Chapter 2: Start With Celebration

On page 20, Regie Routman quoted Don Graves from his book, Writing: Teachers and Children At Work. In this quote, Mr. Graves talks about how important it is for teachers to help children not lose their "positive I-am-a-writer spirit". I guess I want to make sure that I am NOT the teacher that unknowingly removes the desire of my students to write. This chapter has inspired me to make writing even more fun than ever!

Today, when we wrote in class, I told the students that they could visit for 10 minutes with each other about their writing and to get ideas to make their writing even better. They were excited about it! The interesting thing was they visited about 5 minutes and were ready to start writing. I just smiled. :)

On page 24, Ms. Routman talks about being a scribe for a student that just couldn't seem to write. I was happy to hear that as recently I wrote a story for a student as he dictated to me. Once, he began to do that, he was excited and wrote a pretty good story. I have not had to do that again for him...

I also enjoyed "Take a Leap of Faith" on page 30. I loved the fact that the first grade teacher complimented the student on just writing, Happy Thanksgiving. What a smart teacher! It certainly paid off in the end. I am already seeing a difference on how I approach writing with my students. :)

Chapter 1: Simplify the Teaching of Writing

In this chapter, I felt a sense of relief and encouragement as Regie Routman explains that her purpose for writing the book was to "make writing easier, more manageable, and more fun." I think that it is important for teachers to seriously explore how writing is taught in their classrooms. How much time DOES get wasted during writing time and are the students truly enjoying what they are writing? Within the text titled "12 Writing Essentials for All Grade Levels" on page 13, I was very encouraged by the fifth essential called embrace language. In my classroom, I have enjoyed playing with words by using various nouns, verbs and adjectives in activities and working with descriptive language such as similes to make writing more intriguing and interesting.

I like the idea of simplifying my writing instruction and concentrating on the pure enjoyment of writing!