In finishing the last two chapters of Routman for this semester I got to thinking about how much help is enough help for my students? I am not talking about those students that require a lot of hands on help in their writing every time they put pencil to paper. It’s the in-between ones, that are somewhat confident in their writing, and need some help from time to time. The help I am referring to is when we model our writing lessons for our kids. We solicit nouns, verbs, and, adjectives from the students for instance. We write them on the active-board or for the document reader to display. We then further model the lesson by putting the words together in coherent sentences. All good things, but when is enough examples, enough? I would submit that often times our solicitation of ideas from the class, results in a rather limited representation of the class. Certainly, insuring that everyone is participating by using name sticks is a strategy to call on all of the kids, but still are we tapping into each students individual creative mind? I don’t think so. Often it turns into a copying exercise, and while it looks to the reader (typically the parent) that their child can write, can they? What are they learning? So again, the question is how many examples do we use for them to get their own creative juices going? I submit a few, and throw away the spoon.
There is much to learn for me in literacy. Even the basics I feel I need to bone up on. Visions of taking the dogs down to Lake Washington in the sun this summer, and reading Routman, and Foxx are in my future. Neither book I feel will be far from my reach.
I was able today to spend some time in 4th grade classroom. Completely different teacher style than my MT at ether placements. Very animated, and very participative with her kids. At first I said “how is she going to rein these kids in” after a rather animated introduction to a lesson, complete with a few celebration rah! rahs! Yeeks. She did it. She got them settled right down with some sorta psychic power or something. Amazing. I enjoyed her style, and her enthusiasm with her kids. Just goes to show you, that you can be effective in different ways. Even a fun way, and still have your kids still respectful, and knowing where the line is drawn.
The game that got them going was a literacy exercise that they do first thing every morning called “Caught Ya!”, which she calls “Gottcha!”. A sentence or two are put on the board complete with punctuation, spelling, and syntax errors. The students job is to correct all the errors. It took a couple dizzying rounds of checking 25 papers before the first student got it all right, and gradually more and more got it. It certainly jumpstarts the students mind and the teachers stamina.
