Writer’s Workshop Interview Transcript
How do you differentiate your instruction for teaching writer’s workshop?
“I walk around based on the students’ needs. I can see which ones need the most help with their writing and work with them. For those who don’t need a lot of help, I give them a dictionary. This is to help them look up words independently. For my two LD students, I focus mostly on them because they need the most help.”
Since each student have different skill sets, how do you grade their writing?
“I use the rubric that we have. For example; if they are a lower student, I wouldn’t expect quite as much but if they are a higher student, capable of more, I would like to see them up on the grade 3 or 4 rubric. Usually, the lower students are on the grade 1 or
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The way Lucy Calkins has it set up is that I only do two or three students a day but I try to just shorten it and go around the majority because if I just did two or three a day the rest would not be staying on task.”
How do you conduct these student conferences?
“Lucy Calkins has a paper with all of these questions listed: What are you working on today? How is it going? How are you going to make your writing strong? What are you going to do next? Who might this story be for? Those type of things… It’s not so much about grammar and spelling, mostly structure, organization and clearly getting their point across.”
How do you decide what you want to teach for writer’s workshop?
“I focus on the three big forms of writing, you know, the narrative, informative and opinion. And then I see what they need to help them grasp that.”
How do you decide to move on from narrative to informative then from informative to opinionated?
“We have a date for the pre-test and the post-test which lets us know when the deadlines are.”
How often do you teach writer’s
I also delineate my writing strengths and weaknesses that played out as I tackled these assignments. The Literacy Narrative assignment enabled me to learn how
“ The students will read the first sentence of each paragraph in the text. Each student is going to skim the text. (Appendix 4) Then they are going to discuss the main idea of the text in pairs. The teacher elicits answers.
The speakers for the first Lecture Series were from the Writing Center located at Texas A&M University. Thaddeus Bowerman is a Writing Consultant and assists students with their writing. Tiffany Tigus is an English Major and gives presentations to classrooms to inform them about what the Writing Center has to offer. The speakers gave a presentation about the Writing Center and how it can help students.
I have to keep in mind that for both of these situations I need to be coherent and professional. 3. Think of a writing assignment that you will need to complete this semester. Who’s your audience? What’s the occasion or context?
As they begin to type, they referred to these notes and questions. Taking this step to slow down, think, and prepare before writing naturally sets up the students for better quality writing, especially with setting up a solid continuity of ideas. I stress this every time we write an essay in the classroom and this is the first time I have seen it happen among my students. As these students worked together, I noticed sustained high levels of
Writing About Writing, A College Reader. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 481-495.
Number four is titled “they can write clearly and persuasively and movingly” (p. 8). This paragraph is described as being able to touch, teach, and persuade people through your writing. I do think I lack this trait, but I think that my expected experience at Central and more importantly, my intersections course, will help me to become a better writer. I expect this to be because of the more intense writing I will do as compared to high school. Quality number six is something I know I must learn quickly to be successful here at Central.
These surveys could be used when studying expository texts to give students’ text to analyze that they are personally connected too. In narrative writing it is crucial to give variety of writing prompts, so students do not feel locked into one prompt, and can choose which one connects with their personality and memories best. The author stresses the importance of having a mentor text from the teacher for students to reference multiple times, and to give students something to compare what their writing should be similar to when they are done. Teachers must write these texts along with students, so that students are given the opportunity to see the process and formatting as it develops and grows into the mentor text. Integrating student choice into an ELA class requires an extensive amount of time and effort, but when implemented properly, it can do wonders for student engagement, motivation, and performance, and always pays off in the
My Writing Experience In previous courses, my writing skills have been mediocre or just enough to pass the class. Throughout the duration of this course, I have written a variety of papers using different techniques and skills. Previously I would write assuming that the only audience would be my instructor. This course has helped me realize that there are many steps and skills involved with writing a well-organized and easy to comprehend essay.
My goal is for students to feel passionate about their writing and for them to become confident about what they have
1- Describe your reader’s task. 2- Identify the major kinds of information your reader wants from your communication. 3- Describe the way your reader will look for the information.
I choose topics for reading that students can identify with and give writing topics that students can elaborate on. I give surveys to my students to determine how they learn and what they want to learn about. This helps me give my students instruction that caters to their needs. One of the things I need to improve on is my knowledge of content. English is a content that seems to never stop growing and it is up to me to keep up with the new trends.
Jasmine and Weiner (2007) believe that the writing process needs to be introduced to students as early as the primary level. While incorporating writing workshop in their study, the main goal was to examine the writing process in first graders while helping to support them and become independent writers. The researchers found that the writing workshop program helped increase the independence and enjoyment for writing in the first grade students. At the start of the study, students frequently didn’t know what to write and had a hard time coming up with topics, but over time, they began to look forward to it, felt they were better writers, and wanted more time in the workshop (2007). Tracey and Headley (2013) took on a different approach
Goal 1 What: to explore a variety of approaches and activities for developing and practicing writing skills with my learners. Help learners understand the differences between written and spoken language, genres and their functions, style and register, and other key aspects of writing they need to successfully pass the certification. Why: I often teach certification courses and I feel that my students are under-prepare for it. My students usually have problems with writing most of them would say that they hate writing. But, it is less about “hate” and more about a lack of preparation in the subject area.
This classroom included nine general education students, five students with exceptionalities, and one English learner. The types of exceptionalities that students had in this classroom ranged from; specific learning disabilities, visual processing, auditory processing, reading comprehension, conceptualization, attention processing, and ELL. I enjoyed reading Brittany’s observation and liked that the teacher gave very thorough instructions to his students, in regards to them writing their five paragraph essays. I’m sure it was helpful to the students to be able to either view the instructions on a computer or have a printed hand out of them. Sometimes, I prefer a hard copy of information like this, so that I can add any further details that I feel would be necessary to my success on the assignment.