Hello fellow bloggers!
Unfortunately, I was none too happy with my book so I have opted for a new one. I have chosen Kelly Gallagher's Write Like This: Teaching Real-World Writing Through Modeling & Mentor Texts.
As I am a day behind, I will delve right into the fascinating world of mentor texts and sample mini lessons. I have begun to read this book, and I can honestly say for all of you out there planning to teach middle school or high school English, please buy this book!! It is filled with excellent, updated mini lessons that will keep your kids asking for more.
Gallagher starts off in the first chapter explaining why writing is so important. He mentions that people may think writing is a dying deed with the introduction of technology, but those people are dead wrong. He says that writing and understanding the written language (I take this to be reading and comprehension) is at the core of every good career move. Our kids are graduating high schools with writing skills that are under college standards and the reason for this is that we do not give our kids enough time to write in the classroom. He says that only a small portion of time should be dedicated to lecturing and the majority of time should be spent mentoring and free writing. Kids should see us writing as teachers, and write themselves in mimicry of us.
Gallagher also mentions the common core standards (attests to the relevancy of this book) and how they are a bit limited. He says that teachers can easily get caught up in meeting these standards without allowing any flexibility for the creative mind. I, however, believe that we can adhere to these standards, and still maintain creativity in the classroom. The point is that we should never let these standards bog us down, rather, take them as a starting point and "stretch them into areas that can be readily applied in the real world" (7). In tune with stretching the core standards to be relevant for our kids, we also need to mentor through modeling. What this means is teach a lesson, model the lesson, then let the kids free write. Students need to let their writing express, reflect, inform, explain, evaluate, judge, inquire, explore, analyze, interpret, take a stand, and propose a solution. Writing will never be fulfilling if we don't allow kids to creatively express themselves in one of these ways.
I have to admit that when I first read the section explaining how to model writing for our students, I thought it was weird. Writing in front of my kids just sounded strange. All their eyes on me as I type, backspace, take time to think, revise, then edit. But then Gallagher explained that if a child sees an adult going through this process, they will understand that great pieces do not magically appear on a page, and they are only perfect after multiple drafts. If we show our kids that the creative process is a constant jumble of editing and revising, perhaps they will filter that this is "ok" into their primary Discourse (shout out to Gee).
Well folks, that is all I have for chapter 1. It seems as though a lot of the following chapters are sample mini lessons and what kind of use they have to students, so I will be sure to share some of my favorites, and perhaps you all will find some great ideas for your own classrooms. Again, I highly recommend this book!!
Happy Blogging,
Miss H
Nice start on your book. I would agree that in many of the classrooms that students are not asked to write very much and probably very few teachers write in front of their students. It is funny but for one of my class in getting my BA one of my instructors would type what we were talking about as we went. It is easy to see what he was talking about you see the re-writes, mis-spelling and corrections and revisions right in front of you as we went. I can see for many of our young writers that this may be encouraging. Also the idea of mimicry for our students makes sense. Taking a look at good teaching outside the classroom I mimic things I want my son to do so he can see it done right. Furthermore, when coaching especially wrestling I mimic the moves for my athletes instead of just trying to give them a picture or lecture of the move so they can better see what I am trying to explain to them. This would make sense to do the same thing in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting post. We were actually talking about the mimicry topic not to long ago in my Spanish linguistics class. Mimicry is a useful tool, especially because visual learning is usually fun for students, and they will be more than likely to remember what to do with enough practice. But an important point no to forget is to explain to our students the purpose of each concept we will be modeling on. For my linguistics class we were addressing the ALM (Audiolingual Method) of teaching which is based in mimicry. From this I learn that students will often memorize information they learn and tend to forget it after a while. That is why explaining the purpose of each of the concepts we teach our students is important.
ReplyDeleteGreat comparison James. I know that for me, no one ever mimicked writing in front of me so I sometimes find myself getting so caught up in fixing my mistakes, or finding the right way to spell a word that I lose train of my thoughts. It has been a struggle for me to learn how to make a 1st draft straight through without stopping to edit or revise as this is a skill that I am self-teaching. I think mimicry is the best answer.
ReplyDeleteGreat point Laura. There are definitely visual learners and I think showing before doing is a great way to involve those kind of learners. Being accommodating to all of the different kind of learners will definitely be challenging, but I look forward to it.