If you were to ask Alianna Rust the things she misses most from fourth grade as a burgeoning fifth grader, she would answer two-fold: (1) Seeing all the babies (2) Writing in Mrs. Lin’s class.
As a parent it has been cool watching my borderline dyslexic child #3 take on writerly identities. It began in Mrs. Touchstone’s class with Alianna’s favorite center: “Book making.” There she would staple a bunch of white, unlined pieces of printing paper together and call it a book. She quickly began authoring a series she called “The Stick Family” which featured, you guessed it, sticks with a variety of names.
But it wasn’t until fourth grade that her writing really took off. Mrs. Lin opened up the floodgates, so to speak. On our daily after dinner walks, Alianna would hang back 10-20 feet behind the rest of us, mumbling to herself. “You ok?” I’d call back. “Yep,” she’d reply smiling shyly, “Just making up stories in my head.” Somehow Ms. Lin was able to convince Alianna that weaving tales went beyond being able to perfectly spell/encode words. It was okay to just get ideas down and edit later. From this proud Mama’s perspective, Ali P was a natural weaver of words, a burgeoning poet storyteller.
Writing workshop methods (I’m not even gonna say the name Lucy Calkins- whoops I said it) has gotten a lot of flack in the recent years. But when I think about the magic that goes into building writerly confidence in the context of this month’s blog blast theme of checking for understanding, all I can think is that something the workshop method does WELL is monitor each individual’s kids development to meet them where they are. You can look at just one piece of writing to assess so many different TYPES of understanding, such as:
- Has this child learned how to encode words?
- How is their handwriting?
- What is their working vocabulary?
- Where is their level of understanding in sentence construction?
- How do they frame narrative?
- Do they apply English conventions such as spelling, end marks, punctuation, etc.?
- How effective is their organization?
- How well do they understand the elements of this particular genre?
- What level of details are they able to employ?
And that’s just the beginning!
So just last week I walked into the delightful focused flurry of writing workshop in Caroline’s class, and it was just the example I needed of a teacher actively checking for understanding. Students were all at different stages of the writing process, and all had clear signals of productivity at work. Here are a few things I noticed:
- Caroline energetically conferencing with individual students about their writing at the standing table; talking to one about present tense versus past tense and which would be more effective.
- All students had a host of materials at their disposal: a checklist for narrative writing elements, a narrative writing outline, lined paper for composing their drafts, etc.
- Some were energetically moving on their drafts, and others were taking a break. Still, I noticed their talk was centered on writing: “what is yours about, John?” etc.
- Some had filled up pages of dialogue, while others were on the first paragraph.
- Most were writing fictionalized stories but nearly all had elements of the truth.
- Caroline did one sound check in the room to make sure the talk was writing focused
- Students all seemed to know what to be doing when; it is so difficult to attain this kind of workshop environment and Caroline has DONE it!
I have to admit, I’ve tried to replicate what Caroline has so well achieved in my 12th grade English class to much less successful results. I have various theories why. I never fully commit to enough time routine building. Students by the time they are 17-18 have developed writerly habits that are mostly outside of classroom time. I usually allocate less class time to writing than I mean to . .. it is the first thing to go. I rarely give them choice in the same way that workshop models do.
Still, every single time I sit down with a student to talk about their writing, whether it is during the class time or during “Dr. Rust office hours,” I get what all the hype is about. There is NO better way to check for understanding and then provide next steps than sitting down with an author over a piece of their writing and dialoguing about it. Period.