Literacy, Week 5, Shared Writing

Writing Essentials Chapter 5:
What is shared writing, how is it used, and for what purposes? How does shared writing fit into the optimal learning model? Deconstruct one of Routman's shared writing lesson examples (starting pp. 99 or 105). What does she do that makes it "shared" writing? What is the potential impact on students? How does this lesson compare to writing instruction in your field experiences or past schooling?

The chapter on Shared Writing, chapter 5 in Writing Essentials, was not only very interesting to me but also very helpful. I am interested in ways to teach our English Language Learners (ELL) and appreciate each time the author, Regie Routman, points out the possible uses in this area for her teaching approaches. As I read this chapter, I realized, also, that my cooperative teachers have been incorporating shared writing in their teaching.

My Main placement is in a Kindergarten class. The teacher has incorporated elements from Guided Language Acquisition Design (GLAD) strategies to literacy learning in her classroom. An approach used for ELL students, this teacher explained to me that GLAD has many helpful elements for the general classroom. One element that I witnessed her teaching appears to be a form of shared writing.

On Monday, this particular week our theme was apples and our letter was a, the teacher put a sheet of chart paper on the whiteboard in front of the class. The sheet had been folded into quarters so that when unfolded, there were four distinct sections of the paper. We had been having a group discussion about apples and had decided that apples were hard and round. Starting in the upper left square, she drew an apple, wrote the word apple underneath and then the words hard and round. The a was then traced over in a different color.

The next day, after reading a factual book about apples, we added to the chart. After some discussion, Flowers bloom on trees became the text for the upper left quarter. Throughout the week, Blossoms turn into apples and Apples fall to the ground were added to the text. Each day the students reread their text before moving on to the next square. The teacher continued to trace over the first letter in each sentence; as I think on it now, I'm not sure why. It will be interesting for me to return to her classroom and observe again her teaching this literacy approach. This time I will have more questions.

tech video

This is Kalie's video.

Literacy, Week 4, Writing and Literacy Skills

Writing Essentials Chapter 2: All students, especially those who begin school with limited literacy skills, need to think of themselves as readers and writers, see the processes as meaningful, and have positive attitudes about literacy before they can successfully engage in literacy practices? (p. 34). How do you respond to this quote? What connections can you make between this quote, your field placement, and/or your own experiences?

My immdiate response to this quote springs out of my own experience as a preschool teacher and a teacher of foreign languages. The I-can-do-it attitude is perhaps the most important aspect of success in learning. The first year I taught in a classroom setting, I had the same student in a senior creative writing class and a French I class, only he was not the same student in each. In Creative Writing, he had the idea that he could do the work. Therefore, he applied himself with the outcome of A's for the class. However, he did not see himself as a student of the French language, did not apply himself and barely got by with D level work. It was an amazing process for me, as a first year teacher, to witness. It seemed that no matter what I did to interest this student in French, including arranging pen pals with students from France, he believed that he couldn't do it and therefore, he didn't do it.

In six years of teaching at a preschool I also saw this at the entry level of a student's formal education. The first skill a student masters in preschool is how to use scissors for independent work. How many times have I heard "Miss Ann, I can't do this!" Students quickly learned not to say the "I can't" phrase because it hurt Miss Ann's ears. But what I saw often, especially for those who struggled, were students determined that they couldn't do something therefore they wouldn't. The challenge for teachers is to help students to see that they can, even when some are struggling and especially when the strugglers witness others in the class for whom the task at hand seems to come naturally.

Therefore, I can understand why it is important for teachers to help students, whether they are emergent literacy, ELL, or well into their years at school, to see themselves as readers and writers. Because not seeing themselves as such is a huge obstacle to overcome.

Literacy, Week 3, Invented Spelling

Fox Chapter 3: Based on your experience and your reading of this chapter, do you think "invented spelling" (in which children spell words the way they think they sound) helps or hinders young readers?

Before the start of my student teaching experience, I was opposed to "invented spelling." It seemed to establish poor spelling habits. As a parent I loved the invented spelling of my own children but I thought that surely my children would learn how to spell words properly once they started school. I frowned upon teachers who allowed misspellings to go uncorrected.

Teachers began explaining to parents that they ignored misspelled words when they wanted their students to focus on writing, to get their thoughts on paper. Students who are preoccupied with spelling are not concerned with the thoughts that they want to express. However, this procedure of ignoring spelling for the sake of writing is different from actually encouraging the writing of words spelled incorrectly.

In my main placement Kindergarten class, the students write in their journal everyday. The teacher demonstrates what journal writing looks like. She has an idea that she would like to write down. She draws a picture of the idea. Then she attempts to put the idea in writing. She says, "I like apple pie." Then asking for help from the students she begins to write I l a i. The long sound of the letter i is what the students hear. If students say that they hear the /l/ in apple, she adds it.

I now see that invented spelling encourages students to listen for the sounds that they hear in words, not just memorize the way that words are spelled as if there is no association between sound and spelling. I am now a supporter of invented spelling.

Literacy, Week 2, Emergent Literacy

Think about classrooms you have visited. What aspects of emergent literacy have you observed in young children? How have you seen teachers support the growth of young children's literacy?

My main placement is in Kindergarten. Some students can make the sounds of certain letters. Others do not even know the names of the letters. Starting on the first day of school, the class meets on the floor for the daily message. The only changes in the message are the dates and the specialist that the students will go to on that day. They focus on how to spell one "sight word" per week; so far, the, to, is. These become no excuse words. Once the class has officially learned the word, the students are expected to spell these words correctly in their journal writing.

Journal writing also began on the first day. The first writing consisted of making particular lines on the page; wavy lines, zig zag, loop de loop, magic lines, and finally A,B,C. On the second day of class the teacher talked about having an idea that she wished to write. She drew a picture of her idea and then wrote "kindergarten writing" using the sounds that the students heard in her statement and magic lines when we had no idea what to write for a particular word. For example, I l t o t ___ p. I like to go to the park. Some students hear a sound in the middle of the word and that is what the teacher encourages them to write on their page. Students then drew their own idea in their journal and wrote their sentence. Some students had only magic lines in their first entry. Three weeks into journal writing, all students were writing at least some letters. Several would write about mom everyday. Dada may be the first words that children say but they learn to spell mom first.