Thursday, November 19, 2009
"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?
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I would have to agree that encouraging students to explore their own voice starts with the topic of their writings. A good way to permit students unique voices to be transferred on paper would be to have opinionated topics. An example would be to have a quote that can be easily understood and ask your students to tell if they agree with it or not and why. It shows the students that you a care enough to be interested in their thoughts. As for when it comes to expanding students vocabulary, I think a thesaurus is a great resource. A student having a thesaurus their desk at all times can be advantageous. Instead of using a common small word like got a student could look at a thesaurus and see that received is probably a better word to use. Most likely the next time the student wants to use got, he or she will remember that replacing it with receive would be a good choice.
ReplyDeleteWhen students are given freedom to express their own thoughts on a certain topic or be creative with the topics they can write about, the more passionate they become about the writing they are doing. If they feel a personal connection with what they are writing, that will show with the final product of their writing. The most important topic out of those 5 is "elaborate detail". I believe that through detail, children, and all writers alike, can fully express their voice. Detail also makes writing more interesting for writers to read. It engages writers and makes them want to know more about what they are going to read. It is a writer's greatest goal to intrigue his/her audience and capture the reader's attention. If this is not present, what are students writing for? The audience can even be the writers themselves (such as a diary or journal), but there must be meaning behind the writing being done.
ReplyDeleteI think given visuals and examples help students to become better writers. As she demonstrated the part about just beginning. Showing students how to do it and showing them examples starts giving them the tools to form their own ideas and create on their own. It really is the Optimal learning model that really helps students learn. I like how she talked about using authors, they are great tools to utilize because then it is not coming all from their teacher. Also it will encourage them to maybe want to read the book by that author.
ReplyDeleteAs I tutored my students at Think Together I noticed that their writing was boring, it was full of nothing. They had no flare in their voice when they had to write sentences. No one seemed to come up with anything good to write about. They would just write to get it over with and most of the time the sentences were bland and. I kept trying to encourage the students to expand their sentences. Instead of using three words how about try five words. I tried to give them ideas but they just didn’t seem to care at all. Teachers these days need to encourage students to write about something that interests them. Teach the students to put their voice into their writing so it comes across as exciting, something that wants to be read by a person. Writing needs to be taught as something that is fun and productive, something that can be used forever in life.
ReplyDeleteI really like this video. As a child I was never really taught how to be descriptive in my writing. I knew how to do it when we worked on it in isolation, but never incorporated it into my every day writing. This activity that she gives her students is amazing. I think that it can help them to produce outstanding papers with a tremendous amount of voice. Using detail can help children become their own writers. They can adopt their own style and make it their own. When teaching the structure of writing, ideas can get lost in the paper. Writing then becomes boring and like she said," the sentences are predictable." I can see that in the future I will use this activity to help my students learn descriptive writing skills. I do not know if teacher involvement will solely help with detail. I think it would help with any subject in the classroom. Overall I just believe that the teacher needs to make each and every activity fun and exciting so that they students will want to pursue it and do it well.
ReplyDeleteI remember being taught with a model similar to this one when doing creative writing in school. I think that encouraging students to write with flavor and voice is definitely an important aspect that is often overlooked today because only the standards are being considered. Teacher’s obviously don’t enjoy reading a stack of boring voiceless papers that give the impression that students don’t care about their writing at all. In my opinion, voice is contagious to both the reader and the writer. As Spandel describes it, once you have gotten use to reading writing with a consistent voice, it is nearly impossible to tolerate voiceless writing. This can also be the same way for the writer. Once you are on a roll and are writing an exciting, suspenseful story, you don’t want to stop until you’re finished with it. As a teacher I think it is important to make direct suggestions to students about word choice and sentence fluency in their writing, instead of just broadly stating to them that they need more voice. A simple way to check for this is analyzing the writing piece and really pinpointing in particular what is keeping you, the reader, from being fully engaged in the story.
ReplyDeletethis was an interesting video.this semester we have been doing tutoring and it is easy to say that students writing for the most part lacked any "flare" or true voice. I could not believe how boring it was to read over students writing. Then again you have to remember what grade they are in and what knowledge they have about writing, but then again arent teachers setting high goals for their students and shouldnt students want to learn to write?
ReplyDeleteStudents should be conserded with organization and ideas but without voice it is still boring to read. We can not forget to teach students that they need to include detail in their writing because that will help keep the reader much more engaged!
BY: WILLIAM BURNS
I believe that adding flavor to writing is essential. This workshop really helps students to see how important it is to have interesting pieces of writing. It also shows them that they are capable of writing with flavor. The examples and demonstrations by the teacher were great. I think it is a wonderful idea to have students examine the work of authors and see how they incorporate the ideas of flavor discussed in this workshop. I believe that if students have a meaningful audience they will want to put forth their best work. If there is not a meaningful audience, I feel that students will probably not put forth much effort into their writing. I think the five characteristics, beginnings, elaborative details, suspense, main event, and endings, will add great depth to the students’ writing and I would certainly want to incorporate these characteristics into my own classroom and teaching. I believe that they can only benefit the students and their writing ability.
ReplyDelete