Writer's Workshop*

While reading this segment of chapters, one paragraph really resonated with me and really got me thinking. Katie Wood Ray made a comparison to the process of getting your writing ready and getting dressed. She said that people in the world expect you to do the necessary things to get ready in the morning ( such as brush your teeth, comb your hair, put on clothes), that like writing people expect you to do the same mundane things as well ( use capital letters, proper punctuation, complete thoughts). However in my opinion, it is how you “dress” the writing that really makes it your own. If you think about it, we as humans don’t all wear the same exact clothes every single day, yet we all still put our pants on by one leg at a time. This goes the same for writing, we all don’t write about the same topic or in the same way, however we all first have to brainstorm or come up with an idea in order to even begin writing.
Also in these chapters, I really liked how Katie Wood Ray wrote how teachers can become more knowledgeable at writing. One suggestion she said was that teachers need to write themselves. I really believe that teachers need to write themselves because how will you get any better at writing if you don’t practice? Last semester, when one of my teachers asked us to sit and write, she would sit and write too. When we asked her why she did that, she said that she likes to show the students that writing should be taken seriously. Also she wanted to show her students/us that if she asked us to do the assignment, then she wanted us to see her doing the assignment too. Therefore the assignment given wasn’t just meaningless busywork. I really liked her philosophy and hope to implement it when I am teaching. I think it would be very important to have my kids see that I take time out of my day ( just like them) to write. Sure I could probably be doing a million other things that need to get crossed off my to-do list but writing during writing time should take precedence. It goes to show my kids, that I would not assign them a task or something to do that I myself would not do.
I always thought that conferencing was important to a child’s whole aspect of writing however Katie Wood Ray made some really great points about what a conference is really supposed to be like. I liked how she said that a conference is not a place to help but a place to TEACH. This sort of reminded me of the old Chinese proverb “ Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. I think that it is very easy to sit down and correct a child’s writing by saying “ fix this, this doesn’t make sense, you need to put spaces here..blah blah blah” but I find it negative and ineffective. Sitting down during conference time and actually teaching a student how to be a better writer shows significant positive connection to the writer (student). It shows that you care. Although it seems overwhelming the me to make sure I conference and record with 20-25 students at least a couple times per writing piece in my class, I know that it is the most beneficial thing I can do to help influence my students to be better writers.
When thinking about it, sharing really is an oxymoron. Majority of the time when someone like an adult tells you to share, you do it out of obedience and not out of your own goodwill. So why do teachers call student response time “share time” if they are calling on students who do NOT want to participate. When I have my classroom I do not completely want to do away with sharing time because I think that it is important to have students have the chance to volunteer to share their pieces. However if I want students to share who may not normally want to share then I would call it student-response time. It is during that time that I will call on students even if their hand is not raised. Even though they do not want to talk, I believe that it is important to get students to start talking in class because it helps build their confidence and social skills.