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The Talladega County Cornerstone Team was faced with the task of planning and implementing a three-day, intensive staff development event for our colleagues in Stemley and Sycamore Schools. In February of 2002, our staff development included "How to Launch Writers' Notebooks." Most of our students are now using writers' notebooks. The problem was our colleagues were confused about what to do next. So we decided to offer training in how to move students to the next level. We planned and implemented several sessions, including launching the writers' notebook, writing conferences, using literature to teach text structure and word choice, six-trait writing, and steps toward publishing. In this piece we will attempt to convey the gist of that staff development.
We make decisions every day that have a major impact on our students' learning. The decision to give every student and teacher at Sycamore School a writer's notebook was a monumental one. There was something magical about those marbled-covered notebooks with the child's picture on the front. From the first entries, our kids' writing was deeper and more meaningful. Using writers' notebooks makes writing more authentic, more real for our students and teachers.
Many authors, who write the books that our students read and that we read to our students, keep writers' notebooks or some other type of note collection system. To emulate these authors, we encourage our students to write down things they see, things they want to remember, thoughts they have, overheard conversations, interesting words...anything they think they may want to use in one of their projects. They are engaged in an authentic, real activity – writing like real writers. In her book, In the Company of Children, Joanne Hindley tells of a young student who struggled for words to explain what it feels like to keep a writer's notebook. He compared writing in a journal to keeping a writer's notebook. He said it was like the difference in driving the interstate and driving the scenic route: you get to the same place, but the scenic route is more fun and you learn so much more. The majority of the writing students do in their notebooks should be unprompted, process writing, writing that comes from their schema, writing that comes from the heart. The main idea is that kids get their thoughts and their ‘noticings' down on paper so they will have seeds for future writing projects. Admittedly, some prompted writing may be necessary because of required writing assessments, but no more than 20% of the time in the primary grades. We have chosen not to mark in our students' notebooks; we use sticky notes if we feel the need to make written comments. For editing, photocopies of notebook pages work well. Writing conferences about notebook entries can help with major mistakes. But the notebook is a place where mistakes are allowed, for, remember, it is a seed book, a place to begin.
From those beginnings, we hear voice in our kids' writing. When they don't have to worry about conventions (spelling, grammar, etc.), students can concentrate on putting their own thoughts in their own voice in writing.
Now that our students have stored their ideas and thoughts in their notebooks, what comes next? Let's try conferencing with our students to guide them, scaffold them to develop finished pieces from their notebook ideas. It is here that Six Trait Writing enters the picture. We heard about Six Trait Writing a couple of years ago when we asked Ellin Keene for some help with teaching writing. The Six Traits include:
We already have our students' ideas, and a hint of voice, from their writers' notebooks. We now need to move the students down the road toward their finished pieces. We do this through crafting and modeling from good literature, through mini-lessons in surface structure skills, and through individual writing conferences. The writing conferences are the ‘meat' of the teaching. When we teach individual students working on their piece of writing, we are teaching the writer, not writing. As we confer we move through three phrases:
Katie Wood Ray's book, Wondrous Words, offers us lists of books from which we can model text structure and word choice in a crafting setting and within individual writing conferences. There are many web sites on Six Trait Writing. Some of these supply book lists with ideas for teaching the six traits. One that we have used is www.schoolwide.com , a site which provides at least two resources with lists of texts to support 6+1 Trait Writing. While conferencing with our students, we help them with good word choice. One key is to really look at the simplest, easiest words, to replace with words that show the reader what the writer is trying to convey. Words like went, saw, and gave are prime candidates for replacement. Guiding the students to make better word choice is good, sound teaching. It is our job to put words in their minds that bring their voice to life. Many pieces of good literature can be used to demonstrate good word choice to students.
We also use good literature as examples of organization. All narratives have a beginning, a middle, and an ending or conclusion. They begin with a person in a place doing something. Good narrative writing does not tell the reader; it shows the reader through language structures such as onomatopoeia, interesting adjectives, and alliteration. Non-fiction books have a different structure, an organization designed to relay facts. During conferences with students we discuss books and other texts. Some of what we teach our students during these book discussions are: to make good word choices, to make their illustrations match their words, to choose the most important information to write, and to structure their sentences to be fluent so that the reader understands the message that the writer wants to convey. Good literature is embedded with text structures. Wondrous Words, by Ray, identifies at least thirty-one text structures. WOW! Before that blows your mind, you don't have to remember them all. Know them, but become familiar with six or seven text structures that appear in several books that you regularly use in your teaching. Text structures, such as circle text, texts that follow nature cycles, and seesaw texts are demonstrated in literature. When we mentor ourselves and our students to good writers, these text structures will become a part of our schema, a part of what we write. Again, there are many helpful resources available through professional literature and on the web. Most importantly, we can't say enough about how vital reading and listening to good literature is to encouraging the use of the six traits in writing. The read aloud is most important. To make the text especially useful, read and re-read several times.
The first decision is to choose a genre for the piece. Will it be poetry, a picture book, an essay, a short story, a chapter book? To which genre do the seed ideas in the writer's notebook lend themselves? Will there be illustrations? What organization will best fit the format? These choices will be explored in the writer's conferences. Guiding the student, let him/her choose the notebook pages to use as a basis for the piece; photocopy the pages, or set up a ‘dummy book' to use for editing. Here, again, is the opportunity to teach through conferencing. We will teach text organization and sentence fluency, spelling and grammatical structure, word choice and voice. And this teaching is highly effective because it is within the context of real writing that is from the student's own life, experiences, and words. We are teaching the writer rather than the writing. Reading and re-reading the piece several times is advisable for the student, especially if it is read aloud. Through this re-reading, superb voice, sentence fluency, and word choice get another hearing. After changes are made, the final copy can be created. It could be hand written or computer generated by the student. Then, final illustrations are added, and the published piece is ready. Remember to include a dedication page and an author's page, if applicable. Books can be bound with covered cardboard and colored duct tape. Some schools have a parent committee that acts as the publishing company; the committee sets one or two mornings a week to work on the books. At small schools, the students and teachers can do the binding. Reading about this process all at once makes it seem daunting. But, remember, it is a process, one that could take several weeks or months, depending on the project and the student. And you will have several of these projects going at the same time. That is one reason individual conferences are necessary. Try to be patient and encourage your students to be patient. Cornerstone has not been built in a day; neither is good writing. |
Johnnie
Tankersley 
