Notes and demos from Monday, June 25th

Marilyn L'Hommedieu's demo:

Marilyn L'Hommedieu's Research Question: Talk, Draw, Write Marylin L’Hommedieu National Writing Project Writing in the early childhood years should be developmentally appropriate, that is, challenging, but achievable, with sufficient adult support. Reading and writing for early childhood learners should be developed as continuum! Kindergarteners learn best while talking and doing. Children take their first steps toward learning to read and write early in life. Even in the first few months of life children begin to experiment with language. Young babies make sounds that imitate the tones and rhythms of adult talk. They “read’ gestures and facial expressions and begin to associate sound sequences frequently heard- words- with their referents (Berk 1996). They listen to familiar rhymes, play along in games such as peek-a-boo and manipulate objects as board books in their play. Early on children learn to use a variety of symbols. As children gain these symbols, children acquire through insight that print can represent meaning. At first children will use the physical and visual cues surrounding print to determine what something says. As they develop an understanding of all alphabetic principle, children begin to process letters, translate them into sounds, and connect this information with meaning. Children acquire these understandings through adult guidance and instruction. Teachers need to build on what children already know, and can do, and provide knowledge and skills for lifelong learners. (Joint position statement of the IRA and NAEYC, pg.3) As educators, we need to discover what young children know in order to help them figure out what they want to say and how to say it. Talk, in and of itself, plays a powerful role in the beginning of writing. “You can’t know what you mean until you hear what you say,” (Berthoff, 1982, pg.46), therefore, if children have a chance to talk their stories through first, they have a better sense of what they want to put on paper. An effective strategy for beginning writers is storytelling. Children need to orally share their experiences, their stories. As early childhood educators, we need to model storytelling. Teachers need to share childhood memories, experiences, and moments in their lives with their students. Early childhood teachers need to provide opportunity for children to share their stories. Reading and writing need to be taught as a continuum. Reading and writing follow similar processes of thinking. The eight processes of thinking are connect, organize, image, predict, self-monitor, generalize, apply, and evaluate. 1. Connect: Reading and writing connects us to our experiences, memories, and knowledge. 2. Organize: Organizing information helps us to remember and use what we’ve read and to sequence what we write. 3. Image: As we read and write, we use our senses to imagine what is happening. 4.Predict: In both reading and writing we make inferences. In reading, we make predictions on what may happen next. In writing, we predict how a story or event could end or how our readers may react to what we are saying. 5.Self -monitor: Self-monitoring is our brain’s way of double checking information. When we read and write, we self- monitor constantly. We are usually aware of the self-monitoring only when we realize that something has gone wrong. 6.Generalize: Generalizing is the thinking process by which the brain takes several small pieces of information and from these small pieces comes to some larger conclusion. In reading and writing, information is or can be generalized. 7.Apply: As you read information and write information, you are applying information. 8.Evaluate: To evaluate is to make judgment about things. When we read and write, we make judgments. Thinking is something we do all the time. We daydream, plan, wonder, worry, and ponder. To comprehend what we read, we think as we are reading. To communicate ideas to a real audience, we think as we are writing. (Cunnigham and Moore, 2004. pg.8). We need provide a print rich environment. Children need to be expose to written language. Children learn about reading and writing from the labels, signs, and other kinds of print they see. Children need to be read to daily. After read-alouds, teachers should incorporate storytelling. Children will enjoying sharing connections they may have to the story. As children develop their storytelling abilities, drawing and writing can be incorporated into the experience.. Children enter the world of writing through drawing. Drawing is a way for young learners to relay meaning. Young children like to draw. When early childhood learners are given something to write with and something to write on, they draw. Most young children come to school already drawing. For young children, drawing is writing. It gives them opportunity to do what writers do: to think, to remember, to get ideas, to observe and to record. (Horn and Giacobbe, 2007, pg.52) After a storytelling activity, young children should draw. Teachers should encourage the children to draw one specific part of their story. Drawing and writing journals are a great for young learners to draw or write about their stories, experiences, reactions, etc. Allow children the opportunity to draw throughout their academic day. Young children can express their thoughts throughout their day through drawing or writing. As children develop in their storytelling and drawing, teachers should encourage them to write. Interactive writing lessons in a kindergarten classroom provide teachers and children the opportunity to write jointly. During this direct instruction, teachers and students compose message and “share the pen” as they put words on paper. They may write text, label a mural, label a object in the classroom, write letters, write notes, etc. or create lists, etc. During these guided, teacher directed whole groups sessions, they compose a common text that looks like writing as we see it in the world. The writing is spelled correctly, letters are formed correctly, handwriting is neat, and punctuated correctly. In the drawing and writing journal, the children work independently. They use what they know about making they may not add text to their drawings on their own. However, as teachers we encourage them to add words to their drawings and ultimately add sentences or stories to their drawings. Teachers should also encourage children to share their drawings and writing. Once again children learn through talking and interacting with the world around them. Young children need to share, talk in order to learn to write. Storytelling is an excellent strategy to encourage young learners to share their experiences that they can later use in their drawings or writing. Drawing allows children to express themselves in a way that is natural to them. As children learn to express themselves through their drawings the natural progression is to write. Writing is then becomes a less of task and more of an enjoyable, natural way of expressing oneself. Bibliography: Berk, Laura E. Infants and Children: Prenatal through Middle Childhood. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2008. Cunningham, Patricia Marr. Reading and Writing in Elementary Classrooms: Research Based K-4 Instruction. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2004. Horn, Martha, and Mary Ellen. Giacobbe. Talking, Drawing, Writing: Lessons for Our Youngest Writers. Portland, Me.: Stenhouse, 2007. McCloy, Mary Ellen. Strategies for Successful Child-Centered Writing. Successful Child Center Writing (Kid Writing). N.p., 20 July 2002. Web. . "Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children." National Association for the Education of Young Children 30-46 53.July (1998): 1-16. Natalie Lafferty's demo

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An essay to work with. The essay we worked with... I love being a teenager! I enjoy having the throbbing, green and yellow oozing pustules that proliferate like happy bunnies on my face. They boost my self-confidence; they make me highly alluring, and they completely counteract any drama that could possibly occur on any important event, especially picture days or first dates. I’ve tried all the creams: ProActive, Neutrogena, Clean and Clear, Acne Free, and all the possible foundations to cover my zits, and I’m glad they didn’t work. I prefer the zits. When I have Miley Cyrus beaming at me from the tube, her clean and shiny face makes me feel so good. Nothing makes me more reminiscent than when Bryan kissed me and my zit popped right on his face! I felt so sexy after that. Welcome to my world of acne. Like anyone else’s world, mine begins in the morning. You know when you wake up and you run your soft fingers over your oily face and delightfully come across a zit the size of Mt. Everest? Yeah, well, me too. I just love starting my day off with Mars on my face. My first thought is to wash my face with a face cream, but that never works out. Teens switch face creams all the time just trying to find the one that works—because everyone knows that’s actually very healthy. Come on, switching it all the time isn’t going to help the beast miraculously become the beauty, but hey, I’m not a dermatologist. Make-up can cover up any pimple no matter what size or skin color—ha, negative! Don’t you just love all the “skin-glowing, clear skin” treatments that sometimes only make it worse? I know I do. The bathroom battles are only small segments of this teenage war. The global acne conflict has its greatest battlefield in the world of photography. The thought of picture day runs through my mind. I’m obsessed! What to wear, how to do my hair, should I smile or be serious? Oh wait, and then there’s that nasty zit. As I am caressing my face with make-up, I see it—a big, fat, juicy pimple on the tip of my nose. It appears to be flashing red and white pus as to alarm, “WARNING, WARNING!” Dang, might as well take a picture of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer and say I’m his twin. It’s not Halloween, its Picture Day! I may as well have gotten a mask. YOUR TRANSITION STATEMENT HERE My date gazes over the table, staring at that enormous mountain on my face, slightly leaking pus. The zit pulses, and I smile because this is the most wonderful night of my life. He’s so perfect, but me? I’m in the exclusive club: my outfit, my hair, and the special perfume I put on just for tonight. Oh, don’t let me forget my partner in crime, the zit. I start scratching at it, ripping the skin and concealing it under my fingernail. Everyone gives me this curious look, and somehow I end up feeling isolated. But no! It’s the perfect night; nothing can ruin it. The zit popped. “I cannot believe that just happened,” I inwardly panicked. “Maybe he didn’t notice,” I prayed. YOUR TRANSITION STATEMENT HERE After all the trouble, the zit is still triumphant over the face. The cream never worked. My embarrassment has been forever immortalized in the school yearbook. Then, there was the ultimate failure, my date. I’m sure he’ll call me back any minute. The battle with the zit is a never ending war. It’s the joy of waking up every day to find another soldier invading your home front. Still, every teenager goes through this battle and loves and cherishes it more than anything else in the entire world. Natalie Lafferty's Research Question Why is writing an important learning tool for any content area? What are some best practices that can assist teachers and students with writing in all content areas? Writing should be utilized as a necessary learning tool in all classrooms. It needs to be a practice used in every content area weekly if not daily. Knipper & Duggan (2006) state, “Writing to learn engages students, extends thinking, deepens understanding, and energizes the meaning-making process.” However, many teachers are hesitant to use writing as part of their curriculum despite the fact that writing is inherent in every content area’s curriculum plan and standards. Writing is not merely something that should only be taught, but also used as an educational instrument. English, Science, Social Studies, Math, Art, Foreign Language, Special Needs, and even Physical Education classes alike have the ability to utilize writing to their students’ benefit in order to further knowledge and understanding of concepts specific to the content area, as well. This is becausewriting is learning. Many educators are well aware of the need for daily writing in the classroom and are employing writing effectively; however, there still remains a distance that needs to be traveled. The introduction of the text, Because Writing Matters: A Book That Shares What We Know (2003), reveals that “Composition pedagogy remains a neglected area of study at most of the nation’s thirteen hundred schools of education where future public school teachers are trained. Nor is it a specific state requirement in most state teacher certifications.” This information is alarming considering the overwhelming benefits and different options and/or strategies out there in which teachers have available. Learning logs, quick writes, brainstorming, graphic organizers, speeches, story boarding, reflections, creating Power Points or Prezis, blogging, and text-analysis are just a few examples of how writing can be incorporated into every classroom’s curriculum. Yet, Nagan (2003) cites a report by the National Academy of Education’s Commission on Reading that supports the unfortunate conclusion that teachers either are not prepared or comfortable teaching writing or are simply not teaching it period. The commission reports, “In one recent study in grades one, three, and five, only 15 percent of the school day was spent in any kind of writing activity. Two-thirds of the writing that did occur was word-for-word copying in workbooks. Composition of a paragraph or more is infrequent even at the high school level.” Teachers can take solace, though, in the findings that “Writing to learn is an opportunity for students to recall, clarify, and question what they know about a subject and what they still wonder about with regard to subject matter. Students also discover what they know about their content focus, their language, themselves, and their ability to communicate all of that to a variety” (Knipper & Duggan, 2006). For example, at this summer’s National Writing Project at Florida Gulf Coast University, teachers demonstrated lessons that could be utilized in several different content areas. It was refreshing to see teachers naturally incorporate writing eclectically. For example, Vanessa York, an elementary school teacher, tied learning the Fibonacci sequence, a form of number progression, with creating poetry that utilizes that sequence by words in a line. With this fusion of math and poetry, students are able to take a mathematical concept and develop further cognition by applying it to written word. Middle School teacher, Chris McClure, synthesized music and writing. Through investigation of rhythm, rhyme, and tone in both music and writing, students can make a connection between the two. Not to mention the songs that can help students remember concepts that they are learning, like the YouTube rap Chris found about the cell. April Etzold, a high school teacher, presented a lesson that helps students develop voice in their writing. NWP participants chose a “voice” out of a hat—shy, confident, clever, sarcastic, etc. Then, using a model of a letter already created, the participants re-created that letter using the voice that they chose. This practice employs students to write differently, creatively, and exercise varying modes of diction. Teachers at the workshop were inspired. Automatically, they started brainstorming how to use the lesson in other content areas. Ideas ranged from writing in the voice of a significant historical character for Social Studies class, writing in the voice of an organism in Science to describe their purpose in nature or the human body, to transforming the writer into a character from a novel or story by writing a letter in their voice using evidence from the reading. No matter what the lesson presented in the past two weeks, the NWP participants were able to tie writing to other content areas as a way to enhance learning. Students build connections and further their understanding and knowledge of the world and the content area with writing. Fisher & Frey (2004) suggest, “[…] the purpose for writing to learn is meant to be a catalyst for further learning and meaning making.” National Writing Project has certainly been the catalyst for participants to try the writing strategies presented in their curriculums for the approaching school year. Writing is a critical learning piece. The development and implementation of writing has personal and academic value in any content area. Teachers are encouraged to share best practices like the ones outlined in this paper in order to promote learning through writing. The ultimate goal is to build a community of writers in our schools not only to benefit students in their learning today but to carry them through their future academic and personal writing paths. References Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2004).Improving adolescent literacy: Strategies at work. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Knipper, J. K. (2006). Writing to learn across the curriculum: Tools for comprehension in content area classes.International Reading Association, 462-470. National Writing Project, &. N. (2003).Because writing matters: A book that shares what we know . New York: Jossey-Bass.