Random Notebook Thoughts About Writing

Sharing some recent, random notebook entries concerned with writing. Hope they stir some thoughts...



Open My Notebook 

Uncover the pen

Above the expectant page

Lower it confidently

To make contact with the unmarked surface

And before that first line is barely dry

The next is nudging it's way out.


Alan j Wright


Curriculum As A Guide

You can choose to teach according to curriculum (or school based mandates), adopting a tick the box mentality, or you can  teach according to what you know about the particular needs of learners. Without doubt, the difference is significant, the impact lingering! Blindly adhering to curriculum mandates does not make your pedagogy authentic. Let curriculum inform your work, but never let it ‘be’ your work. It must be shaped to fit the learning needs of learners.


Writer's Notebook Freedom

Stories still reach my ears of schools where Writer's Notebooks are being presented to students in ways that unintentionally limit their potential to influence and inform the developing writer. Notebooks possess the potential to be more than depositories of 'seed' ideas, lists and Y charts. The notebook offers the young writer a safe space to find their stride. It should offer freedom to expand, discover and grow their words given time and encouragement. The writer's notebook is a collection zone for a broad range of entries, a place to launch writing, not merely consider it.


Process

Process goals are the things the writer wants to get done during that day’s writing time, such as writing a certain number of words or completing a section of their notebook. Children who lack these process strategies are likely to find writing frustrating and difficult. Therefore, it is important for teachers to model and scaffold these strategies for their students and help them develop their own writing habits and routines.


Go in search of more poems by that poet

  • that style
  • that topic

Ask yourself could I write a poem like that?

List poems

Rhyming verse

Narrative verse

Rhyming Couplets

Repetition 

Syllable poems - haiku, tanka, etheree, nonet

Ekphrastic poems

Golden Shovel poems

...we've barely scratched the surface!


Genre approaches 

I have a growing concern regarding the way genre is presented in our schools. It is too frequently presented like a template the inexperienced writer needs to follow. Genres appear in stand alone terms as if they are siloed. Today I read some of Beverly Derewianka's research and writing on genre study. Beverly says, 'A functional approach to language does not advocate teaching about language by handing down prescriptive recipes. Rather it is concerned with providing information about the development of effective texts for particular purposes.' 

There is a vast difference in the approach being advocated here.


Conferring 

Too often kids think a ‘writing conference’ is where the teacher ‘fixes’ your writing. The notion of a conversation between two writers needs to be at the heart of a conference. Encourage writers to request a conference when needed rather than foisting one upon them.

Empowerment of writers is the end game. If young writers come to a conference with a considered view of the help they feel they need, that’s such a great way to open the ‘conversation.’


Alan j Wright


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