Entry #2: Writing Practices as both a Teacher and a Learner

Throughout this past week, I have had the opportunity to reflect on my past and present practices in writing, both as a teacher and a learner. Much of what we read about in Tompkins (2012) and Caulkins and Ehrenworth (2016) I have experienced either as a learner in elementary school or today as a teacher. I can vividly recall being in 2nd grade and having a writing journal. We would work in this journal during our writers workshop. My teacher, Mrs. Fortner, would let us write about whatever we wanted. I usually chose to write about something happening in my life at the time, such as what I did the past weekend, what I was looking forward to in the weekends to come, or fun trip or event in the past. There was one story in particular that stands out to me, which was about a sleepover I had with my cousin. I remember being especially proud of this writing piece because I had worked on it for weeks, and it was almost 5 pages long (very long for a 2nd grader)! I think it goes to show how influential writing workshops can be, as when I was given ample time to write about a topic that I was passionate about, I produced something that I was so proud of, and even remember over 15 years later. I can also remember the writing workshop I had in 3rd grade. My teacher at the time would have us come in Monday mornings and write about our weekends. It helped having a specific prompt to write about, and was about a topic that was fresh on our minds. I remember that after we drafted our writing piece, we would have our teacher read it over. She would point out misspelled words, which would then become our “bonus” spelling words for the week. I really liked this idea, because it encouraged us to learn words that we would use frequently in our writing. This shows how important that drafting phase is, as it helps work out the kinks in writing pieces.

In my own personal classroom, I hope to implement more aspects of writing workshop. When teaching first grade, it is often difficult to have students work independently, especially in writing. I have some students who could write multiple sentences about any given topic, and some students who have a difficult time tapping and sounding out a word. This makes the independent aspect of writing workshop extremely difficult. However, I am eager to attempt to implement certain aspects of it in my classroom in the future. For example, having student independently pre-write and come up with ideas, then draft their writing together, revise and edit together, then allow students to share with each other. Although with the school year being halfway over, it may be too late to implement these processes and have them run smoothly by the end of the year. I am excited to try these elements next year and in the years to come. I think this would really help my students become more confident, independent, writers which I am very excited for!

P.S. I'm not entirely sure how to make my reference list look correct in the blog. When I show the preview it does not look 100% correct. So I apologize!

References

Calkins, L. & Ehrenworth, M. (2016).  Growing extraordinary writers:  Leadership decisions to 

raise the level of writing across a school and a district.  The Reading Teacher, 70(1), 7-

18.