Drivel

This evening, Tisa and I drove up to Merced while listening to Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil, which had this strange part where the narrator reads a play with the two title characters discussing a pear. It was incredibly descriptive, if a little overwrought, but I enjoyed the description because it helped me imagine the role I would like writing to play in my classroom. I'd like to start including "Writer's Workshops" in my classroom. This is the result of several things...

Two weeks ago, I read an article about hands-on learning in The Atlantic. The article talked about the students who competed in an annual showcase for innovation, emphasizing learning by doing philosophy in the classroom. It made me slightly sad; I began my career as a teacher with the intention of developing a hands-on approach to teaching students. I even wanted to work at an educational learning camp similar to CELP, which is apparently not spelled "Kelp" as I always imagined it. It's really frustrating trying to meet the needs of my current school environment due to the focus on Standardized Testing. I believe that standardized testing has actually made me a worse teacher... I am trying so hard to gear my lessons towards the tests that it is taking away from some of the interactive learning environment that I originally envisioned. Reading this helped me start questioning what I was currently doing in the classroom.

So, I'd like to try to give my students a slight sense of "learning by doing" in my classroom. Specifically, Tisa and I talked about using writer's workshop as an experiential learning model for teaching writing. Here's what I imagine it looking like:

1. Each block class, I'll have students write for roughly 20 minutes (at first, perhaps increasing the duration to 30 minutes or so later in the year).
2. I'll try to map out the year with a different writing genre each month, similar to the genres outlined by Kelly Gallagher (descriptive, comparison, argumentative, expository, narrative, etc.).
   
3. I'll try to provide one strong example of the genre to help begin the month (like using the piece by Yann Martel to introduce descriptive writing).
   
4. Students will write a minimum of two pages per week (roughly a page per day)
5. They'll keep all the writing of the unit in a portfolio folder.
6. I'll introduce multiple ways follow up activities as we go... peer editing, revision, read alouds, etc., so that each day, students can choose what they want to do after the reading.
   
7. They'll pick one piece of writing to revise and publish at the end of the month.
   
8. As we go through the month, I'll pull student samples to show them how to make writing interesting and unique.
9. And I'll use the sample texts to also highlight grammatical usage such as semi-colons, parallelism, and repetition for effect.
   
10. And overall, I'll just try to foster an appreciation for valuing one's own writing as a process for developing thought and presenting one's unique perspective to an audience.
    

Well, I'm going to try it out. It's tough to reconcile my desire for student success on standardized tests with a model that's more flexible than the typical standards based lesson. But, this is a good year to try it out as it will be my last year with Green Dot. And based on the abysmal jump in Far Below Basic kids I had last year despite my thoughts that it was the best teaching year I'd had so far. It makes sense to try something new this year.