PAcree

    Craft Lessons, the final reading covers the topics which will further enhance student writing. Students can learn through the sample lessons to refine and improve their writing. The topics include lessons on character conflict, using flashbacks to make plot more interesting, improving setting descriptions, shaping and slowing down the actions, improving transitions, and experimenting with irony and symbolism. In every lesson, the tie between reading and writing is evident and lessons have been based in quality children's literature.

     The information gained in Craft Lessons has caused some thought about the importance of creating an environment where writing is frequent and rewriting is a natural part of the writing process. Students need to practice daily writing and work on a piece of writing to improve it. Student conferences about their writing has helped to focus my students this year on the importance of creating a publishable product that fits the purpose of the assignment. Having students correct each others and their own writing with verbal feedback has created better written works. Entertwining reading and writing and creating a opportunity for students the read and respond to quality literature and to identify and discuss the literary devises of authors is absolutely essential in enhancing student writing.

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Posted by: PAcree    in: My entries

Modified on February 28, 2006 at 4:00 PM

Craft Lessons (pages 79-92) continues with examples of what to teach and how to teach writing to the upper elementary student. The authors have focused on topics which will create improved writing by students. Subjects such as finding a focus, manipulating time in a story, "pruning", selecting a lead, using descriptions, creating interesting characters and making them come alive, using recurring lines, and writing "low on the food chain" are suggested as necessary topics which will teach students to engage readers. The authors suggest that teaching these topics requires a great deal of interaction with good literature and models of writing created by the teacher. Students need to experience good and poor writing to compare and revise. The authors link writing heavily with reading and give examples of literature to use to cover writing topics.

The list of topics covered by the authors are the very things that we wish our students would use in their writing. For example, frequently, students have a difficult time finding a focus  and creating the details that support that focus.  Pruning writing to get rid of any unnecessary parts could be part of the revision process. Teaching students to write "low on the food chain" helps them to make their writings detail specific and more appealing to readers (described by the authors as the bottom feeders).

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Posted by: PAcree    in: My entries

Modified on February 21, 2006 at 4:31 PM

In Craft Lessons, the authors have devised a 3 step writing process which will replace the 5 step process of writing commonly used by teachers. The 3 step process is conceive---craft---correct. In the conceive step, potential authors come up with ideas for writing through literature, brainstorming, word lists, and story maps. The authors discuss how students can come up with writing topics using their own pieces of writing. The authors stress that in order to improve student writing students must write frequently, share their writing, and conference with the teacher on a regular basis. Teachers of writers must learn to respond appropriately to student writers, be positive, try to understand the writer's intentions, and lower the ambitions(teach only one or two things with a single piece of writing).

As a writing teacher, I do not need to tell students what to write, how long it should be, nor exactly how to organize their ideas. My job is to teach the process of learning to write. Teaching writing as a craft requires frequent writing, frequent conferences with writers, abundant examples of writing through literature, and a emphasis on rereading,rewriting, and correcting to make it better.