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Routman says, in CH 10, that "unless teachers know how to teach writing well, student writing will not improve." Her point, I think, is that no matter what kinds of assessment teachers do, if the teacher does not teach writing well, there will never be any improvement.
Routman emphasizes assessment FOR learning and improved instruction rather than relying solely on assessment OF learning. She makes valuable points when she states that most (80%) of student writing needn't be graded. She also argues that just as students need to practice reading without pressure to improve reading skills, they also need to practice writing to become better writers. I do not think my education gave me enough practice in writing. I agree with the principle of not all writing being graded, but at the same time, some students, without the pressure of grades, won't do anything. They'll say, well if I'm not getting graded than why do it when I could be doing something else more fun. Some people have intrinsic motivation to do well at schoolwork, and they don't need the grades, but some people never developed that. How do you teach students the importance of delayed gratification? I hope I can teach it to my kids, but I do not know how I will teach it to my students. Probably, like many things, something one has to learn by making many mistakes along the way.
Routman argues that too many teachers focus on only what will be tested rather than teaching the underlying skills and strategies that result in writing competency. I agree with this statement, but I also appreciate her paragraph later in the chapter that states teachers still need to teach students how to write to prompts, because although it is unnatural, it is also very common. Students will have to write to many prompts in their life: on standardized tests, on college applications, on job applications.
Lamott, p. 182: "Your unconscious can't work when you are breathing down its neck. You'll sit there going, 'Are you done in there yet, are you done in there yet?'. But it is trying to tell you nicely, 'Shut up and go away.'"
Lamott wrote this in her chapter on writer's block, and it is so true. The minute I start fretting over if my brain is done yet, if this sentence works right here, worrying about the assignment getting done by the due date, my unconscious works poorly. Exhaustion has a similar effect on me and my brain. That's why I call 11:30 my pumpkin time--I turn into a pumpkin; my brain stops working, it all shuts down, I get whiny and crabby and just can't think. When I am trying to force something to come about more quickly than it wants to, when I am breathing down my unconscious's neck, I also turn into a pumpkin. I am less accepting of this pumpkin time. I get angry at my unconscious, and I need to find a way to let that anger go.
I think students of mine need to be able to leave their unconscious alone as well, so that it can do its work.
My unconscious, and my students' unconsciouses, does not need constant supervision, just like many children do not really need constant supervision. If you are always on top of your unconscious or a child about being productive or focused, it/he/she rebels, and washes away all creativity that it might have offered. It was suffocated, sheltered, and never had time to try its wings which really probably would have otherwise worked pretty darn well, but since it didn't get enough air, it has caved in on itself, given up the ghost. Sad, I think.
On p. 159 in Lamott's Bird by Bird, she writes the following:
"They've gone from being four tense, slightly conceited, lonely people...to one of those weird little families....They all look a lot less slick and cool...because helping each other has made their hearts get bigger. A big heart is both a clunky and delicate thing; it doesn't protect itself and it doesn't hide. It stands out, like a baby's fontanel, where you can see the soul pulse through. You can see this pulse in them now." She later says something about this is the way writers have to be--and regularly mentions how close to our hearts writing is.
I like this quote because it so eloquently describes what it is like to give wholly of yourself to things in your life, be they writing or relationships or whatever. I am one of those people who gives wholly at first, and if I am soundly rejected or denounced or if my vulnerability is taken advantage of in some other way, I hurt a lot, and take a while to heal. And if I get to a comfort level following a rejection, where I feel it is safe to put my whole self out there, and it is again rejected, I become very very timid. I have been lucky in personal and familial relationships--I have always been able to recover pretty quickly because I am convinced they really do still love me, but this has not been the case in professional relationships or in relationships I have had as a writer with editors or graders of some kind.
I think the heart Lamott describes in her passage is the best one to have, overall, and I still have that heart with most things in my life, the more important things in life (family, significant other), but in some parts of my life, my big pulsing heart is still in pieces.
Regie Routman's depiction of what writing is, what it should be, and how to teach it in empowering ways is a very different take on things. Many of her points are common sense, but from what I have seen of writing pedagogy and what I have heard teachers say about teaching writing, common sense has disappeared from writing pedagogy.
Teachers fear teaching writing because it is such an enormous task. Everyone needs to be able to communicate effectively with others, and they need to be able to do so at appropriate levels. Becoming an effective writer requires a lot of practice. There are many purposes to writing, and children and adults need to work on identifying what the purpose of different writing work is. Routman argues that because educators are caught up in teaching formulas and structures for good writing, they lose sight of the varying intents of different kinds of writing.
For example, college admission and scholarship essays. I thought universities wanted creative writing, very descriptive and full of imagery. My Dad thought that colleges wanted me to use writing primarily as a way of communicating who I am to someone who has no context of me. I do not know exactly what they wanted, but I got in and I got scholarships using my Dad's formula, so it must have some merit. I used to think that the purpose of all writing was to demonstrate how good at using imagery I was, because I have a special talent for creative writing and storytelling (which, by the way, I never demonstrate because I do not think that is what professors in education want to hear and because my senior year of high school, my teacher pounded on all of my creative writing, saying it was a waste of time and energy and effort and by golly that is not what they wanted on the AP test). My Dad helped me learn, more than teachers did, I think, that writing has many different purposes in different settings and contexts. Not all students will have a Dad (or any adult other than their teacher) who is a good writer and who will spend time helping them grow as writers. The effort he put into me helped me become a collegiate writer who fairly regularly wowed my professors. Many papers in college (undergrad) came back with many positive comments and usually accompanied by verbal comments about how clearly I communicated my ideas.
I think Routman's point about how if we want students to be able to write well, they need to see our own process of writing, because often we teach formulas that research has shown worked, but you are losing much of the thought and intent behind writing by just teaching children formulas or templates which they just have to fill in (the 5-paragraph essay, for example).
There is a place for the 5-paragraph essay, don't get me wrong, but that does not encompass the whole idea of writing nor does it illustrate the ubiquitous purposes of writing. We teach kids what to write in school, but not really in life. How many adults write 5-paragraph essays on a regular basis in their workplace? Not many, I don't think. Yes they write things to persuade others to do things or to share information with others, but most of the time they are emails or conversations.
From readings of a text about phonics, I am convinced that inventive or best guess spelling is helpful for children who are emerging readers. Fox mentioned in her text that children often associate a word with one or two sounds, maybe three, and spell it that way. Many children identify words solely by their beginning sound. The next sound they rely on for reading and writing is the ending sound, and the middle sound--many of them vowel sounds--comes last.
Best guess spelling seems like a valuable tool for growth in literacy.
I found it interesting that Fox seemed to dis word configuration cues and tools as helpful to literacy. It came across in the book, I think, that word shape, word length,
and letter shape have no value to literacy. I think that Fox dismisses the significance of our sense of vision in learning to read.
Brain rule #4 or so states that vision and sight supersede ALL other senses when it comes to our brain processing information. If analyzing signals sent to the brain by the eyes and nerves along the way is the most important way humans process knowledge, than I think it is wrong to dismiss visual cues's importance as Fox seems to do on p. 73 of her text.
Although it seems logical that the sound of words and letters is more helpful in learning to read, I do think that visual cues are important, perhaps more so than research has investigated. Every author has opinions on things before they conduct research, and some of them pugnaciously resist changing those. I think perhaps the importance of visual cues to reading is under-researched because those in the field of phonics are all about sound anyway.
Reading response for Week 2
Article: Emergent Literacy, New Perspectives, by William Teale and Elizabeth Sulzby
This article was very informative. My parents always said that reading to me as a young child had a huge impact on my reading and writing in school. I always believed them, but it is nice to have a literacy professional say the same thing.
What surprises me about this article is that experts ever thought that reading was simply a cognitive skill, and no more complex than that. Literacy is crucial to active participation in most societies today. Being able to communicate is our greatest blessing as humans; it is what sets us apart from other mammals.
On p. 3, I was surprised by the statement that children seeing adults use functional literacy (the TV guide, newspaper, greeting cards)
is significant in literacy learning. A lot of what we read that is functional is considered literature trash, and thus its importance is dismissed.
I was surprised by the evidence about students repeated readings of favorite storybooks is more than just memorizing the book. Children are piecing together the words to make sense of the story. I am pretty sure most parents rereading the same books over and over feel like they are shortchanging their child's reading education, but the article made it sound like it was a very important step in literacy development.
I was pleased to read on p. 5 that interactive storybook readings have powerful effects on literacy development. It is so much fun to read stories to children, and interact with them during the story. I am glad that evidence has shown that it is important, and not a waste of time. I also found the emphasis on expository reading on p. 7 as helpful. It is nice to hear that reading informative books to kids is not necessarily boring. The activities to incorporate with informational books described on p. 9 were very creative and seem to be appreciated by the children.
The authors' emphasis on using labeling in your classroom to teach writing and reading was interesting. Labeling and posting things in your classroom has a dual role: it is effective classroom management and it is also an educational tool. I always thought it was just helpful to classroom management.
