Which Way Does the Staircase Go?

So I know there's been a lot of debate about kids' lack of effort, how apathetic they are and how teachers don't push them enough. Sometimes I find myself thinking "well back in my day, everybody worked hard and teachers pushed us and held us to high expectations and we had to to school walk up hill in the snow both ways!"
Anyway, I read Up the Down Staricase for my multi-genre book and it taught me something. Despite politics and social climates, teenagers thirty years ago were pretty much the same as teenagers twenty years ago were pretty much the same as teens ten years ago were pretty much the same as teens five years ago, ect...Bel Kauffman does a fantastic job of capturing the teenage voice, and what I noticed was that the kids she's writing about sound exactly the same as my kids in field. Keep in mind she wrote this in the sixties. I guess what I'm saying is that despite conventional wisdom, kids aren't progressively getting dumber...what with the hippity-hop music and their nintendos and the myface. They're actually pretty much the same kids they were forty years ago...a hundred years ago...a thousand years ago! (I'm guessing).
I sometimes feel discouraged when I read how horrible some student writings can be. But this isn't a new thing. As Kauffman portrays it, none of her students really had a fantastic grasp of the English language. And as I see it, none of the kids in my Career Comm class do either. I think mainly this reflects on the widening gap between us teachers and the kids. It may not be that they're complete dunces; maybe we've just gotten a little smarter. (ps. did I use that semicolon right?)

i am terrible at posting on the blog

Assessment reminds me of those annoying 12 people at my high school who were vying for valedictorian-ship, as if that was the most important thing they were ever going to accomplish in their entire lives. It made me angry, because I never thought grades were very important. My records from high school and my bachelor's degree are appalling. I really genuinely liked school, though, and I thought most of my subjects were really interesting, and somehow it didn't ever occur to me to worry if I had an A or not, and slavishly study away accordingly. Besides, in the words of my father, "Of course you can get an A if you study. The hard thing is to get an A without studying." Thanks, Bill.

Assessment really scares me, and I'm not really sure how to use it. I always hated testing in English classes, because tests were so frequently multiple choice and true/false, followed by a short answer section. Any idiot could look up the names of the cast of A Streetcar Named Desire and memorize them -- the tests really rewarded the 12 valedictorian wackadoos and didn't do much for people who were awful with names but who genuinely "got" something out of the reading. I feel like most assessment is just a way for the 12 v.w.'s of the school to prove how obsessive they are about their studies and for the kids who don't care to just slide by. However, I don't really want to become one of those "everyone's special" teachers who has no standards. I realize we can't really get by -- the way the system is set up -- without grades. But there must be some medium.

When I was in high school, I thought making a portfolio was really satisfying. I wonder if everyone else just thought it was stupid? It motivated me to not write garbage, becaues when I was a sophomore, I looked back at my crappy freshman work and thought, wow, I can do better than this.

I really think that there must be some way to motivate students to do their best work besides traditional assessment, and I think part of the answer is the quote one of the other poster's used, about making what students learn relevant to their own lives. If you don't feel like what you're learning is important, worth your while, and has something to offer you, then what's the point?

B&B Chapters 6 & 7: Making Assessment Count

A summary of good instruction and assessment comes from a quote in Chapter 6 from B&B:

“ ‘…students become enthusiastic about learning when they feel the subject is relevant to their lives, when they can do real and challenging work, when they have control over what they do, when they feel connected to their schools, and when they do not feel compelled to compete against classmates for A’s and high scores’” (100).

 This passage sums up the ideal environment of a high school classroom. This may not be a reality in most classrooms across the country but I hope it is the goal in all of them. To make information relevant and valuable to students means giving them responsibility. This chapter discusses how portfolios are one example of an assessment that can achieve this. Not only is it an authentic form of assessment, but learners get the opportunity to compile a collection of their writing. This allows for reflection, revision, and creativity. It can also be a personal form of expression, eliminating feelings of competition; each student has created his or her personal best for no one but him or her. Assessments like portfolios are also conducive to creating a cohesive classroom. Before student are willing to open up and share their final product, they must understand and respect one another. I think the writer’s reflection questions in Chapter Six would be helpful in guiding students. They may help them recognize the importance of their own progress.

 In Chapter Seven, I expected to read an outline of how to apply the Six-Trait Model into student writing and that was all. But this chapter also explains how to incorporate it into instruction. I think the first step (Introduce Each Trait by Reading and Discussing Age-Appropriate Literature) is so important. This goes back to establishing relevance in the curriculum—students can see that these are elements that real authors use and they are just standards by which they are being graded. This gives the mini-lessons and assessments some credibility; we’re not doing this for nothing. 

Maybe it's just me....

I always seem to struggle with the actual application of the material we read.  I agree with the main ideas it offers but remain skeptical of the success of it's actual application.  I think that at future English teachers our material offers for more practical forms of assessment.  It's kind of hard to make a multiple choice test out of writing styles.  And in theory, portfolios do seem like a good way to show progression of students.  But I also wonder if it's much different than students turning in multiple drafts of a paper.  Maybe it was just me, but when I had to do portfolios, i picked the work i got the lowest grades on, adapted it to the teacher's the corrections/suggestions and turned it back in.  I didn't take any time to consider my progress, i only wanted a better grade.  Even if my teacher noticed an improvement in my work, i didn't know or even care.  So i guess the problem i always struggle with is, how do you make your students care about the work? Especially with students who don't want to be there in the first place?

The Tight Rope That is Assessment

As of right now, I'm undecided as to how I want to use assessment in my classroom. Ideally, I would want to be able to trust that my students want to do their work and that they put a sincere effort into whatever they are currently working on. Obviously, this will be difficult to judge. I know for a fact that some of my high school teachers though that I had put hours of work in to a project, when in fact, I "borrowed" ideas from her examples and put it together the night before. I mean, there's no way for a teacher to truly be able to tell.

From my field, I've become pretty disappointed as to how much motivation is present in local students. It seems like assessment is different for every student because teachers assume that each student needs to be able to bend certain expectations. Now don't get me wrong, I agree that no two students are the same and that certain students require special needs, but there is a fine line between those two students. I have little doubt in my mind that students know what they can get away with at Hickman and take advantage of their teachers' expectations. It's as if the bar is constantly being lowered and the tight rope is gradually getting wider. With this being said, students are not being properly prepared for the real world. Alright, now I feel like I'm ranting so I'm going to knock that gibber jabber off.

One idea that stuck with me from these chapters was the idea of creating a student portfolio. I had to do this for a creative writing class my senior year and I really enjoyed it. I still look at it every so often and find new ideas. It's nice to be able to look back on how far you've come as a student. As for assessing these student portfolios....that's tricky. I would grade them based off whether or not the student completed the assignments that were supposed to be included and how much time on revision was spent on each piece. Along with that, I would ask the students what grade they felt and why they felt that way. The "why" would be the key part to that question.

I just hope I can have an optimistic, creative, and comfortable relationship with my students. To know that they aren't taking advantage of me and that there is a mutual respect between my students and I. I'm going to put my butt on the line for them so I will expect the same out of them. word.

Assessment

I find assessment really interesting. In math, science, and social studies it is so objective, but in the English classroom that is not the case. I do not think we are, as future teachers, aware yet of the intense amount of grading we are going to be going through every night. It is not simply going to be right or wrong, but we are going to have to justify to the student's why they achieved the grades they did. This is intimidating! And what if we have two students of completely different levels in our classroom? Do we grade one harder than the other? What if they compare papers? After reading these two chapters I still do not have an answer. I like the idea of the Six- Trait Model because it gives students very descriptive guidelines in which they should follow and also give the teacher the same guidelines on which to score. I almost feel like students should be evaluated by their writing before going into high school and put into a classroom with students who are at the same level they are. But, of course, that idea is completely unrealistic. Most schools do not have the room, funding, or teachers to support a program like that. However, I do think the idea of a portfolio is a great one and should be used as a final grade in the classroom. The teacher can evaluate the improvement of the students and then give them a final grade based upon the effort they made to improve. In this way, students who do struggle with English can be rewarded even if their writing is poor.

B&B 6-7

I had never heard of the six trait model before reading this chapter but it seems like a really good way for students to learn what makes a good paper. Chapter 7 also had some good ideas for hands on activities that are non-tradtional and fun for the students as well as instructive, such as making a brocure of their hometown or analyzing greeting cards. On Wednesday in my class at Hickman everyone brought in song lyrics to analyze using critical approaches, such as feminist, Marxist, historical, etc. and the activity was a huge success. It was fun both for us as teachers and for the students and a good change of pace, and also prepared them to apply those critical approaches to more literary works, which they will be doing in the near future. I always enjoyed activities like this when I was in high school and hope I am creative and forward thinking enough to come up with fun activities like this when I teach. Another nice thing about the six trait model is it provides is it provides a uniform way for grading student's work, so that everyone understands why they got the grade they got and eliminates the issue of fairness or inequality. It would be nice, even, if all English teachers could get on board using the same rubric for writing workshop so students are not confused from class to class. It gives students all the specific elements they need for a good paper and all they have to do is apply them.

Keeping all of your work in a folder...BRILLIANT!!!

In my senior English class in high school we kept a portfolio with a lot of work from the year. Like most things in that class though we did a mediocre job of pursuing it. We didn't keep all of our work and it was very unorganized. I don't think the portfolio was assessed all that thoroughly either. In my class I would like to use portfolios and really stress their importance. I want students to be proud of what is in there. What I like about portfolios is that the student as well as the teacher can map their progression. As said in the chapter, portfolios show the process as well as a product, they create a collection of work, are useful to review instruction, and show student growth. It's really great how something so simple could be so helpful to both the student and the teacher. When assessing the student, portfolios are a great way to answer the question of how to grade students of different ability levels. It will be easy to see how hard a student has been working and be able to grade on their individual progress instead of comparing them to others. Another great thing about portfolios is it gives the teacher a great resource when parents want to know what is going on.

Reflection and Self-Awareness

I can remember creating portfolios from first grade to senior year of high school. Portfolios always made me excited not only to track my progress, but also to have a finished product, a personal artifact, from that year in my life. The reflection at the end, however, always was a drag. I just wanted to be done with it already! I guess I was just struggling with the idea of critiquing my own work, especially the poorer-quality work from the beginning of the year. Now being students in the College of Ed, we get bombarded with reflection assignments. I realize the importance of self-awareness and progress today, but perhaps I can use my previous frustrations to connect with my future students. I can explain to them how difficult it can be to grade our own work or point out the flaws. At the same time, I can help them understand the PURPOSE of reflection, and that I want them to decide their grade based on effort and growth.

Portfolios

After the discussion from Katie's lesson and then reading the section on portfolios in chapter 6, I can see myself using that type of assessment in my classroom. I think the students would benefit A LOT more if they could do an English, Math, etc portfolio (a portfolio for each subject or even just a few subjects) through their entire hs career! It probably would be hard for the entire English department at a school to go for that, but hopefully once I start doing portfolios for my students then other teachers would want to follow along!

When I first heard about the portfolio idea from Rebecca in class I just thought it would be a good idea for students and parents to keep student's hs work-almost like a good memorable token or something. Then, as I read chapter 6 I realized that it could be used as an actual assessment of the students learning AS WELL AS how the teacher is teaching-the effectiveness of their methods. I believe the best way to asses a students learning is by using authentic assessment and a portfolio does that-students have to reflect on their own work (share what they have done, how they have done it, how they think they did on it). Don't get me wrong, some traditional assessment is totally fine, but then again, are you assessing a student's knowledge or did the student just guess the correct multiple choice?!

Assessing Individuals

I've been thinking a lot about assessment lately, even before we started talking about it in class, and I think one of the best things for me has been to see how my field teacher grades and assesses the students in his class. It's a career communications class, so it's geared towards students who probably aren't going to go to college. Currently, the students are working on position papers on a controversial issue--one that they care about and hopefully will want to write about (that is the goal, at least). Every time I get to work one-on-one with the students, I'm amazed at how many different levels they are at. Some of the students are writing pretty decent papers, while some of them still don't know how to come up with a topic sentence. Their teacher is grading them mostly on an individual basis--he told me which students he wanted to be at certain places in their essay and which students he just wanted to have an outline of their points by the end of class. As teachers, we are going to have to have different standards for different students, because all of the them are going to be at different places as writers. But I know that there still has to be a balance in the grading between what is expected of everyone corporately instead of individually, and I don't feel like I know what that balance is. How do we recognize the needs of individual students and their abilities while still basing grades on some sort of rubric or spectrum??

What is the real world?

Ok, after reading these 2 chapters and after our couple discussions in class, I am left with one burning question, WHAT IS THE REAL WORLD?

It seems that all this talk about assessment, testing, (even teaching really!), is to "prepare students for the real world". But, it seems that in English classes particularly, the goal is to produce good writers, good readers, and add a little creativity to all of that, with not much mention for the "real world". If the real world is AFTER college, then we need to expand our territory. We need to incorporate a wide variety of things that familiarize students with many careers. And the after-college-real-world would require students to give presentations, speeches, oral reports, advertisements, etc. However, if the real world IS college, (or if the goal of teaching high school is to prepare students for college), then the assessment and testing would look much different. For the great majority of my college courses, assessment and testing has looked much like what we sort of "shunned" the other day in class. Things like multiple choice tests, long, drawn out papers, 10-questions quizzes to prove if we read a book or not, and true/false where you have a 50% chance of getting the answer right. I guess I'm confused as to what we are supposed to do. Or what "real world" we are supposed to prepare our students for.

If it were up to me, I think a combination of everything would be best. Preparing students for careers, preparing them with college-type work, and helping them produce in themselves the best and most creative readers and writers they can be...

-Lacy

Assessment in AP Lit

Reading these chapters on assessment made me think a lot about my field class. I am in Mr. Stover's Senior AP Literature class, and it is intense. He is preparing the students to take the AP Exam in May, and they have been working hard all year. Mr. Stover has graded the AP Exams before, so he has first hand experience on what the testers are looking for. He definitely teaches to the test as well. However, this is not a completely horrible thing. Every student has a AP scoring guide, which ranges from 1-9, one low, nine high. Every time they do an essay, it has to be written as if they are taking the AP Exam. On their homework, he even wants them to time themselves and make sure they don't go over 40 minutes! It's amazing. However, what I find most interesting is that he doesn't assign grades according to their essays. Instead, he has them rate their essays and write justifications for their ratings. He then rates their essays and looks over their justifications. Their grade on the assignment depends upon how close their ratings lined up with his. He is always using the same language found on the scoring guide and essay prompts to describe the pieces of work they analyze, a suggestion B&B make with regards to the six-trait model. It is very interesting...

Devil's Advocate

5 points: The topic is narrow (what is narrow?). 5 points: The writer seems to be writing from experience (at what point do we consider someone "experienced?"). 5 points: An inviting introduction draws the reader in (all introductions need to be warm, fuzzy and pleasant?). 5 points: Striking words and phrases (is there a list of striking and not-so-striking words somewhere?).

There is no doubt that we can identify quality writing, whether it's in the form of a Faulknerian novel or a critical essay, a New York Times headline story or an experimental short story. We take classes, we study, we write. And somewhere in between all that good writing emerges. Writing that we can look at and say "yeah." But I think it's dangerous for us to try to quantify the standards of good literature. In number-crunching American, where research is god, anything backed up with quantitative assessment must be true. Right? Maybe so when determining wind patterns, consumer habits, or any other scientific stuff, but we're treading on thin ice when we do it with an art form. You wouldn't go to an art museum and give Whistler's Mother a D- because it doesn't adhere to some research-based rubric. You have to judge something on it's own standards. You wouldn't say the Beatles are bad because their songs are too short. Or that Beethoven is bad because his pieces are too long. You judge them on different standards. Though they are both music they both are trying to achieve different things. A rubric like the one in chapter 7 may be appropriate for argumentative essays (big emphasis on may be) but I would be wary of using these standards anything less formal. Take into consideration who the research is based on, "Paul Diederich, John French and Sydell Carlton asked (in 1974) 60 professionals, including 30 college professors, 10 writers and editors, 10 lawyers, and 10 businessmen to read 300 papers . . . "(pg. 122) i.e. old fat white guys. I'm willing to bet that that group would've scored a book like Mango Street poorly. Don't get me wrong. I think it's necessary to distinguish good literature from crap. The fact that Kite Runner sits on the same shelf as Paris Hilton's "autobiography" makes me want to puke. But I still think we need to rely on ourselves to determine what is good literature rather than some arbitrary list of numbers.

This doesn't solve any problems when considering how to establish consistent grading standards when addressing student papers. I'm just playing devil's advocate. The devil of a non-numbered world. I just don't want my assessment of students to be as white-upper-class biased as standardized testing.

Assessment - slowly becoming clearer

Assessment is a topic I know so little about and is so important that I worry about starting as a teacher and just not knowing what all of my options are or what to expect. I am a little disappointed that these two chapters only gave two pages to authentic assessment and then the rest is on portfolio assessment and the 6 Trait Model. I'm understanding that a lot of assessment my first few years will be trial and error to figure out what tells me the most about what my students are learning.

Before this semester, I was unfamiliar with portfolios as a type of (authentic) assessment. I think it sounds like a really great idea and am looking forward to trying it in my classroom. I'm glad chapter six included surveys and rubrics. These are so helpful and many books will provide examples of student writing, but never how to assess student writing. I'm kind of curious how useful portfolios are to all students. Would they work in writing classrooms filled with students who did not plan on furthering their education? What do you do with kids who are extremely unorganized or often lose things?

I also had no idea what the Six-Trait Model was before this class. Chapter seven really sold the concept to me. It makes so much sense that providing students with the same terminology to discuss writing will help them learn to revise effectively. Some of the steps (like connecting writing to literature and providing time and resources) are similar to other advise we've received in the past. I like how this gives you a step by step guide to teaching students the correct way to revise. I think so many teachers assume that students know how to do this, when few do much more than proofreading. I feel like these two chapters were extremely helpful. I do wish they covered a broader range of assessment tools, however.

student writing

I agree with Jared... the problem students are not really addressed in this article. I think they should be! How do we inspire students who are not interested to write? Certainly marking their papers with red ink everywhere is not going to help anything, but I wonder if there is some way they could be inspired. I was thinking about what we were talking about the other day and maybe it would be a good idea to give students opportunities in writing where grammar is not relevant or necessary and they can write however they'd please; maybe it would inspire them to let loose a little! Of course, we would also need to assign formal papers that need to focus on grammar and the specifics. Would this be confusing to the students? I can see how it could be but I think it could also be beneficial. If students become more comforable with free writing and idea writing maybe they would be more receptive to trying something a little more formal? I mean as long as they know there is a time for personal writing and a time for formal writing could this technique be successful?

Responding to students writing

I really like the idea of writing workshop, but I think I'm going to be the kind of teacher that does a lot of reading and writing...together!!! Yes, some days I will have an official writing and reading workshop day, but mostly I want to incorporate both of them together! I think it is very important not only to set an example by writing when the students write but take that time and talk with the students about their writing. I want to let my students know that not everything that they write in my class will be graded and that they are free to write about what the want.

I still have burning questions and I would really like to get some feed back on how to grade students that are not at the 10th, 11th or whatever level they are suppose to be at in reading and writing?! I don't think it is right to hold every student accountable for the exact same thing because I know that I will get students that can barley write in the 8th grade level when they are suppose to be in hs. But how do I grade that student that just can't write, do I need a separate rubric to give them or what??? Then, if I do have a student that is very low in their writing skills what can I do to assist them without taking time away from my other students?

Nancie knows best...

As usual, i really enjoyed reading the Nancie Atwell chapter.  She always seems to have the perfect method for teaching workshops.  She makes it seem so simple.  Although i'm sure she's struggled along the way, she makes the concept of writing workshop really easy to understand.  I especially enjoyed the list of questions that can be used to guide students in their writing.  She makes sure that the work and the ideas come from the students instead of just telling them what to do. I think this is a great way to teach writing.  Especially after watching and seeing some of the middle schoolers at the Youth Writing Conference last week, it's become very clear that young writers have something to say.  Atwell does job showing future teachers how to set students in the right direction. 

However, my one difficulty with the chapter, and the idea of writing workshop as a whole is that i worry some students need technical help first.  I had the chance to read several pieces of student writing from my field class and there is such a huge variation in capability.  I do think writing workshop could be helpful in such a wide ranged class, but i felt that so many students needed grammatical and structural guidance first.  Some of the papers i read were composed of one or two giant run-ons or used incorrect verb tenses.  I know we discussed grammar last week and many people think that it shouldn't be taught but i seriously think some of these students need it.  Maybe no one has ever showed them how to form sentences or conjugate verbs.  I think these points are incredibly important to know.  To me it seemed that the problem was not creativity or ideas, it was grammar.  What instructional path would be best in this situation?

Student writing...

...is really fun to read!

I liked all of the examples that Atwell used, especially the essay a boy wrote about the craziness of his family. Kids are funny, and I like being reminded of that.

"Every adult remembers at least one waking experience comparable to Chute's nightmare, when an English teacher's response took the form of an attack: red ink bled all over a piece of writing that represented the writer's level best" (45). I do NOT want to be this kind of a teacher, and this was a good chapter for that. It makes me realize that grammar alone does not matter as much as I might want it to, and not all grammar needs to be corrected as I might write something. Students have a mind of their own, and I think sometimes they are trained by teachers to try to get into the teacher;s mind instead of their own. They all have stories to tell, they all have their own experiences; who are we to tell someone that something they write isn't good enough? Sometimes I feel like this is easier said than done, though, because as teachers, we want everything to be written up to our standard. I think there is a fine line though, because at the same time we do need to hold students accountable for what they are writing.

For myself, though, I just want to be more aware of the effort that students put into their work; I don't want them to feel like anything they are doing isn't good enough simply because I say so. I think the questions and examples that Atwell provides do a good job of this--but I wonder, how are her classes so great?!

Helpful Advice

I really found this chapter by Atwell to be very helpful. I am often concerned about how to approach students' writing. This may stem from my personal occasional writer's block or revising issues. Nevertheless, I think Atwell presents some practical pointers for addressing students and their writing.

For one, I think she brings up the emotional/psychological side of writing that is important to consider. For many students, writing makes them vulnerable which can hinder them from sharing or even getting started in the first place. For others, their lack of confidence might keep them from trying. Creating a safe and encouraging community of writers (as we've talked about in the past) would probably help those apprehensive writers.

I have also wondered how writing conferences should be structured. They were often only an option in my high school English classes, so most students didn't go through the trouble--unless they were really stuck. Moving around the classroom shows that the teacher is more engaged in what the students are working on then having them come to him or her, I think. Atwell's suggested questions and thirteen content conference guidelines would be both helpful and practical. I am definitely going to be using some of her ideas for my own writing conferences. She also stresses the importance of students conferencing with one another. This would most likely help them to improve upon their writing independently by reading/revising other students' work.

TDP 4020 makes me Not want to teach:

Thankfully, this class does! Big time.

This is an area that I am really excited to participate in as a future teacher. I can't wait to hear what my students have to say in hopes that they feel comfortable enough to say whatever it is they want. The only problem is getting them to that point and then creating a mutual understanding with my students as to what is deemed appropriate and sufficient. I think its important as a teacher to understand that everyone wants to know how to improve and young writers generally want to be heard, it all boils down to how you handle a particular situation.

When I start teaching, I hope that I never forget what it was like to be a student. I always dreaded turning in my first paper because I never knew what to expect back from my teacher. I felt that every teacher graded differently and looked for different things. What I failed to realize is that many teachers are understanding and want students to grow as writers. I don't plan on holding all my students to the same level of expectations, but I do expect to see them put enough effort in their writing to help them become not only a better writer, but a more creative, risk taking, voice established writer. I want to be the teacher that allows his students to take their writing where they want it to go. I'll simply ask the question, "What could you do next?" Of course, I'll guide them if they are going in the wrong direction. Another point that I think is important is to communicate with your students while they are writing, not once they are done. I felt overwhelmed when I would get a rough draft back with all kinds of "suggestions". Instead, provide the students with ideas and tips while they write so they can incorporate those techniques into their "rough draft".

This article definitely helped me get an idea of what to expect as a future teacher. I sure I will learn a lot through trial and error, either way, I can't wait.

Oooh, I like this stuff!

I really enjoyed reading this article! I think the article gave many great ideas and insights into student writing, conferencing, and responding. What I liked most about her ideas, was the pages and pages of questions to use for editing a paper. From what I have seen in high school classrooms, is that many times when students are asked to revise their own papers or to peer-edit a friend's, they are either given no guidelines at all, or are given just a handful. I don't think a paper will ever be written to its best ability by only checking for spelling or punctuation mistakes. Instead, Atwell lists several questions about purpose, information, leads, conclusions, titles, and style. She really covers all the bases, and gives her students the BEST chance of revising their paper. I think it would be really cool to have all of these topics on posters around the room, listing out the editing questions for each one. That way, when students are sitting in class, just staring at their paper, thinking about how they can change it, they can look up, read a question, and go back through looking for a more specific thing. Another thing I really liked about this article, is the way Atwell dealt with her students when they needed help. Her specific example with Arelitsa on page 50 was a great example of how a teacher should respond. Arelitsa was stuck on something with her paper, and needed help knowing where to go next. Instead of solving her problem and telling her exactly what to do, the teacher simply asked a few probing things to get Arelitsa to think and come to the conclusion on her own.

Interesting stuff... I'm excited to actually use this someday.

-Lacy

Nancie has quite a group of students...

I've read quite a bit from Nancie Atwell and it seems she has the smartest, most focused students ever. Sometimes  I feel like she is promoting her way of teaching so much that she forgets to tell us how to handle students who down care. Some students are going to hate to read and write. Some will be little scientists in the making who could care less about writing a fiction piece. How do we deal with these kids when doing a reading and writing workshop? Anyway, I do like her 13 "Content Conference Guidelines." One thing I have wondered about was how to go about doing the student conferences and these guideline are very helpful.

How will I respond?

I really admire Atwell's conferencing procedures. I would like to borrow her ideas when I begin writing conferences, because they seem so perfect! Her mandatory conferencing equipment, for example, sounds like a great start: "the status-of-the-class record on a clipboard, a pad of four-by-six-inch Post-it notes...and my footstool" (49). The status-of-the-class record on a clipboard would extinguish the need for asking students, during class, where they are in their writing. The Post-it notes seem ideal for helping students remember your suggestions, because all too often, students don't write down your comments and later forget them (therefore not revising or improving their writing). Hopefully, I will also be able to carry a footstool around the room in order to look my students in the eye and comfortably situate myself in front of their writing.

When it comes to asking questions, I also plan on using Atwell's list of questions found on page 54. These questions are open-ended, which force students to give detailed, clarifying answers. I may even carry the questions around with me when I first begin implementing writing conferences, so as not to get stuck or feel unhelpful. Then, once I get used to the questions, I can come up with my own or have these questions embedded in my brain.

I found this article very useful and am glad I read it!

Responding to student writing

So far in my field I've been lucky enough to encounter a lot of student writing. They've been writing reviews over the books they read for lit circles. It's a neat way to get the students thinking about their text critically, and I think it would be worth considering when in the real teaching world. (My host teacher is Mackenzie Everett-Kennedy, if you'd want to ask her anything about the lesson). I think the biggest problems facing students writers (or the biggest problem I've faced in the Career Comm class) has been writing that goes nowhere. "This book is an example of what people can do when they're facing adversity. John faces adversity throughout the whole book. He has to deal with it when he was a kid too. One time his mom had cancer and their house burned down. It would be tough for anyone to have to go through all this, and it was really hard for John too." That's not a verbatim example of student writing, but that's what I've seen so far. (But who knows, maybe the papers other than the other 2 or 3 I've looked at are brilliant). This is especially hard for me to address with the students. I can tell that they've been working hard to get what they have so far, so I'm afraid to say "This is all redundant, scrap it!" I try to say something like "let your voice shine through" or "spend less time talking about what happened in the book and more time giving your impressions." But sometimes I'm scared that this may be too advanced for them. Sometimes I feel like they're just at the stage where getting something down is important, but I feel compelled take it further. However, I don't want to frustrate the kids.

I really try to ignore grammar when I look at their papers, but it's just too easy sometimes. Against my better judgement, I've wasted time on the easy clerical stuff before, sacrificing an analysis of what's really going wrong in the paper. I love the Charles Cooper quote on page 77, "It's easier to persist with commas if you know you're engaged in some fundamentally important human activity that has very great consequence for your full development as a human being." It is easier. Grammar correction is the monday morning quarterbacking of the writing world.

To Know or Not to Know

To start, I realized last class period that I responded to the article for today last time. So I thought I would correct my mistake by commenting on "To Grammar or Not to Grammar" today.

I found this to be an interesting article. I definitely like the idea or incorporating grammar lessons into actual writing lessons. This way, the information has a place and purpose, rather than just being something to memorize. As I was reading the article, it discussed parts of grammar that I seem to have forgotten since high school, making my assumptions correct. I also think the author brings up a good point: look at how the authors of classroom literature use grammar. As students continue reading they can pick up on what they've been learning all along.

Something that sparked my interest though was the fact that if you don't teach students elements of grammar, they'll pick up on it anyway. For example, the teacher who first asked the students to write with adjectives and adverbs then did prewriting activities in order to get them thinking with their senses made me wonder what her goal was. In this case, she was impressed with how much more descriptive her students writings were (which is excellent) but that doesn't necessarily mean that now they are learning how to formulate more complex sentence structures. Neither case is worse than the other, it just depends on the outcome the teaching is hoping to achieve. The article goes on to describe fifth-graders who use participial phrases and absolutes in their poetry without ever learning what they actually are. I think this raises the question of whether students need to know the hard facts of grammar or if just being able to use them is enough.

Also, the teacher who is revising the descriptive paragraph of the boxer. She makes comments on how to "better" the writing, but does not explain how she would go about teaching these things to the student. I had trouble seeing how this was effective. I think the end goal for the writing of the student is the determining factor in these situations.

compromise!

Grammar is one of those things that, I am sure, will never be agreed upon among English teachers. Some will focus on it, others will not, and often grammar will be part of the classroom but not a significant part. Although I do believe grammar is, most definitely important, there are other aspects of the joys of English that are much more so. "Why Revitalize Grammar" takes one side of the argument a bit extremely. I agree with Eric on the point that there does need to be a standard way in which we can judge and evaluate our student's papers. If there is not, then where do we draw the line on what is wrong and what is right? If a student hands in a paper which is in Ebonics how are we, as the teacher, even going to know for sure what they are talking about? In order for our students to be successful in communicating with us, we need to have universal grammar. I do believe, however, that grammar should not make up the majority of an English class. I think that my role as a teacher will be not to demand and teach grammar rules, but to help my students to enjoy the power of reading and writing. I know that once I was confident with my grammar abilities I was more prone to write and enjoyed it more, perhaps this will be the same for my future students.

I am all grammared out.

When I came to Mizzou I was unsure what I would major in. After taking an english class in college I realized how different teaching can be from what I was used to in high school. Many of my teachers were sub-par, according to my definition of par now. I didn't get much grammar schooling when I was younger in middle school and earlier. When I entered upper-level classes in high school we did all formal papers. There was a lot of research papers and papers about books, but we didn't do any creative writing. My teacher would allow us time to free write in class, but we never pursued it any further than that. I think grammar is important in the right circumstances, but the most important things that are learned in english classes come from what the student can come up with creatively on their own and when it come to that I don't think grammar is the most important thing in the world. I want my students to be able to read great authors and see what they do with writing and then use that knowledge to come up with their own material. I think along the way students will learn the important parts of grammar.

G to the R to the A-M-M-A-R! Gramalicious...

Haha.... sorry for the ridiculous title. I'm in a computer lab where a girl's headphones are blaring Fergie's "Fergalicious!" Anyway, after reading these two articles about grammar, I am realizing three main things. 1) That I honestly know NOTHING about grammar, 2) That it isn't a very "fun" or desired topic to learn OR teach, and 3) That is MUST be taught, we just need to find some innovative and creative ways to do it.

Let me elaborate...

1) That I honestly know NOTHING about grammar:

All my life I attended an average school district near Kansas City. (NOT Kansas City though!) We learned how to read, write, be a little creative, understand literature, and interpret reading. We did not, however, learn grammar. I am realizing this now that I'm in college, when in several of my English classes I am required to know what a modifier or a fragment is, and have to go to google to find out. I wonder how many other people are in my situation...

2) That it isn't a very "fun" or desired topic to learn OR teach:

This is obvious. No one likes the technicality of most anything. Like we talked about in class, when you teach a class how to write a research paper, you shouldn't read from a huge textbook about how to write a research paper. It's not fun. It's not practical. Kids don't want to learn this stuff. And worst of all, I bet many of us don't even want to teach it...

3) That is MUST be taught, we just need to find some innovative and creative ways to do it:

This kind of wraps up my point. I don't know grammar, and now I'm struggling. So to avoid my students being in this same situation, it must be taught. And because it isn't fun or exciting like poetry or graphic novels or something else, we need to find better ways for students to learn this stuff! Any ideas???

--Lacy

Why write this essay?

I found this essay to go against how I feel grammar should be taught and its importance in the classroom. First of all, I do not believe that grammar is used for power and opportunity and that 'correct grammar' is used to oppress those who do not use it. That's ridiculous. We have grammar standard so that everyone who speaks English knows how to interpret writing so they can all understand it, not so we can ridicule those who use African American Vernacular English. If I wrote formal papers using country slang and someone else wrote his paper using ebonics, there would be no standard for grading them or pulling any kind of useful meaning out of them. Also, I notice grammar errors in textbooks and novels as well in student work, perhaps even more so because I expect them to be perfect. Idiots.
I was excited to get to the part where they would talk about "improving the world" as they promised on the first page they would do, but it appears to be nowhere in this essay. Liars.
The little 'some might say/ we say' interjections are silly and distracting, as well as being incorrect as far as I have seen. For example, "Some might say: Students who make grammar errors are lazy." Really? Who says this? I am sure most people would say that they make errors because they are not proficient at grammar and usage, but I don't know anyone who would call someone lazy for making a mistake!
I also agree with the point they argue against that students need to know grammar rules before they can break them. Successful authors don't use sentence fragments because they don't know any better, they do it for style and effect, and I seriously doubt they would write the same way for a formal essay. Therefore students must first learn the rules of grammar and usage so they will know how to experiment with them in their own writing.
Why do they seem to be complaining about people debating grammar on the first page and then suggest it as an idea for students in the classroom? Having the class blow up into a fight over commas and apostrophes does not sound fun to me. Hypocrites.
All of the ideas they suggest seem like things students should do after they have learned grammar, rather than do instead of traditional grammar. I would much rather have read a grammar handbook from cover to cover than read this article.

Grammar, grammar, and more grammar

You know how when you have been analyzing or working with a single word for so long, it starts to look likes it's spelled funny? Grammar is doing that for me now. Anyways, I really liked the "Why Revitalize Grammar?" article. I like how they did a kind of Mythbusters with the Challenging Views grammar. This section gave me a kind of arsenal from which to shoot my defenses if I am challenged about the way I [will] teach grammar. Being so far into the Secondary English Education Program here at Mizzou, I am sure you will all sympathize with the situation. Does it seem as we make our way to become big bad English teachers, people get more and more picky about the way we talk? I have friends who sometimes seem so proud of themselves when they catch a grammar mistake that I make, it's kinda ridiculous. [On a side note, I find it interesting that spellcheck no longer underlines "kinda" in angry red] Anyways, I have never been a grammar stickler, and most people know this about me, but they still think that I need to be some divine grammar goddess because I am going to be an English teacher. I really like the way that Dunn and Lindblom approach the concept of teaching grammar. Most people have this perception of English teachers beating students with the grammar book, and I think this image is what causes people to hold me to a higher grammar standard. I had no intention, and still have no intention, of doing this in my classroom. I really do think that grammar is best learned in context, not in isolation.

Walking to the Bottle

I really liked the baby and the baby bottle analogy in this section of reading:

"...They do what they need to do to get the bottle, and as time goes by they learn better and better ways of getting the bottle. But their goal was always the bottle, not the walk... Communicating effectively is the road to success. Knowing the rules is largely irrelevant to communication. Writers learn to communicate by communicating, not by memorizing rules."

This is so crucial, because it's not saying that we don't need to focus on the "walk"--we do--but we need to realize that the walk is not the end goal in and of itself. It doesn't belittle the importance of grammar, but it states that there is a point to grammar, and that is to communicate effectively what you are trying to get across as a writer.

I don't think I ever really realized this until college. I don't ever remember writing anything in high school that I wanted to write, there was never a freedom in writing until recently. Papers were written for the sole eyes of the teacher and what they expected and wanted out of their students, not for communicating something as a writer. Students learn to write better and better when they have a goal for their writing and they can see (or at least partially see) where they are trying to go with it. And I think when students see that goal, they will eventually realize the importance of the steps it takes to get there and to improve. That will come with time, but that is why it is so important to revitalize rather than correct.

Like the chapter says, anyone can correct grammar, but not everyone can respond in a sophisticated way. I think it is hard for me to train myself to not just regard something as "good" or "bad" based on whether or not the grammar is good. Even with working with kids who don't speak "well" according to society's standards, it's all to easy to disregard many of the things they say because we can't get past what the words sound like that are coming out of their mouths. It's a long process, and one in which we should be encouraging to get better and better rather than correcting at every moment of disuse.

Gramma say whaaaa?

I'm going to be honest, I have no idea why I decided to give this post the title I did. I guess I decided a long long time ago, which was a Sunday night, that I was going to give each of my posts an interesting title because that grabs the "audiences" attention. Right?

Anyways, here's what hit home with me from these articles...

"Published contemporary writers do all sorts of things students are taught to avoid."
Boom! I mean, Ka-Boom! Is it just me, or does that hit you square in the mouth? Such a powerful statement. I can honestly say that I didn't feel the freedom that writing can consist of until my senior year of high school. It's such a joy to be able to put anything that crosses my mind on paper, because I'll be damned if I don't think of some of the craziest ideas. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta....Office Space anyone? Nevermind that nonsense. To all that think that my post thus far is not the most grammatically sound piece of writing they've ever read, I challenge them with this...."Some may say: Effective writers follow the rules. We say: Effective writers have something to say and follow or break the rules to say it." Students need to realize that they are in control of their writing. They can break the rules. Write how you want. Write what you want. Write to simply get it out. I mean when you look at it, teachers are like coaches. You got to give a mean (mean as in real legit, almost Too Legit like MC Hammer) pep talk to get the creative juices flowing. What's going to be my bulletin board material to get my students pumped, how about this little dandy...."Pulitzer Prize-winner writer E. Annie Proulx's novel The Shipping News is chock full of what any grammar handbook would label as "fragments," and Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle never used quotations around his characters' dialogue." Why make students into robots in middle school when in college they are asked to do the complete opposite? With all that said, I'm beginning to feel like I'm either going to be a ground breaking teacher that opens all kinds of doors for his students or some washed up hippie that is going to suffer quite a bit of pain when he hits the wall of reality he is sliding downhill in neutral towards.

Nike and writing should pair up for a campaign.....

"Just Write It"

Grammar

When I was in middle school and high school I was definitely one of the students who was good at figuring out what the teacher wanted in a piece of writing.  As a result i was really good at getting A's but i a probably didn't learn much.  I'm glad "Why Revitalize Grammar" brought this up because i think a lot of students get through school this way and that's unfortunate.  All i can really remember writing in school is research papers.  Even when i was given the chance to choose a more creative project, i always chose to write a paper because i had become so good at it.  As a result i still have difficulty with other styles of writing.  In a sense, it's like creativity was stifled by the "proper" form of writing.  I agree with the texts that this is unfair.

However, as a product of heavy grammar instruction, i have a lot of difficulty accepting some of the texts' arguments refuting it's importance.  "Why Revitalize Grammar" specifically noted that teaching one form of English as "proper" suggests that some students' home language will be "dismissed as rule-breaking slang".  As a huge supporter of encouraging diversity and individual differences, i agree with this statement.  I think students should express themselves in the way that best suits them.  However, i also strongly believe that there is a time and a place for grammar and "standard English".  We can say that people shouldn't be judged by their speech or writing, but in some situations they will be whether it is right or not.  I think it is our job as English teachers to help students understand when "Standard English" may be the better option.

As a result, i agree that grammar should be taught within the context of writing.  Grammar may be boring to some students no matter how it is taught, but they may have a better chance of understanding it's importance if they see it in context.  I also liked the readings' idea to have grammar debates that discuss the controversy surrounding grammar.  This can also lead to a higher appreciation of writing.

Focusing on an Audience

I agree with Brittany when she says that not all students are college-bound, but they do need to understand the importance of writing for a certain audience. I am reminded of my professors, who ask us to write them professional emails, as if they were an employer or future business partner. Stressing the importance of writing for a specific reader is a lesson students will utilize throughout their lifetime, whether or not they are college-bound. In high school, I always appreciated lessons based on formal vs. informal language/writing. I also liked when teachers clarified with which one they expected us to write, especially when assignments tended to vary in genre or purpose. Dunn and Lindblom give us some great ideas for finding audiences outside of the class: local businesses, community organizations, Internet publications, print publications for teens and children, hobbyist magazines, retail corporations, employers, fellow employees (152). I think any student, despite their future goals or interests, could relate to and benefit from writing to many of these audiences.

When I got to page 186 in Burke's article, I instantly remembered an English teacher from my freshman year of high school. She had a list of "Banned Words" that we could not use under any circumstances. Burke's list includes: is, was, am, were, are, weren't, wasn't, and isn't. Ms. Gilner's list, in addition to Burke's, included: it, that, this, we, you, us, like, and many more (I'm drawing a blank). As frusterated as everyone got with these "banned words," I began to realize just how vague and useless they were. To this day, I still try to avoid using those words (at least the ones I remember). I don't think Ms. Gilner liked hearing us wine, but I know she enjoyed hearing us say, "I can't believe I use 'it' so much!" Burke agrees that he is "content if [his students] develop a new awareness of their writing" (186). I know I will love overhearing those "Ah, ha!" moments.

Lemme Aks U somethin

It was the first day of class in my History of the English language class I took last summer and our professor asked us why people say 'aks' instead of 'ask.' An awkward silence fell over the class (as always happens in college classrooms). Finally someone spoke up and hesitanly said "laziness?" I didn't answer, but I was thinking the same thing. "But what's lazy about it?" the professor asked "Is it easier to say aks than ask?" And the short answer is no. The aks vs. ask problem goes much deeper, stemming from, among other things, racism. But that's what we do with grammar. Ever since I've known it, it's been a tool for degredation. And how do we tell if someone is stupid? If they "ain't got none" or "don't do good." No no no, it's "haven't got any" and "don't do well." People hide behind grammar so they can assert their superiority or because they have nothing valuable to say. "Almost anyone can 'correct' a draft. Not everyone can respond to it in a comprehensive, sophisticated manner." (p. 149). Someone asked me once about a sign she saw "It said Renissance Festival in Excelsior Springs. Shouldn't it be at Excelsior Springs." I gave her a blank look. I really don't know or care. "C'mon. You're the English teacher, you should know!" I guess her knowing the location of Ren Fest hinged on whether it was at or in the town. It's pretty arbitrary sometimes, this grammar stuff, because "published contemporary writers do all sorts of things students are taught to avoid." (p. 150). If, as the Revitalize Grammar chapter pointed out, students are writing with a purpose (as do professional writers) they will be able to utilize a specific set of grammar rules to complement their piece. They will understand how change in tense or complex sentence structures can help or hinder their writing.

They hit on my old assumptions about bad grammar in these two chapters. That it's a result of stupidity or laziness. But in the end I think the old methods or teaching grammar are trite and unfair. My professor said, with a chuckle, that no matter what he tells people, they're never convinced. Some people are absolutely sure there's only one way to say or spell 'ask,' even if a linguist tells them differently. If the meaning shines through, then do the mechanics really matter? He solidified his argument by pointing out that some hack named Chaucer also used aks in his writing. If it's good enough for Chaucer, shouldn't it be good enough for everybody?

Evolving Ideas

Reading these two additional grammar articles and reflecting on my high school experience has allowed me to realize some significant differences in my education and the type of teacher I want to be. I think the reason I'm having a hard time letting go of teaching grammar by itself is because I was taught it and forced to have near perfect grammar in so many of the papers I wrote in high school. I was in honors language arts classes and almost all of our writing assignments were formal papers; we rarely explored other, more creative genres. I'm realizing now, that I'm not going to want to teach in the same way.

"Why Revitalize Grammar?" clarifies the important fact that perfect grammar is not the key to economic success and not all students are college-bound and will need to communicate in perfect standardized english. All students do need to learn to communicate effectively and to do so, they must know how to communicate in a way that their audience will understand. I'm really looking forward to developing my students Textual Intelligence by looking at different genres and writing in different genres. I believe that there is a place for "proper" grammar and my students should know to use it in their formal essays or research papers. However, they will also learn that there are types of writing in which the content will be more accurately understood by the audience if grammar rules (and other writing "rules") are broken. While reading these articles, I thought of so many lesson plans - it was great!

Parts of this article reminded me of the Ruby Payne book we read for a previous TDP class. It discusses how "Standard" English rules of grammar sometimes creates divisions between people (i.e. students whose home language is different from the language they are expected to use in the classroom). In response to this, I liked the suggestions of using different genres--allowing students to use multiple voices rather than a forced, stiff writing that is typical of research papers and book reports. "Effective writing is not effective due to an absence of error. Effective writing works because it achieves its purposes with the particular audience for whom it was intended to work" (148). This statement varies from what we usually expect when 'editing' or 'proofreading'. This article puts emphasis on students' progression based on practice, not memorizing rules of writing. I can see how lessons focused specifically on grammar might not keep students' interest but I would be interested to see how to incorporate mini-lessons in over-arching writing lessons. 

Grammar teaching for ELL students

Actually I buy most of the points posed by the author. I do agree that we shouldn't teach isolated grammar rules, instead, we should apply grammar lesson to our real writing practices.

However, I suddenly think of a problem: for native English speakers, they might acquire grammar naturally, I mean, they are immersed in English while reading and speaking this language every day. They may be reading sentences with apposition, absolute, etc. and using it in their own writings, even though they might not know the exact definition of what an apposition/participle phrase is. It will possibly be efficient with native speakers of English. But how will you do with the ELL students, in whose mother tongues there aren't even such long sentences with clauses and participle phrases like in English?

How will you let them understand what are apposition, adverbial clauses and absolute? What can we do to show the students how to use them? And how can you let them understand the effectiveness those may bring into their own writings?
Those are just several aspects of grammar, which can help to improve the students' writing, but what about other aspects, such as irregular verbs, the consistency between the subjects and the verbs?

"Alright stop, Gramma Time!"

Overall, I enjoyed this piece. I must admit, now that I'm done reading it, I'm a little worried that I might use incorrect grammar while writing about it. Anyways, here's what I thought....

The part that grabbed my attention was when the author talked about how important it is to draw upon literature as a model of effective sentences and paragraphs. I can honestly say that that is what I do quite often. When I'm writing and I find myself confused, I look to a published piece of literature that I own and see how that author wrote it. Along with this, I also find great grammar techniques while reading. If I like the way an author put together a sentence, I try to star it and use it as a reference in my own writing.
Another section of this piece that I really enjoyed was the part that talked about the 5th graders and their poetry. I was shocked to see how successful some of their pieces were. This definitely brought an over-the-top tear to my eye thinking about how bright the future writers of America are. The idea of immersing students in reading and discussion of good literature is brilliant and I plan to use it in my classroom.

Sorry for posting so late, it slipped my mind.

Stop! Grammar Time!

One day as a young lad, I was sitting alone in my room pondering what I wanted to be when I grew up. I knew I should find what my true passion was and it would lead me in the right direction. After much soul searching, I realized that I cared about nothing more than I cared about grammar. Thus, I decided to become an english teacher.... I kid, I kid. That's not how it was at all. I wasn't in my room I was at a bus stop. Kidding again.

Seriously though grammar is not what makes language arts the best subject in the history of education. Instead students find it very boring, myself included. Yet it must be taught. I did not receive much instruction in grammar while in high school, but I wish I had. It is important. As a writer I have always been told it's okay to break the rules as long as you know what you are breaking and why. Students need to know the correct way to write before they can use the english language to uniquely express what they really want to express. Therefore I think grammar lessons should be mixed into the fun stuff. Point out what a writer did in their work and why they did it. Keep the grammar lessons short, not all period long. Don't just put a red X through a grammar mistake on their paper, but instead explain to them why it is done another way. Slowly but surely students will improve their grammar and you won't have to bore their brains out!

Title: MC Hammer reference(in case you missed it)....U Can't Touch This!

To Grammar or Not...

I agree with the article that teaching grammar skills in isolation does not really help students improve their writing skills by itself, but I still think there are some valid reasons for teaching it the way most teachers still do. Sometimes the only way to learn basic concepts is by practicing them over and over until you are familiar with them, which I think teaching the individual parts of speech is good for. I always like grammar lessons in high school because I actually felt like I was learning something useful, so I don't see a big problem with how they are being taught. I do like the idea, however, of using literature to teach grammar, perhaps after students have already learned the basics so they know what to look for in the literature. Students learning this way must also realize that many authors take liberties with common grammar and sentence structure, and that "good writing" does not always mean the author has used "correct grammar". I suppose I am old fashioned in that I believe students should be taught that there is a correct way to use grammar and punctuation that should not be deviated from in formal writing so that their ideas can be clearly understood according to a common standard. In their creative writing they should be allowed to play around with grammar and sentence structure as long as their writing makes sense.

I don't know if I would teach grammer as a unit, by itself, but rather I would integrate it into mini-lessons that have a different major objective. Does that make sense? Inotherwards, I can always incorparate grammer when I teach a book or something. I will just incorporate different mini-lessons as I teach the main unit.
Growing up my teachers would just give me worksheet after worksheet and I really don't think I learned anything! Also, it was extremely boring and I didn't want to pay attention! Granted, I know how to make a complete sentence and I can write a decent paper, but I don't know the terminology for different parts of the sentence. Therefore, I think it is best to integrate grammer into lessons, but I do feel that it is a bad idea to teach grammer by itself!!!

Grammar makes me sleepy

I'm sorry to say this, but I literally fell asleep reading "To Grammar or Not to Grammar..." I don't completely blame the article, because it is snowing outside and I read it in bed. But anyways, there were some points I did want to talk about. I liked the idea of disguising grammar lessons and never actually calling them grammar lessons. Incorporating literature into these mini lessons sounded like a feasible way to teach grammar in disguise. Using exerpts from The Giver like Carol did, allowed her students to mirror correct grammar usage. Also, this tactic helps students improve their own revision abilities. They become the teacher and get to let the "Error Beast" loose on professional writers (or in Carol's case, she actually "put it through a regression process that turned [the exerpt] into a piece of writing any middle schoool student might have written" p.22). Believe it or not, grammar can be fun and engaging. We just need to have a positive outlook and think of some great [disguised] grammar mini lessons that connect to the literature. Students, in turn, begin using these grammar techniques in their writing, either consciously or unconsciously!

Torn

I really am torn as to whether or not high school teachers should teach grammar by itself. And it's hard for me to explain all of the points on both sides.
First of all, it's very important to say that I agree with Weaver's article that teachers should teach grammar in a context that will directly improve their writing. Some of the examples included in the article are really great writing samples for middle schoolers. I think students (and teachers) should focus more on the content of their writing before worrying about grammar and editing. I think this can be done by looking at literature, having mini-lessons and individual conferences. I understand that we should be making our students better writers and that we need to teach them to communicate their thoughts and feelings effectively. However, I just can't let go of the fact that if teachers don't teach them grammar, then who will?
It would be ideal if students could have grammar nailed down by the time they got to high school so we could focus on developing their writing in further ways; however, we can just pass the buck to elementary or middle school teachers. I recognize the fact that research has shown that students do not benefit from grammar exercises in isolation from writing, but does this mean that we can just forget about educating them on parts of speech, punctuation, subject-verb agreement and everything else that goes along with grammar? In our blogs, many of us are regretfully admitting that we're not entirely confident in our own understandings of grammar. If some students are wanting/needing it upon leaving high school, shouldn't we offer some instruction on it?
The hard part is then teaching grammar in a way that benefits students' writing and involves writing while still acknowledging the fact that we're teaching grammar (which the Weaver article tries to mask).
I don't know. I'm still torn. I hope we discuss this in class.

Ha it's funny because I just read back through what everyone else is saying, and we are all responding almost exactly the same... I sense a class theme here.

grammar

I feel like throughout my earlier education I was taught grammar a multitude of times. I would then remember exactly what was what in a sentence and re iterate that back when I had tests to see how well I could apply my knowledge. It is weird; when I write I know exactly how to write and what is wrong and right but often I cannot put specific labels on my editing and say, this is why grammatically. I agree with the article that isolated grammar lessons in the classroom are ineffective and should be replaced with hands on activities. The way I learned grammar is not how I learned to write well. I learned to write by writing. At the same time, the fact that I probably could not pass a grammar test with flying colors scares me...if I am going to be an English teacher I should probably know this stuff pretty hardcore! How important is it that our students learn the technical names for modifiers, conjunctions, adverbs, etc. I am not sure, but it is important they learn to write well. I believe I did, without knowing all the technical stuff but now, of course, I am beginning to worry. If the goal of my English teachers throughout my life was to teach me the technicalities of grammar then they failed, but if it was to teach me to enjoy writing and to write grammatically correct then I believe they succeeded. However, I do wish I had a stronger grasp on the explanations behind grammar and I hope to be able to teach these, while at the same time enabling my students to enjoy writing.

The Emergence of Grammar

While wary at first of even reading about grammer (much less doing it myself!), I liked how this reading talked about "grammar emerging" through different activities, like prewriting and art and literature. I don't know why it hasn't been taught this way before--all I remember in learning about grammer is opening up a book and trying to diagram a sentence, and once I got to Structure of the English Language last semester, everything that I had (maybe) once learned had been long ago depleted from my memory. I remember being in that class and thinking, I'm going to be an english teacher and I hardly know anything about grammar! If, as teachers, we are going to be effective in teaching grammar, we are going to have to be creative and slip it into lessons and activities we are already doing with out students--not so that they won't notice it, but so that they will notice it but it an engaging way, in a way that makes sense of it and puts it into real-life context. If it is taught as something that can be used in writing and as something that makes the writing better, I think that students will be more likely to see the use of it and to remember it not as something that is counterproductive, but as something that can be a valuable tool.

Yorick definitely didn't care about grammar

Its like one of those "duh" moments. You know the ones: putting peanut butter and jelly together, the invention of the seat belt, roasting meat over a fire, the wheel. The fact that English teachers have spent the last 100 years with grammer in one corner and writing cloistered in another just confirms the rest of the worlds suspicions: we're masochists. But not anymore! And here I was, poised to start my future teaching weeks: short story writing-tuesday, subordinate clauses-wednesday, moaning and groaning-thursday. Maybe if I squeeze them close enough together they'll congeal into a jiggling mass of wonderful writing. And that's usually what papers end up being with this format. Ooze.

So why did (do) teachers spend so much time hammaring away at the little things, prepositions ending a sentence, misused colons, capatalization errors, comma splicing (god help me, I still don't know what that means -- I got marks on my paper because of it in college...in a music class no less)? Well for one thing, it's convienent. Combining grammar and writing may seem more difficult than doing them seperately; sacrifice complexity and the students may learn better. Right? But what I thought would be an unbelievably complicated matter actually might lend itself to easier teaching experiences because "students' use of these grammatical constructions . . . simply "[emerge]" in their writing, as a result of their engagement with art and especially literature." (p. 170). So this is an instance where we don't have to drive something into the students skulls for them to understand the concept.

Still, I think a lot of it has to do with fear (or...masochism). New things are always scary and old habits die hard. If it's been going on for a century it will be hard to bring to a complete stop. Plus, we've probably spent the last 100 years trying to justify (possibly coming up with some legitimately good reasons) traditional grammar exercises. So I don't expect this force-fed grammar to stop anytime soon, but we're going in new directions, so that's good.

I have to say, based on personal experience, sentence combining may be one of the most brilliant inventions of all time (next to pb&j, seat belt ect...) In my creative non-fiction class our teacher offered us this key to great writing. Naturally I was skeptical. We drew up a paragraph (of about 5 sentences) and proceeded to combine it into one great, expansive sentence. Low-and-behold, it sounded much better than the original, more fluid, expressive and thought-provoking. It sounded like language, like poetry. Because it's such a simple concept,it would be a crime to withhold this key from our students.

Chapter 3 response (sorry for the late post)

They only had a little blurb about organizing a classroom which bothered me a bit. In all my workshop classes in college (granted thats only 2 so far) we did this half-circle model. This still allowed the teacher to sit in front of everybody and allowed for all the students to see each other. I know it wouldn't work in some classrooms because of size or desk types but I really enjoyed that format and would like to impliment it in my classroom. Now, I realize I might be a little off topic because, of course, the type of workshop they're talking about in this chapter isn't the same thing we do in college workshops. However, their definition of workshop would easily segway into the collegiate definition of workshop.

I loved the Quick Tips on page 47, especially the slogan writing exercise. It really opens up our understanding of what is done with writing besides novels and research papers. I admit that until college I never seriously considered the fact that ad agencies would hire people with English degrees; I didn't think much about the relevance of English outside the classroom and that may still be lost on some students today. In my school we would take a field trips to power plants or art museums and see the respective class material put to real life situations butI seldom remember getting a chance to experience English practically (Although it was obvious to me that behind every sitcom sat a nerdy writer, I didn't really think of that as practical, everyday work). Plus, the practicality of english education can't be made readily apparent when you're reading Oscar Wilde. This slogan writing exersize could be a great place to start to get students past that I'm-never-gonna-use-this-stuff mentality. I believe that once students begin to see writing as it applies to the real world, they will begin to break their willingness to write and reticence on writing.

I'm a little wary of the conferencing worksheet presented on page 57. I know we talk about a lot of those things in collee - distinct voice, flow of a paper, appropriate vocabulary - but those terms to a high school student may seem pretty vague. It's frustrating as an adult sometimes when told "your intro isn't very interesting," but I ask myself "what is interesting?" There must be some reasoning behind those vague remarks but that reasoning may end up boxing the students in. After all, debating a statement like "this is/ is not interesting" make writing and reading worthwhile. Part of me wants some formula where I can assess the quality of students work in a determined structured way but at the same time I want to absorb their work on its own terms, respect what they are doing and let them experiment. However, I feel this may be a double-edged sword. If you stick to a formula then students will only manipulate that in a way to get a good grade, but if you leave it open students will see it as an opportunity to slack. This can be managed...right?

A lot of the prompts offered in this chapter (esp the list on 50-51) are autobiographical exercises. I know the chapter said students will be willing to write if they write about something personal, but I find myself more comfortable when its not necessarily comfortable - when given freedom to create fiction. I'm wondering if some students (or anybody in class particularly) feels the same way? Don't get me wrong, writing nonfiction stretches me, takes me out of my comfort zone...which is good. Although, ironically, when I write fiction I feel that it comes out more honestly than when I write non-fiction/ autobiography; whether or not that feeling is justified through my writing is another story (no pun intended). I think thats why I like the advertising exercise so much.

Grammatically Challenged...

Like Bethany, I have been worried that this grammar day would come - and it would be revealed that I barely know the parts of speech, much less feel comfortable really digging into other, more complicated topics. When I think of learning grammar, I think of my grade school textbook - ugly, orange, squashed, pictureless. There were long exercises of dull example sentences: underline the verb once, circle the noun in red, triple-underline the prepositional phrase. What?! What really perplexed me was that I was always a decent writer - and yet I knew nothing of grammar. I knew when things didn't sound right, but I could never explain why.

"To Grammar or Not to Grammar" was a fairly interesting read. It makes so much sense that grammar and writing should be taught together - I wonder why this hasn't really been emphasized before. Obviously, it is very difficult to learn something kind of abstract - like grammar - and then separately apply it in practice. I like the examples of student writing - and I especially like the activity that one of the teachers did on The Giver. I think the writing that the students came up with was really amazing. The end of the article mentioned writer's workshops; and grammar seems like something that is really condusive to mini-lessons. Who can stand an entire class period on it? It makes far more sense to break it up, to make it more manageable.

Grammorticians

I have to admit, when we started the semester and I was told that we would have to look at grammar, I thought, "I've been dreading this.  I knew this day would come."  I can identify basic parts of speech, types of sentences, etc. etc., but you start talking about participial phrases and I'm lost.  I was reluctant to delve into our assigned grammar readings as well.  I am not a grammortician:  someone who beats into a person proper usage until he/she dies of overexertion.  I have taken several linguistics classes and have come to realize how so many of our strict grammar "rules" were founded on the frivolity of the "educated" who thought that everyone should speak and write like themselves.  I don't like grammar.  However, I loved the reading, despite the awkwardness of the writers referring to each other by first name.  Did it seem like a weird form of talking in the third person to anyone else?  Anyways, I digress.  This is exactly how I want to "teach grammar" in my classroom.  Admittedly, I will have to brush up on my own skills in order to understand exactly how the different grammar construction can affect a piece.  It was weird.  I was reading this as a student (Oh!  I can do this to my memoir!) and a teacher (I would LOVE to do that as a mini-lesson!).  It is a great curiosity as to why, after 100 years of not working, we have still all been taught grammar in drills.  The methods described by Connie, Carol, and Sharon make grammar much more effective, and, I dare-say, fun!

Chapter III

This chapter gave a really good overview of writing workshops. From a lack of first-hand experience, I knew very little about the process before I read the chapter. I like how this model is more student-centered in that the students have more freedom to progress at their own individual pace and to explore genres and styles that most interest them, while the teacher still maintains oversight through regular meetings/conferences. I also like the focus at the beginning of the chapter where the authors explain the purpose of the mini-lessons that teachers can incorporate throughout the semester so that students are still focused on expanding their abilities through a more structured approach.

The only question I have after reading this chapter is how a teacher can ensure that students are in fact working independently and/or assisting each other effectively? Based on my own experiences, I feel that the authors assume that students will willingly work when they are left relatively unsupervised, and I’m not sure that most high school students are that dependable. Though I’m much more self-reliant now, I know for a fact that in high school, if a teacher was not breathing down my neck, I would not feel it necessary to work. I know that’s not right, but it was a reality for me and most of my classmates. I think that in an ideal setting, writing workshops can be more beneficial to students than a lectured-centered classroom, but I feel like the authors need to better detail how the workshop approach can be effective for all students.

Writing Workshop Chapter 3

I really enjoyed this chapter because it while reading it, it gave so many examples of things you could do as a teacher and the steps in how to do them. Being a list person and someone who always has a to-do list, I really liked the parts that talked about how to make long- and short-term plans for the writing workshop. I like knowing what is coming up, but also being flexible enough to change a plan if it isn't working out as planned. I think it will be really good to be able to put a vision down for a whole semester, including texts and what kind of prompts I want to use. One thing that seems like will be really tough about teaching is being organized and on-task enough to be prepared for each class and really know what is going on. I think plans like this will help tremendously, and I don't want to overlook that.

One thing that I find kind of frustrating in writing workshops is the limited amount of time that the teacher can spend with the student in conferencing. I want to try to figure out something that can help this, but I'm not sure what that would be? How do you give students enough time to talk about their work, with questions flowing in both directions, while still interacting with every student? It just doesn't seem feasible to give them all the time that they need. Hopefully I will be in a school with block-scheduling :)

how bout some stations?!

Throughout reading chapter 3, I think for a classroom to work very effectively (much like the Newspaper business they referenced to), there need to be some stations. I couldn't help but invision my future classroom doing writing workshop with different places for different things. Bean bags for comfort, computers in one corner, 1 corner designated for pure silence, 1 area with all reference materials for anything about poetry, one area with all reference materials about fiction, non-fiction, etc. One "craft" area where students can use creating things to produce/prompt them in their writing. Maybe this is a bit idealistic and no classroom would ever have the space, but I think it would be a very cool things. That way, the teacher knows just by where the student is located in the room, what type of writing they are working on. It briefly mentioned that we should "think" about how to set up our classroom, but no real ideas or examples. What does normally happen? How is writing workshop physically organized in the classroom???

-Lacy

Surprisingly Helpful

Like most people, I do not enjoy textbook reading.  Even if it is on a subject I'm interested in and genuinely want to know more about, I can't get over the fact that I'm reading a textbook.  Usually  I skip all extra boxes or articles or examples.  However, I did look at some of the "Quick Tip" boxes in this chapter and found them surprisingly helpful.  Not only do they give ideas of what to do for openers or mini-lessons, but there are also which texts to use with these activities.  In addition this chapter includes writing topics, genres to cover and an outline for teacher conferencing.  Usually, I find examples like this to be vague and uninteresting but I actually could see myself using some of these. 

b&b: writing workshops

I think this chapter gives a lot of good ideas and advice for implementing a Writing Workshop into the classroom. Maybe because I often get writer's block, I enjoyed the amount of suggestions it gives for getting writers started. Having the teacher demonstrate their own list of "writing territories" is a good example. Amy did this with us in class when we made our lists of significant places. It may help spark a memory or idea for students that would not have considered writing on that particular topic. It opens up the freedom to write about anything...they can be as open as they want. Coming up with a "library of provocative prompts" is another way to get students thinking about something a little deeper and more introspectively. Maybe no one else has asked them questions like "What is one thing you would like to change about your life if you could?" I think we would find that behind the exterior they present most of the time, high schoolers have some interesting and surprising answers to these kinds of questions.

I'm glad that this chapter spent quite a bit of time discussing conferences. Just because I did peer conferencing in high school, I kind of assumed most people have or know how. The chart on page 57 presents key components of a well-written paper that would be a good guideline for students to follow while analyzing each other's papers. Spending time on the mini-lessons the author suggests would also be very useful. How are students supposed to look for a skill in someone's paper when they can't do it themselves? So, I think covering these kinds of topics beforehand and throughout the writing process would benefit them over time. Focusing on revision and not necessarily editing was another good point. I find it easier sometimes to check a paper for misspelled words and grammatical mistakes than to look at how it's working as an entire piece. I am just curious as to how teachers set up a timeline for a writing workshop. How much time should be spent and how often should the different kinds of conferencing take place?

Chapter Three of B&B

I liked this chapter of B&B because it was very practical; if you wanted to set up a writing workshop in your classroom, this is pretty much a step-by-step approach. One thing I seemed to do, however, while reading, was imagine how a writer's workshop would take place in my field. And I am not sure that's possible. I suppose teachers who are going to use workshops have to set their rooms up this way from the beginning of the year - and set up their behavior management accordingly too. My field students can barely stay on-task enough to type papers in the Media Center, much less critique each other's work. But this is a little off-topic...these are thoughts for my field journal.

I feel like students probably need a LOT of direction for something like writing or peer conferences. In high school, I think when we had to share work, most pairs ended up with really vague "praise" (Wow, that was good. You are a good writer.) or really unhelpful criticism. I would like to see a writer's workshop in action. In our TDP class, when we use elements of workshops, they work well, but everyone in our class - or most people, anyway - are self-possessed enough to really work, and to do quality work, not just keep busy. However, can most high school students do this? I assume writer's workshops are to be used with any class, not only upper-level or honors classes, but at the same time, I seem to see really struggling writers getting lost in a writer's workshop. Students in my field who have trouble writing a complete sentence with a subject and a verb seem like they would be a little lost in the hubub of such a workshop.

I really like the list of "Modes and Genres in Writing Workshops." Some of them are really interesting and creative: the billboard, bumper sticker, and letters to past and future people would be really fun to work on. This would hold my attention a lot better than simply being assigned a research paper or report.

Reading & Writing Workshop

In response to Bethany's question...yes, you can have both. For five years, we had a Reading/Writing Workshop that inspired kids to not only read but write and also write about their reading. It is a glorious combination when done correctly!

Decisions, decisions...

OK, just like the reader's workshop, I would LOVE to structure my classroom as a writer's workshop.  (Can one do both?  A question to save for later).  So, just like with the reader's workshop, how would you grade students?  Would it be OK if one student was cranking out paper after paper, while another spent all semester (or year) on just a few really good essays?  Would I even have time to keep up with everyone's projects?  I feel like it could take me a whole week to go through and do some good conferencing, so by the time it came around again, they could be so far off from where they were the last time we talked.  I remember in high school I had a teacher for creative writing that tried a workshop-style kind of set up, but it seemed a lot more structured than what Blasingame and Bushman suggest.  The semester was devoted to writing a short story for four genres:  romance, mystery, science-fiction, and action.  She conferenced with us and everything, but all I remember about the class was hating it.  I didn't like any one of the genres we had to do, and I didn't really feel like I had creative freedom.  How do I avoid this kind of workshop.  And, back to the question above, how would one go about creating a reader and writer workshop classroom?  Is both possible, or is it doing too much?

After the End Response to my Memoir

For anyone who is reading this today, I read the chapters from ATE and a lot of the exercises was for partners or groups. So I thought, "Hey, we have a blog, that works." My memoir is here. I hope that works. Anyways, the exercise I would like you guys to try is a spinoff found on page 17. Please either write some questions for things you would like to know more about, or ask some questions about my end so I can keep going. I'll tell you know, my ending sucks. I got kind of lost with how I should keep going, and your questions would be a great help! Thanks!

Introduction in two ways

When I taught, I used two introductions: one is verbal; the other is written. Always on the first class, I introduced myself first informally and let students themselves. I encouraged them to talk about their favorite food, books, movies, songs and their interests so that I constantly try to connect their interests with mine or with class curriculum or others. But it's not easy to remember students' introduction at one time so I asked them to write their introduction as the first assignment: they can put their photos or draw or glue whatever they like to show their interest area. During the semester, I keep reading those while thinking how to incorporate student's interests into class curriculum somehow. And I adjust my curriculum according to it. It was joyful to see some quiet students' shining eyes when I used their favorite ideas and artifacts for the class. It also takes time to understand students fully throughout the semester.

Response to B&B Chapter 1

Sorry for my late post…

I believe the goal of any responsible writing teacher is to create an environment, which is inviting and comfortable for their students to produce good writing pieces. I just want to ask one question here: what are you going to do with a class with over 60 students (,which is commonplace in most English classes in Asian counties)? How will you build the community there? It is for sure that students won’t write freely and express their ideas clearly when they feel uncomfortable, but facing such a huge class often makes the teachers uncomfortable (, and this is just one of their classes through the semester), not being able to know each one of their students well enough even till the end of the semester.

As for the red-ink marks on the students’ writings, many people think it means “stop” and looks scary (because of the traffic lights?), however, red is somehow the representative color of Chinese culture. We wear in red and decorate most stuffs around the house in red when it's important festival, and I’ve got used to the red marks on my exercise notebooks because I’ve seen them since elementary school. For me, those marks mean that I need to pay more attention to the particular places in my writing. Just suppose, if we return the students’ work without any marking on it, will they think that our teachers are not doing our job well? If we conduct teacher-students writing conference that will surely help them a lot, but how long will it last concerning just one piece of writing? Two weeks, or one month? What about the other elements of English learning, such as speaking, reading and listening? Maybe peer-writer conferences would be time-consuming, but who are going to monitor (maybe it’s not an appropriate word to use here) them? What if they learn from each other’s errors, say the wrong expressions and the usages of words?