Reading #5

Chapter 10 - Double Entry Journal

FACTS
1. “When students commit ideas and knowledge to writing, they must be more thoughtful, organized and precise than when speaking” (292).
2. One problem with leaving writing to English teacher is that writing is different in different core subjects. (293)
3. Writing essays improves students thinking about the content.
4. In a social studies study, teachers used brainstorming, writing, and reading and found that this helped students synthesize information.
5. The writing process involves: Prewriting, Drafting, Revising, Editing, and Postwriting or Publishing.
6. Prewriting involves deciding on a topic, collecting one’s thoughts, gathering data, organizing ideas mentally or on paper, rehearsing in one’s mind what will be said or written. In Revising, the focus is on content or meaning. In Editing, the focus is on form (spelling, punctuation, grammatical convections, and finding the right word).
7. Writing process is not strictly linear. Writer can go back and forth.
8. Students need to be provided with incremental modeling, guidance, and practice in the different phases of the writing process.
9. Concerning African American oral and written traditions, the authors note that they “are highly prized and effective conventions in many contexts, although they may not be awarded points in the five paragraph persuasive essay or history term paper” (298).
10. Learning logs can be a beneficial way for students to practice writing and reflect on content. Teachers can provide prompts.
11. Hierarchical summaries, REAP and GIST are three formal procedures for teaching summarization.
12. Guided writing procedure involves brainstorming and writing before reading an assigned text selection.
13. Report writing can be very difficult, but different strategies can be utilized to help. One is called I-charts. Also, teaching outlining and paraphrasing is very important. (Start with smaller passages, then build up to larger ones).
QUESTIONS, OPINIONS, THOUGHTS
1. I agree with this and I think it is very important to my students. I have tried to work with them on the organization of their writing with varying levels of success.
2. I find that this is true, though there is a lot of overlap. I still have no doubt that my students can use the extra writing skills practice in social studies class.
3. I think this is very important. I did one unit on essay writing. Next year I plan to do the unit earlier in the year and then to have students write more essays throughout the year.
4. I think this is great. I also have tried to incorporate these things and would like to do more so.
5. It’s great to see this laid out here. It’s been some years since I learned the “writing process” in a classroom, and I would like to have a solid structure to pass on to my students.
6. These explanations/clarifications are helpful. Prewriting can involve brainstorming and knowledge webs.
7. I’d like my students to understand this as well. It was exciting to get try to teach them the writing strategies – I am still developing my approach.
8. This is something I tried to do. I mostly focused on the prewriting and drafting phase. If I do it again, I will set up a more comprehensive plan for guiding my students through each phase in the process. I tried to teach my students strategies for brainstorming and outlining, while at the same time trying to explain the basic structure of an essay and paragraphs within. This could work for the prewriting and drafting phases and I may go on to the revising phase, and try to help students make better paragraphs using the “Power Writing” model.
9. It is interesting to see what one study found to be more traditional in the African American community. I think I recognize some of the things like rhyme, word play, etc in spoken speech. I have not so much found this to be as developed in the writing as well, but that could be because I have not done a lot of free writing in my classes.
10. Learning logs are something I considered trying early on, but never got off the ground. I think this would be a great way to review information while also practicing writing. I may try to get back to this when I start out next year and make it part of the weekly routine.
11. More and more I have thought about the importance of summarizing – and of learning it in middle school. I’ve heard more than one person say that they remember doing a lot of summarizing in 7th grade. I’d like to try some of these strategies with my students.
12. This would be an interesting thing to try, but I’m skeptical as to what subject topics in my geography class my students would feel ready to write about before reading about. It is definitely something to consider.
13. I am not quite ready to tackle a report in my classroom, but I do want to get there and some of the strategies could come in handy.