“Beginning anything is never easy,” writes Ann Marie Corgill in her new book, Of Primary Importance. This is especially true when it comes to creating a community of writers in a primary classroom. Every teacher knows the chaos, uncertainty, and confusion those first few days or even weeks and months of a writing workshop can create. Ann Marie suggests that while the chaos is inevitable, creating a writing routine from day one is essential. Here is how she does it:
In order to create a writing routine in your classroom with your students, the most important thing you can do as a writing teacher is begin on day one—give the kids paper and pencils and crayons and markers and say, “We’re going to have writing time every day in our class, and it’s going to be really great.” Or you might say, “Just Write! Our writing time this year is going to be lots of fun!” No doubt there will be lots of talking and lots of questioning and lots of chatter in the room—“I don’t know what to write” or “I’m finished. What do I do now?”. Lots of “Where are the crayons?” and “Can you sharpen my pencil?” and “How do you make the stapler work?” There will be broken pencil points and crayon marks on the tables and glue sticky hands and paper covering the floor. And, yes, you may seem a little fried and overwhelmed at the end of it. I know. I feel that pain every August or September (and even into October!), and it’s normal. But don’t give up. Establish a writing routine on day one and stick to it.
Our classroom writing routine lasts approximately one hour and always includes a focus lesson, independent writing and conferring time, and writing share. The routine is the same every day except for differences in the time allotment of that hour over the course of the year. At the beginning of the year, we tend to need more time for focus lessons and settling in to our writing at the beginning of the workshop period as well as time for cleanup and share at the end of the workshop period. The children need longer amounts of time to practice the routines of passing out writing folders, finding appropriate materials for work, and settling in to their actual writing. We also need extra time for cleanup at the end of the period, so that children can make sure that their writing work and all materials are in their proper places and ready for the next writing day. At this point in the year, although settling in to write and cleanup take more time, we need less time for actual writing and conferring until the children build writing stamina and can focus their attention on the writing work. As their stamina increases and they develop strategies for writing and producing pieces, the length of the workshop increases.
At the beginning of the year, our independent writing and conferring time lasts around twenty minutes, and by the end of the year, we have built up to at least forty minutes of independent writing and conferring time As you live and work through these days of writing chaos at the beginning of the year, try to take a step back and really listen to the questions being asked and what caused the chaos at the writing materials area or during your conference time with a student. Everything that’s happening is an opportunity to teach (and then go home that afternoon and have a glass of wine!).
It’s in these early months of writing workshop that I can just hear myself saying (in a very strong and serious voice), “I am trying to hear your classmate read his writing, but you’re making it very difficult for me to hear!”
I can’t count the times I’ve said, “I’m shocked that you don’t care enough about your writing work and fellow writers to use a quiet voice.” But we are teaching five- and six- and seven- and eight-year-olds who make sense of their world through talking, and the more we let them in on the problem solving, the more respectful and productive they will become. “What can we do about those times when I’m conferring with a classmate and I can’t hear him over the room noise?” “What can we do to respect the other writers in this class during workshop time?” “What does a productive writing workshop look and sound like? Do you think we can try that today?”
You can read more about Ann Marie’s classroom on the Stenhouse website.
In the first chapter of her new book, Of Primary Importance, Ann Marie Corgill invites readers to “Step inside and breathe the writing workshop air with me.”
That is what a group of teachers from Riverside Elementary School in Dublin, Ohio, are doing for the next couple of months as they meet every other week to read and discuss the book.
Franki Sibberson, author of Beyond Leveled Books, is part of this study group. She and her fellow group members are going to post regular updates about their progress and discussions. The group met last week to set their schedule and to talk about questions they have as they begin to read.
We got together for our first meeting of our group that will be reading and discussing Ann Marie Corgill’s new book Of Primary Importance. We met last week to give ourselves a reading assignment before vacation and to focus in on the big questions that each of us hopes is answered during the course of the study group. Everyone in the group had a chance to preview the book and came ready with lots to think about.
We are a group of teachers who teach at Riverside Elementary School in Dublin, Ohio. There are 12 of us in the group, K-3 classroom teachers, principal, reading teachers, a math teacher and me. It is a great group and we are going to try to meet every other week for a few months starting in January.
We started the meeting looking at the book so we could decide how much we should read. Someone suggested that we read Chapters 1-5 because those chapters are all about the set-up and routines. It seemed like a lot to read, but then we remembered that we had almost a month to read and that it made sense to read that part of the book to start. So, we are reading from page 1-83 before we meet in mid-January.
Everyone had previewed the book so some of the talk was around how to use the book—some people hope to get an idea or two, others looked through it and want to follow many of her units to add some structure to their workshop. We are all hoping to get different things from our study group.
We brainstormed those questions that we hoped to have answered by the end of the study group. We shared the things that we hoped to learn. They included:
My kids love to write but where do I go next with them?
Is it better to teach forms of writing or to let kids have free choice?
How much editing makes sense? What should I edit? What should I let go?
What level of writing should I accept? What is a realistic expectation for primary kids?
Which authors and mentor texts work?
How important is the finished product?
How do I balance process with product?
Where does prompting fit in? How do you work to help kids get away from needing a prompt?
How do I keep kids’ interests when they are working on a piece over several days?
How do we keep kids engaged through the process?
How do I best manage the tiem?
What can I do with all of the kids who rush though the process and come to me saying, “I’m done.”
How do I help kids generate ideas? What prewriting work is best?
How can kids be more independent in the process?
So, these are the things we are thinking about as we begin our talk. We all left excited to read and think about our questions. We talked about mid-January being a long time to wait and we think we will probably have lots of informal conversations with each other before our next formal meeting.
We’ll post updates every time we meet—sharing our individual thinking and growth because of the book. We are excited to share our new learning.
Note: This is the first installment of Quick Tip Tuesday. Each week we’ll offer a teaching technique or strategy from our authors. We’re starting the series with some suggestions about endings.
Students have a hard time knowing how to wrap things up once they get going. In their 2002 book, Knowing How: Researching and Writing Nonfiction 3-8, Mary McMackin and Barbara Siegel offer a range of strategies for writing nonfiction conclusions. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 6: Is It Done Yet?:
We’ve probably all been in a situation where we’ve worked hard on a paper. All that remains is the conclusion. We read over what we’ve written and then struggle to think of anything else to add. We’ve already said everything. After staring at the paper, we decided to revert back to our tried-and-true concluding statement: “Now you know everything about. . . [topic].”
It’s common for students to get tired of the topic and the paper by the time they’ve reached the conclusion. It’s not easy to sustain one’s attention and motivation over an extended period of time. Not infrequently, the lack of intensity of the conclusion reflects this. Students run out of team. How can we reenergize students at this point so they don’t revert back to their old standbys? How can we motivate them to go beyond, “I liked writing this report,” and continue to think about the needs of the reader? To go back to what Karen Tracey wrote, “We do research to answer our own questions, and we write up research to answer the questions of others.” (Tracey, 1997, p. 10)
How do we encourage writers to think about the questions that still remain in the reader’s mind of perhaps to push those questions to a new level?
We believe all students are capable of writing effective conclusions. We also believe that students would be reenergized, even after spending weeks on a project, if they had at their disposal a range of strategies and concrete examples of how others have used them. Then, they could move beyond standard conclusions and experiment with different types of endings. Our experiences suggest that most students revert back to the “usual” endings because they don’t know how to bring closure in any other way.
Conclusions, like leads, take time to create. They don’t just pop into a writer’s head (as a general rule). It’s important to work endings, nevertheless, because they play an important role in the paper. The conclusion helps form the reader’s final impression of the report.
Although there are several ways to end a report, some ending will work better than others, depending on the tone of the report, the writer’s style, the nature of the research question, the topic selected and so forth. Before they can decide on a strategy to use, writers need to think about what they want to accomplish through their conclusions. The final words or sentences in a paper may
connect the beginning and end of the paper, forming an organized whole
link together multiple, diverse ideas
recap key point(s)
provide next steps
lead readers to future considerations
draw a final conclusion
let the reader know what impact the topic has had on the writer
challenge the reader ton continue to think about the topic in a more sophisticated way.
McMackin and Siegel go on to provide models of several different kinds of conclusions along with teaching tips and sample student work. Find out more about Knowing How.
Two teacher-bloggers found inspiration this week from the second edition of Beyond Leveled Books by Franki Sibberson, Karen Szymusiak, and Lisa Koch.
“After reading the foreword, the list of mini lessons, and the first chapter I knew that I had much to gain from this book,” writes Sarah Amick at Amick’s Articles in her review of Beyond Leveled Books. The book “draws you in during the first chapter as they persuade you to move away from the bookroom, away from the prepublished books from your basal, and to really evaluate the books you are placing in the hands of your children,” Sarah continues.
Stacey Shubitz at Two Writing Teachers attended a session by the authors of Beyond Leveled Books during last week’s NCTE. Franki Sibberson and Karen Szymusiak were joined by Cris Tovani (I Read It, but I Don’t Get It and Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?) and Patrick Allen (Put Thinking to the Test) to discuss authentic assessment in reading workshop. Stacey writes that she will be able to connect what she learned to her writing workshop and shares how she will change her lesson charts to empower her students as writers. “I now think there’s a sense of agency we can create in our young writers by using a statement in the first-person as opposed to the third person,” she writes and gives the example of her upcoming persuasive letter writing unit of study chart to demonstrate the power of and importance of the language used in the classroom.
I have long know that Ann Marie Corgill is a gift to her students, their parents, and her colleagues. Now this brilliant early childhood educator has given us all a professional gift.”
–Shelley Harwayne
What does a writing year in a primary classroom look like? Join Ann Marie Corgill as she shares her thinking from fifteen years of teaching and gives you a clear picture of successful writing instruction in her new book, Of Primary Importance.
Ann Marie immerses you in her classroom and lays the foundations for helping young writers — from creating the right learning environment to setting writing goals to structuring writing studies. Of Primary Importance is rich with student examples and detailed units of study on poetry, nonfiction, and fiction that demonstrate the writing workshop process at work.
You’ll see how mistakes are just as much a part of the success of the writing year as those magical writing moments, and discover new ways for students to publish and celebrate their work. Rather than offering step-by-step direction, Ann Marie encourages your own thinking, supports your own work, and fills your head with questions and ideas. You will come away energized, challenged, and wiser in your classroom writing instruction.
Spending time with boys in their writing club, I was reminded again that boys like to write…we think of it as something that maybe boys would choose not to do, but here are boys who give up their recess once a week to get together and write.
In his new DVD, “Dude, Listen to This!” Ralph Fletcher thoughtfully examines the exuberance, sly humor, and surprising sensitivity of boy writers. Watch this clip as Ralph works with a group of fourth-grade boys who meet weekly with Jennifer Allen, literacy specialist and author of Becoming a Literacy Leader. Ralph reflects on how the writing club encourages writing for pleasure and helps boys support each other as writers.
All writers have little habits; rituals, that get their creative juices flowing. For some, it’s a special notebook or a laptop, for others it’s a specific time of day that inspires. So we posed this question to two Stenhouse authors: What are your strategies for finding motivation to write?
I’m left-handed. Back in grade school I quickly learned that whenever I wrote something, the edge of my palm would inevitably drag over the page, smearing pencil or pen marks and leaving a black or blue smudge on my hand. If I was writing in a binder, the curved metal clips inhibited my style and forced me to curve my hand even more awkwardly. So, in the early ’80’s when word processing came into my life, I felt as though I had been delivered to the promised land.
Today I use a Mac for my writing, which consists of me pecking away furiously with two fingers (I never learned to touch type). I usually begin a piece of writing by making a list of the ideas swirling in my head on any handy piece of paper – a magazine subscription insert, a napkin, the back of an envelope, a piece of scratch paper cut from discarded drafts or e-mails. As rapidly as I can, I jot down any and all thoughts pertaining to the topic, not censoring, just recording. Then I go to my laptop, create a file, and type the hastily scribbled list, embellishing it as new thoughts occur. I print out that list and use a red pen to make additions, deletions, revisions, to switch words around, make notes, and add names or places or specific vocabulary related to the topic. As I enter these changes on my laptop, I cross out each one with a blue pen, so that should I be interrupted, I can tell at a glance what entries I have already typed and which ones still need to be entered.
My writing always goes through multiple drafts — often I’m not even sure where a particular piece is going until I am in draft 4 or 5. Poems take many attempts to get it right — I’m now on draft #23 of a recent poem and feel that I may, just may, be nearing the end of it.
I write/type in my office, at my desk, looking out the window to the Rio Grande River valley and the distant west mesa. A rhyming dictionary and a combination dictionary/thesaurus sit in the bookcase next to my desk; I use these two reference tools more than any others. I don’t need a lot of sleep, so I do a lot of my writing in the morning, often starting at 5 a.m. Jeannie is still sleeping, the house is quiet, and I can work without interruption. Once I have completed a draft, I print it out and then do something else –I find that I need time between drafts to “forget” what I said and bring somewhat fresh eyes to the text to be able to improve it.
When I take my daily walk, I carry a piece of scrap paper and a pen with which to jot down ideas that occur to me while walking, But I am essentially a word processor – the computer is the place where I set down my ideas, even my journal entries. I do not like the physical act of writing – it feels laborious, and I actually can type faster and more accurately than I can compose in longhand.
Between occasional poems, e-mail, book chapters, essays for certain occasions, commissioned poems, letters to friends and family, and journal entries, I write something every day. It’s easy – I’ve been doing it for years, and if I don’t write regularly, the ideas start to well up inside.
Making space for my reading and writing time is always an essential struggle. Often I trick myself. I am just going to jot down a few ideas and before I know it, I have written much more. I will read for just a few minutes before I fall asleep. (I find that reading makes me want to write.) I also email myself ideas or thoughts I get during the teaching day. That way, I have the collections of a writer’s notebook in a searchable format.
I am an addict for notebooks, the right pen, etc., but over the last few years I’ve gone to drafting exclusively on my MacBook Pro. But I had to turn off the email alert. That helped so much. It really seems to save time too. It’s all about how I save it now.
I have a wonderful space to write, a desk that looks out a window. And I use it–sometimes. Most of the time though, I grab my laptop and write on the couch or on the porch, weather permitting. The trick for me is to get the draft going. Once I have had the time to draft, I can tinker with the writing later. I have to print things out and mark them up and then re-enter them.
I find that doing this with Judge Judy on in the background is optimal. I also get a great deal of rereading and marking of drafts and revisions on the elliptical trainer at the gym. It makes both tasks go quickly, though it’s impossible to keep your target heart rate up. But if I am writing and reading, I am happy. If I am exercising and writing or reading, my creativity soars.
According to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, in partnership with the College Board’s National Commission on Writing, the shorthands and casual style of text messaging is seeping into teenagers’ schoolwork.
The study was based on focus groups and a survey of 700 children, ages 12 to 17, and their parents. The kids reported that “their e-communication style sometimes bled into school assignments,” and about half of them admitted that they omitted punctuation and capitalization in schoolwork.
“I think in the future, capitalization will disappear,” commented Richard Sterling, emeritus executive director of the National Writing Project and professor at the University of California at Berkeley, in a recent New York Times article about the study’s findings. He added that when his son asked him what a capital letter added to what a period at the end of a sentence already signified, he had no good response.
We asked Liz Hale, author of Crafting Writers, K-6, to comment on the results of the study. Is it really that bad that kids are writing so informally? Shouldn’t we be happy that they are writing at all? What opportunities do teachers have to turn text messages into teaching moments?
When I was a high school student, I remember my English teacher Mrs. Mathews waving her arms with excitement and praising the wonderful world of poetry. And I shared her enthusiasm. Poetry was the one genre of writing where I could disobey all the rules of writing I had been taught. These days, of course, with the ever-increasing presence of technology in daily communication, there are more and more forms of writing that do not follow the typical “rules” of formal writing. E-mails and text messages, written by teenagers and adults alike, consistently disregard the use of capitals, punctuation, and grammar. Even when I write a text message, I will shorten words, use acronyms, or occasionally communicate an emotion with a or a . Interestingly enough, I can no longer just type a colon followed by a parenthesis without my computer automatically turning it into one of the little faces in my previous sentence. Even my own computer is programmed for this new language.
All this shortening of language in some ways makes sense, especially when it comes to writing on a cell phone. After all, in the few text messages I send each week, I certainly don’t have the patience to type every single letter of every word with my thumbs. All that matters is that I get the message across. But according to a recent New York Times article, this more informal, short cut style of communication is seeping into the academic writing teenagers do in school. The popular acronyms and symbols they text and email to their friends are appearing in their papers. The most important question is not why are they doing this, but what should teachers do about it.
I think it’s great when some aspects of school allow students to communicate however they wish whether it’s with blog sites, poetry, personal journals or even free-writes done in class. But I think a majority of writing in school should adhere to standard writing expectations, regardless of current trends. Having both outlets in school honors the fact that different generations communicate differently, as do different cultures, but it also respects the fact that we have a responsibility as teachers to prepare students with the skills they will need to be successful in the future.
When I was in middle school, there was no such thing as e-mailing or texting, but we did have an informal oral language that conflicted with the formality of writing. I don’t know how many times my mom told me to stop using “like” in all my sentences, but it sure was what all the cool kids in seventh grade said: “I was, like, so not eating your chips. Like, how can you say that?” If the language I used with my friends back then seeped into my papers, I am pretty sure my teachers would not have deemed it unacceptable, and not because it was a language my teachers didn’t use themselves. Reading a paper that uses the word “like” over and over when it’s not really needed would not only be distracting for most people (even my seventh-grade friends), but it would interfere with clear communication. And I think this is what writing expectations should come down to: what is going to support or hinder clear communication?
When it comes to communicating ideas from one person to another, oral language has a lot more flexibility. When speaking to another person, you know your audience. You use slang or jargon with one person you wouldn’t with another. Your interaction is also live and multi-sensory. Body language and facial expression can add tremendously to the effectiveness of our words. And when I am not being clear, there is instant feedback. All I need is a quizzical look or a “What do you mean?” from a friend for me to stop and clarify what I just said. With writing, none of the above communication supports are givens. It’s not always clear who your audience will be and they won’t always be there to tell you what parts they do or don’t understand. In addition, listening is a much more passive process than reading. When listening to someone speak, your brain is not doing the added work of turning text into meaning. The fact that there is far more brain work involved in extracting meaning from print, as opposed to just listening, matters.
In the New York Times article mentioned earlier, a professor from The University of California at Berkeley suggests that capitalization might someday disappear, alluding to the fact that he could not answer his son’s question about why capitals are needed when a period denotes the end of a sentence. There is nothing wrong with questioning rules, but his point of view disregards the intricacies and incredibly fast pace of the reading/writing connection. Any time a reader needs to readjust, backtrack, or fill in the blanks to make sense of what is written, he or she has to use more effort to turn print into meaning. Few would argue the previous statement if the issue was that all quotation marks or all periods were missing from a novel. But even extra effort on the part of the reader that is barely discernible gets in the way of reading. Paragraph spaces are not absolutely essential to understanding text, but they are still around because they just make the process of reading easier. And this is the reason–the avoidance of unnecessary effort on the part of the reader–is why sentences start with capital letters! If all the sentences I wrote had periods but no capitals, it would take more work to be aware of when sentences end. When you take time to look for a reason behind the rules of writing, you will almost always find one.
So anything that gets in the way of the reader making sense of print–whether it is missing punctuation, run-ons sentences, or trying to decipher slang or acronyms–gets in the way of the purpose of writing: to communicate thoughts, ideas and images as clearly as possible with only the written word. As teachers, it’s our job to help students to get good at writing clearly for a wide range of audiences, not just their peers. The point is not to make teenagers write with this formality all the time. The point is to prepare them so that they can write at this level: so that they can write a grant application that has a chance of being chosen; so they can write an essay for college admission; so they can write a report for their boss or a memo for co-workers that can be easily understood. Otherwise we are, like, choosing popular fads over preparation.
During his visits to classrooms around the country, Jeff Anderson often notices a shift in tone when teachers talk about editing and grammar. “I’ve been in classrooms where teachers are doing a lot of great things with writer’s workshop and craft lessons and then they get to editing and they say, ‘Okay, guys. We have to prepare for the test and so now we’ve got to do some editing.’ It sounds like ‘take your castor oil,’” says Anderson.
And the typical editing activity isn’t much more inviting. In the classic daily oral language drill, a teacher puts up a sentence filled with errors and students shout out all the things that are wrong with it. Again, Anderson wonders about the messages that students are taking away: “The brain absorbs the patterns it sees all day; I don’t think it’s a good idea to look at bad patterns.” Instead of leading students on a scavenger hunt for errors, Anderson posts a wonderful mentor sentence and invites students to notice its characteristics and then to imitate its structure. When students immediately start shouting out errors they see in the mentor sentence, Anderson slows them down. “Wait, wait. This year I’m going to put up sentences that I like, that I love, and let’s see what we notice about them.”
Anderson demonstrated the activity in a recent webcast with a group of a dozen teachers and staff developers from around the country. You can listen in to the 45-minute webcast and see Jeff’s slides by clicking here.
I think in the future, capitalization will disappear,” commented Richard Sterling, emeritus executive director of the National Writing Project and professor at the University of California at Berkeley, in a recent 
or a 
. Interestingly enough, I can no longer just type a colon followed by a parenthesis without my computer automatically turning it into one of the little faces in my previous sentence. Even my own computer is programmed for this new language.