Saturday, November 28, 2009
Session 1: Research Writing
At the start of the year, some teachers at KF got together to study writing. We began by looking at the writing process in its fullness. Check out the link at the right to see some basics on the parts of the process. Upon discussing the various stages that pieces of writing go through to get to publishing and sharing or celebrating, we talked about some of the genres of writing that we know and/or work with. These included poetry, news articles, realistic fiction, historic fiction, fairy tales, recipes and research writing. The group decided to focus on researching research writing through the year. We wrapped up the sessions by cracking open brand new writer's notebooks and taking a few minutes to just write steadily as we might ask our students to do in order to flex their writing muscles and gain stamina. Homework included reading a chapter from Katie Wood Ray's book Wondrous Words. Check out the link from ncte to learn more about this book. The chapter discusses Reading like a Writer, the first step in getting to know a genre. The other part of homework was for teachers to find examples of research writing to share with their group next session.
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We packed a lot in at this session. There are many lessons that could come out of the various parts. Students can examine, discuss and order the steps of the writing process in pairs or groups. Students can list or web genres they know. One way to facilitate students naming genres is by having them organize the classroom or school library. Giving students writer's notebooks and having them decorate and take ownership of them is another important step. Many teachers remind students that writers usually write about their own lives and ask students to create lists of possible topics from their lives that they can write about. This eliminates the issue of "I don't have anything to write about." What are some other lessons that might come out of this first session?
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