Jumping Through Hoops

Some of my kids think of writing as just jumping through hoops, with no passion for how writing can elicit thoughts and feelings you did not know you had, until the pen moved, and no thrill for the magic of words, or even the opportunity to express their opinion. (Jumping through hoops is how I approach drudgery tasks like online applications, or taking the garbage and recycling bins up to the top of our steep and long driveway.  Not much passion). 

So I have to be careful when I say things like "use 3 supporting details" because I risk they will see that as just another hoop, instead of a guideline to prevent rambly writing, or dimly supported topic sentences.

I read over 100 postings on several teacher forums this week, about teaching writing.  The gist of the discussions was:

• Kids need a lot of variety of forms to practice writing
• It takes an inordinate amount of time and organization to teach writing
• The good teachers read papers and journals all night and all weekend

 I searched for what to do with the kids who aren't keeping up, yet the answer to the nit picky, struggling writer questions was basically just to have them write more, and more often.  Well, haven't we been there; done that. Funny how our kids don't say, "Oh thanks ________ (insert significant adult's name here)!  I am going to sit over there right now and write up a storm!"  Telling these guys to just write more can be like telling a dieter to just go to the gym more. It's another hoop to resist jumping through! 

Microscopic assignments,  a sentence a day, a comic a day, a line of a song.  Tiny pieces of writing to keep that part of the brain alive.  Word Games. Written notes to said parents or guardians convincing them to let them go ________ or do __________.  I know a parent who is currently holding her ground on letting her 12-year old son get a cell phone, UNLESS he writes a persuasive letter that convinces her otherwise.  I saw his first attempt and it was meek and unconvincing.  "Take 2".  He is attempting a second draft.

A healthy hoop to jump through.

Healthy Thanksgiving Wishes,

Kendra

Summarizing

So..... I come upon another study about the value of one-on-one instruction, in a blog by a local neuropsychologist couple

Eide Neurolearning Blog

The Eides create this blog for parents and practitioners, and I admire them for their Harvard-based intellect and therapeutic compassion.  They assess and work with kids like those that I work with, and we all advocate for kids - pressing schools to customize themselves enough for the nuances that come with the territory.
I have met them at conferences and for coffee, and they are humble yet geeky, quirky, yet cheeky.  Kinda like me.

So this week I hit a wall with my gifted 4th grader who is absolutely struggling to write book summaries.

Okay, I am supposed to insert a cute graphic or another link, if i am to follow blog protocol, but I am going to rebel against the blog experts.

Dates

I have to figure out how to get my posts in the right order....they have found their own non-sequential way of stacking themselves, much like my budding writers have their sentences all over the place.

One-on-One Time

SIGH...

If I could bottle patience and sell myself a 12-pack I would do it right away. Peddle it to Costco. I feel so frustrated with the slow progress of:

a) Schools, in the systemic changes necessary to meet the individual needs of kids

b) My movement on writing my book and marketing my private practice in an ongoing way

c) Some of my students who seem “flat line” in their reading or writing progress

Other tutors talk about this last one, too. The intensity of intervention that is needed is something the average family does not have the time or money for. So I plug along with my once-a-week sessions packing what I can into that hour and praying that the daily practice happens. Parents are so taxed, often with both of them working, and managing stress in the most creative ways they can, plus doing what they can for their child, that my good ideas often float into the section of the brain called “information overload.”

All the research points to intervention, and specially-designed instruction, and monitoring response to the interventions, with high levels of precision, a wealth of materials, and astute teacher knowledge. Schools don't quite have the resources to meet up with the criteria that the research has revealed the importance of.

Teachers know what they need more of to be good writing instructors: TIME. Just to sit down one-on-one with their students and have the luxury to discuss their writing. The adults I talk to who are good writers, or at least don't resist it (!), can name at least one, if not a few, teachers who took that time, and inspired them to express their insides onto the outside, with words.

At the ADD Conference I attended this weekend I discovered that there is actually a chemical response to one-on-one attention. Dopamine. It is one of the biggest gifts we can give kids, and in schools that can be rare. So it falls upon me to be that attentional facet that showers them with praise and feedback about their writing, and discipline myself to keep the corrections at a minimum.

I encourage so much “self talk” in my students, but in my present impatient state I need my own, when I get blank stares or “I’m done” attitudes about writing that is seriously skeletal. I tell myself that LD writers have years of frustration behind them, look upon writing as something that taxes their brain, and become more overwhelmed by grammar and spelling than I can begin to imagine. So that self-talk helps me focus on them and come up with something wise to guide them into a next step. And they have less life experience, which leaves some assignments impossible to swallow.

A 6th grader was asked to write about what a day in the life of a caveman might be like. This was after a brief reading from a textbook on the introduction of Prehistoric Times. He was just stuck, and had no rubric, or list of words to include, and no one had asked him what the picture in his head was! We started with that, and it took a lot of word-retrieval tooth pulling to get that out of him, then we brainstormed words, then started an organizer, and our time was up.

Time away from the screen, away from consumerism, away from pressure to produce. And a one-on-one hour with an adult. That will create the next generation of writers.

SHOW Dont TELL

Oh no; it is time to pull out my Luddite hat. I shudder at this hint of the future of the written word.

Technological advances usher in the future of reading

8-1-2010: This Seattle Times article portends a new definition of authoring, publishing, and just what a book really is.

"As electronic reading devices evolve and proliferate, books are increasingly able to talk to readers, quiz them on their grasp of the material, play videos to illustrate a point or connect them with a community of fellow readers...... the distinction between professional and amateur writers is rapidly blurring.

I already have students that wear the "minimalist" hat proudly, and I work diligently to help them expand and flesh out the details. This article implies that their models for excellent writing are narrowing.

What I fight against is those minimalist's insistence that the paragraph is fine the way it is. They look at their teachers, and me, like we are dumb, and like can't I figure out, from their 6 sentences, what they did at day camp. They are masters at what I call "throw-it-out-there" sentences. Classic TELL, not SHOW, sentences.

We did some stuff with clay.
We beat the red team after lunch.

The counselor guy told jokes.

and the most painful....

It was really fun.

So I roll up my sleeves, and point out their "SHOW, dont' TELL" tip sheet I have given them in their writing folder (that they bring back and forth to sessions). They walk through the revision process with me, and then I am able to say, "Okay, now we have a mini movie of your day camp in the short paragraph."


All Kinds Of Minds (aka Mel Levine) has a summer blog series and here is a pertinent one:

Unfortunately, there are only TWO tips given, but I have broken it down much more, after realizing that the writing process is ever-so-mystifying to kids. The ones who struggle hardly EVER see a need to revise.

August 3, 2010

The Role of Higher Order Cognition in Revising Written Work

Students may stop at the end of a sentence, reread what they have written, and decide there is a better word to express what they want to say. They may find places where they need to add more description or rearrange sentences.

Revising can happen at any time during the writing process. Some students spontaneously revise while they are writing. In school, students are often asked to reflect on what they’ve written after they finish their first draft – a task that can be challenging for many students. These students often focus on fixing punctuation and spelling rather than enhancing the content.

To revise, students must first detect that there is something to change and then know how to change it. Considerations include audience, grammar rules, appropriate levels of detail, and clarity of expression, just to name a few. Revising written work is a multifaceted challenge, in terms of both academic skills and neurodevelopmental functions.

Neurodevelopmental factors:

This skill of revising – adding content and new ideas to a story or report changing a word, being more descriptive, re-ordering sentences, or inserting a new paragraph – requires students’ language and higher order cognition to be working well. In this post, we’ll focus on the higher order cognition demands – specifically, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving.

Students need to be creative and brainstorm new ideas when revising their writing. They also need to think critically about what information they need to cut and what they need to add – what will make the information most effective for the reader. Writing can be interpreted as a problem-solving task: The topic or assignment is the “problem,” and students need to “solve” the problem by producing a written piece that addresses the topic or assignment. Revising is a critical step in ensuring the quality of the end product, or the effectiveness of the “solution.”

Here are some possible signs that a student is succeeding with the higher order cognition demands of writing:

The student …

• comes up with original, engaging ideas to share through their writing
• is able to evaluate written material for problem areas such as clarity, relevance to the topic at hand, level of detail, logical sequence, etc.
• includes highly imaginative ideas in their stories
• chooses words that are appropriate for the targeted reader
• is capable of identifying problems with a writing passage and taking appropriate steps to resolve problems

Here are some possible signs that a student is struggling with the higher order cognition demands of writing:

The student …

• has trouble choosing a topic to write about or using imagination to generate an engaging story or report
• asks many questions about what to do to enhance their writing, e.g. which passages need revisions, how to address problems with the written work, etc.
• generates better written work when allowed to collaborate with a peer or conference with a teacher
• does not logically think through potential ways of resolving a problem, instead pursuing the first thing that comes to mind

Strategies to help students struggling with revising written work:

• Have students break the revising process into steps, beginning with going through and marking the places where they need to add or change information. Students can use different colored pencils, pens, or stickers to mark where they need to make changes. For example, green could be where they need to think of some new words, yellow for where they should add more details, blue where they need to move a sentence, etc.
• When having students work together as peer editors, first model the process and types of question they should ask. Provide students with a list of questions that they can ask the writer and example sentence starters for providing feedback. For example, “I really liked it when you said…”