Get Kids to Write, For Themselves

My lesson sequence was a combination of Penny Kittle’s words of wisdom mixed in with the basic structure of our class, and a little of my own experience sprinkled in to make it feel real. Teaching argumentative writing through letters to the editor and op-eds was inspired by one of Kittle’s quick writes on page 48 as well as the longer activity on page 133. The “Argue Writes” activity made a lot of sense to me, so I began each of my lessons by having students write quick writes in response to evocative op-eds, which also served as mentor texts. I went on to use mentor texts throughout each of the lessons to really help scaffold.

Chapter 8 helped me to mold the story of my lessons, and it’s what inspired me to have the students analyze the op-eds for criteria that make an argument successful. Kittle writes a lot about giving students the opportunity to write what they care about, so that idea was central to my lesson sequence: “We study the form first and begin considering ideas we care enough about to spend hours articulating our views” (Kittle 132). Giving them the choice of topic was important, and helps create more passionate writing. I also included a lot of workshop time (both peer review and student/teacher), because Kittle proved the importance of feedback through each chapter. Writers need to talk through their ideas, and I thought this would be especially relevant in argumentative writing.

For me, the most important task of a writing teacher is to get kids to write for themselves. They need to write to express, to push through, to understand, to question, and to feel the power of their voice. It is our job to be their guide in that process.

I think that my greatest challenge as a new teacher of writing will be finding the time to give each student the guidance and feedback that they need, and doing this is in an environment shifting more towards tests and rankings. One of my challenges right now as a tutor working in a company focused on scores more than real education is finding the balance between what administrators want and what I know the kids need. My plan is to keep doing what I know is right for each kid, and continue to find ways to back up what I’m doing with the research and writing of best practices. My favorite writing activity was the found poem. I was nervous about being in a writing class, and this activity really broke down the walls I had up and made me feel accomplished in my creativity. I would definitely begin the next class with this activity.

Blog Post Assignment 8: Make it Work; it Makes a Difference

Wrapping up Kittle has left me feeling like I need to go back and read through each chapter again, like the text is a mostly used tube of tooth paste and I want to squeeze out every last blob of information. I’ve flipped back through my book, eyeing the pages marked with sticky notes, and planned tutoring sessions around Kittle’s words. I know that I will revisit these pages often as I begin teaching.

The last couple chapters of the book answered some questions, or more honestly utter confusion, about how to respectfully and meaningfully provide both feedback and grades for students’ writing. I could relate to Kittle’s reaction to the “feedback” provided by someone in her writers group, and I’ve often felt intense trepidation before marking a student’s work in that usual, expected way. When I first began tutoring, I was trained to grade essays like that: red ink marking errors, never connecting with or acknowledging what the kids were trying to say. Through the feedback we’ve been giving each other in this class, I’ve learned how effective and valuable real feedback can be. Kittle reinforced that the voice of the writer needs to be heard, not just edited, and that harsh critique of surface things can inhibit the will to keep writing. What really stuck with me were Kittle’s thoughts about more helpful feedback she had received: “Terry gave me an invitation to work through what is troubling me as a writer by first saying she understands the purpose of my piece.”

I thought that the idea of end notes was really interesting, and probably something that I’ll use when I teach. Having students self evaluate their understanding of the unit and also giving them the opportunity to explain their process makes sense to me. Asking kids how they can improve their work, what confused them, and having them analyze their own work helps them to think about their writing in a different way. I also think that I will use portfolios in the same way that Kittle does. Asking the students to go back and look through their semester’s worth of writing to identify specific skills and reflect on those pieces is more meaningful than giving them a grade after each paper is submitted, and having that writing stashed away in the bottom of a locker. Honoring their work in that way shows them that it’s important, and that it matters to you too. “Final portfolio work should be a celebration: They’ve worked hard; it is time to take notice.”

Blog Post Assignment 7.5: Leveraging Knowledge to Practice Conventional and Pragmatic Aspects of English

Rebecca Black’s “Digital Design: English Language Learners and Reader Reviews in Nonfiction” highlights the interaction between reader and writer in online mediums as a mechanism for the writer to organically build her writing skills. Since we began this class, I have been thinking about how to use in collaborative writing in my role as an English tutor. This chapter certainly gave me a new way to think about that, as I have a few students whom I think would be really engaged in the fan fiction genre. I don’t have ELL students at the moment, but I can certainly see how this more natural way of practicing and building skills would be beneficial to a kid learning to navigate the intricacies of the English language.

“Nanako is able to leverage her knowledge of anime culture to practice conventional and pragmatic aspects of English, experiment with different genres of writing, gain a great deal of discourse or communicative competence in the fan fiction register through her written exchanges with other fans.” This isn’t about just using tech or social media for the sake of using it, it’s utilizing it to create a meaningful experience for students to connect themselves to text.

I really connected with Black’s emphasis on creating lifelong learners instead of kids who know the content we’re teaching. I agree that students will benefit from moving away from a classroom environment focused on propositional knowledge, shifting more towards procedural knowledge, which is geared towards building skills and strategies to learn and continue learning.

The Translanguaging Guide for Educators helped me to better understand an aspect to teaching that I’m not familiar with at all. I wasn’t aware that the way that someone navigates between two languages, or even the way that a household or group navigates between two languages, could be so complex. One of the ideas that stuck out to me strongly was the idea of translanguaging as a way to empower students. “But by making use of flexible language practices, translanguaging releases ways of speaking that are often very much controlled and silences. When new voices are released, histories of subjugation are brought forth, building a future of equity and social justice.” Using culturally relevant texts (or texts about a content-area topic but in the home language), drawing upon community for inspiration, including specific language objectives, and having students respond to readings using English and the home language using graphic organizers were some of the examples that I think would be useful in my future classroom.

Blog Post Assignment #7: Adapt to the Wonderful Ways that Language Works

Shifting Perspectives About Grammar: Changing What and How We Teach

It seems like Deborah Dean kind of made it up as she went along during her first few years of teaching. I didn’t expect such a candid admission right off the bat. It was a little relieving to read, as I feel like I have been winging it for the last year or so as an English tutor. Dean fumbled through district-approved textbooks while I spent way too many months griping about SAT workbooks. I can relate to her right or wrong dilemma, “My practice was the classic example of write and wrong: language as answers in the textbook, totally removed from what my students wrote or spoke.” After a few months, I found myself straying more and more from the required workbooks as I realized my students were not learning anything – the were memorizing types of answers with types of questions. It’s baffling to me that with so much research pointing away from textbook guided learning, so many organizations (like my tutoring center) still rely on workbooks and a one-size-fits-all style to learning. If this happened at the start of Dean’s career, and it’s continuing at the start of mine – when can we expect to see real change in teaching?

On another note, I found Dean’s comments about intertwining her grammatical lessons with genre. She mentions: “Contemporary genre theory helps us understand that genres are textual responses to specific situations, not merely text types (Miller).” Based on my own experiences, I agree that grammar should be taught in the context of reading and writing. I’m pretty sure that most of my language skills were developed through constant reading and writing (independently and academically). I can’t seem to recall a single grammar lesson in class, though I’m sure there must have been many. 

And as the teacher of teenagers in 2016, I can surely see the benefit of using genre as a method of teaching kids to code switch (especially from social media and texting to other forms of communication): “Teaching language from a genre approach helps students understand how to marshal their language skills for specific tasks instead of seeing language as a unitary concept.” But I do question if this only further pushes our students away from learning to love reading and writing for themselves. Can we get our students to fall in love with literature if we pick apart Atticus Finch’s dialogue to discuss the power of using pronouns versus names? Yes, learning how to manipulate language is incredibly important, but is it more important than having students really get into a reading flow with such a powerful text? I’m not sure if there’s a right or wrong answer here (see what I did there?), but I do agree with Dean’s overarching theme that we need to continuously reexamine the way that we’re getting our students to connect with grammar and language so that what we’re doing works in the context of their lives.

Blog Post Assignment #6: The Politics of Correction

The things that we "correct" are not always wrong. The article encourages us to honor our students' home languages and emphasizes the importance of showing them how to code switch. But are we not implying that one is inferior to the other if we say that there is a time and place for each? Or are we preparing them for the realities of being in the real world? I don't think there's a correct answer to those questions, but we'll keep trying to do what's right for our students.

And what we can strive for is this:
"He wrote with passion about a topic he care about."

Blog Post Assignment #5: Choice is at the Center of What a Writer Needs

Kittle: Chapters 9 & 10

This week's Kittle reading really got me thinking about student agency and creating an environment to find their voice as writers. To me, this stuck out as the most important concept because I often feel like my students at the tutoring center aren't given any choice in the work they do - whether it's a writing assignment or choice in literature. And every time I find a way to give them just a bit of choice, they're so much more engaged. And what Kittle said about uninterested students never revising their work really clicked with me. I have a student who is so passionate about learning and writing especially, but when I asked her to revise her SAT essay for homework, she never got around to it. Instead, she brought me a beautifully written piece about her love of making art out of her food. I hadn't asked to her to do this assignment, but she wanted to share her writing with me and hear my thoughts on how to work on that piece. This was an extra credit open ended assignment for school that she didn't even plan to hand in, she just wanted to know how I thought it could be tweaked. She wanted to revise her own work, for the sake of her own writing. It was a funny coincidence that this extra credit assignment she was working on was tied to a unit on The Scarlet Letter, which is the book that Kittle's colleague had students respond to with a personal narrative. This student's engagement with this piece speaks to everything Kittle spoke about in these chapters: whether its literary analysis or SAT essays, if the kids don't care about it, it's not going to help them as writers. Once we can get them to care, we can help them become better writers, instead of getting them to produce better essays.

I thought that the idea of blending genres was really interesting. Kittle spoke about modeling this for her students and a few other ways to prep them to start writing this way. I think what intimidates me most about Kittle is that her ideas make so much sense and clearly work for students, and even though she herself said she was not a good writer - I feel like multi-genre writing is something I would have to work through on my own before tackling with my students. Kittle even says: "My advice for understanding how to teach multi-genre writing is predictable: study what this writer has done and then craft writing on a big topic in your life." Easier said then done, Penny Kittle, easier said than done.

Throughout the chapter Kittle made note of the fact that even if the assignments are student driven, and the topics are of their choice, and the classroom environment is engaging - there will still be students who will not care about the work they are doing. So what do we do for the students who are, as Kittle puts it, just along for the ride? What can be done to engage them, or meet them in the middle somewhere? I've had students who I had a hard time connecting with, and I know there isn't a one-fits-all answer to my line of questions, but where could I start? I would love to hear what some of you guys have done in situations where students could not care less about reading or writing.


Milner & Milner: Unit Planning, and Burke: Composing a Curriculum

The excerpts from Milner and Milner and from Burke drilled in the need to plan (as did Kittle when she spoke about coordinating with other teachers in a variety of ways). Burke's chapter made a lot of sense to me, he listed pretty logical steps that made unit planning seem doable. He lists some pretty user friendly steps: What do we want students to learn and be able to do, why do we want them to learn or do this, and how can we get them there? I appreciated his break down of time to be allotted for each item, and his side note to remember to be flexible with this. As a preservice student, I also appreciated being able to review a sample unit. Though I'm not planning units now, I think I can find ways to utilize this with my tutoring students.

Because I'm not working in a school, the specifics of the Milner and Milner chapter, like the creative process model, conversation based model, content based model, etc., were a bit foreign to me. As I read through the many different approaches, I wondered if I will have the option to choose which model to base my planning around, or if this is something done on a school-wide basis? Much like the Burke chapter, I appreciated the breakdown of instructional design found on page 469. Get all of your ideas out, figure out which ones work, which ones work together, and arrange them in a way that works for your students and for you.

One of the parts of this chapter that I connected with most was the section on motivation. It relates to what Kittle speaks about, what I've learned from this class, and what I'm seeing with my own students now: "Students have greater confidence in what they are learning because they feel tangible growth. When teachers identify themselves as partners in learning, students have role models for this challenging enterprise."

Blog Post Assignment #4: A Series of Decisions I Make Each Day

I pulled some really great how-to's from this chapter that I can start applying to my teaching immediately. And in my effort to teach like Kittle, I've buckled down and started writing. Kittle writes of her struggle trying to find time to write each day and the excuses she finds to procrastinate - so relatable. But her emphasis on writing so that you can teach kids to write in a genuine way really struck a chord with me, so I've been making an effort to write consistently. I need to figure out my own writing process and flow before (and while) I can ask my students to do the same. In this chapter, Kittle mentioned that she always takes the time to teach through her thinking in whatever genre they're working on from her first thoughts, placeholders or "I don't knows," and even full drafts. While she only usually only does this for one of the five lessons in the week, I think its so important for the kids to see her process to learn how to access their own process.

I loved what Kittle wrote about tailoring her approach to the kids in front of her. I recognize the need to "tune instruction" to meet the needs and skills of the kids in my class, and I hope that through experience I'll be able to do this effectively. I can see this reflected in her handouts to the kids and parents, the emphasis on book talks, the value she puts on sustained silent reading and in giving kids a choice in what they want to read and write.

I'm not teaching in a classroom yet, but I can definitely start giving the kind of feedback that Kittle talks about (notes in the students' journals, second revision verbal feedback, etc.) I've always given feedback, but the way that Kittle does it really makes me think about better ways to work with writers. Her approach is focused on the students' needs, not what I think (or, more honestly, standardized test essay graders think) their writing should be. She writes: "I work hard to listen, encourage and direct my teaching toward something that will help this writer at this moment in time."  I need to focus more on listening to what my students need from me and how they think I can help them.

Blog Post Assignment #3: All Writing Springs From Something to Say

I just finished binge-reading the first five chapters of Penny Kittle's "Write Beside Them," and I can't believe I've waited so long to read this book (though it doesn't help that it's so hard to get your hands on - thanks, Amazon). I wish I had been given this book before I started teaching writing to my kids at the tutoring center. I feel like I have been perpetuating the problem that Kittle references when she talks about how standardized testing encourages learning writing skills, or all skills for that matter, on a superficial level. The tutoring center where I work is focused on test scores and sales, and emphasizes Kittle's thought that this kind of culture only has the product in mind, instead of getting the kids to learn to use the whole process to give form to thoughts, ideas, stories, etc.

I connected with so much of what Kittle wrote about, from her initial hesitation to sit down and write, to her ideas about being authentic with your students so that everyone is learning together. As I mentioned earlier, I didn't really consider myself a writer. But Kittle's words gave me encouragement: it's not about being a writer, it's about being a person who is trying to write. Our kids need to see the process, and see us going through the process with them, to show them how to work through it to get a narrative on paper. Our own insecurities can be used to empower our kids, and that is enough to get me to write with them. I often felt disconnected from the assignments that I was told to give my students, mostly SAT-style essays or overly-guided literary analysis, and a lot of that was not having worked through the assignment with them. Granted, it was also because I disagreed with the way I was being told to teach - but that's a thought for another blog. Kittle needed to do the writing to know what to teach, and that's definitely something I know will help me with my students.

I'm currently working with a few students on writing, and I plan to have them start writing notebooks immediately. I think that the opportunity it provides for rehearsing, a space to just think about your writing, is something that could really benefit them. And if I can get them to expect to write in this notebook each time we meet, hopefully that will get them to think about their writing ahead of time like Kittle's students. I love that Kittle included so many examples of quick writes, as I can apply those directly to my classroom. The most important concept that I've taken from the reading so far is to just start writing and keep writing.

"I think with any writing, you just have to start." 

- Penny Kittle

My biggest takeaway from the Elinor Fuchs article is that reading a play is unlike other reading. We need to look at the world of the play as something separate from our own, and consider all of the elements of that world before event starting to think about the characters. According to Fuchs, when consider the world, or planet, of a play, we have to recognize that it is not something that can fit neatly into our own experience. With this in mind, I took on the task of reading The Humans. Admittedly, I did not go into this reading with much enthusiasm. I share Jaime's thoughts on reading plays, but went into it with Fuchs' advice in mind. Maybe it's just this play, or maybe it's that I haven't read a play since high school and I'm unfairly basing my opinion off of a struggle to get through Shakespeare, but reading The Humans was not terrible. I was actually drawn in and didn't put it down. I did exactly the opposite of what Fuchs' advocated, I was drawn in by the characters and their realness. Real life is messy, and hard, and beautiful, and the conversations jumped off of the pages for me because they reflected real life. 

Blog Post Assignment #2

Reflection on Multimodal Piece and Readings

I was pretty inspired by the whole found poetry project. It's something that I can't wait to try with my students, as it left me feeling both creative and accomplished. I think it's a less intimidating way for kids to start out with poetry. The multimodal component of the assignment was an interesting experience. Not having realized that the purpose of the found poem was to identify yourself as a writer, I instead used my first blog post to create a poem that tells the story of the kind of writing teacher that I want to be. Once my poem was actualized, I needed new images to help tell the story. I wanted my images to connect with the emotion behind each stanza, but I found that aspect difficult because I didn't have complete control over the size and timing of the images and text, nor of the timing of the song. However, through this I learned the importance of pairing powerful images with words to help bring the message off of the screen. 

My favorite images were the ones of students writing confidently and collaboratively, and expressing themselves in front of each other, and also the image of the student journaling independently. I think that one of the most important things that I learned about myself as a writer is that I feel much more confident when the parameters of the assignment are not so restrictive. Although we were only allowed to use words and phrases from our first blog post, there was almost a freedom in that limitation. It forced us to be even more creative in our poems, and that inspired me to be more creative than I may have been otherwise.

I enjoyed reading about genre schemas in literacy in Randy Bomer's work. "A Curriculum for English" was interesting in that we learn the type of a text ("the way this kind of thing goes") before we learn the content. The different methods of the transfer of information or ideas is what kids learn first, and its what we as readers will recognize first, which is something I've never considered. It makes sense, that the method or template, or genre, through which we shape our meaning will guide our writing. I found his points about teaching genres important to the dominant culture's community interesting, and think its so important to teach our kids to learn how to learn different genres themselves. One of my favorite lines was: "I don't teach poetry so that kids will remember all about writing poems and be able to do it forever. I want them to develop habits of mind related to learning in a genre, so that they can learn in whatever genres they need." He goes on to say "Our students can learn how to learn about a kind of writing, so that they can always use their habitual way of reading, thinking, collaborating, and composing to master whatever new forms they encounter." It's important to empower our students to become lifelong readers, writers and learners.

I really connected with Hicks' emphasis on the importance of intertwining tech and writing in the classroom, and in doing so we need to really understand newer literacies. Composing is writing with text, images, sound and/or video and encompasses writing skills, analytical thinking, creative expression, often involves collaboration, and so much more. The following quote from Katie Wood Ray and Lester Laminack particularly stood out to me: "I have seen man classrooms where students 'do the writing process,' and the focus is on pieces of writing and how to take those pieces of writing through each step of the process - prewriting, drafting, revision editing and publication. This down-the-line kind of emphasis can be contrasted to a writing workshop where the focus is very much on writers rather than on the process that leads to finished pieces." They continue to discuss how the focus is about getting students to use the writing process more naturally in a genuine writing flow. As a writing teacher, I hope that I can employ this idea that we're teaching writers, versus teaching kids to write.

My Penny Kittle book has not arrived yet, but I will update this with my reflection on the that reading as soon as it does.