I was really excited/surprised to see a list of all the concrete, applicable ideas in chapter 9 that any teacher could incorporate into their writing workshop. I feel like a lot of our classes discuss theories, but never give real examples of how to put the theories into practice so this chapter was refreshing. This chapter gave me many real ideas that I could see myself incorporating into my future classroom.
I think chapter 10 really broke down writing curriculum easily in an easy to understand way. I feel like the Georgia Performance standards are a nit-picky, long checklist of things so this chapter was surprising because it covered the same curriculum but it painted the picture in broad strokes instead of small strokes.
Chapter 13 was interesting because it described the parts of a focus lesson. Last semester I saw my teacher's attempts at a focus lesson, but most of these lessons would fall flat. The students weren't interested in what she was reading and they were unable to make the connection from the lesson to their own writing so I'm glad this chapter gave me some ideas on how to create a good focus lesson.
I am wondering about these focus lessons you observed - was it just bad mentor texts? Or the kids just didn't get it?
ReplyDeleteI'm glad the curriculum and ideas were broken down into helpful, practical pieces that all referred back to writing. I do think it is important that students see the relevance to their work as often as possible (kinda like the focus lessons, I guess, and how we want students to see the connection to their own writing!)
Beth