow.”
I’m from singing Christmas carols around grandma’s piano.
I’m from Sunnyside and the proud Dutch
potato salad and apple kuchen.
from my daddy, Mark,
and the two-door garage he built with his own hands.
From the cedar chest,
holding boxes of pictures and bibles
old school photos and mementos
and all those things I never want to let go of because
they all show proof of
where I am from.

"Now That You Go To School" Response

James Britton talks about 3 different types of writing in this article: transactional writing, expressive writing, and poetic writing. Transactional writing is the most common style of writing and includes anything that is meant to teach or instruct the audience about something. Informational books, directions, essays, and newsletters are all examples of transactional writing. Expressive writing is anything that comes written in the “I” form – where you put your thoughts down on paper. Journal writing, portfolios, personal letters, and diaries are all different types of expressive writing. Poetic writing is not limited to including only poetry, but also includes any kind of writing that is meant to entertain the audience it is intended for. Examples of poetic writing include plays, memoirs, poetry, and personal narratives.

It is important that students get practice writing in each of these areas, not just one. In Kindergarten, most of our writing actually falls into the expressive writing category. The majority of my free writing in class is having the students tell stories from their life: their interests, about themselves or families, things they want to do, places they want to go, etc. After reading this article, I realize that I have limited my students’ writing a great deal. True, they are just beginning to get print down on the page in Kindergarten, but I should think of ways to incorporate more transactional and poetic writing into our classroom, even if it is through shared or guided writing.

“I, You, and It” Response

James Moffett describes four different types of communication – inner verbalization, outer vocalization, correspondence, and formal writing. He goes on to discuss how these can force us to view/verbalize/write about the same situation differently, with different attention to detail, depending on our audience. With children, their writing will progress in the same way, moving from concrete to abstract, from self to world.

Moffett also states that students should not be asked to do so much writing on reading. “What most frequently freezes the student at one end of the abstractive spectrum is too much writing about reading.” (pg. 26) Moffett goes on to say on pg. 27, “On the same grounds, I am leery of asking the student to read about writing.” This goes against almost everything else I know about writing with students! I have always been under the impression that incorporating writing with reading was essential, as they are two sides of the same coin. I think Moffett challenges us to think about the writing that we assign to students in a different way. He explains his position better in this selection:

“Rather than assign book reports and essays on books, I would encourage the student to incorporate into his essays of generalization illustrations and ideas drawn from his reading and to mix these with his own experiences and observations; in other words, get him to create the classes into which he can fit people and actions drawn from both books and life.” (pg. 27)

This is something I strive to do in my classroom. Incorporate my students’ background, experiences, knowledge, into what we are learning. I think Moffett is right. Incorporating facts (from books) with life (from experiences) will make the assignment have a much more powerful impact and learning experience for our students.

Querencia

My home growing up was in Sunnyside, Washington. This small town, despite its problems, is still the place where I feel the safest and most comforted. I grew up surrounded by countless family and friends. Weekend barbeques and potlucks were commonplace and I was with the ones I loved the most. My parents and sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, numerous cousins, and always friends fill up the memories of my childhood. My husband does not understand how this town can be such a safe harbor for me. When I feel depressed, sick, lonely, or full of self-pity, I long to go to Sunnyside, to my querencia. Even though most of my friends have scattered like the seeds from a freshly blown dandelion, much of my family still remains in Sunnyside and some of my fondest memories will always be of this place.