Writing Stages

The 5 step writing process can be seen through the work of Jack in Sharon Creech’s Love That Dog and Mara Casey and Stephen I. Hemenway’s Structure and Freedom: Achieving a Balanced Writing Curriculum. Through reading these two case studies, we can see how the structure of the classroom can support writers during these 5 steps: pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.

5 Stages of Writing

1. Pre-writing

When beginning the writing process, students must think about what they are writing and why, considering things such as topic, audience, purpose, form. The form of pre-writing can vary from notes to looking at examples to pictures to free writes or anything else a teacher plans. In Love That Dog, Miss Stretchberry supported this first stage by providing excellent examples of literature for the class. She brought in poems such as “The Pasture” by Robert Frost, “Love That Boy” by Walter Dean Myers and “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams (Creech, 2001).

2. Drafting

In this step, the focus is getting key ideas down on paper. The focus of writing a draft is not to focus on eliminating mechanical or grammatical errors, but rather on the story itself. “If you really want to do good writing, you have to concentrate and think about it. You have to work on one subject for a long time. And the teacher has to keep the idea going that you should do drafts and drafts and drafts” (pg. 71).

3. Revising

In revising, students share their writing with both the teacher and other students so that constructive criticism can be used to improve their writing. Tompkins et al suggests designating a special chair in the classroom as an “author’s chair” so that students understand that they are authors as well. Students can then take the feedback to revise their work, either adding or removing based on audience. In Love That Dog, by Sharon Creech, Jack demonstrates the revising process after his teacher, Mrs. Stretchberry, asks if she can put one of his poems up on the board. He asks that she add a title, “You Come Too,” and “leave off the part/ about the other dogs/ getting killed dead/ because that’s too sad” (pg. 28). This revision shows not only Jack’s awareness that his classmates are his audience, but he is aware of what their aesthetic reaction to the poem would be as well.

4. Editing

Students can proofread their own work or get a classmates’ help to discover and correct any mechanical errors made. As students learn and improve on their writing, they are able to assimilate more grammatical and structural components. As she progressed to more senior grades, Page would often skip revising and purely proofread her assignments to find the grammatical mistakes her teacher would look for (Casey and Stephan, 2001, p.72). Encouraging time for both revising and editing, as they had in grade three, led to a better result.

5. Publishing

Students are now ready to produce a final copy of their work in an appropriate form – be that hand written, typed on a computer, as a book, or any other form. The finished product is shared outside of the class as well, through bulletin board displays, newsletters, or other ways. In the case study, after the book by Page and her classmates was published through reading it out loud to the principal, putting it in the library and giving a copy to every family at the school (Casey and Stephan, 2001, p. 69).

Engaging Writing Classrooms

Choice

In order for writers to really be engaged in their work, they need to take control and ownership. For most, this involves choice in areas such as topic, style, or focus. This is especially the case in elementary writing classrooms. If students are able to write about what interests them, that enjoyment will usually show through their writing. They will take pride in the work and go through all the steps to get the best end result possible. This is best shown through Jack in “Love That Dog.” From the beginning, he was able to choose whatever form he wanted, as long as he wrote something. Having that freedom encouraged Jack to became an effective writer; by December he was showing signs of becoming a real author. By saying “I think maybe it would look better if there was more space between the lines. Like how I wrote it the first time,” he is taking ownership of his work (Creech, 2001, p. 18).

Time in the classroom

In the case study, Page consistently mentioned that classroom time was needed to produce the best product. Her grade three class spent a significant amount of class time working on their project, but as she continued through the public school system, this time dwindled along with her passion for writing (Casey and Stephan, 2001). While students are first experimenting with the writing process, it is critical they are given class time to go through all 5 steps. The teacher needs to support each student through the steps, ensuring that it is within the range of proximal development. Without this time in the classroom, students could easily become confused or overwhelmed. However, even after students become proficient in these areas, they need to be continually challenged and engaged by their teachers. This means taking class time to support learning and creativity.

Constructive Criticism

Without some form of constructive criticism, how can teachers expect their student’s skills to grow? Students need teachers to model skills at every step in the process. By showing areas the student can approve, teachers are helping to expand their knowledge A great way to do this is through mini-lessons, where a specific skill or idea can be focused on. Throughout the novel “Love That Dog,” Miss Stretchberry was encouraging Jack by asking him questions and helping him to become metacognitive (Creech, 2001, p. 5).

Effective and Balanced – don’t tip the scale!

Bringing in outside help!

To ensure that my classroom is both effective and balanced, I plan to bring in examples of good literature. The literature will vary depending on my focus or expected outcome. I want these examples to inspire my students, while providing an exceptional model of writing. Reading “Love that Dog” has inspired me to look at local authors where I’m teaching, so I can use all the resources at my disposal.

Student focus

An effective classroom must also accept the diversity in the classroom. As a teacher, I need to ensure my students are a main focus, using their needs to tailor my actions. Part of this is also ensuring the focus on the skills they need to learn so that when they move on to another classroom, they have the necessary skills. Of course, keeping it balanced means that I not overwhelm my students by going above their zone of proximal development.

Efferent Walk Down Memory Lane

Almost all of my favourite elementary school memories come from the same teacher, who I had for both grades 2 and 3. The project I remember enjoying the most was planning a journey from our current town to a town of our choice in any other province or territory. We had a lot of choice when working on that project: which province we chose, what form of transportation we took, and how we wanted to present our journey. I remember being able to choose from either writing a story, making a scrapbook or making journal entries.

“Our Great Nation”

Looking back now, I realize this was part of a thematic unit our teacher planned about Canada. A few weeks before we did this project, we starting singing “This Land is Your Land,” and were told to pick a province other than BC that either meant a lot to us or we wanted to travel to one day and present a research poster on that province to the class. The theme of “Our Great Nation” was integrated into nearly every subject area for one month, and used as a tool to inter-relate all aspects of the curriculum.

I remember the entire class loving this theme, especially myself as I had never traveled outside of the province. When learning about the different provinces, our teacher asked everyone to bring any pictures or memorabilia they or their parents had at home. This style of teaching reflects Vygostky’s idea that learning is social and can happen both in and out of the class (Tompkins et al, 2011, p.8).

Adjusting and Inspiring

I realize now that by allowing the structured choices, my teacher allowed each student to choose which format worked best for their level. Students who still struggled with writing could make a scrapbook, so they only had to write a few sentences per page. Other students, who excelled in writing, were encouraged to write stories or journal entries. With this type of approach, she was able to support each student at his or her individual level, helping to scaffold all of us. I had my heart set on doing the project one way, but I remember her convincing me to write a story about the journey instead. She said that I had an amazing imagination and she loved the stories I came up with. With her encouragement, I was able to step outside my comfort zone, but still within my zone of proximal development, and grow as a writer.

What interests you the most?

This project also incorporated inquiry-based aspects as each student chose which form of transportation interested them most. Whether we chose traveling by car, train, hiking or flying, we were given time to research the steps needed to travel across Canada. We had done a few research projects before, using encyclopaedias and some online sources, but this was the first project where we did nearly all of our research online. We were encouraged to team up with other students if we had troubles with our plans, again gathering support from our social network.

End Result

Though this project seems overwhelming when looking back on it now, I never felt that way when I was working on it. Part of that was because while my teacher gave us many choices, it was all within a pre-determined structure that she used to guide us in our choices. In the end, we had over 20 incredible journeys planned and a fire within all of us to travel across the country. I haven’t made my trip to Newfoundland yet, but I still talk to my penpal I met in that very same classroom, and I will make the trip to see her soon.

Diversity and the IRP

Characteristics of a Learner

In every classroom, one of the most difficult aspects of teaching English Language Arts (ELA) is taking into account all the various levels and characteristics of your students. Each student enters the class with what Piaget calls a “schema;” a set of past experiences and knowledge that shape who the student is and how they learn (Tompkins et al, 2011, p. 5). No two students learn in exactly the same way, so teachers must be flexible and able to explain one thing in as many ways possible.

Students enter the classroom with diverse backgrounds that can either help or hinder learning in the classroom. Students whose parents read stories may enter with a passion for ELA and using their imaginations to create a plethora of stories. Others enter with a negative view that could stunt their growth in ELA. Students have different ethnic background as well, which can correlate to different strengths and weaknesses.

Some students will understand completely after verbal instructions, others will need visual clues and perhaps the shy boy in the corner learns best using mind maps. Tompkins et al (2011) describes how each student will also have what Vygotsky calls the “zone of proximal development (p. 8).” It is the teacher’s job to discover which areas are too hard, and which are too easy to find the zone in which the student will learn. Teachers not only need to understand what the characteristics of a learner are, but to know how those characteristics are represented in each individual student so that each child’s needs will be met.

An incredible movie called “Including Samuel” was brought to my attention the second week of September during an Education Student Association meeting. This movie highlights the difficulties associated with incorporating those with physical disabilities into classrooms in a meaningful way. A link to the trailer can be found by clicking here.

BC ELA IRP

Along with knowing the characteristics of learners, another important aspect of teaching is ensuring you follow the BC ELA IRP. In my first classes in the Education Program, I was confused between “PLOs” “IRPs” “ELA” and all the other acronyms being thrown around so casually. Thankfully, as the weeks have passed these terms have become more familiar and have been assimilated into my schema.

Positives…

As with the terminology, I found the IRP to be extremely overwhelming at first glance, with over 150 pages for each individual grade from K-7. However, the more time I spend looking over the pages, the more I understand the necessity of having such a document. Teachers must take so many things into consideration when preparing lesson plans, and it would be easy to over look something important. The charts and helpful headings separate things nicely, making it easier to flip to the right section. It also in theory ensures that no matter where a student lives, they will receive the same education and not above or below the rest of the province.

Not as positive…

One of the negative aspects of the ELA IRP is that I could see it restricting some classes. There’s a lot of material you have to cover, and it leaves the feeling that there is not much room for individual ideas. For me, this is both negative and positive because I see it as a challenge to be as creative and innovative as I can be. One of my hardest jobs will be that each of my students reaches their full potential under IRP guidelines, regardless of any language or physical barriers. I came to understand these sorts of difficulties more clearly after watching the trailer of “Including Samuel.” When the teacher nearly broke out into tears, my heart broke for her, and I began to fear that without the proper training or practice, that could be me one day.