A kid makes a book

We have been working on books for Moms and Muffins which is coming up in May. The books have about 10 pages. Some examples: It bugs my mom when ______________. My mom likes to_____________________. My mom is smart. She knows all about______________. Each kid is making a book. So we work on a couple pages per day. Then they get bound and the kids will present them to their moms on Moms and Muffins Day. The moms love them.

Today, during Choice Time, a girl went to Art. She cut several pieces of paper into rectangles and stapled them together. After writing about 5 pages of her very own Mother's Day book she came to read it to me. Some examples: I love my mom. I am going to get my mom a present on Mother's Day. Then we had to clean up. She said, "I'll just finish up at home."

It never ceases to amaze me when kids take learning into their own hands and work on and produce such neat things. I have to constantly remind myself to step out of the way and let the learning happen.

A Progressing Kindergarten Writer

I have been watching one boy's progress, recently, during Writer's Workshop. He has grown into quite a good kindergarten writer.

He is a good artist as well. At first all of his emphasis was on his pictures in his journal. His pictures are full of detail and colors.

But the focus has shifted just a little and his writing really shines. There was one day recently where he wrote to the bottom of his journal page and he didn't draw a picture at all. He wrote about a trip to Target and riding his bike. He has so many sight words spelled correctly, other words he has sounded out and he consistently uses spaces. He is experimenting with periods and just throws them in anywhere he wants to!

When Writer's Workshop is over he always comes over to me because he wants to share.

Article: Getting Studetns to Think

In this article, a professor from the University of Hawaii sought out some help from his colleagues for a better understanding on how to make his students’ writing more engaging rather than superficial. The responses and activities he received were varied yet all promoted deeper thinking and provided a scaffold for students to gain a better insight to their beliefs and understandings before writing.

Although this article was written with university students in mind, I was definitely able to apply some of the ideas and practices to my second grade students. I remember once reading that Donald Graves believed that writing was the ultimate form of synthesis. If this is true, than understanding how to get writers to be more critical thinkers before actually writing or finalizing their writing, is essential.

Two of the suggested ideas were focused on having students appreciate other people’s perspective. I believe this is a transferable skill and can be built from a very early age. I have ongoing conversations with my students regarding this and use every opportunity to reinforce the idea that it is OK to have different views. I encourage listening to the other person’s ideas or beliefs and trying to back up their own opinions with clear examples. This sort of dialogue I think will later help them when they have to put their thinking and beliefs into writing. Developing critical thinking skills is developmental and needs to be ongoing for life.

Spiraling

I was rather disappointed with my students writing this week and have been reflecting on why and what I can take away from it. We have been doing writing prompts off and on all year. In February, our homework centered around prompt writing and receiving feedback. The students were doing really well and I was proud of their growth. So, when I looked through their writing this week, I was shocked to see that only 7 out of 53 students remembered to have an opening sentence and 5 out of the entire group had a closing. I even had one child use only one period for a two page writing piece. I was so disappointed. I read many of the opening sentences to the students and had them give a thumbs up if it was an opening sentence. They could do this rather well but it was not transferring to their writing.

One thought is that we have been doing poetry for the past several weeks which follows a different structure and does not require typical correct punctuation and capitalization. Corey and I have had several conversations around switching our poetry units to either the beginning of the year or end. I am not sure how much this affects their narrative writing.

Another thought, is that writing is truly developmental and must spiral through the curriculum each year. Similar to math, it must be revisited on a regular basis and built upon previous learning. I will continue to contemplate this as I think through a restructuring of my writing curriculum for next year.

Science Writing Resources

My membership to NSTA (National Science Teacher Association) was up for renewal last week. I don’t usually go to the NSTA website, but after renewing I started looking around and found out that I can download copies (PDFs) of past articles for free, and I can search by topic and grade level. I did a search on “Writing” for the topic, several articles came up, which I proceeded to download. I haven’t had time to read them yet, but here is a list of some of the articles, in case anyone else would like to see them. Science and Children is the elementary level NSTA publication, Science Scope is the middle school level one and my search results also included chapters to some NSTA books.

• “Comments on Students’ Writing” by Inez Fugate Liftig, Science Scope, April 2000.


• Handbook of College Science Teaching, Chapter 19:“Mating Darwin with Dickinson: How Writing Creative Poetry in Biology Helps Students Think Critically and Build Personal Connections to the Course Content” by Jerry A. Waldvogel, copyright 2006, NSTA.


• Help, I’m Teaching Middle School Science, Chapter 6: Writing for Science, by C. Jill Swango and Sally Boles Steward, copyright 2003, NSTA.


• “Learning Logs: Writing to Learn, Reading to Access” by Daniel Heuser, Science and Children November/December 2005.


• “Making Thinking Visible, a method to encourage science writing in upper elementary grades” by Roxanne Greitz Miller and Robert C. Calfee, Science and Children, November/December 2004.


• “Science 101, Q: What writing represents what scientists actually do?” Science and Children, November/December 2005.


• “Science the “Write” Way” by Valeria L. Akerson and Terrell A. Young, Science and Children, November/December 2005.


• “Writing to Learn” by Brian Hand, Vaughan Prain, and Keith Vance, Science Scope, October 1999.