WRITING TO LEARN

“Writing is a tool that enables people in every discipline to wrestle with facts and ideas.  It’s a physical activity, unlike reading. Writing requires us to operate some kind of mechanism – pencil, pen, typewriter, word processor – for getting our thoughts on paper.  . . . It forces us to keep asking, ‘Am I saying what I want to say?’ . . . It’s by writing about a subject we’re trying to learn that we reason our way to what it means.”

                                                                        William Zinsser in Learning to Write

 

Although my area of teaching was language arts, writing is not just for language arts!  I have interacted with educators from all disciplines. Through our discussions and sharing, we discovered ways that writing could definitely benefit students in all subject areas.  Using writing as a tool for learning helps to organize, channel and give extra leverage to thinking.  

 

This kind of writing works best when it is 

•       Frequent

•       Short

•       Spontaneous

•       Exploratory

•       Informal

•       Personal

•       Unedited

•       Ungraded

 

Ask yourself:

·     How do you use writing to introduce a subject and to find out what students already know?

·     How do you use writing to help students gain control of the subject material?

·     How do you use writing to help students clarify their understanding of what they are learning?

·     How do you use writing to help students know themselves and to help you to know them?

 

During my work with the Minnesota Writing Project, I was fortunate to gain several helpful ideas from a master St. Paul educator.  Here are a few of them to try in your classroom.

 

·     Admit slips – Have students turn in short pieces of writing on pre-assigned topic upon entering the classroom.

·     Start-up write – Have students write for the first five minutes of class time on the topic of the upcoming lesson.

·     K-W-L – When a topic is being introduced, have students make a list of all they already Know about the subject, Want to investigate.  After completing the lesson, have them make a list of what they’ve Learned.

·     Clustering – Put a key term, concept or name in a circle in the center of the page and then write all associations with that term in whatever pattern “seems right.” Often clustering reveals unrecognized connections/relationships.

·     Stop and write – Pause the video, discussion, etc. and ask students to write and reflect.

·     Double entry – Divide a page and on one side have students put quotations, problems, etc. On the other side, have them write reaction, explanation, question, etc.

·     Visualize – Have students draw a picture, diagram, or model to demonstrate what they know.

·     Exit slips – Have students do a short piece of writing (summary, question) before exiting the class.  (These can be a helpful in learning what students understand and where they have confusion.)

 

Our next posts will share even more ways to use writing to learn.  Why not share some of the ways that you use writing to learn in your classroom?  

Book Recommendation - Revision

 Just when I thought we were through talking about revision, I came across one of my favorite books on the subject by Janet Angelillo. Her book, Making Revision Matter, is a practical, easy-to-implement book on revision that incorporates studying mentor authors, revisiting published pieces, and applying additional revision strategies to student writing.

Early on, Angelillo helps teachers with gauging students' abilities to use the revision process by giving the reader the qualities of a stage one reviser through those of a stage four reviser. For example, a stage one reviser "looks [the] piece over without purpose," while a stage four reviser, "is able to change sequence and reorganize chunks of writing." She says that a stage one reviser basically, "resists revision completely," while a stage four, "internalizes revision repertoire and chooses techniques from it purposefully."

As you can see the range is wide. The chart gives many more specifics, but I am intrigued by the stages and how they correlate with the characteristics of quality writing. In order to teach revision, Angelillo implements the essence of good writing into engaging lessons that use mentor texts as well as student texts. From beginning to end, tips given and lessons provided are useful to writers of every stage and can be used by all teachers who want to see their students grow as writers. Check it out.

A Final Note on Editing/Revision

 "A teacher has two roles as a reader of student work: one, to hear what the writer is communicating, to listen well, to consider and respond to the thinking in the piece; and two, to help the writer communicate it with as much grace as possible, which might mean to correct and suggest and model the conventions of the genre." Penny Kittle Write Beside Them

Kittle reminds teachers that sometimes we get so caught up in grading that we forget the first role and end up only focusing on the second. Muriel and I have been talking about revision and editing in our last few entries, and we have conveyed the difference between the two. Revision is of utmost importance - does the piece say what the writer wants to communicate? Kittle talks of teachers "kidnapping" the piece and just focusing on how they would say something or maybe just focus on misspellings or missing punctuation.

We need to listen to our students and really hear what they are trying to communicate - if we take the time to talk about the writer's intent and guide them through revision, helping them say what they want to say, we can enter the editing process confidently. Luckily, we now have computer software that eliminates much of our mechanical editing. I have found students are not the best to judge each other's mechanics. They are great, however, at looking for concrete problems that need solving before the piece is finished.

Nancie Atwell, in Lessons that Change Writers, gives some great examples of what needs to be edited out of final manuscripts...concepts that students can point out in each other's papers.

    1. Everyday conversational words that are overused: 

          absolutely    just    so    all    kind of    sort of    (a) big    (a) little    totally    completely    quite

            very    definitely    really    would

    2. Too long or too short paragraphs

        Atwell suggests students look for connections between and within paragraphs. Can two paragraphs

        that are on the same topic be combined? Does one long paragraph need to be split? What feels     

        comfortable to the reader?

    3. Should "I" be used?

        Sometimes we explicitly tell students not to use "I" in their writing, but in reality, there are times 

        "I" makes a lot of sense - in retelling a personal experience, for example.

    4. Passive sentences

        Use the active voice in writing of any kind.

    5. Exclamation Points

        Avoid exclamation points except in dialogue.

    6. "Hopefully" and a few other issues

        Be confident - Use "I hope" instead of "Hopefully..." Also, pay attention to "a lot," "alright,"

        "gonna," "gotta," "wanna" ( going to, got to, want to)

        "would of," "should of," "could of" (would have, should have,  could have or would've, should've, 

        could've)

    7, Stories that end "The End."

        Writing should come to a conclusion that is evident to the reader.

Editing is the final step but by no means is a writing ever finished. We can always go back to previous writings and add new ideas, take out sections and rearrange thoughts. We can repurpose our writing and transform it into a different genre or just put it aside until some future date. Classrooms are artificial writing situations where students learn the process while not creating perfect products. What is important is that they have a chance to see new possibilities as they work on their classroom pieces. Reading each other's pieces and helping each other edit, helps both students grow as writers.

Our next topics will focus on writing tips for specific genres. Let us know what you are working on!