1. For me, it is essential that children are excited about writing and about being authors. If they are enthusiastic about writing and know that their ideas are important, they will not be discouraged as writers. Children must be able think about reading and writing as interconnected skills and be able to apply reading strategies and what they read with what they write. I think it is important that students are able to get their thoughts written down regardless of whether the spelling and mechanics are perfect right away. Meaning as a whole is the most important aspect. When students are proud of their writing, see their work as significant, and are excited to share what they have written they are on their way to become successful authors.
2. In my classroom we are still working on launching Writer’s Workshop and the students are still getting used to the writing routines in our classroom. The students have many opportunities to write and we have modeled, practiced, and completed the D.W.A (Developmental Writing Assessment) in which they completed a storyboard with pictures, and then wrote a short story based on the storyboard with a beginning, middle, and end. One thing we strive to point out to the students is that Reader’s Workshop and Writer’s Workshop are interconnected. We have not begun the Writer’s Workshop mini lessons as in depth as we have the Reader’s Workshop mini lessons. Some of the mini lessons we have completed in Reader’s Workshop include predicting, going back and rereading, and tuning into interesting words. Some students are beginning to apply what they learn in Reader’s Workshop to their writing. We encourage students to write their best and we conference with them individually afterwards. During these conferences we write correct spelling underneath their work and make sure their work makes sense. A lot of the aspects of Writing Essentials are evident in my classroom. Something from Chapter 7 that really stood out to me was “teaching explicitly and telling students why”. Explicit instruction is so important and especially with young learners like my first graders. They need to know exactly what is expected of them and go into a task knowing exactly what they have to accomplish. Also, “focusing on editing after students can produce quality work” is important to note. In my classroom, once the students have finished a writing piece, we conference with them and point out corrections in mechanics such as punctuation and capital letters, etc. We also use a word wall as mentioned in this chapter. In addition, we make time for daily writing just as it was discussed in Chapter 8. The chapter about conferencing, Chapter 9, also was interesting to me because we do many of the things mentioned in this chapter. We do whole class shares every day and the chapter mentioned “assume the child is making sense” which I think is very important. When working with my first graders I have seen how important it is to constantly tell students their work is important and how proud you are of them for doing their best, even when it is not perfect. They love to know that you understand their work and appreciate it.
3. One particular student, LB, in my class is doing very well in our writing activities. He is a very active, engaged, and bright student, however whenever we begin our writing it takes him a little bit of time to get going. He usually sits there for a while saying he doesn’t know what to write about and I prompt him with further questions about the topic before he decides on something and starts working. One thing he struggles with is that he has very expressive vocabulary and wants to include it in his writing but gets a little discouraged when he feels he is not capable of writing (or spelling) exactly what he wants. He does well when I encourage him to simply do his best to write words he does not know very well. He is proud to share his writing because of the interesting words (as we learned in Reader’s Workshop) he includes. A strategy that works with him is to show him that you are noticing his connections between reader’s workshop and writer’s workshops and encouraging these connections. In our Book Club Plus reading they mentioned, “Even young children can be introduced to fairly complex themes and issues in their reading and use writing to work through these complexities”. I can definitely see this being true for this particular student. I think he could use this and write as a way to express his thoughts and feelings about a specific issue and excel in that task.
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