Memo 5

Writing along students is something that may make sense to me, but may not make sense to all. I’ve always thought that as a teacher, you must find yourself through the requirements of being a teacher. Your ideas and passions must somehow break through the things the school board sees important, like test scores and testing.

You need to be prepared to take hold of your ideas and back them up. So putting myself in the shoes of a teacher or writing, I imagine my weaponry to look something like this.

Teacher modeling is one of high importance and benefit to every student no matter how far along in their writing ability. Nancie Atwell writes that although not every student gets the same amount out of a lesson, the important part is they grasp something. After modeling in front a student, they may realize how to create better paragraph transitions, or realize that they need to tighten up their sentences, or they may simply learn how to properly indent a paragraph. Any learning is important learning matters.

There are three main benefits to teacher modeling for students:

1)      Creates a positive writing role model.

2)      Shows students that writing is possible and takes practice. Writing can always be perfected.

3)      Teachers put themselves in the students’ position and can begin to emphasize with them.

Teachers can remember a time when they weren’t excellent writers, but often times they are very removed from that memory. Writing alongside also works in a way that helps the writer notice things about how they write. Tim Gillespie explains “as a writer paying attention to my own work, I learn to be more keenly attentive to my students' work” (Gillespie 1).

Writing is not something that can be perfected and left, it is ever changing and there is always room for growth. That being said, writing is a process. It is important for a teacher to model each step. When going through each step, Kelly Gallagher has his students pick apart his work. He asks driving questions like what is working and what words are weak? The idea of teacher being able to more keenly aware of their students work goes both ways. By having his students analyze his work, they are sharpening the tools they need to better analyze their work.

When trying to write better, practice is essential, so it is important for teachers to give their students practice time with low stakes writing. Low stakes writing can be a quick five minute write in a journal or five minutes to gather a student’s thoughts on a class discussion. Toby Fulwiler has his students practice writing through writing letters back and forth to his students weekly. It is here that students can develop a voice, learn how to organize their thoughts, and do so through a very low stakes median. Letter writing is a mode that does not overly stress out students because only one person will be reading it. This form of low stakes also doubles as a tool for students to feel more connected to their teacher and when a student feels like they matter to the teacher they start to have a personal stake in the classroom and in their learning.

Through writing and finding out what works and what doesn’t through experience, young writers develop themselves. Through teacher modeling of the revision process, writers take the tools they learn through dissecting the teacher’s work and apply it to their own work through proper revising.  

Teacher’s as models is only one job of a teacher. Debbie Rickards and Shirl Hawes see writers as having five different key roles that all entwine with each other. Through modeling teachers become coaches for their students. They establish a better bond when putting themselves out there on the spot and coming up with writing. Being this open and vulnerable to students helps students start to open up. The classroom slowly becomes less scary of a space, and eventually a community forms. When a class is connected, learning flows better, students start to see each other differently. 

Teachers also work as assessors of their students, as explained above, teachers better access their students when they are aware of their own writing and the choices they make behind it. Going back to my picture of a teacher’s own idea of what is important for students coming through, teachers act as planners. They must balance the things to teach today and how they fall in the grand scheme of the school year. Scaffolding must occur and careful planning ensures it does on some level. Timing and placement is crucial while taking in the need of the student.

Finally, teachers must act as consultants to their students. They must find time to break free of the group and address their students directly either in small groups or one on one. Writing is an excellent way to do so because the student and teacher have a body of work to go through. Kelly Gallagher also believes in the effectiveness of teacher meetings and prefers them over marking up a student’s paper. He believes it is more beneficial to a student to spend three minutes with them talking about their work rather than spending five leaving comments in the margins.

Through writing, teachers do what they set out to do: teach. Writing is a constant battle with students, and one teacher must be willing to be there for. When writing instruction isn’t taken into consideration the student suffers. Writing is the core of many real life activities and is crucial for a student to be a functioning adult in the working world. Writing helps sort through thoughts, express emotion, and relieve stress as well as communicate ideas and information. Writing is a way for the human race to stay immortal. It works on so many different levels that it’s hard for a teacher to ignore its importance.  So by taking hold of the five roles of a teacher, putting yourself out there and making yourself raw to your students, and being bold against the tides of testing, teachers can change a  student’s life forever. When the fear of writing is taken away, when the stress is lifted and a student is told that they are not expected to produce a perfect final polished daft on the first go, they are able to be really practice and grow. It is up to every teacher to give themselves to the need of their students at whatever the cost, even if that means going up to the Smart Board is writing a poorly written paragraph about their pet cat at 8 am on a Monday in the cold of January. 

Our Assignment Packet

I really enjoyed looking through the packet of Gods’ Man assignments. It really helped me get a sense of where I was in my own assignment in regards to everyone else. But more importantly it was really inspiring. Some of the assignments you guys thought up are cooler than anything I’ve done in some of my past high school classes. They were all fresh ways of looking at a book and having students really embody the story.

Some of the assignments that really stuck out to me was Jessica’s rewind dniwer assignment where she has her students read the story in backwards order and write a story based around Gods’ Man. This is something very simple but mind blowing to students, including myself, who just read in normal order everyday of their lives and never question it. Taking a story in backwards order can be powerful and implants an idea of reading other things backwards too. So not only is Jessica having students be creative and write something, she is showing them other ways to look at texts. This reminded me of an exercise in Kelly Gallagher’s book Write Like This where he has his students write reverse poems that mean one thing one way and something completely different the opposite way. 

I also really enjoyed Nathan’s assignment, primarily because of the way he wrote it. It was really enthusiastic and boarded on corny at moments and that something that will get students to do it. In a way Nathan is modeling an attitude that can and will infect his students. In his assignment, Nathan asks his students to pick three characters, “furniture counts too” and write a background on them. He also provides an example of this by using himself. This attitude makes students excited or if they are stone hard rebels, it makes them laugh enough to humor you into doing the assignment. It also opens up a connection that would make a student feel left out if they did not complete the assignment; who would want to miss out on the fun. 

Jocelyn’s piece was also very audience appropriate. I really liked how she had her steps clearly written out and the requirements she was looking for clearly defined out on a page. More times than none students ask themselves, “Well what exactly is considered clear language?” Jocelyn leaves no room for confusion. Her visual example and the breakdown of it is the cherry on top and something that I know I personally would use when doing the assignment. 

In terms of rigor and audience, I feel as though the majority of my fellow classmates were spot on. Most of the assignments don’t seem too difficult and all of them have an element of creativity and fun to them. It was refreshing to see assignments that focused more on the creation of something art like rather than an informative essay. That was one other thing I noticed, we all seem to assignment some sort of essay at the end but they are all pretty low stakes. This is amazing to think about. Maybe our generation of teachers will put an end to the essay heavy tasks in a back lash to our own horrible experiences with them.

A theme I saw throughout most of the assignments was a listing of steps. I personally did not write out a list of steps and going through and seeing it in action makes me realize I need to. It’s just so much clearer for students to grasp what the teacher is asking of them. It’s also a way for students to feel as though they are progressing along the work by being able to check off steps. In this fashion, students build momentum and may even start to work more productively or quicker. Each step completed is a small victory. I also realized I didn’t put any Common Core standards on my sheet, which I did for my revision.

Overall, the packet really got me excited. At first I was dreading going through because I really don’t have a high opinion of my “teachery” work. But seeing everyone’s and mine together made me feel like as a class we’re all kind of connected. We all strive to do something different in teaching and all share the thirst of a common goal.

Photo Biltz(krieg Bop)

Doing the photo blitz project was really fun. I have always liked photography, and very rarely am given the opportunity to take pictures. I did my project at the laundry mat after work tonight. I was originally going to do it at home, but I figured it’d be interesting to do while I waited. The area is also a very small area, so I found myself trying to get really created.  I was very interested in using the glass washer and dryer doors to reflect images and look behind myself. I found it even more fun to use dryers that were running.

                The laundry mat is a tiny place, primarily made up of the machines and a tiny sitting area with a TV (Juno was on). There’s a little bin of kids toys, which I didn’t notice until the end of my project. There was only one other person in the laundry mat besides me, my partner, and the attendant (whom kept giving me weird looks).

                Looking at my pictures, the ones that worked the best were the ones I shot at different angles and through reflections. Three out of the five pictures I have uploaded are reflections; one is of a different angle. I tried using the reflection to show openness.  For most of my pictures, I started out just taking random shots. I didn’t even have my criteria sheet with me, so that left me a little freedom. I did remember a few, like the converging lines prompt and the abstract one. Although I took a lot of converging lines pictures I didn’t consider one to be my best work. I think it really shows something about taking the pictures without really having the photo list in front of me.

                 I found it more enjoyable to have to go back and look through them all. I think this assignment is very freeing. I believe we all want to be creative, but aren’t because we all have so many things to do in our everyday college student stressed out lives. So assigning an artsy project is something that more professors really should keep in mind, including us teacher candidates.    

Memo 3.a and 3.b

Memo 3.a

Some of the major texts I have related my topic of teacher modeling to has been Kelly Gallagher. He was the first text that got me all hyped up to write about it. However a lot of the things Gallagher says about teacher modeling seem to be universal to many of the authors we read.

The first person that comes to mind is Linda Flower. Linda Flower’s article “Revising Writer Based Prose” focuses mainly on students aiming to get their writing into reader based prose rather than writer based prose. Reader based prose is when a writing has the audience in mind. The writer is aware of the format he/she must write in, whether it is a letter or a description of what happened in the events of a fender bender. The writer makes conscious choices in the writing to better fit the future audience. Flower contrasts this with writer based prose which is the writer “Essentially talking to himself.” Most first drafts are this type of writing, where the writer is talking it out between the paper and pen. The reader based writing is the polished copy and what is aspired to.

This idea of reader based prose connects to Gallagher because Gallagher’s approach to modeling is all about keeping his audience in mind. Gallagher is modeling for his high school students, some who are very advanced writers, but most who need proper teaching. This is what Gallagher does when he slows down his process so his students can see him problem solve and scribble. Originally, Gallagher did try presenting a perfect model, but realized it made his audience, his students, freeze up in their writing. So keeping in mind their insecurities and lack of experience, Gallagher effectively models. The revision process of Linda Flower, her idea of working writing to the goal of reader based prose is also something Gallagher uses in his teacher modeling. Once he has written a draft, he edits in front of his students asking them what they feel is working and what isn’t, ultimately showing them the tools they need in order to start revising better.

The idea of keeping an audience in mind while writing also links to Troy Hick and his book Crafting Digital Writing. In the beginning chapter, Hicks, comments about writers and their practicing of craft. He explains, “When writers begin to think intentionally about creating meaning in their readers’ minds, they are beginning to master the craft of writing” (Hicks 13). This craft is related to Flower’s reader based prose, and echoes practice and revision. Hicks is also talking about keeping an audience in mind, and takes a whole new spin on that idea as well. In a way he has to have his students think boarder about their audience because the work they are producing will reach a much larger base due to online publishing of work. Having a sense and an ever present awareness of how easily it will be for people to read something you have written almost preps the writer to do a little better from the start. The work seems more authentic when someone other than the teacher could potentially read it.

Whether it be students writing in class on paper, or on blogs, students thinking about their writing and who will read it makes them a more conscious writer and makes the whole writing experience more important. They are not only seeing models of good writing, but are seeing models of real life work and a way of presenting one’s thoughts and ideas effectively enough to engage others in an intelligent and thoughtful manner.

Memo 3.b

This week, I reflected back on the previous articles and texts we have read throughout the semester like the rest of my classmates. I don’t know how you all felt but I personally found it intriguing to go back through the texts with all this other information popping around in my head. I made connections to texts that I wasn’t drawn to initially; like Troy Hicks and his digital composing. I’m sure I could find a connection to every single text we read in terms of teacher modeling and revising. This is probably because all writing is a process and one that is never finished.

I took a break from reading articles and pieces on teacher modeling and followed in Jocelyn’s footsteps; I started watching some videos one teacher modeling. I had no idea what YouTube would have to offer me when I typed in teacher modeling writing. I was a little surprised to find a whole bunch of videos centered around elementary school children and their teachers reading to them aloud. In this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9yAxqsMqws) a teacher makes a very good observation that “Primary teachers are already doing read alouds with students.” In the read alouds, teachers stop and point out literary devices that authors are using to drive their story. Teachers may not be modeling their own writing, but they are using the models of real life books to expose the youngest writer to the elements of writing.

I also looked up some video of Kelly Gallagher and Nancie Atwell, and watched them actually modeling. A lot of what each of them said I had already learned from their writing. I watched a very informative interview with Kelly Gallagher    (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJFMhWtFVnA) where he explains that he wants his students to be writing ten to twenty years from now. This is another reason why he models his work as well as giving real like models. He explains that he feels as though he has to branch out from just having his students write literary essays on books and do real world writing like Amazon Reviews and law making. Gallagher also touches upon the idea of using teacher models and real life model simultaneously to give students a variety of methods and examples. He will choose real like writers who he feels best suit the idea they are working so that not only do they get to see him in action, but can see the real life implications of the writing being modeled.

Memo 2

Following Dr. Cook’s advice, I took out RIC’s copy of Nancie Atwell’s book, In the Middle: New Understandings about Writing, Reading, and Learning. 

            Nancie Atwell is a precursor to Kelly Gallagher, and together I noticed many similarities between the two. The first bit of info I read in the book is about how Atwell writes actively in front of her class. She does this to be a role model to her middle school students. By doing this, she is saying “Here’s an adult who writes” (Atwell 331). Like Gallagher, Atwell will write in front of her students as well as alongside her students. Atwell calls this writing alongside, “Parallel writing” (352). She does this to show them the art of her writing and how she problem solves and brainstorms. I noticed that Atwell brings in a lot more pre written pieces to her classroom and has her students work through it and analyze what is working and what isn’t. She calls this student collaboration, where she opens up the piece to the class and has them see what she is doing well and why they think so.

            One thing that Atwell comments on explicitly that Gallagher doesn’t is that at the end of the lesson everyone will learn something and most the times something different. Her teaching modeling helps each student in the various stages of writing they are at. This is something very real, considering that not every student in a real life classroom is on the same level of progress and understanding. Atwell explained that some students learned to pace themselves while others mastered how to properly indent paragraphs and transition. This reminds me of Vygotsky and scaffolding. Each time that Atwell does a writing lesson with her students, they are scaffolding and learning/ perfecting different techniques. This is where real learning is happening.

            Another source I read was an article by Toby Fulwiler called “Writing Back and Forth: Class Letters.” In this piece, Fulwiler tells us about how he writes his class letters each week and has them each write one back. He explains that writing letter works on many different levels. On the most basic level, students are writing weekly, and writing low stakes writing (or as Peter Elbow calls it “No-Big-Deal Writing”), where they can explore and play with writing without the fear of being judged or graded.  He explains that when people write letters they all write in such a way where their idea or words make sense and can be properly conveyed. Because students know someone will directly read their writing and respond they just to write better than they normally would. After many weeks of this practice, that kind of writing becomes the norm. . Fulwiler explains that “Letters lower your expectations. (It’s just a letter.) … There can always be another letter- better, more thoughtful, more complete, literate, clever, or profound. Letters leave doors open” (Fulwiler 22).  Letters are a way to give students room to play around with language and style and write with little restriction.

            Much like our class blog, as well as our personal I-Search blogs, letters help create a classroom community. This community becomes a safe space where students start to feel connect and that they matter to the professor by receiving an “Honest-to-goodness reply” (Fulwiler 21).  Students feeling like they matter promotes a better learning environment. They start to feel as though they have a personal stake in the class, which doubles as an enforcer to attend class, read material, and be engaged. 

            Overall I learned from these readings that modeling can come in different forms other than being up in front of the class. It can come from personal letter writing or note writing. Such writing creates classroom community besides simply putting yourself out there and writing in front of a class. Letter writing becomes low stakes writing, and low stakes writing is practice writing. The low stakes writing and in class collaboration on reviewing teacher written pieces can scaffold students understanding of what works in writing and what doesn’t while they themselves craft their own style and skills. For future research I plan on looking up pieces by Peter Elbow, possibly the piece cited by Fulwiler called, Writing With Power as well as some work by Tom Newkirk. I feel as though it would also be good to look up the Expressivist Movement too. 

Memo 1

The primary source I will be using for my I-Search paper will be the book, Teaching Adolescent Writers by Kelly Gallagher. In this book, there are a few different points where he talks about his experiences with teacher modeling, but the heart of the information on it comes from chapter three “Beyond the Grecian Urn: The Teacher as a Writing Model.” In this chapter, Gallagher not only talks about modeling writing, but also the importance of modeling revision.

To start off, Gallagher explains that in many things in life, carpentry, waitressing, and acting,  learning and working directly with a master is extremely beneficial, so why not the same be said with writing? He explains that he started off thinking presenting a finished product as a model was the way to teach but realized that showing students that perfection without the steps to get there just freezes them up. So he writes alongside his students and takes them through every step of writing from start to revision.

Gallagher explains that showcasing how to handle the doubts and anxieties of writing in front of students easing them into writing their own work. They can learn the craft along with learning that they are allowed to make mistakes in writing. Gallagher pushes that students need to be broken out of their fears because they hold them back from starting and writing freely. Besides modeling, he also allows his students to create low stakes first drafts and tells them he will not be grading everything they write. This freedom allows students to write unpolished work because according to him, “Students need coaches more than they need critics” (Gallagher 53).

Besides physically writing before his students, Gallagher will talk out writing and urges his students to do the same, possibly using a voice recorder to record their words and then transcribing them. He also provides many graphic organizers during the brainstorming process.

Gallagher also models the revision process to his students along the way. He uses his own first draft as a model to show students the STAR method. STAR stands for Substitute, Take things out, Add, and Rearrange. He goes through his piece and writes where he could do these four things and how. He also works through places where he could strengthen sentences and diction.

Most importantly, Gallagher works with his students “Towards deep revision after they gain confidence” (Gallagher 67). He asks students where they can expand on a single idea in his piece and how he can do so. To train students in creating more precise, less vague content, he will read a vague piece he has written and ask students to ask questions about the piece that they are unclear of such as “How long ago was this?” and “What did you say?”

Overall, this piece was chalked full of information on the ways and benefits of teacher modeling and is a strong primary source for my paper. 

Topic Choosen, Defined, and Explored

It’s here! After much soul searching I have decided on writing my I-Search paper on (drum roll please) the effectiveness of teacher modeling in the classroom!

Thinking back through my own high school English classroom career I never really had a lot of teacher modeling. I can remember back in my sophomore year my American Lit teacher gave us a fill in the blank sheet of paper that we could use as a template for virtually any essay on a book we had to write. 

It would start off like In ____________’s novel ________ the theme of ____________ is shown through _________,___________, and _______________.

No, I’m not kidding.  This is the closest to teacher modeling I’ve had. My school was big on every student writing in TBEAR format, (Topic sentence, briefly explain, Example, Analyze, Relate). This rigid format is so stifling it can complete turn students off to writing, and every teacher enforced it. If they modeled, they modeled all this. Luckily, writing came easy for me and I was able to just ignore this cookie cutter method all together.

But I do wonder what it would have been like if I had a teacher who was sporadic like Kelly Gallagher. Don’t get me wrong, I had some awesome English teachers, some who even inspired me to become an English teacher, but not very many great writing teachers. If I hadn’t been so turned on to writing I probably wouldn’t be as good of a student as I am. It still can take me eight hours to write a five page paper.

So have an animated writing teacher, one who would take risks and put themselves out there in front of the class and just start writing in front of us would have been so cool. It would have strengthened the relationship we, the students, had with the teacher. Teacher will push brainstorming for every single paper, but I have never had a teacher brainstorm writing in front of us. If I had, I feel lie writing wouldn’t be so intimidating to me. For me, starting a paper is hard, I always trip myself up and that’s why it takes forever. I feel like it’s got to be perfect the first time around. If I had a teacher that practiced what they preached and modeled and gave us opportunity to revise, and when I say opportunity, I mean like plan in revision in class time, my formal writing would be stronger.

I feel like teachers know they have to model, and know they have to have students revise, but they all kind of just say the words. So this is why this topic is important to me. This is why I want to write and research this. Because I don’t have a real life example to go off of, I will need to read up and understand modeling in order to be an effective model for my future students.