Final Reflection of the ENG 204 Course

       Thanks to this ENG 204 Course I rediscovered my passion for reading and writing for both aesthetic and efferent purposes. I am now intrinsically motivated to get my 60+ poems out of a big, brown, wrinkled envelope and to use all the knowledge gained about the writing process -from prewriting to publishing- to enable me to discover my "diamonds" in the rough. A decade of procrastination to have my work critiqued by creative writers, and the like has come to a grinding halt.
       Despite the fact that there was some drilling involved in the classroom sessions as well as one-track thinking by some of my counterparts, my lecturer's teaching style has restructured my mode of thinking about how English Language should be taught. I am inspired to want to teach English Language in a more engaging way with students at the forefront , using social interactionist and constructivist learning approaches with the use of behaviourism sparingly. I now understand why there is just no getting away from direct teaching in the classroom sometimes. I am even more convinced that students need to take responsibility for their own learning and it is my job to tap into their metacognitive thought processes (as my lecturer demonstrated to us) to expell ideas that are looming in their heads that are of value to their learning to become independent readers and writers.

I created a list of key words that should come to every student's mind when approaching the writing process from beginning through to the end.

1. THINK/ (ENVISION)

2.DISCOVER

3.EXPLORE

4.CREATE

5.QUESTION

6.DISCUSS/SHARE

7.INTEGRATE

8.CHANGE (MODIFY)

9. STRIVE

10. SUCCESS (CELEBRATE)

Summarily, this was a life changing experience that does not end here-theory has to be put into practice in the near and not to distant future.

To all  fellow ENG 204 bloggers, subscribers, friends and family,

I bid you a heartfelt farewell. Without your comments and views my inspiration to write for an audience would not have flourished as much as it did.

Sincerely


Jueanne Cherubin

Unit 5-The Reading-Writing Connection

SUMMARY OF THE READING-WRITING CONNECTION

       Writer's workshop uses the literature-based approach to foster the reading-writing connection in students.Generally,  reading precedes writing and as we write we read. But why should writer's do this?What purpose are they aiming to achieve? What is the teacher's role in all of this?The answer is that teachers need to foster the reading-writing connection in students because it leads students to create writing pieces with the audience in mind and in the guise of a writer.In essence, when students realize that they write for readers and readers write because of writers their attitude toward the writing process will be forever changed.The literature that is used during classroom sessions or writer's workshop serve as models of writing in particular genres. Students are reading to learn so that they can make informed decisions about satisfying the needs (efferent, aesthetic etc) of the reader as they write.While reading students take note of effective uses of writing conventions, organisation (for e.g elements of a short story), presentation techniques (work that it error free in terms of font size, spacing etc), text features  (italics, illustrations, captions, quotations etc), text structures (cause and effect, description, problem-solution etc) and ideas and content (using 5 senses to add descriptive detail that shows and does not tell) among other things.However, there is need to move away from the basal readers and other literary texts to allow students to analyse samples of their writing and that of their peers. This has the benefit of students wanting to read aloud their essays to a peer or the whole class so that they can refine their ideas, identify structural gaps in their writing etc based on feedback generated from their audience  (teacher and classmates).Both shared reading and writing promotes discourse, build learner confidence and generate positive and negative feedback.  For this reason, peer editing and revising is an important component of the writer's workshop model.
     
       Reading evokes psycho-social and cognitive responses in the reader. Through reader response activities that require written expression students get opportunity to analyze and explore meaning of text; discover implicit meaning and to communicate meaning to others.Hence, it is assume that better readers become better writers and better writers become better readers.Examples of writing tools to process reading include: learning logs, reading logs, graphic organizers, note-taking and summarizing. However, the teacher in fulfilling the role as facilitator and guide rather than "sage on the stage",will use the gradual release of responsibility model to facilitate the use of any of the aforementioned reader response tools. Firstly, the teacher models the use of the tool using authentic samples; students can follow along with similar tools,come up to blackboard to   fill in details, respond to questions about tools etc. Rules can be provided implicitly through questioning or explicitly through brief note-taking or recall. Thereafter, teacher places students in small groups or pairs to try out what has been taught. She monitors and provides guidance while students work together. Thirdly, it is only when the teacher is satisfied with demonstrated performance of requisite skills that students need to work independently, would scaffolding be removed and independent practice begins. The only foreseen obstacles in implementing any of the above is lack of materials but students can be encouraged to make their own graphic organizers in a drawing book (they will retain information better as it is their own as opposed to teacher giving them computer-made graphic organizers).Yet another option is to encourage students to use scrap paper from offices or to form groups of three or four  to buy one packet of computer paper to create the graphic organizers as well as learning logs.

Unit 4: Activity 4-Participation in a Writer's Workshop

Reflection of my participation in a 

on First Steps in Writing

As a self-directed learner, this was not my very first virtual writer's workshop. I discovered very early on in this course that one of the best ways to improve my professional practice was to view videos on teacher educational sites and YouTube which showed me practical application of concepts in real life-the classroom. The only difference with this one and the rest was that I have viewed was the conditions and frame of mind. I  am more knowledgeable about the writing process than I was back then and so I was viewing from a critical perspective rather than an "all accepting" perspective. I also had a legal pad, taking bullet points of information which I later coded. I coded the information that I gathered as (1) beliefs about writing I already know, (2) concepts in writing that sparked my imagination because they informed practice. I tried to get another data category but to no avail.

I found the following lists of beliefs or ideas about writing to correspond with that held by the NCTE, based on reflections on the NCTE Position Statement of Beliefs about Writing contributed by me and my peers via writing (a blog entry) and orally through class discussion.

BELIEFS ABOUT WRITING CONTRIBUTED BY TEACHERS IN A VIRTUAL WRITER’S WORKSHOP THAT ALIGN WITH THAT OF THE NCTE

-The role of the teacher in the classroom during writing periods is to foster writing for purposeful communication during students’ adolescent life and in preparation for entering the world of work. Students need to know that writing suits informal and formal contexts and thus there is always the need to “say what you mean and to know how to say what you mean.” -Writing should occur with intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is needed to find one’s voice in writing as well as personal style. There is no such thing as writing for the teacher. As teachers our role is to help students find their individual inspirations for writing so that writing is authentic –relates to students personal view of creative expression and not an empty piece which reflects a template or “writing for writing sake” -Writing conferences (peer-to-peer and student-teacher) are effective means of addressing individual student needs. At the writer's conference student's affective filter is very low so they are more receptive of corrective feedback than the regular classroom environment. In these conferences there is a targeted and progressive approach to improving student performance in writing which includes the writer setting personal goals to improve writing products at various stages in the writing process.Guidance is received from a peer tutor or the teacher every step of the way in making the writing better so that the major goal of independence in writing will come to fruition after scaffolding is removed. -Reading is a quintessential part of writing. This is because published pieces of writing and students' own samples of writing provide models about what is acceptable and unacceptable in any specific writing genre based on the 6 traits of writing.Furthermore, reading provides inspiration to write because it can paint pictures of what writer's want to write, provide evidence for argument based writing, delimit a topic, promote discourse about the topic and surrounding issues when planning to write among other reasons. More importantly, it has been purported that a great writer is a great reader and a great reader is a great writer- reading and writing use similar cognitive processing to make sense of meaning and promote understanding. -Good writer's practice, practice, practice. We are not all born with an innate capacity to write using the process approach. Development of the writing craft therefore needs to be nurtured both within and outside the classroom environment. With lots of practice there is more development of creative expression by wanting to experiment with and discover new writing techniques that work well with specific genres. Expert writers take risks in their writing to find their unique voice while novice writers are less critical of their craft and as a result do not develop their craft beyond a certain point and tend to sound like "everyone else".

I also reflected on the multiplicity of reasons why students need to write for both academic and aesthetic purposes based on classroom knowledge and additional research conducted.

REASONS WHY STUDENTS SHOULD WRITE

empowerment to challenge society's orthodoxies promote freedom of expression promote personal satisfaction in developing communicative competence achieves concreteness in thought process (permanent records) fosters metacognitive development builds self confidence/self awareness/self-discovery develops higher order critical thinking skills (reasoning, critiquing etc) promotes social discourse

IN SESSION



In this section I compiled various segments of the writer's workshop that would help me with practical application of the knowledge that I have acquired in this course.

FREEDOM OF CHOICE IN SELECTING TOPICS FOR ESSAY WRITING

Guided by Schuman's planning pyramid I will accommodate for diversity in the classroom when selecting topics for shared writing in the whole classroom environment. I will endeavour not to  choose topics that only some or  few students can write about but those that all students should be able to write about based on collective experiences. I can tap into what some or few writers can write about during individual student-teacher conference, portfolio assessment and the like.

REVISION DOES NOT MEAN A SEARCH FOR IMPERFECTIONS

If students complete the editing process thoroughly enough then there will be no need for them to still try to be fixing mechanical errors in their writing when they are revising. Hence, the reason why editing should precede editing when the teacher models the writing process (although with practice the two can be done in  tandem).

I like the idea of having students construct Venn Diagrams to demonstrate that they understand the similarities and differences between editing and revising as opposed to giving them peer and self editing or revising checklists and assume that the mental conditioning is already there for the students to use them effectively.

WRITING PRINCIPLES DON"T CHANGE TO SUIT STUDENTS

In a classroom of diversity in language ability, cognitive ability, social and cultural experiences. There is no such thing as  modifying writing principles for e.g grammar rules to suit any particular group or individual students. However, as trained teachers we can apply our knowledge about differentiated instruction by making  accommodations for the learners using appropriate teaching strategies and teaching materials.

"RIFTING ON A WORD"

Part of teaching students creative expression is to teach students the denotative and connotative meanings of words. This helps very much with descriptive writing. The word "bomb" was used to create individual  poem using the writing strategy called free writing. Bomb can mean "terrorist bombs" in planes and dropped on buildings, "dropping the bomb" about an unfaithful partner, "suicide bomber" and the list goes on. This is great to promote discourse in writing and not only written expression. Students learn how to add flavour to writing by showing and not telling only when describing images, events, characters and so forth.

QUICK WRITES RATHER THAN LONGER PIECES OF PROCESS WRITING

Students need practice in writing in various genres and opportunities to share the writing with others. Quick writes focus on dominant characteristics of a particular writing genre but don't focus on writing mechanics. Quick writes promote critical thinking and are popular with students due to immediacy of feedback from peers or teacher.It also lessens teachers workload of evaluating full essays of 5 or more paragraphs.There are numerous other advantages to quick writes. Click on the links below for more advantages of quick writes and how to implement them in the classroom.

http://nrhs.nred.org/www/nred_nrhs/site/hosting/Literacy%20Website/Literacy%20Strategy%20Templates/Quick_Write__description.pdf

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson1053/quick_write_draw.pdf

MORE SERIOUS CLASSROOM MATTERS

FOR WRITING

-It is best that a yearly writing plan be made which is broken down into term and weekly plans.

-When planning, the activities in the lesson plans should build momentum in achieving students personal goals. (Of course, teacher needs to find out what these are and make adjustments where necessary)

-Following the curriculum guide, plan all writing genres (narrative, expository, descriptive, argumentative). It is better to overplan than to have never planned at all. This is because the writing genre that was not incorporated into the plan for the term may be the one that sparks a child's imagination. 

-Try to incorporate writing practice into instruction on a daily basis for at least 7 minutes. This can include: film  review, part of  a chapter or unit review, predictions, story retelling for e.g different beginning or ending and the list goes on. This will take the form of small group, large group, whole class and independent activities. However, the rule of thumb still applies that writing needs a stimulus and it occurs after listening,viewing,reading, visually representing and speaking. However since the focus of literacy tends to be reading and writing, writing tends to follow reading in a typical classroom.

-Materials need to be sourced right away as the lessons are planned. This is because the teacher needs to make accommodations for diverse learners in an all inclusive classroom environment."The early bird catches the worm" and it is necessary to avoid other issues such as increased cost as well as inadequate or non-existent supply which may lead to frustration or having to change the lesson's format. 

SETTING 

-Source student friendly writing tools to enable students to get from a place of less confusion to a place of  serenity when planing to write (prewriting stage).

-Not all students will learn just because writing concepts have been taught. Hence, there is need to take records of  students progression throughout the various stages of the writing process and to come up with plan of action that is in tune with students personal goals as well as those that you the teacher has set for them based on the prescribed curriculum. The "Writing Goals" Chart  below identifies specific personal goals of the students in an English language classroom that align with those of the curriculum.

AIDING STUDENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONAL WRITING GOALS

EXAMPLES OF GUIDING QUESTIONS TO AID STUDENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPECIFIC WRITING GOALS

• How do you intend to revise this piece?
• What are the qualities of a good piece of  "X genre " of writing?
• Can you tell us about your best piece of writing?
• What topics would you like to write about this term?
• What type of feedback helps you to make corrections?

Rule of thumb: Teachers should periodically assess whether individual student goals have been met during the course of the term.

TEACHERS SHOULD BE REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONERS

• Teachers are encouraged to join the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) to network with English language teachers all around tho have similar goals which are accomplished in different ways. Professional conversations, professional workshops (face-to-face and virtual), teacher blogs, classroom videos of teaching strategies in action, teaching aids developed by teachers for teachers are some of the perks of becoming a free member of the NCTE. (I am already a member and receive regular e-mails specific to my professional development as an English Language teacher).
• Professional courses are not hosted by reading and writing groups in St.Lucia unfortunately. If there are any it is organized by Ministry of Education for teachers to network from all over the island for a two week period. This is not a regular occurrence throughout the year. 
• Despite a lack of professional courses available free of charge to  St.Lucian teachers there are still creative writers and dramatists who are willing to assist in a professional capacity.( I plan to visit a few of them about the possibility of publishing my poems). There are also group such as "Headphunk" that promote the performing arts inclusive of stand up comedy and poetry. Teachers who are practicing writers can take advantage of these free opportunities for hands on experience in practicing the content that is taught to students.
• In the pursuit of developing "top-of-mind awareness" of the English language curriculum requirements, the school's, students' and a teacher's personal goals there is need to network with members of the English language department at the school that a teacher is employed.

The aforementioned  can take place at a negotiated  time  for e.g two hours each week after school day has ended.  The English language Head of Department should be a regular participant in those meetings to keep abreast of the issues facing the English language department in meeting needs of diverse classroom populations- especially in light of  meager resources provided for teaching of English language as compared to content area subjects. The teachers will discuss their strengths and weakness in meeting challenges that are unique to teaching English language. There is a whole hour for  brainstorming and demonstrating effective teaching strategies that have been tried and tested by novice, emergent and expert teachers. Other times there will be writer's workshop where only the improvement of students' performance in writing is on the agenda.Resource persons can also be invited to those departmental meetings.In developing such a high level of support for each other "behind chambers", teachers should be provided with the opportunity to co-teach or exchange expertise with teachers at the same grade level. In this way addressing strengths and weaknesses in teaching of writing can be examined from a global as opposed to just a localized perspective i.e.the teacher' s classes only.Teaching is indeed not a solitary act.

Unit 4: Activity 3-Types/Purposes of Graphic organizers for Writing

(1) The Spider Graphic Organizer

Spider graphic organizers are useful to help students understand how main ideas can have several related ideas or issues. The details associated with these ideas are displayed on the organizer as well.

(2) Herring /Fish Bone Organizer

The Fish bone organizer is a great tool for students to organize ideas about the text structures: cause and effect and problem/solution that are common to expository writing. Students learn that one effect (outcome) can have several causes and  likewise, one problem can have several solutions.

(3) The Storyboard/Chain of Events Graphic Organizer

This graphic organizer enables students to ascertain a logical flow of ideas for narrative and descriptive types of writing. It can also be used to describe process in expository writing. The aim of this approach is to get students to realize the importance of structural coherence to the reader. The reader who is kept in mind should not get lost or confused during reading  or be left hanging due to gaps in the story or irrelevant details.

(4) Venn Diagram Graphic Organizer

Venn Diagrams are used to compare and contrast seemingly dissimilar ideas. They also single out overlapping ideas.This is a very popular graphic organizer among secondary school students in St.Lucia because it is normally introduced to students during Mathematics class in Grade 8 or 9 when covering the topic of Sets in Algebra.  Since most students would have already been familiar with it, then teacher may have students demonstrate knowledge of how to use it much more than him or her doing so during the modelling process for e.g on the blackboard. 

(5) Problem/Solutions Graphic Organizer

This is a great tool for expository writing as deciphering the feasibility of solutions to problems becomes a much easier task through visual representation. It also prevents one-track thinking. It is suitable for use in paired, small group or independent activities. Organizing tool for higher order activities such as debates and panel discussions which provide structured ideas for writing.

(6) Cycle Graphic Organizer

Useful for reinforcing that parts of  a story link to the rest (events or issues are cyclic). Thus each sentence in a paragraph must be cohesive with the rest to covey intended meaning.All paragraphs must be logically sequenced and structurally coherent so that the story achieves the level of appeal to audience that the writer intended.

(7)Cluster Graphic Organizer

I see clustering for brainstorming about a topic to be a whole class or large group activity because the aim is for students to understand how diverse perspectives on issues, events, categories and items can be grouped based on similarities that correspond to the main idea. This can generate a lot of discussion and justification of group choices and how they relate to main idea, as well as assessing whether interrelationships between constituents of each cluster as true or false. I see this as time consuming, tedious process which is not suitable for below average or some average learners because it requires critical thought process which may be lacking in these types of learners.

(8) The Compare/Contrast Graphic Organizer

I do not like this graphic organizer. I find the Venn Diagram to be more representative of a tool for comparing and contrasting.  Nevertheless, I could make a hybrid of the two whereby  I insert all those tabs in the left hemisphere, the intersection and the right hemisphere of the Venn Diagram to give students more space to write their ideas and to improve the neatness of their presentation.

(9)The KWL Graphic Organizer

The KWL chart is a very popular graphic organizer which uses questioning strategies to tap into students metacognition about planning for their first draft. Since it uses the questioning strategy it i suitable for multiple writing genres.The first two categories What do I already know about this subject  and What do I want to learn about this subject  are for use before reading or discussion about subject student wants to write about. The last category is for use after reading or discussion i.e. What did I learn about this subject. I would modify this chart though to include the "H" (for use after reading or discussion) which stands for How will you learn more about this subject.Some students may want to do additional research like consulting a dictionary, thesaurus, conducting online search etc to re/define their topics and to get more information to clarify level of understanding and meaning about the topic and its pertinent issues.

(10)The 5Ws and an H Graphic Organizer

The questioning strategy to organize logical, sequential and cohesive thoughts is the central premise of this graphic organizer. It asks the same sort of questions that news reporters ask to cover all the relevant details of a story they are covering or an interview conducted. This graphic organizer is useful for students to use in multiple writing genres.It works especially well for narrative (character development, plot development etc) and descriptive writing (logical sequencing of an event as it happens using sensory details, hovering over space and giving descriptive detail from various angles).  It can also be used for authentic assessment of students writing in the planning stages so that the teacher knows that the student is going on the right track.

KNOWING WHY AND HOW TO USE GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS IN THE CLASSROOM

• Graphic organizers are best known for planning writing (prewriting stage) but not for revising.However, Tierney and Pearson (1984) purport that students can revise better if they can see clearly what they are revising.
• Furthermore, students reading skills may inhibit their ability to revise in a text-based modality and thus with visual representation, the process of revising becomes more engaging and easier for the student.

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE CRAFT OF AN EXPERT VS A POOR WRITER

AN EXPERT WRITER  USES KNOWLEDGE TRANSFORMATION  STRATEGIES Is aware of the overall plan and goals for writing which they develop within the constraints (boundaries) of their writing .

A POOR WRITER USES KNOWLEDGE TELLING STRATEGIES Writing is reflective of the writer’s trend of thought  and suggests that the writer has little knowledge of the impact of mental processes that reader goes through as their product is being read.

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN HOW EXPERT VS POOR READERS REVISE THEIR CRAFT

EXPERT WRITERS	POOR WRITERS
Organize, cluster and establish relationships between thoughts and ideas. Their schema contains prior knowledge to aid in this process.	Do not organize, cluster or establish relationships between thoughts and ideas. Their schema does not contain prior knowledge to aid in this process.
Diagnose problems in their writing and make an effort to fix them in the order of global (below the surface) to local (surface errors). However, if lots of problems surface are willing to rewrite the entire paper	Diagnose problems and do not attempt to fix them. They consequently rewrite from a more local perspective where they focus on fixing surface errors.
Flexible processing –Use standard and unconventional approaches to get a more balanced view  (insight) into their writing	Lack innovation in cognitive processing. They simply decode words and use default interpretations to get a balanced view of their writing.

Flower, Hayes,Carey, Schriver and Stratman (1986)

In examining the table above of the revising processes that expert and poor writers engage in, it is evident that expert writers have some knowledge of the use of graphic organizers. The poor writers on the other hand may have no knowledge or have some knowledge which they cannot apply effectively.This plays a big part in the quality of writing that has been produced by these two groups.

GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS AS A VIABLE CHOICE IN SCAFFOLDING REVISION

PERCEPTUAL PROPERTIES

Offloading a “dumptruck” of thoughts and ideas, re-representation and delimitation may help students to better see what they need to revise.

-Tree diagrams, fish bone and matrices have perceptual properties because they provide concise categories of ideas into main ideas, sub-ideas, with explicit interrelationships between them. All information that is required for processing is easily located on such diagrams.

-Outlines or matrices don’t address global but local revision (on the surface). When one fact is found, the other is likely to be located next to it.

-Venn Diagrams facilitate global revision by allowing the writer to compare and contrast ideas or details. -Overall, diagrams provide readers with spatial representations that are often difficult to derive from text only. This is because readers are able to reorganize info in novel ways (Clegarty, Carpenter and Just, 1991)


ADVANTAGES

-Opportunity is provided to reduce cognitive load  i.e. " freedom from  demands of constructing well formed and coherent text" which leads to students ability to concentrate on "comparing, diagnosing and operating" what they want to write concerning the rhetorical problem they wish to answer (Flower and Hayes, 1981)

-Clear representation of the writing plan can lead to better essays. This is because studies have shown positive correlation between the quality of the writing plan and essay scores. Plans that are organized , structured and have beginner and intermediate levels of responses have higher mean essay scores while  plans which are well elaborated including a brief summary of the topic have the highest mean essay scores (Lee, 2007)

FRAMEWORK FOR MULTIPLE REPRESENTATIONS OF GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

DESIGN             Number­-Should be sufficient to meet the level of complexity of the text. Form-Students need to understand the relatedness of ideas in the graphic organizers before they can be used for revision. Task inappropriate graphic organizers interfere with students ’mental conditioning that  graphic organizers can be used to improve difficulties experienced in writing. Information-Information should be distributed coherently, sequentially and should enable formulation of choices when students translate information from one type of representation to another . Sequence-mirrors logical cognitive processing in structuring writing according to genre. Translation­- It should not be difficult for students to read whatever they have from  their diagrams. This is important so that the teacher or peers can understand where their writing plan is headed. It is also important to be able to transfer that information onto another type of representation with ease.

FUNCTION Complementary-Graphic organizers complement each other when they differ in terms of the processes each supports or the information contained. Constraining- Explicit instruction, familiar representation is introduced prior to unfamiliar representations so that students can learn by analyzing. Constructing-Learners integrate information from various representations to construct new knowledge that would be difficult to achieve with only one representation.

COGNITIVE TASK/FEEDBACK -Some of the cognitive activities presented by using graphic organizers are extraneous in nature and are consequently not directed at schema acquisition, however feedback can make the situation much better. Benefits of feedback -exposes students to  a variety of writing styles (Harris and Graham, 1996) -provides practice in distinguishing between useful and useless feedback (Harris, 1992) -the latter helps to build up students declarative and procedural knowledge and metacognitive awareness so  that they will be equipped to evaluate their own writing in the future (Lee, 2007) -feedback from peers or teacher provides students with a mental model of readers resulting in increased awareness of  incongruities between how their ideas are expressed and how the reader perceives those ideas (Schriver, 1992; Berg, 1999)

FOR EFFECTIVE USE OF GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS AS A REVISION TOOL

• Students would have put in a lot of effort to rewrite drafts based on peer or teacher feedback at revision sessions. Therefore there should be  an effort to have revision sessions not only for the first draft but subsequent drafts as well.At these sessions students would be more willing to reread their essays as comfort level between them and their peers increases over time.
• The type and complexity of the tasks students need to perform will determine the distribution of information in graphic organizers. Argumentative writing builds one argument on the basis of another and so complementary and constraining functions are very important . The use of the text structure cause and effect in an expository piece would lend itself to the constructing function.
• Students should be allowed to generate the graphic organizers themselves . Teacher constructed graphic organizers ="sage on the stage" and affect the depth of students' cognitive processing. For e.g. The teacher may have assumed different prior knowledge from the students and  oversimplified the comprehension process by focusing on basic declarative knowledge of facts.
• Students need to be trained in using graphic organizers following the gradual release of responsibility model (teacher models, students work in small groups, teacher monitors and gives advice, scaffolding removed when level of competence or benchmark reached, independent practice follows). If this fails to happen students will have clouded judgement about their usefulness and may be susceptible to making costly errors in their use.
• Training familiarizes students with form and function of the organizers. That previous knowledge of what to look for next when using organizers and where to look for it makes a considerable difference in performance of children who can and cannot use  a particular type of graphic organizer.
• Training and familiarity with graphic organizers is built over a period of time. Ellis (2004) as cited in Lee (2007) suggests that "...students need about 15-20 different meaningful exposures to  a specific graphic organizer before they really begin to understand and internalize it."
• In terms of feedback, it should begin early on in the writing process. Students are generally much more willing to accept comments early in the draft than later when they have already put so much effort into it and having to do immense modification or rewriting frustrates and upsets them. (Ferris, 1995)Furthermore, formative feedback promotes improvement to students' writing by encouraging students to develop their writing skills in multiple genres.

Unit 4: Activity 2-Brainstorming Strategies and 10 Tips for Better Brainstorming

BRAINSTORMING STRATEGIES

SUMMARY

-Brainstorming enables us to harness our metacognitive abilities and to transform the energy generated by that process into written words.

-Brainstorming helps get writing of text in motion regardless of too few ideas or too many ideas

-Brainstorming helps to review a first draft that is a long way from completion.

-Brainstorming can be used by writers of varying proficiencies from novice to expert.

TYPES OF BRAINSTORMING

(1)Free Writing

-Free writing is a free up of internal critique-uninhibited expressions.In free writing there is need to set benchmarks or targets for yourself.

-Tools to facilitate free writing are :

For timing: kitchen timer, alarm clock 

For space: X no. of notebook pages 

Materials: notebook paper, computer paper, sketch pad paper

(2)Listing/Bulleting

Aim to generate a list of words or phrases under a particular topic.Several lists can be generated.

For e.g First list for thesis, Second list for opposite claims. This fosters comparison between ideas.

Advantages of creating lists/bulleting:

(1)Ensures that thesis is solid or grounded

(2) Gather alternative perspectives on the topic

(3) 3 Perspectives-1-Describe it (describe subject in detail) 2-Trace it (trace history or significance of subject) , 3-Map it (What subject is influenced by or related to?)

Advantages

(1) Holistic perspective of ideas; varying angles are more pronounced

(2) Analyze ideas  for interesting relationships

(3) Analyze ideas for mismatches

(4)Cubing allows approaching the topic from 6 different directions

1-Describe it

2-Compare it

3-Associate it

4-Analyze it

5-Apply it

6-Argue for and against it

Cubing lends itself to questioning which is also a brainstorming strategy.

Advantages of cubing:

(1) Create a broader awareness of the topic's complexities

(2) Sharpen focus of what will be done with the topic

(5) Similes technique

------------------is/was/were like----------------------
Just fill in the blanks to refine ideas with vivid, supporting details.

(6) Clustering/Mapping/webbing-The essence of this strategy is to establish groups among a range of ideas. Its like creating order out of chaos.

(7)Thinking Outside the box- Learning is not compartmentalized and therefore previous knowledge from the content areas can help to provide topics to write about in English; may lessen the amount of research that has to be done on the topic and so forth.

(8)Consider purpose and audience-Audience: What do they already know? What do they need to know?

Purpose: Why do you wish to communicate with the audience?-Inform....., Convince......, Describe....

REVIEW OF NEW IDEAS

-When free writing if you can't think of what to say that can be stated too.

 
-Free writing is writing in a state of "nothingness". There will be gems of discoveries-highlight , cut and paste them on an ideas sheet. Filler and unusable thoughts serve the purpose of ascertaining what contradictory or overused ideas are and provide motivation to stop procrastinating and get to serious work. 

-Useful questions to ask when using the cubing strategy, " Do responses suggest anything new about the topic?" or "Can one side of your argument help draft your thesis statement?"

-I was familiar with clustering but not the specific details of implementation. I know now that a large space is needed for e.g. sketch pad paper or blackboard. On this space all associated items are circled. Draw lines of various colours between the clusters that form various types of relationships. Some items are out of a cluster and need to be colour coded. Thereafter, stand away from cluster and try to start forming conclusions about how to approach topic. (What is done with clusters depends on writing needs)


IMPACT ON MY BELIEFS ABOUT TEACHING OF WRITING AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

Reading and writing, require thought and  are interdependent activities. Cognitive processing required to develop understanding and decipher meaning of text occurs both in reading and writing.Hence, in the whole to part graphic organizer. After reading to discover connections between the whole and its constituent parts. We write to relate the not so obvious connections between the parts that were not revealed after having read.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION  OF BRAINSTORMING STRATEGIES

The journalistic questions strategy is useful to establish critical thought processes in writing as well as to establish writing in an authentic classroom environment. With regards to the 5WS and How the teacher will first model interviewing activity and then have students work in pairs to get insight into the effectiveness of their first draft. An alternative is to use a panel discussion technique or sage on a stage game where teacher can collaborate with the rest of students in class in brainstorming. This voluntary participation of teacher as a student  will build learner confidence and trust in suggestions that peers give about making their first draft better.

Tape recorders are obsolete and so voice recorders in the cell phone could be a great tool to carry out interview with an imaginary friend. The voice recorder speaks to the student who can respond orally or in writing to the questions. for e.g. What aspects of your essay must you work on further?; How do you intend to find out more about the topic?

Although research helps to define topic and to gather supporting details or evidence for the main ideas, there is need to teach students via minilesson how to conduct research on the Internet. The guidelines will cover scholarly content, copyright issues, citations etc. This is to make the research process as hassle-free and accurate as possible for students.

Tips for Better Brainstorming

SUMMARY

-A positive teacher attitude toward brain storming activities will filter down to the students and motivate them to be voluntary participants in brain storming sessions. Praise students who thought of a very divergent perspective. Make this a habit and soon children will figure out that brainstorming means generating as many diverse ideas as possible
.

-Topics should be chosen that lend themselves  to many ideas. If that is not the case change it. Also don’t ask children to brainstorm ideas you already know answers too. The children will be able to pick up on your lack of enthusiasm about their ideas.

-When students get stuck on a topic and generate stagnant ideas just move on to a sub- topic that relates to the main topic and come back to some other time.

REVIEW OF NEW IDEAS

-Small every day decisions in the classroom can give students practice in brainstorming before a whole class activity on brainstorming on a difficult topic.

-During read-alouds, hearing the suggested ideas from other students reinforces the importance of ideas and reminds them of that have already been stated.

-Benchmarks or targets can be set to give students the drive to brainstorm

-Teachers should align children's personal experiences  with brainstorming so that directions are sufficient and that learning is more student centered and relevant to every day life.

IMPACT ON MY BELIEFS ABOUT TEACHING OF WRITING AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

Reducing students’ affective filter results in an uninhibited flow of ideas for writing  that can be expressed by brainstorming in pairs for e.g. think pair share, small groups  and whole class groups. However, there are times that thought processes  stagnate because of lack of interest in topic. This is the opportunity for the teacher to devise strategies  to get students to write about  topics that all students can identify with . For e.g. The students will be asked to show and not tell what is  rain. This is accomplished by relating  rain to any of the five senses and using text structures such as cause and effect. for e.g “Rain is the unexpected, thunderous explosion from smoggy, bluish-grey, potbellied clouds, swollen with liquid crystals that is guaranteed to cause a lady, fresh-out from the hair salon, to run as fast as a persecuted squirrel to the nearest  burrow.


RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 10 TIPS FOR BETTER BRAINSTORMING

In a section of students' learning logs they could indicate the metacognitive activities that go into producing journal entries e.g. double entry journals, learning log. This would be authentic practice of brainstorming and if done conscientiously, would become part of student's writing process sooner than later.

Unit 4: Activity 1-Prewriting Strategies

STRATEGIES






Summary

Prewriting is: 

-the scaffolding of a good essay/ writing skills
-the solution to writer's block (being unfocused, anxious, frustrated, blank)
-everything that we do before the first draft (guides writer into outline of possible ideas, topics or comments)
-dynamic and everevolving (changes make it better)
-a means of finding inspiration for writing and to find the calm within to facilitate starting the first draft
(Sources of inspiration for writing include: dreams, the media, personal experience, visual art research)
-important to teachers because it demonstrates how students came upon the main idea and conclusion of their essays.

Developing the topic:

Strategies to help students develop the topic include
(1) Reader Response (Oral or written response to literature that has been read about a certain issue
(2) Listing-Create a list of topics that one feels comfortable writing about-Double space between topics so ideas about topic can be inserted at a later date.
(3) Free Writing-A type of brainstorming where the flow of ideas and thoughts is uninhibited for a specified time frame. In the classroom we can have students free write for 7-10 minutes.It is a means of generating positive criticism that allows students to gauge their progress with the first draft.
Rule of thumb: Never cross out, look back. NO EDITING WHATSOEVER!!! Do not get preoccupied with writing conventions but focus on creating a central focus for the paper.
(4) Questioning-The teacher can ask students question such as:
Are these ideas to broad?
Could your main topic be more specific?
(5)Blindwriting-This is  a type of freewriting. It is best done on the computer and requires that the screen be turned of while computer is still on and then writer types away at his or her fast draft, uninhibited, non-stop for a specified time frame.
(6)Graphic Organizers-They are valuable instructional tools that get students to  visually represent their thoughts and ideas.


ADVANTAGES OF USING GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS 

-Flexible (user has many choices to fulfill the purposes of the writing)

-Show order and completeness of students thought process. Thus, strengths and weaknesses in writing  become apparent

-Dig below the surface of ideas, show inter- relatedness of ideas; allows writer to view ideas from multiple perspectives

N.B.DIFFERENT GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS ARE USED FOR DIFFERENT WRITING STYLES

EXAMPLES OF GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

(1) Chain of events-Depicts in detail actions in a sequential mode. for e.g. What is the character going to do first?

(2) Spider Map-Used to illustrate the central premise.Can b used for topic, concept or theme supported by the main idea that has evidence r clams to support it.

(3) Continuum Graphic Organizer-Displays historical events on a timeline. Students place events in a sequential order from first to last (useful for research papers)

Review of new ideas


-Blindwriting is a means of getting rid of writer's block because it turns of the language monitor in the left side of the brain. It is this monitor which makes us think that our ideas are not good for e.g "What is this crap that I have written?"

-We list and brainstorm to generate ideas and then create graphic organizers to organize our ideas.

-It is the graphic organizers that help to prioritize main ideas because lists cannot allow the writer to perceive interrelationships between ideas for the first draft.

-Questioning helps students to focus on specific ideas while writing ( 5Ws-who, what, where, when, why) and how and can resolve problems encountered in creating a first draft.

Impact on my beliefs about teaching of writing and implications for practice

-If students are not taught to organize their thoughts before they write they will ramble and keep going around in circles in their writing. We want students to present writing products that are precise and focused on satisfying the needs of the reader for specific genres.
-Graphic organizers foster the reading-writing connection because they can be used before, during and after reading and structure ideas in such a way that the relationships between them can be revealed explicitly rather than implicitly as in text-based mode.
-Graphic organizers cater to the learning needs of visual learners in particular because they may have problems in formulating a topic. They can then see and write out what is deeply embedded in their deepest thoughts. Gives all students a visual image of their thoughts which can be obscured by relating them in text format only.
-I always enjoy asking students probing questions because it helps them with cognitive offload. I want to know what my students are thinking so that students can help each other as well as myself through provision of positive feedback/criticism.The diverse perspective also helps students learn to respect diverse ideas and this is an important principle in fostering a learning community of writers.

Recommendations for implementation of prewriting strategies

• There should always be a stimulus for writing before students can prewrite.

• The teacher can make use of information gathered from interest inventory to give students lists of topics they can brainstorm about.

• Prewriting strategies need to be modeled before students can be expected to use them.The gradual release of responsibility model will be used for this . Modelling first, then group work and monitoring from class teacher, followed by independent practice when students have thoroughly understood the concepts and are ready to try it out on their own.