In my first grade class, I am currently observing Writer’s Workshop. In addition, I am observing and participating with conferences with these young writers. With this said, this chapter from Flint was a Godsend. I cannot tell you how unsure I felt and how many questions I had about how the workshops were set up, exactly what feedback to give my students, and how this connected to their emerging literacy. I was especially interested with the Sharing piece of a Writer’s Workshop. I see so many students get discouraged during the day. They don’t know how to spell a word, can’t find it in the dictionary, and their neighbors do not have the knowledge to help them. By giving them the chance to share their work at the end of WW though, I see students come alive. That may sound corny, but their eyes light up, they get excited, and the frustration of the activity seems to melt away.
The text draws in the fact that this shows how students interact with texts. This is something I have not seen, but will be looking to observe in the future. By understanding and listening to how a student interacts with a text they have created, I think that a teacher should be able to gain a general understanding of how this particular student interacts with many other texts. This is knowledge that can be used to a teacher’s advantage in helping a student excel.
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I agree that this chapter was very helpful! That's awesome that you are getting to do conferences with your students. It's even better that you get to practice some of the things we are learning. I would love to see how individual conferences actually look in the classroom, but it was SO helpful that these chapters clearly outlined how to do it, including having some examples of conferences. I am sure you already do a great job of working with the students in writer's workshop but I would love to hear if the stuff we read was really helpful! Good luck :)
ReplyDeleteDear Laura,
ReplyDeleteYou're not the only one who had no idea what to say during literacy events. And you're also not the only one with students who get discouraged becuase of a little learned helplessness. I found the two texts to be very complimentary and very informative. But as we've always discussed from these texts we can only get ideas, but we really need to learn in the thick of things.