fieldnotes on teaching
Teaching writing in high school
adapted from Kelly GallagherIn a typical week getting ready for Friday’s game, a basketball team might practice these skills:
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Daily writing exercises
Langer and Applebee propose three main purposes for daily writing activities:
1. Writing helps students draw on relevant knowledge and background to get ready for new learning
Synapse Stimulator: Put a new concept on the board and have students write for 5 minutes as much as they can about the word. At end of 5 minutes either share a a class or pass the papers to be read in smaller groups.
Quickwrite: Write for 5 minutes in response to a “focus question.” “Should your parents have any say in who you date?” “When, if ever, is it okay to disobey a law?” “Why do you think it is warmer in the summer than in the winter?”
2. Writing helps students consolidate and review ideas and experiences
If you write a grocery list before going to the store then forget to take the list, you will still remember more of the items than if you hadn’t written a list. The traditional ideas work: notetaking, outlining, clusering, and double-entry journals.
Exit slips: The last 5 minutes of class ask students to explain in writing what they have learned in class that day. The writing is used as a ticket to be handed to the teacher as they leave the room.
SDQR Charts: Ask students to create these to capture the ideas in a lecture or a reading assignment:
Says Doesn’t Say Questions Reflections Students record:
- Facts learned
- Facts confirmed
Students record
- What is not said/omitted
- Inferences
Students record
- Questions that arise
Students record:
- Thoughts
- Connections
A similar chart can be used to think about similarities and differences between two or more texts or experiences:
Notes from Sample 1 Notes from Sample 2 Notes from Sample 3 Reflections Students record the data--facts, events, images--from a text or an experience Students record the data--facts, events, images--from a text or an experience Students record the data--facts, events, images--from a text or an experience Students record:
- Thoughts
- Connections
3. Writing helps students reformulate and extend knowledge
Besides demonstrating what is already now, the act of writing extends knowledge by creating new thinking. This is why it’s hard to follow outlines. Once we start writing, new connections and insights occur to us.
Looping (Peter Elbow, Writing with Power, 1998). Start by having students write for 10 minutes giving their initial writing on a topic, such as a fictional character’s behavior or their thoughts about a historical era or a political event. After 10 minutes, have students re-read what they have written, looking for a “hot spot"--an emerging theme or central idea, or a place where their own voice starts to come through, or where the writing gets more honest and less perfunctory. Circle the hot spot. Skip a line and re-write the hot spot into a complete sentence. Beginning with this new sentence, write for another 10 minutes. At the end of 10 minutes, find a new hot spot and begin again with a new sentence. Keep looping till a focus or thesis emerges.
Pass-the-reflection. Have students write their thoughts on a topic for 2 minutes. Then have them pass their papers to each other. They then read the paper they have received and continue writing on the topic. This encourages students to extend their thinking.
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