What Teachers Can Learn from Student Responses to Author's Drafts
Presenter: Lester L. Laminack, children's author"OK, it's 11:00, my watch just beeped. Shut up and listen." That's how Lester starts it out.
Here are the ideas that really hit home for me.
1. Children have to envision before they can do revision. How do you hope to affect the reader? What sort of response are you hoping for? You have to start with a blueprint even if you are going to end up making spontaneous remodelling decisions in the middle of the process.
Students come up with their vision before writing. Then they write a first draft. Then, before they share them in a small group, they first share what their vision was, what they were hoping for. Now, when they read, the group is primed to listen for how they did on reaching their vision and can provide them specific feedback accordingly.
2. Teacher study groups are a vital method for improving the teaching of writing at a site. Get a small group of teachers together and all read the same book on writing and/or teaching writing, over time. This can help you both discuss and make decisions about your own practice, but also create a common language of writing and teaching writing that will filter down to the kids as well.
3. This one was my favorite. The idea is to teach students to use favorite books as mentors. Find your mentor. For example, looking to Charlotte's Web (which he recited from memory, pretty cool) to learn about description of setting (the barn).
Another example of books as mentors was in the teaching of leads. He gives groups of kids maybe five picture books, maybe three with a good lead, one with a mediocre lead, and one with a weak lead, or however you want to do it. Then he read the first page only and rotate through the books at their group, discussing and settling on one book that has a really good lead. The class then looks at each other's examples of good leads, discusses the elements, etc. The trick, after they've found a mentor book they admire, is to teach them how to imitate how they do it and not what they say.
4. Have kids give written responses to drafts of writing. He uses his own drafts for stories he will one day (and has) publish(ed). Students respond to the drafts, one lense at a time, examining conventions, making suggestions about wording, visual imagery, etc.
5. You can look at writing to prompts as a kind of genre, Test Taking, but make sure it is only one slice of all the different forms of writing you teach (and assess).
(notes by Evan Nichols, BAWP TC)
