Tag: Lucy Calkins

Good Morning, Little Writers!: Conferring in 1st Grade

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Every Tuesday morning, I start my day in writing workshop with 1st graders.  This week, they have been composing narratives about fall. Almost everyone is on their final drafts. Almost everyone, but M., who hasn’t even yet begun. These are the kind of writers I have the privilege to support.  I love this challenge.  I love to figure what these small writers need and build a road map with them to set them off on their long writing journey.

The best way to illustrate my conference time with this young writer is to write down our conversation.  As the conference begins, I think of all the experts who helped me become a writing teacher: Calkins, Graves, Murray, Fletcher, Andersen.  Their advice whirls around my head.  I take a deep breath, relax, and remember most of all to be present to this little writer in front of me.

Me: So M., do you know what you want to write about?

M. : Yes! PUMPKINS!

Me: Fabulous! Have you made a plan?

M.: (shaking her head) What’s that?

Me: You know.  A web – those sheet with the circle in the center and the lines.

M.: Like a spider.

Me: Yes – spider paper.

M.: No. I don’t know how to.

Me: Here, I’ll show you.  Let’s make a simple plan – beginning, middle, end.

M. sits down with me at the table in the back of her classroom. I turn over her story template and list on the back – B – M – E.

Me: What happens in the beginning?

M.: I am at the pumpkin patch and I find a GIANT pumpkin.

I write her words down.  She watches me intently.  I go slowly modeling how to think and write and sound words out.

Me: So, then what happens next?

M.: The pumpkin is too BIG.  It’s too heavy.  I can’t pick it up! It is ENORMOUS! (M. holds her arms out in front of her making a large circle).

Me: You can’t pick it up? What do you do next?

M.: I look around and I find a smaller pumpkin. I pick that one up and bring it home to make pumpkin pie.

Me: Fantastic! Now, tell me your story again out loud.

M. tells me her pumpkin story from beginning to end.  She is giggling and dancing with excitement.  She is ready to write.  I turn over the planning paper and M. picks up her pencil to begin.  This is where the heavy lifting begins.

M.: “One day I went to the pumpkin patch. “ How do you spell pumpkin?

Me: Let’s stretch it out.

M.: p-u-m-k-i-n.

Me: p-u-m-p-k-i-n.

M. writes “pumpkin.” Then asks how to spell “patch.”

Me: Let’s stretch it out.

M.: p-a-ch

Me: p-a-t-ch

M. write out “patch.” She continues with her story – writing, pausing, stretching the words she’s unsure of, and happy in the process. At times, she starts telling me other stories as she writes, and I have to redirect her.  Six sentences are hard work for this writer, but she perseveres joyfully. All of a sudden, M. stops and turns her smiling face to me six inches from my nose.

M.: You are fun! I need to have a playdate with you!

Me: (laughing) M. keep writing.

M.: I love you! You are my favorite teacher!  You are the best! (She says with wild exuberance thrusting her hands toward my face and sticking one finger up my nose).

I lurch backwards and laugh.  This is why I teach. Children have such heart and spirit.  They are fearless to show how they feel.  This moment in time will sustain me all week.  I am grateful to M.

M.: How do you spell pumpkin?

Me: Well M., you have written it four times already in your story. Let’s look back and see how it’s spelled.

M.: Okay! (she says cheerfully).

M. continues and is finally finished.  She is so excited that she’s made a story.  She gleefully reads it aloud to me.  I clap and cheer on this young author.  What have M. and I learned this morning in writers workshop?  I think M. learned: it’s good to have a plan; a story has a beginning, middle, and end; you can stretch out words to help you spell; and it’s fun to share your stories with a friend. What I learned and was reminded to do was to trust the young writer, slow down, listen, support, repeat, repeat, repeat, and be joyful in the process.

Books from Writing Experts

  1. …And with a Light Touch: Learning About Reading, Writing, and Teaching with First Graders by Carol Avery and Donald Graves
  2. Assessing Writers by Carl Anderson
  3. A Writer Teaches Writing by Donald M. Murray
  4. How’s it Going?: A Practical Guide for Conferring with Student Writers by Carl Anderson
  5. Joy Write: Cultivating High-Impact, Low-Stakes Writing by Ralph Fletcher
  6. Teaching Writing by Lucy Calkins
  7. The Art of Teaching Writing by Lucy Calkins
  8. Writing: Teachers and Children at Work by Donald Graves
  9. What a Writer Needs by Ralph Fletcher
  10. Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide by Ralph Fletcher

Here I Am!: Conferring with Student Writers

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There are many things I love and enjoy about teaching – presenting concepts, sharing ideas, being witness to creativity and discovery, but the one thing that is most important to me is connection.  I know that connection is key to student understanding.  Without connection there are just untethered ideas.  And that is why I absolutely love the time I get to sit down with student writers and talk about their work. Many teachers are not comfortable with this part of writing workshop. They are tentative.  They are not sure what to say.  They focus on errors in grammar or spelling to guide them, instead of homing in on the content and meaning.  In Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide, Ralph Fletcher and Jo Ann Portalupi note that, “We should expect plenty of failure: false starts, blank pages, misspellings, and so on.  Failure is an integral part of how people learn.  But we also need to build on their strengths – take notice of and celebrate a great work, sudden twist, surprising image…” Teachers might, indeed, start by asking students to create an “I can be” list.  In this way, the children can explore and ponder all the possibilities that lay ahead of them.

Fletcher and Portalupi suggest that these questions might help you “read” the student you’re working with: 

  • What can I learn from her body language?  Does she seem “up” and engaged, or listless and bored?
  • What kind of writing is she attempting? Is it a poem?  Fiction story?  Personal narrative?  Information piece?  Notebook entry?
  • Where is she in the process?  Has she just begun, or is she almost finished?
  • Is this a genre she has never before tried?
  • What are her strengths as a writer?
  • What is she ready to learn?
  • What surprises me about the student?

In order to promote reflection and make conference time more productive, teachers might ask a student to re-read her writing before the conference.  Ask the student to put an asterisk next to the place in her writing where the writing worked well. Then ask her to put a circle in the margin next to the place where the writing needs more work.  This will help to shorten and focus conference time, and build the scaffolding needed for the student to become an independent and confident writer.

The most important job of the teacher during writing conferences is to listen intently to the student-writer.  Try to put everything out of your mind and be present as a listener. Think about how the student’s writing is affecting you, and then let her know how her words have moved you.  Do not focus on errors and weaknesses.  Rather, give specific, concrete praise: colorful details, a funny moment, a surprise ending.  As Lucy Calkins says: “Teach the writer, not the writing.”  Give the student one strategy to add to her repertoire of writing skills.  In this way, she’s not just fixing this one piece; she now has an extra tool to use on all her writing!

A number of years ago, I read Katherine Bomer’s book, Hidden Gems: Naming and Teaching from the Brilliance in Every Student’s Writing.  Bomer urges teachers to search for hidden gems in student writing by focusing on author style, purpose, and language, rather than concentrating on mistakes. She encourages teachers to make conferences celebrations of student writing: “My hope is that as teachers we can respond to all students’ writing with astonished, appreciative, awe-struck eyes.”

As a Curriculum Coordinator, I no longer have my own band of fearless writers, as I did when I was a classroom teacher. Now, I have to invite myself into classrooms and talk to students about their work.  Teachers are happy to share their conferring time and I get to see students in all stages of writing development: from the Kindergartener who diligently labels her drawing, to a 2nd grader who is learning to add dialogue within a complicated fairy tale variant, to a 3rd grader who is constructing a speech using biographical information, to a 5th grader experimenting with forms of poetry.  I wonder at the complexity that writing entails, and I am now beginning to fully understand why writing takes time and patience and presence.

This week I was once again reminded of the importance of being present – of stopping what I was doing – and listen.  I was reading through the students’ submissions to our literary magazine, Spark.  I nodded, I smiled, and I laughed out loud.  The children boldly put their thoughts and feelings on paper in the form of poems, letters, stories and articles.  They chose pieces that were important to them.  They chose pieces that whirled them away into fantasy and pieces that sunk them back down into COVID reality. As I was reading, I gasped as I came across this gem from a 5th grade writer.  This skinny little, brave poem stood up and demanded to be recognized.   I read it again to myself.  Then, I read it aloud and said, “Wow! Now there’s a poet!”

This poem stands up straight and speaks for itself.  I couldn’t wait to talk to the student-poet.  I couldn’t wait to tell her how much I connected with the poem – how important it was.  The next day, I came into school early, hoping to catch Chelsea before classes started.  I found her in her classroom organizing her desk, and I motioned for her to meet me in the hall.  She looked a little surprised and I added, “You are not in trouble.  I have something wonderful to share with you.”  She came out into the hall, and I told her how much her poem meant to me and how powerful it was.  I told her that I was putting it at the very end of the magazine because it was so very powerful that I wanted to end the magazine on a strong note.  I could see her smiling behind her mask, and I was so glad I took a few minutes to connect with her face to face.  Then we went on with our separate days until I got home later that night and found this waiting in my email inbox.

There is no doubt that Chelsea is a writer – no doubt that her strong opinions and emotions will enlighten the world.   And there is no doubt that connecting with student writers is of the utmost importance. Writing is so much more that spelling, grammar, and punctuation – those skills will come in time.  But the students’ lives and how they express their experiences help them better understand and cope with this swirling world around us.  Take a moment.  Sit down. Listen.

Books About Teaching Writing

  1. A Fresh Look at Writing by Donald Graves
  2. After the End: Teaching Learning Creative Revision by Barry Lane
  3. A Time for Wonder: Reading and Writing in the Primary Grades by Georgia Heard
  4. Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School by Georgia Heard
  5. Craft Lessons by Fletcher and Portalupi
  6. Day by Day: Refining Writing Workshop Through 180 Days of Reflective Practice by Ruth Ayres and Stacey Shubitz
  7. For the Good of the Earth and the Sun by Georgia Heard
  8. Hidden Gems: Naming and Teaching from the Brilliance in Every Student’s Writing by Katherine Bomer
  9. How’s it Going?  A Practical Guide to Conferring with Student Writers by Carl Anderson
  10. In Pictures and In Words: Teaching the Qualities of Good Writing Through Illustration Study by Katie Wood Ray
  11. Inside Writing:  How to Teach the Details of Craft by Donald Graves and Penny Kittle
  12. Revision Toolbox by Georgia Heard
  13. Study Driven: A Framework for Planning Units of Study in the Writing Workshop by Katie Wood Ray
  14. Teaching the Qualities of Writing by JoAnn Portalupi and Ralph Fletcher
  15. The Art of Teaching Writing by Lucy Calkins
  16. The Journey is Everything by Katherine Bomer
  17. Writing: Teachers and Children at Work by Donald Graves
  18. Writing Workshop:  The Essential Guide by Fletcher and Portalupi

Magic on the Page: Encouraging Reluctant Writers

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Magic on the Page
 
Big round, brown eyes
Are looking up at me;
They are brimmed with tears.
“I don’t know what to write,”
The little girl before me whispers.
I pause and breathe,
Calm everything inside me
Until my breath and hers are one.
“Well, you are supposed to tell about a memory.”
There is a vigorous shaking
Of her dark curls from side to side,
“No. I can’t remember anything.”
“A birthday? A holiday?”
I offer in hopeful expectation.
“No. Nothing.  I started but I can’t,”
She says, pushing her paper towards me.
Let’s think,” I say slowly, patiently.
“How about something you love?
What do you love?” I ask.
Her smooth young forehead furrows,
“UNICORNS,” she exclaims.
There is now a twinkle in her wet eyes.
“Unicorns. Most certainly,” I say.
Soon she is sitting among the others,
Busily scrawling words upon her page:
Sky… rainbows… fly… fairies…soar… sparkle…
The magic has begun.

Usually, I write the narrative and then add a poem when constructing my latest blog posts.  This time, I started with the poem because it came to me all at once after working with a group of 2nd grade writers.  The assignment was part of our fall writing assessments to create an on-demand narrative piece from a prompt.  The prompt was to write about a favorite memory from 1st grade. We had talked and brainstormed about favorite 1st grade memories, and then they began to create writing web plan.  Everyone was primed and ready to write.  The classroom was a quiet buzz of pencils on paper.  I navigated between desks that were set six feet apart.  I monitored from a safe distance.  I started to write my own piece to show students they were not alone in working through the writing process.

A few minutes passed when Avani got up and walked over to me with her plan in hand, her eyes brimming with tears.  My mind started to move into action what were all the strategies I knew about how to deal with reluctant writers?  What do you do when someone gets stuck in her writing?  How do you help her keep her pencil moving? How do you grow confidence, support without taking over?  All these thoughts raced in my mind.  All the while, I looked in those big round brown eyes.  I knew the first think I must do was to stay calm and build trust.

In the past, the students would turn and talk and tell their stories to their writing partners before they started to write.  This time, I conducted the lesson as a whole class with only a couple of students sharing because COVID restrictions made partner sharing very difficult, if not impossible.  Students partners would have been shouting their stories six feet apart.  So we made accommodations and moved forward. Everyone seemed to have an idea of what to do and was busily creating a web of ideas, and then one go stuck.  She had her plan filled out but started writing about something else.

She saw the plan and the story as two different things.  I had never had a student do that.  Usually, they have trouble thinking of a topic or sequencing a story or adding details to make the moment come alive. This writer thought the plan and the story were two different entities.  When I suggested a place in her web where she could start her story, she said that the web idea was not the story she wanted to tell. So I asked her to tell me the story she had in her mind.  She said she wasn’t sure but the story in the plan was not the story, and she started to cry.  The story plan was about Halloween.  So I asked Avani if she wanted to continue to write about Halloween. She was silent.  When I asked her again, she looked at me fiercely and said that she was thinking.  I gave her a little time but she began to fiddle with the eraser on her pencil, and I was afraid I was going to lose her.

“Avani, if you didn’t write about Halloween, what would you write about? What do you love?” I asked her.

Her eyes lit up, “Unicorns,” she said brightly.

Then write about unicorns,” I said.

She looked at me questioningly, “I can change my plan?” she asked

“Yes, of course, if it isn’t working, change it.”

“But then I have to write another plan now?” she asked.

“Oh!” I began to understand.  Avani took time to write a plan.  The plan didn’t work out and now she had to start at square one again.  Her stamina was waning.

I knew that trust and flexibility were key.  I told Avani to go back to her seat and just start writing her unicorn story.  Away she went, wiping her eyes.  Soon the purple and pink unicorns were flying across the page.  Magic had been restored.

When I teach writing, I have an arsenal of teaching strategies and moves I use depending on the situation.  This arsenal includes the ideas and books of some of America’s best writing teachers.  I stand on the shoulders of these giants so that my students, with pencil in hand, can reach for the stars or the flying unicorns, whatever the case may be!

Great Books about Teaching Writing:

And some picture books about writing: