Crafting Continued

Hale is full of great ideas for encouraging and improving student writing. She has developed a system of crafts, mini-lessons and conference strategies that are brilliant and, with some thought and dedicated time, look to be relatively simple to implement. A careful eye and a patient tongue may actually be the most arduous skills to master in her scheme.

In the midst of the discussion and explanation of some of her conferring strategies (precisely between pages 121 and 124), Hale makes two subtle, harmonizing notes about her art, namely that one must remember to help build a students confidence and, from that foundation, present them with tools for self-evaluation. Throughout Crafting Writers, Hale faithfully sews the same warm thread of encouraging students, crossing crafts into compliments and using her conferences to recognize “legitimate” talents. Building the foundation of self-confidence in a student can help to develop a student’s “internal motivation,” which she notes must always be discovered and is never imparted. With a sturdy foundation as a “scholar,” they will have what they need to begin the (sometimes intimidating) task of reflection.

From a personal perspective, I know that encouragement at the early grades can be a great help in encouraging writing throughout one’s life – in my doubting moments, I still remind myself of Ms. Garrison’s (my 5^th and 6^th grade teacher) thoughtful compliments. Teaching students, “all students” (121) their strengths is crucial to their development as writers, academicians and as individuals.

I recognize that much of this is recap with, perhaps, a little bit of romanticism about actually crafting writers, but it brings me to what really is one of my only questions: will there ever be students where it is best not to point out their strengths?

My gut reaction is “no, that’s nonsense and just mean.” I think I agree with myself, but I am curious to read what others might think. I can imagine a student whose self-confidence has ballooned into a pig-headed arrogance – is it appropriate not to notice their strengths?

Again, I don’t think this is the case. Pointing out strengths might actually be the only way to reach a student who is in that frame of mind, appealing to their pride while pointing out areas of improvement.

On a side note, does anyone else have trouble coming up with meaningful, relevant questions from some of our readings? With Hale, I find that she is straightforward I agree with pretty much everything she has to say. The questions I had as I read, she resolved with her balanced approach. I’m digging deep (as you can see above) to come up with some good interaction with the reading. If you have suggestions in coming up with questions, please feel free to share.

Crafting Writers: K-6

(Super)Brief Summary: Our reading selection of "Crafting Writers," by Elizabeth Hale dealt largely with "specific craft" (7) strategies for developing young students (mainly in the intermediate-elementary range) into independent writing artists. Hale provides the reader with a reading tool used to locate and extract elements of "good writing," which can then be introduced to students as they develop in their writing.

[Apologies for the insert: Does anyone remember whether or not we refer to readings in the past or present tense? I employ the present tense below.]

In trying to come up with literacy related questions, I have felt somewhat stumped. Hale's presentation seemed quite forward and, all-in-all, well presented.

I do appreciate her appeal to the "art of writing" (5). I enjoy having my attention pulled towards the "style" of students' writing (3) and away from the more popular and rigid realm of writing mechanics (16). The "craft" tool I looks to be both fun and effective and is something I would like to begin developing for myself now, if possible, helping me to be readily armed come day one in the classroom.

A thought I found interesting was the relationship between our approach to "craft" and to our children's writing. There are, of course, many parallels which one could draw (i.e., "show, not tell;" focus on student writing, not rules; etc.), but the one which caught my mind was a combination of the "zoom-in" tool and crafting process, namely recognizing the small part, naming it, and saying why it's good (27). These together, though applied differently byHale, seem to be very similar concepts to those which we discussed in class last week.

When looking at a students writing, especially in the early grades, one of the important skills for a teacher is to recognize the "small part" in a student's writing which shows an understanding and skill (and from our exercises, this is itself a skill), note which skill and aspect of writing the element represents and to say why it's good. Then, "zooming in," we can focus our attention on that element and begin to build out from there. The tools which Hale provides in developing craft lessons, while in many ways standing in their own right, seem to be extensions of the "umbrella" skill of precise, positive attention and teaching from the students strengths.

Our Charge: Take Joy in Err

When I look at or hear a masterpiece, I often marvel at the highly produced and oft rehearsed end result. “What a magnificent piece,” I think after hearing a new orchestral achievement. “What a brilliant idea,” I might think after reading a new favorite story. Rarely, though, do I consider that this did not appear as one solitary spontaneous act. Never do I say or think, “What an incredible culmination of years of practice, errors and experimentation!”

Reading this week from Lyon and Moore’s “Sound Systems,” and Cusumano’s “Every Mark on the Page,” I have been drawn to consider the beginnings of what most consider to be the rudiments of education and, some might say, society, namely, possessing the ability to read and to write. Together, these writings are directions and encouragements for teachers to begin thinking about how they would teach a non-reader and non-writer to become fully effective in both skills. Taken as compliments to each other, this book and article give insights from the practical, procedural perspective and gently admonishes educators to be patient in allowing students to progress properly.

The point that most caught my attention in these writings was Cusumano’s description of the beauty in an apparent skill regression. In the analysis of a child’s writing, the child appears to have misapplied a writing rule she once knew. Cusumano acknowledges that many would assess this as a failed attempt on the child’s part. She is quick to explain, however, that this strange application of a writing convention is actually a moment youthful discovery – that she is in fact, “exploring her limits.”

Cusumano mentioned early in her article that learning to write is much like learning to speak – it is an inventive process on the part of the child, constructing their own understanding from their observations of the world around them. Considering language, reading and writing in this way should offer us as educators a reason, if no a means, for liberating children to explore the rules and limits or writing (and, perhaps to a lesser extent, reading) rather than to have those rules “imposed form without” (Cusumano, 2008).

This idea of allowing children to explore and discover writing rules and to slowly grow into readers (as described in Lyon & Moore, 2003) is wonderful. As an aspiring educator, I have to wonder: what can I do with this?

Cusumano’s consistent emphasis on “enthusiastically accepting” a child’s accomplishments as they move forward in their own learning trajectory is, I believe, at least the very first application of this idea. As educators, we will need to be diligent in remembering that the focus of our work, at least in early reading and writing, is not on our literary pronouncements and rule-instruction but is instead on child-learning. It should be our daily task to remind ourselves that our students are master craftsmen and craftswomen in training and that we are their guides along the way. Finding that balance between self-lead learning and enabling instruction will undoubtedly be a challenge, but that is our charge.

The backside of this lofty idea and wonderful charge, of course, appears to be a good amount of careful planning and consistent assessment. It is easy for me, as a pre-service educator, to continue on about beautiful ideas and ideals, so I hope to remember this next point to keep good ideas in perspective. This means work. The recommendations from both readings are not possible without intentional designs of the teacher. In learning to scaffold phonics learning, Lyon and Moore explain how important it is to understand different the stages of learning and to keep scrupulous records to inform a teacher’s guidance. Cusumano’s approach requires developing a patient heart and a positive eye, all the while being proactive in educating families and the local community about what it means and looks like to read and write. Having spoken to teachers here and there, this necessary work is also work done in our “extra” time, which will sometimes feel like more burden than it is worth. Hopefully we will find perseverance in those moments.

All in all, it is exciting to consider the creativity that goes into learning to read and write at the early stages. We will have the opportunity to guide our students towards the skills and knowledge they will need to go and create the great works which towards which the next generation can aspire. I’m looking forward to the challenge.

Works Cited

Cusumano, K. F. (2008). Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children's Writing. Language Arts , 86 (1), 9-17.

Lyon, A., & Moore, P. (2003). Sound Systems: Explicit, Systematic Phonics in Early Literacy Contexts. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Talk, Text, and Texting

In response to a question posed by Karen Wohlwend on my previous post, I have decided to draw out my thoughts here.

The question posed was whether writing is “just speech written down on paper.”

Writing is not just transcribing speech down on paper. Speech written really only exists in very specific, often academic, contexts (such as in linguistic research) and is often incomprehensible to readers, especially those who do not share the same context. When speaking, people use generalities to refer to things in time and space, drawing on immediate and personal contexts that are not contained in words, speak with extensive filler sounds, stutters, starts and restarts, and with what would be considered a wide-range ungrammaticalities. Writing, at least in its traditional sense, is a completely different animal with different rules and conventions which, in turn, sound stiff and clunky when spoken.

Further, I would say that writing extends beyond writing on paper as well. The obvious example to the point would be our blog posts and the use of "book-machines" like the Amazon's "Kindle." To extend further back in history, with the fear of being overly thorough, much writing has been done on a number of different materials from parchments to stones.

In addition and returning to our more immediate time, Mrs. Wohlwend has alluded to less formal writing on other devices, such as texting on cell phones. I find this to be an inviting thought. I have had frequent conversations with a high school teacher in Newark, NJ who has described her students, who are perennially behind in all their subject areas, as having the potential to text their papers faster than they could type them. I found this an intriguing idea (especially as I am a rather clumsy texter), and was even more drawn in when I gathered that, had she the means, she would actually consider allowing them to submit papers via text – even if only first drafts.

The benefit, naturally, would be drawing out the students already developed ability to communicate in written language. They are able to emote and explain complex ideas and life situations, often with the aide of T9 (which I use extensively). However, the drawback is that “text-talk” is deeply diverged from standard written English and is unintelligible to many readers – especially those who are not fluent in the language of the highly adaptable texting world. This is not to make a value judgment on this kind of writing, but rather to mention one of its weaknesses – inaccessibility. As a teacher, it seems reasonable and appropriate to meet students where they have texting skills and then help them to extend those to write standard American English (if you prefer). Texting certainly can provide some basic, though often technically complicated skills, but I believe these should be a baseline from which to further develop their writing.

I am interested in learning more about your thoughts concerning texting as a writing form and if you know of any resources which address this topic. Are there tools developed and in place to harvest and capitalize on the skills which these learners already have? Are there more benefits you see or reservations you have concerning texting? What are they and how can they be either be used for student benefit or adequately addressed?

Finally, what other forms of writing do you see that are accessible to the upcoming generation which we and former generations may be missing?

Picture URLs:

http://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/istock_writing.jpg

http://www.pvc.maricopa.edu/puma/nov06/teenslang.html

Community Literacy Dig: Playing with Language

Monday morning I was a part of a team conducting a “literacy dig.” As an observation team it was our task to explore, discover and collect different uses of language and literacy in a specific location over the span of approximately one half hour. Our team selected a local playground.

My role was to observe and report moments of speech between people we observed at our location. In other words, my task was to describe how people were saying what to whom.

During the time we spent collecting data I noticed three main ways of communicating between three distinct groups of speakers. The first group of speakers I will be looking at are the children who were at play. The second group of speakers consists of parents, grand-parents and other supervisors on the grounds. The third group contains the members of our research team.

Children’s Communication

“Mommy!”

The most distinct and consistent utterance I observed from the children was the calling out for their mothers and, less frequently, their fathers. The call could be heard over the entire playground at almost any given point in time, spoken with a wide range of emotions.

The two most common uses of “mommy” and “daddy” were in either expressions of excitement or pain and fear. The first half-dozen or so of the “mommy-daddy” tokens were exclamations of delight.

“Mommy, I did it!”

“Hey mom! … I climbed up that thing!”

“Mommy, look at me!”

The second most common instances of what I am calling the “mommy-daddy” token were during moments of pain or frustration. One example of this was where a young boy, around two years old, was standing next to the swing of his choice. Unfortunately the swing hung to high for him, and he saw his swinging prospect depended entirely upon his mother’s participation. Instead walking over to get her attention, he repeatedly called “Mommy!” until she arrived.

Outside of the “mommy-daddy” speech tokens, the most notable language information from children was the consistent focus on the self. In every instance I recorded, the children spoke solely in reference to, in the benefit of and in the direction towards themselves. For instance, one child called out to a group of his newfound friends:

“Come over here guys – come over here!”

Another informed his dad that he was “gonna go up the BIG slide!” – the focus being on him and his goals – and later complained, “I’m hungry. When going down a slide, a child could often be heard saying, “Mommy, look at me!”

The most obvious instance occurred when a boy was seeking the attention of his mother, who was at that time busy caring for her other child who seemed to be in some pain. He was hoping to use some playground apparatus that required an adult’s help.

Boy: “Mom!”

Mother: “Yeah” (other child crying in the background).

Boy: “I need your help with this.”

Mother: “I don’t know about that.”

Boy: “I can not… I can not do this [task] now [without your help].”

[no response]

Boy: “Mom, you can help me do something now.”

Mother: “I can’t totally help you right this second…”

The egocentric nature of children’s speech was not that surprising. They are the center of their world (as are we all, at least perceptively) and are still developing not a fuller world context from which to speak.

Adult to Child Communication

I was intrigued by the speech of adults, especially when interacting with the children. Adults would speak to children in ways that acknowledged and affirmed their centeredness. This would usually be coupled with the adoption of their speech and vocabulary, notably the expected “mommy” and “daddy.”

“Hey John, wanna go over here to this one?”

“Wanna go climb? Wanna go climb?”

A Grandfather, while pushing granddaughter on a swing sang a playful, “Aah rigidigikiky-diky.”

Often, in a similarly understanding way, adults would respond to children’s stories and statements with simple “uh-huh” and “okay” fillers, seeming to simply acknowledge that the child had spoken while not addressing the speech content.

In addition to using child accessible language and acknowledging their speech, many of the adults gave children directions in the form of questions. Instead of speaking directly and saying, “Jenny, we are leaving in five minutes,” one father told his swinging daughter:

“Hey, we’re going in three minutes, okay?”

In another instance, a father seeking to encourage his daughter to go play in another area spoke a gentle:

“You wanna swing? You wanna swing next to her?”

The first of the final two uses of language between children and adults is where adults were directing children to a particular parent, saying things like:

“Your mommy is over here.”

“That’s a daddy job.”

It is interesting again to note that the adults used words like “mommy” and “daddy,” where normal adult speech does not include these words with the same frequency.

The last use of adult to child language was in the form of reprimand, speaking in bold declaratives to attract the attention and obedience of the children.

“That’s enough, Jimmy!”

Adult to Adult Communication

The last use of language on the playground transpired in interactions between adults. Almost all speech in this context revolved around the children or child related ideas or activities. For instance, in one interaction, two grandparents were discussing a swing set:

Grandfather: “You go ahead and push

Grandmother: “Why they would put slick seats on swings, I just don’t know…”

[moments later the child nearly fell from her swing, being steadied by the grandfather]

Grandfather: “[I’m] glad I listened to you, for once!”

Finally, I captured a moment when one of the members of our research team was asking permission to photograph a child. She used language that was very different from the informal, child-like language and was more proper and deferential.

“Excuse me – I’m doing a project for class and I was wondering if I could take a picture.”

All in all I found that language use at this playground was largely informal and child-centered. With few exceptions adults would use language accessible to children when speaking to and (often) about them. Above all, the cry “mommy,” is the constant and ringing theme of the our morning’s playground music.