My Reading and Writing Process

The abilities to read and write do not naturally develop in students. Both are the product of learning separate but similar processes. Reading processes help students sustain reading by solving words, monitoring and correcting, gathering information, predicting, maintaining fluency, adjusting to different types of texts. Other processes in reading help students to expand upon the meaning of text. These processes include predicting, making connections and inferences, synthesizing, analyzing, and critiquing (Fountas & Pinnell, 2001). These processes help readers understand and apply concepts that they have read. For writing, processes flow back and forth between prewriting, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing work (Fletcher & Portalupi, 2001).

Processes in both reading and writing require students to solve words, maintain fluency, make adjustments and corrections, analyze, critique, and synthesize. While students benefit from being introduced to each of these processes, it is important for educators to remember that each individual will approach reading and writing processes in different ways. Students will excel in some parts of each process, but struggle with others. As an educator, it is important for me to identify how I approach reading and writing processes, along with my struggles and how to address them.

As a reader, I find that I experience different reading processes depending on what I’m reading. For most types of reading, I experience a majority of the processes used to sustain reading. These processes, including solving words, gathering, and maintaining fluency, help me to comprehend what I read. Of the processes used to sustain reading, I find monitoring and correcting the most frustrating. As a newly married individual who teaches full time, and attends grad school, I easily lose track of monitoring my reading as my mind fatigues or wanders to other responsibilities that may require my attention. Often, I will find myself dozing off in a book, or reading page after page, only to realize I remember nothing of what I read. One can imagine that this is frustrating. As I continue to acknowledge this area of frustration, I also look for ways to address it. One thing I try to do when I lose track of my reading, is take a break. Forcing myself to continue reading will not benefit me. Taking a mental and physical break, and returning to re-read the parts I lost track of can help me to better understand what I was too tired or distracted to initially understand.

I notice that I use varying processes to expand meaning of text depending on what my purpose for reading is. For example, I will go through the process of summarizing something I have read if my purpose in reading is to share new information with someone. If I read an educational publication or research about teaching strategies, I will often summarize what I have read to share with my colleagues. The process of analyzing and synthesizing also proves useful when reading educational publications. After reading, I will analyze how a particular article’s suggestions will work in my classroom. I synthesize information when I try to apply what I have read to my classroom. When I read non-education related text, such as cooking magazines, or how-to columns for arts and crafts, I can take what I have read and try to re-create it. These are just a few ways reading processes play out in my day-to-day life.

Similar to my reading processes, I find that my writing process changes depending on what I am writing. When I write for personal purposes, such as in a journal, I may pre-write, or I may just draft. Depending on my mood, my journal entries can consist of stream of consciousness writing, which has no topical focus, to an entry focused on a specific thought or idea that has been floating around in my mind. However, when I write a more formal piece, such as an individualized education plan, work that will be presented to colleagues, or work for graduate school, I pursue a more formal process. In my more formal writing process, I almost always pre-write by brainstorming, researching, and creating a sketch, or outline or my finished piece. Next I write a draft. As I draft, though, I move back and forth to pre-writing, finding new research when I need more information, or jotting down ideas in my outline as they come to me. For me, drafting also involves revising. Every so often, as I draft, I stop, re-read what I’ve written, add, change, and omit, and then continue drafting. Over time, I have been able to comfortably transition between these three parts of my writing process. After I am through with these first three steps, I usually ask my husband to proofread it for me. Once he has done that, I publish it, usually by sharing it with classmates or colleagues, posting it to a blog, or turning it in as an assignment.

Proofreading is the most difficult part of the process for me. One reason for this is that I tend to be in a hurry to just publish a piece, and I feel inconvenienced by the fact that I have to go back and re-read my entire work before I publish it. My coping strategy for this has been to ask my husband to read through to look for mechanical and grammatical errors. However, I am beginning to realize the necessity of proofing my own work in addition to having someone else proof it. Regardless of how skilled my husband is at proofreading my work, he can never approach editing my paper with the full knowledge of my intentions for writing it. Also, taking the time to re-read my own pieces helps me become more familiar with my own writing.

After analyzing my reading and writing processes, I can see that I am living proof that these processes are not linear or restricting. Reading processes do not all apply to all situations for all readers, just as writing processes are not applied the same in all writing situations for all writers. Understanding my reading and writing processes can help me emphasize the reality of individual reading and writing processes to my students. Acknowledging my struggles with these processes can help me empathize with the struggles my students face in developing their own processes.


Reference List

Fletcher, R. & Portalupi, J. (2001). Writing workshop: The essential guide. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Fountas, I. C. & Pinnell, G. S. (2001). Guiding readers and writers: Teaching comprehension, genre, and content literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Quotent Quotables

A living list of quotes that have inspired me.

"I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live."
~Francoise Sagan

"What we write is written to be read."
~P. David Pearson

"Make your choice, adventurous Stranger; strike the bell and bide the danger, or wonder till it drives you mad, what would have followed if you had."
~C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew
 
"If you can't laugh at yourself, life's gonna seem a whole lot longer than you'd like."
~Sam, Garden State
 
"If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vane; if I can ease one life from aching, or cool one pain, or help one fainting robin unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain."
~Emily Dickinson
 
"A life has to move, or it stagnates."
~Beryl Markham, West with the Night
 
"What shall we do to be saved? The answer is in four letters."
~Aldous Huxley, Island

Brainstorm List

A few ideas for my own personal writing:

• food that I make or want to make
• Fargo (my dog)
• bicycles
• places I want to eat
• cities I've visited
• cities I want to visit
• things that frustrate me
• things that make me happy
• house hunting
• teaching
• traveling

The Writing Process

This week in class, we are learning about the recursiveness of the writing process.  I made a representation of the process on Prezi.  Check it out!

Fun Games for Sight Word Cards

I found some printable Dolch sight word cards here.  My team printed of a ton in on different colored paper for parents to take home from parent teacher conferences.  We also had the following sight word activities on a handout readily available for them:

After you grab your cards, here are some fun ways to use them!

1. Use the color word cards to label colors you find around the house.

2. Use one color card and glue it to a sheet of paper. Use old magazines to find pictures of that color and glue onto your sheet. Do this for each color, attach them together, and make a book!

3. Choose a sight word card and read a story together. Using the card as a visual clue for the child, make a funny noise every time he/she sees the word.

4. Use the cards like flashcards and run through the cards until your child is a whiz at these words.

5. For older children, put the words in alphabetical order.

6. Print out a set of word cards for each child, set them up 3×3 or 4×4 and play bingo.

7. Using the word cards as your guide, use the letter cards from before to spell out each word.

8. Count the number of letters in each word. Label it using your number cards.

9. Laminate the cards or put them in plastic badge holders. Trace the words with write-on/wipe-off crayons.

10. Using the card as your guide, write the first letter of the word on the first line of paper. Then continue on the next line with the first two letter; third line, first three letters until the word is complete.

11. Lay out all the cards on a table face up. Call out a word. Race to see who can find it first, or if playing with one, use a stopwatch to see how fast the card is found.

12. Play hopscotch! Lay one card in each square. You have to read the word before you can jump and land in that square.

13. Using the cards as your guide, write the words on a chalkboard, a dry erase board, or paper. Write them first with a dark color, then trace over it in different colors.

14. Build the words out of blocks, dough, or finger food!

15. Using the card as your guide and your index finger, write the word on a friend’s back. Can they guess the word?

16. Print out several copies of the words and play Go Fish!

17. Give the child an old book or magazine and a highlighter. Using the cards, find and highlight words in text.

18. Print two copies of the word cards and play the memory game. You have to say the word when you find the match.

19. Practice out loud. Say the word on the card, spell it, then say it again…all out loud.

20. Sort the cards by number of letters. Which words have 2 letters? 3? Which word has the most letters?

A Snapshot of Strategies for Processing Text

I'd like to make this into something I can hang in my office at school...

• Sustaining Reading
• Solving Words
• Monitoring and Connecting
• Gathering
• Predicting
• Maintaining Fluency
• Adjusting

• Expanding Meaning
• Making Connections (personal, world, text)
• Inferring
• Summarizing
• Synthesizing
• Analysing
• Critiquing

Authentic Writing- Persuasive Essay

Writing is a classroom activity that can often cause students to be apprehensive. It involves several components such as ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions (Fisher & Frey, 2003). Balancing all of these components at once can be daunting for a student. As an educator, teaching these writing elements in a formulaic way can cause confusion for students, sometimes discouraging students from wanting to write. However, if teachers provide authentic writing experiences, they will see their students attempting a number of relevant writing experiences outside of required classroom based writing. Allowing authentic writing also gives students the opportunity to express their creativity through writing. Finally, students who are provided with authentic writing opportunities learn to become better writers.

Often, when students are asked to approach writing in a formulaic way, they are usually asked to write about things they experience within the classroom. For example, students are often asked to write about a book they read in class, or a science or social studies lesson. Since classrooms consist of a variety of individuals, it is wrong of teachers to assume that every student will take away the same message from the same lesson. When teachers formulaically narrow writing down to a few aspects of a topic that was taught, they limit the students ability to show their real learning of that given topic. In other words, “teachers decide what is taught, students decide what is learned” (Fletcher & Portalupi, 2001). With authentic writing, students have the opportunity to show what they understood and found important in content lessons. Collecting authentically written pieces from students can also help teachers get an idea of how well classroom lessons were learned. Using authentic writing in this way benefits both the teacher and the pupil.

Authentic writing experiences also help foster creativity within students. While formulaic writing causes young writer to conform, authentic experiences allow students to explore their interests and exercise their creative ability (Angelillo, 2006). When students write about things that spark their own imagination, they begin to build confidence in their own unique writing style, and begin to develop their own voice. Teachers can encourage this creativity by providing motivation and materials that spark the creative flame within their students. Through authentic writing, students can be introduced to new topics and new literature that they otherwise would have missed in a more formulaic model. Authentic experiences can create an interest in writing, and also allow students to take ownership of the things they write.

Finally, when students are given authentic writing experiences, they learn to become better writers. Sometimes, an authentic writing approach is identified as an approach with minimal instruction. However, both authentic and formulaic writing approaches come with an instruction component. In both approaches, students learn about writing processes, different types of writing, and editing skills. Authentic writing, however, allows for teachers to reinforce these skills based on student needs (Fletcher & Portalupi, 2001). In authentic writing, students are given a small amount of whole-class instruction each day, and during writing time, students engage in conferences that can reinforce skills that they learned throughout writing class. During these conferences, individual writers meet with a teacher or a peer to review their writing, and discuss ways to revise it. Teachers can use these authentic experiences to provide individualized writing instruction to a student based on her needs.

When teaching writing, teachers should strive to provide as many authentic writing opportunities to their students as possible. Authentic writing opportunities allow students to explore their school-based learning, display their creativity, and learn to become better overall writers. By allowing authentic writing experiences rather that formulaic ones, students will be more engaged in writing, minimizing apprehension, and fostering a healthy classroom environment for young writers.


Reference List

Angelillo, J. (2006). Prompt writing vs. workshop writing. In Writing to the prompt. Retrieved from http://www.davidson.k12.nc.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=28230

Fletcher, R. & Portalupi, J. (2001). Writing workshop: The essential guide. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2003). Scaffolded writing instruction: Teaching with a gradual-release framework. New York, NY: Scholastic.