4-10-12 Students and Writing

I think this page said something like
"Why is there a whole in the bottom
of my backpack?"

When I was a student, I loved writing.  In kindergarten, I wanted to write a story about my pet hamster sneaking into my backpack and having an adventure at my school.  I wrote out my story and then having some of the best and supportive parents a young boy could ask for, my mom bought me one of those white hardcover books, and helped me take photographs for the illustrations.  I even wrote in a line about how my pet hamster ate through all the pencils in the principal’s office. I even got to take a picture of my principal holding up a “chewed up” pencil. 

But it wasn’t until 5^th grade that my writing really grew leaps and bounds.  We must have gone through 15 different writing prompts that year – all of which my teacher guided us through using the 5 stages of writing that Tompkins outlined. (And I still have all of those writings – complete with laminated covers and bound in black spiral plastic.) 

Stage 1:  Pre-writing

I was always motivated when it came
to writing about giraffes.  

Choosing a topic is important.  I mean you can’t write about something, if you don’t have a something to write about.  I believe that “students should choose their own topics for writing - topics they are interested in and know about – so that they will be more engaged” (Tompkins, 53).  When students are engaged, they are more motivated, more studious, and take more time to do a better job.  And at this point of their learning career, those are the things that matter.  Once they have their idea, they should gathering and organize the ideas.  Tompkins gave some great ideas like “drawing pictures, brainstorming lists of words, reading books, doing internet research, and talking about ideas with classmates” (53).  The one that I think is most important is reading books. 

I have a mentor/friend who was a college professor of literature and education at our local community college (he is now retired).  Last year, I had the privilege of observing him do a poetry workshop for 4^th grade class.  He said a lot of brilliant things that day, but the one that stuck out the most was what he said after he asked a girl – who had written a lovely poem – if she liked to read.  She said that she read all the time and that it was one of her favorite things to do.  He said that made sense because people who read a lot become better writers.  He then asked how many kids liked to play baseball.  A bunch of hands shot up.  He asked how many of them like to watch baseball.  More hands shot up.  He said it was the same as reading and writing.  You can play baseball, but when you get to watch a professional play, you can learn a lot – how they hold the bat, how the stand, when they run, what kind of pitch they throw.  When you get to read the writings of people who are really good at writing, you can learn a lot from them – how to phrase a sentence, vocabulary, how to describe something.

Stage 2: Drafting

A draft is “usually messy, reflecting the outpouring of ideas with cross-outs, lines, and arrows as they think of better ways to express ideas.  They write quickly with little concern about legible handwriting, spelling correctness, or careful use of capitalization and punctuation.” (54)  I have to wonder if Topkins was observing my classroom.  When my students write their drafts they are messy!  Words spelt wrong, lines crossed out, eraser marks all over, and words circled.

My 5th grade teacher Ms. Marks.

In that 5^th grade classroom, one of our bigger writings was an in-depth research narrative where we presented on a topic of our choice in a factually creative way.  She inspired us to choose topics that were really meaningful, things we wanted to know more about, things other teachers might have steered us away from.  Some people chose the holocaust, others would chose divorce, and I chose homelessness.  It was a really big project.  Lots of research, and lots of drafts.  I visited my 5^th grade teacher last year, and the first thing she did (after giving me a big hug) was rush to her closet and pull out my rough draft of that book.  It had pages taped together, words circled, blue, red, black ink all over it, sticky notes attached.  She called it “the beautiful mess.”  And it was.  It showed exactly how messy drafting is supposed to be.  We expect students to be right all the time, that when in reality and in life, rightness isn’t always the most important thing.

Stage 3: Revising

I have been glad to see that my MT doesn’t skip over this step.  In many classrooms, I have seen teachers just go from first draft to “hand it in so I can correct it.”  Talk about working harder and not letting the students think smarter.  Revision means seeing again and after “writing the rough draft, writers need to distance themselves from it for a day or two, then reread it from a fresh perspective” (55).  Anyone who has written knows this to be true.  In my class often the teacher just has them re-write it telling them to look up words they are unsure about.  While this is a good step, I was really impressed with the great ideas Tompkins had for making this process more group oriented.  One station was re-reading where group members offer compliments and asking questions about the writing challenging the author to explain their choices.  Word choice was another station where the writer circle 5-10 words which they bring to their group to work together to make them more specific or more powerful.  Sentence combining where they group helps one another take short sentences and put them together.  Revising has always seemed like a solo process, something teach individual student needs to work on so they can work on their individual skills – but look at how much cooler and beneficial it becomes when you think of it in terms of group work.

Stage 4: Editing

The biggest tip that Tompkins gave was an “editing checklist.”  We used these in 5^th grade and they were incredibly helpful.  Just like anything else we teach, we should model how to proof read.  It is very different from regular reading and something that needs to be explicitly taught.  I have helped the students edit a few times now, and each time I really enjoy it.  My MT has the students sign up on a list for a 1:1 editing time with the teacher.  When I get to do it, I sit down with them and have them read it aloud to me.  I usually let them read it all the way through one time, and then I read it aloud to them.  We stop a few times and fix things that they catch.  Then we go back and I ask them about words I think they should know, and help them sound out the words that I think they can sound out and should be learning.  I am also quick to point out that I am not a very good speller, and it is something I work on but that I do know how to use a dictionary.  So for the words I am not 100% certain of their spelling, we flip to the word in the dictionary to make sure of its spelling. 

In my 5^th grade class, the one thing that made that teacher stand out so much from all the rest was that she admitted to not being good at math.  It was the first teacher that openly admitted to not being the best/all mighty boss/knower of all knowledge BUT that she worked hard at it and never stop trying to be better at it.  I really connected with that honestly and determination. 

Stage 5: Publishing

I think this is a really important step and a lot of teachers forget about.  Just like who letting them choose their topic makes it meaningful, being given the opportunity to share their work makes the writing meaningful.  Tompkins gave some great ideas on page 59: “read it to parents and siblings, share it at a back-to-school event, place it in the class or school library, read it to students in other classes, post it on the class website, send it to a children’s literary magazine.”  The ideas are not all necessarily just getting it actually published in a magazine or a book.  The definition of publishing is much broader than I had thought, but it makes sense.  Writing should have purpose, and when students are allowed to share their writing, it helps them connect to that purpose.

My MT is very proud of her students publishing portfolio.  All the items of writing go into their writing portfolio and they often share these with their parents and conferences, or go read them to the kindergartners down the hall.  They spend time going through the writing process and making a piece of writing they can be proud of and I have enjoyed being a part of the process.  It is also really great because you can even just visually see their growth when you flip from their first piece of writing back in September to the one they just finished last week.  Their penmanship has improved, the amount they wrote, their sentence structure, spelling, vocabulary, etc.  It has all really improved and because of those writing portfolios, assessing that growth is reliable and very simple to do.