This chapter concludes the "meat" of Routman's book, and she does it in such a way that reminds us to put our teaching lives in perspective with our other lives. I appreciate her advice to "stop and reflect", and to encourage us as teachers to consider what is most important to teach (pp. 281). Furthermore, her statement on pp. 282 that says, "If I am to be an effective teacher, our hearts have to connect as well as our minds." And how true that is when we're asking students to write - to capture their thoughts on paper for public display and evaluation. If we haven't built trust and rapport with our students, then finding success when asking students to write freely seems unlikely, if not impossible.
Routman's "Secrets of Good Writers" is a section that should be shared with students. I especially appreciate her comment that she doesn't always love to write, but loves having written. That statement is true for me, and I'm sure for many of my students as well. (pp. 282 - 283)
One key idea I'm taking away from this chapter is to evaluate/score student writing at school, with the student at my side. Yes, I've been guilty of spending hours evaluating student writing, only to see little improvement in subsequent pieces. Hopefully, having the student sit with me while I evaluate their writing will lead to student implementation of suggested corrections in future writing.
I've always been a fan of daily oral language exercises, but stopped doing them many years ago when I read the research that students rarely make connections to their own writing. Disappointing! And yet I'm still tempted to use daily oral language exercises . . . . but, Routman's reminder that the "payoff isn't big enough for the time involved" steers me away from such teaching strategy (pp. 285).
The guiding question from this chapter (and perhaps the entire book) is on pp. 286. How did what we do help students become more competent, confident, and independent as literacy learners?
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4 comments:
Kris, I depend on those whole group share conferences the most. Then I work with the ones who have the most difficulty writing one on one. This is what has worked best for me.
Trust and rapport with students - well I agree. We are asking them to put themselves out there! They need to feel that they have positive guidance and support.
About DOL - I just hate giving that up. I try to vary the style in which we complete DOL. Correct whole class mostly, some independent, some small group, sometime write sentences correctly in cursive (the lost art) etc... I did like the idea of making up our own DOL and using the students and their life experiences as examples. I'm having a hard time with that one!
Like you, I have used DOL. Now I am rethinking that idea after reading this chapter. I am thinking about using student generated sentences instead as she mentions. I might even try taking sentences from student work and using those. No names of course. Anyhow, I am rethinking how I want to teach grammar skills.
Kris, I recently tried writing DOL's that were including my students and what they are experiencing. The students loved it. But after reading again what Routman said, I'm thinking of letting the students write some, or take out something from their writing to edit.
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