Chapter 12: Make Every Minute Count

I truly loved these statements from p. 282: "First, I have to reach each child's heart, and so I have to open mine." "If I am to be an effective teacher, our hearts have to connect as well as our minds." These statements echo the foundation of my teaching beliefs.

Chapter 11: Build on Best Practice and Research

Wow! This chapter was packed with good information.
It's hard to pick one single important thing from this chapter. However, one point that sticks out was under the category of Develop a Schoolwide Vision: lasting change takes a minimum of 3 years and a full 5 years of ongoing commitment to impact achievement permanently. As teachers, we rarely give ourselves this much time for the process of change.

This is another point that I will walk away with from this chapter: "While there is no one best program or model of how to teach writing, knowledgeable teachers make decisions based on research, teaching and learning experiences, their observation of their students and ongoing professional conversations."

It takes courage and commitment to be willing to reflect on and question your beliefs about teaching and learning and for this I applaud my 6th grade team!

Chapter 10: Make Assessment Count

I enjoyed this chapter and agreed with much of what Routman had to say. My favorite was, "Reader's have to read avidly to become readers, and the same holds true for writers."
We should have students write everyday for 20-30 minutes, just as we have them read every day. If this is what we believe, we will make time for it.

There was one area that I disagreed with Routman on and that was the use of the six traits of writing. I don't know any teacher that uses the traits in isolation as Routman suggests. We use it as an evaluation tool, criteria for good writing and a common language. Routman herself uses these phrases when talking about writing: it's in the language, the way the piece flows, organized, the impact the words have on the reader, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and voice. Sounds like the six traits to me. I don't believe that the use of the six traits or a rubric sends the message that content doesn't matter or fails to take into account the writer's development of ideas and evidence presented in the writing piece.
I do agree that not every rubric is a good tool to use and if a teacher doesn't teach and demonstrate a rubric that it makes it worthless! However; our 6th grade team has worked hard to create a rubric that we value.

However, I'm sure every teacher must have been relieved and cheered to read that Routman suggests we needn't grade but 20% of our students' writing. I personally have never graded all my students' writing, because I feel it creates an atmosphere for reluctant writers instead of promoting writing.

Chapter 9: Conference with Students

The main idea that I took away from this chapter is that even though one on one conferencing with your students may sound ideal, it is not the only effective strategy. It was reassuring to here Routman suggest that there are a variety of ways you can conference with your students. A conference can be formal, informal, long, short, small group, large group, public or private. This realization gave me some hope that I was on the right track. My thoughts were further reinforced when Routman explained that conferences can be conducted for different purposes : to celebrate, validate, encourage, teach, assess or set goals. Some of these I never really categorized as a conference before now.

Chapter 8 Organize for Daily Writing

Provide More Choice Within Meaningful Structure
I was glad when Routman addressed this idea in the chapter. It was something that I had been curious about. I have found the greatest amount of success with my students when I apply the idea of giving students the freedom of choice within a predetermined topic. Routman also suggests that a teacher should demonstrate choosing a topic for writing, so students learn how to effectively choose their own topic. I have not demonstrated specific topics that I am writing myself but I have used different scenarios to demonstrate choosing a topic. For example: I might say, "If my daughter were going to write on this topic she might choose to write about her trip to Washington D.C.. This topic is really large! How could she write about her experience in D.C., but narrow the topic?"

Recently, when my students were to choose from four drafts they had previously written to publish, way too many of them chose their weakest piece of writing to publish. This really surprised me. Which lead me back to Routman's comment: "the topic is the single most important factor contributing to writer variability." I didn't want to discourage my students by contradicting their choice; which to some would mean they really didn't have a choice to begin with, but I also didn't want my students stuck writing on a topic that they clearly could not develop well. When I came across the following questions Routman listed I thought this would be an excellent way to handle the situation. Do you care about the subject? Can you tell a lot about it? Can you include appropriate and interesting details? I will use these questions or similar ones with my students in the future.

Chapter 7 Be Efficient and Integrate Basic Skills

I'm not certain if it is just me, but Routman confused me through out this chapter. I felt she contradicted herself numerous times.

We, as teachers, strive to create authentic and real world writing situations for our students, but I'm unsure how to teach my students to write for a particular audience and format without teaching them the skills that go with it before they write and not after as Routman suggests. Routman also suggests not to list the requirements we want students to include in their writing, but then she uses that very technique.
Her opinion that most teachers don't inform students why they are learning a skill and that teachers simply have their students complete worksheets and then magically want them to apply the skill from the worksheet into their writing is a bit offensive to me.

I do agree that there are skills better taught within the context of a piece of writing and I liked her list of mini lessons.

Chapter 6 Capitalize on the Reading-Writing Connection

I have to say this chapter is one of my favorites. It seems like such a no brainer and yet as teachers we can all say that we need to spend more time writing. We know that to improve reading, one must read. I believe we have finally, but not so easily, accomplished this in our educational day. We give our students many and varied opportunities to read. We also know that our best readers are our best writers, so now, we must ensure the same for writing. It only makes sense that since the two go hand in hand developmentally that we teach them together and not in isolation. I believe that primary teachers tend to do a better job with this. I know that when I taught only reading and language I taught reading and writing interconnected, but now that I must focus on more subjects the connection is not quite as strong.

I do believe that as an intermediate teacher I do a better job reading and writing expository text. It's neat to watch a student who otherwise struggles with reading explain potential and kinetic energy and journal about their team's process of building a mousetrap. It's amazing.

One topic that I have modeled a lot with my students is rereading writing, so as to improve the quality. The students are willing to give input as I model and do quite well. However, when they are working independently on their writing I don't see it having the impact that I desire.