I enjoyed exploring(jigsawing) Jim Trelease's information/ideas/reasearch on silent sustained reading with you all. I believe some great ideas came out of our discussion of this chapter. If you want to know more about what Jim Trelease has to say before or after we go to see him on Oct. 30, you may borrow The Read-Aloud Handbook from me.
If you would like me to help you set up a jigsaw in your class, I would love to help you with that also.
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I connect to this chapter’s reading in multiple ways, so I will here share:
Gallagher writes that students need teachers to model, in part, that writing is a worthwhile, intrinsically rewarding effort (75). Today I heard an expert speak about happiness in the workplace: a person can be happy in a job if he/she finds relevance in that job. Another perspective of this: purpose that is eternal. A pastor I heard this week spoke about having an eternal-kind of reason for major tasks that one undertakes: unless there is a long-term significance, doing just for the sake of doing will soon cause frustration and a desire for something more or different. So, going back to Gallagher, part of my job as a teacher is to show students the greater purpose in school and classroom learning and activities; as an English teacher, this means English and activities such as reading and writing. I think that if I can keep this attitude, then, in my classroom, there will be more freedom to try, less anxiety for perfection and grades, more willingness to try again and again, and less resistance toward assignments in general.
Gallagher quotes Stephen King when he expresses the importance of reading and writing in making a writer (76). Earlier this year at a writing conference I attended, a published mystery writer shared this advice to those who wish to write: it must be among the top three priorities in your life or it will not happen. Earlier in the book, Gallagher noted that teachers must prioritize what is most important instructionally and focus on those skills, even when that means that some standards will not be taught. My lesson plans, then, stand in stark relief: am I teaching skills and making meaningful, long-term impact on a student’s learning, or am I filling my days with short-term activities? I spoke to a science teacher this past week, and she shared how appalled she was at an 11th grader’s writing. She knew he was not doing well in English, but she also wondered how he passed all other English classes writing as poorly as he did. Frankly, I was embarrassed, thinking of the classes I’ve taught where I didn’t spend nearly the time on writing as I should have. I spent 90 days each semester doing something with those students, and I aligned everything to the standards. So, why wouldn’t my students be fine or at least better? Gallagher points to it again and again: the key is writing and reading and intense instruction with both.
Mr. Trelease was quite engaging. I thought that his insight reinforced with data was very informative. I wish I had known about the closed captioning when my children were little. Maybe they will be ok I did read to them even in their ripe ole' age of teenagers. They would say Mama we can read it for oursselves now. My response was "but not with the enthusiam". and I would continue. After all I AM THE MAMA!!!! However I am spreading the word. I am trying to find the book for pre-teens and teens. If anyone locates it let me know. MR. Trelease I am assuming is not a republican. I am glad he enjoyed our southern hospitality and watch out for the people in the audience that speak Chinese.
It was encouraging.
I am going to try to increase my library in my room.
All in All it was not BAD for a Tuesday Night.
Let me begin with Jim Trelease. I was so excited about seeing him as he was a tremendous part of my graduate studies at USC. Most of the information he shared was a refresher in what I had already studied. However, some of the statistics were quite impressive. I enjoyed listening to Mr. Trelease’s lecture—although that word seems highly inappropriate when referring to the author of the Read-Aloud Handbook.
I found the information concerning the structuring of the writing process very helpful. In fact I plan on using some of Gallagher’s very ideas to aid in my writing instruction with my freshmen next semester. As I was reading Chapter 4, I began to envision a very practical way of helping my young freshmen become good writers. Every week we are going to have a different writing assignment. We will work with it a little every day to help in the editing process. I will probably then choose one piece per grading period (interims included) to have students revisit and edit. That way the students can really begin to understand the benefits of revisiting a piece of writing. However, I agree with Gallagher that it is difficult to get students to learn that one copy of a paper does not mean it is finished. I also need to help them understand that writing it more neatly (or typing it) does not count as editing. I believe that the RAG activity could be very beneficial. My only concern is that the students at times (and only rarely) can be quite immature about their peers’ work. I can see the quiet classroom with students diligently reading over their peers’ papers. Among the hush comes a sudden burst of laughter from a student who cannot control the opportunity to humiliate a fellow class member. Undoubtedly that person would then grab a partner (keep in mind that the entire class is already disrupted at this point) and have them share in the “fun” at another student’s expense. In other words I think that it will be necessary, obviously, to have a good solid discussion with the students about how humiliation and embarrassment does not help one to become better. I may even need to add a grade-related clause to the instructions that encourages them to remain silent during the reading process and only share information with their group during that part of the activity. (I should also remind them that they should treat every paper as their own, remembering that other students are at that very moment critiquing their papers.)
As I began Chapter 5, I was reminded of how much I personally despise writing. I am sure that at one point or another in my life I enjoyed it. I remember afternoons in the park with an apple, black nail polish and my oh-so-cool leather binder with a ribbon binding. I would write for hours because I wanted to. By the time I got to college, I dreaded writing. I would spend hours staring at a blank screen on my computer---the night before a paper was due because I had already put it off as long as possible hoping to avoid the inevitable--before collapsing in a fit of misery and tears, cursing my keyboard and convincing myself that I would fail out of English 278. Matters didn’t improve when in a “Teaching of Writing” course my professor reprimanded me for my distaste of writing demanding to know just how I planned on teaching writing if I hated it. I had no clue how to answer her. In fact I had taken her “Teaching of Writing” course in the hopes that perhaps she would show me the secret to teaching writing, but instead she was belittling me and making me feel incompetent at a job I had not even completed my degree for because somewhere along the line the five-paragraph essays had finally gotten to me as well. As I stare at the computer now I wonder if anything has really changed, I am still petrified of writing, but I also enjoy it at times too. Every time I have the opportunity to write creatively in a relaxed atmosphere I normally feel quite pleased with my writing. I think that the writing prompts from Chapter 5 could be very helpful.
I can really understand No. 6 “What Bugs Me” because this is something I can always get into writing as well. The idea of the “writing territories” is also pretty intriguing. I know that every time I am given an opportunity to free write there are certain topics to which I doubtless return.
As a response to Mr. Trelease I added a new thread to my Injustice Unit. I am reading aloud to my students, every day, from Night. The students enjoy having me read aloud to them...they are engaged in the book. It has proved to be a good end to each class--a way to settle them down before the bell rings!
In the reading this time, I encountered several ideas I should incorporate into my teaching. It’s funny Gallagher quotes Stephen King, whose novels I read in high school but has fallen out of my favor since, largely due to literary snobbery—because I recently reread some King stories and skimmed several King novels I have in my personal library and gained a new appreciation for him as a craftsman. In any case, neither King nor Gallagher’s point about the reading-writing connection is a revelation; however, finding new ways to capitalize on this connection is difficult, particularly when many students who hate writing also hate reading; to the former with them you must begin with the latter. This, perhaps, is the reason why, as Elizabeth points out, we spend so much time working with students yet our colleagues in other disciplines fail to see the results. I’m not sure about every one else… as for me I feel compelled to connect writing assignments to the novels, stories, poems, etc. that we are reading. (I’m not referring to analytical papers necessarily.) And even when students perform well on these assignments, the skills they learn, since they are based on specific readings, may not transfer to tasks such as lab reports. Still, we should remember that English teachers should resist shouldering all the blame for poor writing across the board: I’ve never written a lab report, which means I lack necessary experience for teaching how to write one. As the text has pointed out, specific writing tasks require specific instruction. A kid who can play H-O-R-S-E may still possess too little basketball to excel in an actual game.
What I found helpful this time: Gallagher’s suggestions. These activities, grounded in both research and practicality, highlight my own impractical practices while providing new insight. For example, I use professional models, yet fail to have students complete step-by-step analyses that will deepen their understandings of text structures. Gallagher’s focused approach to employing Ebert’s movie reviews and the “My Turn” essays as professional models seems much more helpful than my own, which is essentially the “Grecian Urn.” I particularly like how he has his students use their notes to create their own graphic organizers. This seems a huge improvement to organizers I have seen, and used, that force every piece of professional writing into the same rigidly defined boxes, or circles, or whatever. Also, in chapter four, Gallagher describes the RAG, which would be a great way for students to create their own criteria for good writing. It might be interesting to have them categorize these criteria and organize them into a rubric; then compare that rubric with the one for HSAP. This activity would also help introduce my creative writing students to the idea of submitting their work to the entire class for criticism.
In chapter five, once again, Gallagher begins with a familiar premise: in order for students to become better at writing, they must see the value in doing so. But how do you accomplish this? How do you engage them? And, once again, he gives interesting activities. My favorites: “Writing Territories,” “Topic Blast,” “Boring Topic,” “What Bugs Me,” “Explorations”—these ideas would work well in any class, but they seem extremely useful in both Advanced Writing and Creative Writing. In Creative Writing, for example, I often have students explore subgenres within fiction—mystery, sci-fi, horror, etc.—by exploring how the same scene would be different if written in three different genres. They understand the idea, but stall when it comes to finding an idea that will work. Any one of these activities could help with that problem.
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