Professional Reading Reflection #3

Book Synopsis #3:  Inside Out ch. 4  “Getting it Down”

I.  Two objectives when teaching writers:  put off correctness

1. Build a feeling of confidence; make students feel successful
2. Help students find a voice / style by placing an emphasis on fluency, often through expressive personal writing        
3. EX: Bring in a photograph that is important to you and write about it
4. “Too often we demand that students write about subjects about which they care little (and sometimes know less) and we forbid them to use their own natural voices.  Then we immediately search out every mistake, large and small, that they make writing within these narrow restrictions.  And we worry that our students don’t seem to have anything interesting to say, and that they despise writing”  (45).

II. The Journal

1. The student writer needs to write every day.
2. Develops fluency and eradicates fear
3. Need an audience with specific comments, not corrections
4. Journals are skimmed and given comments;  credit or no credit grading

III.  Activities to Help Students Build Fluency

1. Freewriting (writing without stopping or thinking for 10 min.) / Freewriting with music or poetry
2. Quickies 5 min; half page (prompts in book), Movie Sound Track videos
3. Memory Writing using vivid verbs and concrete details
4. Then and Now exercise;  Here and Now exercise (4 words and explanation)
5. Verbal photos (creating a portrait with words)
6. CIA:  eavesdropping and recording dialogue; Portrait (observation of a student who doesn’t know he’s the subject)
7. Walking Compositions; Sensory Tour; Listening to a Place; Cemetery as a Classroom
8. The Name Piece:  explore each name (jot list) name chart and share                         
9. EX: Tobias Wolf The Boy’s Life
10. Life Maps:  careful drawings of important events in life

IV.  Final Thoughts

1. Make students keep the authority for writing; not rely on teacher for ideas:  Writing belongs to the writer
2. Writers may steal from each other; simulate effects unconsciously

I think the author makes a good point when he outlines many of the reasons students fail to meet our expectations with regard to writing.  Perhaps, beginning and placing an emphasis on personal writing will help students develop fluency.  However, that does not change the fact that in high school, most of the writing on which we focus is expository.  Colleges frequently tell us not to spend so much time on narrative, creative writing and instead focus on teaching academic topics as preparation for higher education.

Some of these activity ideas are relevant and will help students to become more fluent in their writing.  I do use journals on a weekly basis to explore different writing prompts, often relevant to literature.  I could see using some of these other activities as well, but not many of them, as only quarter one is devoted to narrative writing.