My Preconceived Beliefs of Teaching Writing
I think writing instruction and time in school has been formed into something that is forced on students. Writing has become a monotonous task for students where students are more focused on asking, "how much do you want?" or "what do you want us to write about?" or "how do you want us to write this?" From personal experience, writing should allow creativity and freedom of choice to write in any medium that is not defined by conventional rules. Teachers need to demonstrate to students that the writing experience should be fluid and not set on specifics of what or how to include specific writing components. Students should be continuously given positive comments on their writing no matter their stage of understanding how writing can be a reflective and artful practice in sharing their thoughts. Teachers should motivate students that writing can be literally about ANYTHING and written ANYWHERE! Teachers shouldn't limit writing experiences to reading and writing blocks in class, but should promote students to write beyond school and how that makes them feel about how writing can influence their thinking.
From here, my writing experience throughout my education has had its ups and downs, literally. I have had so many experiences of feeling like a defeated writer because I was always marked for conventional writing rules. I was forced to write on a topic and then believed that if my answers weren’t well written enough that the more I wrote, the better the teacher would enjoy my answers. I was wrong though. The more you write doesn’t give you the better grade, which is what I always worried about as a student. For this graduate course on teaching language arts, my professor is giving us an opportunity to fall in love with writing again with writer’s notebooks. I have only two brief encounters with writer’s notebooks. The first was when I was in first grade and my classroom’s morning routine was to write a sentence or two with the best possible spelling we could and include a picture with our writing. Normally my first grade teacher had a short prompt to help struggling writers, but the majority of the time she just wanted us to write. ABOUT ANYTHING! Every Friday we would read aloud one of our writer’s notebook pages to our class and describe why we decided to share that writing. Beyond first grade, I do not remember any writer’s notebook activities in elementary school. I can only recollect the writing opportunities as being forced to write based on short answer questions or for practice for End of Grade (EOG) writing tests.
In my junior year of college, one of my professors wanted us to have a reading and writing literacy notebook that would help us reflect on our reading and writing that we do inside of the classroom. However, in future discussions below, I am going to reflect on how this was an approach to start the writing experience, but needs more freedom.
Here is my chosen, beautifully colored writer’s notebook. It’s just mine! I decided to get this one because of the colors on the front that reminded me of how I like to paint and watercolor. I also wanted a spiral notebook because I am more comfortable writing in spiral notebooks. This notebook is very different though. It is a notebook that I feel like is giving back both to myself of becoming a future exemplar of a writer’s notebook for my future classroom, but also giving back to the world. This notebook is made out of sugarcane paper which helps conservation of forests by reducing the amount of trees that have to be cut for paper production. Below I included a picture of the small information sheet that the notebook has after the front cover. Also, I included the “Environmental facts” that is designed to look like a nutrition label to demonstrate how this notebook is an environmentally helpful notebook that is 99% recycled!
At first I was hesitant of having to do a writer’s notebook. I literally thought, “ugh, not again! I am in college and I will just make my students do this if I have time.” I was absolutely wrong. Ralph Fletcher (2001) describes how important it is for students to have an opportunity to have the freedom of choice in their writing. There should be no limits on their writing and be a safe place where they know that their writing is important to them no matter the form or medium of their writing.
“The writer’s notebook gives kids a place where they can enjoy language for its own sake” (Fletcher, 2001, p.1).
The writer’s notebook should be a like a treasure box where they have a lot of writing, pictures, lists, stories, interviews, objects (from home or school), drawings, poems, sticky notes, etc. It should become a place where they can store valuable things that they feel is important to expand on and form future writing projects on. This limits the “I can’t think of what to write about” or “what do you want me to write about”. It gives the students accountability in coming up with their own original thoughts, but to also be acknowledged by the teacher in comfortable settings to share their writer’s notebook entries if possible. From my preconceived notions of teaching writing, I used my personal experience of how I felt I was as an elementary level writer. I always wanted to please the teacher with what they wanted and not what I wanted. In my future classroom, I want to give students opportunities to write in environments outside of sitting at a desk with a pencil being timed on their writing. I want them to see that writing can be creative and not have boundaries.
Along with this, I want them to feel that I support their ideas and processes of writing about anything that comes to their mind to spark a connection in how their ideas in their writer’s notebook can be expressed more formally afterword. I feel like a lot of students, even in college worry more about what the final project of writing has to be. Certain amount of pages, certain format, certain structure, etc. This writer’s notebook takes away these stresses and personal writer’s worries they may have to focus more on ideas that they can use to branch on and become motivational. According to Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli (2017), the writer’s notebook allows students to become more of a leader in how they present, reflect, and discuss their own personal writing. It contradicts this notion that the teacher is always in the leadership position for every assignment.
“Students should view notebooks as documents of their lives; they learn not only to honor what they see but to look in the first place” (Fletcher, 2001, p.4).
This link is the complete article by Ralph Fletcher: https://secure.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/ST/ST0064July01.pdf
In the article he also discusses writer’s notebook ideas such as: “Three by Three”, “Write about Your Name”, “Capture What is Important”, “Describe Your World”, “Include Drawings and Sketches”, “Write to a Specific Audience”, and “Bits and Pieces”
Though it is valuable for the students to become motivational and inspired writers in the world, they also need to have some sort of guidance in this experience. According to Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli (2017), teachers need to be writers as well. As a future teacher, I have learned from there text that mentor texts for students provide them multiple gateways in how they can “copy” mentor components. I was nervous when I read the word “copy” because we tell students that they always need original work and the consequences of copying from others. However, Dorfman and Cappelli describe that this literary borrowing helps students to understand how they can become more advanced writers by using exemplars to influence their writing. As teachers, we also have to demonstrate this concept of literary borrowing and how important it is to observe and analyze how great writers can impact our own work.
“Writing comes from who we are modeling must begin with sharing ourselves and what interests us… Let them see who we are first, and how that translates into what we write” (Spandel, 2005, p. 13).
A MUST READ!
I am in love with the book Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal because of her hilarious writer’s notebook like structure of a book. This is not a normal book, but what categorizes a normal book. Her thoughts, incorporation of readers (texting and website), and brief entries make the reader want to keep reading. She discusses the importance of serendipity and coincidence in life and how that impacts us. I’ve never thought about this serendipity concept before reading her passage that describes her own definition and stories to form examples of it. So what is serendipity? I think Amy Krouse Rosenthal is trying to get us as readers and writers in the world to look for coincidences in life and how that forms connections in our past, present and future.
References
Dorfman, L. & Cappelli, R. (2017). Mentor texts teaching writing through children’s literature, k-6. Stonehouse Publishers.
Fletcher, R. (2001). The Writer’s Notebook, School Talk, NCTE, 6 (4), 1-6.
Rosenthal, A. (2016). Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal. New York, Dutton.
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