Uploaded by Paul A

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Uploaded by Paul A

Introduction
Students who read critically engage the ideas they encounter in print; they are willing to consider those ideas as well as question them. But too often student readers are awed by the texts they read. They may feel closed out of the printed words, unable to read past a first paragraph or first page. Or they may accept the text outright, reading solely as consumers of other ideas, granting to words in print an expertise they deny themselves. When we allow our students to respond to what they read by writing and talking about what puzzles them, or about what the ideas in the text remind them of, or why these ideas annoy them, we encourage reading that is both active and dynamic. And by defining comprehension as a collaboration between readers and text, we invite students to consider and question both text and idea. Dialogue writing with a text is a way of inviting students to read as collaborators. It encourages student readers to see themselves as both learners and equals, as individuals with something to gain and something to offer in a conversation of ideas.

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Uploaded by Paul A

Purpose
Double-entry notes provide a framework for engaging with text. They have wide-spread applications. They require students to return to the text and to make a close, critical reading. They allow students to bring their own thinking in response to the text to the fore, and to engage in written conversation with other students. These notes can serve as a prelude for classroom discussion and for writing.

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Uploaded by Paul A

“It is only when school writing becomes an integral part of ongoing observing, experimenting, experiencing, talking, reading, and thinking that it can fulfill its own particular function to the full.” James Britton

When teachers assign writing in subject area classes, they are usually checking how much of the material has been learned. Homeworks, tests, essays, and reports all serve the same function-evaluation of students’ understanding of the subject after some or all of it has been taught. While this use of writing is certainly worthwhile, it limits writing to an end product in the classroom. Writing can be used effectively while students are learning, to make links between what they already know and the new information.

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Uploaded by Paul A

Often reading can seem like a very private, even lonely act. We think about what we need in our heads; judgments, form interpretations and raise questions on our own. However, the reading experience can be made more collaborative through writing and talking. Writing can help us think through our responses. When this writing is shared with other students who are reading the same work simultaneously, it provides us with the opportunity to pool our thinking about what we’ve read and to work together to form interpretations of a text.

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Uploaded by Paul A

Presenting one aspect of your work or raising an issue that faces you daily in your teaching can be an informative experience. You gain a deeper understanding of why something may work or be problematic as well as have the pleasure of sharing your experience and knowledge with a supportive group of peers. In addition, presentations of practice also offer the teacher an opportunity to receive feedback and support from colleagues.

To ensure that presentation provide a gratifying experience both for the presenting teacher and the audience, they need to be carefully considered and designed in advance. If you plan on presenting some aspect of your teaching to the group, please consult the following guidelines. It is essential that you meet with seminar leaders prior to your presentation.

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Uploaded by Paul A

Purpose:
Dialogues are a mode of writing infrequently taught in school, yet students of all ages and abilities enjoy writing them. There are several different kinds of dialogues that students can write, ranging from inner conversations to dialogues in which characters debate an issue. Dialogue writing is a dramatic way to engage students in applying concepts and facts they are studying.

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Uploaded by Paul A

Purpose
Finding a topic or beginning a piece of writing can be a difficult task. When students face a blank piece of paper and freeze, it may be for a variety of reasons. They may believe that they should know everything they want to say before beginning to write. Or, they may think they have nothing to say. Others may lack confidence in their own language, editing even before words form on their papers. Many teachers have found the pre-writing activities help students overcome the difficulties they encounter when they begin to write. Three valuable pre-writing activities are free writing, the bubble outline, and word game.

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Kinds of Help You Can Ask For

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Uploaded by Paul A

Purpose
When students complete a first draft of writing they re often reluctant to make changes in their writing or revise it in an attempt to improve their piece. Even if they agree to “re-write,” more often than not the second draft shows only superficial changes; the quality of the piece remains essentially unchanged. This presentation will distinguish between revision and editing, demonstrate the kinds of choices (strategies0 writers have when they revise, and offer some techniques to help students understand and encourage them to revise their own work.

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Uploaded by Paul A

Purpose:

Point of view writing can be used in subject areas across the curriculum to get students involved in the material they are studying.  Often in the English class limit students’ writing about literature to theme development, character analysis, and plot summary.  Similarly, in history, science, health and other subject classes, we focus students’ writing on content summary and analysis.  Point of view encourages students to take an in-depth look at concepts they re studying.  It invites students to immerse themselves in an idea, a topic, a character, even an organism, by looking at it through different eyes.

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Uploaded by Paul A

Purpose:

Finding a topic or beginning of a piece of writing can be a difficult task.  When students face a blank piece of paper and freeze, it may be for a variety of reasons.  They may believe that they should know everything they want to say before beginning to write, or they may think that they have nothing to say.  Others may lack confidence in their own language, editing even before words form on their papers.  Many teachers have found that free writing can help students overcome the difficulties they encounter when they begin to write

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Uploaded by Paul A

Writing As Process (Thursday, 3:30 – 5:00)

Research into the composing process is beginning to provide rich new perspectives for the teaching and learning of writing. One of the main implications of these studies is that teachers must attend to the ways students write – to their composing processes as well as to the correctness of their written products.

In this workshop, participants will have an opportunity to become observers of the composing process and to examine what happens to them when they write. Through sharing and discussing the writing produced at this workshop, various aspects of the composing process and their implications for teaching will be considered. A handout summarizing some of the major findings of composing research will be distributed.

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The writing process orientation constitutes a complex shift in attitudes, behavior, ideas and approaches – whose ramifications for the classroom have barely begun to be explored.  What we know to date can be summarized as six principles. Before we present them, though, it is important to note that none of these principles is presented didactically at the beginning of a writing project.  Rather, teachers discover each principle by engaging in a number of activities. At the end of a summer project, teachers generally have sufficient experience as writers to see a new role for writing in their lives, and to discover for themselves fresh approaches for presenting writing in their classrooms.  Usually they arrive at decisions to initiate changes in their approaches to teaching that are consistent with some or all of the following principles:

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Uploaded by Paul A

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Uploaded by Paul A

Purpose

Writing is a process of discovery and constructing meaning.  Active listening is a process which encourages writers to discover and construct more of what they mean.

As teachers we frequently assume that we understand students’ intentions in writing.  We also often assume that any corrections or additions we make on students’ drafts are necessarily the ones they should make.  However, if we are to enable our students to become better writers, they need to retain ownership of their texts. One way to ensure this is to provide students with the opportunity to engage in the process of active listening by reflecting and “saying back” to students what it is we hear in their texts.

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