Where does writing begin in a classroom? Well, it begins with the teachers, and their attitudes towards reading and writing. According to Best practices in Writing Instruction by, Steve Graham, Charles A. Macarthur and Jill Fitzgerald, good classrooms have a lot of writing and instruction, paired with passionate teachers. Some key elements that teachers must keep in mind when teaching writing are: A teacher must provide scaffolding as students begin a new skill, A teacher should always encourage their students and have high expectations for all students, teachers need to make time for reflections and connections of material, the classroom environment should display student work and allow students to move around, and students should work together when trying to accomplish writing tasks. It was also noted that successful writing classrooms were engaged 90% of the time, with little to no discipline, due to the amount of activity within the classroom. Having high demands on students produces self regulated writers, who are constantly improving on reading and writing skills. An important conclusion drawn from chapter one was simple, the more writing on the wall in a classroom produced more competent writers, which relates to high test scores on exams. The classrooms that were filled with the most amount of writing hanging on their walls demanded more from their students, and demanded more writing from their students.
I found this conclusion surprising, but amazingly obvious. Now that I look back on student teaching and I compare my city school district site to my suburban site I realize there was a distinct difference between the two. My city school district site lacked writing on the wall, writing standards, and even writing instruction. In fact very little was expected of these students, and most teachers had low expectations for the students. In my suburban site, writing was modeled, displayed in the classroom and words and instruction were everywhere you looked. The students were also expected to write pages at time, rather than just a paragraph or two. The students in the suburban site were not only confident writers, but they loved to share their work, and work with others.
In a research article, Put an Idea Together, Collaboration and Composition in Third-Grade Writing Workshop, conducted by, Ruth Davenport, and Julie Ekberg, they concluded that children should read and write together. Their research only strengthens the idea that Steve Graham, Charles A Macarthur, and Jill Fitzgerald concluded, that teachers need to be the facilitators, and allow students to work together, with proper scaffolding. In the research done by Davenport and Ekberg, they found three different types of student collaboration, in which they saw that student collaboration provided great demonstrations for one another. The first collaboration observed was parallel writing, then y-writing, and lastly collective writing. Parallel writing consists of students writing together and each is writing their own copy, and example would be a play. Collective writing assigns each person a different role that they must fulfill. But the key is to allow the students to assign the roles. For example one student may be the publisher, while another is the writer or editor. Y-writing has one student write a portion of the story , then another student will write there own portion to the story from the one that was previously written. Once this is done the students will then write the rest of story working together.
The research also pointed out some key factors for writing: 1.The teacher needs to establish community writers 2. Physical space is important to plan out, the classroom needs to be set up for movements, and have bean bags and carpets for writing. 3. Materials need to be available, and the students need a sufficient amount of tools through out the classroom. 4. A teacher needs to allow choice! This promotes ownership of the writing and allows students to explore. 5. A sharing circle allows a teacher to not only bring a writing workshop to a close but it allows students to share with their peers. 6. Publication possibilities need to be considered. When students are done with their work, their work should be celebrated! I know from my own experience in a classroom that students love to share their hard work, and often gain confidence and can not wait for the next assignment.
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