The Harper article gave me a lot to think about in regards to my teaching and the way lead conferences. My mentor teacher and I have been beating ourselves over the head trying to come up with new ways to explain revision. My mentor teacher feels a great deal of pressure with the 5th grade writing test quickly approaching. Our students still ask questions like, "Can I add something to my draft?" because they are "past the graphic organizer" stage. It's a disaster. These kids are stuck in the recopying rut!
In our EDEC class, we are expected to have 5 connected lessons. I plan to demonstrate/lead a mini-lesson based on the 5 tools and see if my student's writing improves. I think the Questions tool will be most helpful because my students love to talk and ask questions. They are naturally curious and interrupt with questions ALL the time! Teaching them how to use the Questions tool to improve their drafts will, hopefully, be an awesome lesson.
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Hi Rebecca.
ReplyDeleteYou'll have to let us know how it goes if you use one of these lessons with your students. Revision is so difficult to teach, not to mention difficult to do. I feel like we have to be pretty aware of our own revision processes, then take the step of learning how to talk about it with others. Oh, that is hard stuff. I have a hard time sharing my work in an unfinished state, much less talk about how to fix it. Maybe I should do this after the break, and we can work through it together.
Questions is a great tool, and basically teaches students how to facilitate writing peer conferences. So necessary to having a successful workshop.
Beth