In Chapter 8: Unlock the Door to Revision, Spandel shows the reader the steps for students to take while creating their final draft of a writing assignment. She focuses on each of the six traits, and how to introduce each trait to students. I found this clip to be one way in which we as future teachers can use this technique to engage students in helping them to look at writing from a new perspective. The Emerald Lagasee perspective of BAMM.
Questions to think about: Do you think this analogy of making a meal as to writing better is accurate? Why or why not? Would you use this in your classroom in the future? At what age do you think this would be appropriate? Do you think this role of the media is beneficial to young students?

peer review lab

In chapter 8 of Creating Writers Through 6-Trait Writing, Spandel says that we should encourage students to work with each other as much as possible.
She also emphasizes that as teachers, we should not make our students dependent on us.
We should not be the person that the students should go to all the time.
By pushing our students to work together more we can motivate them to be more independent.
Take a look at this video.
It is an example of a peer editing workshop done in a 4th/5th grade mixed classroom. How do you feel about this revision and editing process?
Do you think it is beneficial for the students?
Do you see any strengths and weaknesses in this program?
Can anything be improved?
How do you feel overall about this peer review lab?

Brainstorming Made Easy & Fun

As we’ve learned from day one in this class, writing is a process. Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all. As Spandel says in Chapter 7, the steps to the writing process are Experience, Prewriting, Drafting, Sharing, Revising, Editing, Publishing, and Assessing. There are so many different experiences that a student can draw from to write about, but it is the prewriting stage where students often find themselves stuck.

Sometimes, students have too many ideas, and sometimes, students can’t think of a single thing to write about. A student who is a strong essay writer might have a difficult time creating a short story, just as a great student poet might be unsure of what to say in an essay. Brainstorming and prewriting can be daunting and chaotic.

As I was searching the web about teaching the writing process, I stumbled upon this brief video about story starter picture cubes. These cubes are used to help students who are stuck on the prewriting stage figure out exactly what they’re going to write about. I thought this was not only a really fun and innovative way to get students excited about writing, but that it was also a way to take the pressure off the beginning stages of the writing process. Sometimes, deciding what to write about is the hardest part of writing, but using materials such as the picture cubes is a great way to fix that. Also, these cubes can be something students make themselves. What a fun project that could be.

My question is: do you think innovative tools such as the picture cubes could really help a student’s writing process, or are there other ideas you find more useful?

Also, to add a fun little free write to this, write a brief paragraph involving popcorn and a space ship. Can't wait to read what you come up with.

Do Rubrics Stifle Creativity?

This video provides opinions from different parents and teachers on the use of rubrics in their classrooms. I thought this video was interesting because rubrics have become a controversial issue between teachers and students as well. Throughout these interviews, teachers have expressed that rubrics no only help organize writing, but they lay out expectations. Many of us have heard that we need to set our expectations with our students right from the beginning. I believe that this statement is valid. Besides expectations, the another professor states that rubrics help grading to be less subjective and more objective. This way students know what is expected of them. The grading is done fairly and they know what the teacher was looking for before they turned in their paper. Another huge point brought up as that rubrics stifle creativity in writing. Sometimes I do believe this to be true, but I also realize that it depends on the teacher. There are some teachers who reiterate using voice and uniqueness in writing. That is what should be done in classrooms. Even though we give rubrics as guidelines, we should not forget that we want our students to bring out their own voice in their writing. These expectations that we are setting can only make our students more successful in writing and not hold them back. Do you think that creativity has been lost in classrooms today? How can we continue to make writing more objective? Are rubrics the answer? Would you use them in your classroom? Do you think it is a good idea to involve your students in the expectation process but having them help you make the rubric?

And Now for Something Funny--A Virus Walks into a Bar

As we get ready to celebrate Thanksgiving, I thought it might be fun to look at humor in the classroom. How well does humor help students learn? To illustrate the potential for humor and learning, check out the video above: A virus walks into a bar and other science jokes. My question to you is this: what strategies have you run across that use humor in the classroom to help students learn? Some teachers like Prof. Jim Brown use funny photos to illustrate a point he's making in class. Others are just naturals when it comes to using humor. Do you think you'll be good at using humor? Or is it a special talent that some people have and others don't?

"Adding Flavor" to Student Writing!

As writers we sometimes struggle finding the best word to convey a message or notion. Some subjects are more difficult than others to write about using voice. Thus far as a tutor in writing have you encountered trouble in helping students find their voice in a writing piece? Have you had difficulty encouraging better word choice in student’s writing? As Spandel (2009) discusses in chapter five, “Adding Flavor: Voice, word choice, and sentence fluency,” there are writing ingredients that keep the reader engaged and represent good writing. Spandel (2009) goes on to describe this interaction of “ingredients,” as voice being the main component and “word choice and fluency are the first cousins of voice and enhance voice tremendously” (Spandel, 2009, p. 86). A reader will most likely not be pulled into a text if the writing lacks detailed, alluring, and expressive vocabulary that flows from one page to the next. The Empowering Writers workshop featured above discusses great lessons to teach students as they develop in the writing process. It is amazing to see the end result of a student’s writing after these notions were mentioned. There are five characteristics mentioned including: “beginnings, elaborative detail, suspense, main event, and endings” (Empowering Writers video, Auray, 2009). I found these to be characteristics of writing that are harder to teach and explain to students without modeling and having them practice. The presenter shared great examples of student writing developing as a result of these lessons taught. These are writing characteristics that are more likely to develop naturally, because they deal with student’s finding their voice in their writing. However, with the help of the teacher modeling and creating rich text environments, students will develop their vocabulary and fluency, which will then support their creativity within their writing. I believe, that showing the students, as discussed in the video, the difference between hearing writing that is boring as opposed to writing with voice and elaborate word choice, students will want their writing to sound just as great as the later (Empowering Writers video, Auray, 2009). Lastly, I would agree with Spandel (2009) who uses read aloud as an example of demonstrating voice, word choice, and fluency (Spandel, 2009, p. 88). Most children are always engaged when reading a great book aloud to them and this is one of the best opportunities to teach lessons concerning reading and writing. Do you believe if the teacher shows more interest in student work and encourages them to share more of what they are writing about, students will want to not only impress their teacher but will learn how to write with more meaning and detail? Are these five characteristics of writing something you would want to incorporate in your classroom? Have you experienced any challenges teaching one or more of the five characteristics, and how so?

Organizing Ideas

For those of us worried about how to teach writing traits such as ideas, voice, or organization here is a great program that will help in the classroom. The program is called Kidspiration, a visual learning tool that includes options allowing students to build graphic organizers, such as concept maps, mind maps, idea maps, and diagrams. Has anyone ever used this software before, would you recommend it if you have? The video focuses on the program's ability to help kids with organizing their ideas by allowing them to manipulate pictures and create a written and visual story. For those of us heading towards middle school and high school, do you think the simplicity of this program could help teachers reinforce the concept of voice and help students with self-expression?

Rethinking Writing Rubrics

This video is an interview with Maja Wilson, a public school teacher and author of Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment. She talks about how rubrics do not allow for teachers to properly assess interesting pieces of writing. Teachers use rubrics in order to follow a common guideline as to what good writing is. Wilson finds a problem with this notion. She talks about the history of rubrics and how they were used to filter through the number of university applicants—to separate the good writers from the bad. She believes that this is not the job of public school teachers. She says that public school teachers are there to help every student. She also talks about how rubrics produce uniformity in writing and also in the teachers’ reading. When this uniformity is utilized writers begin to lose the individualization and texture of writing. Wilson also states that “an interesting piece of writing throws a rubric into chaos.” She believes that rubrics do not work well with interesting pieces of writing. The video states that test scorers have said that interesting pieces of writing take longer to assess. This contradicts what was mentioned by Spandel. Spandel says that rubrics save assessment time. By utilizing a rubric, teachers will have more time for comments and suggestions because everything else is already written down for the student in the rubric. She also discusses how the rubric allows for the empowerment of the student and also for the voice of that student to be heard, which contradicts with the idea of uniformity, as mentioned by Wilson. How do you feel about rubrics? Do you believe they create uniformity among student writing? Is this a positive or negative effect? Do rubrics allow for individuality among writers? Are there any ways to improve rubrics?

Misspellings

You don't have to comment on this unless you want to. I just found this video and thought you would enjoy watching it. It is pretty funny. Hope you enjoy it! :)

Constructivist Learning

Throughout chapter six, Weaver talks about the importance of breaking down grammar into mini-lessons for the help of teaching children to retain more information. The constructivist model for teaching grammar and studies done on this method have shown that the teaching of grammar to be more effective in the context of writing than in isolation. This video shows children in a 4th and 5th grade class working on a social studies project that they got to choose the topic. The students are working in partners and taking the notes and doing the research to make a quality project. The students really seem to enjoy this project and gain a lot of out it. Do you think that children should have a choice in the topics of projects? Do you think it’s beneficial to sometimes work in groups? Also, if this is an effective way of learning, how do you think you can incorporate the constructivist model in your classroom?

By: Megan Tharp

Teaching Grammar

I wanted to find a video that talked about teaching grammar and there were so many out there it was hard to choose. I picked this one because it was short and to the point. Laura form young writers workshops.com gives us several useful tips and ideas on how to teach grammar. First she talks about using mini lessons. I believe that this is a great idea because it does not overload the students with all kinds of rules and regulations because this can make students not want to learn. You can also apply the mini lessons to writing assignments you are doing in class. Again this could be related to peer editing in the fact that they can use what they just learned to help edit other students papers. Next she talks about using literature that you are reading in class as a way to look at grammar by favorite authors. This can be helpful for students writing because when they find a favorite author they are likely to try and mimic their writing style.