GJones

Pages 65-73 in Craft Lessons focuses on ready to use activities that seem very pragmatic. The activities are accompanied with resources such as book titles and material lists where appropriate.  Craft Lessons was a simple read.  The writing process is presented in a nonitimidating way.

I really enjoyed this selection of Craft Lessons as it primarily dealt with creating better writers, for grades 3-4.  The authors actually provide helpful strategies on how to teach writing in a way that seems very unintimidating.  Each strategie is presented with a corresponding book and an example of how classroom discourse would take place.  I personally love the writing aspect of the curriculum and thoroughly enjoyed the way Fletcher and Portalupi begin with the brainstorming and imaginative aspect of writing and venture on to methods of teaching conclusion and resolve.

There is a stigma that seems to innately attach itself with the process of writing that happens at an early age.  Aspiring writers tend to shy away from their own voice and feel the need to mimic that of their teacher or worst yet, write without the presence of voice at all.  The Craft proposes that writing practioners can lead young writers in finding their unique voices while demanding syntactically sound writing. 

The way to do this is to make the revision process a pleasing and rewarding part of writing.  One suggestion is to introduce "story surgery".  During the editing and revising phase of writing, young writers are often discouraged to edit because they see it as a lot of work.  The thought of writing all of their work over just to include a few missed words, phrases or information is a big turn-off to revising.  The story surgery method eliminates the need to write everything over.  All the student needs to do is tape a strip of paper with the new or corrected material beside the sentence/paragraph it will be added to in the final copy. 

Another great tip provided in this selection was to teach writers that replacing generalities will ultimately liven their writing.  Students tend to leave a lot out of their writing because they assume their audience already knows the information.  Some students tend to be self-centered in their writing because they are not at a cognitive level of third-person perspective where others' views about them are noticed.  Writers start becomming aware of their peers perspectives around the end of third early fourth grade.  This is when writing to an audience can be nutured.  To write an effective story the writer must not take for granted that the audience knows key details in their story.  Practioners should scaffold how substitutions can be made in the writing process.  Phrases with vivid images bring the story to life and make stories a visual pallete for the mind.

This was an incredibly well written selection and provided a great amount of practical advice for easy implementation in the classroom.  Some of the strategies merely supported what I already practice in my classroom.  Some of the strategies, like story surgery, I will endeavor to utilize.   

Craft Lessons, by Ralph Fletcher and Joann Portalupi, prescribes fundamental writing practices and conceptual knowledge of a writer's development for practioners of writing.  To effectively implement a writing program that produces proficient writers the pedagogical approach of the practioner must incorporate a writing process.  The authors of Craft Lessons have created such a process to guide students in their approach to writing; Conceive--Craft--Correct, the Triple-C process. 

The first C emphasizes the brainstorming aspect of writing.  Within this stage of the writing process creativity and innovation can be focused via student-teacher conferencing and student-student conferencing.  According to Craft Lessons conferencing is vital to the successful development of a writer.  Conferencing should be incorporated into every stage of the process to ensure correct practices are being utilized by each individual writer.

During the crafting stage of this writing process there is one major theme highlighted, time.  Students should be allotted time to explore the writing process. Educators should plan a portion of the academic day solely for the purpose of writing.  The old adage, "Practice makes Perfect", definitely predicates the belief that the more students write the better they will become at writing. 

Craft Lessons suggest that most students skip the revising, editing, rereading, and self-critiquing aspect of writing and proceed from rough draft to publishing.  Our task as educators is to get our students to incorportate these important attributes in their everyday writing practices.  Craft Lesson's first chapter foreshadows a plan for impementing such a task.