Make Every Minute Count

I am so glad she touched on this! All too often, teachers get caught up in staying late and working toward the assessment that we lose sight of the fun in teaching. I think it is vital in building a classroom community, for our students to see us as people, doing things outside of school. Giving them insight into our lives outside of school, lets the kids see that we are people with interests that we can write about. Finally, someone acknowledges that our entire lives are not just tests and meetings!

Build on Best Practices and Research

This chapter was packed full of useful information. I actually wrote in my book (which I never do). My obsession with underlining, circling, and margin writing began on page 261 with the following excerpt:

Teachers can't be expected to be accountable if they are told specifically what to do. Accountability requires professional autonomy to do what's right. The best teachers are "not followers" and have an "independent spirit." Based on their professional and moral knowledge and judgment, they override directives when something else will work more effectively.

I thought this spoke volumes of what we do in the classroom as a whole. The problem lies in the amount of slack we get for doing what we know to be best for our students. She touched on this later in the chapter when discussing the importance of having data as back-up. Not only do you need the data, but you also need "to be knowledgeable, courageous, and willing to speak up." This takes guts and the willingness to be shot down in front of a room full of your colleagues. For me, this has never been an issue, but I wonder if these words struck a chord with anyone else.

Another point that I thought was extremely important is to have professional dialogue about what we are doing at the building and district level. She focused on the building level throughout most of the chapter, so that is where I will start. We, as a building, need to set a common standard for what writing looks like in all our classrooms. Yes, different approaches can be taken, but our end result should be clarified so we are all aiming at the same target. Her example of weekly discussions across grade levels was very meaningful to me. In order to move forward, we have to take the time to scrutinize and improve upon our current practices as a community. Only after we all sit down together and come to a consensus, can our school-wide writing improve. As she stated on p274:

As a school, you will want to make decisions about such issues as quality versus quantity of writing, genres to include, ... , editing, spelling, publishing, and special education students. And once those decisions have been made, the beliefs and practices behind them need to be communicated to parents and caregivers effectively.

There were some points that she made that I do not agree with, but as she stated: "Trust your professional common sense and your own successful teaching experiences."

Make Assessments Count

Confusion

After reading this chapter, I'm not sure if I am supposed to be using rubrics or not. I am also not sure when I am supposed to assess and not assess. Earlier in the book, I was sure she said do not assess everything your students write, and I know she repeated it in this chapter, yet she also talks about informal assessments as on-going. Are we supposed to let the kids write without pressure, or are we looking over our student's shoulders?

What I am taking away from this chapter is that I do not need to grade everything on a rubric. Sometimes it is okay to grade on a student's improvement and growth that is seen through on-going observation. I also liked the idea of not always teaching the format of the test. Taking two weeks before the test to learn the format 'should' be enough for students to be prepared if they are used to writing longer pieces on a regular basis. I'm not sure about only writing to a prompt once every nine weeks. I have really liked what the sixth grade has been doing with writing prompts in their journal writing. I think it gives kids a start who normally can't get started.

9. Conference with Students

To tell the truth, when I started this chapter I thought she would say to conference with every student formally every week. I was very pleasantly surprised and took a lot away from this chapter. One quote that really spoke to me on page 216 was that "there is no one best way or best type of conference... Be flexible, and above all remember you want your students to go on writing. The conference is secondary; the student as writer and confident learner is primary." This quote squashed all my fears of having to do drawn out conferences every week.

I also have never really known what to focus on during conferences. The idea of focusing on content first, editing later (p226) will make conferencing much quicker and meaningful for the kids. Not focusing on the editing that needs to be done until the writing is complete, in theory, will eliminate nitpicking and make writing more enjoyable for my students. I also really liked her expectations when students did schedule an intensive conference with her. She didn't allow them to come to her with just anything. The prerequisites made the kids do as much editing and improving as possible before they came to her. Those requirements along with the daily whole group conferencing and peer conferences should help aid students in their revision process.

After reading this chapter, I feel like I can make conferencing with students more manageable.