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!
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3 comments:
I agree with you Carol. We need to take a serious look at how we can simplify the teaching of writing. I believe your teams have started to do that by creating the "big ideas" under each of the six traits. That shared language can help all of us create balanced writers. Writers that don't just focus on conventions! We just need to WRITE, WRITE, WRITE!
Great thoughts Carol. I loved your affirmation of playing with words. Don't you love similies! I'm not sure if you have ever used the spelling lists in our reading series, but I am amazed at the boring sentences they use on the word lists. Rarely, do they use adjectives in front of nouns. When we go over the word list I ask for volunteers to give me an adjective to put in front of the noun. They love to do this because they see how the sentence comes alive. They get a picture in their head.
Julie G.
You are a great writer Carol. I felt the "voice" in your words. I so agree that how we teach writing has to be uncluttered and we need to find the joy in writing with our students.
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