1. 1. For me it is essential that writing is an enjoyable part of the school day every single day. Too often writing is seen as something that is strictly structured. I believe that children have immensely imaginative and creative minds and can be incredible authors if they are given the opportunity to explore and venture beyond boundaries. Students should feel as if their writing is important and matters. It is essential to me that my students believe that they are authors, have ownership of their writing, and have the power to reach out to their readers. Students should be able to share their writing not only with their classmates and peers but with the community as well both orally and printed. I believe that students should be exposed to writing of all types and should be given the opportunity to try each kind. Students should not only be given time to write during one subject of the day, but writing should also be a part of all subjects across the curriculum. Written words are powerful and writing can be something that enriches student’s lives and allows for opportunities everyday.
2. 2. Throughout the first three weeks of school I have seen a great amount of writing on a daily basis. As an intern in a fourth grade classroom, a great focus at this time is preparing for the MEAP. Because of this, written responses are being practiced frequently. There are six main informational types of writing that are found on the fourth grade MEAP. These types include: compare/contrast, persuasion, descriptive, cause/effect, problem/solution, and sequencing. My mentor teacher is stressing to the students that they will be given a specific prompt and will have to choose a type of writing based on the prompt given. To start off the school year, we have done mini lessons for each type of writing. The mini lessons are similar to the lessons explained in Writing Essentials (155) such as narrowing the topic, using interesting words, writing a beginning that grabs the reader, backing up statements with examples, etc… Our exercises with the students include coming up with important elements of each type and questioning what a good example would look like. Students were to write down what good writers do as found in an example on page 191 of Writing Essentials. This gives the students a chance to voice their own opinion as to what is important in their writing as well as create a tool they can use in the future. The students are then guided to writing a different type everyday. They are given a prompt and told specifically which type to write about as well as a checklist of what their response should include. The next step of this preparation is to give the students different prompts and have them choose which type would best fit the prompt and complete the response on their own. We have also explored peer response. Students are given examples of other students responses and are to answer questions such as did this student complete the prompt correctly and why. Before giving them peer responses, we did mini lessons that involved looking at their own writing, editing it, and deciding if they fulfilled the writing requirements and why/why not. Seminole Academy as a school has come up with the goal of writing fluency for the school year. Every grade is required to have their students write for 5 minutes on a daily basis. The students are given a topic such as socks, and together as a class come up with details/information about socks. After this, students and teachers write for 5 minutes without stopping. The students are not allowed to erase mistakes and are to just write until the time is up. Each class has tracking records and the students count how many words they wrote during each POP (pencil on paper) session. We have already seen improvements in writing fluency since the start of the school year.
3. My focus student SB is a very strong writer and is also a high performing student in all subjects. SB is constantly considered a model student as he always follows directions and completes assignments efficiently and accurately. SB enjoys POP writing and frequently asks when we will be writing next. SB is a new student to Seminole this year, but has no problem connecting with his peers on a social basis. One struggle I see with him however is he writes strictly by the framework he was told to and does not go “beyond the formula” (Writing Essentials 147). I know that the majority of this is due to the fact that we are practicing strict MEAP writing that looks for calls for completing specific parts in a structured manner. This causes SB to constantly come up to one of his teachers during prompt writing and say is this good enough, can I stop writing. It seems as if he is not writing for meaning. He doesn’t see himself as an author or show voice in his writing. There are a few strategies I could use in my unit lessons to help SB as well as other students. The first lesson would be to “engage students in writing about topics they care about for a reader “ like I read about in Writing Essentials (149). As I discussed in my philosophy I have read how important it is for students to see themselves as authors and take proud ownership of their writing. By allowing students to write about a subject that matters to them, they are beginning to see how to write for meaning. I would also like to see SB take voice, and I could start to do this by demonstrating my writing and thinking aloud. After this, I will stress that students can show parts of their personality through their writing by using things such as humor. My goal of my writing unit is for my students to write for meaning.
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