Blog Post (Whitney Farquhar)

1. I thought that the Quote of the Day was insightful, and I definitely agree with it. Regarding my philosophy about writing and writing instruction, I believe it is essential that students feel like they can express themselves in their writing and that they feel a sense of ownership and appreciation for what they write. I think that if these two aspects are accomplished, it allows students to really enjoy writing which is so important in elementary school. If a love of writing can be fostered when students are younger then writing becomes less arduous as students get older. When students put something meaningful to them in print, then not only does ownership come, but also a sense of pride, which I think is necessary for elementary writing.

2. In my third grade class, my students have been doing a lot of writing. Writing workshop is something the students do daily, and my teacher does several different things. Once a week, students do a journal entry about something like how their weekend was, or a light topic to write for the sake of writing. During writers workshop, she has been working on compiling lists for the students in their writers notebook for them to use as ideas. Lists of things such as “greatest fears,” “Best and worst life events,” etc. She'll use these lists later when the students come to her with the “I don't know what to write” response. She has also been working on students on a practice DWA with students using the prompt “write about a special friend.” My teacher modeled this very explicitly, which was suggested by the reading, and students were asked to write a plan with a beginning, middle, and end. Then students were asked to write a draft. Then revise in green and edit in red. Again, all of this was modeled very explicitly for the students as they were doing it. I feel like students are deeply engaged in writing and the writing process. Not only does my teacher try to make it meaningful to the students, but she also tries to allow them to express themselves fully. My teacher also has spiral notebooks for math, science, social studies, and reading. Students are asked to write the objectives for those subjects, and write important vocabulary words. In their reading notebooks they are asked to do a readers response every day after their silent reading. Right now students are focusing on character traits and writing about the character traits of the books they are reading. So there is definitely a lot of multiple opportunities for students to use writing across subjects. During writing workshop my teacher also takes time to conference with 4-5 students a day, much like what was mentioned in the Writing Essentials reading. She takes the time to have the students explain their thinking and talk about their writing.

3. One particular student in my class, NC enjoys writing and engaging in sharing when asked to share his writing, however he is still struggling with it. He pays attention during the instruction and tries to implement it, however often struggles with more basic themes of writing such as punctuation, spelling, handwriting, and sentence structure. I do not think that he has a hard time getting his ideas out, it is just putting it into a conventional written format that he struggles with. I believe what is causing him to struggle is that he needs to work on more basic skills and he needs more explicit instruction and practice. I think if he received that he would improve. Some particular strategies that may be useful to implement that I noticed from Chapter 9 in Writing Essentials is conferencing with him. This might tie in with more explicit instruction and explaining the reasoning why behind the strategies and tasks they are learning.