Different Writing techniques = Better Teaching

Reflecting upon my time at Hawthorne and through this course of Writing Across the Curriculum (and my entire year during my Bachelor of Education) I have learned that there are many different teaching resources, and strategies for helping students improve their literacy and writing skills. While my content area is English, I know that different kinds of writing techniques, strategies and resources can help stimulate student creativity and writing ability all across the curriculum. Most students don't respond well to simply writing a formal essay on a given to which they have no connection to. In this case students will often be bored, disinterested and no produce their best work. However by connecting writing to the subject matter they are learning and giving them creative choice and freedom to make the writing piece their own, they will produce much better pieces of writing.

For instance early in the semester, we learned about different strategies for teaching poetry. Instead of simply having students read the same Robert Frost poem every year and have them create a poem about winter, it is much more engaging to find a variety of formats of poetry. Have the students explore everything from Haikus, to spoken word/rap poetry, to funny poems which they can relate to in their lives. After that in the creative writing assignment, give them choice yet make restrictions so the students won't get lost in their choice. The "Why I Love Math/Why I Hate Math" exercise is a great example. Or just like at Hawthorne, creating a long list of assignments which the students can chose from and make their own works very efficiently as well.

Finally, in this course with all the blog postings and different assignments, I have come across many great resources which I will be using in my classes in the future in all sorts of different subjects. From graphic organizers, to videos, to project ideas, to jazz chants for social studies it all works in a great cross curricular manner. I would be excited to test out the unit plan my group created which merges geography and writing. At the end of the course, I feel more confident in teaching writing both in language class and  in other subjects as well.

Hawthorne Writing Mentoring Resources

The following is a list of several resources I consulted and used in various fashions during my month of writing mentoring at Hawthorne School:

6+1 Writing Traits:
http://www.plattscsd.org/parents/6+1overview.pdf

Poetry BLMs and Activities:
http://etfo-ots.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Poetry-Unit.pdf

A mid summer's night dream resource:
http://nfs.sparknotes.com/msnd/

Textbook:

Peterson, S. S. (2008). Writing across the curriculum: All teachers teach writing. 2nd Ed. Winnipeg: Portage & Main Press.



Speed Scrabble Game:

Students will use Scrabble letter tiles from the board game Scrabble to create their own crosswords. This game can be done individually, in pairs or in teams. This game is a fun way to have students expand their vocabulary  and improve their spelling while being creative in creating their own unique crossword. It’s also a great alternative to playing an entire game of scrabble (which can take an hour + especially with low ability spellers) as speed scrabble can be done in a very short amount of time. The game can be shortened or extended based on the amount of tiles you give each student/group.

How to play:

Each student is given 10 scrabble tiles at random from the bag. Using those tiles students must create their own crosswords, by spelling words with their tiles.  All of their words must be attached together in some fashion just like a crossword. If I student gets stuck with their letters (no vowels or difficult letters) they are allowed to trade up to 4 of their tiles back into the scrabble bag for new ones. Students can be awarded points for their created crosswords based on the time it takes for them to complete the task, based on the length of their words or the difficult (point values) of their letters.

Literary Essay: Conveying writing strategies to the students

As English is my teachable, there are a variety of important writing forms that students must learn to be a successful writer. I decided to list stratifies for literary essays because it incorporates important basics such as proper paragraph writing, thesis formation, introduction and conclusion writing, paragraph order, and word choice.
Writing a full essay can seem lie a daunting task, especially to students in middle school which is way breaking down the task into smaller chucks can be a successful strategy. First, have the students work on their paragraph writing by breaking down what is included in a good paragraph. You can use the hamburger metaphor to break down the paragraph. The start and end of the paragraph is surrounded by a bun, the intro and concluding sentences. The second sentence is the patty, aka the thesis. It is the point or purpose which he paragraph is trying to make. The following sentences are the condiments, and are important in supporting the thesis statement. There are many great graphic organizers available online including ones shaped like hamburgers.
This process cam be continued for full essay writing breaking down each paragraph as to what purpose it serves. Literary essays should all have make a point about the text with support and evidence within the text to support the points being made. Other tools or strategies include having sample essays of different levels, having he class write a paragraph together, have the class create the assessment criteria or have a class discussion on ideas of what to write on.  

Peterson's Chapter on Poetry

Of all the readings, I found Peterson's chapters on both poetry and narrative writing to be very helpful for my future teachings in the classroom. In the poetry chapter, Peterson described how poetry can be incorporated in a cross curricular manner to get students interested in the subject manner and write their feelings, opinions and knowledge on the covered topic. Poetry can be great tool to help students learn and recall important facts due to it's looser form (or format), it's use of word play and rhyming and it's appeal to artistic and creative side of each student. For instance, in social studies poetry can be used to express the two sides of a debate (or of a conflict) with the poem also physically separating these two viewpoints as seen by the example of confederacy in the black line masters pages. Students can learn science vocabulary and important facts by trying to find words that rhyme with the words they need to remember. Poetry and creative writing also allow students who are more proficient in the language and arts to think of the math and sciences in a whole new manner. Peterson expresses the importance of how poetry can be effectively used as long as students understand the format of the poem (which is teacher driven) and can include the necessary elements or facts in the poem.  An example of a way students could use story telling and poetry in science class would be a lesson a colleague and myself taught at our practicum. To learn about light pollution, we showed a video and did an activity about sea turtles and how lights from the city and beach houses confuse them with the sea and eventually kill them as they never make it to the ocean. Children love baby sea turtles and this narrative had all the students in our class hooked on the subject of light pollution and why it's important. From here we could have the students create a poem (using at least 5 scientific words that were learned in this unit) about the turtles, or even write a short story about the journey of a baby turtle making it to the ocean. Students would be very engaged in this lesson and they would efficiently learn both science and creative writing in the process.

Mentor Text: Ontario Coaching Association Handbook

The mentor text I have chosen for my writing class this week was the coaches’ handbook I received from the Ontario Coaching Association while completing my Level 1 coaching course.  I feel like this is an effective mentor text for a health and PE class because the language used is simple (students 16 and up can get their coaching certificate), yet rich and full of coaching terminology. Students will be able to read and understand the content of the handbook while learning what it takes to run a successful PE period or coach a team.  It’s important to Physical Education because it relays basic sports rules, knowledge and exercises which are vital to many parts of the curriculum. It’s important to health because it discusses many sports injuries, social issues and inclusion techniques that all coaches must address while deal with while coaching a sport.

                According to Chapter 4 of Peterson’s book, this mentor text can be considered a manual text, an instructional text or a directions text. It could also be considered an informational text as many page gives important on sports rules, lesson plan formation and health information including on sports injuries and diseases. From chapter 7 of Peterson, I understand that this text may include some technical terms that need to be defined to the class before allowing them to read the text on their own. Also because this text is a formal information manual/guide, students must be given some context on how to properly read, understand and create your own information text. This could include how to find information efficiently from these texts (look for bolded key works, lists with bullet points, diagrams and worksheet). This could also be useful as students could learn to create their own gym class lesson plans to teach their own PE class. Students are often very enthusiastic during gym and enjoying having a say in what sport of game they play. Using the lesson plan templates, examples and tips on drills and activities in this text, students could be given the cross curricular assignment (works for PE, and English [in both writing and oral communication]) of creating their own gym lesson plan and teach it to the class.  Students will have to incorporate drills, skills, development and inclusion in their lesson plans. While this mentor text may not be a traditional one with writing prompts and idea generations, it could be a great text to inspire students to be a coach, teacher or instructor in the future along with enable students to create informational, instructional, or procedural writing pieces.

Class #2 January 12th Blog Post: Let the students write creatively

Nancie Atwell’s story really struck a chord with me as she taught an important lesson that all new teachers go through. When you start teaching you have this idea, that you will revolutionize the teaching world by having the most engaging lessons which also follow the curriculum documents word by word. During teacher’s college, we are always told about the importance of following the curriculum documents and by large part our chances of getting hired will be based on how we can incorporate our knowledge of the curriculum into our interviews answers. New teachers rely on structure and the curriculum to keep their class organized and on task. While the curriculum is definitely important and needed to ground our lesson plans, Nancie teaches us in her story the importance of learning with the students and adapting our lessons with our class to be the best possible teacher. At the start of her story, Nancie considered herself the teacher behind her big desk following her curriculum plan line by line without reflecting or looking at the performance of her students. While this method was effective for some of the most advanced students, often a large group of students felt disengaged and would achieve poorly in her class.  A student named Jeff (I found it funny that I share a name with the student) started to show her that different people write in different ways and that each student and each class needs to be taught in different ways. I feel like this is one of the most important qualities of a great teacher. Great teachers are always learning, developing and reflecting upon themselves and their lessons. Great teachers are always aware of the needs, learning styles and personalities in their classrooms to tailor lesson that will be effective at progressing the learning of these students. Nancie’s story really got me back to why I chose to become a teacher. It wasn’t because I love curriculum, or lesson planning or marking. It’s because I love working with people, helping people grow, learn and reflect on their past experiences.  Being a teacher is about working closely with your students and understand how to best teach writing, or math or science to them.

When how to teach writing, Nancie’s story also taught me an important lesson on writing activities in a language course (my teachable). The idea learned from this story which is also reiterated in the Peterson chapters is that students need to be given creative choice to write on subjects that interest them. Students will produce their best writing when they are interested in their writing subject and wanting to write because they want to share a story, experience or information. Students will produce more work and higher quality work when they are writing on a subject they know and they enjoy. Deep down, all students love the process of learning and even more they enjoy reiterating what they have learned to someone else to show off their new knowledge.  Writing is a great outlet to have students share their research and what they have learned with the world. They will be more keen on sharing their knowledge of a subject which they understand and enjoy which is why having students being in control of their writing topics is very important. As chapter 1 discusses, many students may still need prompts to begin their writing as having too much choice can overwhelm the students preventing them from ever beginning to write. As a writing teacher, it’s important to have well thought through prompts that are open ended and adaptable to the interest of all students in the class. The prompts are there to help give students that initial idea, not restrict them on what to write about leaving them frustrated because they don’t know what to write for a specific situation. Prompts should allow students to have an easier time to pick what they want to write about. An example could be what is your favourite story/novel? It relates to English and gives students an idea but can be taken in many different ways. Students can write on a novel they enjoyed, a story they have heard or a movie they loved. All students can find something they like in this subject and it gives them a good start to get going.