Ch. 7, 8, and 19

Chapter 7 gave me some really great ideas on how to set up a classroom to try and avoid many of the typical writing workshop distractions. No classroom will be set up perfectly, but it's important to have a space where students come together to participate in the focus lesson. It's also important to have spaces where students can spread out and work comfortably on their writing. How the supplies are set up is also something to think about. I really liked the author's point about talking to students who use a lot of supplies about the "method of their madness." I often find my teacher limiting or reprimanding students who use a lot of paper, or tape, or whatever. But instead of jumping to "John, stop wasting all that paper" I need to ask students "john, will you explain to me what you are using this paper for?"

Chapter 8 is about the "slightly out of hand feeling" I know this feeling very well from my previous experience with writing workshop. It seemed as if each student was in a totally different place in the writing process, or there would be differences in how students write (quiet classroom vs. talking loudly or students would have papers, books, pencils spread out everywhere) and as someone who likes organization it would often overwhelm me. This chapter made me feel a little more comfortable with the idea of managing the out of hand feeling that happens during a writing workshop.

I really liked the idea of publishing deadlines. When I saw writing workshop the students knew their work would be published, but the teacher didn't really talk too much about it so it was hard for the students to see the goal of their writing (publishing and sharing their published writing with others)

Ch. 14, 15, and 17

These three chapters about conferring, sharing, and assessment were very interesting to read. I had seen what my mentor considered good conferencing, good sharing, and good assessment so I thought it would be interesting to see how it lined up with what the author considered good conferring, sharing, and assessment.

I like how the author broke a good conference down into four parts. The first part is research and I really liked how she not only read their writing to see where they were, but she also asked them questions about how they thought their writing was going. I had never heard of asking the student to describe how writing was going, so I thought that was a really cool way to hear what the students are thinking. I also liked her idea of keeping a record. When I saw writing workshop in the classroom my teacher always had trouble keeping up with where everyone was in the writing process. By keeping records about what happened at a conference then you help to eliminate this problem.

When I saw the title of the sharing chapter my first thought was great a whole chapter about sitting in a circle and having students share what they wrote. I had no idea how the author could write a whole chapter about sharing. But after reading it I was pleasantly surprised. She presented many ideas and different ways to have students share their work, besides the typical whole class share.

I liked the chapter on assessment because it presented an interesting way to assess that was unlike my experience with assessment in writing workshop. In the classroom I was in there was a grade wide rubric with different standards on it to assess the children's writing. I liked the author's ideas much better and hope to use them when I assess my future student's writing.