Good Days and Bad Days in the Writing Workshop (chapters 7, 8, 19)

I am placed in a second grade classroom this semester and have enjoyed getting to see the students reading and writing more compared to what I saw in Kindergarten last semester. My teacher typically reads them a book and then they have a writing assignment in relation to the text. For the past several weeks, persuasive writing has been the focus so my teacher has read many children's literature books that demonstrate good persuasive techniques and word choice. Thursday I actually implemented the writing workshop lesson because my teacher was absent and the substitute wanted me to teach it instead of her. The book my teacher left for a read aloud was Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late. I then had the students go back to their desks and write reasons they could give their parents to persuade them to let the student stay up late. I told them to use the pigeon's reasons for ideas but to come up with reasons of their own. We ended up having plenty of time after writing their reasons, so I allowed students to stand up in front of the class and share their reasons for staying up late to the class. We found that many students had similar reasons and some had completely different reasons that were neat to hear about. I was pleased that the writing workshop went well and that I was able to teach the lesson sort of on the spot.

It is interesting to me that the chapters we were assigned to read this week involve distractions in the writing workshop because the next day (Friday) after my successful experience Thursday, the writing workshop was chaotic and stressful to both the teacher and myself. Writing workshop time is right after lunch each day from 12:20-1:10. The students are very wound up from lunchtime and have a difficult time settling down and getting back into the classroom mode. This particular day, my teacher did not read a text but instead had the students get out a paper they had already been working on. The paper was their list of reasons supporting their personal opinion about school uniforms. Each student had already chosen if they were for or against school uniforms. On the Smartboard the teacher pulled up the document with the reasons for and against uniforms that she had written down from the previous class discussion. She also had a list of persuasive words that the students should choose from to use in their persuasive pieces. My teacher informed the class that she and I would walk around the room and oversee their work, helping individuals as needed and also helping them edit for their final copy. This seemed like it was going to be a successful, easygoing writing workshop because the students had already chosen their side and had already begun their papers...........I was wrong. It was a disaster. Many students were talking, some were walking around the room, some were yelling mine and the teacher's name to help them, etc. I was trying to help so many children at once that it was just a mess! When I would be leaned over helping one student add some persuasive words, another student would be tapping me consistently on the shoulder from behind and yelling out questions about his/her paper. My mentor teacher was having the same problem. She kept trying to quiet the class down but it was not working. Needless to say, I had a headache by the time this writing workshop was over. It proved to be unsuccessful because many of the students who were misbehaving and not focused during the writing workshop, now only had about 1 sentence on their paper.....whereas some students were already making their final copy. So now that it was time to go to specials, my teacher scolded the class for their behavior during the workshop and threatened that if they behaved this way during writing workshop again, they would start losing recess. I felt as though this was not the ideal way to try to solve the problem of disorder and craziness. After reading Ray's chapters, I tried to come up with ways to fix the writing workshop for future lessons, but I'm still wondering what I would be able to do as the student intern to make changes without stepping on my mentor teacher's toes so to speak.

It's interesting to see how the writing workshop went just fine Thursday, but then was chaotic and not very productive the very next day on Friday. I guess this definitely proves that writing workshops are oftentimes unpredictable, just as Ray discusses in the textbook.

Conferring & Sharing (chapters 14,15, & 17)

First of all, I want to say.......HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!!! :)

So as I was reading, I was simultaneously trying to think of what I would say when conferring with my future students. I was thinking to myself, "How could someone like me who is not a very strong writer, tell students tips of how to make their writing better?" I began reading on and saw that on page 161, Ray says that "With any opening inquiry, our goal at the beginning of a conference is to get the student talking" (Ray, p. 161). This gave me some peace of mind because it showed that the teacher does not have to do all of the talking in the conference. Some things that you (Ms. Friese) helped us with in just a whole group setting due to time restraints, was to give us knowledge about the bullet points actually listed on page 164. You have shown us how living our lives as writers can be us just simply writing in our notebooks and saving these pieces to show our students one day. I remember you specifically telling me that it's okay if I don't currently have any pieces to share with my future students because with our writer's notebook for this class we will be planning and developing different types of pieces. The bullet points on page 164 also go on to list getting and giving responses to writing which you have already done since you have completed our first notebook check.

It has been both neat and helpful that you have been modeling a writing workshop conference for us so that we can see firsthand how it is done. Of course you had to technically do your "conferring" via Post-It notes in our notebooks because of the limited amount of time we have each week. Ideally you would have had inidvidual conferences with each of us, but I like how you improvised and still gave us feedback in regards to our writing. You taking the time to read my notebook made me want to produce better quality writing. This goes along with what I read on page 174 that states, "For many of our writers, talk is essential because when they are writing every single day, they just need to get some regular feedback to keep their momentum going" (Ray, p. 174). I felt like this section of the textbook was totally talking about me personally! Haha. :) I also could relate to the section titled "Simple Response Share" because it reminded me of when I shared my narrative draft with my classmates sitting at my table a couple weeks ago. I was willing to share by reading my narrative draft out of my notebook to this small group of girls, but I would not have wanted to raise my hand and read it in front of our whole class.