Reflection

NIWP
Reaffirming the Writing Workshop for Young Adolescents
by Sheryl Lain

I like how Sheryl Lain jumps right into this article with the admittance that "we," as teachers, "feel beleaguered by a lack of time." This hits the nail right on the head with me. But she goes onto paraphrase Donald Graves, "that kids need time to write, they need to own their work, they need to share, and all of this needs to be wrapped up a in safe classroom cocoon that inspires enough trust to get to the heart of writing." This is wonderful summation of what I need to do for my classes this new year, and better yet, that I can almost visualize w/my classes.

I need to digest the idea of putting a fluency grade in the grade book for the number of pages a student has written, as Lain suggests. How do you deal w/students who are nonprolific? Is this the right word for this type of product? I'm not sure.

But do like how Lain writes w/and for the kids to read and hear! That's a terrific idea! I plan on doing that to despite the temptation to try to grade or put in grades on the computer while the kids are writing. Again, there's never enough time, yet my #1 improvement goal for the 2010-11 school year is to improve my writing classes, so regardless of what I have to do, I'm going to work towards this goal.

Some other good ideas that Lain presents are using a record sheet that she modeled after an example in Nancie Atwell's book, "In the Middle," making sure that the students own their writing, and mini-lessons to help guide the students on a specific topic.

Unlike any other idea that I've read in other papers, or heard discussed, I really like how Lain writers a poem about each of her students! Through observation, she is able to write these poems during their writing time. Now how cool is that?!

This is another article that I need to keep very handy as I start to prep my room and my plans for September.