If you could take a pill that would increase your vocabulary, improve your writing, give you more background knowledge, make you smarter, and grow your empathy, would that be magic, or what?! Reading is MAGIC! If you love to read, you can learn ANYTHING! You need to love it because love makes practice easy and practice leads to unconscious mastery. If you don’t love reading, you haven’t found the right book yet. Here, let me help you….
Yes, I am the crazy book teacher at my school. The one whose room is flooded with books that I hand out like candy. The one whose classroom walls are covered with posters proclaiming the benefits of reading (get an infographic here and 17 beautifully illustrated A3 reasons here). The one who may, if she sees you with a book in hand, randomly buttonhole you for a conversation about how you’re liking it. The one who asks for 2 minutes at the all-faculty meeting at the beginning of each trimester to plug the benefits of reading, celebrate online library usage stats, and encourage staff to see me if they want their own “what I’m reading poster” to model an adult reading life and spark student conversations. The one who has read The Book Whisperer, Reading in the Wild, and The Joy of Reading by Donalyn Miller; Readicide and Reading Reasons by Kelly Gallagher; Book Love by Penny Kittle, and Free Voluntary Reading by Stephen Krashen. The one to whom people anonymously return library books gone walkabout. (Yup, that’s happened twice in the last month!)For reading, I am “an apologist winsome and sure” (see Dave Stuart Jr.). Dave encapsulates this idea by saying, “[W]e want to become the kinds of teachers who relentlessly, repetitively, confidently, and creatively explain to students why what they're doing in our classes ***matters.***”
It recently struck me, however, I am not yet that for writing. I am not the crazy writing teacher. I can’t roll off a sermonizing spiel like I can for writing. I have my own writing identity from writing these weekly blog posts. I can teach writing pretty well when we have to use it to formulate a response at the end of every unit. I talk about reading like writers. But I don’t fight to get kids writing every day like I do to get them reading every day.
I’m working to change that. "We learn to write by reading, but writing can make you smarter" (Stephen Krashen). This summer I read some books and used what I learned to create a Short Memoir unit for my 6/7 ELA students that we started the fall term with. Our mentor texts, all available free on CommonLit, were “Funeral” by Ralph Fletcher, “Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan, and “Little Things Are Big” by Jesus Colon. I chose them for their variety of perspectives: a white boy, a Chinese-American girl, and a Black Puerto Rican man. For each one, we first read like readers, using one of Beers and Probst’s Notice and Note signposts (Contrasts and Contradictions for “Funeral,” Words of the Wiser for “Fish Cheeks,” and Tough Questions for “Little Things Are Big”). I created a list of possible quickwrite response prompts, based on Linda Rief’s “Do This” prompts in The Quickwrite Handbook. And we did a genre study looking for musts & mights (things all of them had, and things some of them had) across our 3 mentor texts to launch us into writing our own short memoirs (see A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts, Grades 6-12).
Here are my quickwrite response prompts:
(1) “Funeral”: Pick One & Try This (as quickly and as specifically as you can for 2-3 minutes)
(2) “Fish Cheeks”: Pick One & Try This (as quickly and as specifically as you can for 2-3 minutes)
(3) “Little Things Are Big”: Pick One & Try This (as quickly and as specifically as you can for 2-3 minutes)
Students' quickwrite responses gave them experience with some professional writer moves: dialogue, descriptive writing using lists, internal dialogue. They were also waiting there in their notebooks of try revising moves on. Here are some examples from student writing notebooks:
The quickwrites also gave students a pool of ideas from which to draw when it came time to produce their own full piece. Several students asked, “Is it okay if I write about the story I started in that quickwrite…?” Score! Writing doesn’t have to be that hard if you keep a repository of ideas as you’ve responded to other writers!
As we drafted and revised, we continued to read like writers. We went back over these short mentor pieces (just over 1 page to just over 2 pages) multiple times, looking at introductions, conclusions, narrative perspective, setting, paragraphing, titles. Students didn’t roll their eyes and groan when I said, “Get out your texts and let’s see how the authors did that.”
The final drafts will come in next week. I’ve already seen evidence of students using their writing notebooks and mentor texts to shape their writing. I’m looking forward to seeing the finished products.
I’m still not nearly as good an apologist winsome and sure for writing as I am for reading. But I do feel like I’m shifting, and that’s exciting. I love learning and growing. I love to see my students learn and grow every time I learn something new about teaching.
How about you? How are you an apologist winsome and sure for your class? What are your best lines? Which parts are you not as good at yet? How will you grow?
- Ralph’s friends tell stories remembering things Ralph did for them. What are some stories your friends might tell about you (or you might tell about another friend)?
- “I thought of all the things I’d done with these guys…” (para 32). Start with this line and list as specifically as you can memories you’ve had with a friend or group of friends.
- Ralph describes Ale’s Woods: “I knew every rock and mushroom and pine tree by heart….I lay on the pine needles, eyes shut, smelling the mix of the piney smell and the good, rotting earth underneath…. Bits of light danced in the deep forest shadows around me. I knew I’d never forget that place.” Describe a familiar place using as many senses as you can.
- How have you said goodbye to a place/person?
- Write about anything this piece brings to mind for you.
(2) “Fish Cheeks”: Pick One & Try This (as quickly and as specifically as you can for 2-3 minutes)
- A time you’ve been embarrassed like Amy (by family), and thought, “What would ___ think?”
- A time you’ve been in a cross-cultural situation like Robert’s family.
- Describe your favorite meal. Use as much specific, sensory detail as possible.
- “You must be proud you are different. Your only shame is to have shame.” These are Amy’s mom’s “Words of the Wiser.” Do you agree? How might these words apply to you?
- Some “Words of the Wiser” someone has told you, or you have read somewhere.
- Write about anything this piece brings to mind for you.
(3) “Little Things Are Big”: Pick One & Try This (as quickly and as specifically as you can for 2-3 minutes)
- Jesus Colon says courtesy is important to Puerto Ricans. What is a value that is important to your culture or group or family?
- A time you saw a situation and had to think hard about what to do about it.
- A promise you’ve made to yourself, like Colon: “So, here is the promise I made myself back then: if I am ever faced with an occasion like that again, I am going to…”
- A time you asked yourself or someone else difficult questions.
- Write about anything this piece brings to mind for you.
Students' quickwrite responses gave them experience with some professional writer moves: dialogue, descriptive writing using lists, internal dialogue. They were also waiting there in their notebooks of try revising moves on. Here are some examples from student writing notebooks:
- “Funeral” #1, revised to include dialogue. I think I will talk about the day Himeka helped me find my train pass. It made us two late for school so I was really thankful for her being with me. // “Himeka!!” I shouted, “I lost my train pass…!”
- “Funeral” #2. I thought of all the things I’d done with these guys: went snowboarding and was on a trampoline so long that I puked afterwards. Played ping-pong every Friday, and had a war with Nerf guns.
- “Fish Cheeks” #3, revised to use a list. The savory smell of shouyu and the noodles floating calmly in the brown soup, waiting for me to suck them speedily into my mouth and taste the delicious ramen. // The soup was crowded with appetizing ingredients: the savory chashu, noodles floating, waiting for me to eat them.
The quickwrites also gave students a pool of ideas from which to draw when it came time to produce their own full piece. Several students asked, “Is it okay if I write about the story I started in that quickwrite…?” Score! Writing doesn’t have to be that hard if you keep a repository of ideas as you’ve responded to other writers!
As we drafted and revised, we continued to read like writers. We went back over these short mentor pieces (just over 1 page to just over 2 pages) multiple times, looking at introductions, conclusions, narrative perspective, setting, paragraphing, titles. Students didn’t roll their eyes and groan when I said, “Get out your texts and let’s see how the authors did that.”
The final drafts will come in next week. I’ve already seen evidence of students using their writing notebooks and mentor texts to shape their writing. I’m looking forward to seeing the finished products.
I’m still not nearly as good an apologist winsome and sure for writing as I am for reading. But I do feel like I’m shifting, and that’s exciting. I love learning and growing. I love to see my students learn and grow every time I learn something new about teaching.
How about you? How are you an apologist winsome and sure for your class? What are your best lines? Which parts are you not as good at yet? How will you grow?
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