Do things the "write" way...

In this quest to re-design my classroom curriculum, I attended a workshop by Kelly Gallagher.  For those of you who are not educators or who may not be literacy teachers, Kelly Gallagher is a high school ELA (English/Language Arts) teacher in Anaheim, California.  He is also an author of professional development texts on the subjects of reading and writing who travels the country speaking to teachers about these subjects.

I attended this session knowing that I would be implementing the writing workshop in my classroom.  I needed some new ideas to help my students see the value in writing.  Mr. Gallagher spoke specifically to that topic. It was as if Fate herself knew what I needed to hear that day!

Now, it is confession time...usually when I am at PD, I'm busy checking my Facebook and Instagram, or I'm doodling on my note page...basically, I'm THAT kid (you know the one) in a grown-up body.  If you are not giving me new, interesting and relevant information...I'm tuned out.  Kelly Gallagher was so interesting and everything he said was so ON POINT with my journey as an educator that I actually didn't notice when we went OVER the usually time allowance!  During this 6 hours of PD, I took a whopping 6 pages of notes and began 3 narratives.  I would have had more notes, but I couldn't write as fast as he was giving information.  It was amazing!!
The focus of his workshop was "what makes kids better writers?"  He had 4 main topics that he said improves writing:

• Volume - They have to write a lot.  Students need to have and opportunity to write many, many ungraded, un-pressured writing. 
• Choice - This goes back to volume somewhat.  They need lots of opportunities to write about things that interest them!  This needs to be with the understanding that not all writing has to be done "just to get a grade".  
• Modeling - Students need to see examples of good writing.  They need to read like writers.  They need to see the teacher struggle a little and go through the process herself so that they understand that it is not a "once and done" process.
• Conferring - Students need feedback on their writing DURING the writing...not at the end.  They need just one or two things at a time to work on within the writing piece.  Bombarding them with red ink just discourages the process.

So, what does this have to do with your child?  Well, simply put, this made so much sense to me.  It was like going to church!  I am implementing these 4 things into my classroom so that I can (hopefully) develop a love of writing within my students.  If not a love, then at least an appreciation.  I want students to understand that there are different types of writing genres, just like there are reading genres.  

This is a learning process for me, as well as for the students.  I am hoping that some of my passion and love for literacy will rub off on the students and they will continue to grow exponentially.

I hope this gives you a little more insight into my classroom philosophy.  Feel free to email me or Remind message me any questions.

Happy reading-