Observations of writing!!!

Throughout my field experience I have had the opportunity to observe writers workshop.  I am placed in a first grade class.  Though my class participates in writing workshop on a daily basis it is not conducted like our text book suggest.  The children are not able to pick their own topics for their writing.  The teacher gives them writing prompts for them to use.  The teacher does try to pick topics that are of interest for the students.  This really bothered me at first after reading the text but later I realized that though the children do not get to pick their topics during writing workshop they are able to do free writing during center time on a daily basis.  The students typically do centers for an hour every day.  One of the centers is a writing center.  At the writing center children sit a table in a section of the class that is designated just for writing.  The table is full of helpful resources for the children to use to help them with their writing.  The teacher has books in a variety of genres where students can get examples of good writing styles to use.  There are also informational texts present at the center if children want to write an informational piece.  Just the other day a student turned in an informational paper about sharks that he had wrote by gathering facts from a book the teacher had about sharks.  The story was over a page long and was very good for a first grader!  The teacher also has resources like sticky notes, magazines to cut out pictures, stamps, markers, crayons, glue, scissors,  pre-made cards from a store to write letters on, and a dictionary just to name a few.  The students are allowed to write about anything they want and in any genre they want.  Every child also has their own writing folder at the center where they can keep their drafts and their work.  After the students have finished a piece they can decide to publish it.  Once it is finished they turn it into the teacher and get to share with the class before centers start.  The only requirement is for the students to have at least seven complete sentences.  I think this works out wonderful and the children really enjoy it.  It’s really apparent that this center produces some of their best work.  After seeing how this center is conducted I want to make sure to have a center like this in my future classroom no matter what grade I teach.  The teacher also has a poetry center where students get to copy poems and circle special characteristics or themes used in it.  They are also allowed to write their own poems.  The children really enjoy getting to share the poems too!  It is nice to see that I can incorporate writing on a daily basis other than just during writer’s workshop or the designated writing time.

Thoughts on multi-genre research projects!

I think conducting multi-genre research projects are a great idea.  I would love to try something like this in my future class.  I have never seen anything like this done before when I was in school or in observing classrooms during my student teaching.  I think it is so beneficial for students to get to select their own topics like the children got to do in the article.  I also like the idea of the teachers working so hard to support students to select a meaningful topic.  I think having accountable talk, where students can defend their topic choice to their teachers and peers before picking it for sure could really make the topic more valuable for that student. 

Conducting multi-genre research projects are also valuable because it lets students emotions play a part in what they are researching.  I strongly agree that the role of emotion plays an important part on the learning process.  If students are researching something that means something to them they are likely to give more effort and will probably hold on to what they have learned.  I know when I  do any kind of project or writing that really means something to me I enjoy doing it, try harder to do my best, and remember it.  Another idea that I loved about the multi-genre research projects were how students have the option of writing in a range of genres.  Giving students this option will not only make the project more beneficial to them but also will teach them a lot about writing genres even if they choose not to use the ones they learn about.  I also really liked how the authors decided to steer away from the traditional research paper and allow students to learn about the person’s personal life they were researching and not just the main contributions they made.

Finally I really liked how students get to celebrate their projects and writing by making presentations that they present not only to their teacher but other people in their lives.  I feel this shows the student that their efforts were much more than just a grade and that their work was really valued.  I can’t wait to learn more about multi-genre projects.  From what I have read thus far I think these projects have the potential to be very powerful learning tools!