Day 7, July 16: Phew…a long Thursday

Group II, Cathy, Darius, Margaret, and Wendy, started right at 9:00 a.m. with "Appreciating that Writing is Hard Work."
· Role Play: Margaret as the teacher needs to get grades done, so she tells her students (Wendy and Darius) to take out their daybooks and do some free writing
o Darius thinks this is stupid. Wendy is hard at work
o Margaret challenges Darius (from her desk) to “just write something.”
o And he does. The word “something” is centered on his page.
o Margaret and Darius go back and forth, Darius being the typical passive “reluctant” writer and Margaret being the typical uninformed, uninterested teacher.
o Margaret finally releases an audible sigh of relief as the bell rings and Cathy comes in for their planning period.
o Cathy asks Margaret how things are going and upon hearing a negative report shares some ideas of how to help Darius be less reluctant.
o Margaret still seems jaded but ends the planning period and role play by admitting that there are some things she could do differently.
· Margaret debriefed and asked CAWPers to think if they’d been in one of those roles (as Darius, the reluctant writer; Wendy, the successful writer; Margaret, the reluctant teacher; Cathy, the helpful teacher). CAWPers shared various ideas:
o Heather mentioned that some students are reluctant to write because they don’t think their ideas are good or they haven’t had enough prior experience.
o Margaret shared how some of her reluctant boys were afraid of being judged for spelling.
o Paige shared how she played dumb with some of her repeating 9th graders so that they would write about sports rules.
o Ruie mentioned Donald Graves’s terms for writers: reactive (Wendy) and reflective (get up, sharpen pencil, think out ideas). Graves says that reactive writers have been rewarded throughout their school careers.
o Ronnie mentioned some teachers who use writing as a management tool.
o Margaret commented that she feels uncomfortable confronting her colleagues.
o Heather mentioned the National School Reform Faculty and their protocols for various situations and how their resources might be helpful. http://www.nsrfharmony.org/protocols.html
o Margaret also added that some teachers are reluctant writers and that may be why they have a hard time with reluctant writers in their classrooms.
o Paige wondered if some of the reasons students may be reluctant to begin free-writing may be a personality difference. Paige, task-oriented, remembered a kindergarten experience with finger paint. She was reluctant to draw because she didn’t have any idea of the goal.
· Darius then transitioned to an example lesson of chunking the writing process and helping students work hard at writing:
o CAWPers wrote lists of adjectives relating to vending machines and cafeteria food.
o Then we wrote freely on the idea of cafeteria food and vending machines.
o Then we collectively wrote a thesis on the topic of students being able to use vending machines during school/lunch.
o We created a map one bubble at a time, adding in specific examples and support.
o Darius modeled one paragraph of the letter; we wrote one on our own.
· Wendy took over and gave each table a quote and told us to “Turn and Talk”:
o After some discussion about hard work, each group read its quote and shared some insights discussed.
o Ron rewrote Stephen King’s quote about attacking “the blank page” aggressively: “Tackle writing like the linebacker tackles the quarterback.”
o Wendy mentioned that this activity of rewriting a quote about writing might translate into some good posters for your wall.
· Cathy called on her expert listeners to recap the presentation:
o Teachers can motivate students to work hard by:
§ Giving various writing prompts and styles (persuasive for boys)
§ Giving personal topics that students can relate to
§ Chunking the writing process into digestible sections
§ Modeling and showing examples
§ Giving feedback in a non-threatening way
o Some of the reasons that writing is hard are:
§ Students think their writing will be criticized
§ Students are afraid to misspell words
§ Students are confused by conventions
§ [later in the day we learned that writing is hard because it uses 12 mental constructs!]
o Students can feel successful by:
§ Knowing that it’s ok to make a mess – quotes from other authors
§ Realize that they can make a sloppy copy
At 10:15, Paulette and Richard began their technologically-filled presentation on Threaded Discussions
· Paulette opened with the benefits/uses of using Blackboard’s Discussion Forum feature
o Talking about text
o Extending a discussion beyond what class time allows
o Longer response
o Time for quiet students to reflect then contribute
o Outlet for creative expression
o Nuggets for future pieces of writing
o Pre- & Post-Testing
o 21st Century skill
o Collecting resources
o Building community
o Opportunity for more writing
· Richard asked us to read and identify a couple of words/lines that “called out to” us from Stephen Edgar’s “The Secret Life of Books”
o We logged into BB
o Added discussions
o Replied to other CAWPers’ comments, thus creating a threaded discussion
· Richard showed the Mentor/Mentee idea he’s considering using with his ELLs and IB 12th graders at http://ohsnapphoto.net/matkins
o Richard had uploaded students’ essays and based on our group numbers, we read and responded to a student’s essay
After lunch and a time for sharing personal narrative drafts, Julie and Cathy took the stage, presenting “Flip the Script” on integrating science and literacy curricula
· Cathy asked us to think, pair, share about prior knowledge we had of electricity.
o She mentioned Horizon Research of UNC http://horizon.unc.edu/index.html , also associated with the National Science Foundation http://www.nsf.gov/
o Their research revealed that not enough time was given to “sense-making” or closure of science (i.e. Teachers do demonstrations/labs but don’t follow up with explanation or ask students to explain)
· Julie and Cathy focused on goal from the 4th grade science curriculum on magnetism and electricity while using an assessment with the Flip cameras
o Cathy showed the lesson plan model for science that integrates the Standard Course of Study as the What (intended); the lesson plan as the How (implemented); and the assessment as the learned (achieved).
· Using inquiry-based instruction, Cathy walked us through a scenario that presented a problem (we need light but don’t have a flashlight) and Julie passed out our “kits” that contained a wire, battery, and bulb.
o We started by creating a focus question (our first “entry” in our science notebook).
o Cathy shared student examples, making it clear that this is a skill that needs to be taught, scaffolded, and retaught.
o Then we made predictions about we can get the bulb to light; we also drew a diagram of the prediction
o Next, we worked with our partners to test our hypotheses, created a chart of the results, and diagrammed three successful ways to arrange the three parts and three unsuccessful ways
o We all learned that the bulb has two contact points, the battery has two contact points, and that all must be touching to create light. Some were AG and knew the term circuit.
o After our experiments, we independently wrote claims and evidence based on the models given by Cathy.
o Finally, we wrote conclusions and reflections based on the activity.
· Julie then passed out the Flip cameras and explained that the assessment piece involved our writing a script and filming it.
o We all answered the question: How does the relationship between a battery, bulb, and a wire create energy?
o We could create a commercial, a how-to, or anything else we wanted
o Working in pairs, we wrote the scripts and filmed ourselves. We then learned how to upload the videos to our laptops. Tomorrow Leigh Ann will show us MovieMaker, which can work as an editing program for Flip videos.

· Julie and Cathy asked us to end the presentation by sharing on our reflections what we learned and how we can apply it to our own “situations.”
After a quick break, Ron put us all to sleep with his presentation on research—just kidding!
· After a quick skim of the article we read for homework, Ron asked us to share among our table what was standing out to us.
· Ron identified two key people and an organization who helped the process approach replace the traditional linear methods taught in schools.
o Peter Elbow, author of Writing Without Teachers and Writing with Power
o Donald Murray, author of A Writer Teaches Writing and Write to Learn and former mentor of our very own Resolved Ron Honeycutt
o National Writing Project, begun in the 1970s in California (Bay Area Writing Project)
· Our Aha’s revealed that there is no consensus on the writing process, that the process approach is different for different people and can even evolve over the life of the same person.
· After a quick history lesson on the process approach, Ron shared some explanation of meta-analysis and what the research revealed about how teachers were teaching writing
· To conclude, we watched a short video of Peter Elbow explaining his struggles as a student of writing. You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDUn1c4uxUE . Elbow almost failed out of undergrad and did drop out of graduate school before observing his own writing process and then writing about it.
Tomorrow Heather and Wendy begin our day with a presentation titled “Taking it Apart to Put it Together,” and Leigh Ann will wrap it up with “I Hope You Dance: Working with Song Lyrics.” In the middle of the day, Ruie, Donna, and Megan will help us begin on our position paper, and Ron will explain the seven rhetorical paradigms for the teaching of writing.






I tried to cover it all, but I’m sure I missed something. Please share your funniest moment of the day or your own Aha!