For example, they have trouble with expository prose; producing clear, written summaries; or writing on demand.
Oh, yes! This is where my boys are after 3-4 years of "Writer's Workshop" (one time, my younger son had to write and rewrite the same piece for about 10 weeks).
I have so many horror stories about the process. But the end result is this: I have two otherwise academically capable kids who hate to write, who have terrible writer's blocks, and who don't know how to do expository writing at all...
And if reader's workshop had been implemented as enthusiastically as writer's workshop, I'm sure they'd both hate to read, too. Luckily, one of them escaped that fate.
And from Susan:
I have two otherwise academically capable kids who hate to write, who have terrible writer's blocks, and who don't know how to do expository writing at all...
Same thing here, Vicki. After years of mimicing structure points to regurgitate on the state tests, my bright kid is now frozen.
So, along with all of the other stuff I have to finally force him to write, which I have done.
He even forgot cursive since no one has made him use it for years. He writes like a third grader, very labored.
Now, after having him write (and rewrite) several short bios and a couple of essays in cursive, he seems to be getting smoother and faster.
Now that the workshop model has swept the land everyone can come out of school with a roaring case of math phobia and writer's block.
help for the struggling writer
Now that the workshop model has swept the land everyone can come out of school with a roaring case of math phobia and writer's block.
ReplyDeleteLol!
I'm always surprised at the universality of these problems. I guess I shouldn't be now. (Universality. Is that a word?)
Well, if we can give a wee heads up to all the ones with grade-schoolers then it will be all worth it.
I absolutely predict LOTS MORE WRITERS BLOCK as a direct result of Lucy Calkins and our current national mandate for the Teaching of Writing in K-12.
ReplyDeleteI think the way things used to be was that everyone could come out of school with math anxiety, but only writers and writer-aspirants had writer's block.
Now everyone will be able to have it!
why oh why can't we just teach the kids to write:
ReplyDeletea) a proper sentence
b) a proper paragraph
c) a 5-paragraph essay
That would do nicely, and would produce few workshop casualties.
WORKSHOP CASUALTIES!
ReplyDeleteThat's next.
Christopher had no trouble doing the Celt paragraph just now, and he wrote it from memory quite well, too.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the next step after sentence combining & text reconstruction?
I guess Whimbey will tell me.
I'm thinking he should master the various paragraph genres....
Once I find out what those are, I'll be good to go.
process (how to)
ReplyDeletenarrative (time in sequence)
descriptive
argument
What else???
I better get Warriner's back out.
ReplyDeleteWarriner says:
ReplyDeleteCoherence:
chronological order
spatial order
order of importance
comparison and contrast
analogy
Then, later on, he's got:
Four Types of Paragraphs"
expository
persuasive
descriptive
narrative
I have been repeatedly outspoken in favor of the workshop model because I do think kids can be creative when they're a little freed from the contsraints of too much grammar and punctuation drill.
ReplyDeleteAs a published writer (I've written for several magazines including Parenting)I know that writing is far more than rules, and that the essence of expressing a thought is very apart from grammar rules.
I do think the mechanics should be done separately. But I didn't realize they're not being done at all. Silly me. I'm slow, but not stopped.
Now I'm noticing something. When I was gung-ho about the workshop method, it was with both my girls.
Now that I have a boy going through the workshop method, I'm wondering if this is the right thing for him.
He's very analytical. He might like a more analytical approach in which he learns the details of the components of the language.
And he's not interested in creative writing. He likes expository writing. He wants to write about dinosaur extinction or the history of chess.
Once again, educrats come up with a new method that works great for only some kids, but leaves the others behind.
When WILL they become eclectic educators?
Hey that would make a great name for a blog. LOL
Eclectic Educator
Anyway, this whole equity thing is fascinating. Educational Equity seems to be an important principle of constructivist teaching.
Educational Equity is supposed to reach out to minorities and girls.
I sometimes ponder what it was like for my mother raising her kids in the sixties not to know anything about education.
She simply trusted the school. When we were crunching away at numbers in base 2, base 3, base 4, base 5, all the way up to base 16, she didn't bat an eyelash. Who knew?
It's too late now. But I sometimes wonder what it was like.
I'm rambling.
Now I'm noticing something. When I was gung-ho about the workshop method, it was with both my girls.
ReplyDeleteYou know --- I wondered that at the time we first talked about this --- the workshop model "feels" more "girly" in a way. (I don't say "girly" to be sarcastic.)
K-12 education is completely female-dominated these days; soooo much of what's being done just doesn't "feel" boy-like....
When WILL they become eclectic educators?
ReplyDeleteI actually don't think that can happen....because ed schools and educationists aren't pragmatic. They're not about "results."
The NCLB book (Perlstein's book) will be interesting.
That is a close-up look at an urban school with extremely low achievement doing its damndest to bring up achievement come what may -- I'm looking forward to it.
One question: have your daughters generalized well from workshop to academic paper writing?
ReplyDeleteActually, now that you bring this up, I remember Ms. Duque - the brilliant 5th grade teacher I keep mentioning - railing against endless memoir writing.
ReplyDeleteOur kids wrote memoirs every single year; they're still writing them. (My neighbor's son last year, in 8th grade, told his mom, "I'm running out of memories.")
Ms. Duque thought it was madness to be requiring boys to write about personal experiences & their feelings year in and year out.
She was hilarious.
ReplyDelete"No one's going to hire them to write personal memoirs when they grow up!"
Having boys, I feel pretty certain that Writer's Workshop plays to girls' strengths but leaves boys very frustrated. Journaling, memoir-writing, and other self-absorbed writing such as introspective poetry seem to be the province of pre-teen and teen girls. My boys bristle at all these activities, as well as the reading exercises that require them to constantly inspect their own lives & feelings for "connections."
ReplyDeleteIndeed, constructivist instructional methods in general require regular verbal participation, cooperative learning, and art and design skills no matter what the subject. Many schools have adopted block scheduling (classes of 70-120 minutes) in order to accommodate these instructional strategies, which might be hard for high energy boys to sit through. Grades are often given to the group, not the individual. I know I run the risk of stereotyping, but I believe all of these methods cut against a "typical" boy. Could this be why the boys (as a group) are being turned off and underachieving, especially since this trend is most pronounced in the US and UK where these educational "reforms" have been institutionalized?
If you do some quick research on the boy underachievement problem, you find out that girls are outperforming boys in almost every category (leadership positions in high school, college applications and attendence, etc.).
If this trend continues, we're going to have a lot of frustrated, underemployed young men. That's not going to be a good thing.