Sunday, April 8, 2012
Writing
This past year in my
kindergarten placement I have seen a lot of writing, but it is mostly
journaling or simply writing on worksheets that the class does after recess as a
time filler. The journaling is done by my MT giving them a prompt and then they
are supposed to write and draw in their journal in response to the given
prompt. Something that I really like seeing at this stage is the connection
that my MT makes between reading and writing. She often reads a book to them
and then creates the prompt off of that to get students thinking about what was
read and how they feel about it. This is similar to what I was trying to
achieve in my lesson. Tompkins thinks, and I agree that, “reading and writing
should be connected because reading has a powerful impact on writing, and vice
versa. When students read about a topic before writing, their writing is
enhanced because of what they learn about the topic, and when they write about
ideas in a book they're reading, their comprehension is deepened because
they're exploring big ideas and relationships among ideas" (Tompkins, pg.
390). I agree 100% with this. I think that if this connection is made more
often in the classroom, it would help enhance student’s comprehension skills
when they are allowed to explore and think critically about the text that was
read. This important connection can be made, and often is, in the students
journals that I see. I have definitely seen an improvement since the beginning
of the year and expect that students will continue to get better at expressing
what they think through words and pictures. It is difficult for kindergarteners
to write full words let alone full sentences about the pictures that they are
drawing, so my MT and I will go around and ask the students to explain to us
what they have drawn and then we will write it out on the back so we can go
back later and know what they were trying to draw. Because this is the case in
most kindergarten classrooms, it is difficult to work on the whole writing
process. Even though they cannot write very much on their own I feel that it
would be important for them to learn about the process so that when they can
write, it will be second nature to them. I don’t remember learning much about
the prewriting process or the writing process in general before about 4th
grade. This is sad to me and I think Tompkins would agree because, “Murray
(1982) believes that at least 70% of writing time should be spent prewriting.
During prewriting, students choose a topic, consider purpose and form, and
gather and organize ideas for writing”( Tompkins, pg. 52) This along with what
I have seen in my placement and what I can remember from my own early schooling
makes me really want to work with my future students on the writing process as
early as possible, even if it is through simple activities such as them coming
up with questions that they could draw about or coming up with questions or
prompts for me to write about. This would help get them to understand the
importance of prewriting as early as possible.
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Carrie, I thought the quotes you included from this week's reading was extremely beneficial. I too agree that any writing that is expected of our students should always be instructed with a purpose. Fortunately, I have seen a lot of writing that has been opened up this way. My MT is always telling the students that they are writing, and editing their work to become better readers and writers. However, most of the writing I have seen only pertains to free-writing short stories. They have practiced writing fiction and non-fiction stories, but I have not seen them do a lot of writing in response to the reading lessons. I haven't seen a lot of integrated lessons, which is surprising because as a per-service teacher I have seen a lot of opportunities to combine different lessons. My MT has been doing a lot of discussion based lessons and I think it would be extremely beneficial for the students to do some sort of reflection or prompt writing as a post-assessment to all of these grand conversations they are having in response to good books. Also, the students have learned how to edit their writing, but they have trouble editing every aspect of their work. My MT tries to break up what to focus on when they edit, for example fixing capitols, but them other parts of their writing falls short and needs more attention before they can turn in a polished product.
ReplyDeleteCarrie, I am in a Kindergarten class too and a lot of the writing I see is similar to the writing you mentioned in your post. Journaling is included in the classroom schedule everyday from 1-1:30, and while some students writing has improved, I think the writing prompts lack a connection to the student's lives. The students are required to follow a prompt given by the teacher and write one or two sentences along with a picture. But since most of the students are in the very beginning stages of learning to write, the sentences don't make sense. When they are asked to read the sentences out loud to the teacher the student usually just starts rambling about something that happened, paying no regard to the sentences they just wrote. Most of the time my MT just stars the paper if there is something written on it, but she doesn't pay any real attention to the writing process the students should be learning. Something Carrie mentioned that I think is a great suggestion to mention to my MT is first reading a book to the class and then deciding a writing prompt from there. Right now the only connections the students have between reading and writing is when the students sit and copy down pages of their favorite books. But they are not reading the words or understanding what they are writing. Instead, their focus is on each individual letter as they write it so there are no meaningful connections being made.
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