July 23, 2009

July 23rd, 2009

Summary

CAWP 2009 began the day, drawing cards to create metaphors for our writing process that we then shared with the class. Karen’s bikini metaphor and Richard’s zipper created quite a few chuckles.

Group IV: Considering Writing as a Craft that Can Be Learned presented. The group includes Paulette Campbell, Jessica Greene, Leigh Ann Lane, and Amy Kay Nickerson. We had homework last night to prepare for their group’s presentation. The are both from the New York Times entitled Genius: The Modern View by David Brooks and A Star Is Made by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt.

Jessica found a You Tube by Dylan Thomas Poetry. Dylan died very young. We listened to his poem “In My Craft or Sullen Art”. The group gave us the definitions of craft, skill, and art. Our table group agrees that writing is a craft. Heather felt that Dylan’s poem felt very lonely. Paige noted that she was given writing assignments through out her life because she was considered ‘good’ at it, even though it took a lot of effort. We shared out each group discussion. Next, we listened to a Voice Thread of the quotes from the articles the group had to read. Amy Kay read some quotes from Fletcher about Day Books and is inspired to use some of the ideas with her students. Leigh Ann really enjoyed Ann Lammot and continued the Voice Thread. It’s okay to be scatterbrained. But the biggest thing to take away from this CAWP experience is that we need to scaffold what we ask our students to do, especially if we have difficulty with the process ourselves. The next Voice Thread was from Welty. It wasn’t about instruction but about awareness. What you witness and learn is from where we gather our writing ideas. The last Voice Thread is about Stephen King. He spent a lot of time in this selection on description. Paulette is going to be able to use this in multiple areas of her job ‘Odyssey of the Mind’, Yearbook, reading and Daybooks. The articles were discussed next using the questions from the handout.
Are writers born or made?
What makes some writers seem like they have God-given talent?
When someone is good at something, what makes them seem good at it?
Discuss a quote or something from the article that spoke to you.

People enjoy doing things that they do well. Did the talent come first or did the practice?

Touched With Fire by K. Jamison was mentioned by Paige about the anguish that some writers had to go through to become prolific writers.

We ended with putting up sticky note ideas with the question “How can you take the information, quotes, and topics we’ve discussed today, and apply to your own instruction?”

Dr. Ron Honeycutt
CFA’s and Conferring

Writing Workshop is the most powerful way to teach writing. Teacher is facilitator. There is a lot of direct instruction for the struggling student writers with available times outside of the classroom for individual work with the teacher.

Group participated in a Six Traits Rap. Group 1 had a professional edge to their sound incorporating some adlib style. J

Dr. Honeycutt shared his handouts:
1. Writing Workshop – Flow chart with the definitions of each participant in the workshop.
2. Reading Drafts in Progress: Levels of Response
a. Large-scale concerns
b. Mid-level concerns
c. Sentence-level concerns
3. Looking for an edge or angle
4. Having A Writing Conference With Yourself
5. Self-Regulating Strategies
6. Ten Commandments of Teaching Good Writing

Dr. Honeycutt role models his expectations for students in his class about conferring, writing and the writing workshop.

As new students come and go from his class other students share – class rules, organization, warm-ups, your writing and conferring.
1. No apologies for your writing.
2. No rolling eyes.
3. No over sarcasm.
4. You can’t speak negatively unless you speak positively.
Within his class conferring is held with pairs, groups and teacher. Dr. Honeycutt gives grades on the FCA’s to develop quality responses in his student.

Dr. Honeycutt shared a story of writing from his class. The student scored a 1 on the writing test as a fourth grader and a 4 on the retest in 5th grade.

Dr. Honeycutt gave out student papers from the last writing assignment in his class this year. The prompt was ‘write about a time, a person or an event that changed your life’. We were supposed to write FCA’s and discuss with someone at our table.

Kate shared a story that a student wrote about how Dr. Honeycutt and another language arts teacher at his school changed his life. A student gave a very touching tribute to his teachers.

He begins his school year with ‘Found Poems’, short stories and summaries. Each reading has a writing connected to it. One example of writing with reading is a letter to Aunt Polly from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn as a character of that time. Dillard Drive Middle School tries to integrate the subjects as much as possible. Another example was a science fiction piece through science class. Question about writing in math came up. Description and process were primarily used in math. Taking formulas and writing them in English sentences. Take a concept in math and how they would use it in real life. Students writing story problems was also a great way for students to understand math too.

AFTER LUNCH

Dr. Pritchard
Combining Sentences

Ruie started with sharing major findings of teaching of grammar.
1901 Started research on the quality of compositions based on grammar instruction.
Shared an article that there is a genetic component to using grammar, there is a grammar gene. Correction is not the way to change it in oral language.
Teaching of grammar is still a part of every curriculum. Grammar is the structure of the language not just spelling. Why would you do formal instruction of grammar? Early findings:
There is an absence of correlation between knowledge of formal grammar and the ability to compose, orally or in writing – general conclusion of over 85 studies.
There is no relationship between the knowledge of grammar and the ability to interpret language.
If grammar study doesn’t improve composing does it have another use? No transfer of training of grammar study and ability to correct errors, apply reason, make a rule or to apply definition.
Looking at correlations…intervention/pre/post…the correlation between attainment in formal grammar and the ability to correct compositions and correct language errors is about the same as taking any two random subjects in a school. P.E. and Art, math and history or between composition and anything else.
The ability to write English compositions depends to a considerably higher degree upon general ability than upon knowledge of formal grammar.
Writing background and ability leads to more success in college than a grammar background.
Grammar study doesn’t repay the students for the effort and the time they spend on it in the curriculum.
One group used textbook on grammar/One group considered problems. Finding – an academic year is too short to bring about productive growth on grammar. The study of English grammatical terminology has a negligable effect upon the correctness of children’s writing. It is almost an almost harmful effect on grammar.

An inductive approach is best. Model, model, model.

Ruie took all of this information and tried to put some meaning to the findings around what she knew and understood about Intelligence/creativity and grammar/writing. Ruie’s idea is that creative people are generally intelligent but intelligent people aren’t necessarily creative. So, maybe people that are good writers are generally good with grammar but people with good grammar aren’t necessarily good writers.

The grammar group far exceeded the thought group in mastery of formal grammar, but the thought group achieved superior results in sentence structure and had longer retention of the fundamental abilities involved.

We all took a diagnostic exercise on grammar.

Combining exercises, that are not graded but shared orally, is a powerful tool for learning. Frank O’Hare noted that student’s grew 4 years in 1 year.

The Parts of Speech: Rap-Style

On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about halfway between the Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud rose-colored hotel. –F. Scott Fitzgerald

Did another activity where we combined sentences together to create a cohesive paragraph.