Best Practices Chapter 3

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I read Chapter 3 in Best Practices this week, and I found the concrete, step-by-step approach to teaching narrative writing to be very helpful. There were a few areas of confusion for me though. First was the rubric on page 60. I didn’t quite grasp how this was supposed to be used.

I also fell off a bit of a cliff on page 66 when the authors discussed the phenomena of students falling back in competency as they began to incorporate more complexity into their writing. It’s not that I didn’t understand the concept. It’s just that I didn’t quite get what a teacher’s strategy should be for this. Should we circle back and review concepts already covered or press on? Still, it’s very enlightening to know that this is a normal part of the process.

I found the storyboards a wonderful way to help students visualize the progression of a narrative. Also, the story plot planning sheet and the cartoon exercise are other great ideas for helping kids visualize., which I’m sure is a necessary element for many kids to be able to wrap their heads around the concepts.

One other part I didn’t quite understand was at the very end. The authors discuss the fact that their students performed better than other classes using different techniques. “The two instructional approaches differed as follows: focus on plot tension versus temporal event sequence, story character versus story problem, characters’ inner mental worlds versus outer physical worlds.” I’m not sure I even know exactly which is which. It would be nice to know how less successful techniques differ from these techniques.

I guess my other big question about all these readings is that the majority of them seem to be geared toward elementary school students. I wonder how these techniques would work in a high school classroom. At this point, and given my recent experience with field work in high school, I have no idea what high school students are meant to be learning. Should they already be proficient writers? What percentage of high school students are actually where they should be in writing skills? Certainly the students I’m seeing in Bridgeport aren’t there, but who is? And how do we handle older students who are significantly behind in writing skills? Seems like in Bridgeport they are closing their eyes and pushing the kids out into community college to hopefully learn the skills they need there. That’s just my first impression so it may be an unfair characterization, but my question remains. How does most of this relate to the high school level?

I also read “Multiple Literacies in the Content Classroom: High School Students’ Connections to U.S. History” by Jane Hansen. I guess my biggest impression about this is why is this so unique in our classrooms? It seems so obvious that kids will not be motivated by dry, boring textbooks that they know are only telling them half the story. Tell them the truth and they’ll be compelled by it. My daughter is three and she already knows when I’m lying to her. You don’t get anywhere with young people by underestimating their ability to handle complexity. In fact, all they do is shut down because they know you’re patronizing them. I remember that vividly when I was young. There was nothing more frustrating than knowing your parents were keeping you in the dark about something.

Erika Pierce’s (or Price?) methods clearly work since all but one of her students passed the state test. Since what we care about today is passing tests, why don’t we just get over our own discomfort and let kids read the truth. It seems to work.

292 thoughts on “Best Practices Chapter 3”

  1. It’s amazing we’re still so insistent on textbooks isn’t it? There are so many awesome nonfiction trade books out there, historical fiction, research sites.

    I didn’t read the narrative chapter but now I’m going to have to. πŸ˜‰

    I’ll be back!

  2. Hi Lee Ann,
    I found your comment on what High School students are meant to be learning really apprporiate, particularly when there can be a big disparity in their writng proficiency levels. With regard to this, I found the emphasis on group writing activities in Chapter 10: Promoting Motivation for Writing in Best Practices and the Hansen article, “Multiple Litericies in the Content Classroom: High School Students’ Connections to U.S. History” so helppful. Initially, it may take high school students out of their comfort zone to conduct writing activities in pairs and groups. I have certainly felt like this in grad. school when I’ve taken classes that require several group projects that often culminate with a group paper. It is time consuming to meet with other grad. students outside of school (hopefully the high school students are given time during class and can work together during lunch or a common free period.) However,I do admit, that I have learned during these projects because I’ve been exposed to other students’ writing styles and have picked up strategies that I believe have really empowered me to be a better writer.
    As an adult ESL teacher I am challenging myself to help my students become better writers. Last week I began to teach the writing lesson which I presented in our class that was based on one of the Motivating Lessons in Chapter 10 (I did tweak it a bit.) You would not believe the buzz of energy that was present when the class worked in groups of three to produce their own storylines from “The Interview” picture. This week I plan on giving the groups 30 minutes to write a dialogue based on their own storylines. We’ll see how it goes. This notion of group writing is very new to me as an ESL teacher. A fair amount of my students’ class time is spent working in pairs and small groups in which I have them focus on speaking, listening and reading skills and it usually is very successful.. Hopefully by incorporating the writing skill in pair and group work they’ll reap the benefits. I’ll keep you “posted”.
    Moira

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